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The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins

New atheism / science and religion

It belongs on a science-and-religion route as the popular flagship of the new-atheist case.

Synopsis

A new-atheist argument that belief in God is almost certainly false, intellectually unjustified, and often harmful, and that secular reason offers a better basis for life.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

The existence of a personal God is a scientific hypothesis that the evidence renders highly improbable.

It insists that religious claims be judged by the same evidential standards as any other claim about reality.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with Blaise Pascal, Pensées.

Reading note

Read it as polemic as much as philosophy, weighing its arguments against more sympathetic accounts of faith.

Best paired with

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

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