It is fascinating, when you spell check Dawkins the computer suggests as an alternative - Darwin.
I think that's pretty eerie.
Is it the ghost in the machine displaying its sense humour?
Is it even stranger than that?
Is it a divine message, from a messenger using the spell checker as a high tech Ouija board?
Who knows but we do know that Dawkins is back in the news, again.
It is one thing choosing to not believe what other people believe, fair enough we don't all think the same thing about things, but to embark on a wholesale campaign to prove that they are wrong, in the face of, presumably, your being right, well it seems a bit extreme really.
I decided that there was something in all this religion business when I was really quite young.
When I headed off to theological college I was just twenty years old.
Too young to know anything really.
But what I enjoyed about theological college, my first year was a foundation course called christian humanism, was exploring the christian scriptures, the Old and New Testaments and challenging some of the teaching, a bit like Dawkins I suppose.
When I was in my second year I came across a book by Bishop Barnes a former Bishop of Birmingham which challenged the received wisdom on the resurrection, Barnes who would have enjoyed debating Dawkins, developed a thesis that argued that the resurrection could not have happened and the foundations of the church were to be traced back to a kind of confidence trick by the disciples.
I decided to write my essay on the resurrection based on Barnes' book.
When I picked my manuscript out of the tutors in-tray, he had not marked it with an alpha, beta or gamma, the best being an Alpha triple plus and the worst a Gamma triple minus, I usually came somewhere in the middle.
Rather he had scrawled on the bottom of the essay, B*****k's.
So that was me put firmly in my place!
According to Dawkins a lot of Christians don't believe what the church teaches, well that's true and I imagine I might be one of them.
But it doesn't stop me feeling that the only story I know which makes sense of the world as I experience it is the story of the birth, death and resurrection of the man, Jesus of Nazareth.
More than that the story also steers me in the direction of being a better person than I would be left to my own devices.
There is in the christian tradition an ethical perspective which argues that we should respect and value the humanity of other people, it was this ethical perspective that led me with others to set up an organisation called Church Action on Poverty and to focus my work in the area called social responsibility.
In the news today is the story of the vicar murdered in his vicarage, we don't know the full story of what happened yet, but the story is a reminder of the vulnerability that so many clergy experience as they seek to follow their calling.
But also in the news today is the Queen exercising her role as Defender of the Faith.
The secular lobby has been quietly undermining the churches position for some years and has now gained in confidence, interestingly what it has done is to galvanise the churches into a robust defence of their mission.
Whatever the outcome of this debate it remains true that, in most places where I have worked the faiths have worked together to better their communities, notably in Bradford where, church, mosque and synagogue sought to witness to the unity of the city and its citizens.
Clearly the history of the church is the history of human sinfulness but it is also the history of a belief that beyond history in the realms of the eternal possibilities there may be a different purpose to human life, that our names, written in the hand of one we choose to call God, may have an eternal significance, or it might simply be confused with someones else's name ............
I think that's pretty eerie.
Is it the ghost in the machine displaying its sense humour?
Is it even stranger than that?
Is it a divine message, from a messenger using the spell checker as a high tech Ouija board?
Who knows but we do know that Dawkins is back in the news, again.
It is one thing choosing to not believe what other people believe, fair enough we don't all think the same thing about things, but to embark on a wholesale campaign to prove that they are wrong, in the face of, presumably, your being right, well it seems a bit extreme really.
I decided that there was something in all this religion business when I was really quite young.
When I headed off to theological college I was just twenty years old.
Too young to know anything really.
But what I enjoyed about theological college, my first year was a foundation course called christian humanism, was exploring the christian scriptures, the Old and New Testaments and challenging some of the teaching, a bit like Dawkins I suppose.
When I was in my second year I came across a book by Bishop Barnes a former Bishop of Birmingham which challenged the received wisdom on the resurrection, Barnes who would have enjoyed debating Dawkins, developed a thesis that argued that the resurrection could not have happened and the foundations of the church were to be traced back to a kind of confidence trick by the disciples.
I decided to write my essay on the resurrection based on Barnes' book.
When I picked my manuscript out of the tutors in-tray, he had not marked it with an alpha, beta or gamma, the best being an Alpha triple plus and the worst a Gamma triple minus, I usually came somewhere in the middle.
Rather he had scrawled on the bottom of the essay, B*****k's.
So that was me put firmly in my place!
According to Dawkins a lot of Christians don't believe what the church teaches, well that's true and I imagine I might be one of them.
But it doesn't stop me feeling that the only story I know which makes sense of the world as I experience it is the story of the birth, death and resurrection of the man, Jesus of Nazareth.
More than that the story also steers me in the direction of being a better person than I would be left to my own devices.
There is in the christian tradition an ethical perspective which argues that we should respect and value the humanity of other people, it was this ethical perspective that led me with others to set up an organisation called Church Action on Poverty and to focus my work in the area called social responsibility.
In the news today is the story of the vicar murdered in his vicarage, we don't know the full story of what happened yet, but the story is a reminder of the vulnerability that so many clergy experience as they seek to follow their calling.
But also in the news today is the Queen exercising her role as Defender of the Faith.
The secular lobby has been quietly undermining the churches position for some years and has now gained in confidence, interestingly what it has done is to galvanise the churches into a robust defence of their mission.
Whatever the outcome of this debate it remains true that, in most places where I have worked the faiths have worked together to better their communities, notably in Bradford where, church, mosque and synagogue sought to witness to the unity of the city and its citizens.
Clearly the history of the church is the history of human sinfulness but it is also the history of a belief that beyond history in the realms of the eternal possibilities there may be a different purpose to human life, that our names, written in the hand of one we choose to call God, may have an eternal significance, or it might simply be confused with someones else's name ............
Some thought provoking stuff Geoff. Coming from a religious up-bringing through various sub- denominational sects and currently embracing atheism, I find myself looking at these issues from all sorts of perspectives. I like a lot of Richard Dawkin's arguments but agree that his style is sometimes a bit condescending and overly strident. I do believe however that it is possible to lead a good and fulfilling life motivated by ideals that lie outside of religious thinking. It's probably going to take several decades or centuries to catch on though! Keep posting the thoughts. cheers! Tom.
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