religion "a form of child abuse"

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jan 08, 2006

Richard Dawkins, who acts in the cause of biology the role that Pat Robertson does for patristics, takes his case to the tube:

Controversial scientist Richard Dawkins will assert tomorrow evening that religion is a "virus" that amounts to child abuse.

The new two-part series, to be shown on Channel 4, will compare Moses to Hitler and claim that God is racist. It will also argue that religion is a "backward belief system" responsible for terrorism. The controversial films, which were produced by IWC creative director Alan Clements and written by Dawkins, are a polemic against faith and a stout defence of science.

Entitled The Root Of All Evil, the series shows Dawkins visiting theological hot-spots in Lourdes, Colorado Springs, the al-Axa mosque and an English faith school. In each case the presenter, who is an atheist, attempts to show that religion is an "elephant in the room" trying to subvert reason.

In the first film, The God Delusion, Dawkins claims that Lourdes, a Catholic pilgrimage destination in France, symbolises a belief system based on "delusion". "If you want to experience the mediaeval rituals of faith, the candle light, the incense, music, important-sounding dead languages, nobody does it better than the Catholics," he says.

Dawkins then travels to the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where he hits out at the influence of "Christian fascism" and "an American Taliban". This is followed by an interview with Yousef al-Khattab, an American-born Jew turned fundamentalist Muslim, who clashes with Dawkins after saying he hates atheists.

Dawkins was well advised to bring his film crew to places where he won't find a philosopher or theologian to ask him how he arrived at a notion of "evil" by observing and measuring rhizomes -- by science, that is.