The title "The Devi's Delusion(s)" has two meanings. First, the title of the book I want to talk about is The Devil's Delusion. Second, the devil is delusional in thinking that he has ANY power over me. I'll tackle these backwards.
God is doing work in me, and it is so good. Now that's not to say I won't have struggles or hardships or any other "problems." Rather, I wanted to proclaim that I am a son of the Father and satan has no control of me. Basically, I'm so excited about what God is teaching me, how He's molding me, what He's doing in the lives of my family and my friends, as well as the lives of people throughout the world. Hopefully I can use this blog to share my thoughts on all of it with you. I guess the pun I wanted to make was that devil is delusional if he thinks I won't use this blog to glorify the one true God.
Back to the book. The Devil's Delusion, written by David Berlinski, is an counterargument to Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion. I'll be honest, when I picked up this book I had no idea what I was getting myself into, yet once I picked it up I couldn't put it down.
This isn't necessarily a The Reason For God book so much as it is a "why atheists are wrong" sort of book. Berlinski goes through each point Dawkins makes in "disproving" God and in fact proves why Dawkins' arguments are inaccurate, incomplete, or illogical. Berlinski doesn't try and use scripture or Christian reasoning for proving God. He uses purely scientific logic to prove Dawkins and atheist scientists wrong.
Dawkins' main argument (I'm almost positive, I read this over a month ago) is that since it is highly unlikely that God could exist, He doesn't. Point after point, Berlinski proves this a ridiculous argument because most of science's arguments for alternatives to God require just as much, if not more faith than faith in God. It's ridiculous to me. Berlinski briefly explains the main tenants of modern science, from string theory to the general theory of relativity, and I don't understand how scientists can believe it all so readily. In essence, modern science believes that there are literally billions of parallel universes where every possible situation is laid out. This means that all of those statistics proving just how unique earth is, every other possibility where numbers are just slightly off are somewhere else in another universe. Wow. There are plenty of other scientific arguments as well where I thought: "how can you legitimately believe that, yet say faith in God is ridiculous?"
Needless to say, this is a very interesting read that will make you smarter both in apologetics and science. I'd say it's a good addition to A Reason For God in that it gives you a better understanding of science's arguments. If all of this science stuff sounds boring to you (it's thick content), know that Berlinski has some humor in him. He's sarcastic a lot, which is probably why I like this book so much, plus he makes jokes. Here's one quote that made me laugh, and hopefully it'll make you consider reading the book. The context is what aliens would think if they compared us to apes:
"I suppose that if a fish were thoughtfully to consider the matter, she might have a hard time determining the differences between Al Gore and a sperm whale. Both of them are large and one of them is streamlined." (pg 161)
Who ever thought science, apologetics, and Al Gore all together could be so much fun to read about?
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