| OUTGROWING GOD A Beginner's Guide Richard Dawkins New York: Random House, 2019 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-9848-5391-2 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-9848-5391-0 | 294pp. | HC/FCI | $27.00 | |
Richard Dawkins is known as the author of numerous books arguing that belief in a god, or gods, is not supported by any valid evidence. This one is aimed at a young audience: people of high school and possibly college age.
In it, he sets himself a formidable dual challenge: To make it clear to the reader why the world's religions, and the Abrahamic religions in particular, are undependable; and to explain, with a minimum of technical jargon, the reasons why evolution is true. He lays out this arguments in two sections of six chapters each. I judge that he accomplishes his objectives. It probably helps that he's had a good bit of practice, because considerable discipline is needed to thread the way between going too simplistic and too technical.
Personally, I was put off in places by his use of punctuation (which may be a British trait) and his penchant for throwing in sentence fragments. Put off, but only in a minor way.
Some of the questions he delves into are:1
Answering that last question requires the last six chapters, and takes the reader on an extensive tour of the plant and animals kingdoms: not just gazelles and cheetahs, but chameleons, cuttlefish, cabbages, cauliflowers, and "the mathematically elegant Romanesco."
Indeed, his last chapter ranges widely through science, pondering plate techtonics and ending with consideration of the multiverse concept and the Anthropic Principle. I found this the weakest part of his argument — probably because the multiverse is still purely theoretical.
This chapter also introduces the reader to Julia Sweeney. Her account of outgrowing God is charming enough that I intend to look up the full version, and I quote a fragment of it here.
I sat down and thought, "Okay, I admit it. I do not believe there is enough evidence to continue to believe in God. The world behaves exactly as you would expect it would, if there were no supreme being, no supreme consciousness, and no supernatural. And my best judgment tells me that it's much more likely that we invented God than that God invented us. And I shuddered. I felt I was slipping off the raft..." – Page 264 |
I judge the book worth reading. It's got 28 color plates and a number of diagrams. There is an index, but it's a sketchy one that doesn't list the four or five books referenced in the text, and some of the people. So I can't rate it a keeper.
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