George Galloway blasts the Senate

...Dawkin's and the Guardian's attempt to influence the US election surely backfired. I blame him for Bush's election

Here's the text of his hysterical epistle as published in The Guardian newspaper:

"L'Europe de Dante, de Goethe et de Chateaubriand." I interrupted: "Et de Shakespeare, mon General?" He agreed: "Oui! Shakespeare aussi!" ...No leading member of the EU elite would use such language today. The EU has no intellectual content. Great writers have no role to play in it, even indirectly, nor have great thinkers or scientists. It is not the Europe of Aquinas, Luther or Calvin--or the Europe of Galileo, Newton and Einstein. Half a century ago, Robert Schumann, first of the founding fathers, often referred in his speeches to Kant and St. Thomas More, Dante and the poet Paul Valery. To him--he said explicitly--building Europe was a "great moral issue." He spoke of "the Soul of Europe." Such thoughts and expressions strike no chord in Brussels today."

"President Bush will be speaking Friday on how King Lear and Othello have, along with several favorite sonnets, influenced his understanding of the human condition. Immediately following, Vice President Cheney will join the discussion (via satellite link from a bunker somewhere in Monaco) to read from the letters of Albert Einstein pertaining to the inhumanity of nuclear weapons arsenals and from those bibilical passages which remind us how the wealthy have as much chance of getting into heaven as Joe Camel has of squeezing through a needle-eye. Third up, Donald Rumsfeld will address the works of Tolstoy as they relate to honesty and to empathy, but I think we can also expect a passionate defence (from the Minister of Defence after all) on his personal intellectual love and area of interest - of the need to protect important achaeological sites and early civilization antiquities. Lastly, I'm really excited to tell you that Karl Rove will tie up the evening with a one-man play (written by himself) wherein he will act as attorney arguing in defence of Galileo - and of all free inquiry - before the Inquisition officials. "

At least Galloway won't be performing for "invite only" audiences unlike some politicians who shall remain nameless (but AirForce1 made my trip back from LA 1-1/2 hours late.)

Steve - considering that Professor Dawkins is a militant atheist he contradicts his own theories by designating anything as an "act of God".

Anyway most people here - Republicans and Democrats alike - figured the good professor had gone off the deep end when he published an open letter to Ohio voters urging them to vote for Kerry. Here's the text of his hysterical epistle as published in The Guardian newspaper ...

University of Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins made a career out of trying to present science in terms that could be understood by the general public. Through television appearances, opinion articles in newspapers, five books, and a CD-ROM, Dawkins had taken up the job of breaking down the barriers between the scientific community and the rest of the world. This led to his being named in 1995 the first Charles Simonyi professor of public understanding of science at Oxford. At the same time, however, he remained controversial, not just because of his views on evolution but also because he had become one of the country's best-known atheists.
Dawkins was born March 26, 1941, in Nairobi, Kenya, where his father was stationed during World War II. The family moved back to England in 1949, and in 1959 Dawkins entered Oxford, where he studied zoology. After receiving his doctorate, he became (1967) an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, and then returned to Oxford to teach two years later. In 1976 he published his first book, The Selfish Gene, in which he tried to set straight what he thought was a widespread misunderstanding of Darwinism. Dawkins argued that natural selection did not take place on the level of the species or the individual but rather among genes. Genes, he maintained, used the bodies of living things to further their own survival. He also introduced the concept of "memes," the cultural equivalent of genes; ideas--such as fashion, religion, or other cultural phenomena--took on a life of their own within society and, along with genes, affected the progress of human evolution. The book was notable not just because of what it espoused but also because of the way it was written--it appealed to both the general reader and the scientist. More books followed, including The Extended Phenotype (1982), The Blind Watchmaker (1986), River Out of Eden (1995), and Climbing Mount Improbable (1996). He also released an interactive CD-ROM in 1996, The Evolution of Life, in which users could create "biomorphs," computer-simulated examples of evolution first introduced in The Blind Watchmaker. In fact, it was Dawkins's fascination with computers that contributed to much of the controversy surrounding his ideas. He felt that evolution boiled down to a sort of binary information transfer between genes that could best be expressed through computer simulation.

Dawkins often appeared on talk shows and debates, defending not only his theories but also his atheism. He likened religious faith to the childish habit of needing someone to blame for anything otherwise inexplicable. He was the winner of a number of awards, both literary and scientific, including the Royal Society of Literature Award. His notoriety only increased with his marriage to Lalla Ward, an actress who had played an assistant to the fictitious television scientist Dr. Who. (ANTHONY G. CRAINE)

HofT wrote:

Steve - considering that Professor Dawkins is a militant atheist he contradicts his own theories by designating anything as an "act of God".

Anyway most people here - Republicans and Democrats alike - figured the good professor had gone off the deep end when he published an open letter to Ohio voters urging them to vote for Kerry. Here's the text of his hysterical epistle as published in The Guardian newspaper ...

Dawkins's background probably never mattered to the good people of Ohio. By the time that hit, they had become pretty astute about sizing up those who talked-down to the them such as the stream of Hollywood celebrities who were constantly breezing into the state with Kerry. The fact that this guy was stupid enough to pen such a condescending letter and think it might ever benefit Kerry is a prime example of what's wrong the Democratic party and fanatical liberals elsewhere. They've highjacked the party and will keep it out of power for years to come.

A sidebar here, the Ohio Amish, who traditionally do not vote but choose to pray for all candidates, were actively seeking out the local GOP to help them vote in the last election ... Bush won Holmes County with 76% of the vote.

Dawkins and his ilk were fools then, and apparently continue to be.

A recent poll in Canada (headlined in the Vancouver Sun) noted that Canadians now consider George Bush and Osama as equally dangerous to world peace. I think what bothers me most about that is my suspicion both men would likely respond to this polling result with a sense of pride and accomplishment.

A poll here in the U.S. might reveal that Americans aren't much interested in what Canadians think.

Militancy in defence of liberty is no vice. Dawkins' piece, quoted by Helen, doesn't match any dictionary definition of 'hysterical' though her use does match an earlier American instance where Benjamin Rush described women who supported the redcoat swine in the pre-independence period as suffering from 'hysteria' (see Thomas Szasz in The Manufacture of Madness).

scan through this Whooda then tell me Dawkins is a fool

http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Biography/bio.shtml