A leap of understanding
Andrew Brown
September 14, 2006 05:45 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/andrew_brown/2006/09/post_387.html
I have just finished reviewing Richard Dawkins' new book on God for
someone else and spent a sleepless night wondering if I should really
have been so cruel about it. It's rubbish, of course; but why say so?
What is it about the jeering, smug atheism so well represented on the
internet, as well as in Dawkins' books, that makes me so very angry?
Perhaps this is a rage at heresy, since in lots of ways I think he's
right, and our disagreements ought to be quite trivial. But the more I
think of them, the more serious they become.
I certainly agree with him that religion can represent a monstrous
betrayal of the intellectual's commitment to the truth, and that it can
be extremely dangerous, both to its participants and to the innocent
bystanders. Think how much better a place the world would be without
any concept of the sacred, which has made Jerusalem so valuable to all
three monotheistic religions that some of their members are prepared to
risk a quite literal Armageddon to get hold of it. Wouldn't we all be
better off without such beliefs? Is there any rational reason to
suppose that there exists a God who cares who owns Jerusalem?
.
|
