Talk:The God Delusion/Archive 3

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References

Lots of the references refer to specific pages in the editor's copy of the God Delusion - shouldn't the edition and publisher be mentioned? (or the ISBN, so that edition can be found again). MrBeast 22:27, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Dawkins Delusion

I notice that Alister McGrath has written a new book called The Dawkins Delusion?. McGrath seems to have a real bee in his bonnet about Dawkins. Anyone would think he is trying build a career around attacking the man. Still, McGrath is unable to provide any evidence that his God exists anywhere besides in his imagination. Yet he continues to assert, without proof, that God does exist. People often erroneously think that it is the job of the atheist to disprove God's existence, as if it were possible to disprove any imaginary entity. No, it is the job of the person claiming Zeus to exist to demonstrate with proof that Zeus does exist. Otherwise, we have no reason to assume Zeus's existence to be worthy of debate.

My favourite Christopher Hitchens quote comes in here:

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

I wish people like McGrath could get to grips with this. -Neural 14:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

At least he deserves an award for the most unoriginal rebuttal title since "The Da Vinci Hoax"... Seriously though, Alister isn't that bad, search amazon for "Christian Theology" and he should be up there. Now, about this new book, has anybody read it? Is there anything relevant to add about it here, or does it suffice to link to it? --Merzul 04:03, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Neural – Dawkins certainly thinks that McGrath is riding on his popularity. Here's a quote from his website (posted as a comment):

“ Alister McGrath has now written two books with my name in the title. The poet W B Yeats, when asked to say something about bad poets who made a living by parasitizing him, wrote the splendid line: "Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?" [1] ”

Lh'owon 05:08, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

It's ridiculous to suggest that Alister McGrath is trying to "build a career around attacking Dawkins". McGrath was awarded a personal chair at Oxford purely on merit aged 46, (Dawkins had to have a chair endowed specially for him, aged 54), and has written 18 books which have nothing to do with Dawkins. McGrath exposes some of Dawkins philosophical and historical howlers and Dawkins responds by a personal attack. Given the scathing reviews that The God Delusion has recieved even from atheists, it is unwise to conclude that its sales are driven by "popularity" rather than "notoriety". The comparison [[User:Merzul|Merzul] makes with Dan Brown seems apt. I am however puzzled Snalwibma's comment that "McGrath's comments on TGD cannot have come from a book that predates it by 2 years! TDD is not "subsequent" to those comments, but their source." in his latest edit. I think he may be confusing the book TDD with the article of the same title? NBeale 10:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

... And I suppose RD's chair was not awarded "on merit"?!!! But to the point - yes, I am confusing the two McGrath publications of the same name - but it isn't clear from the wikipedia article that the McGrath review is in his article, not his book. The footnote/reference simply says "The Dawkins Delusion", and I naturally assumed this was the book. Perhaps if there was a proper reference insted of just a link to something that appears (admittedly without following the link) to be the book called TDD it would be easier to understand. Snalwibma 11:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

RD would never normally have been appointed to a chair at Oxford. Indeed he was being criticised for neglecting his duties as a Reader in pursuing his popularist agenda. Simonyi heard that "his hero" was in trouble (according to press reports on Dawkins's website) and he endowed this very specific chair "with the express intention that its first holder be Richard Dawkins". Oxford was short of money at the time and accepted this gift with the string attached. NBeale 08:29, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not that big of a Dawkins fan to bother deleting another persons comment, but I think this is quite dubious material and not very nice towards the subject. Unless these accusations are based on reliable sources, I suggest you remove them from this talk page. (And then you can remove this comment as well). --Merzul 21:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

If you like a bit of malicious gossip - did you hear the latest rumour about John Polkinghorne? Snalwibma 21:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

What a lot of negative reviews!

I have just reread the article, after many weeks away. Does anyone else, I wonder, share my impression that the thing has been badly skewed by quote-mining Dawkins-bashers in a gleeful point-scoring attempt to overwhelm what Dawkins says with as many trivial negative comments as possible, and at all costs to ensure that the detractors have the last say? No, I have not read all the reviews, but I find it hard to believe that the critical reaction was really as negative as the Wikipedia article suggests. I strongly suspect POV-based quote-mining. Is it time to redress the balance and trim away some of those oh-so-important reviews by oh-so-learned religious commentators with their oh-so-predictable negative reactions? Gnusmas 20:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

If you think the article is missing reviews in notable publications that are more positive, you should link them. Speaking as someone who enjoyed the book, I'd suggest that the negative reactions were indeed predictable, as well as voluminous--because that's what a best seller praising atheism is bound to attract.--Barte 22:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

By all means add some quotes from positive reviews (if you can find them), but I think the article gives a reasonable balance of the assertions of Dawkins and the criticisms. The book was pretty much panned by almost every philosopher who reviewed it, whether they are atheist or religious. Was it predictable that atheist reviewers should have had negative reactions? If so, why?NBeale 10:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Me too with NBeale on the negative criticisms but for different reasons; there is too much money, power and politics in religion to expect too many positive endorsements as the book speaks for itself. The target audience was joe-pubic not the "philosopher". Given Dawkins' role has traditionally been to make science more consumable then this is an understandable focus. Consider what joe-public would make of, say, the words of Karl Rahner or say Plantinga's ontological argument ? No I do not think that "panned" by "philosophers" is a criticism but a complement to the book. Ttiotsw 10:57, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Over-generally speaking, the book has drawn scathing reviews from believers, mixed reviews from fellow atheists, many of whom were uncomfortable with Dawkins' take-no-prisoners approach. It will be interesting to see the critical reception for Christopher Hitchens' new book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything".--Barte 15:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have made two edits that slightly balance the negativity of the section, but in general I agree, our duty is to be neutral with respect to what is out there, and considering that Dawkins calls atheists/agnostics tolerant of moderate religion as "Chamberlainian", the negative reviews from atheist commentators should not be surprising. --Merzul 21:30, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

It's worth checking the individual reviews. Sometimes expert reviewers will use the opportunity to pursue thoughts of their own, even if they quite like a book. In any event, reviews usually have some balance that can't be summed up without a bit of work. The review by Kenan Malik is a case in point. I had reason to check this yesterday, and found that our account of it was rather distorted. Metamagician3000 01:02, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Positive or negative, it seems odd to include such a large number of reviews at all. I have not seen anything comparable in other wiki entries for books, and you certainly wouldn't see such a thing in a more traditional, printed encyclopedia. Imagine an article on A Tale of Two Cities in the Encyclopedia Britannica that included reviews. Ridiculous. This is meant to be an encyclopedia, not a dust jacket. I'd suggest the removal of the reviews. At most, there should be links to reviews so the excerpts could be seen in context. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.166.209.136 (talk • contribs)

This has been on my todo-list, to try to move from this list of reviews to a more coherent view of the reception, impact, publication story, and interesting things about the book. It will take a lot of effort, and it will sure spark a lot of discussion here on the talk page, but it is something we'll have to do... The current situation is the simplest possible compromise, but it's not a good article about a book. --Merzul 18:43, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

This review in particular practically begs for some sort of a rejoinder:

Writing in Harper's, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson argues that Dawkins has a superficial knowledge of the Bible and is intolerant of theists, yet demands tolerance of science: "if religion is to be blamed for the fraud done in its name, then what of science? Is it to be blamed for the Piltdown hoax, for the long-credited deceptions having to do with cloning in South Korea? If by 'science' is meant authentic science, then 'religion' must mean authentic religion, granting the difficulties in arriving at these definitions."

If this excerpt fairly represents Robinson's point of view, she is overlooking an Elephant in the room problem, namely that scientists routinely check other scientists' work and expose their errors and frauds, often within mere years or decades, and to the benefit of overall progress in science, whereas religions typically persist in their errors and frauds for as long as possible, up to centuries, and only grudgingly admit error after having been dragged to it by the efforts of people outside the religion. Compare the Piltdown hoax (perhaps modern science's most egregious hoax, requiring 40 years for other scientists to definitively expose, although doubts about the fossil had been raised early on) to the Galileo affair (requiring more than three centuries for the final grudging apology from the Pope, long after the injustice to Galileo had been demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt by persons outside the Church). Some humans are scoundrels, and every organization of humans has its share of scoundrels. The institutional integrity of science and various religions is not measured by the scoundrels who invariably slip through, but by an organization's ability to police its own errors. Since science is fundamentally based on critical thinking whereas every religion must systematically exclude large areas of doctrine from critical thinking (otherwise they would have to stop making so many supernatural claims and just admit: we don't know), religions are inherently far less good than science at finding, admitting, and correcting their errors. Religions have a very hard time admitting error because doing so undermines their claim to moral authority; whereas science makes no claim to moral authority, and simply reports on causes and effects that anyone can observe for themselves (given sufficient resources). It would be nice to find a reliable source to cite here, lest the unrebutted Robinson review leads the naive reader to equate science and religion on an institutional integrity basis simply because both have had their frauds. --Teratornis 21:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Great Beethoven Fallacy

I just happened to look through a few pages of this and found a major error. He attacks religious groups for claiming Beethoven was deaf. In fact, Beethoven was deaf. The author mentions Beethoven many times in the book as if he's a big fan, but he doesn't have basic knowledge of the man. Worse, he skips over the bigger argument, about eugenics and how deaf and disabled people have sometimes been targeted by birth control advocates. He seems to be saying deaf people have never accomplished anything so there is no arguement. In fact, in recent years the US, France and Canada have all had leaders with significant hearing loss. Other famous individuals considered deaf include Thomas Edison, who invented audio recording. Just reading this section I can see that the book basically follows whatever is in the author's head without bothering to check basic facts. How did he ever graduate from college?

To be fair to Dawkins he does know Beethoven was deaf but disputes the suggestion that he was the 5th child of a syphilitic father and a turburculous mother, and that modern doctors might therefore have recommended an abortion. (I'm unable to find my Beethoven biography, what is clear is that there were a total of seven children, of whom only three survived infancy) As to "how did he graduate?" the answer is "with a second-class degree" NBeale 10:23, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The book specifically states that there is no evidence that Beethoven was deaf. Maybe the author meant born deaf, but that's not what it says. His argument seems to be written in such a way as to avoid the whole issue of eugenics, but rather than exposing a fallacy he creates a "straw man". He's attacking something he claims he found on the internet instead of the actual argument. Assuming you can determine if a child will be deaf, which may be possible today, then Beethoven might have been aborted. There's so many errors in this section alone it makes wikipedia look like a bastion of accuracy. Your typical article here is much better organized and argued. People who read this book are the sort that like to think they're educated because they went to college, read two books a year and simply follow whatever the professor says. This is why American culture is such crap. (revised) I noticed this guy is actually British so I'll revise my opinion and say he's the sort of professor that has a British accent that Americans fall for. Maybe he thinks he's so smart no one should edit his work for obvious errors.

Well the sentence (p299) is very poorly written "He [Beethoven] was the eldest - strictly the number two, but his elder sibling died in infancy, as was common in those days, and was not, so far as is known, blind or deaf or metally retarded" so you could read the 3rd "was" as applying to Beethoven but actually I'm sure that all three "was"s apply to different things and the 3rd one applies to B's elder sibling. (It seems from [2] that "An elder brother, Ludwig Maria, died at one week old. Ludwig's two brothers - Caspar Carl and Nikolaus Johann - were followed by two more children - Georg and Margherita - both of whom died in infancy." I think your wider points are spot-on. Why not get yourself a WikiPedia ID and contribute more fully? NBeale 15:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Why is this poorly written? In this paragraph and those nearby, Dawkins never asserts that Beethoven wasn't deaf. He doesn't come close. Our anonymous critic's far-flung accusations here are entirely baseless.--Barte 21:36, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

If someone is talking about Beethoven I would assume thy mean the composer and not his brother or his dog. If this brother died in birth how could they know if it was deaf or retarded? Is that some kind of British humor? Anyway, he doesn't address the whole point of the story which is that if Beethoven was aborted or gassed by the Nazis then you don't have his music. The idea of looking at relatives for signs of disabilities is so old it doesn't make any sense without at least giving us some background on eugenics, which is an important subject in terms of explaining why humans shouldn't play god. It's easy enough to find history of religious societies that were faulty since nearly every society has been religious. There's only a few examples of non-religious societies and they're not good. I notice the author claims Hitler was Catholic. I suppose Lenin was Jewish? Isn't one of the author's basic claims that people shouldn't label children based on the religions of their parents?

We need to start focusing this discussion on the Wikipedia article. (There are great sites like convinceme.net for online debate). This talk page is for discussing the article, so do you have any suggestions on how to improve it? --Merzul 02:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we should take any more notice of someone who wants to use Wikipedia as a soap box, is not focused on the article, and does not even sign with an IP address. Metamagician3000 01:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

On the subject of improving articles, I'd like to invite interested editors to have a look at a related article, The Dawkins Delusion?. The reason? It is one of the most blatantly POV articles I've come across, in urgent need of some neutrality. Thanks all. -Neural 00:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather focus on improving this article, and while I agree that neutrality is a good thing, I don't want editors to leave this page just yet! See below... --Merzul 08:30, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

What's next?

Are we happy with the current structure, and will we just maintain and improve small things here and there; or are there any suggestions about what is needed to improve the article more substantially? We have limited this to the contents, while Feature Articles on books, such as The Brothers Karamazov or Night (book), generally include a lot more. There is at least some things to say about the context, publishing and all the supporting talks and interviews that he has given after the books publishing. This would be a good opportunity to add some pictures :) --Merzul 08:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

sourcing

The entire synopsis uses the book alone as a source, unless I missed a source. It would be preferable to include some other sources - reviews written by others. I'll start looking over reviews myself, any help would be appreciated. KillerChihuahua^?!? 11:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

• I don't follow this line of thinking. It's a synopsis of the book, giving a summary of what Dawkins says in TGD. The only sensible source is the book itself. Reviews and opinions of others are given space in the "Reviews" section. Snalwibma 11:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The line of thinking was that if there are any bits within the synopsis which make statements about what Dawkin's aims and methodology were, in other words, minor speculation, those should be sourced. Upon more careful reading of the synopsis, however, I don't see any questionable speculation, so feel free to strike my concern. KillerChihuahua^?!? 11:57, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

This article makes almost no sense

This article at various points seems to assume (it's not really clear, and then again many of the arguments are not very clear) that all readers are ultraconservatives or athiests. Is this how the professor presents his arguments? Does he assume that all Abrahamic religious groups believe in Creationism, biblical inerrancy, that things which appear to be incorrect should be believed nonetheless, etc? Does the synopsis of this article leave out crucial contextualizing information that would keep it from being a bunch of disembodied floating straw man arguments selected merely for titillation factor? I mean c'mon I haven't read this book, but as for the summary here, as a Christian I could make a better case for athiesm in an hour by assembling results from Google queries. An easy way to improve the article is to (a) Contextualize (b) Ask how would a skeptical Christian (or Muslim...) who has been educated in the various sciences and believes in evolution understand this guy's arguments? Should certain subsections of the synopsis be ignored by certain readers? (c) Did he allow for some score "points" from his opponents in order to demonstrate his reasonableness and that he understands the point of debating? (It's helpful to include say a hint of this in the synopsis because it sets the tone for his work). I'll assume that this isn't just pop culture spin machines spinning and that the author deeply cares about his arguments (as is the norm in arguments of belief), and assume the flaws lie in the article. - Connelly 19:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, your judgment of this article is similar to what many Christian reviewers have said of the book, so I don't think the synopsis is that far off. Personally, I think the originality of the book is not in its content, but in its style; so it's value (to atheists) is not philosophical but social. It's not so much what he said, but that he dares to say it. So I don't think the synopsis really requires any more detail, what this article would need is to explain more about the impact of the book and the context in which it has been published. --Merzul 01:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, more information is needed about the context in which it was published. - Connelly 19:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

As a Christian you are already well on the road to Atheism as you already discard many gods, though you leave just that one Jewish tribal god as an exception, so yes I would agree that you probably could present the case for Atheism quite well. You discount 'n-1' gods: atheists discount 'n' gods. In this book Dawkins uses an almost conversational tone presenting that religious belief is a delusion. It has introduced the idea of "delusion" into the conversation; and it has stuck given that we now have a rebuttal called "The Dawkins Delusion?". I don't see it as an argument for Atheism but an argument against the delusions. This includes such concepts as the afterlife too in which he uses the example of Buddhists (which is nothing to do with the term "atheist").

With book articles we can't really start up our own review of it as that is more or less original research but must summarise each book section neutrally, add other people's reviews for and against and other related data.Ttiotsw 07:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I like that you thought this worth making an argument for, it gives me hope for the future of what I fear is an increasingly uninterested and unintelligent populace. I'm not sure Wikipedia is the best place for posting such arguments, as they tend to start flamewars. I wasn't asking for a review but rather contextualization. - Connelly 19:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

So you want to represent the content of a non-fiction book presenting one persons views on what they feel is a "delusion" into the worldview of the deluded ? I feel that reworking one set of foundation myths to apply it to another cultural setting is fine but this book is questioning the foundation myths. To contextualize that misses the point somewhat. Ttiotsw 19:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

No, contextualize to explain e.g. why the subsection "Why there almost certainly is no God" jumps immediately into minutiae of the mechanics of the debate of Creationism vs Evolution, which is a topic mostly of interest to America and the U.K. in the years of 1859-2007. Actually now that I look at it, it seems this entire section is focused solely on evolution debate. Bizarre. In any case, jumping into this section is like jumping into ice water if you are a skeptic like me: one wonders how in the world we went from the philosophical topic "why there almost certainly is no God" to the mechanics of the given debate. I think this would be much more confusing for people who don't live in the United States and who haven't grown up around Christians. My other point was that whatever this author's original arguments were, they seem to have been ripped completely to shreds by Wikipedians removing the deductive force from them and merely exposing various "OMG that's so controversial" quotes. I guess maybe I should read the book but I'm now kind of leery of it after Merzul's observation that it isn't serious philosophy and seems to be some kind of social movement instead. (I'm asocial, black triangle symbol would be given to me in the Nazi camps). - Connelly 22:48, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, the English Wikipedia is substantially if not mostly the work of contributors in the U.S. and U.K. (and current or former U.K. possessions) (no disrespect to contributors from elsewhere, but just browsing around the site indicates some obvious and heavy U.S./U.K. influences), so I'd think the Creation-evolution debate has received suitably wide attention to be a notable issue here. Dawkins will of course target fundamentalists because (a) those are the people who have been attacking evolutionists like Dawkins for decades, (b) they have managed to persuade more than half of U.S. poll respondents to reject the scientific findings on human origins, and because (c) fundamentalists are the most difficult to imagine accepting Gould's fanciful restrictions on their activities (the so-called non-overlapping magisteria, which always struck me as Gould's remarkable attempt to define away the people who repeatedly came out to debate him). Theists such as yourself who seem to "know your place," as it were, worshipping a sort of God of the gaps whose domain steadily shrinks over the centuries of intellectual progress, while leaving the big decisions about reality up to science, probably would never have motivated Dawkins to respond. After all, it doesn't matter to other people what you believe so much as it matters what you do. If we were to observe you and Dawkins at length in everyday life, perhaps it might be difficult to guess which is the theist and which the atheist, until we finally saw you heading to church. A person's religion only becomes an issue when it gets in the way of someone else's agenda, or when it starts asserting its own agenda over others. And that is precisely what fundamentalism is all about: the restoration of theocracy. This is on painful display in many parts of the Muslim world today, whereas much of Christendom is centuries farther along the path to secularization and seems unlikely to turn back the clock far enough to set up its own counterparts of the Islamic state, but nonetheless we can see the track record of, say, the Bush administration which caters in many ways to evangelical/pretribulationist points of view and has us fighting a protracted conflict over religion and petroleum packaged as the War on terror. --Teratornis 22:34, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Reverted category "criticism of fundamentalism"

I removed the category added by Chsbcgs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). I'm not too pleased with his list of contributions, but with respect to this particular edit I explained in the edit summary why I object to that category, please respond here if anybody disagrees. --Merzul 21:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. It is a criticism of fundamentalism. It is also a criticism of moderate religion. I just re-added Letter to a Christian Nation before I noticed your comment here. I'll take that book back out for the moment; I had not realized the fact that this category was just created. It might not be particularly useful. I'm open on this; we could CFD it, if we don't I'm leaning toward putting these books in that category. — coelacan talk — 04:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have serious concerns about the user who created this category, and I am assuming bad faith here, but look at the guys talk page... so he has created a category "criticism of fundamentalism" and added books by atheists and religious authors that in his opinion criticise fundamentalism; it's not just a neutral and helpful category, it's very much arguing that Dawkins and Harris have focused excessively on religious fundamentalism. While "criticism of religion" is a neutral category, both Category:Criticisms of Fundamentalism and Category:Criticisms of Moderate Religion would be loaded with one side's POV. --Merzul 04:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Just thought I would add something because I'm going to sleep now... I mainly removed the tags because of the way these things have been added without any discussion. I have no problem putting them back if after a reasonable discussion you find that my above argumentation above is not persuasive. --Merzul 05:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the category certainly wasn't created under stellar conditions. I also think that while there are certainly such things as fundamentalism and moderate religion, the separation between them is much more of a spectrum than a plain line. Categories don't have room for ambiguity though, they're binary; an article is either in or out. So I'm thinking a CFD is probably a good idea. I'll remove American Fascists too, since I put it in, and if nobody else objects soon I'll try to remember to open a CFD tomorrow. — coelacan talk — 06:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

---211.30.130.90 15:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)Guys, I don't think it really matters. I got here by searching "The God Delusion" in Google. Do you think the categories *really make that much difference?* Don't know what *you* are using to edit this but the way I have to do it is not friendly. I understand this is a higher-level issue. What do you think?

In my mind, this category is no different from Iraq liberation opposition, because I'm quite convinced calling this book a "criticism of fundamentalism" is one-sided. This is, of course, just my opinion; and you are welcome to discuss it here. I don't know what you mean by higher-level issue, like any change that is reverted, it requires discussion and consensus. Now, you say it doesn't matter that much, then why add them at all?--Merzul 15:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The category is up for deletion now at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 1. — coelacan talk — 05:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Reference to Pirsig

The reference to Pirsig in the intro is interesting, as, later, a literal reference to him would argue against the proposition. I need to find the quote, but to paraphrase, Pirsig says "God exists". What he meant was "a belief in God exists". Then, the metaphysical question is, "Is there a difference?". I will endeavour to find references for this.

I believe it is right to give the flavour of Dawkin's argument, and not be "objectively' impartial [an concept Pirsig would argue with). I must read this book. It promises to add more to the mix...

Something we can all agree on?

I see that in the Sunday Times bestseller lists TGD comes just under The Book of General Ignorance. I have a feeling that both D's admirers and critics would agree that this was appropriate, but for different reasons :-) NBeale 15:36, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

And what about those of us who are both admirers and critics of RD? Or do you not admit that such a category could exist? I suspect, in fact, that is a large part of your problem! ;-) Snalwibma 15:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Then you might doubly agree. After all pretty well every qualified reviewer of whatever persuasion, however much they admire RD, has been critical of TDG. I wonder if sales of his (alleged) source have picked up at all ;-) NBeale 16:05, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Nonsense. There you go with your POV again. FT, Guardian, Economist are all positive and amazon customers give it 4/5. In fact there is a good review of the reviews at [3] that presents a much more neutral overview than the selective choice quotes (many inserted by nbeale) given here. Poujeaux 13:30, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Some of our selections here do misrepresent the reviewers, and it is slightly tilted towards the negative. Marek Kohn (The Independent) concludes in a positive vein, yet our summary has focused entirely on his objections. --Merzul 10:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Referring to Dawkins as an atheist in the opening sentence.

Is it really necessary to refer to Dawkins as an atheist? Any other religious individual isn't described by their field then by their belief system. - Throw 00:13, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

You're right. Sometimes the religion comes first:

• The Dawkins Delusion? is a non-fiction book by the biochemist and Christian theologian Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, written as a critical response to Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion.
• The Purpose Driven Life (2002) is an advice book written by Christian author Rick Warren and published by Zondervan.
• The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (1998) is book by Christian apologist and former journalist Lee Strobel supporting the thesis that Jesus of Nazareth was the unique son of God.
• Islamic Way of Life (Arabic: Islam Ka Nizam Hayat) is a book written by prominent Muslim Sunni Islamic scholar Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi in Lahore, 1948.

It's common and helpful to clarify the religion of the authors of books giving advice or making arguments concerning religion. -- Schaefer (talk) 04:29, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree to this, Dawkins's atheism is relevant; although the title of the book should slightly hint at that :) --Merzul 10:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

The Boeing 747 flies again!

Hey - take a look at Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. Three months after being deleted, or rather turned into a redirect to The God Delusion, it's back, flying once more over people's heads in a revived POV-pushing and original blog-like essay! Chocks away! Snalwibma 19:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Einstein and God

The article currently says: "This awe of nature's complexity is the core of what he calls “Einsteinian religion”, referring to Einstein's use of the word “God” as a metaphor for nature or the mysteries of the universe. However, he regrets that many scientists use the word "God" in this pantheistic and poetic sense[7] because of the confusion it causes."

This may be correct about the book, but it is wrong with respect to Einstein. Spinoza's belief (which Einstein claimed for himself) that God is Nature is not the same thing as saying that one is a metaphor for the other, and in fact that isn't what was meant (basically as I understand it God is an ontological substrate for all beings and is an immanent force that is constantly active in constituting/maintaining them). Retaining the idea of God was not casual or incidental for Einstein, which if anything is underscored by his rejection of an Abrahamic God. I'm gonna modify the quoted part of the article.

I'll echo you there. Many theologians have argued that Pantheism is arguably compatable with Theism. However Dawkins, in order to make his point about Einstein being an Atheist, simply describes Pantheism as "sexed up atheism" or something like that. He doesn't even examine who Spinoza was or look at Pantheism in greater detail. Rather he coines a new term "Einsteinian Religion" which doesn't make much sense when you consider Pantheism.Olockers

Is this article about the book or about how accurate the book is? 90.152.12.130 14:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The former. But it is hard to stifle the inner-pundit.-Barte 14:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi guys, somewhat related to this topic. If you haven't seen it yet, I very much recommend Walter Isaacson's piece on Einstein & Faith. Probably the most NPOV account on this issue that I have read. --Merzul 22:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Second this. I very well written, balanced, informative article. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 01:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone understand how exactly this scientific god, which Dawkins allows, is any different from the Sikh god? Epa101 09:05, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Reviews

Didn't John Cornwell also criticise the book for its limited citation of religious books? As far as I recall Dawkins only used one book on Islam, Why I Am Not a Muslim and none on Judaism. Also in the book he states that he doesn't consider Buddhism a religion but rather a kind of moral philosophy. Wasn't this picked up anywhere? It may be a non-theistic religion (sortof) but it still implies belief in the supernatural so to speak: reincarnation and enlightenment? Olockers

In the notes he talks about how Buddhism is really not that great of a "religion" - however his points are better used criticizing Hinduism than Buddhism, as it brings up many points such as reincarnation and karma that were thrown away or at least are not universal in modern Buddhism. Buddhism, at least in its original form, threw supernaturalism out the window. Attempting to figure out what is after death is like asking what sort of arrow is in your heart before you're taken to the hospital. What matters is earthly suffering, not afterlife questions. Some sects of Buddhism do embrace reincarnation, but the others like Zen often don't give a damn. As for enlightenment: "the only difference between one who is enlightened and one who is not is that the enlightened one sees no difference" - it's not a huge spiritual thing, it's just the realization of how to cease suffering (by detachment, et al). -Wooty Woot? contribs 00:57, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

In the "Reviews by other commentators" section I changed the description of Daniel Dennett as "a friend and 'ally' of Dawkins" to "a prominent American philosopher". Since the other commentators, (especially those with negative comments), were described in terms of their credentials ("a Christian philosopher and author", "an analytic philosopher and author" etc.) it seemed to imply that Dennett's only credentials were his friendship with Dawkins. This did not seem terribly objective to me. My wording was taken from the Wiki article on Mr. Dennett, and seems uncontroversial there. Perhaps this could be tightened up further, but I feel my change is a step in the right direction.218.166.205.212 16:15, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, certainly so. Just to clarify though, this wasn't intentionally biased... Dennett describes himself as "friend and ally" in the intro of that review and so it seemed neutral to report it here. Compared to how other people are described, it was clearly unfair, so thank you for fixing this. --Merzul 20:08, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I read the article Dennett review again before making any changes and saw that he had referred to himself that way, but it seemed a bit out of context as it was written here. The summary of Dennett's review ended up sounding as if, even though he was Dawkins' friend, he was quite critical of the book, which made the referenced criticisms seem even more negative, when, aside from a few negative points Dennett made, he definitely feels quite positive about the book.218.166.209.176 01:32, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Dawkins said that there is an argument for seeing Buddhism as a system of moral philosophy rather than a religion; he does not explicitly take up this position. In a footnote, he does criticise the system of stratified rebirth in Buddhism, where a disabled child is said to have done something terrible in a past life. [Even the Dalai Lama believes that he must have been great in a past life to have his position] With regards to lack of Muslims books, he does cite quite a few articles, and he talks about the Qur'an itself. Epa101 11:03, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit

Comments invited on the AfD [4]. Sophia

Paperback version

There is now a paperback edition, including a section where he responds to critics. I have mentioned this but it could do with expanding. As noted above there are already too many negative reviews by upset christians so this might improve the balance. Poujeaux 18:30, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Well done! We should expand this, but I haven't seen the paperback edition yet. I wonder, how lengthy is the response section in his book? Is it the same as the Times article, or is that just a synopsis? --Merzul 20:12, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Well I have just ordered it - half price at Waterstones this week! (As is the 'Dawkins delusion' and 'God is not great' by Christopher Hitchens). Will expand when I get it. Poujeaux 17:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

"Neutrality disputed" tag on "Reviews" section.

As the tag directs readers to the talk page, I thought I'd make a start. By a rough numerical totting up, there were five favorable, five broadly neutral and ten disparaging reviews. (E&OE — I ran out of fingers.) This is only a crude measure (as some reviewers may be more persuasive than others) but still, in narrow terms, the tag seems justified. However, given that the rest of the article is summarising the work, and therefore the "delusion" viewpoint, could we take the balance of piece as a whole and do without the tag? --Old Moonraker 15:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

It appears at the moment that the reviews section is being used to push a POV here is a rough break down of the reviews given:

Positive: 3

Neutral: 6

Negative: 11

This break down aside doesn't it strike anyone as a bit odd that we need 20 something reviews on the one book? Other controversial books usually have 0 reviews included probably to stop this sort the sort of POV pushing that this article is currently showing. I would suggest that we get rid of all of the reviews or maybe leave 2-3 of them, what does everyone else think?Ferdie33 15:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Ideally, instead of reviews there would be an overview about the social and literally reception, and all kinds of things surrounding the book. Considering how controversial the book has been, it might be difficult to do something like that, and instead (basically as a compromise) we are just summarizing the reviews. I disagree though that there is a serious NPOV problem, I think the 3-6-11 ratio is representative of all the reviews out there. --Merzul 15:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't think that the section is POV as long as it is written in NPOV. From this point of view the there is no "Neutrality" problem, even when there are less positive than negative reviews. BTW, if a review is positive, neutral or negative, is up to a point, in itself POV. (In The Dawkins Delusion? there is also a "Reviews" section.) Having said that, I cannot see a POV problem.Cyrus Grisham 16:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, the "reviews" section of The Dawkins Delusion? only has three reviews; all are favourable to the book. --Old Moonraker 12:25, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

As far a I can tell, The Dawkins Delusion? proved so non-notable that it failed to attract any critics. Dawkins himself pretty much ignored it.-Barte 13:37, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

We've been down this road before and the answer is always the same. The reviews are by and large critical. That's just the way it is, and to try to "balance" that out would itself would violate NPOV. As for the number of reviews, I'm fine with it. Controversial book, lots of reaction, the synopsis is informative--and I don't see that Wikipedia has a canonical template for a book-related entry. -Barte 16:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I endorse Barte. When a book like Dawkins' addresses foundational issues in society that would have a major impact on how it is decided, it is appropriate to provide for such a range of responses. Better to provide brief summaries and let the reader evaluate than to bias the presentation by editors POV. DLH 15:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Beethoven again

"In this section, Dawkins also defends a pro-choice moral standpoint over abortion."

I had to read the relevant chapter of TGD again after seeing the above sentence here in the article as the relevance wasn't immediately apparent. It's actually D picking on the issue to provide examples of religious inconsistency: among others the rather extreme case of clergyman Paul Hill unrepentantly defending his right to kill doctors in order to preserve "the sanctity of human life". He also imagines a non-religious utilitarian dispassionately considering the relative suffering between a distressed pregnant woman and that of a non-sentient early-stage embryo and deciding in favor of the woman's right to choose. Although D's standpoint is obvious, he doesn't seem to be endorsing "pro choice"—he's just using it to provide examples.

I'd like to amend along this line, or delete the sentence altogether, subject to other editor's views. Old Moonraker 17:05, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Done--Old Moonraker 06:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Philosophical and Logical Critiques

Philosophers are evaluating the foundations of Dawkins' book. Propose adding following different viewpoint under this subheading:DLH 17:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

"Philosophers are evaluating the foundations of Dawkins' arguments. In First Things, Francis J. Beckwith observes that: "the intuitions that inform Dawkins’ judgment of Wise are as illusory as the design he explicitly rejects." Beckwith evaluates Dawkins’ arguments versus his assumptions and finds them to be logically irrational. "So if the theist is irrational for believing in God based on what turns out to be pseudo-design, Dawkins is irrational in his judgment of Wise and other creationists . . . For Dawkins’ judgment rests on a premise that . . . only appears to be true."" DLH 15:17, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the article, I think you would be hard pressed to make the case that philosophers are only now evaluating the foundations of Dawkins' argument. The critics have spoken, spoken again, and spoken some more--and their arguments are already well represented here. Has Beckwith found some clever line of reasoning that uniquely shifts the ground beneath Dawkins' feet? Or is he just one more theologically-inclined critic in a long line of them?-Barte 15:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Barte. I agree with you on philosophers having been discussing it. Apologies for phrasing "now" that implied that. I have gone back and deleted that. I am stating that Beckwith's argument strikes at the foundations of Dawkin's arguments. The very basis for Dawkins' criticizing others is shown to logically destroy his own credibility. Brown comments on Dawkins claiming religion is irrational. I do not see anyone described as making Beckwith's logical analysis that Dawkins' argument is itself foundationally irrational. (I have not read all the reviews themselves). Thus I believe Beckwith's review is an important viewpoint to mention here.DLH 17:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Beckwith is an ID supporter, which makes him an ignorant fool to say the least. His "philosophical" opinion does not bring anything new or actually interesting.--Svetovid 16:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Svetovid, your arguments must be logically very weak to have to resort to ad hominem attacks on Beckwith. I look forward to more constructive civil responses.DLH 17:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you would, considering your history of misusing the project to promote ID POV. Beckwith's opinion isn't all that notable, nor is the publication in which it was published. We have to be selective at some point and this is as good a place to start as any. Odd nature 18:12, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not ad hominem if it's true.--Svetovid 20:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

True. However, Beckwith's publications and professional reputation give no indication of being either ignorant or a fool. A highly published tenured professor can hardly be called a ignorant. His insightful arguments give no indication of being a fool. (Contrast Beckwith with Ward Churchill who was fired for plagerism etc.) You give no evidence for your accusations. Thus your accusations but reflects on yourself. Furthermore, Beckwith addresses the constitutionality of ID arguments rather than advocate ID himself. Beckwith is addressing Dawkins' irrationality here, not ID vs evolution. DLH 02:21, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I deleted an earlier attempt to insert that paragraph about Beckwith yesterday. Not because I agree or disagree with the analysis of Beckwith or Dawkins, or anyone else, but because the article is already over-long and suffering from attempts to stuff in every comment anyone can find, anywhere, no matter how trivial, about the book. Whether this stuffing constitutes a deliberate attempt to overload the article with so many negative comments that the anti-Dawkins POV dominates I leave to others to judge. The Beckwith stuff struck me simply as yet more unjustified cruft. Snalwibma 07:07, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The importance of Beckwith's review is that he applies Dawkins' methodology against Dawkins' own arguments. Beckwith shows that Dawkins' argument that religion is irrational logically implies that Dawkins' arguments themselves are irrational. That is a major finding that undercuts Dawkins' entire position. This is not shown in the other reviews and is thus important to add. DLH 02:13, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at where the reviews come from in the first two sections. Prospect, Harper's, Nauture, Science, The Economist, London Review of Books; the Guardian, the Independent, The Sunday Times. Where does First Things fit within this group? It doesn't--it is by comparison non-notable. You call his theory a "major finding". Major findings get widely cited. This simply doesn't qualify as a notable critique, and I suggest, politely, that that's the consensus here.-Barte 06:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Neither the opinion (at least as you describe it), the publication or Beckwith himself is particularly notable when compared with most of the critiques already represented in the article, most of which come from heavier hitters (such as McGrath), and most of which are published in far more mainstream publications. There are a few exceptions, but I'd argue that those should be trimmed, rather than adding yet another Dawkins critic with yet one more philosophical variation. This is suppose to be a fair representation of the critical response, not a comprehensive listing of every utterance. -Barte 00:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Its Beckwith's logic revealing that Dawkins' arguments are themselves irrational by Dawkins' own methodology that is important.DLH 02:21, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

All the more reason to include it because this perspective is missing. Dawkins directly attacks God/religion. First Things is one of the primary journal addressing issues addressing the interface between society and religion or the foundational issues in society. Since Dawkins directly attacks those foundations, it is most appropriate to hear from those focusing on these issues. Gregor Mendel published his findings on genetics in an obscure journal, yet they are the foundations of modern biochemistry and genomics. The content of a reference is critically important, not its wrapper. Because Beckwith shows that Dawson is foundationaly irrational according to his own metaphysics is why this is a critically important quotation. DLH 00:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Beckwith only states his opinion without any logic or proof.--Svetovid 00:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Then I suggest you analyze the logic in Beckwith's discussion rather than making another assertionDLH 03:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

"First Things is one of the primary journal addressing issues addressing the interface between society and religion or the foundational issues in society." Could you put that into English? As for Mendel, he might have published his findings in an obscure journal, but he would not have merited a Wikipedia article until those findings had become accepted by mainstream science. See wp:n Dawkins has done this, as have some of his critics. Beckwith, in this instance, has not.-Barte 00:51, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

A quick Google search shows 40 references to Francis Beckwith's review versus 32 for David Baltimore's (including multiple links to the same Wikipedia page). So it is already gaining more traction than some reviews listed.DLH 03:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

DLH - you should not add a paragraph on the grounds that you consider it "important" because in your opinion Beckwith's comment is "a major finding that undercuts Dawkins' entire position". To do so is inherently original research and an abuse of the article to promote your own point of view. The article is not there to demonstrate the weakness of Dawkins' position, or to comment on the book, but to summarise and describe the book and its reception. Your finding that Beckwith scores 40 Ghits and Baltimore 32 is perhaps an argument for the deletion of the Baltimore, but certainly not for the inclusion of the Beckwith cruft. Snalwibma 04:58, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

There is certainly a case for trimming. The entire "Reviews by other commentators" section could be reduced to a paragraph summary on the grounds that publications and websites are too small to represent the book's general reception. Also, having finally read Beckwith's article, I don't think you could call it a book review. Rather, Beckwith takes Dawkins to task for an argument that appears in just three pages of the The God Deusion: p.284-286. To claim this is a major finding that undercuts Dawkins entire position is quite a leap.-Barte 06:06, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The importance of this is that Beckwith's identification of Dawkins' irrationality applies to every moral and teological statement Dawkins makes. i.e., the bulk of Dawkins' arguments.DLH 03:04, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

According to whom?Barte 05:32, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone else notice the irony of accusing an evolutionary theorist of making teleological arguments? How many times have Dawkins and others cautioned against making teleological arguments? Are you referring here to Chapter 5, where Dawkins gives a review of theories, like Atran's and Boyer's, on why evolution would have evolved? If so, then it's clearly not the whole book, but rather one chapter, and this is really more of a review/summary of other's work. Edhubbard 05:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I do ;) - Beckwith's fallacy of composition has little relevance to the majority of the content of The God Delusion, though it may have relevance to Dawkins' opinions on this one person, i.e. Wise. Ttiotsw 07:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Beckwith's review "The Irrationality of Richard Dawkins" is gaining as much traction as PZ Meyers' 'The Courtier's Reply'. e.g., 260 vs 279 in Google search. Aug 8, 2007. Why should we not find it POV to insert reference to PZ Meyer's and reject a similar length discussion of Beckwith?

If you don't want to add a section, then include Beckwith as another review as follows:

In First Things, philosopher Francis J. Beckwith observes that: "the intuitions that inform Dawkins’ judgment of Wise are as illusory as the design he explicitly rejects." Beckwith evaluates Dawkins’ arguments versus his assumptions and finds them to be logically irrational. "So if the theist is irrational for believing in God based on what turns out to be pseudo-design, Dawkins is irrational in his judgment of Wise and other creationists . . . For Dawkins’ judgment rests on a premise that . . . only appears to be true."

DLH 02:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi DLH, it's not a matter of POV so much as notability. If Dawkins hadn't used PZ Meyers comment, it wouldn't be notable to add to the already overgrown slew of comments, reviews, and replies that are already there on the page. Given that Dawkins himself used it, it confers notability on the source. In addition, note that the final version of the addition takes extreme pains to keep the focus on Dawkins and his use of Meyers comments. Meyers' comment, by itself, it not that notable... 260 hits, come on. 279 doesn't really hit notable enough either. Edhubbard 05:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

PZ Myers blog citation

I've reverted the "responses from others" section, which cites a blog. See wp:v. See also the section above here in talk: I'd argue that the entire article is endanger of becoming an ongoing forum on the book, rather than a Wikipedia article entry. The latter certainly requires a showing of how the book is received, but it does not require that every utterance by every observer, pro or con, be referenced. In this case, we've got a response to other responses (as opposed to the book itself), justified by Dawkins citing this response in his response. Too many degrees of separation, especially when the critique in question is self-published.-Barte 14:23, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that, in the case of PZ Meyers, the exception to the general prohibition regarding blogs counts in two ways:

First, as it states on the WP:V page "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so." Clearly, as PZ Meyers is a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, he is a reliable source, whose work in the relevant field has been published in reliable third-party sources. His blog takes him beyond his area of official expertise, but he is in the same field as Dawkins, so they are equally far out of their area of official expertise.

Second, the quote itself is notable, inasmuch as Dawkins himself used it as part of his reply in the paperback edition of the book. Does it need to be here in full-length? I'm less sure about that, although I do like it. I've always liked ironic humor like that.

However, I share your larger concern about the article becoming almost "Popular and critical response to The God Delusion" instead of being about the book itself. Is there some middle ground? A link to the appropriate portion of the blog without the entire quote? Some other way of integrating the information? Edhubbard 14:57, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

If, as you say, Dawkins uses Meyers argument as part of his reply, why not just cite Dawkins? That's the slippery slope here in terms of the article's subject getting blurred. I'm also unclear on why Meyers' writing a science blog bypasses the general ban on citing self-published sources. Dawkins, by virtue not just of this book, but others (i.e. The Blind Watchmaker), is now an established authority on atheism. Is Meyers similarly established as a critic of religion coming from the perspective of a biologist? Or is this a first-time endeavor?-Barte 15:40, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

No, Meyers has been an outspoken critic of ID, and for science education in the U.S. for some time. He hasn't published any books, be they on biology or on atheism, but according to Nature (which I just went and double checked myself), his blog was the number one ranked science blog, in terms of hits counted by Technocrati. His blog mostly deals with issues of biology, evolution, ID and atheism, so he's clearly a kindred spirit to Dawkins, if not as famous as Dawkins is. Also, bear in mind that Meyers is a professor at an accredited academic institution, so he has the relevant expertise to at least talk about evolution and ID. This leads us to a slippery question: What does it take to be considered a relevant, reliable source on something? Are books the only thing that counts? If so, most pages on wikipeida are in trouble. Doctorates? Meyers has this... Peer-reviewed is normally the word used, but then what about Newsweek, Time, or the NYT? No peer review, but reliable... And, more specifically, what does it take to be an authority on religion? Clearly not a degree in theology, since we would count Dawkins, Dennett, Harris as experts, despite the fact that they have doctorates in ethology/biology, philosophy and neuroscience, respectively. Does the number one science blog, by an expert in a related field, which commonly deals with the issues at hand count as WP:V? I would think that it would. Note that this isn't a "general ban" as you phrase it, but blogs are "to be avoided", and there are explicit exceptions in the WP:V guidelines, which I have copied above, and which I think that Meyer's blog meets.

Now, all of this is secondary to the sheer length of the article, the response section, and so on, about which I still agree with you. But, your questions were about Meyers. Why not just cite Dawkins? Well, it wasn't his argument originally. Science is about giving credit where it's due, and this extends into other realms where scientists make contributions... so, we should in some way aknowledge that this argument originally came from Meyers, but we certainly do not need to have the whole quote there verbatim. Edhubbard 16:23, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Points taken about the validity of Meyers blog, and we seem to agree that the citation is (way) too long. If we wanted to be concise, yet acknowledge Meyers, we'd put the reference into the "Dawkins replies" section, together with a footnote to the relevant section of the blog. I'd do this, but I don't have the paperback and didn't look for this when watching the Dawkins video (of him reading the preface in the Galapagos). But it really needs to be done; otherwise, don't be surprised if someone else posts a response to Meyers.-Barte 21:28, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the quote needs to be shorter... as for now, we haven't had any input from FeloniusMonk. I would like to have him join the conversation, but if he doesn't join in, I'll be bold and let him change it until we reach an agreement. As for the exact text, I provide two sources of Dawkins using the PZ Meyers quote.

First, he refers to it in his reply on The Times website, which he copies to his website [5]

You can't criticise religion without detailed study of learned books on theology.

If, as one self-consciously intellectual critic wished, I had expounded the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope (as he vainly hoped I would), my book would have been more than a surprise bestseller, it would have been a miracle. I would happily have forgone bestsellerdom had there been the slightest hope of Duns Scotus illuminating my central question: does God exist? But I need engage only those few theologians who at least acknowledge the question, rather than blithely assuming God as a premise. For the rest, I cannot better the "Courtier's Reply" on P. Z. Myers's splendid Pharyngula website, where he takes me to task for outing the Emperor's nudity while ignoring learned tomes on ruffled pantaloons and silken underwear. Most Christians happily disavow Baal and the Flying Spaghetti Monster without reference to monographs of Baalian exegesis or Pastafarian theology.

I've transcribed from his reading of the preface in the Galapagos here:

You can't criticise religion without a detailed analysis of learned books of theology.

Surprise bestseller? If I’d gone to town as one self-consciously intellectual critic wished on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus, if I’d done justice to Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope (as he vainly hoped I would), my book would have been more than a surprise bestseller, it would have been a miraculous one. But that is not the point. Unlike Stephen Hawking, who accepted advice that every formula he published would halve his sales, I would happily have forgone bestsellerdom if there had been the slightest hope of Duns Scotus illuminating my central question of whether God exists. The vast majority of theological writings simply assume that He does, and go on from there. For my purposes, I need consider only those theologians who take seriously the possibility that God does not exist, and argue that He does. This I think Chapter 3 does, with what I hope is good humor and sufficient comprehensiveness. When it comes to good humor, I cannot improve on the splendid "Courtier’s reply" published by P-Zed Meyers – that’s P.Z. Meyers to you – on his Pharyngula website.

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion. Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity. Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor’s taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of imaginary fabrics.

To expand the point, most of happily disavow fairies, astrology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster without first immersing ourselves in books of Pastafarian theology, etc.

I note two things about these transcripts. First, these quotes make explicit something else that has been discussed on the page, which is that Dawkins stated that the central question of the book was whether God exists. Second, the Mawkscribbler line is missing from his reading. I don't know if it's missing from the preface, or if he just skipped it when reading. I'm off to bed here (in Paris) but I will look at this again tomorrow. Edhubbard 22:56, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

ps: The relevant section comes from about 4 minutes to about 7 minutes into the reading. Edhubbard 23:01, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Tinkering with the second paragraph of the "Dawkins' response" section:

To the charge that he has not surveyed theology adequately, Dawkins replies that he only considered theologians and others who actually argue for God's existance--rather than just assume it. He references University of Minnesota biology professor P.Z. Meyers, who mockingly accuses Dawkins of "outing the Emperor's nudity while ignoring learned tomes on ruffled pantaloons and silken underwear." (Footnote as appropriate.)

I still think this is a slippery slope. In the section above this one, "Philosophical and Logical Critiques", an editor argues for the inclusion of yet another theologian critic, another professor, writing in yet another theological journal. If you include Meyers, who has not reviewed the book, but only commented on the comments, why not include theologian N, N+1, N+2......? All of whom are notable on some level and all of whom have taken a narrow swipe as some aspect of The God Delusion. I can't think of why not.-Barte 23:56, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

(restting indent) Hi Barte, I think I see your reasoning clearer now. Yes, you're right that admitting something from the "pro" camp that doesn't deal with the whole book opens the door to a lot of "You accepted this from the pro guys, who not from the oppose guys, too?" I guess the difference here is that Dawkins explicitly uses and cites this argument, but even that is still dangerous. If Dawkins mentions The Dawkins Delusion do we have to include everything that Alister McGrath says (although he does get some time in the article)? Where do we draw the lines? Anyway, let's work on this paragraph, and then deal with the next step. How about this, to further return our focus to Dawkins, but give some measure of credit where due.

To the charge that he has not surveyed theology adequately, Dawkins replies that he only considered theologians and others who actually argue for God's existance--rather than just assume it. In addition, following University of Minnesota biology professor P.Z. Meyers(note Meyers), he argues that being expected to debate all the finer points of religious scholarship when arguing against the existence of God is like being asked to discuss all of the finer points of the Emperor's wardrobe while arguing that he is naked.(noteDawkinsTimes, noteDawkinspreface)

Edhubbard 08:10, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Looking at your transcription of the preface, I'd say Dawkins doesn't quite argue Meyer's point. Rather, he commends it to the reader. Hence this slight amendment, slightly shorter:

To the charge that he has not surveyed theology adequately, Dawkins replies that he only considered theologians and others who actually argue for God's existance--rather than just assume it. Dawkins endorses University of Minnesota biology professor P.Z. Meyers(note Meyers) analogy that being expected to debate the finer points of religious scholarship as an atheist is like having to discuss the finer points of the Emperor's wardrobe while arguing that the great man is, in fact, naked.(noteDawkinsTimes, noteDawkinspreface)

And yes, you have described my concern. The criteria for notability is so low that even a minor utterance from an academic now qualifies, even if the publication where the utterance took place is obscure. As for McGrath, he not only gets credit here, but his book Dawkins Delusion has an entire article on Wikipedia. For academics, The God Delusion has spawned an industry, and this article is beginning to reflect that.-Barte 10:45, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I like it. We still haven't had any participation from FeloniusMonk, but perhaps I'll try to add it in and then see how he responds. As for the "spawning an industry", as a scientist, I would be honored if one day I could spawn an industry... as a wikipedian, I think that your comment is perhaps exactly the right starting point for rewriting the reviews section into a coherent critical response section.... Maybe we should start a new discussion heading on that. Edhubbard 12:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, just to be difficult, I'm unclear why the footnote contains the entire quote, which makes it thicker by far than any other footnote. We've already summarized Meyer's argument--is the actual wording itself that important? I think not; it should be a click away within the footnote.

Which is why a discussion on trimming the article would be difficult. Everyone thinks their citation is pivotal. I vote for trimming, but I think enough time will have to pass so that The God Delusion is on the remainders shelf. With eyes finally looking elsewhere, someone will quietly come in, reduce the article to reasonable size, and there will be no one around with enough strength to object.-Barte 20:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

You're right; I've removed the quote, and made one edit to our consensus, which was to explicitly name the analogy ("Courtier's reply") instead of just calling it the analogy... as for the length, I think that it might be hard going to trim this, but it's clear that someone (with more time and will than I have!) will need to take the whole second half of the article apart and put it back together again, in a coherent narrative. Dealing with the debate could become enough for a doctorate in Dawkinsology. Edhubbard 21:13, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

<Heh> Agreed.-Barte 21:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Shorten Critic Section.

I believe it needs major clean-up. It needs shortening and needs to be approached from a different angle—why have a paragraph for each review? Ashnard _Talk ^Contribs 15:04, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Completely agree. Also, there's mixed in with the notable reviews are some that are self-published and others that appear on very obscure websites. The second half of the article has turned into a Web directory.-Barte 17:08, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Straw man from Alister McGrath

“ One of McGrath's main points is that "Dawkins’ assertion that science disproves God is not right". ”

Dawkins never said that science disproves gods. Dawkins said it makes it very improbable and that science will probably be able to disprove gods in the future. There should be a note pointing out this fallacy.--Svetovid 12:05, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

And pigs shall fly (in the future.)

I knew that Dawkins' fight was bold but somehow unappropriate. God won't get proved anyway so It won't get disproved by science. What do you think ?

D's war against bigotry is not unuseful so let's support it and the best way is not to pick up and point to controversial ideas like that one.

Why support this in Wikipedia ? Because we say "NPOV rules" and bigots don't. -- DLL ^{.. T} 20:02, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

What?--Svetovid 08:54, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

You're right--Dawkins talks about improbability, not disproof. But unless he's on record refuting McGrath on this topic, McGrath's quote (cited from the Baptist Press website) stands. That said, McGrath's critique of the book is probably better represented elsewhere. And (to beat a dead horse), the critical response section in the article is way, way too long. For example, I see that just today, yet another professor appears to have linked his blog entry.Barte 14:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC) It has since been removed, but others lurk.Barte 20:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

What a page

This page is such a horrible POV mess, but I suppose that proves Dawkins point. Thanks christians (y)! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.35.208.12 (talk) 13:07, August 30, 2007 (UTC)

Dawkins "Response"

As some will know I am not a fan of Dawkins. But even I find it hard to believe that he can really have made some of the ludicrous claims attributed to him in this section. For example the existence (or otherwise) of any deity is clearly completely outside the domain of evolutionary biology - you might as well say that the existence of supernovae is highly unlikely according to botany. Did he really say such things? If so, please ref them. If not I think we'd better remove them, and give the guy a fair hearing by putting what he does actually say. NBeale 21:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

the section is based on the new preface, see this video.
As always NBeale, you are stating your opinions on the talk page, and they have nothing to do with the article so stop it.--Svetovid 23:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

er - talk pages are precisely for stating opinions about ways in which the content of the articles can be improved. It is not enough, when attributing frankly ludicrous statements to a prominent commentator, to link to a 24 minute video of him reading a preface. Surely some editors have bought the paperback edition and can make these attempted paraphrases a more accurate statement of his positions. NBeale 06:28, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes but it is your personal statements about Dawkins "the person" that are embarrassing and unbecoming rather than your opinions on Dawkins "the article". We can only imagine the pride felt by some when they see "Der ewige Jude" in Christopher Howse's review ! Ttiotsw 07:40, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

One long argument from quotational impenetrability

Right, the review section yet again... The first review ends by "he concludes that the book is one long argument from Professorial incredulity." So, how exactly is the book a long argument from Professorial Incredulity?

I guess what I really wonder is what we are trying to achieve here. Should these clever quotations arise interest in the review, so the reader then clicks on the links and understands what the reference is to? Or are they just supposed to sound clever?

If we forget about the current mess, then what would an ideal "Critical reception" section for this book be like? Should it be structured around the general topics of concern, or is the current structure a good one and only needs trimming down to a few essential reviews that we can explain more fully? --Merzul 12:16, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we should be summarising the arguments/praise found in each review. i.e. Some reveiwers (A, B, C) criticised the book on such and such grounds (maybe a good quote from one of them). Dawkins responded "blah blah".

It makes no sense to divide it up into newspapers, magazines and other commentators. Much better to have positive and negative sections. BillMasen 12:25, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Darwin's Angel

A critique that is getting a lot of attention in the UK is Darwin's Angel. Amazingly the Dawkins Acolytes don't want Wikipedia users to know about this book. Why don't they like well referenced facts? I wonder. NBeale 21:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not a matter of trying to hide material, but a question of trying to keep the article within reasonable bounds. Are you planning to add a reference to every single adverse comment you can find about the book? The article is already unreadable and more or less useless. It needs a radical overhaul. Stuffing in yet more well-referenced but repetitious comments helps no one. Snalwibma 22:31, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, look at this wonderfully fair edit by NBeale. He removes my criticism section that is strictly summarizing bits from the cited article by Dawkins, and restores his own chapter summaries, and when he is reverted by User:Evb-wiki, who is at least consistent in removing both my summarizing and NBeale's, we have this accusation! (How does NBeale even know that this guy is an atheist??) But what really amazes me is that after removing criticism and restoring his own stuff, he come here, and claim that we don't like well referenced facts... God help us. --Merzul 23:28, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

If it's getting so much attention, prove it with sources.--Svetovid 20:06, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

For reference, the AfD debate concluded with 10 Keeps and 1 Merge. NBeale 16:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Reviews section: time for radical action?

It really is unreadable. The article is swamped by a massive collection of quote-mined recentist extracts from reviews, most of which raise suspicions of a POV-pushing agenda. OK, the book has provoked a lot of comment, but do we need all this stuff? How on earth does it help the reader understand the book and what it is about and how it was received? Compare (for example) the articles on other controversial books such as Stupid White Men or the Kinsey Reports. Criticism is there but it is summarised, not listed ad nauseam and used as a means of cramming the article with a load of "well-referenced" ripostes and counter-ripostes. I don't care how well referenced they are - if they don't help achieve a balanced account of the book they don't belong. Time to grow up, smell the coffee, take the bull by the horns and sweep the whole lot away? Maybe that would be the best solution. Snalwibma 20:33, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the "quote creep" could be reversed (or at least hindered) if the reviews were sorted thematically rather than by author. Any particular comment can be attributed to the most notable persons claiming it, and responses from Dawkins or his supporters can be integrated into the same paragraph or section on the subject. The decision of whether or not to include a particular critic of Dawkins should depend not only on their personal notability but the novelty of their criticism. So if yet another widely-read columnist says Dawkins is ignorant of most theology, it might not warrant as much article space as, say, an obscure neuroscientist who says Dawkins misrepresented something about God and the brain (fictional example). This more desirable balance of attention would result naturally from arranging criticism by theme, as repetitive comments would lump together and become easier targets for summarization. The arrangement could even eventually extend to include the book summary itself, so that objections and discussion of the book's claims are presented in-line with their exposition as part of the book. But this is obviously a much more Herculean task than just fixing the review section. -- Schaefer (talk) 22:59, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, making the inclusion criteria "novelty" rather than notability won't address the issues of quote mining and recentism. Nonetheless you're right in suggesting summaries by theme. I think the best approach here is to hack it all out, then nut out on a case by case basis, those criticisms that are most notable, and summarise them with references to their sources. ornis (t) 23:47, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The reoccuring themes I can find in the commentaries, just going by what's in the article now, are:

• Whether religious beliefs are actually harmful, independent of whether they're true (Brown, Robinson, Shermer, Dennett)
• Whether Dawkins wrongly ignores academic theology and philosophy in favor of popular beliefs (Robinson, Eagleton, Cornwell, Williams)
• Whether The God Delusion is effective or overly polemical (Krauss, Shermer, Kirk, Orr, Wakefield, Malik, McGrath)
• Whether TGD succeeds in diminishing respect for fundamentalism (Eagleton, Skapinker, Williams)

These categories don't include all of the commentators, either because their comments are relatively unique (Plantiga, Kenny) or because they're not elaborated on in the article (Swinburne, Blackford). What does everyone think of these as possible subsection topics for the reviews section (which perhaps should be renamed)? -- Schaefer (talk) 00:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

This is an excellent way to start, one could add "Philosophical objections" for those who object to Dawkins's argument about God's non-existence, but this should be an extremely short section because there is already an equally bloated Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. --Merzul 11:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Complete restart??

Could it be easier to almost completely blank the page the way I did here, and then go forward from there? Obviously, this current version is always accessible from the history. Perhaps it is easier to move towards a real encyclopaedia article about the book, if we start from almost zero?

The reason for such a drastic measure is that I believe it is not only the reviews that are the problem, this entire article is more about the content of the book than about the book itself. To put it another way, this article is currently more about God, the delusion, than The God Delusion. --Merzul 12:13, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Merzul - Your final comment (God, the delusion, versus The God Delusion) is a very interesting way of expressing it, and I think you've put your finger on something. We need to consider - To what extent is it appropriate for an article about a book (especially a recently published controversial one) to summarise the content of the book? How can this be done fairly and without bias? How can it be achieved without inviting fact-stuffing and content-creep? What is the right balance between summarising the content and describing the critical response? Interested parties might care to take a look at a similar discussion under way at Talk:Darwin's Angel. Snalwibma 12:44, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Merzul - Your prototype revise was indeed "radical," but I think a radical approach is appropriate here because it forces editors to think in terms of higher "levels" of summary. And agree that both the summary and the critical response section have combined to become a morass. The aim here is to think not in terms of chapters, but in terms of RD's broader themes. And to think not of individual reviews, pro and con, but rather of the general critical response--pro and con. That's easier to do now that the book is a year old. I also think the external link section should be culled, but if the body were shorter, a longer link section would be more tolerable. Barte 20:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

A less radical approach would be to restructure the article, i.e., remove the chapter subsections and basically put the new structure in place, but not blank the current material, which could be trimmed down more gradually perhaps? --Merzul 08:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, before giving up and writing a little rant in frustration, I had tried for a very long time to move stuff around in the criticism section following the categories that had been suggested, but it was really really difficult, and I can't really pull it off. I think actually the radical approach of starting from zero would be a lot easier. I'm taking a break now to let other people think about what to do. --Merzul 15:14, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Merzul I don't think your big restructurings help at all, and the remove much useful and closely-argued consensus material. What exactly are the problems you are trying to fix? NBeale 19:26, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

What I'm trying to fix is the WP:NOT#PLOT equivalent for non-fiction. We are not here to summarize every single line of the book, especially in such a way that trivializes the arguments. This is obviously what you want, but it is not something I'm willing to allow. Feel free to do so with Darwin's Angel. But here, if we don't have the space to do justice to it, we are not going to use your one-liners to trivialize the book. --Merzul 19:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

NB! Please let's this discussion below. --Merzul 19:36, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Good summary of criticism

This summary is a good source for the different lines of Dawkins criticism. If you look at the original post at The Valve, the author actually linked to our review section... :) --Merzul 08:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

We need to specify criteria that a review, response and/or a book has to fulfil to be mentioned. Most responses should be mentioned in external links at most.--Svetovid 09:04, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Can someone please review this edit....

I have two problems with this edit here [6]. One I've addressed with the editor directly and the other is that what he's reverted it to is to say....."in Dawkins's positions, and that the "religion as a virus" ideas have disturbing precedents." and yet the source provided only uses the word disturbing in the sentence, "Dawkins nourishes a disturbing contempt for religious believers.". The word "precedents" is uniquely used in the source as, ...".... the precedents of such medical analogies, applied to certain religious and racial groups, have hardly been innocuous in the history of the 20th century." and this is why I wrote my version which used "innocuous precedents" in it. I'll go with whatever consensus is chosen though it isn't what it currently is. Ttiotsw 12:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I just deleted the whole entry because it was just a statement that John Cornwell didn't like the book. That does not improve or add to the article at all.
Are we gonna have a list of all people who don't like the book, especially the ones that don't like it automatically because of their background?--Svetovid 13:33, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

No, but we obviously need to think of what to do with the criticism section in general, so that it serves not just as a source for people who want to write a parody of the reviews, although I'm glad we could be of service, but to actually give an encyclopaedic overview of the critique (and praise). Reverting this addition will do little to solve the general problem. --Merzul 18:18, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually maybe all those (notable) critiques and responses should be only mentioned in see also and external links only.--Svetovid 02:02, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The synopsis is easier to fix...

Well, I couldn't do anything about the criticism, but I think I've made some progress with the synopsis. The main point should be to focus on what are the essential themes, what is the core of what he argues, and try to present that as clearly as possible. The section on the "Existence of God" was previously a long list of one-line descriptions of what he did with every argument, let's avoid such trivializations at all cost. When summarizing a point, either we try to express it in such a way that the original author would have been satisfied with our representation, or we should simply leave it out. In most cases, it is probably wiser to just leave it out. --Merzul 17:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, so I'm going to stay back now for a few days. I did perhaps too many things at the same time, but I believe the general direction is a correct one. I will no longer interfere, and perhaps NBeale is right that this was too brutal a cut down. (I mean the synopsis, the review section still needs to be very brutally cut). --Merzul 20:03, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Merzul (continuing the discussion in the earlier sections here as requested). 38 edits from one editor in a single day, drastically reshaping an article that has been heavily discussed by (probably) over 70 editors, and has been independently assessed as B-Class is just too much too fast. Only 3-4 editors have called for this radical restructuring, and I honestly don't see the point. The original article, for all its faults, did allow people a reasonable chance of understanding what the book said and what the main reviewers said. And that's a really useful service. Hiding much of this information is a retrograde step in my view. NBeale 21:09, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

NBeale, I find Merzul's version to be better written than the current one, which does in fact read like a "plot summary". I applaud Merzul for being bold and doing a lot of work to improve the article, and I see no good reason to revert it. Don't be afraid of change -- this is a Wiki, after all. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 22:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Completely agree. Merzul's edit is a great start toward a more coherent article. Barte 23:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

This version is no good and is against wikipedia policy, you can not shunk off criticisms to other articles. Hardyplants 03:18, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a start toward something much more manageable . The problem with earlier versions was that it was overburdened with recentist list cruft. ornis (t) 03:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

(←) I don't like the way criticisms of TGD are being interwoven into the account of what the book says. I think the arguments of the book should be briefly outlined, without comment or criticism, and only then should the critics be given their say. Interweaving them obscures the article, making it hard to see what Dawkins said and then what his critics said. But I think Merzul's approach is the right one. Snalwibma 06:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

That should be added after the intro (which still needs a lot of work) and the body should include more detailed arguments and the responses they have generated.

Intro:

the books auther.

an over view of the books purpose and subject.

its reception and resulting 'effects'.

The next part should include a more detailsed synopis of the subject matter coverd.

including main argumnets.

Then on to what we currently have. Hardyplants 06:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Snalwibma that critical discussion should be kept separate, so I removed Plantinga's objection again. But not just because it was in the wrong section, but why on earth do we have an article on the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit, if all those objections are going to be listed here too??? We could move up the philosophical objection section so it is more prominent, but I think it is against the spirit of summary style to repeat the philosophical objections here again. --Merzul 08:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The main reason is that you can't hide major criticism in other articles, this is against wikipedia guidelines. Hardyplants 08:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Once a clear summery of the book is generated, then the criticism section should be summarized too. Hardyplants 09:00, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

NO! We don't need more content, we need more context!

This is an encyclopaedia, not a forum for literary analysis. The synopsis should just outline the essentials of Dawkins's main points as sympathetic as we can. Then we try to represent the criticism as fairly and as strongly as we can represent them, and we briefly include Dawkins' response (too much space is given to the response). In my opinion, there should be about two paragraphs of criticism and one short paragraph of response, for each of the lines of criticism, except philosophical ones that has its own article.

What really needs beefing up is the material about the book. How it was published, the public readings of the book, the interviews, and public debates that Dawkins was involved in. This is first and foremost an article about the book, and it's real world impact, not a forum for debate about the Existence of God. It is much more important to mention that it was published on October 18, 2006, than quoting sections of the book!

I think my opinion is clear, and now I'm really leaving it up for other people to decide. Thanks for reading my rant, Merzul 09:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

"What really needs beefing up is the material about the book. How it was published, the public readings of the book, the interviews, and public debates that Dawkins was involved in" I can agree to that, will come back to the issue after this has been formulated and merged into the current article. Hardyplants 09:11, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The current version of the article is not going to be improved by trying to merge more things into it. I don't know why you want the article to remain a "summary", but that's precisely what articles shouldn't be. I see no reason to throw out Merzul's work toward making this a stylistically better article. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 10:07, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

So your saying it does not need more content like "interviews, and public debates". Hardyplants 10:12, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The 'Critical reception' section is ATM ridiculous. Too much information from too many (unreliable and irrelevant) sources written in suspicious manner and often not encyclopaedic manner.
Unless it can be substantially improved, it should be just summarized into external links and a section similar to Letter to a Christian Nation#Response--Svetovid 10:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the critical reception area in particular has become a forum by proxy. Not sure we need to get it down to just two paragraphs, but something like that. And yes, this will "hide" information in the sense that any summation does. But that's the nature of an encyclopedia. Would only add that the general critical reception of the book was.....critical. That's been noted over and over here, and we shouldn't lose that in the summary.Barte 13:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I meant two paragraphs for each type of criticism. So we identify 4-5 main lines of attack, and then we have for example two paragraphs about Dawkins' lack of scholarship, two paragraphs about his inability to distinguish moderate and fundamentalist religion, and so on. I would also suggest roughly a 3:1 ratio for Criticism:Response in the critique section. --Merzul 15:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

"Would only add that the general critical reception of the book was.....critical." That is just your POV. If you avoid opinions of people who don't like the book contents by default, the picture is very different.--Svetovid 19:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It's my observation based on readings here and elsewhere. (For the record, I <heart> RD). And while I take your point (if I understand it) that some reviewers came to the book with their minds already made up, is that an exclusionary criteria we can validly impose here? Barte 19:53, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Barte. Even if we exclude the more obviously biased (e.g. by cutting out reviews published in obviously religious magazines). Still, we have people like H. Allen Orr, himself a big fighter against intelligent design, and Krauss's review in Nature... These guys clearly don't fit the category of "people who don't like the book's content by default." --Merzul 13:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Organizing critique

So how would one go about doing this? I'm fairly confident most critique can be grouped in to 4-5 rough categories:

1. Scholarship and style of the book.
2. Effect of the book on society.
3. Assessment of his arguments about The Existence of God.
4. Assessment of his portrayal of religion (and science and atheism).

But are we satisfied that we have even gathered the most important points from most of the relevant reviews? Perhaps, we need to read through the reviews one more time, and then see what are some of the broader themes... so ironically, we perhaps need to expand this section a bit before starting to summarize it, although this is better done on a talk sup-page, so we can freely dump quotations. --Merzul 16:23, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

So a reviews dumping ground: /reviews. --Merzul 16:25, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm taking some time off to think about how to do this. It seems very very difficult, as so many people have said so many things, so I'm not sure exactly what to do. I don't like the current style, not just because it is bloated, but it doesn't even do the reviewers justice. Take Eagleton's response, there are actually some very profound ideas in that review, but our summaries just picks out "cool sounding" bits...

Any ideas on how we should go about doing this thing? --Merzul 13:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It is difficult, which is why I'm applauding from the sidelines. Two thoughts: (1) this is a wiki, which is IMO the most collaborative medium ever invented for text. That means you don't have to chart out an entire schema ahead of making any changes. You don't have to envision the end before trying your hand at a beginning. You don't--and will never get--full consensus on any one approach, because people need to see something before they can react. So, revamp a section, something small, see how it flies, see what changes others make, see what changes subsequently occur to you, and go from there. (2) The current article may simply be good enough. There is no canonical template for a book entry in Wikipedia, so while this one may be overgrown and weedy, it is.....what it is. Barte 14:26, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the support on this. About the second point, I agree, it could very well be good enough, although I'm sort of hoping that perhaps one could push this one for FA, it would be really nice to have this article on the main page about one year (and one month after the release). I believe September 18 was the release date, but even October 18 is a very optimistic date, still it would be awesome. It would require solving the structural problems very soon. Then we should add the missing contextual material, and find some nice images, so that it is "feature-complete" by the end of this month. And then a week of copy-editing, getting a peer-review, and then finally pushing for FAC by October 12th, hoping 18th is free on the main-page.

Anyway, to come back to reality, about the first point, well, that's the approach I normally take, I make bold and extreme changes, and then look for what people think, but right now, I can't even think of something small to begin with... Currently, I haven't reached consensus with myself on how to fairly represent the criticism. --Merzul 16:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, I have some ideas about how to do this... but unfortunately I have to cut down my Wikipedia time to just one or two well-thought edits per day, or else I will lose my job very soon... Perhaps, it is actually better to not rush these things. --Merzul 14:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Images...

I'm not at all sure these are the appropriate images naturally, but in case we have people here, who are into that (I mean people who are good at illustrating articles), please start looking for appropriate images. Thanks! --Merzul 17:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, I reverted those images, although I wish there were appropriate images for this article, I don't think it was a very good start. I still hope we can find some nice pics for this one. --Merzul 14:39, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

New article: Critical reception of the God Delusion?

Well done to Merzul for reorganising this section. It is so large that perhaps it ought to be split into its own article, with a mere summary here? BillMasen 20:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, the re-organization was a very very rough beginning, a lot of work is still needed, but I actually also thought about the idea that perhaps this material is perhaps worthy of a sub-article. Although, I'm not at all so sure that we are doing anyone a service by providing these summaries. (Except perhaps people who want to parody these reviews). At least when I read Eagleton's review again, I felt we somehow have picked out the less relevant bits... but then summarizing deeper objections is difficult and there is not room for that in one paragraph, so I'm afraid we end up with a rather superficial picture. --Merzul 10:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

It needs to be trimmed down in the first place. Particular editors keep adding all negative "reviews" and comments on the book, often from unreliable and irrelevant people.--Svetovid 13:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The whole section is flawed since it's supposed to imply that the only critique the book received was criticism.--Svetovid 01:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Sales and publishers

The book has sold half a million just in the UK[7] Sources for overall sales are difficult to come by; generally the author is the best source, as the sales figures are often not released by publishers, and the books are published by different publishers in different countries and different formats. I note our article lists Bantam as the publisher, but it was published by Transworld Publishers Ltd in the UK, and Houghton Mifflin in the US (which is the edition located by the ISBN in the infobox). Amazon shows Mariner Books for paperback publisher in the US, an audio version is out by Tantor Media. None of these have released sales figures taht I can find, am I being incredibly dense or looking in the wrong place? KillerChihuahua^?!? 11:31, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

No sales figures for the book are current on the web as yet, I found some from spring. The problem is that Dawkins website should not be used as a source for sales figures- especially when its only listed as a sales promo for another product. When the book does sell a million copies there will be many reports from other neutral sources. What we have now does not say if the sales are world wide, or just English or what. It might only even be published books and not those sold- so it's premature to pluck it up on wikipedia when we do not know if its verifiable. I am sure its going to reach 1 million in sales some time in the next year. but we are taking a premature stand now with out collaborating data. Hardyplants 11:47, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

It sold 700,000 more than 6 months ago and before the new paperback, and the source will ultimately always be the publishers or Dawkins.--Svetovid 13:38, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I've added an additional source for the figure from the BBC.[8] ornis (t) 13:56, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Any comment on why we have "Bantam" rather than "Houghton Mifflin" as publisher? What's the rationale on that? KillerChihuahua^?!? 21:31, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

But it is confusing, is Bantam the UK publisher? But it seems Houghton Mifflin also published it in the UK? In any case, here are the amazon links: Houghton Mifflin, Bantam, and Black Swan. --Merzul 11:04, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The enthusiastic statements about amazon.com turn out to be about Amazon.co.uk which is much less significant. (The source Amy Worth is at .co.uk see eg here NBeale (talk) 23:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

This article is full of meaningless squabble injected presumably by Christards

He questions whether Dawkins has read or heard of Christian thinkers like Eriugena, Rahner or Moltmann.

I question whether any random 1 out of 1000 Christians has heard of them, and therefore question the relevance of the question. --75.58.66.29 12:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

In the future, you might not want to call Christians - Christards. Kind of hurts any affect you are attempting to have. The Rypcord. 13:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I haven't read the most cutting edge physics or evolutionary biology, but I would be deeply annoyed if someone criticized these theories based on their amateur reading of say Darwin. The criticism is that Dawkins is not an expert on the topic, yet makes very strong claims on the topic. But there are also rebuttals that we mention (by PZ Myers, Dawkins and Weinberg). In any case, this is certainly a line of criticism that should be discussed in the article from both an athist and christard perspective. --Merzul 17:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Response to such claims from Dawkins: http://richarddawkins.net/article,1647,Do-you-have-to-read-up-on-leprechology-before-disbelieving-in-them--Svetovid 21:07, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Relevant or not, it was a comment made in a review of the book, and one of the aims of the article is to provide a fair and balanced (!) summary of how the book was received and reviewed. So your presonal opinion on the validity of the argument is probably irrelevant here! Sorry. Snalwibma 19:48, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Balanced should mean that we don't include everybody who mentioned the book in their writings.--Svetovid 21:07, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Svetovid, you are absolutely right! We don't need to repeat ten reviewers saying the same thing; but note that Eagleton's is the most important representation of this particular line of criticism. Why? Because Dawkins responded using Eagleton's named philosophers, so it was obvious Dawkins was aware of this particular review. That makes it notable in my opinion. Also, PZ Myers is specifically addressing H. Allen Orr, so it makes sense to give Orr a small mention in this section.

Would you say The God Delusion#Dawkins' scholarship as it currently stands is a fair and balanced summary of the situation, or is it still too negative? As time permits, I would hope to summarize all sections in this way. If you find it too negative you are of course welcome to change the summaries, it is a Wiki after all... :) --Merzul 15:51, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Plantinga's rebuttal

A sentence here reads: "Dawkins does not present support this assertion [that God has to be complex] and Plantinga finds it probable that Dawkins is assuming materialism." Does this mean that (a) Plantiga is claiming that Dawkins does not support the assumption at present, or that (b) Dawkins does not present support for this assertion?

In either sense this would be wrong. In sense (a), this article is discussing the book, and Dawkins's current beliefs are parenthetical. If (b), the arguments for complexity are there in the same chapter (chapter four in my edition, page 149), although Plantinga does write that he was looking in chapter three, and also appear in the "Arguments for God's existence" (chapter three, pages 80-84). Checking the supplied footnote, it seems that Plantinga intends (b).

Old Moonraker 07:58, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

• Now reworded for sense (b)—thanks Ilkali. The fact remains that Plantinga seems to be ignoring Dawkins's (admittedly sometimes satirical rather than scientific) justification of his assumption that God is complex.

--Old Moonraker 09:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

NPOV tag is much justified

I'm now trying to focus on getting this review section done. I have downloaded all the reviews on my laptop and have read a few of them many times. In the long run, we should aim for a more coherent presentation, but there is something more urgent.

The NPOV tag is far more justified than I thought! In particular, the summaries of David Baltimore, Kenan Malik, and Michael Shermer suffered from more or less serious NPOV issues. Our summaries tend to focus more on extreme quotations rather than conveying the main point of the reviewers.

I have made a few changes to better reflect the sentiments of the three reviewers mentioned above. This needs to be copy-edited because English is not my native language, but now they are much more faithful to the original reviewers. Based on this experience with 3 reviews, I believe we should keep the NPOV warning until the complete overhaul of the criticism is completed. Many reviewers were highly critical, but the situation is not quite as bad as our article suggests. --Merzul 16:53, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Your English is just as good as mine, and I am a native English speaker.

Based on your changes to those three summaries of reviews I don't see a need for flagging NPOV. There was a minor shift along the negative towards positive scale, but only minor. Anyway, it's a controversial book so I don't think people will use summaries of reviews here at Wikipedia to determine whether they want to read the book or not. --RenniePet 18:05, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I think maybe I've just changed my mind, thanks to the latest edit by 72.70.79.253. Is this acceptable, pouring in line after line of sillyness stemming from someone who apparently doesn't understand what evolution is? Should there be a standard number of lines per review, and a weighted number of reviews represented that attempt to reflect the number of notable positive and negative reviews in existance? (This may already have been discussed, I haven't really studied this discussion page.) --RenniePet 19:47, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The intent is to summarize the book's critical reception by notable reviewers in notable publications--but there is no Wikipedia template for how that is done. Because The God Delusion has been such a lightening rod, the number of reviews is considerable, and what you now see is a kind of sedimentary layering of that history, including some publications and reviewers that are more (or less) notable than others. A few of us have felt that in so much detail, a reader no longer can see the forest for the trees and that, hence, more summarizing and trimming, not further explication, is what is needed. (Ergo 72.70.79.253's additions, whether accurate or not, don't help.) Barte 20:10, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, Rennie, thank you for copy-editing! Feel free to be bold and experiment with bigger changes. Most of us are not entirely happy with this article. It is perhaps not the neutrality that is the problem, but what Barte said, I fear we have lost our readers. And while I fully agree nobody is going to change their mind about reading the book, or if they have read the book, they will not change their opinion about Dawkins. However, and this is important, I did change my mind about these reviewers based on our summaries. I will probably never read a review by Terry Eagleton :) This is why it is very important that these summaries are fair to the reviewers and not just pick out the sections that NBeale had found most useful nails "in the coffin of Dawkins' declining intellectual credibility". :) --Merzul 19:20, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Long-time plans ...

I think now that we should have a sub-article for the criticism. I will probably create an article /Criticism of The God Delusion initially as a subpage of this talk-page, but with the intention of moving it to mainspace once it is mature enough and we're convinced that it works. Each reviewer will be given a fair summary, and reviewers will be listed in alphabetical order. We will have a strict inclusion criteria: only people with Wikipedia entries will be summarized. Once we have good summaries of the opinion of most of the notable reviewers, a shorter and more topic oriented summary can be produced here based on at most four topics:

• The scholarship & style objections
• Philosophical objections
• On the influence of religion
• Contribution to the public debate

Does this sound more or less okay?? We have too much material, and given how many notable scientists and philosophers have reviewed the book, I don't really want to just throw it away. Having a sub-article would allow a shorter summary here, and that would solve the bloat problem, while keeping some of the stuff. Then, I would like this article to cover some post-publication topics, such as the readings and the Out Campaign. Opinions?? --Merzul 17:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm unclear (not critical of, just unclear) of the concept behind subpages within an article. Are they essentially independent articles that are hyperlinked within a "parent" article? Barte 19:56, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

They are yes fully independent in that sense, so it would look like Da_vinci_code#Literary_and_historical_criticism, except we don't have to call it "Criticism of ..." So, yes, it has to be like a real independent article. I think what I'm suggesting is more like List of reviews of the God Delusion, and this could perhaps be an acceptable encyclopedia article. --Merzul 20:17, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

(Following written before above response - got an edit conflict.)

I'm guessing Merzul means something like you see on many articles that grow; they spin off new articles and in the main article there is a section that starts with "Main article: link to sub-article" followed by a very brief summary. See for example Blackwater USA.

If this is done, shouldn't the sub-article be called "The God Delusion controversy" or "The God Delusion response"? I'm thinking that if the sub-article is called "criticism" that implies it can only contain negative views, and personally I'd prefer to see a page where the positive responses outnumber or outweigh (in academic notability) the negative responses. (I'm assuming that is the case, surely. Surely?) --RenniePet 20:20, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we can pick a more neutral title, but I'm afraid even in terms of academic notability, the nay-sayers might have the upper hand. Many atheists don't see the point in fighting this war, even Steven Weinberg, who did support Dawkins, said "Where I think Dawkins goes wrong is that, like Henry V after Agincourt, he does not seem to realize the extent to which his side has won. Setting aside the rise of Islam in Europe, the decline of serious Christian belief among Europeans is so widely advertised that Dawkins turns to the United States for most of his examples of unregenerate religious belief..."

Then there is another thing at play, and this is something that Dawkins is well aware of. The pro-evolution lobby in the US are nervous about Dawkins' writing. The evidence against Intelligent Design that weighed a lot in the court ruling was the NOMA arguments from Christians and other religious believers, who accept evolution. But Dawkins believes that a true understanding of evolution will lead to atheism, and since atheism = evil in the US, the pro-evolution lobby fear that Dawkins is "rocking the boat".

Finally, most atheist philosophers of religion, having dedicated their lives to refuting precisely what Dawkins considers a waste of time, haven't exactly been excited about the book. And I can fully understand that they've remained silent, he didn't cite any contemporary atheist philosopher, he didn't use any of the conventional arguments, developed by Mackie, Rowe, Schellenberg, Draper, and extensively discussed by Martin, Nielsen, and Oppy. I'm not sure about Simon Blackburne and Paul Kurz, they were perhaps mentioned, but almost all atheist philosophers were left out... --Merzul 20:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

You obviously know much, much, much more about this than I do. :-) --RenniePet 21:27, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm probably giving up on this whole critical reception thing. I'm fairly convinced that having a sub-article is a bad idea, because these summaries will never do justice to the reviews. What we really need is simply someone, who is bold enough to trim down and streamline the current critical reception into a balanced and coherent text. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to do this. --Merzul 19:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I can't either....at least not until I retire. But I still think that one of the joys of Wikipedia is that there is no canonical form. Consider, for example, an article on a TV show called Kid Nation that I've been contributing to (toward the bottom) and following since near its inception. The article contains a synopsis of every episode, a corresponding chart, and another chart tracking participants. Excrutiating detail, one might say. But I have yet to see anyone question whether the article is too long for its (well, I think) comparatively trivial subject. Rather, this is undoubtedly the definitive treatment of the topic by a third-party source. And here, comparisons to a standard encyclopedia treatment are meaningless, because standard encylopedias don't go there. Barte 22:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have tried to trim the reviews section a bit - for example where reviewers give their own view of religion, which is not relevant. I agree we don't want a sub-article for the reviews. It seems to me that the review section is now reasonably balanced, so I suggest getting rid of the 'neutrality disputed' tag. If anyone thinks the tag still belongs, please say so clearly with reasons, and which way you think it is skewed? Poujeaux 18:18, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, no comments on this. I think the tag can go, though there may be still a few too many reviews from offended christians. Poujeaux 18:37, 30 November 2007 (UTC)