Re: [asa] The Old Testament God is ..

David wrote:

> Wayne, I'd agree that there is good reason to question why bad things
> happen, and that it is even appropriate to question God as David did often in the
> Psalms. But I don't think there's any really sympathetic way to understand
> the language Dawkins uses here.
>

My point was not so much in his diatribe; which seems far more
vitriolic and vituperative compared the more restrained and
somewhat patronizing tone I recall in some other works of his.
It was more the common difficulty in understanding suffering,
and understanding some of the more troublesome passages of the
Old Testament. I find some of that very difficult. But that
is as far as I can go with it. I certainly do not agree with
his "solution" --- let alone his paroxysmal rant. :-)

> Has it ever been suggested that Dawkins' views about the "Old Testament"
> God are anti-semitic? Manicheanism was one of the roots of anti-semitism in
> Church history. This seems no different. If the Jewish God is all these
> things, then so are all the Jews that recognize him as their God, as well as the
> non-religious Jews who are heirs to the Jewish culture.
>
>
>

I think Dawkins is just being Dawkins, and maybe
the rant is just because too many fundys have pulled his chain.
On the other hand, there are people out there who are looking
for something (anything) to pin on the Jews. They could
seize on this kind of stuff, distort beyond recognition, and
use it to espouse their own "solution". But such people would
use anything to achieve that end.

I mainly think that the naive views of such people -- that if we could just
cut out that religion thing in the brain, the world would be a beautiful
place --- is just nonsense. Even by his own beloved Darwin, we can
see that the selective advantage is strongly toward a belief in God. If
that wasn't important to our survival, it would have been gone long ago.
From the cold viewpoint of an operating system (which is not even
conscious), it is akin to ripping out part of the kernel on a working system;
i.e., hubris.

by Grace we proceed,
Wayne

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Received on Wed, 4 Oct 2006 19:51:13 EDT