God vs Dawkins

Today I started work on my new book "Dawkins vs God" subline: "The greatest battle of all: Religion and free Science". Despite the title I hope it is going to be an objective book as possible - although I feel the ultimate conclusions will be drawn in favor of Dawkins I hope it will be without his passion (which tends to cloud his points) and with a fresh "2 sides of the coin" approach.

The way I am going to present the book is to deal with the arguments against Dawkins' book "The God delusion" (of which there are many) and try and objectively weight them against Dawkins' own ideas.

Heres an excerpt from the opening:

"Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion caused a massive stir in many social (and political) circles. Not least in those of the atheists (who finally have a banner to which they can rally) and religious believers (who attacked his ideas with similar vociferation and vigor). The book caused open debate and controversy across the world as it addressed one of our final modern taboos: that of Religion as a concept rather than truth.

Where Dawkins strength lies (and ultimately his weakness) is in the passion with which he writes, his firm beliefs are flooded into the pages of The God delusion with incredible conviction. Sadly, whilst this moves many people, it flies in the face of the very concepts and beliefs he would have people follow - that of objective scientific reason. Certainly there is much of this reason in his books, but, unlike such tomes as "The Blind Watchmaker", Dawkins' latest effort instead attempts to beat religion at it's own game - in moving hearts and minds. Whilst this approach will appeal to many (and rightly so) to some it seems less likable. In this book I hope I can address (albeit more briefly) the same themes as Dawkins in a more objective and staunchly scientific way.

The main focus of the book will be on debunkers of The God Delusion. Those people who have taken Dawkins ideas and reasoned why they are wrong (often as passionately as Dawkins first puts them). Even now at the start I believe my (hopefully) objective conclusion will be in favor of Dawkins but do not let that fact put you off as a reader. Instead consider the hard facts and evidence I lay out here - I will endeavor not to present wild assertions, passionate speech or rude put downs - and form your own conclusions.

I am not deeply learned in the specific teachings of religion and their scriptures - in that sense I will hope to steer away from specifically dealing with text and scriptures which I may misinterpret. Instead I will try and look at ideas that people have drawn in The God Delusion and in the answering (pro-religious) texts and present it as fairly as possible.

I look on this as a laymans book - not steeped in learned teachings, throwing out deeply meaningful quotes or dealing with complex religious and scientific ideas. Instead it is a book that presents common and layman interpretations of all those 3 things (widely debated by more learned men than you or me) in a way that will hopefully bode well for weighing them against one another."

I hope that is a good start and I hope I can complete it in a meaningful timescale! The research for the first chapter alone has already taken up a huge amount of time!!