Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks and Richard Dawkins debate deity [View all]

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By Jonathan Kalmus, September 13, 2012

Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks has described the opening of atheist evolutionist Richard Dawkins’s God Delusion book as “antisemitic” and profoundly misrepresenting Judaism.

Professor Dawkins, the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, refuted the claim as “ridiculous” and said the string of names he called the God of the Old Testament, from misogynistic, masochistic and an “ethnic cleanser”, were to be taken as a joke.

The exchange came during a filmed hour-long debate at a BBC Religions and Ethics festival at Salford’s MediaCityUK.

Lord Sacks told the academic: “Richard, I don’t think you have fully understood or appreciate that there are Christian atheists and Jewish atheists, and you are only a Christian atheist, and because you read the Bible in a Christian way, you have become prejudiced. That is why I didn’t read your opening to Chapter Two as a joke but as a profoundly antisemitic statement.”

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/80594/chief-rabbi-lord-sacks-and-richard-dawkins-debate-deity