And talking about those who misrepresent Dawkins, Our Maddy of the Sorrows, Madeleine Bunting, demonstrates once again that she is ever-dependable in this department. She comments on that radio interview between Dawkins and Cornwell, and introduces her article with:
Richard Dawkins, finally agreed to debate religion with one of his critics. He has repeatedly refused a head-to-head with protagonists such as his Oxford colleague, Professor Alister McGrath, but on the Today programme this morning, we got a snippet of a fascinating exchange between two very clever men.
Clearly she’s living in another world. As Richard Dawkins himself felt obliged to point out in the comments on her piece:
She only had go google "Alister McGrath" and "Richard Dawkins" to find several references to our debate at the Oxford Literary Festival, chaired by Joan Bakewell in March of this year. It is available for her to listen to at http://richarddawkins.net/article,802,Richard-Dawkins-at-The-Sunday-Times-Oxford-Literary-Festival,Richard-DawkinsI would more strongly recommend to her, however, the long conversation between Alister McGrath and me which she will find at http://richarddawkins.net/article,1212,Richard-Dawkins-and-Alister-McGrath,Root-of-All-Evil-Uncut-InterviewsMadeline Bunting will be disappointed to discover that, in both these debates, I am conciliatory, civilised, and not, I think it is fair to say, ‘shrill’ or ‘arrogant’. Perhaps, after this, and after examining the evidence of sharp practice by her hero John Cornwell at http://richarddawkins.net/article,1610,Honest-Mistakes-or-Willful-Mendacity,Richard-Dawkins Madeline Bunting might finally begin to get the message. Is it too much to hope that she’ll go the whole hog and actually read The God Delusion before the next time she sounds off about it?
I fear that the good professor hopes too much. It seems pretty clear that she hasn’t actually read his book. After all, she writes:
And this is why I think Dawkins is dangerous. He has spent enough time now thinking about religion and listening to thoughtful religious people such as the Harries, yet he persists with a parody, a childlike perception of God and religion. Of course there’s no man with a beard crashing about in the sky.
As Chris White points out in the comments:
Blimey Madeleine, you really haven’t read The God Delusion, have you? (Nor, in all probability, will you read this.)Page 31: "The God Hypothesis should not stand or fall with its most unlovely instantiation, Yahweh, nor his insipidly opposite Christian face, ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’. […] Instead I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a super-human, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us."And, crucially, page 36: "This is as good a moment as any to forestall an inevitable retort to the book, one that would otherwise — as sure as night follows day — turn up in a review: ‘The God that Dawkins doesn’t believe in is a God that I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in an old man in the sky with a long white beard.’ That old man is an irrelevant distraction and his beard is as tedious as it is long. Indeed, the distraction is worse than irrelevant. Its very silliness is calculated to distract attention from the fact that what the speaker really believes is not a whole lot less silly. I know you don’t believe in an old man sitting on a cloud, so let’s not waste any more time on that. I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented."Please try reading the book before pronouncing upon it. You might actually learn something.
Amen to that.
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