Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams, 9/11

Here it is, 9/11, and I wasn't planning to post anything about it, but in my web travels, I came across the thoughts of two Brits on the subject. One, Richard Dawkins, resident atheist and Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, gives what I'd call an expected response to the On Faith question of the week on 9/11, and the second, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who was in NY during the 9/11 attack, and who gives a more nuanced reflection. Somehow, though, both left me as cold as I was before I read them.

First Dawkins, from On Faith ...

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What message would I send to religious extremists? The following.

You are passionately sincere. You really really believe that killing for your God is the right and moral thing to do, and that you will receive the supreme reward in Paradise. Your passionate conviction is called 'faith' and you have been taught, from infancy on, that to have faith is the supreme virtue. Not just you, most people in the world, the vast majority of whom would never dream of doing the terrible things you are prepared to do, have been brought up to respect faith unquestioningly. You could claim that you are true to your faith, in a way that those nice gentle people are not. But what if your faith itself is wrong?

It is wrong. Utterly, catastrophically, dreadfully wrong. There is no God. If you die a 'martyr' for your God, you will have died for nothing. If you kill for your God, you will have killed for nothing. Your life will have been wasted, and so will the lives of those you murder. You will not go to Paradise. You will rot, along with your victims, and the world will be well rid of you, though not of them.

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And here's the mention of some of what Rowan Williams has to say, reported in a TimesOnline article ....

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will argue tonight that terrorists must be shown the “respect and patience” owed to every person.

In an address in which he will call on the Church to establish its credentials as non-violent, Dr Williams says torture can never be justified to extract information from terrorists.

Comparing terrorists to disabled people or the poor, he says none of these groups can be regarded as “collateral damage” in the steady advance of prosperity in the West.

He says: “The dignity of every person is non-negotiable: each has a unique gift to give, each is owed respect and patience and the freedom to contribute what is given them.

“This remains true whether we are speaking of a gravely disabled person - when we might be tempted to think they would be better off removed from human society, or of a suspected terrorist - when we might be tempted to think that torture could be justified in extracting information, or of numberless poor throughout the world,”

Dr Williams will defend the right of terrorists to respect in a speech to a Christian-Muslim conference to mark the anniversary of 9/11.

In his text, Dr Williams calls for leaders of both faiths to believe in the “possibility of liberation from the systems of violent struggle.” .......

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