Foolishness all around

Rebecca Hamilton's August 3rd blog post, "A Non-Theistic Christian Now Running the Washington National Cathedral", is yet another example of writing that despite being brief is loaded with all sorts of nonsense. Even the title is ludicrous. By the loosest definition a self-professed "Christian" is a theist. Any one who seeks to follow the example/teachings of the Christ figure, regardless of specific interpretations and perceptions, is living by a "theism." A few sentences from the first full paragraph seems to reveal her real issues with Reverend Gary Hall, "He isn’t too keen on the idea of life-long commitment or fidelity in marriage, either. But he’s in the bag for gay marriage and has personally assured Dr Richard Dawkins that he also “doesn’t believe in the God” that Dr Dawkins doesn’t believe in."

That first sentence is basically just a biased opinion with little to no foundation. I have not read much on Hall but what little I have does not seem to support the idea that he has no respect for marriage. This seems to be a conflation. Somehow if you're not a prude or willing to tell others who they can love and how, you must be anti-marriage. Hamilton seems to think that only heterosexual relationships count and that you must publicly insist on a strict "conservative" view of sex for your beliefs about marriage to matter. This blatantly narrow minded approach should not surprise anyone who's read more than a few posts from her on the "Public Catholic" blog. In my experience the Catholics, and theists in general, who are the most in-your-face about their faith also tend to be the most narrow minded, hypocritical, and bigoted.

As the title of this post implies, it is not just Hamilton who is full of shit. Hall himself is also a bit of a fool. He has actually commented on Dawkins in the way Hamilton quotes him. Despite claims to the contrary, Dawkins does not criticism only one version of the God concept. It is true that he tends to focus more attention on the personal/scriptural version but he has pointed out flaws in the more abstract variation. Basically both of them are rather clueless and have no idea what they are talking about. If it were just another spat between to competing Christian interpretations I wouldn't care that much. Unfortunately, competing theists tend to drag in and abuse everyone around them. The Dawkins related quotation was meant as a slur.The piece does further various biased misrepresentations of atheists and non-theists in general.