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.