Both Francis Collins, head of the genome project and author of "The Language of God - a scientist presents evidence for belief" and Richard Dawkins (who has been quite critical of Collins) have featured on the satirical American program "The Colbert Report". Stephen Colbert adopts the persona of an extremely conservative, Christian interviewer with rather amusing results. I'll let others judge which of the two has the better sense of humour!
You can see Collins' interview on the Comedy Central website once you've got past the adverts, and the Dawkins interview from RichardDawkins.net:
Collins on the Colbert Report
Dawkins on the Colbert Report
Showing posts with label Dawkins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dawkins. Show all posts
Monday, 17 September 2007
Dawkins and cake
Here is an excellent parody of Richard Dawkins position from a recent "Private Eye" that I thought was fun!!
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
Why I don't think Dawkins is too bad...
In an article published in the Times in May entitled "How dare you call me a fundamentalist" Richard Dawkins answers some of the criticism that has come his way since publishing his rather dubious book "The God Delusion". The article can be found here however I was rather struck by the following excerpt:
...and I see his point. For once Dawkins has not actually lumped all believers into the same category and acknowledged that there is a vast difference between the belief of Rowan Williams and Pat Robertson.
Although atheists tend to sound a bit too bitter for the good of their own argument, I think Dawkins has generally been quite useful for religious belief. Much like Dawkins I am horrified by much of what goes on in the name of religion, and want to distance myself as far from some Christians as Dawkins does. In fact in many cases I find myself agreeing far more with Dawkins than I do with some others who call themselves Christians. These people do need to be confronted, and as robustly as possible, or else they risk pulling all religious belief into disrepute. In this respect I find Dawkins saying many of the things that I would really like to say, but that my well-behaved Christian politic just won't let me. I'm not saying that Dawkins isn't a twit - he strikes me as rather bitter and self-obsessed - however sometimes he does make some useful points!
If subtle, nuanced religion predominated, the world would be a better place and I would have written a different book. The melancholy truth is that decent, understated religion is numerically negligible. Most believers echo Robertson, Falwell or Haggard, Osama bin Laden or Ayatollah Khomeini. These are not straw men. The world needs to face them, and my book does so.
...and I see his point. For once Dawkins has not actually lumped all believers into the same category and acknowledged that there is a vast difference between the belief of Rowan Williams and Pat Robertson.
Although atheists tend to sound a bit too bitter for the good of their own argument, I think Dawkins has generally been quite useful for religious belief. Much like Dawkins I am horrified by much of what goes on in the name of religion, and want to distance myself as far from some Christians as Dawkins does. In fact in many cases I find myself agreeing far more with Dawkins than I do with some others who call themselves Christians. These people do need to be confronted, and as robustly as possible, or else they risk pulling all religious belief into disrepute. In this respect I find Dawkins saying many of the things that I would really like to say, but that my well-behaved Christian politic just won't let me. I'm not saying that Dawkins isn't a twit - he strikes me as rather bitter and self-obsessed - however sometimes he does make some useful points!
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