The whole case comes down to an emotional case rather than a rational one. So intolerable, so disagreeable...that we are doomed to death...playing on the heartstrings, playing on the emotions. It’s not nice to think that we’re all going to die. Not nice to think everything is meaningless.
–Richard Dawkins (the Mexico debate)
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unplesant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
"With the purified you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous." (Psalm 18:26)
ReplyDeleteYes, Dawkins realizes that the visceral argument against God is a bad one while he uses the argument himself.
ReplyDeleteWhat Dawkins doesn't seem to realize is that it is rationally consistent for a creator acting entirely under his own auspices to intrinsically possess absolute rights over every aspect of whatever he creates regardless of how his creation feels about it.