Gerald Warner is a bit of an odd cove. A Telegraph blogger, he's one of the most crustiest old reactionaries I've ever heard of. He's so staggeringly; curmudgeonly old fashioned, he could seriously make professional fuddy duddy, Roger Scruton look like an eligible contender to present the next series of "Pimp My Ride". His blog is therefore excellent fodder for on line car crash entertainment. A taster of which can be this entry, which throws a series of attacks at Richard Dawkins for being the godawful militant atheist scoundrel that he is. It is a series of unfocused criticisms of [Dawkins] wanting the Pope to be arrested, to his documentary on faith schools that's going out on More4 this Wednesday. The entire article has so many straw men in it, it begins to resemble a Worzal Gummage themed fancy dress party. So we get stuff like this:
"Dawkins calls on us rather a lot, which might seem a touch inconsistent in a man who has said: “People can believe what they want, but I wish they would leave the rest of us alone.""
No one is under duress to listen (let alone abide by) to what he has to say. I don't think the same can be said about some of the major religions (obviously with varying degrees of intensity.) in the past, and indeed the present.
"Dawkins argues in his programme that religious schools encourage social segregation. So do public schools, such as Oundle, his alma mater; Oxford colleges such as Balliol where he was educated or New College where he was a fellow; and just about every institution that promotes excellence or within which people freely associate. Does he regard them as a menace too?"
I suppose they do practice a form of segregation on the grounds of wealth and exam results. Oxford in principle is open to anyone who has the intelligence to meet the entry requirements. I don't think it can really be accused of encouraging social segregation (though there is likely an atmosphere of idiosyncratic donnish eccentricity about the place, that outsiders may find odd.) . The dangers of religious schools come from the fact that they widen and compound the fractuous gaps that the already highly mutually exclusive religions import on our society. They also impose their subjective values as "truth" on small kids, rather than giving a broad education which encourages varying viewpoints and critical thinking, two of the best gifts a child can receive, and that is why I personally dislike faith schools so much. When we hear that 95 percent of kids in the harmonious paradise of Northern Ireland who attend segregated schools, of which 68 percent of 18-25 years old never meet the "other side" at all! (No really!) Then we have insider reports of schoolkids at a Muslim school being taught that Jews are monkeys! yeah we must conclude that there are reasons to consider them a menace to social harmony, and thus in a different league to the "dangers" going to a public school.
Faith school children just freely associated themselves into their schools! Come off it Gerald.
"Despite his attempts to deconstruct established religions, Dawkins does not bring the same relentless empiricism to bear on superstitions which he himself embraces"
Oh it's this argument again. Dawkins bad for bashing "your" superstition. But you bash his "superstition" and that's good. So you're attacking him for his embrace of the very evil (a "faith" position) that you yourself are defending, as it is only evil if it is someone elses one.
Genius. I'm sure man made climate change won't get mentioned in the next sentence.
"such as man-made global warming:"
Original aren't they?
"he has even recommended Al Gore’s notoriously discredited film on the subject."
Who discredited it? It's supposed errors were cross examined by a court. They found no evidence for iffy research.
"He also supports the Great Ape Project, which seeks to extend moral and legal rights to great apes."
If only there was some chemical compound in the cells of animals that was like a record of the ancestry of different species that could link mankind to chimps and gorillas.
"Dawkins carries his reductionism and scientism to lengths of intolerance that dismay even some of his admirers. When the Oxford theologian Alister McGrath accused him of being ignorant of Christian theology, Dawkins asked, with classic academic rigour, “do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns”?
This is such a silly argument, my eyeballs fall out of my head whenever I hear it. Christian theology and the existence of God are two completely different issues. This is no different to someone arguing that you can't say the Force is made up because you've only seen the Star Wars films and haven't read George Lucas's biography, every star Wars novel and every single Wookiepedia article.
"So, would he debate Marxism with Eric Hobsbawm without having read a word of Marx."
Dawkins isn't into splitting hairs on the finer points of theology. He's concerned about the case for the existence of God, and the truthful merits of the major faiths. The two are almost totally mutually exclusive
Stuff like this makes me think that the God /no God question is literally an exercise in banging your head on a brick wall, preferably a wailing one.
No comments:
Post a Comment