Dick in the Dock Part 11: Dawkins loves the little children…

Once an organism (and perhaps especially one of Homo sapien parents) reaches a certain, apparently arbitrary, level of development Dawkins apparently ceases to think it is expendable and thinks its well being very important. At least he thinks it is important to protect them from religion. Thus his notorious statement about religion being child abuse. I do have to agree with him to a certain extent; that is, I do think that man-made religious systems are child abuse. But then I believe there really is a God, which such systems would be an abomination to. However, since Dawkins does not, what is he fussing about?
In order for something to be abused, it must presumably have some proper use. So we must ask, what is the proper use of children, that is, what are they for? Well, according to natural selection, the purpose of children is to propagate their parent’s genes. So then anything which interfered with this purpose would be abuse. Now Dawkins complains that Roman Catholics fill their children’s heads full of a bunch of nonsense. Be that as it may, it is tough to argue with results. There may not really be a nasty place called purgatory where you will have to go if you engage in homosexual acts or use birth control, but you know what? Catholics have a lot more kids than atheists do.
After blathering on about children for most of the chapter (and making very little if any sense) Dawkins abruptly switches gears, and starts talking about how important the Bible is as a cultural basis and literary work. That it certainly is, but it is that only if one excepts its truth claims. Here I must pause to make a distinction, many people confuse “truth” with “reality”. Truth is that which deals with the immaterial, the rational, the metaphysical. Reality is that which deals with the material, the empirical, the physical. Now I can read J.R.R. Tolkien’s works without having to lend too much credence to the “reality” of the events being related, but I have to give at least some credence to the Truth of the paradigm, or it becomes pure gibberish. The Bible is like this but even in a more profound way. The Bible claims both supreme Truth, and that the Word was made flesh, Truth and Reality where fused. This proposition must either be regarded as true or false, if it is true it is True, and if it is false, then it is worthless as literature or any thing else.