The Dawkins Occlusion

I was not at all happy when I posted on "The God Delusion" before. I was angry at Dawkins irresponsible ignorance. I felt physically ill after posting my reaction. I had let myself down somehow.

I recently drafted a comprehensive rebuttal to the book based on the Wikipedia article on it, but when I gave it to my excellent colleague Ernest Adams (who studied philosophy as his degree) for review, he made absolutely clear to me what I had been in denial about. One can oppose  a particular ideology without reading its source texts, but if one wants to write a comprehensive rebuttal to a book, one has to read it first.

This, unfortunately, places this rebuttal somewhat in doubt, as Dawkins is just not important enough for me to subvert my current reading list. It's going to be hard to want to read a clumsy sophomoric work (Plantinga's professional assessment of it) over more Kant, Kierkegaard, Arendt, Feyerabend or Wittgenstein, and I certainly have no intention of putting any more money in Professor Dawkins already ample bank account in respect of a book which, to my sensibilities, is blatant bigotry. I would far sooner reread his middle work, which displays intelligence and erudition.

So, for the time being, I have constrained myself to a few paragraphs in the piece on Ethics of Metaphysics which follows. Perhaps this will suffice.

And I retract my claim that nothing good could come from Dawkins writing a book on religion. Clearly, this book has put religion back on the table as a subject for discussion. That alone may be worthwhile, as not talking about it was surely not working.