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Richard Dawkins, The God delusion

Article in Journal of Bioeconomics April 2011
DOI: 10.1007/s10818-010-9100-y

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Richard Dawkins, The God delusion

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Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 2008, 463 pp, $15.95 (paper)

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Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

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Cassill

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University of South Florida

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Richard Dawkins, The God delusion

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Deby Cassill

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Throughout the animal kingdom, alpha males have been the Gods that see the big picture and set the rules that the masses follow. Richard Dawkins is an alpha male. With
his Godlike-powers, it is no surprise that he has written an ambitious, aggressive book
dispelling the God myth. The surprise is that Dawkins is toppling his own pedestal.
Why would a man who wrote about the immortal gene willingly destroy the allusion
of his own Godliness? That is a mystery he will have to reveal himselfhopefully in
a future autobiography.
Meanwhile, let us review this alpha males position on God. It is simple. Dawkins
does not believe. He is an atheist. The goal of his book is to build atheist pride. Being
an atheist is nothing to be apologetic about. Dawkins writes. On the contrary, it is
something to be proud of, standing tall to face the far horizon, for atheism nearly
always indicates a healthy independence of mind and, indeed, a healthy mind (p. 26).
Although it is unlikely that Dawkins writings will immediately sway the masses to
a secular lifestyle, his book is well worth reading. Dawkins clearly defines the differences among theists, deists, pantheists and atheists. A theist believes in an invisible,
sentient, intelligent, God-parent who not only created the universe, but oversees and
influences the fates of his creatures. He answers prayers, performs miracles, knows
who has been bad or good and forgives or punishes accordingly. A deist believes in an
intelligent God who created the universe, but who does not answer prayers or intervene
in human affairs in any way, shape or form. A pantheist uses the term God only as
a metaphor for summarizing the physical laws of nature or the universe. Einstein
was a pantheist. Atheists accept the uncertainty of life and the finality of death, and
avoid using the term, God, entirely. These definitions should provide clarity for those
searching for answers to what it means to be a theist or an atheist.

unc
orre
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D. Cassill (B)
Department of Biology, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA
e-mail: cassill@stpt.usf.edu

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In one of the early chapters, Dawkins describes the Old Testament God as jealous
and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty
ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal,
pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully (p. 59).
Here, Dawkins is refreshingly bold and direct. His candid single-paragraph portrait of
the Old Testament God as a psychotic delinquent (p. 59) elegantly illuminates the
difference between belief and reality, and thus, might set free the hearts and minds of
those who have been bullied by belief.
In the middle chapters, Dawkins vents his frustration with the masses who still
believe in a supernatural God-parent. Because Dawkins is an alpha male, he views
life through an alphas lens; this is a problem as the lens of the masses is quite different from that of the alphas. For example, the masses rarely see the big picture and
they rarely set the rules. Their world is often one of fear and uncertainty. To them,
a God-parent offers the allusion of certainty. Do good deeds now. Give money now.
Suffer now. And when you die, you will live in Gods heavenly home, protected and
loved forever after. To the suffering masses, a belief in a heavenly home would be
irresistible when compared to a toxic reality.
In the final chapters, Dawkins asks the question: Do we need God to be good? His
question is the Holy Grail of theoretical evolution and one that I have attempted to
address myself. Here is what I have found. Human behavior is a duality of competition and compassion (Cassill 2006). Competition helps us accumulate and stockpile
resources for the proverbial rainy day so we can survive seasonal gaps in resources.
Compassionately sharing increments from our stockpiles with vulnerable individualstypically the poor, young and elderly who would otherwise die of starvation,
disease or exposureindemnifies us against aggression. How does sharing with vulnerable individuals indemnify donors against aggression? By way of the proverbial
safety in numbers. If an aggressor lurks nearby, better to be one in twenty than one
alone. By competitive stockpiling and compassionate sharing, both donor and recipient
live longer and happier compared to those who do not stockpile and share (Cassill and
Watkins 2009).
In a nutshell, competitive stockpiling indemnifies individuals against scarcity and
starvation; compassionate sharing indemnifies individuals against aggression. Thus,
even our most cherished moral behaviorhelping those who cannot help themselves
is often self-interested rather than self-sacrificing. Although he does not come right out
and say it, Dawkins hope is the same as minethat humans will come to recognize
and appreciate our innate compassion rather than crediting our compassionate nature
to a distant, supernatural source.

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Cassill, D. L., & Watkins, A. (2009). The emergence of cooperative hierarchies through natural selection
processes. Journal of Bioeconomics (in press).
Cassill, D. L. (2006). Why skew selection, a model of parental exploitation, should replace kin selection.
Journal of Bioeconomics, 8, 101119. (http://www.springerlink.com/content/63j12k7w561gr667).

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