I've almost finished it, and thus far it's been a very entertaining, educational, and sometimes deeply poignant book. Dawkins makes some very concise arguments for atheism (and against religion). He uses cut-and-dry logic and knife-point wit to make his cases for enlightened freethought. It's a bit of a read at around 450-500 pages, but to be honest, I made no note of the time, as the pages seemed to turn themselves.
I will openly concede and acknowledge Dawkins' overt hostility to religion, which he calls "nonsense". I would also say that this hostility is not unfounded, given its propensity to drive some of the faithful to heinous acts of violence and abuse. At the other end of the spectrum, religion can also bring people to great acts of charity and beneficence. However, Dawkins asserts that religion or God need not be the motive behind such acts, or behind morality at all, an idea which I share.
Whatever your faith (or creed, or belief, or whatever), I would recommend this book to you. There's no guarantee that you'll like it, and definitely no certainty that you will be an atheist by the end. The beauty of being human beings is that we are able to evaluate and assess the world around us and draw conclusions based on our findings. If that conclusion is a profession of belief in a supernatural being, so be it. Just be willing to give your faith a little check-up every now and again. Keep an open mind about all possibilities! There's nothing wrong with choosing to believe (or disbelieve) something if there's evidence to support it (or not).
My score: Two thumbs up.
Now, with that out of the way, I would like to direct your attention to a website I found snooping about today on Something Awful.com:
Conservapedia!
Mother of Pearl. I'm all for free speech, and I can't rightly fault whoever started this site on those grounds, but the entire site smacks of fundamental conservatism, and when there's no conservative angle to be had, there's no intelligent content whatsoever. Observe! The Banana slug.
That's it. (As of 5/14/08, anyway. Maybe they'll have that updated at some point. God Forbid they'd have to consult the dread SCIENCE for help on that one) And if you click on the "mollusk" link in the description, it offers a similarly brief commentary with some more added rhetoric about homosexuality thrown in. Oh boy! Look, wikipedia has a bit of a leftist slant and some questionable sourcing and edits, but conservapedia.com throws neutrality and reason to the wind. It is chock-full of ignorance, intolerance, and just plain irresponsibility. It doesn't even pretend to care. It's an encyclopedia for conservatives, by conservatives, and if you don't agree, you are WRONG. It's like the Bill O'Reilly of online encyclopedias. "But David, you hairy, testosterone-dripping lumberjack, you, if it's on the internet, shouldn't we not care? Like we don't care about 99% percent of all the other crap on the internet?" I hear you say. Of course we shouldn't. I merely wished to point out that this exactly what I'm talking about. Their featured article of the month, by the way, is atheism, which is laughable at best, and downright offensive at worst.
I sigh. This is fundamentalism at work. I only wonder how long it will take for the foolishness and name-calling to run its course. Check it out. Read some of these articles. It makes for some pretty interesting reading:
The Homosexual Agenda
Environmentalists
Liberapedia.com
(smaller, but with a better sense of humor)
Well, that's all for me.
Consider yourself taken on, fundamentalist jerkbags!
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