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I just finished Dawkins's "The God Delusion" and am now very angry about everything.

Everyone should read it, even - especially - those currently deluded.

On the plus point I know what to get my mother for her birthday.

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There are 55 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

angry about everything?

Even beer? You can't be angry at beer.

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I can.

I am angry about the beer that leaked in to my carpet. It was both a waste of beer and a horrible mess.

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Gah - I've got a mile of plastic sheeting I could have given you some of.

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angua.livejournal.com

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*beery sympathy*

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But I bet some clown attributes the existence of beer to inspiration by the old man with the beard, which gets us into the whole business of belittling all human achievement.

OK. Maybe I'm not quite angry about _everything_. :-)

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"Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy." - Benjamin Franklin ;>

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"Everybody has to believe in something.....I believe I'll have another drink."

-W.C. Fields

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But...but...I don't WANT to be angry about everything!

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It's my natural emotional state, me.

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Brain breakage at finding

cookwitch in

damerell's LJ.

But thanks for the book rec - I'll check it out! Angry is good.

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cookwitch.livejournal.com

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damerell.livejournal.com

I think I am already angry enough about Other Things at the moment.

However, was it interesting?

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You may be temporarily excused under the circumstances.

It was interesting and very amusing in the bits where I wasn't reminded that people actually believe in this stuff. Dawkins has really pulled the gloves off - indeed, part of his point is that we give an unjustified respect to religion when we would feel perfectly free to mock or pity an adult who believed in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus.

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It is a truly excellent book isn't it? I am probably going to offer to buy a copy for each of my religious friends.

There were two things I wasn't aware of before I read the book... That Dawkins is good friends with the bishop of Oxford, and that he was abused in some way by a religious teacher at school.

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I see no indication that that teacher was religious; Dawkins is just making the point, in passing, that in fact this experience was not the Worst Thing Ever. Having had similar experiences I would concur; Minty being excessively tactile was annoying but has hardly blasted my life forever.

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Did you see his Root of All Evil – two-parter on television?

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Nope - I don't watch TV. Was it good?

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Unfortunately, I absolutely loathe Dawkins as I think he's an arrogant, bombastic twat with a very limited understanding of inclinations he doesn't share, so it would probably make me angry too, but perhaps not in the same way. Good to hear you enjoyed it, though, so I'd certainly think about reading it - don't want to judge too harshly without prior knowledge.

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he's an arrogant, bombastic twat with a very limited understanding of inclinations he doesn't share

He certainly is. However, for those of us on his side of the argument it makes for a very refreshing change to have the bombastic invective flying in the other direction for once. ;)

(To put it another way: it's easier to forgive someone for being arrogant when they're right.)

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Actually, I think in this book he's thought very hard about _why_ religious belief exists. It's a difficult question.

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It would be nice if Dawkins was less erratic in his arguments.
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7803

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I'm less than convinced. Sure, Dawkins is absurdly optimistic in asserting atheism never provides the motive; but, if I can employ the "it's politics, not religion" defence so beloved of the theists, I don't suppose Tibet being a secular democracy would have made a blind bit of difference, for example.

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OOI (and please lets not have TGGD here), what do you think I might gain from reading said book? I've read several of Dawkin's previous works.

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I always find that reading Dawkins help to confirm my faith.

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Well, you might come to your senses. :-)

I'm not sure. There is much less evolutionary biology - and most of it has been in Dawkins's earlier books, often several times - and the same is true of the regular mocking of creationists.

The discussion of the possible biological or cultural imperatives for religion is quite interesting. I am normally quite unable to understand why any rational educated person should be religious [1] and Dawkins goes some way towards a possible explanation.

There's quite a bit about the political machinations of the religious right in America, too.

[1] Honestly, I'm not trying to launch TGGD here. This is the literal truth.

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I had to skip the bits about how to argue with creationists, it's terribly terribly depressing.

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