Het gelijk van Dawkins

Uit de speech van 's werelds beroemdste atheïst Richard Dawkins, vorige week op een zgn. reason rally in Washington:

It is a thing most wonderful that on this once barren rock orbiting a rather mediocre star on the edge of a rather ordinary galaxy, on this rock a remarkable process called evolution by natural selection has given rise to the magnificent diversity of complexity of life. The elegance, the beauty and the illusion of design which we see all around us has given rise in the last million years or so to a species — our species — with a brain big enough to comprehend that process, to comprehend how we came to be here, how we came to be here from extremely simple beginnings where the laws of physics are played out in very simple ways — The laws of physics have never been violated, but the laws of physics are filtered through this incredible process called evolution by natural selection — to give rise to a brain that is capable of understanding the process, a brain which is capable of measuring the age of the universe between 13 and 14 billion years, of measuring the age of the Earth between 4 and 5 billion years, of knowing what matter is made of, knowing what we are made of, made of atoms brought together by this mechanical, automatic, unplanned, unconscious process: evolution by natural selection.
That’s not just true; it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because it’s true. And it’s almost too good to be true. How is it conceivable that the laws of physics should conspire together without guidance, without direction, without any intelligence to bring us into the world? Now we do have intelligence. Intelligence comes into the world, comes into the universe late. It’s come into the world through our brains and maybe other brains in the universe. Now at last — finally — after 4 billion years of evolution we have the opportunity to bring some intelligent design into the world.
We need intelligent design. We need to intelligently design our morals, our ethics, our politics, our society. We need to intelligently design the way we run our lives,

...maar dan begint helaas de denkfout...

not look back to scrolls — I was going to say ancient scrolls, they’re not even very ancient, about 800 BC the book of Genesis was written.

Net alsof we voor de wijsheid (intelligent design) die we hier en nu zo keihard nodig hebben om als mensen te kunnen te leven, ons niet kunnen laten helpen door wijsheid van (bijv.) 2800 jaar geleden (of door de wijsheid van iemand anders überhaupt). Wie zegt dat iets, omdat het oud is, niet waar kan zijn, denkt niet logisch. Is niet echt op zoek naar betekenis.
Wat verder in zijn speech wordt Dawkins weer interessant:

We just ran a poll by a foundation in Britain in which we took those people who ticked a Christian box in the census [...]. We just took the people who ticked the Christian box and we asked them “Why did you tick the Christian box?” And the most popular answer to that question was “Oh, well, I like to think of myself as a good person.” But we all like to think of ourselves as good people. Atheists do, Jews do, Muslims do. So when you meet somebody who claims to be Christian, ask her, ask him “What do you really believe?” And I’ll think you’ll find that in many cases, they give you an answer which is no more convincing than that “I like to be a good person.”
By the way, when we went on to ask a specific question of these only 54 percent: “What do you do when you’re faced with a moral dilemma? Where do you turn?” Only 10 percent turned to their religion when trying to solve their moral question. Only 10 percent. The majority of them said, “I turn to my innate sense of goodness” and the next most popular answer was “I turn to advice from relatives and friends”.
So when I meet somebody who claims to be religious, my first impulse is: “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you until you tell me do you really believe — for example, if they say they are Catholic — do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer it turns into the body of Christ? Are you seriously telling me you believe that? Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood?” Mock them! Ridicule them! In public!

Aiai. Hoeveel van onze theologen zouden hier door Dawkins' mand vallen? Maar de man heeft gelijk: hebben wij, katholieken van 2012, redenen genoeg om te geloven dat Jezus Christus ook gelijk heeft wanneer hij dingen zegt en doet die onbegrijpelijk zijn?

Don’t fall for the convention that we’re all too polite to talk about religion. Religion is not off the table. Religion is not off limits.
Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated and need to be challenged and, if necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt.

Helemaal eens met ome Richard. Het is waar of het is niet waar. Gewoonte kan niet de reden zijn om je christen te blijven noemen.

"Christus veritatem se, non consuetudinem cognominavit - Christus heeft zich 'de waarheid', niet 'de gewoonte' genoemd" (Tertullianus)