Customer Reviews

The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, And Hitchens

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Despite approaching this from the perspective of a (weak) atheist who has admired Dawkins greatly over the years I enjoyed this book. Anyone who doesn't want to slip into the comfy zone of only ever debating and discussing with people who concur might disagree but, personally, I think that knowing your opponent is preferable. And, when your opponent manages to strike some good blows AND entertain you into the bargain it has to be a good outcome.

Vox Day has, in general, steered clear of cant and, instead, directly addressed the facts and assertions employed by Harris, Dawkins and Dennett and it is here that, for me at least, the book had the most value. Vox has done his research and lucidly sets out his facts. I think that there are clearly flaws in some of the argumentation, as has been pointed out in other reviews, with a-priori assumption of that to be proved being the most common complaint. However, it's entertaining if you like the mental exercise.

Having said that, I would love to have a book from Vox that addresses the fundamentals; my view is that the impact of a fact, for good or ill, has no bearing whatsoever on its veracity. One can argue that atheism or theism leads to better or worse outcomes but it is fundamentally irrelevant to the argument. Ultimately, there is or there is not a God - period.

Therefore it is entirely pointless for either side to argue for or against the existence of God on the basis of whether that means people behave better, do or do not persecute other races or any other consequence; benign or malign. The consequences are our problem.

In fact, I would love to have books from both sides that directly address the fundamentals rather than long treatises on who behaves better, produces better laws etc etc.

However, given that this book does exactly what it sets out to do (attack Dawkins, Dennett and Harris and try to rebut some of their assertions), does it humerously and does it intelligently I would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone interested in the debate.

When I received my copy of The Irrational Atheist I wasn't sure what to expect. While doing research on the internet for opinions about the book I basically found two kinds of reviews: the glowing, `Vox demolishes the New Atheists' review and the `don't bother reading this, the book is full of strawmen and logical fallacies' review. Because the negative reviews almost never gave any examples of the strawmen and fallacies used I began to wonder if perhaps these negative reviews were written by people who just didn't like the book and didn't read it all the way through, so gave it a one-star review anyway to spite the author.

Well, after reading the book myself (cover to cover by the way), I found that the negative reviews were spot on. There are so many problems with the book I think I will begin with what I agreed with the author about because Vox did manage to point out a few major problems with the New Atheists' books. For example, he refuted Richard Dawkins' Boeing 747 argument against god and as far as I could tell showed that Sam Harris' Red State/Blue State argument was not only a poor guide for discerning the morality of individuals, but that it actually showed the opposite of what Harris intended.

Vox was also successful in pointing out the great historical errors that many atheists make: the common mistaken belief that religion is the number one cause of war and that religion has always battled against scientific progress. Now, note that I said the error that many atheists make, and not the New Atheists. This is because the New Atheists have never made these two statements in their books while many "internet atheists" have. So, while Vox wasted an entire chapter and part of another one erecting a strawman against the New Atheists, he did refute those atheists who do make such claims.

Now for the bad...

A lot of reviewers make a lot of ballyhoo about Day's use of FBI data to refute the idea that religion causes a lot of problems in society, but Day actually cherry-picked the data if you look at the 2005 hate crime statistics he used. The fact is that the data flatly refutes Day's claim that religion doesn't cause that much conflict. The fact is that religion is actually the second - yes, read that again, the SECOND - leading cause of hate crimes, in 2003, 2005 and 2006 (those were the only years I checked). Why did Vox's data show the opposite? Well, Day only looked at the figures for murders caused by religious hate crime, not violence and threats of violence. I'm reminded of the book "How to Lie with Statistics" right about now...

When you get to the chapters on the individual atheists, this is the heart of the book that I'd heard was fantastic, but again what I found were several cases of strawmen, Vox taking the New Atheists out of context, and counter-arguments that just did not stand up to the facts when I looked into them.

Take for example the following quote by Vox in the chapter about Daniel Dennett,

"The most interesting thing about Breaking the Spell is not the way it differs from the other three atheists' cases against religion, but the way it specifically refutes them. After Harris does his excellent Chicken Little imitation by clucking about how religion is going to end life on the planet at any moment, Hitchens metaphorically calls the poison control center on it, and Dawkins slanderously asserts that it is worse than child molestation, it comes as a bit of a shock to read Dennett's calm declaration that the secular proposition that religion does more harm than good, to an individual or to society, `has hardly begun to be properly tested,' let alone conclusively proved."

When I read this passage I first believed Dennett was referring to whether or not religious belief was potentially dangerous. After looking up the quote myself it seems that the way Vox presents this partial quote is misleading. Dennett says,

"Even the secular and nonpartisan proposition that religion in general does more good than harm, either to the individual believer or to society as a whole, has hardly begun to be properly tested, as we saw in chapters 9 and 10."

I read both chapters nine and ten to see what Dennett was referring to and it wasn't religious violence or how dangerous religion is. In chapter nine Dennett talks about the studies that show religion seems to improve health and notes that it's not known for sure either way yet. In chapter ten Dennett discusses the subject of morality and religion and concludes that the "presumed relation between spirituality and moral goodness is an illusion."

Vox clearly took Dennett out of context because it wasn't the dangerous consequences of religion Dennett was referring to, but health and morality, which Dennett agrees with the New Atheists in that religion often causes people to act in violent ways.

In the chapter titled "The Red Hand of Atheism" Vox makes use of the old Communists-killed-a-bunch-more-people-so-atheism-is-worse-than-Christianity canard. Here, his entire premise is based upon the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc. He fails to show how atheism was the cause of the Communist atrocities in any way and ignores the fact that it was the Communist ideology, not atheism, which is why I was shocked to find this statement in the chapter,

"The reason Communism has so habitually devolved into violence is because it is an impressively stupid vision that violates both basic human nature in the form of the individual's desire for material betterment as well as the economic law of supply and demand. Its early institution was such a disaster that Lenin was quickly forced to revise some of his more dysfunctional policies, but he was the first in a long, lethal line of Communist leaders who made a practice of always attempting to force their populations to fit the Communist mold instead of adjusting the utopian vision to fit humanity."

Exactly! And when people do not want their property seized the Communists take it by force and further oppression takes place. The answer is right under Vox's nose the entire time, but again, his goal is not historical truth but Christian propaganda.

One of the more surprising things I learned is how badly the chapter on Sam Harris was argued. Based upon the hype I'd read in reviews and Vox's bold and confidant (or perhaps more accurately overconfident) chapter title, "The End of Sam Harris," I was expecting some major butt-kicking. Unfortunately, this alleged butt-kicking never came. While I agree that Vox pointed out Harris' error with the Red/Blue State argument as I pointed out before, he also pointed out that, unlike as Harris seems to imply, most suicide bombers are not Muslim. He also points out the fact that, unlike what Harris argues, the wars of religion have not caused "millions of deaths in the last ten years." Vox gave a high estimate of around 750,000. While Harris was wrong about the total number dead Harris' point is still valid in that many needless deaths have occurred due to beliefs that are no more real than that of Santa Clause. Roughly half a million deaths have occurred due to religious wars in the ten years prior to the publication of The End of Faith.

Out of the fifteen arguments Vox presented against Harris in that chapter only three were valid. The other twelve were either Vox taking Harris out of context or he misread Harris.

The other chapters follow much the same pattern as the one about Harris, with strawmen, quotes taken out of context, and mostly what I call nitpicking; the focusing on statements and arguments that are minor and not central to a book's main premise. Take, for example, this enormous case of nitpicking by Vox in the chapter on Richard Dawkins. Vox writes,

"In Unweaving the Rainbow, Dawkins writes: 'By more general implication, science is poetry's killjoy, dry and cold, cheerless, overbearing and lacking in everything that a young Romantic might desire. To proclaim the opposite is one purpose of this book, and I shall here limit myself to the untestable speculation that Keats, like Yeats, might have been an even better poet if he had gone to science for some of his inspiration.'

Of course, this speculation is as improbable as it is untestable, given the centuries of evidence demonstrating that science is largely incapable of providing the inspiration for passable poetry, much less the sort of great art that religion has reliably inspired for millennia."

Vox spends several pages arguing against this unimportant opinion of Dawkins'! Who cares!? It was merely Dawkins' opinion and he even admitted as much!

I could go on and on with many more issues with Day's book but, ultimately, while he pointed out a handful of errors with the New Atheists' books, Vox mostly misses when he aims and doesn't pay enough attention to the main arguments of the New Atheists, choosing instead to nitpick their books to death, leaving most of their main arguments untouched.

Before I close out this review I'd like to make a plea to anyone who may read The Irrational Atheist and later decide to write a review for the book. Please, please, please check Vox's references for yourself! With so many reviewers singing praises for this book and going on about how well researched it was, check out Vox's so-called facts for yourself because more often than not he is wrong. Don't take Vox's word - or anyone's for that matter - and check the facts and the author's sources yourself.

I honestly cannot recommend this book since the arguments are more often than not poor and the personal attacks are uncalled for. I know the theists seem to believe that the New Atheists should be fair game after their ridicule of theists in their books but the difference is that the New Atheists only ridiculed religious beliefs and some Christians' lapses in reasoning. They did not get personal like Vox did and that really subtracts from the book I think.

I went looking for a reasoned rebuttal to the so called New Atheists. I wanted to find the theist response to questions posed by Dawkins et al such as "if the universe could not have come into existence by natural processes, how does proposing an even more complex creator address that problem. After all if the spontaneous start of the universe is too unlikely, how much more unlikely is the spontaneous start of a being capable of creating the universe". Surely the problem of an infinite regression of gods has been addressed by theists somewhere. Instead I found this book where the author makes a nearly endless series of smug ad homenium attacks on the three. I am just glad that I only wasted $1.99 on a Kindle version. I intended to write an in depth review and point out some of the egregious examples, but life is too short.

Surely there must be a theist out there who can take on the questions raised raised by the atheist in a straight forward question/response way. The questions to be answered are easily found in the works by any of the atheist authors. Just pull them out and give it your best shot at why you come to a different answer. Don't waste my time pointing out that Dawkins doesn't know enough history, or Harris needs to address the theology of (insert your favorite theologian), or that Hichens must be using the wrong Bible in order to come to the conclusion he did, or any similar dodging of the questions. The questions are much more basic than that, the approach to answering them needs to be just as basic and straight forward.

I only managed to read the first 3 chapters of this book. Vox Day employs so many logical fallacies and so much dishonest rhetoric that it's a difficult read.

The author employs ad-hominems against all atheists (atheists are parasites), but reserves especial vitriol against Dawkins (an old grump with asperger's), Hitchens (a drunk), and Harris (an extasy-popper who hasn't finished his Ph.D). This is a good example of going the man, not the argument. By painting all atheists, wrongly, as bad, he hopes he doesn't have to present any argumentation against the atheist position (that there are no gods).

Day also misrepsents the positions the popular atheist authors. He creates straw-men arguments that he can knock down. According to Vox, Dawkins says Vox telling his children that God loves them is worse than child abuse. This a lie. Dawkins has said no such thing as a reading of the God delusion will attest. Vox pretends that Sam Harris would think it ethical to kill him. This is also a lie. That is not Harris' position either. Vox goes on in this vein for quite a while that it's obvious that his claims to truth and fact have been long abandoned.

He attacks science for the way people have used scientific discoveries and attacks scientists for having made these discoveries. This, of course, is the genetic fallacy. The fallacy here, that by attacking the origin of argument, he can avoid making a case to support his point of view.

Vox attacks the enlightenment and science as bringers of violence and intolerance. But he misrepresents both. The Enlightenment wasn't French peasants out to get revenge on the French aristocracy nor Nazis using ancient Christian bigotry to exterminate Jews and science doesn't lead to good or bad acts. It's a method that allows us to better understand the world. What people choose to do with the results of science is a political issue. One that is very pertinent to the case Dawkins, et al make against religious dogma and its influence on our societies.

He redefines science to suit his purposes. He presumes to know more than people who really do know what they're talking about. There are many more problems with only this small sample of the book that I would not recommend the reading any of it.

Perhaps the best that can be said for this book is that it may help students understand better abuses of truth, philosophy and argumentation.

I was looking for a book that would be a kind of "counterpoint" to the favorable review I gave Christopher Hitchens' book some time back, and read this loaner on a friend's recommendation. I am very, very glad I paid no money for this, its grandiose "B Horror Movie" title to one side. I mean, "Unholy Trinity?" But I digress.

I read all of the reviews in this thread as well, hoping that someone might have made a point I missed somewhere, allowing me to be a little more charitable. I am afraid I did not find much to use. I will say that the book is written in a baroque linguistic style many find off-putting but which I rather liked. Day has a powerful vocabulary he uses well, although the prose slides too often into what could be fairly interpreted as self-referential pomposity. But, that too, I think, is not damning. Religion and belief in Western culture have been increasingly framed as private and not communual exercises, so defending this position from a personal perspective is, perhaps, something to be expected and even indulged even if it really advances no argument, pro or con. What I did not like was how the book fails to live up to its title. I found no "dissection" here. For every good point he makes, and there are many, instead of measured follow up, it seems like there is an "a priori" argument or "ad hominem" attack which do nothing but make the author sound petulant and even viciously mean-spirited. This is not even to mention that I have no way of knowing if his tossed-of personal slurs against the people he seeks to engage are even true, and even if so, whether or not they would even matter. From someone writing from a position as a "Christian libertarian," this seems contradictory, even schizophrenic. And the philosophy sections seem to be almost in an unedited state, more ramblings than engagement. And for the life of me, I don't see what trivialities like MENSA memberships have to do with anything, or whether or not someone personally likes or dislikes someone. High school mash notes do as much. This is not a "dissection." This more a "reflection" or some kind of a meditation. "Dissections," in my opinion, are dispassionate even if invasive and unpleasant. And it is the subject that interests me, not the author and his personal peccadilloes. To little of the former, too much of the latter.

I am also increasingly weary of the "logical" arguments each side makes in this debate which degenerate, it seems, into how one person or another's logic is flawed somehow. This is not argument or an attempt to persuade. It is a Hall of Mirrors, and while those are fun for a time, eventually, everyone wants to leave. And given this subject, I am not sure how pure logic, ultimately, would have purchase.

The hostile tone, then, for me, poisons the well and deeply, not to mention the absolute indecision in how to proceed in approach. The end result, I thought, was a casserole of ideas half-baked and then served up cold, the deficiencies in argument covered over with the preening molt of a lesser bird. Such joylessness here, such gloom, such malice, and no effort to engage consistently. What is good about the book is lost in this morass, and that is a shame, because what is good, had it been developed, would have made for a possibly formidable, entertaining, and impressive read.

I have never read Dawkins or Harris, but if you are looking for counterpoints, I think that going to writers like Merton, Chardin, Kierkegaard and even Camus might be the better choices. But not something like this.

A genuine disappointment. Not recommended.

I read some reviews here at Amazon and got a genuine impression that Vox actually provides some good argumentation. Decided to write this brief review to warn other people against wasting thier money.

The book is positioned as if it fights atheism with reason and wit. This is simply a lie. It is written in a childish manner and it takes the reader to get to chapter 3 before so-called arguments finally start to show. And what a cruel joke those are. Authur does not have a faintest idea what science is about. Arguments he presents lack logic and coherence. The book is clearly directed at a religious layman to reinforce her or his position, since arguments fail even at a hint of a scruteny of a thoughtful mind.

Hence my recommendation - skip this if you are looking for some intelligent writing. But be the author's guest should you wish to continue thinking in a very narrow loop.

Damn.

After reading a whole bunch of reviews saying this book was full of ad hominem attacks and fallacious rhetoric, and reading a bunch that said it was quite the opposite, I'm so pissed off that I wasted my money. I should have just listened. But I thought maybe, just maybe, this guy has something worth reading. Maybe, he can poke some holes in Sam Harris' writings, maybe he will show me how Dawkins has got it wrong. Sadly I was mistaken.

As a non-believer I enjoy reading and hearing the argument for God, as it allows my to look at both sides of the argument, and question my beliefs (or lack thereof). But this does nothing but scream and shout, about how incompetent Sam Harris is, how irrelevant Hitchens is, and how ironic Dawkins is (for apparently abandoning science).

I would say a mere 10% of this book actually makes non-personal, evidence based argument, whilst the other 90% is purely personal, either about Harris' use of drugs and lack of education, or Dawkins' abandoment of reason and science in favour of book sales. If only the author provided some facts to back up his arguments, I could live with it (even if I disagree with it). Otherwise its just name calling.

Seriously, don't waste your money.

Theodore Beale, a.k.a. "Vox Day" (renaming himself after the Latin "Vox Dei", or "Voice of God"), provides the same tired, superficial, utterly transparent straw-man arguments we have all come to expect from such self-appointed prophets. He can make no defense whatsoever against the arguments of those he calls "the New Atheists," and instead, wastes precious page after page chasing fictional caricatures of those arguments which are little more than figments of his imagination. Sam Harris, we are told, "calls for forcibly imposed dictatorships," believes "that every human being should not be free to believe whatever he wants," and is "a utopian would-be philosopher-king cut out of the very same intellectual cloth as those who murdered more human beings in the twentieth century than every war, civil war, and criminal act combined." His curious portrayals of Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens are even less kind.

Needless to say, Mr. Harris believes and advocates no such things. I opened this book expecting, or at least hoping, to find a reasoned rebuttal to the arguments of better-known authors, but what I found was a meaningless parade of misrepresentations and outright lies. From someone who has actually named himself the Voice of God, this was a remarkably mundane read.

I give this book a one-star rating only because I cannot rate it a zero. Please do yourself an intellectual favor and read the books of the authors Mr. Beale is pretending to rebut, so that you can at least understand what their positions are, before you subject yourself to his reinterpretations of them.

This book is refreshing in many ways. For one who has read the works of the New Atheists, including "The God Delusion" and "Letter to a Christian Nation," Vox Day's militant style is an interesting response. This, however, is not a book that's going to convert anyone. It doesn't present arguments to believe in Christianity. Rather, Vox Day has committed himself to tearing down the arguments that the New Atheists present against theism.

Vox Day's success varies largely throughout the book. His historical knowledge is admittedly quite broad, and he is very successful when he confronts the New Atheists on these fronts. It is his knowledge of theology that is very questionable. His view of God and spirits definitely leaves much to be desired. Indeed, the entire chapter titled "Master of Puppets or Game Designer" is worthless and worthy of being ripped out of the book. Chapters like that are balanced by others like "Occam's Chainsaw," in which Day presents fairly valid arguments against a number of atheistic arguments. Day also presents sociological arguments against atheism that are interesting, if not fully formulated.

The back cover features the phrase "Atheism delenda est" [Atheism must be destroyed], and that is the overall tone of the book.

Overall, this is a book that will be a good resource for those talking to atheists 'educated' by the New Atheists, but it is a book that is too militant to be wholly useful in conversion (while the militancy can be greatly entertaining in some ways). Add it to your library for the arguments from history and sociology, but be aware of the theological/doctrinal errors, and don't let the angry tone seep into your own witness.

If the author wrote the book for the three most often named Athiests, I could probably give him 4 or five stars, the 1 star is for the book as written, assuming that it was intended for mass market readership. I really have no quarrel with Day's disgust with Athiests if that is how he feels, not do I have any problem with Harris et. al. espousing their lack of beilef in a supreme being.
My problem is with the author and what appears to be an extreme ego. 1.Although he claims to be a member of Mensa, he trashes the other members of Mensa)
2. Although he often harps about the lack of logic in the athiests agruments, he consistantly violates the most rudimentary rules of logic. The two most often violated are assuming true that which is to be proven and assuming something causal because it follows. (Post hoc, ergo prompter hoc).
3. He fortifies many of his arguments by first calling the critiqued author names.
4. It seems that the deeper he gets into an agrument the longer the words get that he uses to present it. When he tries to make a point for which it appears that he probably has a weak argument (He would never agree that any of his arguments are weak) the more he launches into some
ancient happening for which very few readers will know about or care about.
My objection to the book is not what it says, but how it says it. A book written in obvious attemt to "prove" a series of points should be written in a manner that will allow the majority of readers to understand the points being made. Unless the reader wants to sit down with an unabridged dictionary in one hand and the book in the other, he will not be able to tell if Mr Day really has some arguments or is just "blowing smoke".
As a post script, I am not one of his Mensa idiots nor am I uneducated. I have a post graduate degree and taught in a major University for over 20 years.