Dawkins getting rational?

Whether it is age or argument, Richard Dawkins at least seems to have changed tactics recently. While earlier denying any intellectual merit at all in holding that a God may exist, he started his latest debate with John Lennox by saying that A serious case could be made for a deistic God.

The report is much of a hoot, some of which of course may be due to it not excactly being written by a disciple of Dawkins. After the previous debate with Lennox, it seems rather revealing that he this time chose to leave his standard arena of distorting Aquinas and arguments for God.

Maybe he has realised that he has been found out? His bluff has been called so many times that it seems appropriate with a new approach.

So then, how does Dawkins now proceed to debate a fellow scientist on the existence of God? By focusing on science? On theistic arguments?

No, by historical arguments against the divinity of Jesus.

Instead, Dawkins was able to move the debate onto a specific attack on Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus, which is a very different argument and obscured the central point of contention – the claim that science had buried God. The fact that Dawkins now appears to be so reluctant publicly to defend his own position on his own territory of scientific rationalism – and indeed, even to have shifted his ground – is a tribute above all to the man he was debating once again on Tuesday evening.

While this may have been a surprise for Lennox, who neither is a Historian, he was at least able to make Dawkins see some historical light.

In the debate, under pressure from Lennox Dawkins was actually forced to retract his previous claim that Jesus had probably ‘never existed’.

That, however, didn't stop Dawkins from committing other errors, revealing his distorted view of the history of science.

And in a revealing aside, when Lennox remarked that the Natural History Museum in which they were debating – in front of dinosaur skeletons -- had been founded for the glory of God, Dawkins scoffed that of course this was absolutely untrue.

But it was true. Construction of the museum was instigated between 1855 and 1860 by the Regius Professor of Medicine, Sir Henry Acland. According to Keith Thomson of the Sigma XI Scientific Research Society, the funds for the project came from the surplus in the University Press’s Bible account as this was deemed only appropriate for a building dedicated to science as a glorification of God’s works.

While Dawkins may not walk the way of Antony Flew yet, he seems at least to have become wise enough to drop or hesitate about several of his arguments from The God delusion.

Darwin hit by friendly fire

Read all about it at the new Quodlibeta, formerly Bede's Journal.

The Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph all feature pieces this morning on the Michael Reiss debacle. All are highly critical of the Royal Societies response and the way in which Reiss’s comments were misrepresented by the media. This has been a PR disaster for the scientific community. Intelligent design now has claim to a legitimate martyr, despite the fact that Reiss himself is opposed to it. The response by Roberts and Kroto has been lamentable, forcing even Richard Dawkins to admit that the proceedings ‘come a little too close to a witch-hunt for my squeamish taste’.

Keep it up, Dickie!

All barrels blazing

Julie Burchill has a go with all barrels blazing in Guardian:

First of all, let me tell you what this isn't. It's not some "I-was-lost-and-now-I'm-found" sob story. These days, many people reach out to faith "to find peace". I had too much peace in my life already. In faith, I was looking to be troubled – on behalf of other people. Every film and pop starlet, trawling after a reason to exist, says, "I'm not religious – but I am spiritual". I don't have a spiritual bone in my body; but what I am, is religious. I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. I'm a Christian Zionist, as well as a Christian feminist and a Christian socialist. But over the past two decades, almost without me knowing it, the Christian part has become the most important.

Even if I probably don't quite see face to face with her theology (that would be a rare treat), I wholeheartedly enjoy her polemics.

My favourite vicar, the Reverend Gavin Ashenden of Sussex University, never says, "I am a Christian," but rather "I'm trying to be a Christian". Me too. Between the darkness that faces me from within and the darkness that faces me from without, it may just prove to be the hardest thing I've ever done. I love it.

Maybe no coincidence that her name to a stray foreigner rhymes so perfectly with Churchill.

Friday again

Time for some blasphemy.

Dawkins blows it

Sometimes you have to grab your arm rather hard to check if you're awake. I had no intention of writing on Richard Dawkins until next month. And then, suddenly, he proves beyond doubt that he is the madman who has lost everything except his reason, according to a recent news report.

In his speech, Dawkins portrayed a black-and-white intellectual battle between atheism and religion. He denounced the "preposterous nonsense of religious customs" and compared religion to racism. He also gave no quarter to moderate or liberal believers, asserting that "so-called moderate Christianity is simply an evasion." "If you've been taught to believe it by moderates, what's to stop you from taking the next step and blowing yourself up?" he said.

The rationale behind this is no doubt Dawkins' blind faith in all religion being blind faith. He still hasn't learned anything from Alister McGrath. In Norway this attitude resulted yesterday in a rather extreme urbanist, and notorious public speaker, declaring the Nobel Prize Laureate Al Gore to be a Christian Fundamentalist.

The logic is simple. Gore is a believing Christian, hence he also must be a fundamentalist - or he wouldn't really believe. All religions are alike, especially suicide bombers.

So the question is. When will Al Gore leave his cover of fighting against global warming and go on to blow himself or the planet up, whatever his fancy is?

And if the danger is really blind faith, when will Dawkins take the nest step and blow himself up? Not to mention start to advocate arresting anyone suspected of a tad of theism, before they blow anyone up.

At least there is hope that Gore will wait till he receives the Nobel Prize in Oslo this December. With Dawkins there is no time limit.