Who would you rather be touched by?

I think Dawkins was drunk when he wrote the last section of his book. He argues that it's worse to be raised religiously than to be sexually molested as a child. This is not a joke. Start reading at page 317.

He starts off by relating an off-the-cuff remark he made at a conference, when asked about Catholic priest sex scandal, shocked the audience by saying that the molestation wasn't as bad as the religious teaching. Instead of letting this hang as an off-color joke in the text, though, he goes on to try to argue the point! He begins by saying that being molested isn't as bad as people say, saying that he'd been molested. He defends Catholic priests on the charges of molesting children, but attacks them for teaching religion. He then cites one letter from a reader saying she'd been sexually abused as a child, but who felt religion was the worse damage. Finally he tries to get a therapist specializing in "religion abuse" to say the same, but, probably because she has clinical experience treating child sexual abuse -- she waffles. Dawkins, though, does not. To him, religion is a form of child abuse worse than sexual abuse. The next time I see a sexually abused child in the hospital, I'll be sure to console her by saying that at least her parents weren't Christian.

This should be enough to end any discussion of Dawkins as a serious thinker, or even a serious representative of atheism.

I will, in subsequent posts, address other criticisms he raises. You'll forgive me for not quoting from the text, but once I got to the section about children, I sped-read to the end so I could return the book to the bookstore as fast as possible.

So 19th Century ...

Dawkins rarely addresses anything beyond fundamentalist religious belief. When he does, he has a lot of trouble. Describing his conversations with bishops and archbishops, he says the conversation is "interesting", but "nothing anyone would recognize as Christianity". What?

This, in Dawkins' view, is the best compliment to modern Christians: he doesn't recognize them as Christian. All the same, I'm not sure where Dawkins gets off deciding he, and not the Archbishop, is the arbiter of Christian orthodoxy.

According to Dawkins, when he attacks Christianity, these theologians respond by saying "That's so 19th century." As in: you are attacking a 19th century version of Christianity, which is no longer relevant.

In fairness, though, for most people, the choice is presented (almost) as starkly as Dawkins presents it: 19th century Christianity or nothing.

This is largely because sophisticated Christians keep their theology to themselves - a position, I think, which is no longer appropriate.

Religious nutters

In my view, Dawkins attacks a straw man version of religion: literalist readings of the Bible, a hateful God, a young earth, designed animals, harps in heaven, everyday miracles etc. But, in fairness to Dawkins, this is only a straw man in that it is an easy argument to beat down, not in the sense of being artificial. People do believe this stuff -- and perhaps they really shouldn't.

Dawkins, however, admits no alternative except atheism. He refuses to acknowledge any sophisticated version of religion (except Buddhism, for some reason). He only quotes religious fundamentalists: his quotes come from websites, not books; from fundamentalists, not, well, smart people.

It is worthwhile to note that when Dawkins is on target, attacking simplistic fundamentalism, he is doing something worth doing.