RICHARD DAWKINS, the Oxford University professor and campaigning atheist, is planning to take his fight against God into the classroom by flooding schools with anti-religious literature.He's doing no such thing. The goal of The Richard Dawkins Foudation for Reason & Science is to promote rationality. Of course that means attacking the IDiots and religious superstition but that's just a consequence of promoting rationalism and common sense.
He is setting up a charity that will subsidise books, pamphlets and DVDs attacking the “educational scandal” of theories such as creationism while promoting rational and scientific thought.
Here's a video where Dawkins explains his objectives.
Wow. The way the Times seems to be framing this is exactly the kind of devious sensationalism you'd expect from American media outlets like Fox. By trying to teach principles of critical thinking and the scientific method, somehow you're immediately on an anti-Christian jihad. Yes it's true that Dawkins (like me) is an atheist hardliner who has a very sensible concern about the effect religious indoctrination has on children too young to critique its dogmas effectively, and how that in turn inhibits their ability to learn in many cases. But teaching kids to think and critique is not the same thing as pushing atheism; it's pushing science, reason, and free inquiry.
ReplyDeleteMartin - it seems you might be unaware that both the Times and Fox News are owned by the Dirty Digger.
ReplyDeleteAh, that explains much, mon frere! :-)
ReplyDeleteI think it's very interesting that in the USA, with its (imperfectly enforced) separation of church and state, Creation Science and Intelligent Design took pains to claim that they were not religion at all. Whereas in this article, an attack on Creationism is labeled as being an attack on religion.
ReplyDeleteThat is because an attack on Cretinsim/ID-iocy IS an attack on religion, and superstion and irrationality.
ReplyDeleteGO! DAWKINS!