This Dawkins doth protest too much, methinks

Now I am not a great reader of the Sunday Newspapers, partly because I quite like forests, and partly because I have better things to do on a Sunday than immerse myself in half a ton of newsprint with a vapidity index of 99%-plus and lots of pictures of bare ladies. But a front-page article in yesterday's Sunday Times did catch my eye (you can read some of the article here), and some ancient memory clicked in my head, and it led to the following ponder.

Years and years ago, when I was a chubby young fellow, I did what all nicely brought-up chubby young fellows did at the age of seven or thereabouts, and joined what was called in those far-off days the Wolf Cubs, and in due course graduated to the Boy Scouts, in a troop presided over by the very same man who was our only choir tenor, the one who refused to sing anything in Latin, even though his name was Rex.

I can't say my days in the Boy Scouts were very happy. Meetings seemed to consist mainly of incantations, rough (though manly) games, and frequent use of the word "bottom."

In fact, when I became possibly the first person ever to be expelled in disgrace from the Scouting movement...what? Didn't you know? Well, it was all to do with a pair of trousers. The troop I was a member of for my spiritual and moral wellbeing was at summer camp in a field by the Ashby-de-la-Zouch railway line, along which, as I, an expert 12-year-old train-spotter knew, the first train passed each day at about 9am. So it seemed natural that a few of us should plot to steal the 15-year-old gangmaster's trousers from his tent at midnight and hoist them up on the yellow signal only 50 yards from our camp, knowing that when the signal dropped them back to earth he would be the first to break out in healthy boyish mirth, slap us all on the back, and utter words such as "o my aching sides" and "ho ho ho", and "nice one."

I can't remember who was brave enough to clamber up the ladder to pin the pants on the signal, but someone was, and it wasn't me.

Next morning we waited, bursting with mirth, for the distant hoot of the 9-o'clock train, and we held our breath. The pants were hanging on the signal blade, wafting gently in the morning breeze. And then, to our great sigh of satisfaction, the signal moved. But it went up, not down. It was a minor matter that we had overlooked. The pants went up with it, and stayed there.

I hadn't realised that the owner of the trousers was quite so big, or so lacking in the necessary boyish sense of humour, until he knocked me over, sat on my tummy, and proceeded to hit me in the face a lot with his big fists, while Rex looked on and said "o let the boys get it out of their system."

And who get expelled from the Boy Scouts? Yes, I did. (It had taken years of planning, but finally I'd managed it!)

So (and now we're getting to the point, at long last) it was with long-delayed delight that I read yesterday that somebody is setting up summer camps for 8-to-17-year-olds that are an alternative to the sort of camp that I endured in my post-we'll dob-dob-dob days, and I thought, whoopee, this geezer gets my vote any day.

But then I read on. The reason the bloke who's setting one up this year in England is doing it is that he's an atheist, and he doesn't like young people being taught about God. He thinks that eight-year-olds should be made to hunt for unicorns (on the grounds that they don't exist, either) (though he says he's totally against indoctrinating youngsters. He wants to introduce them to, ahem, rational thought, instead.)

Now all the eight-year-olds I know love stories, and the exercise of their imaginations, but they're not really equipped yet for advanced metaphysics or the sort of rational thinking this bloke has in mind. In time they will be, for they will ask questions of their own, and they will learn, and they will make choices, and we all hope their choices will be informed choices, but at the age of eight they want to do fun things, and naughty things, like read books by banned authors such as Enid Blyton.

For the privilege of learning how to prove a negative ("There is no God") youngsters at this summer camp, or rather their parents, because it is far more likely that the parents, rather than the children, are completely bonkers, will pay £500. There are only 24 places, and the first of these camps is now fully booked up. That sounds to me like £12,000 in the kitty (or around £6,000 after Richard Dawkins's generous discounts.) And, unless these putative humanist philosophers stuff themselves silly on gargantuan midnight feasts involving caviar and decent champers, someone is going to make a fat profit.

£12,000 or even £6,000 is an awful lot of money to spend on proving an unprovable point, but it must be very good for the Dawkins bank account.

Every Sunday, every Shabat, Jews, Muslims and Christians gather their young people together to teach them the Ten Commandments and good and wise ways of living, and the life-enhancing art of prayer, which puts that part of your mind which is irrational in touch which something that is beyond reason - Jehovah, or God, or Allah, the all-knowing, all-powerful, being, thing or force which existed before the physical universe came into being, which always was, always is, and always will be. You know the sort of stuff. And the children - or their parents - don't have to pay a penny.

I do hope the Richard Dawkins summer camps work - but work in mysterious ways. And I hope they are not going to be denounccd from every pulpit, because that would add fuel to the fire of these "rational" people's sense of grievance. Like Richard Dawkin's book, they are good money-earners, these camps. And unlike genuine humanist philosophy, which seeks to derive moral principles as absolutes but without positing the existence of a God, a perfectly legitimate branch of philosophy that is respected by people of other faiths and philosophies, Dawkins's brand of atheism is tabloid ranting with headline-grabbing stunts.

And I just feel sorry for the children, who, stuffed full of the precepts of the Dawkins's rational thought brigade, will never know the thrill of hanging someone's trousers on a railway signal in the name of the Lord.

That was to be The End, but I've just seen a comment on the Sunday Times article, which is worth Sharing With You, particularly as we, well I, have been banging on about rational thought. This comment says it all (and I reproduce it literally) -

Am i an athiest because i believe that evolution has occured? not sure - prefer to call myself an evolutionist.

I am however a sceptic about much within the Christian Bible-God made us in his image! - why did he wait so long? - has he himself evolved since Tyranosaurus et. al. roamed the Earth?