Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins is a pompous ass, and the title of his new book is so unabashedly combative that I consistently found myself hiding it. I began reading it not long after I finished The Pillars of the Earth (or perhaps before, come to think of it), but was too embarrassed to add the title to the "currently reading" section of my blog (hence the very long delay in updating the book blog at all!).

I finally finished it, with some relief, last week. Although it's not terribly esoteric (which should probably be credited to Dawkins as a triumph, given his background), it is rather dense, in addition to being witheringly dismissive of those he seems to perceive as being unintelligent enough to disagree with his own arguments--and thus rather tiring.

It is quite brilliantly written; I think I discovered only one typographical error in the entire book, and pictured the professor himself perusing the proofs.

As far as content, I remain undecided. He presents compelling arguments for his point of view, yet his attempt to disprove the existence of God from the point of science seems somewhat misguided. He seems to believe that science should, and will, be able to understand or prove everything at some point, even if it can't right now, and I'm not sure a scientific approach is really the best way to go about discussing something like God.

When I went to Amazon for the image at the top of this post, I saw at least eight books directly confronting Dawkins' text on the first page of search results alone, so it's clear that he and his aggressively-entitled tome have stirred up some strong feelings. I am interested, and somewhat heartened, to see that there is at least a debate going on. Ignoring texts that conflict with one's worldview may be the quickest way to a quiet and unencumbered existence, but I don't believe it makes the world a better place.