Posted on 01/07/2006 10:26:53 PM PST by 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."
Only a Nazi would say such a thing! ;)
</Gordwin's Law>
I could almost laugh, but it's too painful.
You cannot be serious. Are you really arguing that the nature of reality - in this case, the nature of thought - is different depending on how we perceive it? This is the crux of "objective" morality?
How about, it is what it is, regardless of whether God exists or not, and regardless of whatever emotional baggage you bring along?
The former position presupposes some standard beyond nature (for which it cannot account) by which to assign praise or blame, but under such a scenario notions as as "good" or "evil" are necessarily meaningless.
That is simply silliness. If God doesn't define it for you, it doesn't mean anything at all? Tell me, where does God define "furniture", especially as distinct from "appliance"? Can you tell the difference between furniture and appliances in your house? If so, why?
Complaining of a "double standard" or of "creationist hypocrisy" implies the existence of some objective standard by which to judge, a standard for which atheism can give no account.
Huh? Tell me, where did God define "hypocrisy"? Shouldn't the Bible be more than a lexicon to you? Isn't it quite enough to observe one set of behaviors in one situation, and some other set of behaviors in analogous situations, and then call it hypocrisy? Except, wait, atheists aren't entiteld to such judgements, right? Only theists, am I correct? Are principles that shift like sand in the wind indicative of "objective" morality, then?
At least Christianity provides the foundation needed to critique the behavior of its own. Christians can condemn the actions of the Spanish Inquisition.
Based on their own subjective moral constructs, of course.
An atheist like Dawkins, however, cannot even give a coherent reason for why something like the biological experiments of the Nazis were unethical, yet he compares Moses to Hitler.
"It's wrong because someone else said so" is your idea of a "coherent" objection?
You know what? I think I should retract my assertion that the very first mention of Hitler in association with atheism occurred in your post. Only halfway accurate (because your post was the first to do so by proper name) is not good enough; I inexcusably missed the previous context of a previous post that did mention the Holocaust in conjunction with atheism and another mentioned concentration camps "in this century", which is more than enough to justify your use. So I apologize. I was mistaken on this point.
Cordially,
Rand worshipped herself and her promiscuously active genitals, not necessarily in that order. If 50 million innocents had to die for the convenience of those younger than her but of similar social habits, it was a small price (none) for her to pay.
She had no room for God. She thought she was a god which shows how truly limited her imagination was.
She "excommunicated" Murray Rothbard face to face, when he was still an atheist, for merely becoming engaged to an Episcopalian because, in Randian dogma, no rational person could marry a believer in God and remain rational.
When people marry, they exchange marriage vows. Was La Rand not guilty of interference with the marriage vows and contract of Nathaniel Brandon and Barbara Brandon to say nothing of abandoning her own vows to Frank O'Connor? Complete with the usual rationalizations for adultery dressed up as a "philosophy" of "objectivism" [Sort of: Well, we just had to do it and do it again and again and again because, ummmm, whom you bed reflects your self-image and, ummmm, we had a very high mutual self-image and, ummmm, it could only be satisfied by...... at least until La Rand realized that Nathaniel was just such subRandian scum and may have cheated with his own wife and....and....and....]
What makes Ayn Rand different from Elizabeth Taylor???? Well, Taylor was a verrrry attractive woman in her prime and a talented actress and she did not bother to shame herself by pretending to dress up the peccadilloes of her way of life as a "philosophy." From the Arkansas Antichrist???? Slick is a better liar and a far more persuasive politician and knows enough to mock the process by saying that it all depends on what the definition of "is" is. Even Slick did not pretend that Monica, much less the treatment of Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, or Juanita Broderick constituted a "philosophy" of some sort. Now Epicureans or other connosseurs (sp.?) might point to Jennifer Flowers......
Because I have far fewer problems with Jefferson and, I suspect, Locke than I or any sane person would have with the ridiculous pretensions of La Rand.
Not a problem. :)
I've never understood that either.
Condemn the actions of the Spanish Inquisition??????? Surely not! Say it is not so! No one expects......
Welcome to the party! Ping others
Heavens, NO!!! Fray Tomas is one of the great heroes of Christendom.
""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."
These folks are selective in the characteristics they attribute to religion.
Western Civilization was not based upon atheism afterall.
No. I'm not arguing that the nature of thought is dependent on our perception of it. I'm arguing that there are certain logical consequenses that necessarily flow from an atheistic premise, such as, if atheism were true then thoughts are nothing but matter in motion. If that were the case then you just have atheist chemical reactions of the brain and I have theistic chemical reactions of the brain. You can give no reason why one chemical reaction is better than another chemical reaction. To assign moral or rational values to your thoughts you have to claim for your reasoning a validity that is not credible if your thought is nothing but a product of your brain, and your brain a by-product of irrational physical processes. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true, but rather because of a series of chemical reactions. Thus, your atheism cannot account for rationality and morality.
Cordially,
No, Ace, I was thinking more in terms of religions from islands where they mingle voodoo and black-magic with Christianity, or from nations that export islam, the 'sacred cow' or paganism and atheism to us.
Where people get the notion that just because folks slither unnoticed over here from Central and South America that that somehow guarantees they are good Catholics who practice the faith of their ancestors, is a mystery to me. In fact, a great many of these illegals become members of Latino gangs, or become criminals. One-third of all California prison inmates are originally from south of the border.
The truth is that not too many devout Christians would begin a new life in a country which they reside in illegally, drive uninsured and unregistered cars, and in general take advantage of every benefit of the U.S. government without giving something back, (as in, ahem, paying taxes). This way of life actually flies in the face of the the teachings of the Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church which you mentioned.
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