There's a nice article at latimes.com, "Must Science Declare a Holy War on Religion?" by Chris Mooney and Sheri Kirschenbaum. It's on Richard Dawkins's forthcoming book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, and raises the questions as to who will actually read it and will it change anybody's mind?
Mooney and Kirschenbaum question the Dawkins - P.Z. Myers approach which is akin to Mixed Martial Arts fighting. For example Myers, responding to "fanatical Catholics," writes: "Don't confuse the fact that I find you and your church petty, foolish, twisted and hateful to be a testimonial to the existence of your petty, foolish, twisted, hateful god." Which leaves me now sitting here wondering if P.Z. could love someone like me...
Dawkins and Myers want to commit genocide against the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences, who "take the stance that science and religion can be perfectly compatible." As does the National Center for Science Education.
Mooney and Kirschenbaum ask, what would Darwin have done in this situation? They write:
"It turns out that late in life, when an atheist author asked permission to dedicate a book to Darwin, the great scientist wrote back his apologies and declined. For as Darwin put it, "Though I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science.""
Mooney and Kirshenbaum need to remember that, as wonderful and true as Darwin's idea here is, Dawkins is the king of projective psychology as he regularly claims in The God Delusion that, "Yes, ____ said this many years ago, but were ____ alive today he would agree with me." Dawkins's brain lacks the God-gene and, apart from a miracle of God, nothing will be able to change his "mind" about this.
