The God Delusion

I got Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' for Christmas. Started reading it last night and I'm really enjoying it! The quality of the writing is superb, and he really knows how to engage a reader.

I've read a variety of Christian 'rebuttals' of Dawkins' hypothesis, but thought I'd like to read it for myself and perhaps blog comments on some of the specifics. But I'm part way through chapter 3 and struggling to find anything I really disagree with. The religious activities Dawkins describes I find equally abhorrent! And I agree that many of the ways we present and promote our religion leave us open to criticism and ridicule. This quotation from early in chapter one struck quite a chord with me:

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophet said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?' Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths." (Carl Sagan, in Pale Blue Dot, quoted by Dawkins on p.12)

Just an observation. When Sagan writes 'god' the first letter is lower case. But he capitalises 'Universe'. Dawkins claims to have no respect for 'religion'; he asks whether 'theology' can even be considered a legitimate subject. Yet he always writes 'God' with a capital 'G'!