Q&A format a straightjacket (Main Forum)

by Debb , Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 05:33 (407 days ago)
edited by Debb, Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 05:46

I watched a replay of the Dawkins/Pell Q&A and thought it a great waste of time. Three men and an audience, all preoccupied with intellectual argument, trying to explain things. Christ did not come to explain things. Christ came to express God's love in and for the world. What is to be gained by arguing about love?

Dawkins is absolutely obsessed with explaining everything, and he seems to have reduced the principle of ocam's razor to an absurdity. That is, if you have the choice of believing that the universe arose from "nothing" (i.e. a very very simple "something") or from a very complicated God, then the very, very simple is a better explanation. He then uses the word "stupid" to dismiss anything he finds inadmissable. By thus defining the terms of the discussion, he draws others into a situation where love cannot enter. God is not something to be explained, or explained away, God is love.

I try to imagine Dawkins and Pell as two young boys visiting a favourite aunt. Aunt might see that Dawkins looks pinched and miserable, so she will and give him a hug and a nice piece of cake. She thinks Pell looks a bit stressed with being such a big, strapping growing boy and he needs a good run around in the yard with the dog. Then the two of them might play under the sprinkling hose and come inside, where aunt would say, "Don't argue, boys," and give them each a cup of cocoa to drink beside the warm fire.

I wonder what Jesus would say to these two. Do you think Jesus would engage in their pseudo-intellectual argument, or present them with a radical challenge to their being? Like an invitation to love?