Richard Dawkins upset that public doesn’t like him

God-hater says his attacks on religion are ‘thoughtful and reflective’

by Warren Nunn

www.CGPGrey.com

Misotheist Richard Dawkins feels unloved and misunderstood … and is bothered by it.

In an interview¹ about the release of his memoir An Appetite For Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, Dawkins was concerned by the fact that the public had an unfavourable perception of him:

I seem to be perceived as aggressive and strident and I don’t actually think I am strident and aggressive. What I think is that we have all become so accustomed to seeing religion ring-fenced by a wall of special protection that when someone delivers even a mild criticism of religion, it’s heard as aggressive when it isn’t. I like to think I’m more thoughtful and reflective.

It’s not clear what Dawkins considers are his ‘thoughtful and reflective’ observations about religion because he has described it as a ‘virus of the mind’ and said parents giving children religious instruction were guilty of ‘child abuse’. That fits being aggressive and strident.

In response to a question about the connection between his work on evolution and attacks on religion, Dawkins again showed his prejudice against Christianity—and particularly young-earth creationists—with a straw-man argument:

So in a way even my science books are forced to take a stance, not against posh theologians who accept evolution but surely the absolute majority of religious people in the world who literally believe that every species was separately created and even, in the case of the Abrahamic religions, believe that Adam and Eve were created 6,000 years ago². Chemists and other scientists don’t have to battle with that.³

If Dawkins insists he is not aggressive and strident, why then make such a wild claim that a majority of ‘religious people’ (presumably he means creationists too) believe in the ‘fixity of species’, in that God created all the species we see today?

Creationists don’t suggest that and have long pointed out that’s not what the Bible teaches in Genesis but rather it speaks clearly of God creating all kinds of organisms which reproduced ‘after their kind’.

Dr. Jonathan Sarfati explains:

Each of the original kinds was created with a vast amount of information. God made sure that the original creatures had enough variety in their genetic information so that their descendants could adapt to a wide variety of environments.⁴

As well, the ‘Abrahamic religion’ Islam does not hold to the same view of creation as that set forth in Genesis.⁵

Some Muslim apologists say the Koran is compatible with evolution where the Bible is not and that the Koran shows that Allah revealed to Muhammad details about the ‘big bang’, ancient universe and evolution long before scientists began to ‘discover’ such ‘facts’.⁶

And Dawkins cannot help himself with a reference to ‘posh theologians who accept evolution’ whom he excludes from his criticism but on a previous occasion said of such compromisers:

The moderates’ [liberals’] position seems to me to be fence-sitting. They half-believe in the Bible but how do they decide which parts to believe literally and which parts are just allegorical?⁷

The article’s author Andrew Anthony challenged Dawkins on why it was that his book The God Delusion, which was written in response to the September 11 attacks on America, turned into a ‘sustained critique of Christianity’.

Seemingly unimpressed by Dawkins’s reply that he knew more about Christianity as he was brought up in Christian schools, Anthony exposed the hypocrisy as well as his own bias:

All the same, it seemed a little perverse to be galvanised by the acts of followers of one religion to set about debunking the presumptions of another, especially as Christianity, particularly in Europe, and specifically in Britain, had become largely a toothless affair which had almost reformed itself out of existence. Did he really think that Christianity matters very much nowadays?⁸

Anthony also saw through Dawkins’s statement that ‘maybe it would be a shame if Christianity died’, by responding:

But then he goes on to insist that a more muscular and sinister version of Christianity is flourishing in many parts of the world.⁹

Dawkins’s contradictions are again on show when asked if Darwinism ‘informs his everyday apprehension of life’:

Well, in one way it does. My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. That’s never far from my thoughts, that sense of amazement. On the other hand I certainly don’t allow Darwinism to influence my feelings about human social life.

The assertion that he doesn’t allow Darwinism to influence his feelings about human social life is nonsense given the energy he expends attacking creationists (in particular) whom he sees as a danger to science.

Because it is so ‘obvious’ that Darwin’s natural selection has caused redwood trees and humans, why does Dawkins bother with those in society who don’t come to the same conclusion? But Dawkins is so tied up in confused logic, he can’t see the leaves for the redwood trees. Informed Christians don’t come to the same conclusion for good reason—e.g., natural selection doesn’t produce information; it removes it.¹⁰

Dawkins makes no secret of the fact that he hates the very idea of God which again is contradictory; because how can an atheist hate someone that doesn’t—in their thinking—exist?

Perhaps creationist author Richard Barns was right to point out in The Dawkins Proof for the existence of God—that Dawkins lives as if the God of the Bible does exist. No wonder he’s so upset.

We would like to remind Richard that he is loved. We know of many Christians who regularly pray for him, that his heart will be softened and his eyes opened to the Creator God. And God loves him more than he can imagine. Richard, check this out: “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)