Richard Dawkins
I've just watched the second part of Richard Dawkins's anti-religion programme on Channel 4 (UK) called "The Root of All Evil". Basically the world famous biology professor tries to explain why religion is fundamentally to blame for almost everything wrong with the world.
The programme makers seem to have had a field day finding religious (mostly, but not exclusively, Christian) fruitcakes - most of limited intelligence - and getting the very intelligent Professor Dawkins to berate their beliefs at them.
Professor Dawkins's anti-Christian crusade has annoyed me for many years, but when you see some of the examples of religious lunacy that he was faced with, you kind of feel sympathy with his cause. I was very uncomfortable watching the bit where he visited the 'Hell Theater' (or whatever it was called) somewhere in the American bible belt. This was a church with a mission to scare people into believing in the horrors of hell. I am ashamed to be 'on the same side' as these people.
However, I still cannot see how Prof. Dawkins can make the leap of logic from the observation that some people follow a really stupid belief system to the conclusion that there is therefore no God. Even if nobody believed in the real God, that wouldn't stop Him from existing.
In fact, I am largely of the opinion that it is unlikely that any religion, denomination, sect or cult has an entirely correct picture of the real God - we all see Him through skewed perceptions (some much more skewed than others), but the important thing is that we can and do see, or otherwise experience, Him.
No amount of scientific theories, experiments or even apparent proofs can convince someone that someone they have met doesn't exist. Even though I can offer no scientific proof that God exists, I have experienced Him in a number of different ways at many different times over the years. Science has no answer to that, however convincing Professor Dawkins's arguements might sound.
