Smackdown

Richard Dawkins' God Delusion has been flying off the shelves, lately. It's more accurate to say that it would if we could keep it in stock.
The publishers blurb reports that Dawkins "turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes."
I'm not a person of overriding faith, but the older I get the more I rather like the idea of a faith component out there. I have no idea what that may entail, and I don't have the necessary intellect to explore it much further or to give it a definitive construct.
That's why I like the idea of someone like Marilynne (Gilead) Robinson doing it for me.
"Since Dawkins’s declared intention in this book is to hearten the many atheists who, he is sure, exist, but who conceal their convictions for fear of disapproval or rejection, no doubt his tendentiousness is meant to be enjoyed by the like-minded, as is so much that is called “objectivity” in these fulminating times. Yet Dawkins is in earnest in presenting himself as a man in possession of liberating truth — another characteristic of the genre — and his readership is sure to be much wider than the crypto-atheist community. So it seems fair, if not strictly possible, to take him as seriously as he takes himself."
I only know that reading Marilynne Robinson works for me on a bunch of levels. I suspect that's not going to hold up in court as it were, but in a tussle between Dawkins and Robinson, it's a no brainer.

Posted by Dave