Dawkins (High Priest of Humanity) Calls for Catholic Honesty
It appears Dawkins is at it again today. This time I agree with his first few statements.
People who describe themselves as Catholic but do not accept the church’s key teachings should be “honest” and admit they no longer belong to the faith, atheist author and scientist Prof Richard Dawkins has told a Dublin audience. [Totally agree.]He said he was intrigued by this week’s Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll showing almost two thirds (62 per cent) of Catholics believed the bread and wine which was blessed during Mass “only represents the body and blood” of Christ. [This is what happens when the liturgy doesn’t communicate belief.]Just 26 per cent said they believed the bread and wine transformed into Christ’s body and blood in accordance with the doctrine of transubstantiation.“If they don’t believe in transubstantiation then they are not Roman Catholics,” Prof Dawkins said. “If they are honest they should say they are no longer Roman Catholics.”The survey finding “should come in for a fair degree of ridicule,” he added. “I wouldn’t hold back on the ridicule”. [I would say the belief that modern empirical science is independent of teleology or efficient causality is pretty ridiculous itself.]Prof Dawkins was speaking at a public interview in the National Concert Hall last night as part of the Dublin Writers Festival.He said he was encouraged by the growth of the atheist movement in Ireland, and a gradual shift towards “science and reason” at the expense of the Catholic Church. [See the recent post on “If you want to be correct, you must belong to the club with “correct” in its name.“]“The number of priests is going down beautifully,” he said.
In addition, the child abuse controversy has eroded the church’s authority and the “extraordinarily ham-fisted way” the church responded “has helped”.
Secular humanism is on the rise. It is the reasonable conclusion of a philosophy that acknowledges as truth only material and efficient causes. In this way, we can see why these men promote their ideas as ‘reason’. However, if they had a slightly better classical education (Dawkins has none….went straight into modern science) of course the implicit assumptions that only that which is physically demonstrable exists. The rest is in our heads.
