Richard Dawkins Congratulates Wales

… for being Atheist.

Source : The BBC

There’s something rather odd about being congratulated for having no faith. Perhaps in the same way it’s rather odd to be congratulated for having faith.

Perhaps the worst thing about the article is Richard Dawkins being his usual vitriolic self, by making such sweeping statements as:

He said: “People who are educated in religion are positively encouraged not to investigate, not to think sceptically about why they are here, but instead to accept what people wrote 2,000 years ago.

Now, the bizarre thing about this is that most members of the Church in Wales would have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. From all levels of the Church, from those that sit in the pews to those that stand in the pulpit, the Anglican Church (and not just in Wales, but in our sister Church in England), are encouraged to bring everything that they have to their worship and belief about God. That includes their questioning and their intelligence.

Sermons are delivered in a range of teaching from encouragement, to theological unpacking, through to debate with the modern ideas of the time. A simple check through the sermons on this blog will show that the Bible is not simply a book. It is much more than that.

It is this kind of broad-brush lie that makes Dawkins such a quotable Atheist. He’s not interested in actually getting to know the realities of the modern Church, and simply parrots the things that he saw as a child growing up, or the things that he read in Just William.

What seems incongruous, though, is that Dawkins posits that he is well-researched on his subject of choice. The problem is that increasingly he isn’t. There was a time, perhaps, when he was groundbreaking, but has has slipped into what is probably a fairly comfortable piece of ground where he is able to simply spout rage against the Church, despite not really having anything new to say about it. He blithely ignores the fact that, like everything, the Church changes and moves forward. He, like the Government, seems to forget that there are many denominations of Christians, indeed, many denominations of FAITHS in the UK, and as the world turns, so will we.

I have no problem with someone pointing at the extreme and backwards parts of Christianity, and shouting “shame”, and I will join them in that. However, blatant lies about the Church I will call them on.

So, Dawkins, can we have a reference to your broadbrush statement? Can you cite your source?

~BX