Book recommendation
I’ve never had an awful lot of time for Richard Dawkins when he’s on his atheism roll. I like him for evolutionary biology, but for me he blew it when he was given the Thought for the Day slot a few years ago… The first time an atheist had been given the slot, a chance to show that those without a religion have a stake in daily morals and ethics, too. And what did he do? He insulted the theists, said “I’m right, you’re wrong”. He argued. He wasn’t nice, he wasn’t inclusive, couldn’t live with others, and make me think “fundamentalist”.
So I wasn’t going to rush out to get The God Delusion. I don’t appreciate being hectored, however much I might agree with his sentiment. And today something changed my mind. I read about Jeffrey Archer’s version of the Gospel according to Judas, in which he was helped by one Professor Francis J Moloney, biblical scholar and friend of Pope Benedict:
Prof Moloney said one reason for his cooperation was because scholarly works like his own “had made little impact on the increasing scepticism surrounding the Christian Church (and increasingly, within the Christian Church), while deeply flawed and uninformed works like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion have become bestsellers”.
Really? It worried you as much as The Da Vinci Code? Goodness, I thought, maybe there’s something in it after all. Dawkins’s book has just edged onto the bottom of my wishlist.
