The God Delusion (for people who don't read much)

Last night on UK channel "More Four" was the first episode of a documentary "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins; his book by the same name made a bit of a stir 3 or 4 years when it came out, upsetting believers across the country.

As it happens, I was skimming his book in Waterstones just before going on holiday recently (settled on the accidental billionaires instead) so when I saw this was one I was quite interested to watch.

On the whole, I was quite disappointed, it was two hours so i could waffle on for ages, but here were my two main gripes..

1. Despite being called the "God Delusion", he didn't really go after God at all, but rather religion and the stupidity of people (maybe it should have been called the "Religion Delusion", or just "Some People are Stupid").
   The majority of the film saw Dawkins talking with extreme examples of different faiths and highlighting the errors of their ways. He talked about the opression of people (homosexuals, abortion), murder and wars (middle east Israel problems) and the restriction of freedom of thought put on people in these extreme groups (private Jewish communities in north London, extreme american evangelists, etc).
   But despite at one point even comparing an American pastor's sermon to a Nuremburg rally, he failed to raise the fairly self-evident truth, that in fact, these acts are people's failings, not God's, and you only have to look to Hitler and the Nuremburg rallies to see examples of all of the above withot God being in the mix.  Like I said, it just seemed to be saying that sometimes people get it wrong.
   
   
   
2. Throughout the film Dawkins referred a lot to people not being enlightend, about how people were turning to religion and not science, and the importance of science in schools. This considered, I would have like to have seen a more scientific grounding for the film. A particular lowpoint was his comparison of natural design and evolution, I will para-phrase below, but you can check it out online (it was in the firs 30mins or so i think)
   
   
   
   [Richard Dawkins stands at the foot of a steep face of a mountain]
   Dawkins: Lets call this "Mountain Improbable", believing in natural design is liking jumping one big jump up this huge cliff face to the top of the mountain in one go.
   
   [Richard Dawkins now walks up gentle incline]
   Dawkins: Evolution however, is like climbing this mountain one step at a time, a lot easier (and i guess somehow therefore more probable?) than natural design.
   
   
   That was it. I would say that would pretty much be an all time low for any self respecting scientist. The fact that him talking about mountains really does mean nothing to anyone aside, he also very quickly skimmed over the fact that some of those small, easy steps up evolutions path were also pretty massive leaps up the mountain (oh jeez, hes got me using his crazy analogy now!), ignoring the big, challenging questions that face either camp.
   

The second installment is on next week, and despite my qualms, I will prob atill make the effort to watch in the hope it gets better.  You can also watch the first episode again on the 4oD video here