...Continued

The speech was brilliant and it is nothing short of admirable that Dawkins is tirelessly taking the initiative to raise consciousnesses like this. I’m surprised you’ve been parading this around a little here as though it were some sort of blight on atheism.

You try to make Dawkins out to look like some sort of irrational, radical blowhard who shoots his mouth off without having a clue on what he’s talking about.

On the contrary, (while being a little hyperbolic at times as a way of raising consciousnesses) Dawkins is very level-headed and rationally-minded when it comes to his criticisms of religion, and has a habit of hitting the nail squarely on the head every time. This is reflected in the attempts by theists (like yourself) to give a distorted picture of who he is and what his opinions actually are.

So long as you don’t bother to read The God Delusion and continue to cherry pick pieces that sound nasty when taken out-of-context, you will never be in a position to criticize Dawkins, and nor will you fool anyone - who has read his works - about his knowledge on the topic of religion and his ability to think rationally about it.

I can understand that you’d feel the need to try and paint Dawkins as some sort of atheist version of runner, but he’s not. If fact, the beauty of atheism is that is doesn’t have runner equivalents since disbelief is based on reason - even if some atheists are ignorant about, and have naive perceptions of religion.

As I’ve said before, theism and atheism aren’t equally opposing views. Please try to remember this the next time you are tempted to equate the two in one of the “from both camps” points that you so often make.

Dear Banjo,

Thanks for the kind words, if I understand properly your last post.

>>your father was simply giving you the sort of religious instruction you would normally have received from a Catholic priest<<

No, he was giving me "instructions" (at my age of 10 until adulthood: before that it was rather my mother and grandmother who formed my "world-view") in history, politics, philosophy/theology etc. from a perspective broader than the school would be capable of (or allowed to) offer. Since he was a Catholic, this naturally included explanations and interpretations (from the vantage point of 20th century, and adjusted - I presume - to my age) of the bible, theology/metaphysics, the Catholic position (he had a postdoc degree in Canon Law), etc.

I should add that Stalinism broke out fully only when I came to high school, so I had some kind of RE at primary level, where I must have learned about bible stories etc. I do not remember much, since my father's later "input" overwrote my early childhood understanding of Christian faith.

AJ Philips,

I admit that when referring to a quote from Dawkins, the "couple of sentences" should have been more explicitly "two sentences", since the first two make up the sweeping statement I was objecting to, not the following example, of which there are certainly many. (If you wrote "Australians are drunkards" I would have objected since that would be a sweeping statement, even if you illustrated it by examples (one or many) of actual cases of Australian drunkards.)

>>we’re generally a lot more enlightened and aware about the problems with religion than people were back in those days.<<
This is an obvious statement about the advantages of hindsight which should be applied not only to "problems with religion" but also e.g. when criticizing some Catholic educational practices decades, even centuries, in the past.

Remember, it was you who asked for quotes from Dawkins, and I gave you, actually three of them. Perhaps I should not have, since it provoked four lengthy posts from you, like a couple of times in the past. I really do not see any point in answering again your assertions sentence-by-sentence, which would probably take four posts as well, (even if I ignored your "argumentum ad hominem" style). We should have learned from our previous encounter that this ping-pong of assertions and counter-assertions does not lead anywhere if we want to keep to the rational (as opposed to emotional) level.

So let us just leave it at that: you prefer Dawkins' appearance in London to that of the Pope (apparently as both contents and form of presentation are concerned), whereas my taste goes the other way around.

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Dear George,

.

Thank you for those fleeting insights into your childhood and adolescense. It helps to understand your "world view" by putting it into context.

Please be assured that I, personally, shall not abuse of it.

I must say, however, that I was rather suprised to see a person of your intellectual calibre and logic, suggesting an amalgam between a form of "child abuse" (institutions inculcating minors with religious beliefs) and the atrocious crime against humanity of "sending millions to the Gulag".

The difference of scale is simply absurd and escapes all possible comparison.

It is like comparing the flatulence of a rabbit to a hurricane. The comparison is abusive in both instances (rabbit v hurricane and "child abuse" v Gulag) .

Introducing an amalgam of that order into our discussion is not befitting of you nor the cause you are defending.

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Dear George, (continued)

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I do not imagine for one minute that you are a fan of Doris Lessing, the 2007 Nobel Prize winner for Literature but I thought I would post her thoughts here on the subject we have been discussing.

Before doing so, it is interesting to recall that Doris Lessing was educated at the Dominican Convent High School, a Roman Catholic convent all-girls school in Salisbury (now Harare). She left school aged 14, and thereafter was self-educated. This is how she described education:

"You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do.

What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system.

Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself—educating your own judgements.

Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society."

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Dear Banjo,

>> an amalgam between a form of "child abuse" (institutions inculcating minors with religious beliefs) and the atrocious crime against humanity of "sending millions to the Gulag".<<

You are apparently referring to my sentence "seeing Catholic education worse than sexual abuse of minors (is) so absurd that not even Stalinist propagandists would have dared to make explicitly".

I do not know where you got the "amalgam", Gulag etc. I simply spoke of MY experience with Communist propagandists, who were naturally anti-Church, and condemned Catholic education in similar terms that Dawkins et al do today, but would be afraid of completely loosing their credibility if they considered it WORSE than SEXUALLY ABUSING A CHILD. The latter was considered a crime, punishable by law, also by Communists, while Catholic education - as discriminated against in many ways as it was - was not formally a crime.

There were (and still are) societies functioning well, where providing a child with Catholic education was (is) not illegal; I do not know of a functioning society where sexually abusing children is not against the law.