How arrogant is Dawkins? Let me count the ways

Well, one way.

Bertrand Russell, mathematician, philosopher and atheist, when asked what he would say to God if he met him after death, answered “Not enough evidence, God!  Not enough evidence!” Although he continued to call himself an atheist, Russell acknowledged that, technically, he was an agnostic, since he didn’t believe in the non-existence of God.

Richard Dawkins, when asked the same question, not only didn’t answer it, but mocked the questioner. Today’s coterie of atheists really do give atheism a bad name and would undoubtedly make atheists of the past wince; even though I still disagreed with them, at least they had a modicum of wit, finesse, decency and understood the philosophical difficulties that hard atheism presents.

2 thoughts on “How arrogant is Dawkins? Let me count the ways

  1. “Richard Dawkins, when asked the same question,”

    What if you’re wrong? is not the same question as “What would you say to God?”

    Besides, what most people mean is not “what if you’re wrong”. What they’re asking is “what if I’m right?”

    If I’m wrong, any number of things could be right. My being wrong doesn’t automatically means Christianity is correct. For all I know, if I’m wrong I’ll see you in Islamic Hell.

  2. He still didn’t answer the question which was, in effect, the same one as posed to Russell. Instead, he was gratuitously rude and supercilious to the questioner – a technique which he is more at ease with than rationality.

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