The Times: How dare you call me a fundamentalist

13 May 2007

I didn’t pick up The Times over the past week as I’ve was incredibly busy. If I had, I might been aware of this opinion piece by Richard Dawkins, who takes general forms of the criticisms that have been levied at him since publishing The God Delusion and answers them individually.

Here’s an example of one of his replies, which echoes many of my thoughts of the purpose of The God Delusion:

You ignore the best of religion and instead . . . â€œyou attack crude, rabble-rousing chancers like Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, rather than facing up to sophisticated theologians like Bonhoeffer or the Archbishop of Canterbury.â€

If subtle, nuanced religion predominated, the world would be a better place and I would have written a different book. The melancholy truth is that decent, understated religion is numerically negligible. Most believers echo Robertson, Falwell or Haggard, Osama bin Laden or Ayatollah Khomeini. These are not straw men. The world needs to face them, and my book does so.
Richard Dawkins

You can read the full article over at The Times.

Note: the attribution at the foot of The Times‘ article leads me to believe that this may be included in a fore- or afterword in the paperback edition of The God Delusion, which is out on the 21st May.

/hattip to Ã†sahÃ¦ttr for alerting me to this.

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2486 Responses2007-05-13+19%3A20%3A11nullifidian to “The Times: How dare you call me a fundamentalist”

TW on May 13th, 2007 10:29 pm

As is often the case with these things, the comments posted on the article provide a wonderful insight into people’s misunderstandings. One I especially liked was:

Atheist polemicists confuse proof with brainwashing. No-one can make another say what he doesn’t want to say. They ask for proof of God from natural philosophy when they know that that is illogical. The inference about God is that He is not material (which is why a Flying Spaghetti Monster wouldn’t be a logical inference about the uncaused Cause). But instead of me pointing that out again why doesn’t an atheist polemicist offer us a masterclass in scientific proof? Prove to us that genocide is wrong. Prove a man’s guilt – i.e. that he had the mens rea. Prove that World War II happened – with a repeatable experiment. Prove that the scientific method gives us knowledge. Please show all your workings. If you cannot do this then, as you say, stop preaching to the rest of us.

Kevin, London,

Brilliant isn’t it. Complete misrepresentation of the goals of the book, or the goals / function of the scientific method. Add this to an admittance of the non-existence of God, and you get a real chuckle rouser :-)
Bruce on May 14th, 2007 5:42 am

This reminds me a bit of some of the discussion I have had with Arthur at Five Public Opinions, where he/we took issue with a (facetious) charge of militance/fundamentalism. We also had to put up with the “why are you criticising marginal fundamentalist Christians and not fundamentalist Muslims?” meme as well.

(Because anti-secular fundamentalist Christianity has it’s claws into the major political parties in Australia, is being placated with church-state breeching legislation, isn’t a small minority and is growing rapidly in Australia. Whereas fundamentalist Islam in Australia is an extreme minority and we do criticise it anyway.)
TW on May 14th, 2007 11:08 am

Sorry to keep going on about this, but the Comments on that post over at the times are brilliant. Take these three geniuses for example:

No, Dawkins, you are a shrill, bigoted, fundamentalist atheist, as dangerous as Bush or bin Laden, and the kind of person I would cross the street to avoid. Now take your crappy book and get stuffed

whitey, Sydney,

Why does Richard Dawkins spend so much time and effort in attacking something he does not think exist?

Eddie Ward, Llandrindod Wells, Powys

Blah blah blah Dawkins. You cannot have an infinite regression of secondary causes. Try to read at least some elementary philosophical theology before launching out on to the Pacific Ocean of arguments for and against the existence of God in a rubber dinghy. Remember, your lot gave us Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Darwin-inspired eugenics. Nothing to be proud of I would say…

JL, Paris, France

You just can’t teach that sort of thinking…
Bruce on May 14th, 2007 3:19 pm

I won’t teach that kind of thinking.
TW on May 14th, 2007 3:21 pm

:-)
nullifidian on May 14th, 2007 4:21 pm

Bruce wrote:

We also had to put up with the â€œwhy are you criticising marginal fundamentalist Christians and not fundamentalist Muslims?â€ meme as well.

I’ve posted about that before…

Those comments are so full of holes, I wouldn’t know where to start peering through them.