Dawkins: Religion equals 'child abuse'

WorldNetDaily ^ | 1/8/06

[LibWhacker]

Scientist compares Moses to Hitler, calls New Testament 'sado-masochistic doctrine'

Controversial scientist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins, dubbed "Darwin's Rottweiler," calls religion a "virus" and faith-based education "child abuse" in a two-part series he wrote and appears in that begins airing on the UK's Channel 4, beginning tomorrow evening.

Entitled "Root of All Evil?," the series features the atheist Dawkins visiting Lourdes, France, Colorado Springs, Colo., the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and a British religious school, using each of the venues to argue religion subverts reason.

In "The God Delusion," the first film in the series, Dawkins targets Catholicism at the pilgrimage site in Lourdes. "If you want to experience the medieval rituals of faith, the candle light, the incense, music, important-sounding dead languages, nobody does it better than the Catholics," he says.

Dawkins, using his visit to Colorado Springs' New Life Church, criticizes conservative U.S. evangelicals and warns his audience of the influence of "Christian fascism" and "an American Taliban."

The backdrop of the al-Aqsa mosque and an American-born Jew turned fundamentalist Muslim who tells Dawkins to prepare for the Islamic world empire – and who clashes with him after saying he hates atheists – rounds out the first program's case for the delusions of the faithful.

In part two, "The Virus of Faith," Dawkins attacks the teaching of religion to children, calling it child abuse.

"Innocent children are being saddled with demonstrable falsehoods," he says. "It's time to question the abuse of childhood innocence with superstitious ideas of hellfire and damnation. Isn't it weird the way we automatically label a tiny child with its parents' religion?"

"Sectarian religious schools," Dawkins asserts, have been "deeply damaging" to generations of children.

Dawkins, who makes no effort to disguise his atheism and contempt for religion, focuses on the Bible, too.

"The God of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous, and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, racist," he says. Dawkins then criticizes Abraham, compares Moses to Hitler and Saddam Hussein, and calls the New Testament "St Paul's nasty, sado-masochistic doctrine of atonement for original sin."

John Deighan, a spokesman for the Catholic Church, took issue with Dawkin's denunciation of religion, telling the Glasgow Sunday Herald, "Dawkins is well known for his vitriolic attacks on faith, and I think faith has withstood his attacks. He really is going beyond his abilities as a scientist when he starts to venture into the field of philosophy and theology. He is the guy with demonstrable problems."

Madeline Bunting, a columnist for the Guardian, who reviewed the series, wrote: "There's an aggrieved frustration that [atheist humanists] have been short-changed by history – we were supposed to be all atheist rationalists by now. Secularization was supposed to be an inextricable part of progress. Even more grating, what secularization there has been is accompanied by the growth of weird irrationalities from crystals to ley lines. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, the problem when people don't believe in God is not that they believe nothing, it is that they believe anything."

Dawkins, perhaps best know for his much-cited comment that evolution "made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist," appeals to John Lennon in a commentary he authored for the Belfast Telegraph on the eve of his program's premiere: "Religion may not be the root of all evil, but it is a serious contender. Even so it could be justified, if only its claims were true. But they are undermined by science and reason. Imagine a world where nobody is intimidated against following reason, wherever it leads. "You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one."

[r9etb]

Uh huh. What "truth" were you telling, again?

[BlackElk]

The original Christian Church was founded by Christ (see Matthew) and is still the true Church.

If you want to believe otherwise or act on those beliefs, you were given free will to use or abuse. Likewise, if you believe yourself descended from apes, you may well be right as to you and you may be providing eloquent proof of that proposition. Don't try to tag the rest of us with the notion that we are descended from apes.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

" No informed, thinking, honest person can call Hitler a Christian of any stripe. By definition, he was an anti-christ."

He wanted to get rid of the Churches, but he used the imagery of Christ, complete with Jesus as an Aryan warrior against the Jews. It was a sick perversion of Christian belief, as I have said, repeatedly.

[Tribune7]

Thanks

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"1. Rush never posed as a scholar or as infallible."

Are you going to email him and tell him he committed a conservative sin by advocating an objectivist book?

"La Rand's tendency to write in the style which Whittaker Chambers called "To a gas chamber, go!!!!" is also a reflection of her character and her philosophical shortcomings."

Chambers was a moron when it came to Rand's work. There is no possible way you can find ANY similarity with her work and *gas chambers* and still be intellectually honest.

" 3. La Rand's novels are OK for adolescents. She loses most of them when they grow up."

Yes, many become good collectivists and drift to other things.

Your whole tangent of bringing up Rand is a logical fallacy of course. You see a few quotes of her on my homepage and assume I believe everything she did. I also posted quotes from Locke and Jefferson. Are you going to denigrate them now too?

"Gee, doesn't that sound like a Nietzschean super race theory that Hitler had there?????"

No. Nietzsche was no proto-Nazi. The Nazis perverted his thought as they did everything else they touched. Nietzsche was against antisemitism and against nationalism. He had nothing in common with the Nazis.

"Lest I forget, libertoonianism is NOT conservatism, much less is the "objectivism" of La Rand conservatism. Atheism is not conservatism either."

Lest we forget, you brought up Rand as a diversion from the topic of the thread. Talk about an intellectual lightweight. :)

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Now this would be one fine example of a very hard heart.

[Tribune7]

The Soviets used churches. They even subsidized them. You want to call them Christian?

Clinton carried a Bible. His most tenacious opponents were those who took that book seriously. His supporters were those who laughed at it.

If you're saying beware of religious imagery and test words by deeds, fine. But remember, the bad guys are always those who hate the Bible and the teachings found in it.

[humblegunner]

Unfortunately every concentration camp built in this century was built by an atheist. Next question?

I've got a question.. how many concentration camps have been built in the last six years?

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Kinda like you continually putting a supposed Christian dress over the evil Hitler. "

That's the dress he chose to wear. I didn't put him in it.

"Where would you like to start, what little thing have you in mind? There are some who try to put a Christian dress upon the little Toe yet Christ Himself is the key to what makes evolution against Him. Christ said He foretold us all things, yet He also said that it is not given for all to understand for their own protection."


Another non-answer tangent. I asked If every denomination is a little bit different, and they believe things a little different, which one is the true Christianity? Are none of them Christian?

"Kinda puts it out of mere old flesh hands of passing on to the minds of the Heavenly Father's children who has eyes to see and ears to hear. Sure is not talking to a "natural" flesh mind."

Another nonresponse.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Uh huh. What "truth" were you telling, again?"

1) Hitler was not an atheist, he was a theist. He used Christian imagery to build his race religion, and believed that the Aryan race was the perfect special creation of the Creator.

2) He wasn't *insane*, he was evil. *Insane* people are not accountable for their actions, they do not know what they are doing. Hitler knew damn well what he was doing.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Likewise, if you believe yourself descended from apes, you may well be right as to you and you may be providing eloquent proof of that proposition."

We are not just descended from apes, technically speaking we ARE apes. :)

"The original Christian Church was founded by Christ (see Matthew) and is still the true Church."

Which one is it though?

[<1/1,000,000th%]

This should wind down the crevo debates. /sarcasm

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"If you're saying beware of religious imagery and test words by deeds, fine. But remember, the bad guys are always those who hate the Bible and the teachings found in it."

I was saying that the assertion that Hitler was an atheist doesn't hold water. He was a theist, used Christian imagery, and believed that Jesus was an Aryan warrior against the Jews. It's a sick perversion of Christianity, but that is where he got a lot of his *theology*. Blaming him on Darwin, when Hitler doesn't mention Darwin or evolution, is intellectually dishonest.

[r9etb]

Chambers was a moron when it came to Rand's work.

Chambers was a brilliant man who nailed Ayn Rand's work to the wall. Read for yourself.. And Rand herself was a fraud: you cannot use reason, applied to nature, and get her results.

There is no possible way you can find ANY similarity with her work and *gas chambers* and still be intellectually honest.

Except, I suppose, her well-documented tendency to excommunicate any and all dissenters from her presence -- a tendency which in other circumstances might have led to more than simple dismissal. Still, Chambers did not really accuse her of wanting to send people to the gas chambers. He was, rather, commenting on her "dictatorial tone," which is a correct observation. Intellectual honesty should compel you to read his comment in context.

He had nothing in common with the Nazis.

LOL! Except that they applied his philosophy, and that both he and Hitler died insane.

[Diamond]

"The God of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous, and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, racist," he says. Dawkins then criticizes Abraham, compares Moses to Hitler and Saddam Hussein, and calls the New Testament "St Paul's nasty, sado-masochistic doctrine of atonement for original sin."

It is amusing to observe flailing atheist expressions of moral umbrage, which by their own account are nothing more than empty chemical sensations in the brain. Dawkins hasn't any more basis to condemn mere chemical epiphenomena like "jealousy", "pride", "pettiness", "vindictiveness", "injustice", "unforgiving" and "racist" than he has to condemn other developments of natural selection such as fear, pain or indigestion, all of which are devoid of ethical content. Having no foundation for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical process he calls reason, or right and wrong to the epiphenomena of irrational physical reaction he calls morality, there is consequently no moral difference between ""St Paul's nasty, sado-masochistic doctrine" and a hot dog at the ballpark. In both cases, all Dawkins has is concatenations of colliding atoms and irrational physical forces. Thus, his atheism reduces his own moral objections to the category of the futile ravings of a lunatic; all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Cordially,

[CarolinaGuitarman]

" Chambers was a brilliant man who nailed Ayn Rand's work to the wall. Read for yourself.. And Rand herself was a fraud: you cannot use reason, applied to nature, and get her results."

His critique is asinine. Read it already.

"Except, I suppose, her well-documented tendency to excommunicate any and all dissenters from her presence -- a tendency which in other circumstances might have led to more than simple dismissal."

This is the same as advocating gas chambers? You have a way with redefining words.

"He was, rather, commenting on her "dictatorial tone," which is a correct observation. Intellectual honesty should compel you to read his comment in context."

It's what he meant. Read it already.

" LOL! Except that they applied his philosophy, and that both he and Hitler died insane."

1) If someone distorted your work for ill gain, you are responsible? They Misapplied his philosophy to be something he was against. He hated antisemitism and he hated nationalism. The work they most used was *The Will to Power*, which Nietzsche didn't even authorize to be published. It was put together by his sister from his notebooks.

2) If someone dies in the same way you did, you are responsible for their actions?

[Tribune7]

I'm not saying Hitler was an atheist. (Of course, I will say Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot and Castro were or are atheists.)

I am saying Hitler was an anti-Christian.

[r9etb]

1) Hitler was not an atheist, he was a theist. He used Christian imagery to build his race religion, and believed that the Aryan race was the perfect special creation of the Creator.

He did "use" that imagery, like any good propagandist would. The question is whether this was the reason for his actions, and the answer to that is no, as you state yourself:

2) He wasn't *insane*, he was evil. *Insane* people are not accountable for their actions, they do not know what they are doing. Hitler knew damn well what he was doing.

Huh. And how do you, an atheist, define evil? Can "evil" possibly exist?

As it happens, one can be both "insane" (a rather squishy term) and aware of their actions. The legal question of insanity is not one of awareness, but rather whether one can be held accountable for his actions. As any mental health worker will tell you, insane people are often meticulously logical, and even rational within the confines of their own worlds; it's just that the boundaries of their worlds don't reach out very far from their own heads.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"I am saying Hitler was an anti-Christian.:

Ultimately, I agree. That's why I said he perverted Christianity. My main point was simply that there is no evidence for the often proclaimed assertion he was an atheist. The point is alway made to implicate all atheists with Hitler's barbarism.

"(Of course, I will say Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot and Castro were or are atheists.)

Agreed.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

" He did "use" that imagery, like any good propagandist would. The question is whether this was the reason for his actions, and the answer to that is no, as you state yourself:"

No, I stated no such thing, and your quote doesn't back you up in the least. There is no reason to think he didn't believe what he said. He certainly acted upon it.

" Huh. And how do you, an atheist, define evil? Can "evil" possibly exist?"

He initiated force against others. That's always an evil.

" As it happens, one can be both "insane" (a rather squishy term) and aware of their actions."

You can't be aware of the consequences of your actions if you are insane. That's the definition of insanity.

"As any mental health worker will tell you, insane people are often meticulously logical, and even rational within the confines of their own worlds; it's just that the boundaries of their worlds don't reach out very far from their own heads."

You are talking about mental illness, not insanity. Insanity is a legal term. I do not believe that Hitler was insane. He was just evil. If he were truly insane, then he was not responsible for his actions.