"Most atheists I know are great people, sticking to the truth as they see it. Most also remain open to new possibilities and acknowledge that they are not entirely omniscient, and are respectful to those who think differently to themselves."Providing a few examples including the Cambodian genocide, Fitzgerald says that Dawkins is right to be angry about abuses occuring in the churches, but needs to acknowledge crimes and abuses carried out by atheists. Fitzgerald cites a fragment of a quotation "opium of the masses" as a critical finger pointed at any religion.
"Dawkins, however, often seems to have only contempt for the majority of human kind who, unlike him, do believe in the spiritual. His selective campaigning about political issues makes me wonder: is he really an objective seeker of truth, or is he someone who just hates and wants to undermine Judaeo-Christian principles?"
"[T]he opium of the masses" comes from a quotation of Karl Marx in his "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right." The full quotation is revealing: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people." It lightly echos Proverbs 29:18a "Where there is no vision, the people perish..." Marx understood that people who have absolutely nothing of earthly value find something of hope in religious belief. Opium was at one time a drug of soothing, of healing.
Richard Dawkins would deny people with absolutely nothing, the soothing balm of simply having their thoughts and feelings affirmed about themselves and hope that the world around them can become a better place. For some this is all they have.
Dawkins is unquestionably a rabid fundamentalist atheist. I have no truck with his ilk in the same way I have none with the bombast of the likes of Jerry Falwells and Jim Hagees of the world.
