Some time ago I briefly skimmed an essay in the New York Times by psychologist and evolutionary biologist David Barash entitled ' God, Darwin and My College Biology Class '. What struck me about this essay at the time was the brazen way in which Barash admits to proselytizing for atheism in his biology classes. In the very first paragraph of the essay, Barash bluntly states: "Every year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isn’t, as you might expect, about sex, but about evolution and religion, and how they get along. More to the point, how they don’t." How would an atheist like Barash react if a theist physics professor were to write something like: "Every year around this time, I give my students The Talk - about the laws of nature and atheism, how they get along. More to the point, how they don't." If the theist physicist were then to go on the note that he spent the entirety of The Talk insisting that ...
Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion has, according to wikipedi a, sold over 3 million copies in English and has been translated into 35 languages. It is by far the most widely-sold (and probably the most widely-read) atheist polemic of recent decades - perhaps of all time. All this means of course that Dawkins is quite influential in the global atheist 'community'. But is his book really any good? The reader should, by now, be fully aware that the answer is 'No'. I've focused primarily on Dawkins' discussion of the existence of God, as this issue is the lynch-pin of his book. Without his conclusion that belief in God is akin to insanity, the rest of his discussion is largely moot. Much of his case for the 'dangerous' nature of religion is based on the assumption that belief in God is fundamentally irrational and, therefore, 'faith', as he defines it, is the enemy of reason and progress. The problem is, however, that Dawkins' discussion ...