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God To Richard Dawkins
The Sunday Times December 24, 2006
A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion Professor Richard Dawkins has caused a sensation this year with the runaway success of his anti-religious book The God Delusion. Here, through the pen of John Cornwell, the Almighty delivers a counterblast
Naturally I can appear to my creatures in any form I choose
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God To Richard, cont...
Logicians characterise the inherent fallacy of such statements as the "undistributed middle". The Da Vinci Code, which is not factual, is pulp fiction; the gospels are not strictly speaking factual, therefore the gospels are pulp fiction. This freshman howler masks an even deeper, and more pernicious, error. You are thereby declaring that there is no sense in which storytellers, poets, dramatists, evangelists can utter truth. Never mind the profound verities of My Son's Sermon on the Mount, what about Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky . . . the entire canon of world literature. I smell bonfires! On the matter of truth and bonfires, you are right to indict religious believers who have perpetrated persecution and cruelty in my name, both past and present! But would you deny the good performed down the ages by religious believers of every kind? And would you deny the evil done in the name of science and atheism in recent history? How do you see a world without religion? "If the demise of God will leave a gap," you proclaim, ". . . My way includes a good dose of science, the honest and systematic endeavour to find out the truth about the real world."
And you invoke John Lennon's famous song Imagine to conjure up the paradise on earth that will ensue. "Imagine a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts . . . no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers', no Northern Ireland Troubles . . . No Taliban to blow up ancient statues."
Oh please, Richard! Your list, which includes conflicts that are blatantly secular, omits two catastrophic eras in recent history: Stalin's Soviet Union, and Hitler's Germany. So how do you attain a world without them? Are you not aware, Richard, that Stalin's brand of communism found its origin in an idea called dialectical materialism
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God To Richard, finis.
IT IS in the context of these two paths, Richard, that you betray both political and historical naivety. You argue, for example, that the "secularism" of the founding fathers of America was a bid to weaken the hold of religious belief on society. Hardly. The genius of the American proposal was its insistence on a state (in other words governmental) secularism that guarantees religious freedoms, including atheism, in a pluralist society.
The importance of understanding, and conserving, that historic experiment could not be more urgent today as President George W Bush attempts to hijack the protective neutrality of America's state secularism with evangelical convictions. Which brings Me to the issue of respect, which, you say, religion does not deserve.
The question is not whether you respect the content of people's faith, Richard, it is whether you respect their right to adopt freely chosen beliefs, within the law, without insult and persecution. There is no more powerful incentive for universal respect than the proposition that all without exception are children of God and find their ultimate destiny in Me.
There are times when a fine line exists between persecution and satire, especially when a powerful majority makes mockery of all that is held sacred by an insecure, hard-pressed minority. But never let it be said that I am unable to enjoy a joke at My own expense! Which brings Me to the debate over creationism, on which you wax heatedly. To adopt such beliefs into the science curriculums of schools would of course be a gross category error. Theology is theology, and science is science, as Father Mendel would have agreed. But you yourself consistently make a striking category error by confusing creationism and the doctrine of creation held by many faiths.
The matter is straightforward: Biblical creationists believe that the Book of Genesis is a source of factual information about the origins of the world. They teach that I literally created all things in a series of instantaneous acts over six days some 5,000 years ago. Most sensible believers in the book subscribe without demur to Darwin's theory of evolution while reading Genesis in the light of the mystery so well articulated by Martin Rees
I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana
The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.
The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"
I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper
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Re: God To Richard Dawkins
DUDE! Please stop posting this crap this is not my wor...PEOPLE these are not my words, ok? People like Dissident (et al) always post this crap and as if it were actually me speaking. They do NOT know who I am, I mean how could they...I am a FREAKIN MYSTERY!!! HELLLOOOOO?!
I am really going to look into a lawsuit here...this is the second time in a month I have been imitated. Chris...I expect you to look into this.
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