A letter to Mr. Dawkins...

[jo]

[postodave]

[gameld]

jo: i would like to point out that i do not think mr. dawkins is not an atheist. i just think that 'God does not exist' is not his primary thrust. it is not his main concern. he is more concerned that people practice religion and this is itself diabolical and offensive to his own character. in this way he very much puts himself in the position of God by decrying vehemently with wild accusations (as is appropriate to a simple human who is more concerned with his emotions about an issue than the truth of it, something everyone falls into, myself included, though a true God would not lower himself to it) anything that he disagrees with. it is an 'agree with me or die' sort of mentality, though not (yet) that extreme in action.

[alecto]

[jo]

Dawkins is British though - isn't he? - and in this country the whole creationism thing is pretty much a non starter... most Christians here accept evolution as a matter of course. In fact British religion has never struck me as being particularly excessive or dangerous.. I am not sure where the problem with it comes from for him.

[postodave]

And in any case Dawkins has had lots of opportunities to engage in dialogue with Christians who are not creationists such as the dialogue with Poole I gave the links to, or the following

And often when he tals to Christians who do have the cappacity to argue back he has been unable to defend his position. More often he has simply refused to debate. It is perhaps understandable that he refuses to debate with Creationists on the grounds that this gives them credibility but he was challenged some years ago by the historian Paul Johnson to debate the existance of God and repeatedly refused on the grounds that Johnson was acting out of self interest. Although as Johnson pointed out on Dawkins view its hard to see why anyone should ever be doing anyting else. I enjoy Dawkins writing and he has certainly helped me to understand evolution but he has had plenty of opportunites to debate these issues with Christians who are his intelectual peers and he always seems to me to come off badly in the debate.

I didn't put the links in to that stuff with Poole yesterday. Sorry