Scaring children into believing in Jesus

Review: The Root of all evil, Channel 4

Scaring children into believing in Jesus

Richard Dawkins’ two-part programme on religion on Channel 4, The
Root of All Evil has provoked a massive over-reaction from the religious
right. They show no sign of turning the other cheek and forgiving him!

Derek MacMillan

Marxists support the right of people to practise their religion
without imposing it on others, but that would include the right of
scientists like Dawkins to put a contrary view.

Dawkins does not confine his strictures to the soft targets of
right-wing political Islam. He draws attention to its mirror images on
the fringes of Judaism and in the religious right in the United States.

"Hellhouse movies" as they are called are a new growth industry in
the USA today. Graphically filmed, they literally demonise abortion and
homosexuality with the explicit aim of scaring the viewers. Pastor
Keenan Roberts explains that the aim is "to leave an indelible
impression on their lives that sin destroys and Jesus saves". He is
quite happy for children to have nightmares after watching because
otherwise they might commit sins like homosexuality.

The result, says Dawkins, is a mindset which can justify the murder
of a doctor like Dr. Barnett Slepian who carries out abortions on the
grounds that he is destroying a being created in God’s image! There are
websites in the USA which openly advocate the murder of doctors who
carry out abortions.

It is easy for a British audience to ridicule this kind of thing in
the US but the government’s proposals for education will include the
takeover of swathes of the education service by organisations of the
religious right. Many of New Labour’s City Academies are to be run by
far-right evangelists

Evolution will be out. The "one-sided cult of Darwin" will be
replaced with a more rounded view in which the creation of the Earth in
six days is taught as an equivalent theory.

Presumably, the biblical view in 2 Chronicles, chapter 4 that pi is
equal to 3, will be given equal prominence with the godless mathematical
view, which just happens to correspond with reality!

Physicist and Nobel prize winner Stephen Weinberg describes religion
as an insult to human dignity. "Without it," he says, "you’d have good
people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good
people to do evil things, it takes religion."

The Root of All Evil is a valuable contribution to the debate and
very timely in the light of the crusade against science being mounted by
the religious right.