Resumo de The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins in ?The God Delusion? (TGD)deals with the manner in which religion binds and enslaves humanity.TGD exposes the hollowness of religions and the tricks their propagandists employ in the enslavement of man into blind superstition. It points the way to escape from this enslavement. But the question is --- escape to where? Is it to be merely an escape from one way of thinking to another, from belief in a God to atheism? Can rational thought indeed settle such an issue that is so strongly bonded on faith --- whether the faith is in the existence, or in the denial of God? Dawkins calls the ?escape? the rise of consciousness (a little more of this later). Osho said this: ?You ask a question and the philosophy gives you an answer. It satisfies you or doesn?t satisfy you. If it satisfies you, you become a convert to the philosophy, but you remain the same. If it doesn?t satisfy you; you go on searching for some other philosophy to be converted to. But you remain the same, you are not touched at all, you are not changed.? And what matters is the change in yourself which religion and religious practice should bring, if it is the true religion, and you go about it the right way. Right from the days of Aristotle, Socrates and perhaps earlier too, men have been bandying words and ideas back and forth and it hasn?t got us anywhere. The problem remains unsolved, because it has not been correctly defined. The problem is tackled at the intellectual level whereas it needs be treated at the existential level. The person should change.There are a few more deficiencies which may be called prejudices, which can be laid at the doors of TGD: 1. TGD does not take into account the complete available information before passing a judgement in the matter. Ittakes up the issue with the Theists and their arguments for the existence of God. But what the Theists known to Dawkins say about God, or about creation, is not the last word. There are many other definitions; I propose one: What is it the presence of which makes a person alive and functioning, and the absence of which takes him to the graveyard? That something, I postulate (and in fact Hindu thought postulates), is God. Therefore, God exists!2. The burden of Dawkins?s argument is that there is no need to postulate a God who designed this wonderful world we live in. Darwin?sprinciple ofNatural Selection explains it all, and so there is no need to bring in God in the picture. On the other hand, he says, the arguments the theists present, (some Scientists among them, too,) are hollow, and does a good job of shattering them! In the building up of his explanation for the origin of life as a possibility which could ?statistically? happen, however, Dawkins makes one arbitrary assumption which renders his hypothesis plausible: that the probability of a self-duplicating molecule occurring is one in a billion, and since there are a billion billion universes, the appearance of life, is possible when the conditions are right, without having to bring in a God to create life. QED. But then, what are the grounds for assuming this probability as one in a billion? Why not one in a trillion trillion? After all, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and I do not know what else, should get together to form a long, long chain of a specific configuration. 3. Dawkins accepts the need to raise the consciousness. But his view of conscious-raising is a narrow one. All those biologists and scientists who think like him have their consciousness raised (by Darwin)! If one drops his or her belief in God, it is a case of consciousness being raised! Dawkins does not discuss and is perhaps not conversant with Oriental thought, where the raising of consciousness of an individual through a process of evolution on an altogether different plane is given the topmost importance. Raising human consciousness to ?superconsciousness? is possible and has happened to rare, gifted persons who have lived amongst usin different climes at different times. And this vital fact has been entirely ignored by Dawkins.It does not really matter whether the world has been created by intelligent design or by natural selection. These are trivial questions. However clever and convincing the arguments appear to be, they are always open to question. The debate has no end. The fact is that we are here on planet Earth as human beings, with our consciousness at the pinnacle compared to other living beings. What does it matter, how it all happened? Can the human being now evolve to ?raise his consciousness? further, to reach the pinnacle compared to other humans? This is the question to ask. What matters is that the possibility of evolving tosuperconsciousness is given to humans alone of all living beings. This is a possibility which has been repeatedly proved by its actually having taken place! And if we do not make the attempt at becoming superconscious, we are not making the best use of the opportunity. We may not get another.

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