[asa] dawkins and unbelief (again)

I'm presently reading a hard copy of an article about Dawkins in "The
Spectator," a highbrow magazine from the UK. The issue for 9 December 06
has an interview by Rod Liddle.

Dawkins: "I don't think you can disprove God. But I don't think you can
disprove God as you can't disprove fairies and unicorns. It's a kind of
scientific purism that makes me say I can't be an absolute 100 per cent
atheist."

Liddle: "But, to read your book, you are 100 per cent, aren't you?"

D: "No. Some of my friends and colleagues would say that [for them] it's
100 per cent."

L: "Well, I counter, having read the book: it's 100 per cent for you, too;
it burns through on every page. Otherwise the acres of rhetoric would have
been displaced by pure, disinterested science."

****

Ted: Let's say, perhaps, to be generous, 99 44/100 per cent for Dawkins. I
might be a bit low, but let's at least be generous.

As Liddle writes in another place, Dawkins' latest book is a "broadside
against God and those who are stupid enough to believe in him, or her, or
it."

Pim, my comments to you are along the same lines. I am hardly the only
person who reads Dawkins, and finds it impossible not also to read between
the lines, to the deep seated arrogance and hatefully low view of religious
believers, as persons, that Dawkins seems to hold. He really thinks we're
stupid to believe what we do. Ditto for Dennett and Shermer--who takes
Scientific American down with him. This isn't about ID, that's really quite
incidental to this conversation. It's about fairies, unicorns, and God.
It's on that level. In his own words.

Ted

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Received on Mon Apr 2 15:32:41 2007