More Murphy O'Connor
Posted at 00:16:02
on Sun, May 11th 2008 by graham
in:
atheism
bbc
cardinal cormac murphy o'connor
interview
john humphrys
pharyngula
pz myers
radio 4
religion
richard dawkins
stupidity
the today programme
So, it turns out that the story that I blogged about the other day has even more to it than I thought.
Rather than try and summarise the matter here - for I don't fully understand it at the moment; it's late, I'm tired and I'm busy watching the fantastic An Inconvenient Truth. Instead, I'll let Terry Sanderson of the Grauniad explain pretty much my feelings on the matter here.
More over, I learned this evening via the ever-wonderful Pharyngula that on Friday morning's Today Programme Richard Dawkins managed, in three minutes, to not only rip holes in Murphy O'Connor's comments but to also slam John Humphrys for his attitude when interviewing religious figures.
Now, I personally dislike the way that John Humphrys interviews people. I find him arrogant and irritating and particularly dislike the way he interrupts people when they're actually trying to answer the question (I have no objection to him interrupting people who are trying not to answer the question). So it did give me a little tingle to hear Dawkins tying him up in knots. But more important than that was that Murphy O'Connor said this of reason leading to terrorism and oppression, which Dawkins pointed out:
Danger because, if you go just by reason, I think, without faith, without belief in God, you can imagine, for instance in the last century, some of the faith(less), or supposedly faithless societies - people, whether it's like Hitler or Stalin, bringing up - having a country in which, if you like, a God free zone, a dictatorship ruled by reason, and where does it lead? To terror and oppression.
Which is so eye-crossingly stupid I can't even find it in myself to be seething mad about such a statement. Still, I'm sure that plenty of people will be mad on my behalf.
richarddawkins.net has clips of Dawkins' interview with Humphrys, the BBC Radio News item about the Cardinal's speech and an interview by Humphrys of the Cardinal himself (in which, to be fair to Humphrys, he does give the Cardinal a harder time than one would usually expect). You can find them all here. Enjoy.
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