The God Delusion is a 2006 book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.
In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's observation in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."
The book contains ten chapters. The first few build a case that there is no God, while the rest discuss religion and morality. It is dedicated to the memory of Dawkins' late friend Douglas Adams, accompanied by the quote "isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" (from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).
Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four "consciousness-raising" messages:
- Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
- Natural selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a "God hypothesis" — the illusion of intelligent design — in explaining the living world and the cosmos.
- Children should not be labelled by their parents' religion. Terms like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should make people flinch.
- Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.
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