Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks to Debate Richard Dawkins
September 10, 2012 11 Comments
This is one debate that I’m looking forward to watching.
Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins and Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks will meet on Wednesday in an hour-long debate on science and religion, as part of the Re:Think Festival in Salford.
The festival, hosted by the BBC at MediaCityUK, runs from 12-13 September.
It aims to explore and debate ethical and religious issues affecting society.
This will be the second time that Prof Dawkins and Lord Sacks have exchanged their opposing views on faith and science in a public arena.
In October 2011, Andrew Marr discussed the wonders of nature with Prof Dawkins, Lord Sacks and cosmologist Prof Lisa Randall in BBC Radio 4′s Start the Week.
In that occasion, Prof Dawkins’s contribution touched upon the beauty of the physical universe, and highlighted the supremacy of scientific discourse over myth or faith in the explanation of reality.
But Lord Sacks said that, while science provides facts, religion gives meaning; humans, he said, need both.
Ahead of Wednesday’s debate, the Chief Rabbi reiterated that view.
He told the BBC: “There is a belief that science and religion cannot coexist, that the advance of one is to the detriment of the other.
“I believe this is wrong.”
He added that there was “more to life than science and more to religion than ignorance and superstition”.
“What is needed, now more than ever, is a conversation between the forces of science and those of religion,” said the Chief Rabbi.
“Richard Dawkins is a gifted scientist and someone who has contributed a great amount to our understanding of the world.
“I hope we will be pleasantly surprised and realise that there is a very strong argument for saying that, despite obvious differences, there can, and must, be a great partnership between science and religion.”
New year’s debate
The Chief Rabbi will also meet Prof Dawkins in a BBC documentary to be broadcast on the same day.
The programme will mark Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
During an interview with Richard Dawkins filmed for the documentary, Lord Sacks put it to him that hope was based on having faith that good things might happen.
Prof Dawkins replied: “You don’t need religion to have hope. You don’t need the supernatural.
“Hope is an attitude to the future. The future is an unknown and you can take a scientific attitude to prophesy the likely future.”
“Hope is not something that you have evidence for – it’s something that you feel in you.”
Aaqil Ahmed, commissioning editor of Religion & Ethics at the BBC, has high hopes for the Dawkins-Sacks debate: “Jonathan and Richard are two of Britains most revered thinkers in this area,” he said.
“I can’t wait to listen to them explore the complexities of the relationship between religion and science.
“This is a chance to see in the flesh if the gaps between these two worlds can be bridged by possibly the only two people who could manage it.”
The Rabbi is an intellectual and he should give Dawkins a good run for his money.
About Fr Stephen Smuts
I have no respect for atheists in general, and for Dawkins in particular; he is a mediocre, albeit irrelevant biologist who has not put forth anything recently outside of his atheist-centered anti-theist polemics books. He has been called a coward by his own fellow atheists for avoiding a debate with the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, a Brave Sir Robin who makes excuses when faced with actual challenges, but have no problems in debating some poorly-educated, Southern Baptist from small communities. Perhaps this is because he’s an intellectual fraud who thinks his little fame in the scientific community is a platform to shove his idiotic scientism down everyone’s throats, especially in universities where professors cater to gullible young students’ sense of intellectual superiority.
He is the hero of idiots who think that people like Einstein should be listened to in topics of discussions that go beyond physics, while conveniently ignoring that people like Einstein are emotional failures bordering on autistic levels. Dawkins is no different; he, like Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Michio Kaku are celebrity scientists who only sound smart by virtue of their pompous way of talking and the fact that they have appeared on television and written books. Of course, that will not stop their cult members from praising whatever they do, even if they fail miserably; those are the sort of people I would delight in roasting alive, for they are working hard towards the downfall of civilization, in collaboration with their “Christian” enablers who do nothing but hide beyond lazy theology while not being able to stand up to the intellectual stupidity that atheists put forward.
If a Christian is moral, he will crush the atheist error, and guide the atheist to heaven, providing they do not have invincible ignorance. In the case of such, letting them have a free hand will end in the destruction of churches and the murder of multitudes; such is the way of the intelligentsia. Clearly, then, they would need to be “re-educated” or put away into an oubliette.
Seriously, anyway, how can you respect anyone who labels himself a “Christian Atheist”? Someone who has no objective basis for their morality but somehow benefits from a society founded upon the world view that no man can have any god-like powers because of an existence of an exhaustively Sovereign and Perfect God and the infinite deficiency of humanity that no intellect can save.
And now, he’s debating a Jewish Rabbi- for what? What is the point of this debate? Is Richard Dawkins somehow the Atheist Emperor who everyone follows and the result of this debate will decisively determine that God exists or not? That scientists are now required to renounce their belief in God in order to be respected in the scientific community? It is the sort of pomposity from Dawkins that would’ve otherwise ended up with his tongue and writing hand severed had he lived in an Islamic country. (Of course, he can afford to attack Christianity. Christians haven’t been doing much to attack secularism, and we either just stand by and do nothing or make the same Dawkinsian excuse of “I don’t have the time.”)
Atheism must be destroyed; atheists must be converted; their books must be burned, or they all must be forgotten. Atheism, to quote Peter Hitchens, leads to howling ruins. It does not lead to a golden age, it leads to mass murder, alienation, and suicide. It would be moral to prevent these things when we still have the chance, when the stage of conflict is still verbal.
Once again, our modern or today’s Catholic “inquisitor” friend has spoken…
“those are the sort of people I would delight in roasting alive, for they are working hard towards the downfall of civilization, in collaboration with their “Christian” enablers who do nothing but hide beyond lazy theology while not being able to stand up to the intellectual stupidity that atheists put forward.”
Roasted alive, “Christian” enablers… lazy theology? Wow, talk about “intellectual stupidity”! WE are never going to win the lost atheists to the Gospel of God In Christ with this kind of speech! But as Christ told the Scribes & Pharisees…you “have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not left the other undone.” (Matt. 23:23)
And btw, William Lane Craig is a Protestant Evangelical!
I am not a cleric, hence I am no inquisitor. But even brute force can recognize valid intellect. William Lane Craig, is the closest I can get to respecting a Protestant. He is theologically errant at some point, but his philosophical work against atheism is wonderful. His logic is admirable. And the fact that he does it all with a calm smile makes me root for this happy warrior.
What have YOU done lately that can be compared to William Lane Craig’s work? Have you dared to lecture atheists in their home turf? Have you discredited or even just debated any major voice of atheism as of late? I have more respect for William Lane Craig though he is not Catholic, wears no collar, and performs no ritual out of his own intellectual honesty.
I admire him for his debates against atheists, and his efforts in educating the sleepy Christians that they may defend their beliefs when challenged by non-believers. (I believe St. Augustine encouraged this.) Not once have I heard WLC quote Scripture when facing atheists, and the effect is that he defeats atheists at their own Scripture-less game. He prefers to defend “mere Christianity” which I believe is completed with Catholicism, but I find nothing objectionable in most of what he has written in defense of Christianity and in critique of atheism.
He does not whine about how horrible the Pope is. He makes it his point that the necessity of defense and offense against atheism is a common ground of all who believe in Christ or even in God. With so much ignorance about mere Christianity, people like William Lane Craig are needed. He does not have to hide behind Scripture, and is not afraid of science because he (rightly) sees science as a means of glorifying God.
He is not a Christian enabler who says “peace, peace,” when there is no peace. He is not like some hippy-dippy Catholic priests who think everything is fine, and that atheism isn’t on the rise, and avoid any sort of intellectual work for the sake of “getting along” with everyone. What infuriates me is the priest who prattle on about how “Jesus loves everyone!” and run away when a serious, intellectual question is raised. Those are the people that encourage atheism. The inability to answer questions such as “Why is Jesus God’s only Son? Why can’t he have many? Why does he have to die?” can catch those priests off guard and they’d have to resort to an ineffectual greeting card platitude for the skeptic to have pity on them.
Now, there -are- priests who can stand and fight, such as Fr. Robert Barron, or even laymen like Dr. Scott Hahn and Dr. Peter Kreeft, but I do not know if they have struck the fear of God into atheists in the same way William Lane Craig has. (As acknowledged by the atheist Sam Harris)
Craig claims to believe in Christ, but has issues with Catholicism- (Particularly justification/works vs. grace) that’s fine- the details can be worked out later, so long as the basic premise is agreed upon- but he does not make his non-Roman Catholic-ness the foundation of his public identity. In fact, he uses Jesuit, Catholic thought in his philosophy. (Molinism) And that man was not even raised Catholic.
It is, of course, lamentable that in our time, the Protestants have become Catholic and the Catholics have become Protestant. Which is why I opt to go back to a mentality where toughness is needed in the intellect and the will to combat the common enemy, Atheism.
William Lane Craig is of course a Christian philosopher and apologist, and not really a Christian scripture scholar. He got his Ph.D. in philosophy in the 70′s under the Brit John Hick (Hick was a Kantian, died 2012, btw). And Craig got his Th.D. under Wolfhart Pannenberg, (80′s). WLC, is a few months older than I am, but we were both born in 1949.
He is certainly a Protestant, and simply does not see the RCC positions on grace, faith & soteriology. See his web site: Reasonable Faith.
Indeed his position taken from middle knowledge, i.e. Molinism, is certainly not Augustinian! He is a “Presentist” (Presentism – Phiosophy Of Time), and many Buddhists, past and present, are presentist. Of course I see this biblically & theologically as grave error! And too philososopically WLC is an evidentialist, if not too a Kantian. I am myself much more toward the presuppositional position of Holy Scripture, and of course too an Augustinian, and lean towards an Anglican view of Calvinism! Though Luther is also one of my very Reformational mentors, certainly! In Anglican Protestantism (via-media: both “catholic” & “reformed”), some of these are left to holy mystery, and even a kind of Voluntarism which sees the place of will and moral obligations in the Christian life.
typo..*Philosophy of Time
my sticky fingers & keys *philosopically
Why do these words resound in my heart: “Let the dead bury the dead. Then Come, Follow ME”!
@Margaret: Can you tell us what this verse and statement by our Lord means to you? As you apply it personally.
Fr. Robert, you certainly challenge me – a sign of a ‘good pastor/shepherd’!
I was mulling over this for a couple days, hoping for the Holy Spirit to groan within.
As with all of Jesus’ words, they are so very deep and pass as light through a prism; HIS Light is refracted in a new and mature Way as we are open to receive it.
First I would identify those who are the ‘walking dead’ – those who want nothing to do with God, refuse to Believe in HIM or cut themselves off from HIM to pursue a ‘life in the flesh’–devoid of Spirit and Truth…. But also, I believe the ‘walking dead’ are those who Jesus says “only pay ME lip service”; they will say “we healed in YOUR Name”, “preached on street corners” and Jesus will say to them “go away…for I do not know you”. These are harsh words indeed, but Jesus Never minces HIS Words and there is No duplicity in HIM! The Gospels are radical because they are “as God thinks, not as man thinks”!
Second, this statement to me is directly connected to our particular and personal attachments: “the rich young man went away sad because he had many possesions” – he was unable to give a total YES (at least up until that point in his life that we know of). Jesus MUST come First–in Everything and BE our First and Last Love! That is to say, when Jesus says “If you love mother or father…more than me, you are NOT worthy of ME” and “he who does the Will of MY Father IS my mother, my brother….” HE also says “I have not come to bring Peace but a sword. To set father against son….” Our YES resides in the Will but then…”…the day will come when someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not wish to go”!
In reality Jesus takes nothing away that was not wholesome and good in the first place and what HE seems to ask from us HE gives us back a hundred fold, even in this life – we begin to SEE and Live as already ‘in HIS Kingdom’–nothing is turbid, regrets are clothed in HIS Mercy and each day a reawakening. We humans give and do things mostly from a ‘sense of duty’ – which is good in and of itself – but it is NOT Love. When we give ALL to Jesus in Love – hold nothing back – we begin to see our Life through HIS Eyes and we want less of us and MORE OF HIM!
Third and last Jesus Invites – “Follow ME”. That implies ‘behind HIM’ – HE Leads! It is not just applicable to Vocations ie. a calling to the Priesthood, religious life etc. but rather an ‘Intimacy of Persons’ – a Soul in ‘Union with God’! Jesus says “no one comes to ME unless the Father draw him”. And so…”The Wind blows where It Wills, we know not whence it comes nor where to it goes” – we must Listen and FOLLOW!
You ask how I “appy all this personally”? Well, I am one that was standing around idle in the marketplace until mid-afternnoon before the Master hired me to ‘work in HIS Vineyard’. Because HE IS so Generous and will give me the same wages as one called at dawn, I feel that I must work at a fever-pitch. Alas, more often than not, I am convicted by the words of St. Francis to his brothers: “we are useless servants, up until now we have done little or nothing”. But I go forward anyway, always forward…”with hand to the plough, not looking back”. Jesus will straighten my crooked furrows and hopefully, at the end of ‘Life’s field’, HE will say: “Come, Blessed of MY Father…”!
@Margaret: Very nice, and profound! Here I see the great “Lordship” of Jesus Christ elevated! Amen, to “follow”, in the Greek expressing union, likeness, and a way! Of course it is used metaphorically of discipleship to Christ.
Thank you!
Of course that was the Greek NT Text! I love Greek Word Studies!