Any concerns I had about this being "unbearably twee", as I mentioned initially, were most certainly unfounded. It is beautifully written, intelligent, witty and profound prose and I am very glad to have picked it up.
Inevitably there are those who slate it; when I said the online reviews I'd found had been pretty positive I hadn't yet seen those on RichardDawkins.net!
Inevitably there are those who slate it; when I said the online reviews I'd found had been pretty positive I hadn't yet seen those on RichardDawkins.net!
2 comments:
Trevor, how I have McGrath's book The Dawkins Delusion if you want to borrow it. Here's a good comment on the book:
Dawkins takes Richard Swinburne as his key exemplar of the way theologians think (82). This may be our problem. Whilst Swinburne’s books are undeniably popular, and while there is one variety of philosophical theology in which he is a mover and a shaker, I’m afraid that to think he speaks for theologians in general is simply laughable. It is probably fair to say that most of the theologians I know in the UK have no time for him at all - precisely because they don’t recognise the God he talks about. And when it comes to Swinburne’s theodicy (of which Dawkins makes much on pp.88-89), nearly every theologian I know would agree: Swinburne’s views are grotesque.
This is just to say that Dawkin's knows very little about theology.
Thanks Andy, I'll take you up on the loan sometime.
One of the things that Darwin's Angel has pointed out is that the most quoted author in The God Delusion is - wait for it - Dawkins himself.
I'm not a great academic reader but even I can see that primarily quoting oneself is not the most objective approach.
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