I used to have a great deal of respect for Dawkins. In some scientific areas I still do. I have all his books and found the first three or four extremely facinating and wonderful. After Darwin he was the nearest thing I had to a biological master. Then it started. What used to be the occasional comment or explanation why religion and God cannot be became almost a battlecry in his books. He harped on and on in order to to 'prove' there was no God.

At the time I was happily calling myself an agnostic and had no God in my life. All was well with the world if I put no God in charge of things. If I allowed evolutions to take it's randon course I could explain all things (except those first microseconds of the beginning of time/the universe we know today). I was satisfied with my lot.

Something happened that deeply upset all my thinking. Someone I loved dearly died and it became important to me for me to find she had a chance to be 'alive' somewhere and having a better life than she had here. I started looking toward religion for some answers, while remaining open minded on God and trying to find answers I could sit comfy with scientifically and spiritually. I had a wonderful mentor who had the patience of a saint and he was so helpful in assisting me along my own path to try and find answers. I attended an Alpha course. This was a wonderful experience but I came away with more questions than answers.

I became what I call a Christian Agnostic. Emotionally I am spiritual but academically I am skeptical. I started getting splinters in my bottom from the fence I was sitting on. Once I started putting an all powerful, micromanaging God in charge of the world, I became unsettled and unhappy. Putting God in charge of everything threw me, as I then had to explain how he could be so cruel and power crazy. I sought to not go along with orthodox doctrine and teaching. If I was to have God in some way in my life I had to make hime a kind God.

Jesus I have no trouble with. I could happily go along with his teaching and his ways. He seemed such a well balanced guy, considering his parent, and I so believe in the values that it is said he handed down. I was finding a balance and an equilibrium.

The Dawkins got involved with the adverts on the buses "There is PROBABLY no God" and I was sunk. Here was a man who I had listened to, respected, put on a pedestal, and I had put up with him calling agnostics as he did for sitting on fences. Then he happily subscribes to the word PROBABLY. Where was.is his certainty all of a sudden. Then I saw that he is just as much extreme in his thinking as some religious extremists are. It is also dangerous to be spreading what appears to me to be an anti-Muslim ethic. They get blamed for all iniquitous things these days. it is WE (al of us humans) who are responible throughout history, for the wars and carnage. Our interpretation of whatever faith we follow can be as bad as the next persons... or as good.

My respect for Dawkins has gone. My wanting to get to know God better is gone (though I have not given up on wanting to find out answers). I have not given up a kind of belief in Christ's teachings. I remain agnostic but with a deep spiritual quest allowable. I do not believe in God... but I do not NOT believe in him. I still await proff of one thing or the other.

For those who have faith and belief I almost envy them their comforts. Not the extreme versions but the ones just wending their way through their lives who are trying to follow something they believe in. They are not a danger to me. The ones with true open minds, even with faith, are not the dangers. What is a danger is people who preach the message of hate, in one form or another, and get you believing in their message only to find later thet have changed they tack again and are not so solid as it first seemed.

Intellectually I believe true science (I use true to define it from false science) will find us the answers eventually to our beginnings: our roots. Spiritually I find I need a Jesus as much as he needs me. I am hoping to find my way along this path and still keep an open mind as to what I may find art the end. Answers or just more questions?

Probably no god could also mean there could probably be one too?

Hope this in some way helps the debate and my own personal stance. In the end we have to make decisions based on our own personal stance. Ww need to learn to allow others to do it there own way too. Doctrine and Dogma aside, power and possesions removed, it is not religion that is the threat. It is our interpreations of what is given us by the men at the top.

mp