Work
The God Delusion
Overview
The God Delusion is a 2006 book by British evolutionary biologist and ethologist Richard Dawkins, in which he argues that a supernatural creator, God, does not exist, and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. In the book, he expresses his agreement to Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila (1991) that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." He argues in favour of the possibility of morality existing independently of religion and proposes alternative explanations for the origins of both religion and morality.
In early December 2006, it reached number four in the New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list. The book has attracted widespread commentary and critical reception, with many works written in response.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed The God Delusion
Related ideas
- The Independent
- Yale University Press
- Turkey
- Antony Flew
- Michael Ruse
- Alister McGrath
- Atheism
- Intelligent design
- The Wall Street Journal
- Marxism
- Personal god
- Thomas Nagel
- Liberalism
- Watchmaker analogy
- Stephen Hawking
- Evidence
- Natural selection
- Thomas Aquinas
- Arthur Eddington
- Omniscience
- Christopher Hitchens
- Probability
- Pantheism
- David Bentley Hart
Place in the tradition
Part of Antireligion.