An evening at Kingsland

If you have read the Roman Miscellany or Cally's Kitchen, you will have seen that I was at Our Lady and St Joseph in Kingsland (left) last night, speaking on Richard Dawkins and the Existence of God. There is a page at my parish website on Dawkins, Evolution and Atheism if you are interested.

The Mulier Fortis kindly gave me lift over to Kingsland which is "the other side of the river" (insert scary chords here.) We arrived in time for the fifth Station of the Way of the Cross led by Fr Nicholas Schofield. There were about 100 people there for the Stations; a commendable turnout for a Friday night. Here is Father at the eighth station:

There were some good questions after the talk and, as so very often, I found myself revising some opinions in the light of them. The local headmaster picked up on my comment near the beginning of the talk that I had a great respect for Dawkins. This was in reference to Dawkins' undoubted ability to explain scientific concepts in an attractive and intelligible manner. However, as I mentioned later: in his recent book The God Delusion, Dawkins opines that bringing children up in a religious faith is a form of "child abuse." I would agree that this nasty jibe rather limits the amount of respect that one can have for him.

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