Friday 3 April 2009

Richard Dawkins on the Tony Blair Foundation

http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2009/04/tony-blair-faith-children

Very good, very good.

I find the Tony Blair Foundation hilarious in its insane ambition in principle (to unite all the world's religions in peace and love, presumably with a Catholic look & feel) and yet its total lack of ambition in practise (representatives from various religions endlessly talking to each other with no view to actually achieving anything and absolutely no clue about how this is to contribute to the uniting part).

I find it horribly disturbing for almost the same reasons. I can't imagine what good would come of uniting all religions (whatever that might even mean). I can't imagine what religions have to tell us at all, other than to warn us against convincing ourselves that preserving dogma is more important than alleviating suffering.

Organisations like this are concerned with helping supposedly moderate people feel better about supporting harmful policies (such as the Catholic Church's policy on condoms). They can't achieve any good in even the long term, because they don't even have a coherent idea about what 'good' is.

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