... and in the red corner ... Dawkins

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1361840.ece

Some years ago a friend realised that in the church where I served many of us didn't believe in the origin of species by natural selection, but by God's creation. He had spent 6 years in the church before he cottoned on to this. He was alarmed by our belief and I was alarmed that it had taken him so long to realise! I suppose at least one can say that we weren't shoving it down people's throats...

Anyway we started "discussing". I was alarmed by the tone that scientific discussion can take, and also surprised that my friend didn't consider Dawkins to be anti-religion (it was after The Blind Watchmaker and the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures). It seems that everyone needed to turn up the volume control. We weren't hearing all the alarms!

Well it's been turned up, and it's probably a good thing. In case you hadn't before, now you can hear Dawkins' bombast and scorn.

I watched a "scientific debate" on podcast recently, and it was awful. What happened to sensible discussion of evidence and possible explanations? Instead you got two people trying to score cheap points off each other. That is not science. Any more than the auto da fe was Christianity.

Here's hoping that the debate between RIchard Dawkins and Alastair McGrath was of a better quality: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/audio_video/podcasts/books/article1570989.ece

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