The English have it as "falling of the trolley". Professor Richard Dawkins, scientistic atheist par excellence finally has to defend the Established Church of England against the spiritual "poaching" of Pope Benedict XVI.
The last two weeks saw the Pope offering a chance for disgruntled traditionalist Anglicans who much agree to Roman teaching to join the Church whilst keeping their Anglican traditions including married priests. These Anglicans have petitioned Rome in the last 30 years or so when Anglicans started ordaining female priests. It is only now that Rome decided to allow them to get on board by offering them their own church structure within Catholicism. But Rome and Canterbury's reaction is simply not about science. It is about theology which Dawkins despises.
I have always strongly suspected that Dawkins is an Evangelical Atheist that carries a medieval and superstitious strain of "No Popery" in his theology. In this latest tirade, our suspicions of Dawkins are confirmed. He is nothing but a Protestant atheist. Take for example the latest rehash of Protestant libel
"The Anglican church does not cleave to the dotty idea that a priest, by blessing bread and wine, can transform it literally into a cannibal feast'
Dawkins conveniently forgets the Anglican Protestant dotty idea that some people are saved even before they were conceived! This is the Calvinist belief in predestination (Article XVII of the Anglican Articles of Religion)
"Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity"
Dawkins has valid criticisms on certain Vatican positions on gender equality, birth control, role of women etc. Since he is atheistic, he should use SECULAR arguments and not religious dogma.
Evangelical Protestantism, Catholicism, and Atheism have been responsible for the greatest evils the world has seen (with Atheism winning in the numbers of people murdered). The histories of these faith systems have their wondrous and hideous sides. But medieval Dawkins really is, he simple doesn't get it. Dawkins in this latest rant would fit in well with the Medieval Inquisition of the Catholics and the Witch burning courts of the Protestant Reformation.
5 comments:
Let me guess. Is this your post, blackshama?
I don't know if you people are doing some kind of experiment. I am not comfortable reading posts where the author is unidentified.
blackshama it is. djb, are you giving us work in stylometric sleuthing?
inodoro ni emilie
It is an experiment. I'm beginning to like it. But am waiting for more reactions. I think it helps with our ability to deal with IDEAS instead of personalities. But it could change.
Ben, Are you sure you are criticizing Richard Dawkins and not Christopher Hitchens?? My reading of his works gives me the impression his real quarrel is with American Fundamentalism and not Roman Catholicism because he is well aware that the Catholic Church long ago surrendered the field of Science to people like him, preferring to take what's left of their philosophical and theological influence under the wing of Democracy. Dawkins' real fight is with the "pure creationists" of the Jerry Falwell type.
(Oh but thanks for the quote on the Cannibal Feast--must use that one!)
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