I’d been an atheist for a long time before I read it, so it didn’t have any effect on my lack of belief, but it was a great read. It addressed all the arguments for a sky daddy in a smart and often funny way.

Posted: August 24th 2010

See all questions answered by Dave Hitt

When it first came out, about three years ago, I was wary of reading it because of very negative reviews. Unbelievably, I have never read a book by Dawkins previously so this gnarling, rabid figure that was painted could not be easily refuted by myself as I really did know anything about him.

I have been an atheist since earliest memories, so I thought also I would be bored by reading it. I can’t remember how I came by the book, but one day it was in our home and I read it, including some passages out loud to my husband who also when reading it would read some excerpts out loud. We were literally on the floor hysterically laughing. It is seldom noted, but TGD is very funny in some parts. All that enjoyable laughter was worth the price of the book. But, I got more.

I got to know that Dawkins is a great science educator, and that I needed to be educated so I got most of his other books and then books written by other science writers. Eventually, I found science websites and added them to my newsreader. I also signed into his brand new website site as it was listed in his book and met some very nice people there that to this day I know and consider my friends.

Furthermore, I realized that I could no longer be an apathetic atheist that did not challenge the very notion of faith and the dangers it presents. I had tiptoed around religious believers because I did not want to do to them what the religious had done to me when growing up in a very religious family and community. Dawkins made me realize that all ideas which are presented on the public table, as religious beliefs are, need to be criticized soundly. Criticizing is not oppressing, like what the religious did to me when growing up; it is freedom of speech which is crucial for keeping our societies healthy and vibrant.

Posted: August 24th 2010

See all questions answered by logicel

I don’t really have a response to the book, and felt that it didn’t contain any shatteringly new insights – it’s more of a reference work to me, but one aimed at a wider audience than his previous books. The rewards are in the details e.g. the Beethoven Fallacy. I’d heard something like that before, and had a vague suspicion that it was a fallacy because human reproduction is a probabilistic matter, a numbers game: there is no direct “railroad” from foetus to fully-realised adult. The book has a much more detailed treatment of this subject, going back to its origins and the way it’s still being used on creationist websites.

Posted: August 24th 2010

See all questions answered by brian thomson

I read it because I kept reading reviews about it. I didn’t expect to like it though: all the reviews kept referring to this aggressive, angry, rude, insulting book, and I don’t generally like that kind of thing. Still, I was interested, so I bought a copy.

About a third of the way through I quite literally went back and checked the reviews I’d read to make sure I’d bought the right book. I simply couldn’t find any sign of this aggressive hectoring bully I’d been led to expect. I thought Dawkins made his arguments clearly and straightforwardly. (By the way, since reading TGD I have also read some of the Christian books written in response to it, and there, too, I found endless claims of TGD's offensiveness – so I went back to TGD and re-read it to try to see what these people were seeing that I had missed, and still couldn’t see what all the squeals were about. I flagged up 4 sentences in the entire book that were expressed a little harshly for my tastes, and that was it. Hardly enough – given the length of the book – to merit the hysteria of the response. Several of the Christian responses to TGD were far more abusive than TGD itself: try reading The Dawkins Delusion? by Alister McGrath, and you’ll see what I mean: page after page of personal insult directed straight at Dawkins.)

I was already an atheist before I read TGD, but I hadn’t been absolutely convinced at that stage that my reasons for not believing stacked up any better than my previous reasons for believing had. (As a non-scientist, I was a bit bothered by how everything had come into existence, if not through some supernatural agency.) TGD helped me to see that non-belief was in fact perfectly rational and that there were genuinely good grounds for it, so it left me feeling more confident.

More importantly – MUCH more importantly – the small amount of science in TGD whetted my appetite and also gave me the confidence to try reading some of Dawkins’s science books. It prompted me to read A Devil’s Chaplain and Unweaving the Rainbow, and those two books got me absolutely hooked on science, and determined to fill some of the huge gaps in my knowledge about it, and from there I went on to enrol in courses, do more reading and try to learn as much as I possibly could.

So for me the greatest impact of TGD has been that it prompted me to learn about science: and that has been one of the most rewarding, fascinating and exhilarating things I’ve ever done.

Posted: August 24th 2010

See all questions answered by Paula Kirby