BrendanB

You have not alienated me. For that matter no one else but the few people who have deliberately tried to goad me into anger with deliberate insults have alienated me and I am happy to talk to them on any post of theirs that doesn't include a deliberate insult.

Thank you for the insight into your life as a Catholic and your opinions about faith.

"I get tired of people denigrating Richard Dawkins. I really believe that he is a genuine human being and an extremely clever man who has very clear views based on a formidable logic. However, in my world, I recognise that reason is not the be all and end all. I admire Dawkin's intellectual rigour but he is a fallible human being and is as capable of error as the rest of us."

I am sorry it makes you tired, but this is an important point I am trying to make.

Dawkins is clever and he has famously applied intellectual rigour and reason to the creationism vs evolution "debate".

But where is the intellectual rigour and reason is this statement? I don't see any, none at all. I see an emotionally worded polemic statement with NO basic in science and very little, very dubious basis in logic.

"Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong." R. Dawkins, The God delusion.

"is as capable of error as the rest of us."

Fair point. Dawkins is capable of error. I am too. But is that statement an error? I think is deliberate. It is a key premise of his book. If it were an error, would his editors have missed it?, His publisher? Himself when he repeats and reinforces the point as I have seen him do?

I don't think so.

This is a clear point we can make in this debate right now. Do you agree with this sentence, the whole sentence and the connection made between atrocities and religious upbringing or not?

"Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong."

Do you think that is based on reason and intellectual rigour and science, or not?