Cranmer: a response to a response to a response

Recently Cranmer responded, on his blog, to Richard Dawkins writing in The Times.

Cranmer, your smoothly sententious eloquence kept me reading to the end of your unjustifiably ad hominem attack on Richard Dawkins, despite my urges simultaneously to cringe and to heave at your irritating and persistent use of the third person when writing about yourself. Christopher Hitchens has remarked upon the common link between this affectation and megalomania. I find myself doubting any ambition on your part to take over the world; perhaps it is merely a symptom of the complacency so apparent in those who draw comfort from the popularity of their superstitious, faith-based, evidence-free world view.

Look upon this as a response to a reponse to a response. I take issue with your reply to Richard Dawkins, following his comment posted on your blog, after your bizarre critique of his recent article in The Times.

Do not try to dodge the naked fact that you suggested Professor Dawkins should be arrested. If, as you claim, the interrogative makes it ‘not a suggestion’, then I’m perfectly entitled to ask you when you stopped beating your wife, and to expect an unevasive answer. And as for a ‘nuanced point’, the point of your title was about as nuanced as the point of a Zulu spear. You are backpedalling, sir.

Your arguments appear to be founded upon the complexity of written theology. You claim that Dawkins is attacking a straw man, in the same way that ignorant creationists attack evolution by misquoting or over-simplifying Darwin’s thesis. But this is merely obfuscation. Do not, sir, attempt to pass your naked emperor off as decently clad. In order to qualify as a Christian one must profess belief in a supernatural being, omniscient and yet perturbed by his creation’s fall; omnipotent and yet unable to escape subjecting himself to a filthy public execution for which we ought all to share responsibility. If I have misunderstood some complex nuance of theology that renders all this untrue, then please provide me with a reference in order that I may fill the gap in my education.

Some of your claims are either plain ignorant or fundamentally disingenuous. No genuine evolutionary biologist accommodates creationism. That would be directly analogous to Columbus accommodating belief in a flat Earth. Similarly, no true scientist entertains seriously the empty cop-out of intelligent design. To embrace either of those dogmas is to reject science in principle.

If creationists ‘sustain all manner of disjunctive contradictions and inconsistencies’, how does that contribute to their understanding of the world around them? And if they are not trying to understand or explain anything, what is their purpose?

I believe that by positing ‘the varieties of literary genre’ to be found in the Bible you are in fact saying that the Bible is not literally true. That gives us a small island of common ground at least. What, then is the Bible? You list several things that it is not, and cite the importance of knowing what it is in order to discuss it, but fail to enlighten us as to what ‘what it is’ is. And what of all those who believed – and those who still believe – that the Bible is the inerrant word of God? Perhaps the word was somewhat errant after all, if it needed the Wisdom Literature in order to clarify it. It is quite bizarre to claim that a later, external revision somehow validates a self-contradictory muddle of ancient man-made texts, and even more bizarre to expect such a ludicrous claim to be taken seriously, however ostentatiously erudite the high prose in which it be couched.

Dogma is not a prerequisite to the dismissal of belief that Adam existed. I don’t require any dogma to dismiss the existence of Tinker Bell. Rather, I require credible evidence before asserting the reality of fairies. The same goes for Adam. Besides, if Adam existed, the whole of biology goes out of the window in one. Please don’t be so silly.

Your overly-long diatribe, displaying as it does the peacock’s tail of an admirable classical education and a well-thumbed library, says little that is sharply relevant or even helpful. Away with the veil of assumed complexity, hiding the pitifully weak set of claims beneath. If you have a clear, unequivocal point to make in favour of your position, bring it on.