Kudos are due to Jacobs both how thoroughly he throws himself into this research, how honestly he reports its effects on him, and how good a job he does avoiding the easy cheap shots against fundamentalists of all stripes.

All in all, this is a fascinating book that any agnostic (and anyone else, I would think) should find an interesting and thought-provoking read.

But I feel it misses the point of its own arguments.

McGrath argues quite convincingly that modern atheism is very much a product of its Enlightenment roots.  He reaches from this to say that now that the project of the Enlightenment either has been achieved or has failed (he does try it both ways), atheism has lost its way and serves no further purpose.

He goes on to propose that there is a cyclical movement from belief to atheism and back to belief again, without stopping to consider what his own choice of metaphor implies, i.e. that the cycle will only continue.  Interestingly, he does note in an offhanded remark that there will be some people who will choose agnosticism as a means of breaking free of this cycle – but the idea that as the cycle continues throughout history, those people will only grow in number (as each iteration of the cycle makes the pointlessness of the whole thing ever more obvious) is also one he cannot reach for.

Ultimately, this is a book that makes some very interesting points about the origins of atheism – points I have yet to see any atheist address, I might add – but which is a little too willing to engage in wishful thinking in drawing its conclusions, or indeed, in thinking that the argument between belief and disbelief will ever be concluded.

Which I’ve got to say, is among the most insulting books I’ve ever read.

Naturally, I speak here as an agnostic – which so far as Dawkins is concerned, makes me a side issue at best. I can only imagine how insulted you’d be by it if you actually had faith.

I mostly read this book to find out what he had to say about agnostics in it. Unsurprisingly, it’s the same old fence-sitting garbage to begin with. I’ve dispensed with that in previous installments, so I won’t go into it here. But then he goes somewhere completely unexpected, claiming that a number of famous agnostics were ‘really’ atheists. He (deliberately, so far as I can tell) confuses agnosticism on different matters, claiming that all varieties of agnosticism are the same.

In fact, Dawkins’ definition of atheist includes at least part of the territory that is usually considered to be that claimed by agnostics. He claims not to have met very many atheists at all who are dogmatically convinced that God definitely does not exist, which strikes me as odd, seeing as this is the common or garden variety atheist as far as I can tell. Instead, anyone who has doubts but chooses to assume that god is not real, is classed as an atheist. Presumably, Dawkins does not use any definition of atheist I could find in a dictionary – although whatever definition he does use is remarkably flexible and rather suspiciously not to be found in his book.

Although he acknowledges the great work of T.H.Huxley, who first formulated modern agnosticism (and incidentally, coined the terms agnostic and agnosticism), he immediately goes on to distort the words of the man. Although Dawkins (correctly) states that Huxley’s definition of agnosticism was as a process, not a state, Dawkins then proceeds to argue as if agnosticism is in fact not a process, but rather, a fixed system of beliefs that requires absolute adherence to its dogma. In Dawkins’ fractured calculus, you’re only an agnostic if you believe that the arguments for and against a proposition are precisely equal. You know, just like you’re only a bisexual if you’ve had precisely the same number of sexual experiences with each sex.

Dawkins gives an example of a fatuous statement which he claims is agnostic in nature – a statement of Augeste Comte’s which had already been proved false when Comte made it (although not to Comte’s knowledge, a point Dawkins conveniently fails to mention). The statement is reproduced, and is clearly not an agnostic statement,since it is in the form “I believe” – not that this matters to Dawkins. Throughout the book, Dawkins argues his case as if atheism is a true and noble search for the truth, as opposed to a pre-emptory and logically ill-founded claim of ‘game over, I win’ – and neglects to mention just exactly how much he’s prepared to distort the truth in his feckless pursuit of victory.

If this is the best that atheists can offer, they’re in serious trouble:

You really don’t want a man who can’t recognise a joke when he’s touched by its noodly appendage as your standard bearer…