Over the years this blog has been in existence - on and off - I have generally tried to keep my personal opinions of other people's idiocy out of things. Unsuccessfully, I'll grant you - especially as regards Esperantists, cyclists who wear lycra, Italian leaders and Simon Jenkins - but there has been some attempt at least.
And I freely admit that this is partly because explaining my admittedly unusual (yet entirely rational) position as a church-going agnostic positivist takes a lot of time and is prone to frequent interruption.
However, there are times when one has to deliver the bitch-slap, with however heavy a heart, and last week was one of those times. Radio 4 had invited vacuous trendy vicar The Revd Giles Fraser to confront laser-guided Professor Atheist Angrypants Dawkins himself on some pointless survey or other about how many of the population are Anglicans (I answer "yes and no" to this one, myself; a position of which the C of E heartily approves and frequently takes itself).
Dawkins pointed out that a large number of alleged Christians cannot name the first book of the New Testament. Fraser then countered with an undergraduate debating-society cheapshot by asking Dawkins whether he could recite the entire title of Darwin's 'Origin of Species'. Dawkins promptly marched into the heffalump trap by saying he could, and then failing to do so.
Here's what he should - with the benefit of hindsight - have said:
"It matters not a whit whether I, or indeed anyone alive today, can remember the title of Darwin's 1859 magnum opus, nor even whether we have read it. And this is because science is not a religion, Darwin was neither prophet nor evangelist, and Origin is not a holy book. If you ask me to explain how we know evolution to be true, I would not start with a reading from Darwin, nor would I ask you to accept everything he wrote on faith. We would instead look at evidence. That is how science works. And furthermore, the best evidence we can show today was unknown to Darwin in 1859. Our understanding of the genome lays clear things that Darwin glimpsed but through a glass darkly. Thousands of transitional fossils are available in museums across the world which were still in the ground in Darwin's time. Christians, however, need the Bible because Christianity necessarily relies on revelations and faith. Without the book, there is nothing. Without Darwin's book, we can still show overwhelming evidence for evolution. So fuck off."
