Dawkins (book) Anti-Semitic, says Chief Rabbi
The Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has accused Richard Dawkins of being anti-semitic (POST SCRIPT – sachs subsequently explains it’s Dawkins’s work he is calling profoundly antisemitic, not Dawkins the man). That’s a pretty serious charge (even qualified by my PS).
According to Sacks, Dawkins has misunderstood those sections of the Hebrew Bible because he is a “Christian atheist” rather than a “Jewish atheist”.
Dawkins, says Sacks, reads the Old Testament in an “adversarial way,” and that is “Christian” because Christianity’s New Testament is supposed to have “gone one better” than the Old Testament.
Alexander Waugh has a nice illustration of this in his book God – The Biography:
Randolph didn’t come to the shocking conclusion that God’s a shit because he was already committed to reading the Old Testament in an anti-semitic way, but because that’s the conclusion that any sensible person would draw after reading it at first blush.
In fact, Dawkins’s point is hardly new. As the Christian Paul Copan points out, Enlightenment thinkers like Robert Ingersoll were arguing back in the 19th Century that the God of the Old Testament was a cruel and unjust person, and that no one in their right mind could be a Christian as a result.
As Sacks must surely be aware, Christians, just as much as Jews, have strived to show that the Old Testament God is not the monster he might seem to be. They’re still at it. Here, for example, is a Christian Apologist attacking Dawkins et al for concluding that the Old Testament God is a moral monster. Here’s another. Here‘s another. Here‘s another. Here‘s another.
Clearly, it’s not pro-Christian prejudice that leads people to conclude the God of the Old Testament is a moral monster. Rightly or wrongly, it’s the Old Testament itself that leads them to draw that conclusion.
Argue, if you wish (and as the above linked posts do), that those atheists who draw the conclusion that the God of the Old Testament is a monster are reading the OT texts in too literal a manner, or are at least unwarranted in drawing that conclusion based on the texts. But the atheist’s mistake, if there is one, is clearly not a product of some sort of deeply-ingrained, anti-semitic culture.
Did you actually watch the debate? Sacks never called Dawkins antisemitic, and when asked if that was what he was implying, vehemently denied that Dawkins might have been antisemitic. This article is clearly twisting what happened with an agenda…
I watched the exchange. Everyone can see the exchange. It is currently available online here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/0/19563336
Sachs says that chpt 1 of Dawkins’s book is “profoundly antisemitic”.
True, Sacks subsequently said he didn’t mean to call Dawkins himself antisemitic, just his book (that bit was not in the video I saw though, or in the clip above, which both ommitted the QandA section in which Sacks made that clarification). That’s a pretty fine distinction though isn’t it? Sacks says Dawkins’s book is profoundly antisemitic. Without further explanation, the conclusion people in the audience will likely draw is obvious: the author is antisemitic. But then. later on, when cross-examined, Sacks says he is not claiming Dawkins is antisemitic. Perhaps he should have made that clearer earlier?
Frankly though, even to call Dawkins’s book antisemitic is unjustified and pernicious. Right?
But fair enough, I should probably change the header in iight of Sacks’s later comment so it reads “Dawkins’s book” not “Dawkins”. Have done so.
What do you suppose my “agenda” is, btw?