Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has been a runaway bestseller and garnered much attention for his passionate plea for atheists to stand up and be heard. But there is so much more in that book about religion that has drawn considerably less attention, most notably his theory on the evolutionary origins and development of religion, which is a technical field of study among a small band of scientists, one of whom, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, has penned the following analysis of Dawkins’ theory of religion, which he feels is wide of the mark based on the evidence.
as if dealing with god was not enough, now we are starting on the other end, dealing with no god; which reminds me of one famous scientist when asked to comment on belief in god, there is no god and Richard Dawkings is his prophet!
i guess human beings will be facsinated by this idea for some time to come but frankly it is a waste of time and energy when we have not even began to ask a fundamental question as to what is a human being; obviously it is not just a mere animal!
Note that the article does not really deal with the question on whether god exists or not, but rather about how “evil” religion is and the evidence for it.
As for us being mere animals. We are all just organisms for genes to make more genes. Some organisms might be more complicated than others, but they are not necessarily more successful. 
I think we’ve taken for granted the means of communication that humans use, words, which are descriptions, and what they describe! For instance sir you use the word “religion” as if it is a being that has life and hence you call it “evil”. This is what has happened with most of the descriptions that have assumed the role of a being, God, Humanity, ANC, Roman Catholic Church, Family, all just descriptions that are now preoccupying the mind of Human Being, also a description.
What I’m trying to capture here is that long has been the habit of human beings to confuse the description for the described. If we took one example, God, and what this name tries to capture, immediately it becomes clear that all we are doing is mistake the mirage for water, talking of something that no one knows about save the description. When we say religion is “evil”, obviously we are not talking of a being like Satan, we are talking of an institution invented by human beings, so that what we are trying to say is that human beings are “evil”. It is more difficult to state this fact and so because we ourselves are humans, we don’t accept that it is humans who are evil, rather blame the description that the described. The obvious fact is that without human beings there is no “evil”, no God, no ANC, no Roman or Protestant, no description, only the described, Life!
If human beings are just a bunch of genes and nothing more, then we might as well keep on praying and hope that ET will one day come and claim his inheritance, take some of us and at warp speed take us to heaven. I think a human being is a little more than just a mere organism, it is a reflection of everything, and if everything is God, then it is a reflection of God, the image of God; and if God is love, a reflection of love, a description!
If we consider the universe as a whole, and that if it has a boundary, then it has one centre, but that if it has no boundary, then every thing in the universe is a centre, the universe itself is a centre. We are now in a position to say that every human is a centre of the universe, no one in particular but particularly every one! The centre of an object is the object itself, no object no centre, no centre no object, therefore human beings are essentially frames of reference for everything, the universe, God. If we realised that the description is not the described, then we would see what we are actually faced with, the universe!
If that is true, how is anyone to separate abstract sense from reality in anything you or anyone else writes?
That is much more because believers claim to know what is meant by the term “god” while refusing to provide an operational definition than because of any inherent defect in the way that language is normally used. Try the same thing with a term like “chocolate” (I’m not drooling) to see the absurdity. Of course words are convenient symbols that usually have a real-world correspondence – that is their purpose! Words that don’t have such a correspondence or a clear functional definition are the ones that cause trouble. But what could be more trivial than that observation? More importantly, what puzzle does it solve?
I’m not convinced. People are always keen to point out (perceived) shortcomings in others. It distracts them from their own, especially when done loudly. The issue (religion, resources, money, whatever) is often merely the focus for some deeper rivalry. But there is also what I would call a size and familiarity effect at work in this: the larger the “they” group and the more culturally remote it is from “us,” the worse are the “sins” “we” see in “them.”
… ruled by bacteria here on Earth. So do away with humans NOW, perhaps?
What are you trying to say here?
This is an irritating misuse of concepts stolen from non-Euclidean geometry, as applied to cosmology, and perverted. Please read up on the subject to avoid posting such unadulterated drivel.
This reads like more verbal abracadbra of no discernible meaning or purpose apart from trying to sound profound.
'Luthon64