I thought this was a nice place to start. For all you readers of the Sunday Herald Sun in Melbourne out there, you may be familiar with Bryan Patterson’s (of Faithworks) weekly column. Usually he’s not too bad for a believer and I used to think he was at least reasonably intelligent. This week, however, his column was a tad mental and I felt compelled to write in to the Herald Sun with a dose of reality. The guy has the gall to bag Richard Dawkins, who’s an absolute bloody hero. You can read the original column here: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,17893647%255E24909,00.html

I wrote this in to the Herald Sun who published an edited version of the first two paragraphs.

TITLE: Ah….the irony

Whilst I usually find Bryan Patterson’s column to be a mildly amusing irritation, in Sunday’s column (22/1) he dabbled with outrageous stupidity, and I felt a few comments were in order (I could probably go on for six pages detailing each ridiculous point in this article, but I’ll try to keep it short).

Patterson asserts that ‘People don’t often come to faith effortlessly. Most start spiritual journeys as sceptics seeking answers to life’s ultimate questions.’ This is complete and utter rubbish. The overwhelmingly vast majority of believers became so due to religious brainwashing/indoctrination in formative years. They retain their beliefs due to the woeful inadequacy of scientific education and critical thinking instruction in this and all other countries. If Patterson’s assertion were true, you would expect to find approximately equal numbers of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Scientologists (ha ha) etc in all countries. Instead, we find that almost all Iraqis are Muslim, almost all Americans are Christian, almost all Israelis are Jewish and so on. Could this constitute evidence of indoctrination perhaps?

Professor Dawkins often refers to religious indoctrination as child abuse. He does not, however, argue against teaching religion at all. He merely argues that it should be taught comparatively and not as fact. Amusingly, teaching children that believing in something without any evidence behind it (faith: irrational by definition) and holding this to be a virtue is almost certainly responsible for the prevalence of those pesky, irrational beliefs to which Mr. Patterson refers (astrology, clairvoyants etc). What Patterson is effectively saying is this: my irrational beliefs which are supported by zero evidence are obviously true, whereas those other irrational beliefs supported by zero evidence are silly, and probably dangerous. This is an utterly moronic position to hold, but a sadly typical one.

Finally, I enjoyed the irony of placing a column entitled ‘faith is not dangerous religious bunk’ on the same page as a report on stem cell research. Your editor/layout guys must have a wicked sense of humour. Stem cell research is an area of scientific inquiry which could greatly benefit all of mankind and is being opposed by, guess who, the religious nuts. Their argument: you’re playing god. Well, why not? Your invisible, magical superhero in the sky is not helping anyone at all, or doing anything for that matter. It’s about time we stopped believing in nonsense and started believing in ourselves and our ability to improve our lives and ensure our survival via science, logic and reason. It’s the only way that works.