Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

Deepak and tha Dawkins

Published by

Matt Stone

2007-03-13

Christians aren’t the only ones taking Richard Dawkins to task over The God Delusion. Here New Age guru Deepak Chopra speaks forth:

The unfairness of this argument is that it squeezes God into a corner. Dawkins makes it an us-versus-them issue. Either you are for science (that is, reason, progress, modernism, optimism about the future) or you are for religion (that is, unreason, reactionary resistance to progress, clinging to mysteries that only God can solve). He goes so far as to tar anyone who believes in God with the same brush as extreme religious fanatics. Sadly, the media often follow his lead, erasing the truth, which is that many scientists are religious and many of the greatest scientists (including Newton and Einstein) probed deep into the existence of God. Not to mention the obvious fact that you don’t have to go to church, or even belong to a religion, to find God plausible.

I think the importance of this article is that it highlights the debate is multifaceted. That in this pluralistic context of ours a debate over God involves more than just Christians and Atheists. Many more.

Tags Atheist

3 responses to “Deepak and tha Dawkins”

Kalessin

2007-03-13

It’s had a very mixed reception amongst “thinking skeptics”.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2503/
“Though as an atheist I feel I should welcome Dawkins’ diatribe against religion, as a Catholic atheist, I find myself repelled by his crass polemic”
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7803 “Incurious, dogmatic, rambling and self-contradictory”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19775 “The most disappointing feature of The God Delusion is Dawkins’s failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. … Its arguments are those of any bright student who has thumbed through Bertrand Russell’s more popular books and who has, horrified, watched videos of holy rollers. Dawkins is obviously entitled to his views on God, ballet, and currency markets. But I doubt he feels much need to pen books on the last two topics.”

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Matt Stone

2007-03-13

A Catholic atheist! Now that’s a curious identity. Thanks for the rest of those references too. Sound like they’re the type of people interested in much more serious engagement. The irony of all this is Dawkins is starting to look every bit the sort of fundamentalist he rants against, just more the athestic equivalent.

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Kalessin

2007-03-13

I couldn’t find the review earlier (I’d thought it had appeared in the Observer for some reason), but Prof. Terry Eagleton’s comments in the London Review of Books were the most astute, I thought.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

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