It's been a while since
my last submission to this esteemed topic, so I ave a lot of books on catch up on.
Sure enough I did read Dawkins' God Delusion next.
I was utterly convinced by his arguments about the non-existence of God. I was less convinced by his rant about religion, although I could see what he was upset about. My problem was that he was picking the worst bits of religious-led life and comparing with the best examples of atheistic life.
Anyway, by the end of it, I was quite happy to call myself an atheist (having been agnostic with spiritual leanings for years).
Out of some perverse sense of balance, I read Alister McGrath's Dawkin's delusion, expecting it to be a feeble reposte by some jumped up evangelist.
To my complete surprise it was a concise, lucid and deadly accurate criticism of Dawkins' book, exposing it for the rant that it is in the places where it is a poor rant.
The logic of Dawkins was still enough for me to feel an atheist, but the precision of McGrath made me feel relieved there was still plenty of discovery to be had.
Then, I finally did get back to fiction.
I read Khaled Hosseni's The Kite Runner, thank to the recommendation of this thread.
I thought it was beautifully written, and a super book, but I couldn't get over the feeling that the plot was all too predictable until the return to Afghanistan. And gosh, what a surprise who turned out to be the local Taleban leader..... Still, very glad I read it.
Then I read this:
Rubbish. interesting enough idea, poorly writen.
Then I went onto another Polkinghorne tome.
Belief in God in and Age of Science seems like a predecessor to the Unlikely Kinship book Milly and I read earlier. Only much less clearly written. He uses the words "ontological", "epistemological", and "verissimitude" a lot. Whilst it only takes once to look them up, it still takes ages to recall that learning and make sense of the point he's trying to make. Nevertheless, it's a good point - philosophically it could be that there are things we cannot know, and science does not necessarily have the ability to describe everything.
Once I'd finished that, I read this:
Brilliant. A very lucid exploration of consciousness. Hofstadter ends up near the same conclusions as Blackmore (that our consciousness is an illusion), but he does it in a way that leaves lots of avenues for exploration.
And finally*...... I read some more fiction: The End of My Y, by Scarlett Thomas.
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Bloody Brilliant. Read it.
Tommo
*Actually not quite finally. I fully intend to keep reading, and indeed tonight I flicked through the 'religion is evil' thread which I had not bothered with before. George, you should read the Hofstadter (it is good and not like GEB). Richard, you should read the Thomas (it may throw clues on something you were wondering).
