Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself.
Interpretation
The quote questions the need to defend God, suggesting that a powerful being wouldn't require protection.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins provocatively raises the question of why humanity feels compelled to defend the existence or reputation of God, implying that a deity, if truly omnipotent, would not need such defense. It reflects on the nature of belief and the human tendency to protect ideals that may not need safeguarding, highlighting the complexities and contradictions inherent in religious faith.
In practice
During a debate on religious belief, one might use this quote to illustrate skepticism regarding the defense of God.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.
Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.
There are two worlds we live in: a material world, bound by the laws of physics, and the world inside our mind, which is just as important.
But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men- men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order- do we call it? - fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard or His forgiveness we must forever implore?
Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have.
The best philosophy is to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot; bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it.
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