Another dig at God....
The delusional Prof Dawkins has had one go recently. And now, acording to today's Times (Times2, 31st May, "Why religeon poisons everything") - took me a while to upload!), the journalist Christopher Hitchens is having a go too. At the cost of alerting some poor soul to the existance of a book that might otherwise have passed them by, a number of things, in the interview given to herald this work, caught my eye.
According to the article, this book ('God is not great') is 'a righteous harangue'. He rages against the violence of religion. This is a continually popular line of attack. Religion is apparently responsible for the deaths of millions. Noone knows exactly how many millions of course. Which is interesting. Because in that uniquely violent century, the twentieth, which brought us slaughter on an industrial scale, it was the irreligeous who were the problem. Just mention of the names of three avowedly irreligeous men, and a rough calculation, makes the point. Hitler, Stalin and Mao. And lets put the figure at a conservative 100 million - 100 000 000!
Another charge is that apparently religeon is 'invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry'. This is interesting because it seems to ignore what many religeous activists actyally spend a lot of their time doing. For example, founding and funding schools bringing literacy to the poor. Once literate, they are of course free to read material other than the Bible.
It was a religeous culture, indeed a culture of inquiry, that led to the development of science. No zero sum game of science vs religeon for Newton, Davy, Paley, Kelvin, some of the giants of science. And today, no zero sum game for very many professional scientists - and perhaps even the odd journo.
I stress that I have not rushed on to the interweb and ordered my copy, although perhaps I will try to pick up a cheap second hand copy on Ebay in due course. Perhaps I shall happen upon a job lot containing other polemical, and probably similarly delusional bits and bobs.
The delusional Prof Dawkins has had one go recently. And now, acording to today's Times (Times2, 31st May, "Why religeon poisons everything") - took me a while to upload!), the journalist Christopher Hitchens is having a go too. At the cost of alerting some poor soul to the existance of a book that might otherwise have passed them by, a number of things, in the interview given to herald this work, caught my eye.
According to the article, this book ('God is not great') is 'a righteous harangue'. He rages against the violence of religion. This is a continually popular line of attack. Religion is apparently responsible for the deaths of millions. Noone knows exactly how many millions of course. Which is interesting. Because in that uniquely violent century, the twentieth, which brought us slaughter on an industrial scale, it was the irreligeous who were the problem. Just mention of the names of three avowedly irreligeous men, and a rough calculation, makes the point. Hitler, Stalin and Mao. And lets put the figure at a conservative 100 million - 100 000 000!
Another charge is that apparently religeon is 'invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry'. This is interesting because it seems to ignore what many religeous activists actyally spend a lot of their time doing. For example, founding and funding schools bringing literacy to the poor. Once literate, they are of course free to read material other than the Bible.
It was a religeous culture, indeed a culture of inquiry, that led to the development of science. No zero sum game of science vs religeon for Newton, Davy, Paley, Kelvin, some of the giants of science. And today, no zero sum game for very many professional scientists - and perhaps even the odd journo.
I stress that I have not rushed on to the interweb and ordered my copy, although perhaps I will try to pick up a cheap second hand copy on Ebay in due course. Perhaps I shall happen upon a job lot containing other polemical, and probably similarly delusional bits and bobs.
Labels: religeon and atheism
posted by Paul at 6:20 AM
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