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The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins
Houghton Mifflin
ISBN 0-618-68000-4
Published October 2006 - Hardcover - 406 pages - $27.00

All of you who believe in supernatural gods, like Thor, Athena, Mercury, Zeus, and yes, even Allah and God, please read no further lest you encounter what your beliefs call blasphemy.  The rest of us call it truth.  The truth is that there are no gods.  There never have been.  There are only humans that have an emotional need to invent gods to explain the mysteries that humans cannot easily fathom or accept.  It has been this way for all the religions and gods that have already come and gone, and it is still this way with the religions we have today.  Occasionally, a few humans see the delusion for what it really is, and once in a blue moon, one of them will stand up and announce the obvious that everyone else has refused to see, just like the little boy in The Emperor's New Clothes who dares to exclaim, "But, the Emperor has no clothes!"  Richard Dawkins does exactly this in his book The God Delusion.  Dawkins is no stranger to clear thinking, eloquent writing, and keen observation of human behavior, as he has amply demonstrated in his many prior books.  In The God Delusion, Dawkins reviews the problems of all the typical arguments for the existence of God, from the classic arguments of Saint Thomas Aquinas to those of modern religious scientists.  Dawkins then moves on to show why there almost certainly is no God, the "almost" a necessary qualifier required by the impossibility of disproving a fantasy that is beyond the reach of any test.  By the middle of the book, Dawkins summarizes his arguments against God with the clarity of a child who asks, "If God created everything, then who created God?"  If that's not immediately clear to you, it will be if you read this book.  The second half of the book delves into where the human need for religion comes from, why morality is not derived from religious beliefs, and why religion is so dangerous to us all (as if Iraq hasn't already demonstrated this).  This is exactly what should be required reading for every human being before any label of being educated is conferred upon him.

Personally, I have long felt that human civilization will never reach maturity until it throws off the chains and blinders of religion and superstition.  Only then will humanity leave behind its childish ways and seriously begin the journey towards its full potential.  This book could very well be the first prominent paving stone of the road that will take us to that maturity.  Review by Hugh Martin.
Conclusion - A voice of reason in an arena of emotion.