In the words of Russell Brown, whom I thank for this link, here’s Richard Dawkins’ blazing response to the Pope's "Hitler was an atheist" gambit during his British visit this week.
In the words of Russell Brown, whom I thank for this link, here’s Richard Dawkins’ blazing response to the Pope's "Hitler was an atheist" gambit during his British visit this week.
6 comments:
Not a Dawkins supporter, and not the entire truth, but as a polemic it is effective.
Clearly the pope is trying very hard to get everyone who calls himself a Christian to get behind him by attacking atheist. I suppose burning Christians wasn't effective enough, so let's attack the atheists instead.
Dawkins socks it to the head Ped! ;-)
Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens had been talking about getting the Pope (Papa Ratzi as the UK Sun calls him) arrested for crimes against humanity. The Pope visited the UK as a Head of State (duh!) and Dawkins said he was interested in challenging the Vatican's status as a sovereign state whose head can claim diplomatic immunity. Hitchens had some wonderfully pungent comments back in March http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/richard_dawkins/2010/03/ratzinger_is_the_perfect_pope.html. "This former head of the Inquisition should be arrested the moment he dares to set foot outside his tinpot fiefdom of the Vatican, and he should be tried in an appropriate civil - not ecclesiastical - court. That's what should happen. Sadly, we all know our faith-befuddled governments will be too craven to do it." And: "He [Ratzi] should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice - the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution - while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears." A lovely whiff of sulphur...Best wishes to Hitch.
Let's not forget the "Vatican Ratline" after WWII either, where the church funnelled gold from Swiss banks to South America to help Nazi leaders hide out -- well into the 1970's. Most of the gold was taken from Jews in Germany.
At root, there is little difference between Catholicism and Islam. Catholicism has been marginalised by the political process, that's all.
Catholicism has a hierarchal root as well, Islam does not. Christianity and Islam are both wildly diverse, with a similar foundation, but Catholicism is only the oldest sectarian divide of Christianity.
Yes, Roman Catholicism is monolithic, unlike Islam, Anglicanism, Protestantism, or Eastern Orthodoxy. The Pope is not primus inter pares (like, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Ecumenical Patriarch), but claims to be a supreme leader. The Pope is merely the Bishop of Rome with overweening, caesarian ambitions.
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