The God Delusion

Written by Richard Dawkins

Narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward

Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Rottweiler" for his fierce and effective defense of evolution.

Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky). Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes.

He critiques God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. In so doing, he makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just irrational, but potentially deadly.

Dawkins has fashioned an impassioned, rigorous rebuttal to religion, to be embraced by anyone who sputters at the inconsistencies and cruelties that riddle the Bible, bristles at the inanity of "intelligent design," or agonizes over fundamentalism in the Middle East-or Middle America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jan 19, 2007
• ISBN: 9781400173785

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was the inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the acclaimed author of many books including The Selfish Gene, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Ancestor’s Tale, The God Delusion, and The Greatest Show on Earth. Visit him at RichardDawkins.net.

Reviews for The God Delusion

[zachmanonbatman · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Why on earth would Everand allow audiobooks on their platform with blatantly mislabeled chapters? "Chapter 1" of this audiobook is NOT the actual book's "Chapter 1". Nothing about labeling an introduction, a preface, a dedication, a forward, or ANY section of the book that was not designated as "Chapter 1" by the book's creator/s as the audiobook's first chapter on page and in the table of contents makes any sense whatsoever and is, with all due respect, a gigantic and ridiculous oversight. Someone who doesn't have the intention or need to begin the audiobook at the very beginning and follow right along in the hard copy should not have to spend 35 minutes skipping, pausing, checking hard copy, listening, checking, rewinding, listening, (rinse and repeat) until getting even remotely close to the section they're looking for. It defeats the "on-demand" service you're asking customers to pay you for. This isn't the only audiobook on Everand that flaunts this issue. I've come across several, and every single one got me irritated enough that I closed the app and considered canceling my subscription. If you're going to allow this somewhat unbelievable (does whoever lable these audiobook chapters not proofread or confirm it matches the hard copy?) error to even come into existence, the least you can do is leave page references to audio clips every minute or two as a pseudo-lyrics section substitute. I'll also add that this audiobook error made me angrier than the others because, using Chapter 2 as an example, clicking on Chapter 2 in the table of contents does not start at the beginning of any chapter. It starts mid chapter, no, MID SENTENCE rather, somewhere of which I think have been before the actual first chapter of the book. So... unless you're following along with a print copy, you're most likely not going to have any clue what the author is talking about upon clicking that link.

Do you not see the frustration this causes? How is anyone supposed to have an enjoyable experience with regular occurrences of the same error showing up on every two or three audiobooks?

I feel the need to state that I've never run into this issue on any other platform. Spotify has this same audiobook available for premium members and, wouldn't you know it? The intro is labeled as an intro. Chapter 1 is ACTUALLY the book's first chapter. Spotify- a streaming service that is definitely not known for audiobooks. Majority of their users don't even realize they offer audiobooks. Yet, comparing three audiobooks on Everand with the same three titles on Spotify points pretty heavily to this being an Everand problem.

I apologize if this review comes off as rude, or sparky, or disrespectful in any way. I had no intention of that. I was actually very pleased with my subscription when I signed up not long ago, but this issue is showing up on so many of the audiobooks I'm interested in and it ends up that what is supposed to be my time to relax and enjoy a book is turned into a gigantic headache and never fails to irritate me and lose interest in the service that day. I don't think that's good for business and I can't be the only one who is affected by this.

If Everand can fix this problem with what should have been, or at least it seems like it should be, a fairly simple copying of a few words and numbers from page to screen so that 1/3 of the audio books that I attempt to listen to actually work correctly so I can have an enjoyable experience, considering that's what I pay for, then I will happily stay with company and continue to pay for the service. Until then, I'm very much leaning towards stopping my subscription and jumping back over to Spotify, given that they don't seem to have this error and I already use Spotify for music and podcasts anyway. The convenience factor is definitely there, but I very much enjoy the selection here and the mobile app is fantastic on Android devices. Obviously, I'd like a reason to stay, even though it's unnecessary money being spent.

I hope I haven't offended anyone. I have a tendency to be very blunt and straightforward so that sometimes it's misinterpreted as disrespect or aggression when it comes to money being spent on something and I don't get that "something". I don't have a ton of extra money and i don't make the decision to spend money on luxuries like audiobook and music streaming services lightly. But if I do decide to spend the money on a product or service, I expect to receive that product or service. Anything less is unacceptable and it's the customers responsibility to let the merchant and other customers, potential or current, know.


Having said all of that, The God Delusion is actually an incredibly important and fantastic piece of writing. Professor Dawkins has the rare gift to be able to express complex ideas and teachings to the lay person so they may understand them thoroughly and easily and also while making you laugh your ass off! The book in print made me laugh nearly every page it seems, but hearing Professor Dawkins himself speak the words with his attitude, tone, affectations, sarcasm, wit, and blatant intention to "rock the boat", as he puts it, is an all around great experience. The God Delusion was my introduction to Richard Dawkins and I've been a huge admirer since. The work he did on this book showed me that it's okay to be atheist and that we have a duty to use our free-thinking minds. THINK FREELY. The message is simple- question everything until you have the proof.

One of the few items on my so-called "bucket list," if I had one, would be to attend any event at which Professor Dawkins is appearing. The world needed and still needs people like him, and it would be an incredible honor to experience and take in the knowledge and encouragement he offers. It's okay to not believe in a god and its crucial that humans the world over understand just how much damage, death, catastrophe, disaster, war, genocide, theft, cheating, exploitation, judgment, prejudice, discrimination, injury, abuse, and trauma, to name a few, that religion is responsible for. It can't be rationally or even intelligently denied the religion is not a positive force in the world. You could even look at it statistically and the numbers will show that there have been exponentially more deaths that religion is the root cause of than the number of lives saved by it. There's no question.

Please read this book. Whoever you are, whatever you believe, wherever you came from; it can't be overstated how important the information in this book is and it has the potential to change the world and I think even change the course of humanity completely if enough people take the time to seriously read and understand it. If you remember anything from this review, let it be that this book wasn't written to hurt anyone. Will it offend some people? Certainly, but that's not the intention. Anyone who follows the Professor can see that it's not his way. Intentionally offending someone is what one does when they don't have anything significant or even close to a rebuttal on the topic at hand.

The God Delusion is not an attack on anybody. It's an attack on religion and all the damage it does. Willingly believing in something when you know there's no proof that it even exists, in all likelihood doesn't exist, to the point of killing, going to war, shooting up a school, flying a couple airplanes into a couple towers killing thousands for that belief and simply passing it off as "faith" will drive us closer to extinction faster than COVID-19, cancer, smoking, obesity, gun violence, teen suicide, abortion (I guess some consider it murder), actual murder, vaping, racism, bigotry, AIDS, drugs, sex trafficking, police brutality, and Donald Trump combined.

Professor Dawkins deals in facts and evidence. Emotion and irrationality have no claim here. Every bit of info he offers here comes with the evidence which proves said information accurate. THAT'S THE POINT! Stop blindly believing in and dedicating your life to something you have no proof exists! Stop wasting your lives! Live life and do whatever makes you happy as long as no one is hurt by it! Somehow, this seems to be one of the most difficult ideas to grasp for humans as a whole. If it's so hard for humans to believe in only what they have proof exists, we don't have much more time. This is a wrong which desperately, DESPERATELY need to be corrected and the work Professor Dawkins has done and continues to do is only one of the crucial ingredients needed to get it done, but there's more... much, much, more to do. Thankfully, Professor Dawkins wrote the perfect starting point for humans to finally get on the path to getting our heads out of the sand so we can start fixing our world and keeping our species alive. And maybe even live peacefully someday.