Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion is possibly the most misleading and flawed books I have ever come across. He attacks very basic simple and shallow religious beliefs and is in my humble opinion rather a dangerous text. His arguments are extrememly calculated to break down some rather blinkered religious beliefs. Much of religious belief is relatively passive and is based on leaps of faith. This is not what understanding of the Old Testament should be. Many people believe that Science and religion conflict, however, as science and technology advance, a more deeper understanding of the Bible reveals that Science is proving that it is simbiotic with religion.

One of his most common and favourite arguments is that Religion is ridiculous because it believes that humans have only been on the earth since Adam and Eve, which was only just shy of 6000 years ago. Most religious people believe this too, the truth is that there was historically a change in human advancement around that time, as the deeper interpretation of the bible cites that there were humanoid creatures living on earth for thousands of years prior to this. Adam and Eve were the first humanoid beings that God embibed with the essence of a soul (a spark of the almighty). This is the commencement of civilised man, not humankind. This is just one minute example of how Dawkins manipulates religion with his own agenda. Don't get me wrong, I believe Dawkins to be a remarkably intelligent man, but that in itself is his strength in his ability to create and mould specific aspects of religious argument to suit his beliefs.
Another of his arguments is that it's ridiculous to believe that the Universe was created in 6 days. Again the people he takes to task over this issue are always of the religious persuasion who believe in religion with blind faith and leaps of faith. Sadly like the previous point about human inception, most religious people take the 6 days to be literal. However, this is not the case. As the Universe was developing in these early stages, it was, as Science will tell you, going through a process of expansion, whereby "day 1" has been calculated at around 7 Billion years (some of the finest mathematicians and scientists worked this out not me!), and subsequently as the Universe expanded, each "day" became shorter (Day 2 at around 3.5 billion years) the world that was created by God, evolved organically under the blueprint of the "6 days".

Today, we look back in time and we see approximately 15 billion years of history. Looking forward from when the universe is very small - billions of times smaller - the Bible says six days. In truth, they both may be correct. What's exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the "view of time" from the beginning of stable matter, the threshold energy of protons and neutrons (their nucleosynthesis), relative to the "view of time" today. It's not science fiction any longer. A dozen physics textbooks all bring the same number. The general relationship between time near the beginning and time today is a million million. That's a 1 with 12 zeros after it. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says "I'm sending you a pulse every second," would we see it every second? No. We'd see it every million million seconds. Because that's the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe. The universe is 15 billion years old as seen from the time-space coordinates that we exist in. How can the 1st day of creation be what we now know as 24 hours? This is based on the earth orbiting the sun.....there was no sun on the 1st day so it is pure folly to believe the 6 days of creation were 6 lots of 24 hours in our modern day understanding.

The best-known atheist of the last 50 years, Professor Antony Flew, made the announcement in a symposium on science and religion, that the discoveries of modern science have led him to accept the existence of God. Flew was joined in the symposium by the organizer, Roy Varghese, Israeli scientist, Gerald Schroeder, and noted Scottish thinker John Haldane. The news was made public. Prof Antony Flew, the world's most famous philosopher of atheism, has become a believer who accepts that there is a supernatural or spiritual force active in this world. This was not due to him "seeing the light" nor did he "find God". This was purely based on intellectual reasoning and scientific investigation.

On another note, I am not a believer in proselytising, which is why I am not trying to judge anyone's beliefs here, just putting another view forward. I actually feel quite the opposite and believe that people should NOT try to make others become religious. There are many roles for people in this world, some of us need to be observant and close to God, some of us have other responsibilities and roles. If you are not religious and do not have a close relationship with God, then you will still have a place in the world to come, the concept of "Eternal Damnation in Hell" is utterly ludicrous. The only expectancy of humans is to be good, honest and humble beings which can be perfectly achieved without religion.

As for morals being inate....well this proposition is fairly simple to disprove. Why is it that issues such as homosexuality or abortion was unacceptable and sinful less than a century ago in the civilised world as it was completely and utterly immoral, yet in the secular world, these opinions have made a complete turn on itself and these issues are now wholeheartedly accepted and are now completely moral choices.....huh? If morals are inate and humans are born with these tools then they must surely be unwavering.....either something is moral or immoral that is the nature of the issue, people change their minds and opinions but morals are a constant.....otherwise the previous now unaccepted morals were "wrong"....meaning any moral or opinion could also be "wrong". Why don't we drop a nuclear bomb on all the poverty stricken nations of the world? It would relieve the world of a great financial strain, and would mean everyone left on the planet would have a much better life and there would be far less pain, suffering, guilt and tragedy in the world.....on the face of it, this plan actually works perfectly, however as we all understand, it is totally immoral and not something any of us could possibly agree with. This is because we fully comprehend what is right and wrong, but this guide for right and wrong was meticulously detailed in the Bible.....prior to this, the world was is a pretty corrupt and immoral state as there was no boundaries or framework of morality to live by.

Basically, whether you are religous or not, morality, kindness and decency are the platforms upon which civilised existence is based, and it's one's actions that defines the individual not beliefs.