Pastor Patrick Hines | Kingsport, Tennessee
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Richard Dawkins on Religion's Power to Console
Atheist, Richard Dawkins, has written on p352 of The God Delusion: What have you to offer the dying patient, the weeping bereaved, the lonely Eleanor Rigbys for whom God is their only friend?... Religion's power to console doesn't make it true. If Dawkins were consistent with his atheistic worldview, I think he would need to question why the "dying patient, the weeping bereaved," or "the lonely Eleanor Rigbys" would need to be consoled in the first place. Let us consider the "dying patient" for a moment. The concept of consolation makes little sense when the only value that seems to be extolled by Dawkins is the forward progress of our evolution and the glory of natural selection. Should not the "dying patient" welcome their death as perhaps the pinnacle of their life in that they are now experiencing in the very act of dying the glory of forward progress for their species? If the dying die, then natural selection has selected them for extinction. Could we not encourage them to embrace with enthusiasm and joy their small part in the forward progress of our evolution? And what of our friends and acquaintances who have had children die of cystic fibrosis, lukemia, or something else? Couldn't we look them square in the eye at their child's funeral and rejoice with them that their child's defective DNA had been selected for extinction instead of being allowed to pass to the next generation? No matter what Dawkins says on paper and how consistent it is with his atheism, he would never be able to bring himself to live consistently with it were he to attend the funeral of the young child of a close friend. Even the atheist, while his worldview logically produces an attitude of thankfulness when the dying die, they cannot escape what they know because God imprinted it upon their hearts: Human life has dignity and the dying and bereaved need to be consoled.
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