The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, read
by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward.
As a child, my wife hated her school and wished
she could leave.
Years later, when she was in her twenties,
she disclosed this unhappy fact to her parents,
and her mother was aghast: 'But darling, why
didn't you come to us and tell us?'
Lalla's reply is my text for today: 'But I
didn't know I could.'
I didn't know I could.
I suspect - well, I am sure - that there are
lots of people out there who have been brought
up in some religion or other, are unhappy
in it, don't believe it, or are worried about
the evils that are done in its name; people
who feel vague yearnings to leave their parents'
religion and wish they could, but just don't
realize that leaving is an option.
If you are one of them, this book is for you.
It is intended to raise consciousness - raise
consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist
is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and
splendid one.
You
can be an atheist who is happy, balanced,
moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no
religion.
Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7,
no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder
Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian
wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution
of Jews as 'Christ-killers', no Northern Ireland
'troubles', no 'honour killings', no shiny-suited
bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible
people of their money ('God wants you to give
till it hurts').
Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues,
no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging
of female skin for the crime of showing an
inch of it.
If you feel trapped in the religion of your
upbringing, it would be worth asking yourself
how this came about.
The answer is usually some form of childhood
indoctrination.
If you are religious at all it is overwhelmingly
probable that your religion is that of your
parents.
If you were born in Arkansas and you think
Christianity is true and Islam false, knowing
full well that you would think the opposite
if you had been born in Afghanistan,
you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.
Being an atheist is nothing to be apologetic
about.
On the contrary, it is something
to be proud of, standing tall to face the
far horizon, for atheism nearly always indicates
a healthy independence of mind and, indeed,
a healthy mind.
There are many people who know, in their heart
of hearts, that they are atheists, but dare
not admit it to their families or even, in
some cases, to themselves.
Partly, this is because the very word 'atheist'
has been assiduously built up as a terrible
and frightening label.
The word 'delusion' in my title has disquieted
some psychiatrists who regard it as a technical
term, not to be bandied about.
Three of them wrote to me to propose a special
technical term for religious delusion: 'relusion'.
Maybe it'll catch on.
But for now I am going to stick with 'delusion',
and I need to justify my use of it.
The Penguin English Dictionary defines a delusion
as 'a false belief or impression'.
Surprisingly, the illustrative quotation the
dictionary gives is from Phillip E. Johnson:
'Darwinism is the story of humanity's liberation
from the delusion that its destiny is controlled
by a power higher than itself.'
Can that be the same Phillip E. Johnson who
leads the creationist charge against Darwinism
in America today?
Indeed it is, and the quotation is, as we
might guess, taken out of context.
I hope the fact that I have stated as much
will be noted, since the same courtesy has
not been extended to me in numerous creationist
quotations of my works, deliberately and misleadingly
taken out of context.
Whatever Johnson's own meaning, his sentence
as it stands is one that I would be happy
to endorse.
The dictionary supplied with Microsoft Word
defines a delusion as 'a persistent false
belief held in the face of strong contradictory
evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric
disorder'.
The first part captures religious faith perfectly.
As to whether it is a symptom of a psychiatric
disorder, I am inclined to follow Robert M.
Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance, when he said, 'When one person
suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity.
When many people suffer from a delusion it
is called Religion.'
If this book works as I intend, religious
readers who open it will be atheists when
they put it down.
What presumptuous optimism!
Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are
immune to argument, their resistance built
up over years of childhood indoctrination
using methods that took centuries to mature
(whether by evolution or design).
Among the more effective immunological devices
is a dire warning to avoid even opening a
book like this, which is surely a work of
Satan.
But I believe there are plenty of open-minded
people out there: people whose childhood indoctrination
was not too insidious, or for other reasons
didn't 'take', or whose native intelligence
is strong enough to overcome it.
Such free spirits should need only a little
encouragement to break free of the vice of
religion altogether.
At very least, I hope that nobody who reads
this book will be able to say, 'I didn't know
I could.'
