Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself.
Interpretation
The quote questions the need to defend God, suggesting that a powerful being wouldn't require protection.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins provocatively raises the question of why humanity feels compelled to defend the existence or reputation of God, implying that a deity, if truly omnipotent, would not need such defense. It reflects on the nature of belief and the human tendency to protect ideals that may not need safeguarding, highlighting the complexities and contradictions inherent in religious faith.
In practice
During a debate on religious belief, one might use this quote to illustrate skepticism regarding the defense of God.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities, as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads.
The swiftness of time is infinite, as is still more evident when we look back on the past.
All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she has extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity.
If there is one single molecule in this universe running around loose, totally free of Godβs sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.
The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.
Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.
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