Well, this gives a whole new meaning to the term “Militant Atheism”: Call to hold Pope over abuse cases. The Age reports Dawkins’ article in the Washington Times in which he calls the Pope:
– “former head of the Inquisition”
– a leader of a “tinpot fiefdom”
– “A leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring behind closed doors for the position he now holds”
– “a man who believes he is infallible and acts the part”
– “a man whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless AIDS victims in Africa”
– “a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence”
For all this, he suggests that the remedy is that the Pope:
“should be arrested the moment he dares to set foot outside his tinpot fiefdom of the Vatican, and he should be tried in an appropriate civil – not ecclesiastical – court. That’s what should happen.”
Now that’s militant. It reveals the real objective of Militant Atheism Dawkins-style is to take on the biggest player on the world faith scene – and eliminate him.
Post script: Professor Dawkins has obviously moved on from his position which he stated in “The God Delusion” (pages 315-316):
The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of such retrospective opprobrium. For all sorts of reasons I dislike the Roman Catholic Church. But I dislike unfairness even more, and I can’t help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue, especially in Ireland and America.
HT to reader Paul for this.
Update: And from Edward in the UK here is something to make you giggle” Meanwhile, in the bunker…
Reminds me of nothing so much as Voltaire and his “Ecrasez l’infame!”
Of course the problem, as quite a few in the secular arm down through the ages have discovered, is: once you’ve captured the Pope, what do you do with him? If you hold him in custody, the people flock to him (Napoleon transported the Pope in a darkened carriage, but the people quickly worked out who was on board). If you kill him, you create a martyr, and before you know it, there’s a new Pope elected and you’re back at square one. If Dawkins really wanted to damage the papacy, he’d have to sow division and confusion by creating an anti-pope, but of course his convictions wouldn’t allow him to do that.
Um, David, shouldn’t that be “ballistic” ?
Anyway, see my latest post on ‘Glosses…’ for my theory as to why Dawkins has so much apparent credibility these days.
I don’t think Dawkins has much credibility with thinking people, do you?
Trouble is, Louise, there aren’t that many thinking people around, as my post concludes (blatant plug, I know).
No-one who has actually read “The God Delusion” could take him seriously. He suggests Kants moral theory works well with Peter Singers (Kant says humans must never be treated as a means, Singer says we should maximize preference even if that means killing humans), suggests Kant was a secret Atheist (one of the most serious Christians in history, proglomegena to metaphysics of morals says “I am going to give a philosophical account of the moral demands made by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount”), suggests that evolution explains away all apparent design (yet fails to explain why complexity and survivability direct evolution), he outright contradicts himself in some parts, it is a mish-mash of just terrible, terrible work. (These are just the contradictions that stuck in my head – there are more) If people read his book and still like what he has to say, then woe to them, because one should not ever find contradictions convincing. One could perhaps accept a work that at its heart was acceptable, with minor contradictions. Excepting Dawkins’ work on describing biology, he is almost always talking utter nonsense. I mean we like to say Duns Scotus and Ockham misinterpreted the Analogy of Being; at least they had a concept of Being. Dawkins…just…3 pages. How can 3 pages sufficiently answer the analogy of Being? With ALL the scholarship on it…how can 3 pages POSSIBLY be enough? It is just so stupid…
There is a silver lining to all this:
– repentance by those who sinned is needed, and is probably happening
– we are more focussed on things that are important
– eloquent support of Pope Benedict is coming from some unlikely places, eg Brendan O’Neill, an atheist ex-Catholic who writes for spiked:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8526/
I also think there is a lesson that reasoned thought is valuable. Cardinal Bertone probably now realises he made a mistake to make a public musing based on “I read somewhere”.
Even Richard Dawkins might be thinking his cause has been damaged by “jumping the shark” to use the new way of describing talking utter nonsense.
Anyway, today is Pope Benedict’s birthday.
Happy Birthday Papa B, the world hasn’t gone completely mad, although it might be hard to see that from the things you have heard over the last few weeks.
THE militant atheist Dawkins has become almost hysterica, as has old Christopher Hitchens.It is to be hoped that the former stops being blindsided by his scientific naturalism to look again at the wonders of nature and the latter is converetd by his brother Peter ( see old posting on this at GLOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE)