Originally Posted by
The Flying Cow
How can someone say Mao or Stalin were not atheists when they quoted in proclamation (repetitively, I might add) that "religion is the opium of the people", and proceeded to ban all religion where they ruled?
And what sort of "terrible disasters" can we accredit to religion on the par of things like the death and destruction caused by the rules of the aforementioned dictators (Dawkins justifies that these demons were not acting in the name of atheism, even though they not only banned religion in their regimes, they persecuted all manner of religious folk, claiming as part of their slogans "religion is the opium of the people - the slaughter of Tibetan monks en masse here comes to mind) (and saying Hitler was a Roman Catholic - which he evidently was not, having made up his own Nazist religion (using the argument that him being that didn't however mean he acted in the name of it [his supposed "Catholicism"] is superfluous in analyzing his xenophobic attitudes towards the Jews, which he butchered more likely due to his pathological imbalances))?
Finally, though his mostly arrogant overtones seem to show him as all-knowing (and he contradicts himself quite a few times, even if he is able to, via argument, keep himself from blatant embarrassment and humiliation in front of Stephen Sackur), he seems to think (as he proclaims) that suicide bombers can or do have "moderate teachers", when anyone with the least bit of knowledge about the breeding grounds for such radical political acts knows that the leaders and indoctrinators of those specific cells not only do not use religion solely (Velupilai Prabhakaran, the man behind LTTE (the most fecund suicide terrorist group to boot) is a secular Marxist-Leninist), but are far from "moderate teachers"!
Frankly, I'm completely put off (if there ever was a chance) reading his work, especially considering how he throws faith in with one's taste in music, or other trivialities, comparing Christians to Marxists, and seems to argue or feel annoyed that one can't "prove one's faith" (I can't remember his exact wording) when clearly faith is something that does not require or depend on proof (this would, I presume, be the dictionary definition of it?)
He is also arrogant in the way he seems to believe religion cannot hold answers for truths science cannot reach, thus never giving it a chance, yet he believes (here is his evident faith) that science can or will.
That's the end of my anti-Dawkins rant.
Feel free to flame me, atheists of this world (he is, after all, one of your preachers).
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