Atheists, Christians, whoever... come one and all and tell me what you think of this interview

[UnquietDad]

Because, even as a supporter of his, I don't think Dawkins is firing on all cylinders here. He misses about half a dozen open goals. Although to be fair, it's a tight item and the guy hardly gives him a chance to get a word in.

Is he tired? Jet-lagged? Just fed up with having to justify himself yet again to yet another sceptical interviewer with nothing to offer? Or is he just dumbing down for the interviewer (who comes across as a complete numbskull jerk)?

Disappointing, when he has been on such coruscating form elsewhere in the US: e.g. here, for example.

Well, indeed, which is why I don't base my faith on any floaty-light experiences I may (or may not) have had, and I wouldn't expect you to base your faith on those things.

I'm quite sure I don't need to convince you that 'some' of the bible is true, UQD, most people accept that. But it's still possible, for them what's prepared to take the time, to gauge which is poetic allegory, and what is history and so on. That's just simple reading comprehension, which I'm positive is well within your capabilities, UQD.

If I had time, yes. I suppose the difference between us is that I could sit down with the Bible and decide which bits I felt were true, which were allegory, which were exageration and so on - at the end of the exercise, all I'd have to show for it would be one Bible covered in multicoloured highlighter pen and no change in the way I view the world. Because, ultimately, for me it's still just a story. I could do exactly the same with a collection of Greek myths or the Rig Veda.

UQD, having a bible smothered in highlighter pen would be qualification enough for you to be a pastor in some of the churches I've been to

I can imagine it would! An aide-memoire, I suppose.

Christians do set a lot of store by "reading the Bible" as a major thing for non-believers to do; I think it's over-rated unless you already believe it, which kind of defeats the object!

I had an agnostic friend years ago who was being badgered to do so by a Christian girl he was interested in (!), and he expressed the dilemma very eloquently. He told her he had read the Bible (which he had). She told him he couldn't have read it properly, because if he had, he'd no longer be an agnostic. He asked how he was supposed to read it "properly" and she recommended getting a priest to help him read it. He wondered - not unreasonably - why, before becoming a Christian, he'd respect the authority of a priest in telling him what all this stuff "meant", when, as an outsider to the religion, the priest is just a bloke with his collar on back-to-front?...

I dont know anyone who has been converted by the Bible alone. Maybe you do, I don't know. But then I wouldn't expect anyone to become an atheist through Dawkins alone... it was a gradual process for me, involving a lot of pondering of evidence - and eventually I realised it was probably what I'd thought all along, even when I was churchgoing. (I'd never heard of Richard Dawkins other than, perhaps, vaguely as the author of "The Selfish Gene", before I started defining myself as atheist.)

I think reading it is great, just from a cultural perspective, particularly the KJV, as the language is part of our language, like Shakespeare.

But just reading it doesn't make the reader a Christian, anymore than reading a Volvo manual makes someone a Big Fat tank of a car.

I was converted by a mixture of someone explaining the gospel to me, and general research into the bible itself. But it would be very naive of me to think that you should just 'read it' and poof you'd be a Christian. Doesn't work like that.

I don't think my friend's friend thought that, to be fair! I think she was hoping that he'd make the first step towardas detailed study of the Bible which would be a step on the road towards becoming a Christian.

I can't see any circumstances in which I could ever call myself a Christian again - I'm far too interested in the socio-cultural suide of religion and would always be asking myself why this set of stories was any better/worse than those of Ancient Greece.

But I entirely agree about the language and would definitely choose KJV over Good News and other such hippy-dippy abominations...

The King James Version is pure beautiful poetry.
I have read a great deal of the Bible over the years in fact I used to be the reigning champion at something called Sword Drill if you know what that means
I think it has helped me enormously to understand art, literature, music and culture, it has also (esp in comparison with other religious books) helped my atheism beome more and more deep rooted.
quite a lot of things in the Bible I find absolutely shocking, especially know I read them in retrospect. e.g. Noah's Ark, which was read to me as a lovely cosy children's story, and is in fact a story of terrible genocide in the name of revenge.
and, by the by, makes absolutely no sense at all

coffincarrier, lol, I agree as it happens, about Noah's Ark. Completely baffles me why you can buy cutesy little plastic arks with Playmobil characters in them for your kids. That's just a bit weird.

get you with Sword Drill, show off. Pride is a sin, you know.