A review by wildflowerz76
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

5.0

It happened kind of slowly. When I was a kid, I was fully entrenched in the dogma of the Southern Baptist Convention and all the hate and prejudice that goes along with it. I thought gay people were going to hell. I styled myself "pro-life." Like most people, once I got to college, I started thinking more for myself. I don't think that it's anything that I learned through classes I took in college...I can't remember one instance of even talking about any of the issues in my classes. But it was the first time I was living basically on my own, away from my parents and from my church. It was also the first time in years and years when I stopped going to church. I had a boyfriend and I would spend the weekends with him rather than going home and we weren't going to church. I remember in my second two years of school, I started feeling disdain for campus religious organizations and the people who joined them. I think it grew from there. I've felt it more and more recently as I've been reading more and more about skeptical and critical thinking. So I've been seeking out some books about the subject. That's how I came to this one. I went to church pretty much every week for at least 10 years. I read the Bible, though not as much as I "should" have. And still, I don't know half the things that it said in it. I learned things in this book about the Bible, that I never read in the Bible itself. Was it because of the obtuse language it uses? If I had known a lot of what it said, maybe I would have questioned it more, earlier on. I doubt it though. I was very much my mother's child, believing because someone in authority told me that something was true. As I got older, I began to realize that what I've been taught isn't the truth. For several years, I think I'd best be described as agnostic who usually leans toward the atheist side. Even know, where I'm leaning so far, I should tip over, I still find myself reluctant to really give up all that I was taught in my youth, despite the extreme disdain I feel for it most of the time. Anyway, back to this book: There was a lot I already knew in The God Delusion. There were also quite a few things I didn't. I learned more about how religion is harmful in so many ways. This is an excellent read and I'd recommend it anyone, but especially someone who wants to be more of a critical thinker, rather than just accepting what they're told as the truth without questioning it.