THE GOD DELUSION by Richard Dawkins. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006
    PREFACE (p1-7)

      1) A DEEPLY RELIGIOUS NON-BELIEVER (p9-27)

        [1] Deserved respect (p11-19)

        [2] Undeserved respect (p20-27)

      2) THE GOD HYPOTHESIS (p29-74)

        [1] Polytheism (p32-36)

        [2] Monotheism (p37-38)

        [3] Secularism, the Founding Fathers and the religion of America (p38-46)

        [4] The poverty of agnostism (p46-54)

        [5] NOMA --- Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" to explain the difference between science and religion (p54-61)

        [6] The "Great Prayer Experiment" (p61-66)

        [7] The Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists (p66-60)

        [8] Little green men (p69-73)

      3) ARGUMENTS FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE (p75-108)

        [1] Thomas Aquinas' "proofs" (p77-80)

        [2] The ontological argument and other "A Priori" arguments (p80-85)

        [3] Secularism, the Founding Fathers and the religion of America (p38-46)

        [4] The argument from beauty (p86-87)

        [5] The argument from personal "experience" (p87-92)

          Sam Harris's quote cited as a declaration that there seems to be "sanity in numbers" as far as a true believer's belief in a supernatural personal god. (p88)

        [6] The argument from scripture (p92-96)

        [7] The argument from admired religious scientists (p97-103)

        [8] Pascal's wager (p103-105)

        [9] Bayesian arguments (p105-109)

      4) WHY THERE ALMOST CERTAINLY IS NO GOD (p111-159)

        [1] The ultimate Boeing 747 (p113-114)

        [2] Natural selection as a consciousness-raiser (p114-119)

        [3] Irreducible complexity (p119-125)

        [4] The worship of gaps (p125-134)

        [5] The "Anthropic Principle" --- planetary version (p141-151)

        [6] An interlude at cambridge (p151-159)

        This chapter contains the central argument of the book, namely, that the idea of the existence of a personal superhuman god is a delusion, as summarized in a series of six points: (p157-158)

          (1) One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

          (2) The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artefact such as a watch, the designer really was an inteligent engineer. It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person.

          (3) The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a "crane," not a "skyhook," for only a "crane" can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.

          (4) The most ingenious and powerful "crane" so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that --- an illusion!

          (5) We don't yet have an equivalent "crane" for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying than the biological version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the Anthropic Principle entitles us to postulate far more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.

          (6) We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying "crane" to match the biological one, the relatively weak "cranes" we have at present are, when abetted by the Anthropic Principle self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.

      5) THE ROOTS OF RELIGION (p161-80)

        [1] The Darwinian imperative (p163-166)

        [2] Direct advantages of religion (p166-169)

        [3] Group selection (p169-172)

        [4] Religion as a by-product of something else (p172-179)

        [5] Psychologically primed for religion (p179-191)

          References to Helen Fisher's evolutionary theories about romantic love as a similar hormonally controlled process as that which induces an emotional attachment to a religious belief in a personal supernatural god for comfort and safety needs. (p184-186)

        [6] Tread softly, because you tread on my "memes" (p191-201)

        [7] Cargo cults (p202-208)

      6) THE ROOTS OF MORALITY --- WHY ARE WE GOOD? (p209-233)

        What is the Darwinian survival value of morality?

        [1] Does our moral sense have a Darwinian origin? (p214-222)

        [2] A case study in the roots of morality (p222-226)

        [3] If there is no God, why be good? (p226-233)

      7) THE "GOOD" BOOK AND THE CHANGING MORAL "ZEITGEIST" (p235-278)

        [1] The Old Testament (p237-250)

        [2] Is the New Testament any better? (p250-253)

        [3] "Love they neighbor" (p254-262)

        [4] The moral "Zeitgeist" (p262-272)

        [5] What about Hitler and Stalin? Weren't they atheists? (p272-278)

      8) WHAT'S WRONG WITH RELIGION? WHY BE SO HOSTILE? (p279-307)

        [1] Fundamentalism and the subversion of science (p282-286)

        [2] The dark side of absolutism (p286-288)

        [3] Faith and homosexuality (p289-290)

        [4] Faith and the sanctity of human life (p291-298)

        [5] The great "Beethoven Fallacy" (p298-301)

        [6] How "moderation" in faith fosters fanaticism (p301-308)

          Reference to Sam Harris's chilling comment, in his Letter to a Christian Nation. (p302)

            [Quote all of it]


          Reference to another of Sam Harris's percipiently blunt comments about bin Laden, in his Letter to a Christian Nation. (p303-304)

            [Quote all of it]


          But what is so hard for us to understand is that the Islami Terrorists actually believe what they say they believe! The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religous extremism --- as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion.

          Voltaire got it right a long time ago: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrcities." So did Bertrand Russel, who said: "Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do!"

      9) CHILDHOOD, ABUSE AND THE ESCAPE FROM RELIGION (p309-343)

        [1] Physical and mental abuse (p309-315)

        [2] In defence of children (p325-331)

        [3] An educational scandal (p331-337)

        [4] Consciousness-raising again (p337-340)

        [5] Religious education as a part of literary culture (p340-344)

      10) A MUCH NEEDED GAP? (p345-374)

        [1] Binker (p437-352)

        [2] Consolation (p352-360)

        [3] Inspiration (p360-362)

        [4] The mother of all burkas (p362-374)

      APPENDIX (p375-379)

        A partial list of friendly addresses, for individuals needing support in escaping from religion.

    BOOKS CITED OR RECOMMENDED (p380-387)

    NOTES (p388-399)

    INDEX (p400-406)

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