If you have some time, would any of you mind writing a letter to the
editor of my local newspaper regarding the following column? It is
written by Douglas Todd, their religious writer, in Saturday's edition
of the Vancouver Sun. Here it is. It is called "ATHEIST'S ARGUMENTS
ECHO AROUND THE ROOM:

"The world's most famous living atheist is correct: There is a
lot of bad religion out there. Biologist Richard Dawkins, author of
the publishing phenomenon, The God Delusion, is accurate when he
maintains that many religious people have caused a great deal of
destruction.
Just read about the hate-filled utterances and actions coming out
of militant Muslims in the Middle East and hard-line Christians in the
U.S. Dawkins relies on them heavily to make his case.
In readable and abrasive fashion, Dawkins calls for "atheistic
pride." He is urging quietistic atheists to speak out about the value
of rationalism, evidence-based sceince and social justice.
There is nothing wrong with atheist rallying in common cause,
especially in British Columbia, where a record 38 per cent of the
population identify as "non-religios" - including 14 per cent who say
they're atheists. As the defensive-sounding saying goes, some of my
best friends, as wel as family and colleagues, are atheists.
I often enjoy atheists company more than that of certain
religious people. Many atheists have a down-to-earth humanism, a
refreshing lack of magical thinking. And many atheists have made great
contributions, including Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus and Canada's
Jane Rule and Morecai Richler.
That said, Dawkins punchu polemic (somewhat like Sam Harris'
popular The End Of Faith) is, at best, a crude starting place for the
debate. It barely scratches the surface of the science-religion
dialogue, which thinkers have been engaging in for a century or more
producing thousands of books - which Dawkins doesn't seem to have
read.
For all Dawkins claims of being open=minded, he ends up coming
across as a smug idealogue - devoted to the civil religion of
"scientism," the faith that science will eventually answer all
questions and the only truths are those that can be verified in a
laboratory. One of the big rhetorical mistakes he makes is to focus
almost exclusively on the bad aspects of it. If Dawkins had wanted a
real dialogue, he would compare the best of religion, or maybe the
worst with the worst.
Instead, he ignores the dark side of atheism and science, which
have through history combined with greed and power-mongering to give
us Hitler, eugenics, Stalin, weapons of mass destruction amd
environmental degradation.
In one of the precious few sentences in which Dawkins positively
cites a religious person - Martin Luther King Jr. - he claims King's
Christianity was "incidental" to his non-violent battle for civil
rights. Such flourishes turn Dawkin's appeal for intellectual honesty
into a joke.
So does his recent remark in a U.S. newspaper that his broadside
against religion doesn't include the 60 million-member Anglican
Communion - since Anglicanism is a "weakened strain of the [religion]
virus. It's not the real McCoy."
Dawkins tries to get away with defining religion solely as
"supernaturalism." He argues that the only religion that deserves the
name posits God as basically a monarch in the sky - am authoritarian
patriarch with a magic wand. There's little doubt many people hold to
such supernatural beliefs. Perhaps they will be challenged by the
heating Dawkins tries to deliver in The God Delusion. If so, they need
to come up with a decent response.
But millions of other religious people would not consider Dawkins
an interesting intellectual opponent. The various forms of divinity
they're drawn to are far removed from the simplistic supernaturalism
that Dawkins runs out of breath trying to destroy.
Since Dawkins categorizes most people with nuanced spiritual
convictions as "weakened" or, better yet, "closet atheists," he
conveniently closes the circle of his argument. He avoids, for
instance, the insights of so-called :natural theology" which science
doesn't necessarily contradict.
And why doesn't Dawkins mount a response to Buddhism? Turns out
he knows absolutely nothing about it. He doesn't even realize Buddhism
is, in a subtle way, an "atheistic religion."
Maybe he'd like it.
Generally, it's not wise to review books by emphasizing what they
don't contain. But since Dawkins is proposing religion is the root of
alll evil, it's fair to retort that the British scientist knows next
to nothing about the history, diversity and depth of the phenomenon he
think he's blowing out of the water.
To be taken more seriously, Dawkins would have to show at least
some familiarity with a long list of religious thinkers - perhaps Jews
such as Hillil and Abrahan Joshua Heschel; Christians like Henri
Nouwen and Canada's Charles Taylor; Muslims such as Rumi and Averroes;
Hindus such as Sri Aurobindo and Arvid Sharma of Montreal; Buddhists
and Taoists such as THick Nhat Hanh and Lao Tzu; spiritually inclined
scientists like Charles Birch amd David Bohm, and theistic
philospophers like Friederich Hegel , Alfred North Whithead and PLato.
But such important religious figures are nowhere to be found in
The God Delusion. Leaving one to conclude: Dawkins needs to get out
more."




GRRRRRRR. This sanctimonious prig pisses me off on a weekly basis.

If you're interested in commenting, the email is:
sunletters@png.canwest.com

Letter limit 200 words, include name, address, phone number.

They also have an atheist on staff, whom I am urging to write a
rebuttal (his column appears side by side with the above "writer").
His name is peter McKnight, his e-mail address is
pmcknight@png.canwest.com

Finally, Douglas Todd's e-mail address (he's the writer of the above
column) is dtodd@png.canwest, although I think it's probably
dtodd@png.canwest.com and the last part got cut off in the paper.
Idiot.

If you have some time, would any of you mind writing a letter to the
editor of my local newspaper regarding the following column? It is
written by Douglas Todd, their religious writer, in Saturday's edition
of the Vancouver Sun. Here it is. It is called "ATHEIST'S ARGUMENTS
ECHO AROUND THE ROOM:

"The world's most famous living atheist is correct: There is a
lot of bad religion out there. Biologist Richard Dawkins, author of
the publishing phenomenon, The God Delusion, is accurate when he
maintains that many religious people have caused a great deal of
destruction.
Just read about the hate-filled utterances and actions coming out
of militant Muslims in the Middle East and hard-line Christians in the
U.S. Dawkins relies on them heavily to make his case.
In readable and abrasive fashion, Dawkins calls for "atheistic
pride." He is urging quietistic atheists to speak out about the value
of rationalism, evidence-based sceince and social justice.
There is nothing wrong with atheist rallying in common cause,
especially in British Columbia, where a record 38 per cent of the
population identify as "non-religios" - including 14 per cent who say
they're atheists. As the defensive-sounding saying goes, some of my
best friends, as wel as family and colleagues, are atheists.
I often enjoy atheists company more than that of certain
religious people. Many atheists have a down-to-earth humanism, a
refreshing lack of magical thinking. And many atheists have made great
contributions, including Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus and Canada's
Jane Rule and Morecai Richler.
That said, Dawkins punchu polemic (somewhat like Sam Harris'
popular The End Of Faith) is, at best, a crude starting place for the
debate. It barely scratches the surface of the science-religion
dialogue, which thinkers have been engaging in for a century or more
producing thousands of books - which Dawkins doesn't seem to have
read.
For all Dawkins claims of being open=minded, he ends up coming
across as a smug idealogue - devoted to the civil religion of
"scientism," the faith that science will eventually answer all
questions and the only truths are those that can be verified in a
laboratory. One of the big rhetorical mistakes he makes is to focus
almost exclusively on the bad aspects of it. If Dawkins had wanted a
real dialogue, he would compare the best of religion, or maybe the
worst with the worst.
Instead, he ignores the dark side of atheism and science, which
have through history combined with greed and power-mongering to give
us Hitler, eugenics, Stalin, weapons of mass destruction amd
environmental degradation.
In one of the precious few sentences in which Dawkins positively
cites a religious person - Martin Luther King Jr. - he claims King's
Christianity was "incidental" to his non-violent battle for civil
rights. Such flourishes turn Dawkin's appeal for intellectual honesty
into a joke.
So does his recent remark in a U.S. newspaper that his broadside
against religion doesn't include the 60 million-member Anglican
Communion - since Anglicanism is a "weakened strain of the [religion]
virus. It's not the real McCoy."
Dawkins tries to get away with defining religion solely as
"supernaturalism." He argues that the only religion that deserves the
name posits God as basically a monarch in the sky - am authoritarian
patriarch with a magic wand. There's little doubt many people hold to
such supernatural beliefs. Perhaps they will be challenged by the
heating Dawkins tries to deliver in The God Delusion. If so, they need
to come up with a decent response.
But millions of other religious people would not consider Dawkins
an interesting intellectual opponent. The various forms of divinity
they're drawn to are far removed from the simplistic supernaturalism
that Dawkins runs out of breath trying to destroy.
Since Dawkins categorizes most people with nuanced spiritual
convictions as "weakened" or, better yet, "closet atheists," he
conveniently closes the circle of his argument. He avoids, for
instance, the insights of so-called :natural theology" which science
doesn't necessarily contradict.
And why doesn't Dawkins mount a response to Buddhism? Turns out
he knows absolutely nothing about it. He doesn't even realize Buddhism
is, in a subtle way, an "atheistic religion."
Maybe he'd like it.
Generally, it's not wise to review books by emphasizing what they
don't contain. But since Dawkins is proposing religion is the root of
alll evil, it's fair to retort that the British scientist knows next
to nothing about the history, diversity and depth of the phenomenon he
think he's blowing out of the water.
To be taken more seriously, Dawkins would have to show at least
some familiarity with a long list of religious thinkers - perhaps Jews
such as Hillil and Abrahan Joshua Heschel; Christians like Henri
Nouwen and Canada's Charles Taylor; Muslims such as Rumi and Averroes;
Hindus such as Sri Aurobindo and Arvid Sharma of Montreal; Buddhists
and Taoists such as THick Nhat Hanh and Lao Tzu; spiritually inclined
scientists like Charles Birch amd David Bohm, and theistic
philospophers like Friederich Hegel , Alfred North Whithead and PLato.
But such important religious figures are nowhere to be found in
The God Delusion. Leaving one to conclude: Dawkins needs to get out
more."




GRRRRRRR. This sanctimonious prig pisses me off on a weekly basis.

If you're interested in commenting, the email is:
sunletters@png.canwest.com

Letter limit 200 words, include name, address, phone number.

They also have an atheist on staff, whom I am urging to write a
rebuttal (his column appears side by side with the above "writer").
His name is peter McKnight, his e-mail address is
pmcknight@png.canwest.com

Finally, Douglas Todd's e-mail address (he's the writer of the above
column) is dtodd@png.canwest, although I think it's probably
dtodd@png.canwest.com and the last part got cut off in the paper.
Idiot.

If you have some time, would any of you mind writing a letter to the
editor of my local newspaper regarding the following column? It is
written by Douglas Todd, their religious writer, in Saturday's edition
of the Vancouver Sun. Here it is. It is called "ATHEIST'S ARGUMENTS
ECHO AROUND THE ROOM:

"The world's most famous living atheist is correct: There is a
lot of bad religion out there. Biologist Richard Dawkins, author of
the publishing phenomenon, The God Delusion, is accurate when he
maintains that many religious people have caused a great deal of
destruction.

That said, Dawkins punchu polemic (somewhat like Sam Harris'
popular The End Of Faith) is, at best, a crude starting place for the
debate. It barely scratches the surface of the science-religion
dialogue, which thinkers have been engaging in for a century or more
producing thousands of books - which Dawkins doesn't seem to have
read.
For all Dawkins claims of being open=minded, he ends up coming
across as a smug idealogue - devoted to the civil religion of
"scientism," the faith that science will eventually answer all
questions and the only truths are those that can be verified in a
laboratory.

One of the big rhetorical mistakes he makes is to focus
almost exclusively on the bad aspects of it. If Dawkins had wanted a
real dialogue, he would compare the best of religion, or maybe the
worst with the worst.
Instead, he ignores the dark side of atheism and science, which
have through history combined with greed and power-mongering to give
us Hitler, eugenics, Stalin, weapons of mass destruction amd
environmental degradation.

In one of the precious few sentences in which Dawkins positively
cites a religious person - Martin Luther King Jr. - he claims King's
Christianity was "incidental" to his non-violent battle for civil
rights. Such flourishes turn Dawkin's appeal for intellectual honesty
into a joke.

So does his recent remark in a U.S. newspaper that his broadside
against religion doesn't include the 60 million-member Anglican
Communion - since Anglicanism is a "weakened strain of the [religion]
virus. It's not the real McCoy."

Dawkins tries to get away with defining religion solely as
"supernaturalism." He argues that the only religion that deserves the
name posits God as basically a monarch in the sky - am authoritarian
patriarch with a magic wand. There's little doubt many people hold to
such supernatural beliefs. Perhaps they will be challenged by the
heating Dawkins tries to deliver in The God Delusion. If so, they need
to come up with a decent response.
But millions of other religious people would not consider Dawkins
an interesting intellectual opponent. The various forms of divinity
they're drawn to are far removed from the simplistic supernaturalism
that Dawkins runs out of breath trying to destroy.

Since Dawkins categorizes most people with nuanced spiritual
convictions as "weakened" or, better yet, "closet atheists," he
conveniently closes the circle of his argument. He avoids, for
instance, the insights of so-called :natural theology" which science
doesn't necessarily contradict.

GRRRRRRR. This sanctimonious prig pisses me off on a weekly basis.

If you're interested in commenting, the email is:
sunletters@png.canwest.com

Letter limit 200 words, include name, address, phone number.

They also have an atheist on staff, whom I am urging to write a rebuttal
(his column appears side by side with the above "writer"). His name is
peter McKnight, his e-mail address is