Let me warn you from the start that Dawkins is an avowed atheist. In fact, his latest book, a current bestseller, is called "The God Delusion"; he thinks that people who believe in any god are not only deluded: they are dangerous. Religious zealousness seems to be the explanation for much of the violence we see in the world: if you believe that your faith is somehow under attack, then becoming a soldier of god would be righteous. Having said that, concentrate, when you watch this video, on what he says, not on the fact that he is an atheist.
Dawkins argues that although people seem to have a natural proclivity for highlighting only the nice aspects of the Bible, carefully reading this book would also uncover a world full of horrendous moral doctrines that no civilized person would want to accept.
The implication from this observation is powerful: although we may think that we get our sense of morality from the bible, the fact that we pick and choose what passages to obey and what passages not to obey betrays the fact that, surprisingly, we don't actually consider the bible our source of moral knowledge. What happens instead, it seems, is that we have a judgment already in our minds, probably as a result of unquestioned religious indoctrination, which we later attempt to rationalize by finding scripture passages that confirm our original intuition. In a manner of speaking, then, we throw the darts first, and then draw a perfect bull's eye around it, and think our aim is perfect.
In other words, if you think that we should do everything the bible says, then there should be no exceptions to what we choose to obey and what we don't. But if we do make this choice, then it follows that it's not because it comes from the bible itself, doesn't it? If so, then the bible is not our source of morality.
Anyway, here is the video:
And here is Dawkins describing the Judeo-Christian god:
1 comment:
That made me think that I needed to go and really read the Bible. I do agree that people tend to pick out parts of the Bible that justify a view they already hold.
Post a Comment