Evil Religion? Richard Dawkins

Welcome to ETC, I’m Phil Steiger.

Is religion evil? Richard Dawkins thinks so. He is the Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and recently has gone to some length to argue that religion is evil. His point is that even though Christianity claims to teach morality, nothing but moral evil and ignorance comes from it. As a believer, at least a couple of things could be said.

First, Dawkins makes the mistake of picking bad examples of Christianity to define it. Certainly there have been evils in the history of the Church, but those do not change the moral perfection of Christ, or the potential goodness of believers. Secondly, given Dawkins’ strident naturalism, he is unable to defend a serious distinction between good and evil anyway.

Ironically, he borrows his sense of good and evil from the very religion he claims to debunk.

This has been Every Thought Captive. I’m Phil Steiger pastor at Quail Lake Community Church and director of dayspring center for Christian studies. For more information please visit www.everythoughtcaptive.org.