{"id":7264,"date":"2010-01-29T13:02:01","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T18:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=7264"},"modified":"2010-01-29T13:02:01","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T18:02:01","slug":"dawkins-for-bishop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/dawkins-for-bishop\/","title":{"rendered":"Dawkins for bishop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Dawkins has written a characteristically emotional anti-Christian philippic in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/comment\/columnists\/guest_contributors\/article7007065.ece\" target=\"_blank\">Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Where was God in Noah\u2019s flood? He was systematically drowning the entire world, animal as well as human, as punishment for \u201csin\u201d. Where was God when Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed with fire and brimstone? He was deliberately barbecuing the citizenry, lock, stock and barrel, as punishment for \u201csin\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh but that\u2019s the Old Testament. No one believes those stories literally any more. The New Testament is all about love.\u201d Dear modern, enlightened, theologically sophisticated, gentle Christian, you cannot be serious. Your entire religion is founded on an obsession with \u201csin\u201d, with punishment and with atonement. Where do you find the effrontery to condemn Pat Robertson, you who have signed up to the odious doctrine that the central purpose of Jesus\u2019s incarnation was to have himself tortured as a scapegoat for the \u201csins\u201d of all mankind, past, present and future, beginning with the \u201csin\u201d of Adam, who (as any modern theologian well knows) never even existed?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>George Pitcher reckons that Dawkins is not only an embarrassment to thinking atheists, but is an effective recruiting tool for Christianity. He has a point; ten minutes of Dawkins\u2019 rodomontade in an Alpha course would drive out any doubts lingering in the mind of a potential believer.<\/p>\n<p>Pitcher would prefer to <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/georgepitcher\/100024264\/poor-old-richard-dawkins-has-really-lost-the-plot\/\" target=\"_blank\">make him a bishop<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As I\u2019ve said before, Dawkers is a great recruiting officer for faith. He repels tolerant atheists and inspires uncommitted inquirers to look further into what he so ludicrously and entertainingly misrepresents. I think he should be made an honorary bishop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Dawkins has written a characteristically emotional anti-Christian philippic in the Times: Where was God in Noah\u2019s flood? He was systematically drowning the entire world, animal as well as human, as punishment for \u201csin\u201d. Where was God when Sodom and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/dawkins-for-bishop\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2049],"class_list":["post-7264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","tag-atheism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}