To: Cap-Q@yahoogroups.com
From: michael stephen fuchs 
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 12:47:46 +0100
Subject: Re: [Cap-Q] Dawkin's New Book


At 22:03 13/10/2006, Angry Femme wrote:
>
> The God Delusion -
>
> Get.This.Book.


Amen! (So to speak!)

I've still got about 100 pages of it left to read. And I think
it has some non-trivial flaws: in particular, his occasionally
flippant tone, and his occasional tendency to wander off and
indulge pet prejudices (such as a low-grade anti-Americanism),
both of which I think serve only to weaken the force of his
argument.

But, those matters aside, he really is doing God's work (again,
so to speak). Shortly after 9/11, he published an infamous
piece in the Guardian, pointing out the elephant in the room -
that it was religion that created the human guided missiles,
and was the root problem.

Now he's basically formed these ideas into a book-length
component of a "crusade" - to save the world from religion, or
at least allow people to talk about it sensibly. That's heroic
in my view. Particularly, since I consider it not unlikely that
he's headed for being murdered by some God-bothering fucktard
if he stays this course.

This wasn't a totally idle, nor non-self-interested thought:
Monday night I shared a packed auditorium in Bloomsbury with
about 2000 others to listen to Dawkins read from the book, and
answer questions - and, I couldn't help but notice, security
was pretty much non-existent. Would have been a great
opportunity to take out a lot of heathens, and their
ringleader, in one place. Dawkins was totally charming and
funny and erudite and compelling, by the way. (Favourite quote
of the evening: "Some of my best friends are bishops.")

And, in the event, we all did survive. And my copy of The God
Delusion? On the title page it's got a lovely urbane squiggle,
which I watched the man put there himself, while we exchanged a
few hurried words about selection pressures being unable to
account for the ubiquity of religion . . . Muahahaha . . .
Pardon my typical gloating.

Oh, and here's one picture (dawkins.jpg) and two crappy videos I
shot (dawkins1.rm and dawkins2.rm) but which I gave up on pretty
quickly because of total failure to predict when the really
clever bits were coming along, and because I looked like a twat
watching the whole thing through my camera.

Cheers!
Michael


Michael Stephen Fuchs  |  msf@michaelfuchs.org  |  www.michaelfuchs.org

        Author of THE MANUSCRIPT: www.the-manuscript.com

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