Remember when Richard Dawkins described Pope Benedict as "a leering old villain in a frock", you know, because those silly Christians are always putting on funny outfits and standing around trying to look important.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Richard Dawkins in a frock...

Even more amusing is the fact that academic robes have their roots in clerical garb. In other words, the outfit that Richard Dawkins calls a "frock" when the Pope wears it, is more closely related to the outfit above than he realises.

More like the intelligence of an adult cow...

On the other hand you might say, even when a human embryo develops a nervous system and develops the capacity to perhaps suffer, it's still a much smaller nervous system than the nervous system of an adult cow and so, what about balancing the suffering of a human embryo against the suffering of an adult cow when it's being slaughtered for meat.

Give it five minutes and he'll be ranting and raving that atheists are just as capable of being good moral people as anybody else. Yeah, that's really good that is - the old "who has the biggest nervous system" contest.

Because cows and human beings are same obviously.

Oh wait...

An absolutist moralist would say "well humans are just plain special and cows are not human so they don't deserve the same moral consideration" but a scientist might come along and say "well, what do you mean by that? I mean we are after all, all evolved, we're all cousins, at what point would you, at what point in the evolution of, since we know evolution is a fact, at what point in the evolution of humans would you suddenly draw the line and say "right, from now on they are all human and before that they're not"

The thing about atheism is that means cows, monkeys, fish, people etc are all just machines made of meat. This means moral decisions can only be based on "what causes the least suffering?" which is why all the main arguments in favour of abortion center around the suffering that may happen if the baby is allowed to be born.

In that context, I can sort of understand why you might say it's worse to hurt a meat machine with a lot of nerves. You will cause more suffering.

What I can't understand is why they think it's wrong to cause suffering in the first place.

So reads the headline in the Telegraph, apparently Richard Dawkins and Co have a plan to set up Athiest societies in Schools to counter the Christian ethos of many schools...

The federation aims to encourage students to lobby their schools and local authorities over what is taught in RE lessons and to call for daily acts of collective worship to be scrapped. It wants the societies to hold talks and educational events to persuade students not to believe in God.

Doesn't sound like they plan to do anything that Catholic schools aren't doing already...

Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute said: "Atheists are becoming increasingly militant in their desperate attempts to stamp out faith. It is deeply worrying that they now want to use children to attack the Christian ethos of their schools.

"Many parents will also be anxious at the thought of militant atheists targeting their children."

Many parents are already anxious at the thought of a lot of things that go on in our "Catholic" schools. Those with the authority to do something about it don't seem inclined to do so.

Richard Dawkins has, as I'm sure everybody knows by now, stepped down from his post as Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford (who knew) with plans to write a children's book.

"appeal to children to think for themselves; to look at the evidence. Always look at the evidence" - Richard Dawkins

What I continue to find fascinating is the way Richard Dawkins continuously makes appeals to our freedom to think freely. As far as I can see, our intellectual freedom is the most convincing evidence for spiritual reality that we have.

Richard Dawkins says...

"I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will. Indeed, I encourage people all the time to do it."

"...Free will is a very difficult philosophical question and it's not one that has anything to do with religion..."

"I'm not interested in free will."

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But I can only really see two options:

No Free Will - If there is no free will then we can't, as Dawkin's puts it "override biology with free will". Without free will we are simply highly evolved meat machines following the rules of biology. Under one set of physical conditions we will murder our wife, under another set we won't. It's out of our control. If a man does something "wrong" we can't blame him, it's not his fault. Physics did it.

Free Will - If there is free will then we can "override biology with free will". But think about what that means for a moment. Under one set of physical conditions we would have murdered our wife but we can choose not too, under another set we wouldn't have murdered out wife but we can choose to do so. Free will means that man has the power to defy the laws of physics. It means that man is more than a machine. It means that man is a miracle.

GK Chesterton says...

This is the real fact. You cannot live without dogmas about these things. You cannot act for twenty-four hours without deciding either to hold people responsible or not to hold them responsible. Theology is a product far more practical than chemistry.

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It doesn't matter if we take a Newtonian deterministic view where the world is like a snooker table and if we know the position and speed of all the balls then we can predict what happens next (in which case, our minds are not free, they are as predictable as balls on a snooker table) or if you take a Quantum mechanical view where the world is a bit crazy and has apparently random phenomena (in which case, our minds are not free, our choices are random).

Even unknown unimaginable sci-fi scientific discoveries of the future - if they involve 'stuff' (particles, snooker balls, fields, whatever) that follows rules (e.g. if science can say anything about them) then that's not free will. That's stuff following rules.

Free will cannot be explained scientifically. Every act of free will requires some exemption from the laws of physics.

If free will isn't a natural biological phenomenon, what is it? A supernatural phenomenon? A spiritual phenomenon?

It has everything to do with religion.

I'm sure everybody has seen this by now but hey-ho here you go..