Has anyone had a look at it yet? It is available here: http://hiderefer.com?http://www.freedomainradio.com/Traffic_Jams/against_the_gods.pdf

It's pretty short, so I was thinking about doing a formal review of it, but it is so full of fallacies that I don't even know where to start. It's the same old tricks: unclear or completely absent definitions, linguistic tricks, false analogies. The same few analogies he always falls back on, too. They must be what he means by "first principles."

The games he plays with the word "atheist" on pages 1-2 are particularly amusing.

What's interesting about this book is that it's probably the least controversial (to the scientific community, anyway) in terms of the conclusions he's arguing for. So the arguments themselves should be a piece of cake, right? I'm about halfway through the book, and I have yet to read an argument that I wouldn't reject out of hand for being fallacious. And I'm not one who's afraid to acknowledge when Stefan makes a good point. I can't see this as being anything but a detriment to the atheist -- non-religious, whatever -- position. Hopefully listeners don't buy into the "if your religious parents / agnostic/atheist friends reject this book, or arguments herein, they are rejecting YOU" line that is sure to be packaged with the book.

Thanks Argent! I would love to see you do a formal review. I always enjoy reading your posts.

Thanks! Perhaps I'll write more one day after the book has settled a bit and we've seen the reactions and how Stefan talks about/defends it. And whether it's had any worrying impact or just been shrugged off. I'm too busy right now to (want to) put much more thought into it. Currently it strikes me as little more than a collection of fallacious arguments against various aspects of religion, most of which Stefan has used in the past and people have already refuted.

I mean, it's got a good point here and there, but nothing ground-breaking in terms of conclusions. The novelty seems to be intended to be in these arguments, which he might be hoping will help readers clearly communicate their thoughts on the issues surrounding religion. But the arguments are so full of flaws that I can't imagine anyone who doesn't already agree with the conclusions taking them seriously. (It seems to be a principle that it's so much easier to see the flaws in an argument you want to disagree with. And maybe it's also scary for some to question the logic in an argument whose conclusion they do agree with, lest they be accused of heresy or something).

God that book is just awful. I read through 25 pages or so and couldn't keep going. If you do make a formal critique, Argent, it will be difficult not because his errors are difficult to spot or tough to pick apart, but because there are simply so many of them that keeping track will be difficult. I do think it might be good for the FDR community, in the sense of making them a bit more critical of Molyneux's ideas, if a new-Atheist Dawkins/Hitchens type person reviews this book critically, pointing out how fallacy ridden it is.

I feel exactly the same way. I started out trying to make notes, but the errors were coming so fast it was hard to keep up with, and I quickly lost interest in reading it for this same reason. Anything that is written with direct reference to the book would be hard to follow, and probably more lengthy than the book itself.

I think the book is also sorely lacking in historical information about the climates in which religions arose, as well as information about contemporary religions -- neither of which I could provide without doing a ton of research.

In other words, I think those who are interested in reading about religion would benefit most from reading a book by an expert in the field.

did you review 'the god of atheists'? really liked it, and actually still do, but a critical view might be good.

Curious how his new book came out about the same time as Stephen Hawkins published his new book 'The Grand Design'.
This will probably be well received by the Atheist community and will no doubt be a cause of some controversy as can be seen in the following link.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/hawkings-new-book-does-not-dismiss-the-real-god-from-creation-jesuit-scholars-say/

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