Dawkins Gaffe
Richard Dawkins had a gaffe recently in which he talked about a survey that the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science did showing that Britain is no longer a majority Christian nation. One of the criteria he used was asking people what the first book of the Gospel was. So some Christian asked him to give the full title of Darwin’s book on evolution.
First, Dawkins should have known that since he has spent a lifetime educating people about Darwin and evolution. But that isn’t my point here. My point here is that evolution isn’t a religion. I don’t know the name of Newton’s book or paper on gravity, yet I accept the theory. But if someone claims to worship Jesus and the only source of information about Jesus comes from a collection of books, It is reasonable to assume that the person should know at least some basic facts about that collection of books.
I’m an atheist, and I know the Gospels are: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Hell, I even know that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark and Q as source material. More importantly, I know that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn’t actually write the books ascribed to them. But I digress.
My point is that there is some pretty basic information that not only should everyone know, but that Christians in particular should know. Now, it probably wasn’t a good idea for Dawkins to use general knowledge of Christianity as criteria for Christianity, but that is another story.
As it turns out though, Dawkins wasn’t the only survey to reach that conclusion. The British Social Attitudes survey had a similar result.
Related articles
- Richard Dawkins, Famous Atheist, Appeals To God For Answer On Evolution (huffingtonpost.com)
- How Religious is Britain? Not Very, Says Richard Dawkins (patheos.com)
- Richard Dawkins unable to remember Charles Darwin’s seminal work (dailymail.co.uk)
- Dawkins loses title challenge (thejc.com)
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, Current Events, evolution, Mainstream Christians, Religion, the bible
