Even in the foreword to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, we encounter a whole arsenal of logical fallacies, emotional manipulations, and distortions that require exposure. Here are the main issues:
Contents
- 📌 1. Strawman Instead of the Real Thing
- 📌 2. The Rhetorical Device: “Imagine a World Without…”
- 📌 3. The Fallacy of Indoctrination: “You Would Believe in Islam If You Were Born in Afghanistan”
- 📌 4. Declaring Religion a “Persistent Delusion”
- 📌 5. The Self-Contradiction Regarding “Pride”
- 📌 Summary: The Foreword as a Flat Mind Manifesto
- 🧩 Conclusion
📌 1. Strawman Instead of the Real Thing
From the very first pages, Dawkins presents religion as a set of suggestions, irrational dogmas, and cultural injections from which one must “free oneself.” This is a substitution:
- He does not engage with the classical understanding of God as a necessary being or actus purus (pure actuality) in Thomas Aquinas, or as the source of meaning and being in Neoplatonism and Augustine.
- Instead, he chooses the image of “religion as an opiate,” “a set of childhood-imposed rules,” or as “the root of violence and fanaticism.”
How would Thomas Aquinas respond?
Aquinas distinguishes between faith (a rational act of the soul) and superstition (a false cult based on distorted motivation). Dawkins, on the other hand, lumps everything together, confusing the Christian concept of God with mere cultural ritual systems and with violence committed under religious banners. This is a category mistake.
📌 2. The Rhetorical Device: “Imagine a World Without…”
“Imagine: no terrorists, no witch hunts, no partition of India, no wars in Israel…”
This device is emotional blackmail:
- Dawkins invites us to imagine a world without religion as if this would automatically rid us of all evils.
- He conveniently omits the fact that the 20th century set records for victims of atheist regimes: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Robespierre, Kim Jong Il—all built “worlds without religion” and orchestrated genocides.
C. S. Lewis mocked this idea, calling it “sentimental and historically naive.” Human cruelty does not originate from religion—it comes from the corrupted human will. Christianity, in fact, affirms the fallen nature of humanity and calls for repentance and personal transformation, not ideological purges.
📌 3. The Fallacy of Indoctrination: “You Would Believe in Islam If You Were Born in Afghanistan”
This is a classic genetic fallacy:
- The origin of a belief does not automatically make it false.
- If Dawkins had been born in North Korea, he would probably not believe in science. Does that mean science is an illusion? Obviously not.
Pascal’s Response:
What matters is not the origin of a belief, but its internal justification. You can be born in any culture and still be called to Truth. That’s why Christianity is universal, not ethnically restricted.
📌 4. Declaring Religion a “Persistent Delusion”
Dawkins makes a rhetorical move, calling faith a “persistent delusion” and even appeals to psychiatric definitions. This is semantic substitution—an attempt to medically stigmatize believers.
But faith in God is not just an opinion or belief. In the classical tradition (Augustine, Anselm), faith is an act of intellect and will, directed toward that which transcends but does not contradict reason (fides quaerens intellectum).
Dawkins employs a logical substitution: he judges faith not as a philosophical act, but as a clinical symptom. This is an insulting and demagogic tactic—it has nothing to do with real philosophy of religion.
📌 5. The Self-Contradiction Regarding “Pride”
He urges people to “be proud of atheism,” calling it a “sign of sound mind”—thus, turning atheism into a moral virtue. But now it is not just the absence of faith, but a value system—precisely what he condemns in religions.
Ironically, he makes atheism an article of faith—something to “be proud of,” “declare publicly,” “unite around,” and “free oneself through”… This starts to resemble religious conversion or even “atheist evangelism.”
📌 Summary: The Foreword as a Flat Mind Manifesto
Dawkins’ foreword is not a philosophical analysis of religious experience. It is an ideological manifesto of the Flat Mind: simplification, stigmatization, emotional appeals, and battling not the philosophical God but only cultural caricatures of Him.
True religious tradition speaks of God as:
- the source of being (Aristotle, Aquinas);
- the maximum of perfection (Anselm);
- the personal Absolute, beyond all categories and transcendent.
None of this is present in the foreword.
🧩 Conclusion
In his foreword, Dawkins creates an image of religion as an oppressive, childhood-imposed virus from which one must “free oneself.” But he never analyzes the ontological, epistemological, or metaphysical foundations for belief in God.
That is why, from the very first pages, it is obvious: that Dawkins is not arguing with the God of Aquinas, Augustine, or Palamas. He is battling a strawman religion—an easy target for television debates.
The book has not even started, and the substitution has already taken place.
Let me know if you want any edits for style, emphasis, or adaptation to a specific audience (e.g. more formal, more ironic, with footnotes, etc)!
