JPII had
something to say about it:
“The Old Testament, according to Marcion, came from a god unworthy of the name because he was vindictive and bloodthirsty, while the New Testament revealed a God of reconciliation and generosity. The Church firmly rejected this error, reminding all that God’s tenderness was already revealed in the Old Testament. Unfortunately the Marcionite temptation is making its appearance again in our time.”
Dawkins himself has given many reasons–in his books and his debates and lectures–but the poster did not include them here.
When Dawkins says this, he isn’t really looking for someone to defend God.
This is his opinion after reading the Old Testament.
But he’s not smearing or slandering religious people with this quote…he is giving his opinion on the personality of the OT God.
I wouldn’t say he’s cantankerous. This is his opinion and he usually delivers it very calmly and rationally.
A rational response to what I’ll admit was a more emotionally heated comment by me.
I’ll also admit I’ve never read anything by Dawkins. On its own, though, this quote is pretty crazy. The main reference I got was “jealous and proud of it,” referring to Exodus:
…you shall not bow down to them or serve them;
for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/command.htm
Eye-roll. No Jew or Christian has taken this line literally for over two millennia–what makes Dawkins think we’re going to start now?
If he’s going to be as willfully narrow-minded as this in all his Biblical studies, what reason would Christians have to listen to him?
And that’s just it: Dawkins has a major authority problem. How are people supposed to distinguish him from the throng of wackadoo TV preachers and doomsayers who construct their own radical conclusions from a few carefully chosen and out-of-context Bible passages? Compare the relatively extreme Biblical interpretations of Dawkins, a ‘new atheist’ with little credibility in Biblical studies or theology, to over 2000 years of great Christian thinkers, where even relatively minor points were thought over with extraordinary care for centuries in cases… Does he really expect to convince anyone–with Biblical study, at least–except those who already think like him? Christian theologians have far greater motive to try to interpret a passage objectively than Dawkins does.
Well, perhaps that’s just what he’s doing: bolstering his own base…
I guess the main thing that gets me fired up about Richard Dawkins is this: what exactly is his problem? Why is he against Christianity at all? I can understand an atheist trying to argue that Christianity isn’t true philosophically and rationally, and at most being patronizingly condescending of the religious like Isaac Asimov. But he seems to have his own vendetta against what is arguably the greatest force for good in the world today. Does he really believe trying to vilify Christianity is a good thing to do? Does he just like to say shocking things for the public attention? I don’t understand his motives.
Even if I were an atheist, I would dislike Dawkins as I dislike Ebeneezer Scrooge. I would defend my beliefs if challenged, but having lived among Christians living full and happy lives as Christians for over 20 years, what possible reason would I as an atheist have to try to take that away from them?
H.E. Most. Rev. Pablo Virgilio S. David, Titular Bishop of Guardialfiera, Auxiliary Bishop of San Fernando (Phillipines), noted:
"While theology often dwells on the power of the Word of God; we will always need exegesis to remind us as well of the humility of the Word of God. Do we not too often find ourselves speechless when confronted by serious readers of the Bible among our faithful who feel scandalized by Scriptural passages that are full of violence, bigotry, cruelty, duplicity, and all other contradictions that are characteristic of the humanity we share with all other sons and daughters of Adam? And yet we have not cancelled them out from the canon of Scriptures. We have in this canon texts that deny the resurrection and afterlife and texts that affirm them. We have texts that regard Satan as part of the heavenly court with a specific task and texts that present him as a fallen angel. We have texts that declare evil as a consequence of human sin and insist on human culpability and texts that present evil as a disease and human beings as mere victims that can only rely on God’s forgiveness. We have texts that emphasize divine grace, and texts that put a prime on human effort.
Ascent and descent, the divine and the human, the sublime and the wretched-these are aspects about the mystery of divine revelation, about God’s Word in human words, about the God made flesh, that will always require both the contributions of exegetes and theologians, and above all of the pastors who have to keep us all together in humility and with the proper disposition of listening and self-emptying, keeping our focus on Jesus-the God with a human face- on his power in weakness, on his wisdom in foolishness, on his exaltation through humiliation."
See
zenit.org/en/articles/synod-interventions-of-8th-general-congregation
or
vatican.va/news_services/press/sinodo/documents/bollettino_22_xii-ordinaria-2008/02_inglese/b13_02.html