From here:
For some reason the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK) was not approached for a donation in support of Michael Gove’s plan to put a King James Bible in every state school. We would certainly have given it serious consideration, and if the trustees had not agreed I would gladly have contributed myself.
[…..]
I have an ulterior motive for wishing to contribute to Gove’s scheme. People who do not know the Bible well have been gulled into thinking it is a good guide to morality. This mistaken view may have motivated the “millionaire Conservative party donors”. I have even heard the cynically misanthropic opinion that, without the Bible as a moral compass, people would have no restraint against murder, theft and mayhem. The surest way to disabuse yourself of this pernicious falsehood is to read the Bible itself.
This is clearly a case of projection: Dawkins believes the Bible will put people off Christianity in the same way that his books have put people off atheism. Considering that there are about 2.2 billion Christians in the world who believe the Bible, it doesn’t appear to be the case. So much for Dawkins’ claim that he is convinced by evidence.
I accept that for any older text to be understood and appreciated by (modern?) school children (eg. Shakespeare, Milton) it has to be sympathetically interepreted and explained. I doubt if this – particularly the “sympathetic” bit – is availablle in schools today (at least in Britain/the West). Also, I suspect that the believers, which are referred to in this article, are mostly within a society not dominated, as ours is, by a materialist worldview/value system; it is this latter that Dawkins is relying upon (perhaps realistically).
I know of a lot of Anglicans in the ACoC who have been put off the Bible.
@ 2: Anybody famous? 😛 hehehe
A few famous ones – two especially named Bishop Michael …