richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

314 THE GOD DELUSION
Whoever among us gives a little serious thought to the
matter, compares the condition of a Jew - without a true
Church, without a King, and without a country, dispersed
and always a foreigner wherever he lives on the face of the
earth, and moreover, infamous for the ugly stain with
which the killers of Christ are marked . . . will immediately
understand how great is this temporal advantage
that the Pope is obtaining for the Mortara boy.
Third is the presumptuousness whereby religious people know,
without evidence, that the faith of their birth is the one true faith,
all others being aberrations or downright false. The above
quotations give vivid examples of this attitude on the Christian
side. It would be grossly unjust to equate the two sides in this case,
but this is as good a place as any to note that the Mortaras could
at a stroke have had Edgardo back, if only they had accepted the
priests' entreaties and agreed to be baptized themselves. Edgardo
had been stolen in the first place because of a splash of water and
a dozen meaningless words. Such is the fatuousness of the
religiously indoctrinated mind, another pair of splashes is all it
would have taken to reverse the process. To some of us, the parents'
refusal indicates wanton stubbornness. To others, their principled
stand elevates them into the long list of martyrs for all religions
down the ages.
'Be of good comfort Master Ridley and play the man: we shall
this day by God's grace light such a candle in England, as I trust
shall never be put out.' No doubt there are causes for which to die
is noble. But how could the martyrs Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer
let themselves be burned rather than forsake their Protestant Littleendianism
in favour of Catholic Big-endianism - does it really
matter all that much from which end you open a boiled egg? Such
is the stubborn - or admirable, if that is your view - conviction of
the religious mind, that the Mortaras could not bring themselves to
seize the opportunity offered by the meaningless rite of baptism.
Couldn't they cross their fingers, or whisper 'not' under their breath
while being baptized? No, they couldn't, because they had been
brought up in a (moderate) religion, and therefore took the whole
ridiculous charade seriously. As for me, I think only of poor little