I would be very surprised if he did not, I have never heard any atheist claim that atheism involves more than the disbelief in gods. Clearly Dawkins anti-religion views involve more than just atheism.

I also do not quite agree with your reading of Dawkins view on the Bible. He definitely thinks it contains some very immoral teachings. Perhaps he is engaging in poor readings in some places. I, no expert, did find a few places where his writings on the New Testament was sloppy so I would not find it very surprising.

But I do not see that he rejects it as a piece of literature, certainly not as part of his anti-religion campaign. (The value of the Bible as fiction being irrelevant to the point he was making.) Further he does point out the importance of the Bible for understanding many cultural works and clearly is not trying to discourage people from reading or studying the Bible.

I do not think he hates the Bible. Even his discussion of the immoral teachings of the Bible is trying to refute the idea that the Bible is needed as a moral guide by pointing to passages that no one follows, not arguing that the Bible has caused an epidemic of concubine partitioning.

But there are portions of the Bible that I disparage and reject, and that’s because they honestly repulse and confuse me. Joshua oesn’t impinge upon my consideration of the Bible as great literature, but it does make me ‘hate’ the text that I am reading. And when many atheists attack the Bible, they often do so on that moral front.

As for your point about Newton, the man was pushed by his father towards a career in the church, which he rejected in favour of a life of science. On what grounds are you suggesting that I would accuse him of brainlessness? For the record, I have also not accused of brainlessness those people who do opt for a life of religion. I suggested that preoccupation with certain issues (is there a god? Does the universe have a soul? etc) is a waste of brain power, and that this is generally evidenced by those people who are obsessed with such topics. Don’t take my word for it: go down to the local pub or the surf club and you can talk to them yourself. I am sure that many religious people don’t fall into this category, but many religious people accept their premises and move on. Wasting time with speculation as to their veracity is precisely that.

Finally, my critique of the Bible’s banality was a critique of the Bible in English, not in Hebrew/Aramaic. I would not devote so much attention to this text, were I truly under the impression that it is a waste of time. While Shakespeare and Milton might have derived great inspiration from the words of the King James Version, they were both fortunate as to have been able to compose literature superior to it in every way. For one reason, unlike the translators of the KJV, they weren’t constrained to follow foreign syntax.

- “The first concerns the existence of God. . . . The second, however, concerns the existence of god(s).”

I find it fascinating how you make use of the capitalization… Anything else might be god or a god, but the one in the Israelite texts gets the capital letter. Why the singling out of the Israelite deity YHWH as deserving the capital but not any other? Or would you lump any other deity that one can discern from a text as deserving the capital? Is the honor of the capital limited to the Israelite texts, a divine character in any text, or to something else?

- “Abstract speculation on that score, while it might prove entertaining as a diversion, is a waste of brain power – as can generally be evidenced by those who occupy themselves with the question.”

Actually, I find it is foundational to a lot of things—whether one is going with choice number one or choice number two. For instance, for those who happen to live in the United States, our founding documents are based upon the premise that a Creator (with a capital, although they seemed to capitalize a lot of things back then) has endowed humankind with natural, inalienable freedoms and rights. If a citizen of the U.S. does not believe in a “Creator” (of whatever kind) then they cannot agree with this principle of law and governance upon which their own nation stands. There is nothing in a non-creator driven or produced evolution that says a person of any evolutionary stage or development should or can have a right or a freedom inherent in their very existence. Rather, a non-creator driven or produced evolution says that we evolved to the places we are because we were better suited than others and because we were able to survive and adapt better than others. Should we fail to adapt or should we fail to be better suited to survival, evolution says we will be replaced by those who don’t fail in that regard. A “Creator” basis says no other person can take the place of another’s rights or freedoms no matter how more evolved or better suited or more fit or whatever they are. The results of these two are dramatic and will have effects in our actions in the world which are far more than mere abstract speculation. One doesn’t need to look at Pakistan to see the truth of that—where by behaving as if there is no creator or by behaving as if there is may mean the difference between life and death. It will effect how we view and work justice, how we understand and act on the differences or similarities between ourselves and other people or people groups, and many other things that create and move society, culture, and personal interaction. One of my heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr., only stood up against injustice of his African-American sisters and brothers in the U.S. because he believed in this principle. Had MLK considered there to be no Creator endowing all humankind with natural, inalienable rights and freedoms, he would have never took his stand, and my nation would be a very different place. I would even be so bold as to say that the recent activity by my own government in terms of torturing peoples labeled “terrorists,” holding them indefinitely without charge, and doing things to humiliate and degrade them which has nothing to do with making restitution for the wrongs that they have not even been charged with, is due to a lack of this principle of inherent, inalienable right and freedom that exists in all humankind because of a Creator.

- “People who treat it as a source of intellectual enlightenment need to go back to school, and those who profess it to be great literature have evidently never encountered Milton, Shakespeare or Keats.”

I wonder if you have severely undercut your own argument, considering some of these very people found “intellectual enlightenment” in biblical texts and their own literature was inspired in one place or another by the biblical texts themselves. I also wonder how it is possible that you could say any of the great intellectuals of the past thousands of years that dramatically changed society for the better because they found “intellectual enlightenment” in texts you say they shouldn’t have need to go back to school. I suppose Isaac Newton was brainless in your estimation.

- “those who read a text in their native tongue will never appreciate the subjectivity of their own reading, nor the full weight of all the intellectual baggage that they carry to the task.”

I don’t think this necessarily will be the case… (this is where my response post really begins)

Well said.

Classic!

As you have suggested, a belief in the Bible’s inerrancy requires reducing the text to a series of pithy sayings. The actual fabric of the narratives is noticeably fictitious (or at least freighted with fiction) to anybody not raised on its “message”. What is more, the barbarous nature of some of its mandates necessitates continual justification in order to maintain their divinity. My point is merely that enjoying the biblical literature need have nothing to do with “believing” in it, but so long as atheists continue to openly disparage and reject it, I could never swell their numbers with my own small support.

SOME of these people who lack the necessary degree of stupidity and gullibility… lets call them ‘sane and rational’ people… think that it is a bad idea to abandon the field of public discourse, and leave the steering of the ship of humanity and the world in the hands of the stupid and gullible, who are bent upon leading us down a path that depends directly from the myths, superstitions, fables, fairy-tales and fantastical delusions of an ignorant gaggle of Bronze Age fishermen and peripatetic, militant, marauding, murdering, genocidal goat-herders.

It is best to think of Dawkins and the like as pursuing a SANE PEOPLE agenda, rather than an ‘atheist’ agenda.