RICHARD DAWKINS is one of the most influential
scientists of our time. The New York Times Book
Review has hailed him as a writer who "understands
the issues so clearly that he forces his reader to
understand them too." Recently awarded the
distinction of "public intellectual" in Britain,
Dawkins is Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public
Understanding of Science at Oxford University.
Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Rottweiler"
for his fierce and effective defense of evolution.
Prospect magazine voted him among the top three
public intellectuals in the world (along with
Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky). Now Dawkins turns his
considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its
faulty logic and the suffering it causes. He
critiques God in all his forms, from the
sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more
benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker
favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He
eviscerates the major arguments for religion and
demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme
being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments
bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points
with historical and contemporary evidence. In so
doing, he makes a compelling case that belief in God
is not just irrational, but potentially deadly.
Dawkins has fashioned an impassioned, rigorous
rebuttal to religion, to be embraced by anyone who
sputters at the inconsistencies and cruelties that
riddle the Bible, bristles at the inanity of
"intelligent design," or agonizes over
fundamentalism in the Middle East—or Middle America.