richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

WHAT'S WRONG WITH RE L I G I O N ? 281
I do not, by nature, thrive on confrontation. I don't think the
adversarial format is well designed to get at the truth, and I
regularly refuse invitations to take part in formal debates. I was
once invited to debate with the then Archbishop of York, in
Edinburgh. I felt honoured by this, and accepted. After the debate,
the religious physicist Russell Stannard reproduced in his book
Doing Away with God? a letter that he wrote to the Observer:
Sir, Under the gleeful headline 'God comes a poor Second
before the Majesty of Science', your science correspondent
reported (on Easter Sunday of all days) how Richard
Dawkins 'inflicted grievous intellectual harm' on the
Archbishop of York in a debate on science and religion.
We were told of 'smugly smiling atheists' and 'Lions 10;
Christians nil'.
Stannard went on to chide the Observer for failing to report a subsequent
encounter between him and me, together with the Bishop
of Birmingham and the distinguished cosmologist Sir Hermann
Bondi, at the Royal Society, which had not been staged as an
adversarial debate, and which had been a lot more constructive as
a result. I can only agree with his implied condemnation of the
adversarial debate format. In particular, for reasons explained in A
Devil's Chaplain, I never take part in debates with creationists.*
Despite my dislike of gladiatorial contests, I seem somehow to
have acquired a reputation for pugnacity towards religion.
Colleagues who agree that there is no God, who agree that we do
not need religion to be moral, and agree that we can explain the
roots of religion and of morality in non-religious terms, nevertheless
come back at me in gentle puzzlement. Why are you so
hostile? What is actually wrong with religion? Does it really do so
much harm that we should actively fight against it? Why not
live and let live, as one does with Taurus and Scorpio, crystal ene.rgy
and ley lines? Isn't it all just harmless nonsense?
I might retort that such hostility as I or other atheists occasionally
voice towards religion is limited to words. I am not going to
* I do not have the chutzpah to refuse on the grounds offered by one of my most
distinguished scientific colleagues, whenever a creationist tries to stage a formal
debate with him (I shall not name him, but his words should be read in an
Australian accent): 'That would look great on your CV; not so good on mine.'