Richard Dawkins's Film 'The Root Of All Evil'

I understand why the congregant worry Dawkins’s view when she read the book of Joshua. When I read the story of holy war, I could not dispute Dawkins’s description. However, I realized that I read the Bible outwardly. It is easy to make mistake to interpret God when we read the Bible only following the words. However, if we read the book of Joshua with the historical side and the real meaning of the words in the Bible, we can see God differently unlike Dawkins’s perspective. I would like to say that Dawkins interpret God in the only one side. Since Dawkins see God as the side of victor or oppressor, he does only see God as what he describes.

This documentary caught my attention right from the opening lines. People, in general, do not like to admit when they are wrong, so when the narrator began by claiming that the entire set of beliefs he had grown up with and lived his life by were wrong and “untrue” it made me stop and consider how that would affect a person. To have your entire way of thinking be proven invalid would be an unsettling situation to put it simply. I could not begin to imagine how that would feel, but I tried to keep this thought in mind as I continued with the rest of the documentary as it explored complex ideas involving education, employment, and obedience.

What Richard Dawkins is trying to say in this piece of superb rhetoric is that if you’ve read the Old Testament that god is a horrendous monster. He regards the god of the Old Testament as the “worst character in all fiction” and when he says fiction it is an statement to show that he himself does not believe in a god. Dawkins says this as a way of introducing the point that he will be attacking the god of the Old Testament. If you look back in the bible God is directly responsible for many mass-murders. God orders the killing of innocent people like in the story of Noah’s ark even after the Ten Commandments says “Thou shall not kill”. Christians today are quick

Mark, I appreciate how you bring out the attempts of Dawkins to refute the existence of God, and the overall belief in science by utilizing the laws of probability, and a computer model of artificial selection to assert major arguments for the improbability of a supreme being. Both the laws of probability and the computer model are man-made examples that man created, therefore can manipulate into any outcome they desire. While the law of probability may be a rule within the scientific realm, why should I choose to believe this concept, since I cannot see it, prove it myself, and furthermore, how do I know that the person who created this law really existed?

“Belief is a powerful force” (Moore, Alt. Considerations). It is what lead the Israelites out of Egypt and what inspired Michelangelo to paint the “Creation of Adam.” It is what encouraged the pilgrims to move to America, but belief has also lead to wars. It is belief of superiority that fanned the flame of the Holocaust and the KKK. It is what that killed seventy-nine people in the Wacco Siege and it is what that killed 909 men, women, and children in Jonestown. The Jonestown Massacre has played a very big part in the history of cults and radical belief. People wonder how these people were manipulated to do terrible things. But perhaps it is not belief itself that is terrible, but how people use it.

Jeremy A. Evans is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Texas A&M University, a M.Div. in Biblical Languages from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. Dr. Evans has published two main works through B&H publishing company, The Problem of Evil: The Challenge to Essential Christian Beliefs, and The Legitimacy of Christian Moral Thought in the Marketplace of Ideas. Dr. Evans strives to accomplish two things in his teaching and writings; “one, to edify students by challenging them to engage their mind for Christ, and two, provide the necessary tools for independent research

Religious individuals are viewed as illogical and even delusional, while those who claim to be atheists are seen as more intelligent. Sam Harris, a prominent atheist, made a statement reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson’s view on Christianity in a recent podcast. “It would be possible for you and I to invent a religion, right now, that was better than any existing religion.” His ‘religion’, he continued on to explain, would simply be a collection of benevolent rules to enforce moral behavior. To Harris, while the the majority of religious beliefs are outrageous, the moral framework they provide is beneficial to society. Another prominent atheist, Richard Dawkins, took a stance much closer to Thomas Paine’s in a speech titled Militant Atheism. Faith and reason, Dawkins argues, are incompatible and completely destructive to each other. “Not only is science corrosive to religion, but religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial, supernatural, non-explanations, and blinds then to the wonderful, real explanations that we have within our grasps,” (Dawkins). Whether Dawkins chooses to recognise it or not, the modern Catholic Church is still using logic to find its own wonderful, real

God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. He shaped it all out of nothing. He breathed life into it. Everywhere we look, He reveals himself to us. He also reveals Himself to us as individuals and it is our responsibility to seek Him with our whole selves. These two different ways He reaches out to us are called general and special revelation.

An argument against the existence of God is based on the presence of evil in the world. This deductively valid argument is divided into two categories; human action and natural evil (Sober, 2005, p. 120). Human action discusses how experiences makes us better people, while natural evil are tragic events that are not under the control of humans. Each category is used as evidence to refute God as an all-powerful omniscient, omnibenevolent, or omnipotent being. In order to understand the strengths of this argument, it is important for an overall assessment of how the presence of evil questions if a Supreme Being actually exists, by arguing why a being of all-good would allow evil, importance of evil in a good world, and questioning God’s intervention in evil.

Biology professor Kenneth Miller’s central argument is that science should not undermine one’s faith in God. “Science itself does not contradict the hypothesis of God.” He makes this argument by stating that science explains the things that God has made and in doing so, trying to prove the existence of God through natural or scientific means does not make sense. Once the supernatural is introduced, there is no way to use nature, thus science, to prove or disprove its existence. Miller argues that science gives us the window to the dynamic and creative universe that increases our appreciation of God’s work. The central point of his argument is evolution. Creationists, of the intelligent design movement, argue that nature has irreducible complex systems that could have only arisen from a creature or designer. This theory is widely supported among devout believers in the Bible and God. Miller argues that if they truly believe this, completely ignoring hard facts and theories, then they are seeking their God in the darkness. Miller, a Christian himself, believes that this “flow of logic is depressing”; to fear the acquisition of knowledge and suggest that the creator dwells in the shadows of science and understanding is taking us back to the Middle Ages, where people used God as an explanation for something they have yet to or want

One of the main arguments used by non-believers against the existence of God is the presence of evil and suffering in the world. The term ‘evil’ is often used to describe something that is morally wrong. Philosophers make a distinction between moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil results from human actions that are morally reproachable, and Natural evil results from the malfunctioning of the natural world, which produces entities such as disease and famine.

Evil has been a topic that has always been discussed with some amount of controversy—especially in the religious aspect. People who have the Judeo-Christian-Islamic perspective wrestle with the notion of how there can be an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect God who allows such atrocities to happen in the world. It is also difficult to understand how God also allows natural evils — like hurricanes or cancer— to ruin people’s lives and harm people in any way. However, the discussion of evil expands far beyond the religious understanding. In the book, The Myth of Evil, by Phillip Cole, he explores the possibilities and possible theories of evil within the realm of religious belief and outside religious ideology. He recognizes there are four

The conflict between science and religion has always been existed. In many religious institutions, especially Muslim and Jewish, belief in Darwinism or other scientific theories is forbidden (Ferngren, 2002). Therefore, scientific studies in faith schools subsequently differ from normal school one’s. For example, Dawkins (2006) argues that faith schools tend only to teach children in a religious way, avoiding such important curriculums such as science and humanism. Similarly, Cush(2005) states that faith schools provide limited choice of scientific and sociological subjects. The knowledge of science basics is compulsory for every decent citizen in the age of new technologies and scientific humanity progress.

"Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam."

Preaching to a Post-Everything Word was published in 2008. The terrorist attacks of 2001 brought about religious sensitivity and interfaith dialogue, making religion a hot topic. Just two years prior (2006) Richard Dawkins, a well-known atheist, published The God Delusion—It was a New York Times best seller. In 2007, Dawkins film The Enemies of Reason attacked the belief of intelligent design, spurring atheism on as a voice in interfaith dialogues. In politics, the first presidential election since the terrorist attacks of 2001 would take place. Just a year prior, discussions about the presidential nominees began to make headlines. A common matter between these candidates was their religious affiliation. As candidates made their religious affiliation