The Apostle for Atheism gets 'Hoist by his own Petard!'

On a wet, miserable day in a park in a large American city the "Apostle for Atheism" Richard Dawkins addresses a ten thousand strong flock of faithful adherents. The following video picks up his message at a point where he can be heard urging his followers to "Mock them..."(Christians or people of other religions) The most odd thing that may strike you is the reality that here is a man- whose platform is underpinned by his insistence that what he does is backed up by science- inciting people to do something that is worlds away from being scientific! Ravi Zacharias responds with a challenge. 

Atheist Michael Ruse in the Guardian 2nd October 2012 castigates Dawkins for his moralistic quasi-religious crusades against religion:

'Humanism in its most virulent form tries to make science into a religion. It is awash with the intolerance of enthusiasm. For a start, there is the near-hysterical repudiation of religion. To quote Richard Dawkins:

"I think there's something very evil about faith … it justifies essentially anything. If you're taught in your holy book or by your priest that blasphemers should die or apostates should die – anybody who once believed in the religion and no longer does needs to be killed – that clearly is evil. And people don't have to justify it because it's their faith."

In the caricaturing of "faith" as murderous fundamentalism, one hears echoes of the bloody and interminable Reformation squabbles between Protestants and Catholics. It is also of course to give help to the real enemy, those who turn their back fully on science as they follow their religion.

There are other aspects of the new atheist movement that remind me of religion. One is the adulation by supporters and enthusiasts for the leaders of the movement: it is not just a matter of agreement or respect but also of a kind of worship. This certainly surrounds Dawkins, who is admittedly charismatic.

...I do think it all tells us something. Call it a secular religion if you will, but the humanism I have been discussing in this piece does bear strong similarities to conventional religion. One finds the enthusiasm of the true believer. And as a non-believing Darwinian evolutionist, as one who is a humanist in the broader sense, this makes me feel rather ill.'

In the following video we see a faux pas of major proportions where Dawkins becomes the butt of a joke that he- with all his erudition fails to see. And it takes a man of the cloth to spell it out for him!

For the theist, or Christian there is no contradiction in alluding to the "something" from whom all creation came "ex nihilo"- out of nothing, because in doing so we make the distinction that the "something" is the immaterial, supernatural God.  So the incongruity of Dawkins' statement may pass unnoticed at first blush. But when you reflect that Dawkins' philosophical position is that of a philosophical naturalist it becomes a blunder of major proportions to define nothing as "something". To put it as succinctly as I can, a philosphical naturalist holds that nothing exists outside of, or transcends the material Universe, so that if you go back beyond the singularity of the "big bang" before which absolutely nothing existed (in their view) it is a logical contradiction of the kind even schoolboys would not make- to speak of nothing as "something!"  Aristotle's statement that "nothing- is what rocks dream about" may take on a whole new meaning after this...

For further discussion of Dawkins exhortation to his devotees to ridicule and mock Christians take a listen to this video soundtrack where Christian philosopher and author Dr. William Lane Craig critiques the recent movie by Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss entitled "The Unbelievers"

There is a delicious irony here that I feel gains justification from the fact he has gone on public record inciting disrespect, ridicule and contempt, and ends up being the object of that which he wished to foist on others. If it had been anyone else on another issue he may well have been a candidate for being charged with "hate-speech" but I hope he comes to realize that Christians as a rule- and I say this with qualification- are not a vindictive lot. I think it just and fitting that he is "hoist by his own petard!"*



*  "Hoist by his own Petard": Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others. A petard was a small bomb used to blow up gates and walls when breaching fortifications, of French origin and dating back to the sixteenth century.Petard comes from the Middle French peter- to break wind, from pet- expulsion of intestinal gas, from the Latin peditus- past participle of pedere, to break wind, akin to the Greek bdein-, to break wind (Merriam-Webster). (courtesy of Wikipedia)