Challenging Richard Dawkins

Compare book prices at www.BookkooB.co.uk
BookkooB : Cheap books, whichever way you look at it.
Cover of Challenging Richard Dawkins by Kathleen Jones 1853118419title:

Challenging Richard Dawkins:why Richard Dawkins is wrong about God

author:Kathleen Jones
format:Paperback Buy Challenging Richard Dawkins Now
publisher:Canterbury Press Norwich
released:November 27, 2007
isbn:1853118419
isbn-13:9781853118418
storeavailabilityitem pricedelivered 
Amazon UK    
The Hut    
Sprint Books    
Blackwells    
WH Smith (collect in store)    
Base    
The Book Place    
WH Smith    
Pick a Book    
Global Investor    
Waterstones    
The Book People    
zavvi    
Play.com    
Another Bookshop    
History Bookshop    
Tesco Books    
BookFellas    
Foyles    
Samedaybooks    

Above you will see price and availability details for Challenging Richard Dawkins:why Richard Dawkins is wrong about God by Kathleen Jones from the leading UK book stores.

To allow you to quickly compare prices, the stores are arranged in order of delivered price, cheapest first. Click on a store name to buy this book or to view further details.

Books Related to Challenging Richard Dawkins Kathleen Jones - ISBN: 1853118419

View other editions of Challenging Richard Dawkins.
View books by Kathleen Jones.

Customer Reviews

So many factual errors about science or Dawkins's book that it's hardly worth persisting with. - Rated 1/5
If you're going to criticise a book, one of the first things you ought to do is quote from it correctly, surely? This book is littered with misreadings of what Dawkins says - and I don't mean misreadings of Dawkins's attitude, but plain old misreadings of Dawkins's text. On page 12, she says that 'Dawkins complains that he (Mendel) never got in touch with Darwin.' Look up the page reference - and the pages either side - and you can't find Dawkins saying any such thing. A little later, quoting Dawkins's affinity for the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, she refers to the 'Infinite Impossibility Drive,' when any HHGG fan knows that it's the Infinite Improbability Drive. And so on.

She makes hair-raising mistakes with her science, also. She says that computer parts are 'made of silicon, a more lasting carbon compound than human flesh,' - for Heaven's sake, woman, silicon is a different element from carbon, it's not a ruddy carbon compound. Einstein did not say 'God does not play dice' when the first atomic bomb was dropped; he said it because he could not come to terms with the probabalistic nature of quantum physics, and later he withdrew the statement. And so on - I drew the examples above from the first 40 pages and I could have cited more.

She says, on the basis of no evidence that I can see, that Dawkins 'has no interest in the current areas of scientific discovery, and considers all other areas of scholarship, including theology, a waste of time and effort.' Other people have testified to the range of Dawkins's interests, especially music, but that doesn't suit Ms. Jones; and under the heading 'Recent Discoveries in Cosmology' she cites facts such as the moon is dead, light takes eight minutes to travel from the sun, and the average distance between stars in space, but nothing more sophisticated than that ... hardly 'recent discoveries.'

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether she's actually chosen not to understand what Dawkins has to say; for example, in attempting to rebut Dawkins's drawing of an analogy between genes, natural viruses, infactions, and computer viruses (where Dawkins is saying that they are all transmissible between organisms) she says 'the transmission of genes requires a male and a female parent ... viruses are invasive ... their transmission is quite different from that of infective bacteria ... a computer virus is a means of wrecking other people's computer programs.' Besides being inaccurate in her differentiation of viruses from bacteria (and hasn't she heard of prions?) her last point is of a different order from all the others.

Of course, she uses all the tricks of language that you might expect in polemic (so people 'boast' or 'complain' or 'caricature') but so does Dawkins - though not to anything like the same extent, and hardly ever to make a weak point appear stronger.

It terrifies me that this woman is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, though this fact may explain the close-to-certifiable behaviour of the one psychiatrist whom I know well (and to whom every medical professional in my area refuses to refer their patients). I shall strap myself to the mast and finish it, but after a couple of hundred pages of bad science and her failure to read the book she's criticising I'll need a good wallow in something literate, astringent, and considerably better-informed that this unpleasant piece of polemic.


Excellent - Rated 5/5
This book really is a challenge to Richard Dawkins. Beautifully written and throughly researched, entertaining and thought-provoking. This book would be great for anyone who wonders if there is God. The wide range of subjects covered including cosmology, philosophy, biology, quantum mechanics, history and biology make it a such a wide ranging book (and a great read, whether you have read Dawkins or not). Its also an easy read and fun - highly recommended.

Click here to return to the price comparison table

search for books

similar books

There Is a God Darwin's Angel The Dawkins Letters God's Undertaker The New Atheists The Dawkins Delusion? Deluded by Dawkins? A Christian Response to the God Delusion God and the New Atheism The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing Spiritual Brain

bestselling books


compare other prices

Cheap DVDs at dvdspot
Cheap Games at playspot

quick links

subject directory : Biographies, Business, Children's, Fiction, Food & Drink, Health, History, Home & Garden, Horror, Humor, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Sports, Travel, other subjects.

information pages : About BookkooB, Release Dates, Bookmarklet, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy. Compare Book Prices.