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Face to face with Richard Dawkins on ’The Root of All Evil’ By Adrian Hawkes LONDON, UK (ANS) -- It was quite an experience being face to face with Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world’s best-known evolutionist and the Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University in the UK, is a man with a mission in life. Dawkins appears to me to be absolutely driven to rid the world of “The God delusion” and “The virus of faith” — the shocking titles of the two one-hour “documentaries” broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4 network as part of his “The Root of all Evil” TV shows. I recently appeared on his controversial TV show and so afterwards, just for fun I typed my name into Google and what came up are lots of articles about Richard Dawkins. It seemed ironic that my name brought his name forward, mainly because of a brief 10 minute appearance on his TV program “The Root of all Evil.” There is a mixture of articles, concerning Richard Dawkins’ “The Root of all Evil” series of programs that were aired on Channel 4 in the UK. His basic argument is that all the major Abrahamic (1) religions are evil, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So I found that typing my name into Google simply was giving greater publicity to Richard and his “funny” views; using the TV program as a starter and Richard as the main proponent. Some think I didn’t do too badly in my interview with him while others thought I was an idiot. Richard Dawkins, of course, is quite a well-known name and is on the TV and Radio a lot, and I think this probably helps his book sales and commercial side of his attacks, as he sees it, on anything that doesn’t just occur by blind chance. The thing about the Internet is that it is a great leveler, and I don’t need a production company or a contract with a major channel to have my say, and so perhaps you can access my thoughts about that TV series via this little article. I wonder if the team of researchers, working to produce the his TV program, picked out the most extreme people with the wackiest of ideas to be the ones that Richard Dawkins interviewed. Of course, if you use the extreme people that make’s the sensible people look just as stupid, because just maybe they hold views on, say, Christianity, and it make’s what I believe to be an unreasonable argument, sound sensible and reasonable. Where does it leave me, on the wackier end, somewhat extreme? Lots of people of the more sober kind phoned me when they heard about the program and strongly advised me not to appear. They said, “He will make you look stupid!” Well I thought, if no one at least tries to answer the questions then where are we all left, with Richard and his funny view dominating the market place, surely that cannot be right. I suppose that Richard did say on the program, I think Mr. Hawkes means well, which really means “even though he is quite wrong and daft with it.” Let me first say that TV can be great but it has its limitations, the critical information I have read on the “NET” is interesting, but does not seem to take into account the fact that this is not live TV but rather edited television, and in my opinion edited to express the point of view of Richard Dawkins, that’s OK, but we need to remember that! I don’t have too many complaints about the way I was presented or rather “edited”, but in hindsight there are some interesting things that got left out. You get a different perspective when you get to watch the two long programs; the perspectives that Richard knows the answers and will put forward the correct view, even though the researcher intimated that this was an open discussion. All I was aware of at the time was the interview at Phoenix Academy [a private Christian school in London] with myself and I did not realize that it seemed to be Richard Dawkins plan to make those who he defiantly did not agree with, get really mad at him, (and whatever Richard is or isn’t, he is fairly familiar with the medium he was using.) Now I am not unfamiliar, but not as experienced as he is, even if for a while I did have a small TV production company. But I did know not to get mad! I noticed one of the Rabbis’ in London had the sense not to get angry. However, funnily enough, there was a section where Richard definitely got mad with me, edited out of course, I happened to say to him that I thought he was a very great evangelist for his Religion, he replied “that really makes me mad! Other people have used that phrase and I don’t like it!” I think the area Richard wanted to make me mad about was the use of the situation that, as he tried to explain to me, he did not need a God to make him moral, and I needed to have someone, i.e. God, to make sure I was acting rightly towards my wife and others; he acted right, he told me, to others and his wife without such a need. “Well done!” I replied, edited out, “But you obviously are not watching the news, and seeing what is going on in the world are you?” The problem for Richard Dawkins and, of course myself, is that the TV media loves and works best with simplistic sound bites. I had mail from people of the Richard Dawkins persuasion telling me how stupid I was for saying such and such but they were without the advantage of total context. What can I do? My hands are tied. I also had mail from those who might have been my supporters telling me off for not adding this or that into the dialogue, again forgetting this was an edited program and TV works on sound bites and is never, ever the full picture. For example, when I talked with Mr. Dawkins there where areas concerning Religion, things that he experienced in Israel, where I had just returned from, which also gave me much of the same frustrations that he had, though we touched those areas they don’t appear, but of course that was not the intended direction of the program was it? I couldn’t help wondering in all of it though about Richard the Human being, made in the image of the Living God, and therefore to be respected as the highest of God’s creation. Where had he been? What made him so angry? What made him so determined to be such an evangelist? Was he brought up in a religious atmosphere that was actually ungodly? There are many of those arenas. I don’t know the answers, I only know that I am still puzzled as to why he thinks we are all accidental, and there is no design in our universe, I am also amused that others have used Richard Dawkins efforts to stop this “root of all evil” and encouraged a group of Christians on the South Cost to advertise at a university a meeting entitled ‘Richard Dawkins God’, they thought that there may be a handful of people who would be interested in hearing answers opposite to accidental creation. Over 700 turned up! They heard the good news that Richards God is dead, but there is a risen one! Honestly, I have a lot of sympathy with Richard Dawkins view of religion, but then I don’t happen to think that Christianity, the real kind, is about Religion. Religion is mans way of searching for a god, Revelation is God’s way of calling to us, and Christianity is about relationship, relationship with God and with each other, with Grace at the centre of it. Anyway Richard, what do you think about Jesus? (1) Abrahamic The group of religions that are descended from the faith of Abraham; These include Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha'i. Islam is Abrahamic, but Buddhism is a non-Abrahamic religion.
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