Dawkins' witch-hunt

Dawkins' latest invitation to anti-religious hatred has been to call for the arrest and prosecution of Pope Benedict when he visits the UK in September. Dawkins' article in Tuesday's The Guardian newspaper proceeds by attempting to muddy the waters around the Pope's involvement in the case of an abusing priest by drawing an analogy between the actions of the Pope (then, Cardinal Ratzinger) and those of a teacher in a secular institution who failed to report a teacher, who he knew to be abusing children, to the police. But Dawkins' analogy is a misrepresentation of the facts because the priest in question had already been reported to the police. In the letter repeatedly cited in the current media frenzy the then cardinal was treating the issue of whether the priest should also be defrocked, which, as a matter of fact, he subsequently was. But then atheists never let facts get in the way of a good story as anyone who is accustomed to reading the wildly defamatory, and usually violent, comments by atheists on comment threads understands. For instance, this piece of erudite reasoning was posted under Dawkins' article in The Guardian: 'Lets accuse him [Pope Benedict] of witchcraft and see if he floats'.

Dawkins' attempt to make child abuse into an anti-religious issue, and specifically an attack on the Roman Catholic priesthood per se draws attention away from the widespread incidence of child abuse which is endemic throughout society, in secular, as well as religious, institutions and in the family. Indeed research indicates that the incidence of child abuse is higher in the general population and in secular institutions than among Roman Catholic clergy. But what tops all this in terms of hypocrisy is Dawkins' sudden interest in the topic of child abuse given his previous lack of concern for such victims voiced in The God Delusion. There he complains about the 'hysteria' and 'mob psychology' over pedophilia which he likens to a witch-hunt. Yet he has shown himself only too happy to ignite the hysteria of the mob when it suits his atheist agenda. In particular, his ill-judged comment that subjecting one's child to a Catholic education was in itself more damaging than sexual abuse had the effect of branding millions of teachers and parents who send their children to Catholic schools as guilty of crimes more heinous than those of a child rapist.

Dawkins on Anselm

Dawkins approach of ridiculing rather than addressing serious philosophical arguments and concerns is becoming more than a little tiresome to serious scholars. Here is what Ian Logan, an Oxford Anselm scholar, has to say about Dawkins' treatment of Anselm's famous philosophical argument to prove the existence of God.

'In the process of writing my book on the Proslogion, I came across hundreds of accounts of Anselm's argument, some more flawed than others, to the most serious and influential of which I tried to respond. Nothing, however, comes close to Dawkins' account in terms of sheer stupidity.'

It seems that Dawkins has failed to heed Anthony Flew's advice that in order to be taken seriously as an academic one should present one's opponents' arguments in their strongest form. Perhaps Dawkins is afraid that if he presents his opponents' arguments thus he will be unable to refute them?

Dawkins' sexed-up atheism

How does Richard Dawkins respond to Antony Flew's allegation that in The God Delusion Dawkins misrepresents Einstein's view of divine intelligence:

'Antony Flew, having lost the ability to write a book, was persuaded by a Christian ghost writer, Roy Varghese, to let him write it instead. It is one thing for a footballer or a supermodel to use a ghost writer, but there is something absurd about a philosopher using a ghost writer. Flew has now apparently lost the ability to read a book, too, for his 'review' of The God Delusion turns out to be a review of its index and nothing but its index. He only needed to read Chapter 1, in order to see the absurdity of his claims about my treatment of Einstein.'
(Quoted in The Telegraph)

The unashamedly personal nature of much of Dawkins' response, from someone who makes much of being a promoter of well reasoned argument, hardly amounts to an adequate rebuttal of Flew's charge. Leaving that aside, lets take up Dawkins' point that one only need read Chapter 1 of The God Delusion to see that he has provided an accurate representation of Einstein's view of God:

'A deist, too, [like a theist] believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a nonsupernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

'There is every reason to think that famous Einsteinisms like 'God is subtle but he is not malicious' or 'He does not play dice' or 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' are pantheistic, not deistic, and certainly not theistic. 'God does not play dice' should be translated as 'Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.' 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' means 'Could the universe have begun in any other way?' Einstein was using 'God' in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense. . . . .'
(Quoted on Dawkins' website)

Is it accurate to portray Einstein as an adherent of Dawkins pantheism as 'sexed-up atheism'? Here's what Einstein had to say on an occasion when he was asked to define God:

'I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist.'
(Quoted in M. Jammer, Einstein and Religion, Princeton 1999, p. 48.)

Looks like Flew might have a case.

A secularist bigot

Desperate atheist cries of foul play over Antony Flew's 'conversion' continue (see Thursday's post below). In 2008 a number of comments on the customer reviews on Amazon of Flew's book, There is a God, maintained that Flew's contribution to the book was not genuine and he had been a victim of manipulation because he was old. Flew has been moved to refute such serious allegations here.

This link also contains a review by Antony Flew of Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, where Flew takes Dawkins to task for, among other things, failing to properly represent Einstein's views on divine intelligence. Flew, justifiably angered by Dawkins' underhand attempts to discredit him, also charges him with being a secularist bigot.

What the Fool says (3)

'The universe could so easily have remained lifeless and simple - just physics and chemistry, just the scattered dust of the cosmic explosion that gave birth to time and space. The fact that it did not - the fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing - is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.' (R. Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale, p. 613).

Yes, it would be mad to attempt to describe the process by which something evolves from nothing since nothing is not something and therefore is not something that can be the subject of empirical enquiry. Like many a pseudo-philosopher (and ‘brilliant scientist’ to quote his publisher’s blurb), Dawkins treats the word ‘nothing’ as if it refers to a kind of something. If something can evolve out of it, it is not nothing, but if it is not nothing, what is it? On one level he seems to be saying that the universe evolved out of something we know nothing about, but he actually uses the phrase ‘literally out of nothing’. It looks like he is equivocating and does not consistently mean ‘literally out of nothing’, but rather ‘almost as if out of nothing’. But that is to make a quite different claim about the universe, and is no longer a claim about its origins, but is rather a claim concerning its post-original development.

According to Dawkins the universe would look different if it were created by God, and consequently God is a scientific hypothesis. But neither of these claims can he show to be correct. The difference between a situation in which there is a world created by God and one in which there is no world created by God is the difference between something and nothing. God is not a scientific hypothesis, although He is the precondition for the universe and hence for all activity in the universe, including the natural sciences. The natural sciences can each in their own limited ways investigate the post-original universe, what they cannot do is to investigate its metaphysical preconditions. From within their own discipline they cannot even comment meaningfully on these preconditions. For any scientist qua scientist to do so would be for them to commit a category error - a symptom that one might consider renaming 'Dawkins’ disease'.

What's the problem?

Richard Dawkins appeared on the TV programme the Daily Politics yesterday talking about his pet hate which is 'labelling children with the opinions of their parents'. Dawkins objects vehemently to calling a child with Catholic parents 'a Catholic child', a child of Protestant parents 'a Protestant child', a child of Muslim parents 'a Muslim child', etc. Dawkins talks about this so called 'labelling' in strong terms as something that has 'surely got to be wrong' and 'must be something that should be rectified'. To be honest, it is pretty difficult to see what Dawkins thinks the problem is apart from the fact that he doesn't like it of course. Calling a child of Catholic parents a Catholic seems like a perfectly natural and reasonable assumption to make. The rest of the guests on the show, and even the presenters, were struggling to see what Dawkins was getting so incensed about. Credit to John Denham, one of the guests, who had the wit to recognise where Dawkins' argument was heading: an acceptance of Dawkins' point would mean that parents should 'lose the right' to pass on their religious faith to their children. This of course is Dawkins' real agenda and what all the pussyfooting around about labelling is designed to conceal. Dawkins comes across as an interfering busybody who doesn't like the idea of religious beliefs being passed on to anyone and thinks it is his business in particular to stop other people from passing on their religious convictions to their children, whilst, of course, retaining the right to bring up his own children in the way he sees fit. When pressed on this, i.e whether he brought his own children up to be atheists like himself, he dodged the question insisting somewhat disingenuously that he was a cultural Christian. Given that Dawkins has been caught out organising atheist camps for children as young as four we can be in no doubt as to what values he thinks his, as well as everyone else's children, should be receiving. There is a chilling moment in the film where Dawkins attempts to reassure us that he is not advocating 'coercion' or 'state run child farms'.

Atheism and Vegetarianism

'I lived through one age of atheism/vegetarianism and high-minded humanism, with whiskers, sandals and amber beads, and it was tedious then. Seeing it come up on the dreary wheel yet again is almost more than I can bear. I've heard it all before.'

Alice Thomas Ellis, God Has Not Changed, London 2004, p.66.

If anyone should doubt the link between the 'new' old atheism and vegetarianism this piece of madness from Richard Dawkins' website (where he likens the acceptance of meat eating to the acceptance of slavery) should reassure them.

Ditchkins and the yeti view of God

Here is a series of clips of Terry Eagleton talking in a humorous and engaging way about his latest book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution:Reflections on the God debate. According to Eagleton, it was "sheer irritation at the ignorance and illiteracy" of "Ditchkins'" (an amalgamation of "Dawkins" and "Hitchens") atheism that drove him to write this book. Interestingly, Eagleton was at Oxford with "Chris" Hitchens and in their Trotskyite days they used to leaflet car factories together. Eagleton gives a sophisticated critique of Dawkins' "good old fashioned Victorian rationalism" and his unwitting commitment to fideism. He also makes some nice points about the sheer naivety of Dawkins' theory of God as a sort of yeti, and the weaknesses in Dawkins' worldview. Unlike either Dawkins or Hitchens, Eagleton is a serious thinker and at times talks movingly about the radical nature of the New Testament and the realism which takes the suffering and crucified Christ as the truly authentic starting point of history.

Why is Dawkins afraid to debate with William Lane Craig?

It is common knowledge that Richard Dawkins has avoided debating with the philosopher, William Lane Craig. You can see his excuse here.

Dawkins says he won't debate with William Lane Craig because he is a professional debater and creationist.

In fact, Craig is a well-known professional philosopher, who is sceptical of what he calls Neo-Darwinism (which is a philosophical, rather than scientific, worldview generally propounded by people like Dawkins, who are not professional philosophers). The term 'creationist' used to refer to someone who believed in the literal truth of the Genesis 1 account, and rejected any compatibility with a theory of evolution. In Dawkins' world of equivocation, it appears to mean anyone who thinks God has anything to do with the origins of the universe. This of course would mean that a large number of the world's greatest scientists were/are creationists.

A clear-thinking oasis?

If anyone should doubt the rabid idiocy of the atheists, they only need to look at the official Richard Dawkins website, RichardDawkins.net.

Here is a less offensive example of the kind of thing that qualifies as clear thinking in the perverted world of Dawkins and his minions:

Re: Gordon Brown invites Pope Benedict to Britain

Postby oneeyednarn » Tue Feb 24, 2009 12:36 am
Any chance you could plant a bomb and take out both of them?

The phrase 'both of them' refers to Gordon Brown and Pope Benedict.

Christian child

Oh dear, what an irony. It turns out that the two children who feature on the billboard posters of Richard Dawkins' atheist campaign and were picked by the British Humanist Association because they looked so joyful and carefree are the children of devout Christian parents. You have to laugh. The British Humanist's education director Andrew Copson tried to wriggle out of this embarrassing revelation by suggesting that the fact that the children were Christian didn't undermine the atheist campaign because it was never their intention to suggest the children of Christians were unhappy. What! A word of advice to Mr. Copson: when you're in a hole, stop digging.

Atheist Child

Today sees the final phase of the atheist bus campaign, not on buses but on billboards. According to the promoters, the aim of the ‘Don’t Label Me’ billboard campaign is to challenge the idea that children can be labelled with their parents' religion. One of the posters from the campaign has a picture of a small child and the caption alongside reads, "Please don't label me, let me grow up and choose for myself". In truth, this campaign by the British Humanist Association (BHA) of which Richard Dawkins is the vice-president, is just a bit of softening up of the British public for the real agenda, which is to get rid of faith schools. According to their website, the BHA’s stated aim is to ‘stimulate and organise local campaigns against new faith schools and lobby government and parliament to reform law that allows state funded schools’. The line that this campaign is about freedom of thought for children reeks of hypocrisy given Dawkins’ recent funding of an atheist summer camp for children as young as six. It seems that in Dawkins’ utopia only atheists are to be allowed to pass on their beliefs to their, and anyone else’s, children.

Atheism and the Simonyi Chair at Oxford

In 1995 Oxford University accepted money from Charles Simonyi (previously of Microsoft) to establish the Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science. It's first holder (to 2008) was Richard Dawkins. The current holder is Marcus du Sautoy. Both are declared atheists. This latter fact is not coincidental, because this professorship is actually a chair in atheism. It's just that Simonyi and his friends at Oxford didn't have the guts or the honesty to admit that this is what it was. They sell this position as one which has the commendable aim of helping people understand science. But actually, its purpose is to mislead people into drawing unscientific conclusions concerning matters outside the sphere of the natural sciences, on the misunderstanding that the natural sciences can address questions such as the existence of God. It is, to be more precise, a Professorship for Promoting Atheist Category Errors.