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St. Paul to Richard Dawkins

Yesterday when clicking through the channels I saw Richard Dawkins for about 10 seconds--probably a C-SPAN rerun. Nothing new here--someone or other has been saying the same stuff for 2,000 years. Including Paul, the author of most of the New Testament. He too was an educated man persecuting Christians, probably saying the same things as Dawkins, although he didn't have the benefit of C-SPAN to spread his views, or the internet for people to down load it.

Here's Paul writing to Titus, which just happens to be the Oct. 28 selection in my One Year Bible (NIV), but he could just as well be writing to Dawkins (all Christians could be praying that Dawkins have a Damascus Road experience). He would be a terrific Paul Jr.:

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and peasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life."

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e.e. cummings on richard dawkins

e.e. cummings wrote to his sister Elizabeth in 1954: "if you take Someone Worth Worshipping (alias 'God') away from human beings, they'll (without realizing what they're doing) worship someone-unworthy-of-worship); e.g.; a Roosevelt or Stalin or Hitler--alias themselves." Probably also applies to environment-fundamentalists, but cummings died in 1962 before the current pantheist panic.

The above information appears on p. 371 of "A poem a day," edited by Karen McCosker and Nicholar Albery.