Melanie Phillips, Richard Dawkins, and a divine squawking about the deluded ...

When you're in search of righteous indignation about militant atheists, where better to look than The Australian.

And sure enough, cue Melanie Phillips getting terribly upset with Richard Dawkins in Dawkins preaches to the deluded against the divine.

Somehow she thinks that Dawkins has defamed our very own Steve Fielding, not to mention the pope, while the lickspittle uncritical Australian media - Chairman Rupert's minions honourably excepted of course - fawned all over him in a way that could only cause stomach upset in sensitive observers:

The bestselling author of The God Delusion was similarly fawned over by the Australian media, which uncritically lapped up everything he said.

This was even after (or perhaps because) he referred to the Pope as a Nazi, which managed to combine defamation of the pontiff with implicit Holocaust denial.

By comparison, Family First senator Steve Fielding may feel he got off lightly when Dawkins described him merely as more stupid than an earthworm.

Of course Phillips gets it entirely arse about, since it's earthworms that Dawkins has defamed. These singularly useful creatures do sterling work all over the globe, preparing the soil, and surely are the finest examples of the cleverness of Charles Darwin's inventions.

I keed, I keed. Darwin didn't invent earthworms, and come to think of it, neither did god.

I could never get enough of earthworms as a child - in the country, they were essential for a good day's fishing - and I could never understand this slanderous reservation of nice creatures like worms and frogs and snails to the males of the species, simply because someone had a trouser snake:

What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Frogs and snails
And puppy-dogs' tails,

That's what little boys are made of.

Even if Dawkins had compared Fielding to a bumble bee, you'd have to think that was a serious defamation. Of the bumble bee. Come to think of it, there aren't many insects who are more useless than Fielding.

But I digress as usual. Phillips is extremely upset, and we must get upset along with her, as she battles the fearsome forces of scientism, which is a mere ideology. Her language is so agitated and disturbed, I fear she might have a heart attack, as she ponders the sight of revivalists from an alternative universe, hardcore unbelievers swallowing blessed wafers from the hand of the high priest of belief in unbelief.

(It's always important, de rigeur almost, to write about atheists using religious terms, just so it can be kept in the proper compound, and true believers can grasp that atheists are just another form of Satanism).

He (Dawkins) became the apostle of scientism, the ideology that says everything in the universe has a materialist explanation and must answer to the rules of empirical scientific evidence; to believe anything else is irrational.

A second's thought tells one this is absurd. Love, law and philosophy are not scientific yet they are not irrational. So it is scientism that seems to be irrational.

Love isn't irrational? A chemical hormonal stew of bizarre thoughts and deeds? And the laws surrounding it, as practised by eminently rational lawyers, also not inclined to the irrational? As for philosophy, quick bring me some Spinoza, I feel faint.

It seems that somehow it got personal with Phillips:

I had first-hand experience of this when, addressing an audience of US atheists, he (Dawkins) accused me of "lying for Jesus" by misquoting him. This came as something of a surprise since I am a Jew.

Thank the lord that despite that nasty experience, Phillips can find the time to celebrate Christianity in her article:

... although terrible things indeed have been done in the name of religion, the fact remains that Christianity and the Hebrew Bible form the foundation stone of Western civilisation and its great cause of human equality and freedom.

Well hooray for Christianity and Judaism, and never mind the reality that much of western civilisation's key elements came from Greek and Roman civilisations that had all kinds of problems for the modern true believer - like homosexuality, licentiousness and a handsome set of gods, with one to hand for any occasion. Take a close look and you'll see that notions of democracy, and human equality and freedom, within the limits of early thinking, as well as Roman law, got taken up and ripped off by Christians when they did a reverse takeover of the empire.

Slavery? Well the bible - in its new and old testaments - contemplates slavery as a viable activity, provided you're nice to your slaves, which is why you could be a slave owner in the nineteenth century United States and contemplate the notion with equanimity.

But Phillips is determined to speak up for the Christians:

Indeed, he (Dawkins) seems almost to believe that, since everyone who believes in God is stupid or evil and Christians are stupid and evil because they believe in God, those who oppose him must be Christian and can be treated with contempt.

Oh surely not just the Christians. Surely Muslims and Jews who believe in God as a solution to the world's problems, and a pie in the sky afterlife, replete with dozens of virgins, especially when it turns into theocratic states of a persecuting, repressive kind, deserve a little intellectual contempt as well. Since after all, we're talking about ideas, not about killing people for the nonsense they believe in.

As for Dawkins's claim that religion is responsible for the ills of the world, this is demonstrably a wild distortion. Some of the worst horrors in human history - the French revolutionary terror, Nazism, communism - have been atheist creeds.

Which is of course an equally and demonstrably wild distortion, and before we get involved in yet another breach of Godwin's Law, why not have a read of the wiki Adolf Hitler's religious views. It isn't quite as simple or as simple-minded as Phillips contends, at least not when it comes to the Nazis and the ongoing business of religion in Germany during the thirties and the war years.

But it does go without saying that humanity has done awful things in the name of religion, and for that matter in the name of Zeus and of Mars, and in the name of simple secular empire-building and getting to be top dog. No better analysis of the urge has been written than in Orwell's simple fable Animal Farm, but then there's evidence that Orwell was that happy contradiction, a pious atheist.

But you see a childish game of 'the secularists killed more than the religionista' or vice versa, doesn't really answer the many questions there are about the absent god (well absent gods, since we still have an abundance of gods, well above quota or need).

Nor does simply citing a bunch of scientists, or philosophers or recanting atheists, actual deliver much in the way of refutation, unless of course you're interested in selecting a first eleven for a game of cricket between god deniers and god botherers.

No there's something about the ferocity of Phillips' denunciation which suggests she gets upset about atheism - I wonder if she regularly has crises about faith - and of course now that the atheists have found voice again - having gone through regular bouts of persecution - it's important that they be labelled with exactly the same sins as the true religions that have gone before:

This is, of course, the characteristic of all totalitarian regimes, including religious inquisitions. Which is why Dawkins can lay claim to being not the most enlightened thinker on the planet, as his acolytes regard him, but instead the Savonarola of scientism and an intolerant closer of minds.

Oh yes, I've noted that Dawkins regularly participates in book burnings, and celebrates the destruction of immoral art, and shows a profound hostility to the Renaissance, and routinely preaches against moral corruption. Just like Savonarola.

Sheesh, and I thought it was Dawkins who was given to hysterical over-statement, as opposed to a fear of rigorous thinking.

Never mind, Phillips' did remind me of the charms of Savonarola, and his famous bonfire of the vanities.

Is it wrong for me to suggest that Phillips' scribbling is a worthy contender for a new bonfire? Oh shush, I know atheists are intolerant closers of minds - unlike the generous openers of minds you find amongst Christians and Muslims and Jews - but who could be bothered howling down or oppressing Phillips?

Except of course that if you say she scribbles nonsense, she might well regard it as vile oppression. Here's hoping the book she's peddling has more substance, but I confess I won't be forking out hard cash for the pleasure of reading it.

Call that oppression if you will, I just call it the advantage of being given a sampler, a taster, by that taster heaven, The Australian, which can always be relied on to march forward with backward thinking ...

Too many adjectives, and too little thought ...

Is it always thus, when the deluded rail about the the divine?

(Below: Savonarola being given a good burning as a send off, a pleasure usually reserved for atheists. Never mind, Dawkins can look forward to a lifetime in hell, or perhaps the grave).