The Errors of God is Not Great

   

a) The deceptiveness of the book

 

In chapter 1 of the notes, I listed seven deceptions which I reproduce in a slightly shorter version here:

 

The first ‘deception' is that the author comes powerfully and authoritatively, not brooking opposition and stampeding down any opposition. He gives himself the position of almost divine authority. You wonder can he possibly be wrong!

 

The second deceptive approach is that of the person who appears so reasonable that you are seduced by their niceness and really don't take in the significance of what they are saying. That came over very strongly in chapter 1.

 

A third deception is using half truths. It blends truth with untruth to create an end product of its own making, to suit its own presupposed conclusions.

 

A fourth deception is to dump so much in one's lap that it is almost impossible to take in individual points when the chapter goes past like a fast flowing river.

 

A fifth deception is to appeal to extremes of history, silly comments of people whose understanding was less than perfect, negative comments about people's inadequacies in general, and in respect of religion specifically.

 

A sixth deception, is to speak in such generalities that it is impossible to tie down the truth.

 

A seventh deception is to condemn by association. The title of the book is God is not Great but actually very little is about God.

 

These, therefore, are the strategies that the author uses, purposely or not I don't know.

 

 

b) The Wrongs of the Book

 

There are a number of things about this book that worry me if this is supposed to be a book of integrity:

 

1. Its Bitter Bias

 

The further on this book goes, the greater the bitterness being revealed in the writing. The language becomes more and more emotive and there is nothing of objectivity about it; it is all-out crusading!

 

2. Its One-Sidedness

 

Far more than The God Delusion this book comes out of the school of closed-mind, dogmatic mantras. So much is this evident that I have near the end commented that “It's like going into the Labour Party headquarters in London and saying, “Tell me why Conservatives are wrong,” or going into the Democrats' headquarters in Washington (is that where it is?) and saying, “Tell me why the Republicans are wrong.” It is so propagandist as to be almost unbelievable.

 

3. It is Ignorant of the Origins and Content of Scripture

 

Now the Bible is one of the primary foundation stones for the Christian Faith and one might expect these crusading atheists to have read it and studied it and its origins, but all we find is a quoting of others who have little or no knowledge as well, as if repeating shallow errors might make them solid truth. The lack of knowledge and understanding of the origins of the Bible and its contents is horrific coming from those who dare to criticise it. The only reason they get away with it with the media, is that they likewise are largely ignorant of it. If they weren't all so ignorant of it, then perhaps they might not be atheists!

 

4. It has its own way of interpreting history

 

A number of times as I read through this book, I thought, “This doesn't correspond with my knowledge of history! I think he is assuming a whole lot of things here, simply to fit his agenda.” I could be wrong because in a number of areas he is clearly more well read than I am, yet my readings of history suggest that quite a lot of what he says will not stand up to scrutiny and it would be good to have an historian check out much of what he says. I have doubts.

 

5. It uses the ploy of Extremes

 

He has no doubt learnt of Richard Dawkins who is the master of this – focus on extremists and brand the middle ground ‘real article' with the same stamp. It is intellectually very bad! Nowhere in this book is there an examination of the experiences of the vast majority of middle-of-the-road traditional Christians whose only fault is that they seek to be good!

 

6. It leads astray by sleight of hand

 

More than a few times we are led to believe that the author is going to cover a particular topic only to find we have been led into a completely different area which has nothing to do with the chapter title or the opening words of the chapter. The biggest criticism in this respect comes with the very title of the book. Hardly anything or very little in the book is about God Himself. It's mostly about how human beings have done their own thing and used religion. If it had been titled, “Man-Made Religion is Bad” I would have been the first to applaud it!

 

7. It lacks understanding of history

 

This is a subject that I believe can stand on its own, and so we'll deal with it more fully in Appendix 2 – Church and History.

 

 

In addition to these general errors that come up again and again throughout the book, you will find that we have itemised specific lists of errors within chapters at the ends of chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 17 & 18.