Wednesday, May 20, 2009

What a smart fellow ...

In a recent interview with Trina Hoaks, the atheist blogger for the Examiner.com website, [Richard] Dawkins described religious believers as follows: “They feel uneducated, which they are; often rather stupid, which they are; inferior, which they are; and paranoid about pointy-headed intellectuals from the East Coast looking down on them, which, with some justification, they do.”

That's from a piece that I linked to earlier here. I just saw it quoted again, though, and it occurred to me to wonder exactly how it is that Professor Dawkins knows how other people - especially people he doesn't know - feel. It would also seem that that final they would necessarily refer to the immediately preceding them, whereas I think the good professor actually is referring to the pointy-heads (who would be doing the looking down). Speaking for myself as just one believer, I have never felt uneducated or stupid or inferior and certainly not paranoid about an ungrammatical mind-reader looking down on me. I think he's rather funny.

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