I went to a seminar last night where Dawkins was reading from his book. All the way through, Christians were tearing ofF their crosses and beads and throwing them away while Dawkins cheered then for seeing reason. However, I jUSt sat through it with a smug smile on my face, waiting to drop my bomb that would defeat him utterley for the last time. .....
This is kind of puerile. It is entirely obvious from the way 'The G-d Delusion' is written that it is not addressed to sincere believers. He does seem to hope that they will read it and wake up to the real world, but he has almost no grasp of the religious mentality and consequently fails in every way to address their questions and concerns.
In my opinion, anyone sick enough to
need a sense of certainty about the universe and their place in it is better off
with a religion. I only wish they would update their myths to take better accounting of the world as we now know it, which is infinitely more grand, mysterious, and beautiful than that attributed to the Hebrew G-d. It seems to me entirely possible to view the world with a sense of religious reverence and wonder, and even a touch of the truly spiritual, without needing to keep oneself in an arrested state of mediaeval idiocy.
...he just smacks a bit too much of the crusader, for my tastes.
I am a bit torn on this point. I entirely agree that he can seem far too forceful in his argumentation, but I suppose he feels it is necessary to counterbalance the all-too-familiar crusading from the religious camp. And it is not as though any of the positions which he champions are controversial: biological evolution has been proven and demonstrable fact for half a century, and continuing to deny it is nothing short of moronic. If we, as a society, are supposed to allow for a crusader mentality to be appropriated by those who wish to put out their own eyes and live in a fantasy world, I can't see that we can sustain any real objection to Dawkin's particularly bombastic rhetoric and oversimplification.
