Richard Dawkins has contacted the Guardian to strongly deny that he compared Roman Catholics to Nazis, rather he said that Hitler was a Roman Catholic. Here is a longer version of his speech, which has been edited by the Guardian subject to normal editorial constraints.
Should Joseph Ratzinger have been welcomed with all the pomp and ceremony due to a head of state? No. As Geoffrey Robertson has shown in The Case of the Pope, the Holy See's claim to statehood is founded on a Faustian deal in which Benito Mussolini handed over 1.2 square miles of central Rome in exchange for church support of his fascist regime. Our government chose the occasion of the pope's visit to announce their intention to "do God". As a friend remarked to me, presumably we should expect the imminent handover of Hyde Park to the Vatican, to clinch the deal?
Should Ratzinger, then, be welcomed as the head of a church? By all means, if individual Catholics wish to overlook his many transgressions and lay out the red carpet for his designer red shoes, let them do so. But don't ask the rest of us to pay. Don't ask the British taxpayer to subsidise the propaganda mission of an institution whose wealth is measured in the tens of billions: wealth for which the phrase "ill-gotten" might have been specifically coined. And spare us the nauseating spectacle of the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and assorted lord lieutenants and other dignitaries cringing and fawning sycophantically all over him as though he were somebody we should respect.
Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, was respected by some as a saintly man. But nobody could call Benedict XVI saintly and keep a straight face. Whatever this leering old fixer may be, he is not saintly. Is he intellectual? Scholarly? That is often claimed, although it is far from clear what there is in theology to be scholarly about. Surely nothing to respect.
The unfortunate little fact that Ratzinger was in the Hitler Youth has been the subject of a widely observed moratorium. I've respected it myself, hitherto. But after the pope's outrageous speech in Edinburgh, blaming atheism for Adolf Hitler, one can't help feeling the gloves are off. Did you hear what he said?
"Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews … As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the 20th century …
You have to wonder about the PR skills of the advisers who let that paragraph through. Oh but of course, I was forgetting, his senior advisor is that cardinal who takes one look at the immigration officials at Heathrow and concludes that he must have landed in the third world. The poor man was no doubt prescribed a bushel of Hail Marys, on top of his swift attack of diplomatic gout – and one can't help wondering whether the afflicted foot was the one he puts in his mouth.
At first I was annoyed by the pope's disgraceful attack on atheists and secularists, but then I saw it as reassuring. It suggests that we have rattled them so much that they have to resort to insulting us, in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the child abuse scandal.
It probably is too harsh to expect the 14-year-old Ratzinger to have seen through the Nazis. As a devout Catholic, he would have had dinned into him, along with the Catechism, the obnoxious idea that all Jews are to be held responsible for killing Jesus – the "Christ-killer" libel – not repudiated until the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). The German Roman Catholic psyche of the time was still shot through with the antisemitism of centuries.
Hitler was a Roman Catholic. Or at least he was as much a Roman Catholic as the 5 million so-called Roman Catholics in this country today. For Hitler never renounced his baptismal Catholicism, which was doubtless the criterion for counting the 5 million alleged British Catholics today. You cannot have it both ways. Either you have 5 million British Catholics, in which case you have to have Hitler, too. Or Hitler was not a Catholic, in which case you have to give us an honest figure for the number of genuine Catholics in Britain today – the number who really believe Jesus turns himself into a wafer, as the former Professor Ratzinger presumably does.
In any case, Hitler certainly was not an atheist. In 1933 he claimed to have "stamped atheism out", having banned most of Germany's atheist organisations, including the German Freethinkers League whose building was then turned into an information bureau for church affairs.
At very least, Hitler believed in a personified "Providence", presumably akin to the Divine Providence invoked by the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich in 1939, when Hitler escaped assassination and the cardinal ordered a special Te Deum in Munich Cathedral: "To thank Divine Providence in the name of the archdiocese for the Führer's fortunate escape."
We may never know whether Hitler identified his "Providence" with the cardinal's God. But he certainly knew his overwhelmingly Christian constituency, the millions of good Christian Germans with Gott mit uns on their belt buckles, who actually did his dirty work for him. He knew his support base. Hitler most certainly did "do God". Here's part of a speech he made in Munich, the heart of Catholic Bavaria, in 1922:
"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognised these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who – God's truth! – was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after 2,000 years, with deepest emotion I recognise more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross."
That is just one of numerous speeches, and passages in Mein Kampf, where Hitler invoked his Christianity. No wonder he received such warm support from within the Catholic hierarchy of Germany. And Benedict's predecessor, Pius XII, is not guiltless, as the Catholic writer John Cornwell devastatingly showed, in his book Hitler's Pope.
It would be unkind to prolong this point, but Ratzinger's speech in Edinburgh on Thursday was so disgraceful, so hypocritical, so redolent of the sound of stones hurled from within a glass house, I felt that I had to reply.
Even if Hitler had been an atheist – as Joseph Stalin more surely was – how dare Ratzinger suggest that atheism has any connection whatsoever with their horrific deeds? Any more than Hitler and Stalin's non-belief in leprechauns or unicorns. Any more than their sporting of a moustache – along with Francisco Franco and Saddam Hussein. There is no logical pathway from atheism to wickedness.
Unless, that is, you are steeped in the vile obscenity at the heart of Catholic theology. I refer (and I am indebted to Paula Kirby for the point) to the doctrine of original sin. These people believe – and they teach this to tiny children, at the same time as they teach them the terrifying falsehood of hell – that every baby is "born in sin". That would be Adam's sin, by the way: Adam who, as they themselves now admit, never existed.
Original sin means that, from the moment we are born, we are wicked, corrupt, damned. Unless we believe in their God. Or unless we fall for the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell. That, ladies and gentleman, is the disgusting theory that leads them to presume that it was godlessness that made Hitler and Stalin the monsters that they were. We are all monsters unless redeemed by Jesus. What a vile, depraved, inhuman theory to base your life on.
Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity.
He is an enemy of children, whose bodies he has allowed to be abused and whose minds he has encouraged to be infected with guilt. It is embarrassingly clear that the church is less concerned with saving child bodies from abusers than with saving priestly souls from hell: and most concerned with saving the long-term reputation of the church itself.
He is an enemy of gay people, bestowing on them the sort of bigotry that his church used to reserve for Jews.
He is an enemy of women – barring them from the priesthood as though a penis were an essential tool for pastoral duties. What other employer is allowed to discriminate on grounds of sex, when filling a job that manifestly doesn't require physical strength or some other quality that only males might be thought to have?
He is an enemy of truth, promoting barefaced lies about condoms not protecting against Aids, especially in Africa.
He is an enemy of the poorest people on the planet, condemning them to inflated families that they cannot feed, and so keeping them in the bondage of perpetual poverty. A poverty that sits ill with the obscene riches of the Vatican.
He is an enemy of science, obstructing vital stem cell research, on grounds not of morality but of pre-scientific superstition.
Less seriously, from my point of view, Ratzinger is even an enemy of the Queen's own church, arrogantly endorsing a predecessor's dissing of Anglican Orders as "absolutely null and utterly void", while shamelessly trying to poach Anglican vicars to shore up his own pitifully declining priesthood.
Finally, perhaps of most personal concern to me, he is an enemy of education. Quite apart from the lifelong psychological damage caused by the guilt and fear that have made Catholic education infamous throughout the world, he and his church foster the educationally pernicious doctrine that evidence is a less reliable basis for belief than faith, tradition, revelation and authority – his authority.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/22/ratzinger-enemy-humanity
First Page from a total of 728 Comments
Donella 22 September 2010 5:18PM
Still he drew quite a good crowd though eh? And they all seemed pretty happy too.
sonoftherock 22 September 2010 5:29PM
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camera 22 September 2010 5:31PM
Still he drew quite a good crowd though eh? And they all seemed pretty happy too.
Who Hitler or the pope?
peterNW1 22 September 2010 5:33PM
Richard Dawkins writes ...
"the Holy See's claim to statehood is founded on a Faustian deal in which Benito Mussolini handed over 1.2 square miles of central Rome in exchange for church support of his fascist regime."
Nonsense. The Foreign Office website states that the UK's diplomatic relationship with the Holy See dates back to 1479, although there was a long period (1599-1914) when relations were broken off. The year they were restored, at the beginning of the First World War, predates by many years the Lateran Pacts.
sonoftherock 22 September 2010 5:36PM
Sorry, was my post removed because I used German?
I will just say two things.
Dawkins has a schoolboy's appreciation of German history and I do not mean upper sixth.
Could he explain why he chose Hilter as an example of a person who was a baptised Catholic and not say, Descartes?
You know in the phrase whereat he links Hitler with five million Britons.
peterNW1 22 September 2010 5:39PM
Richard Dawkins writes ...
"spare us the nauseating spectacle of the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and assorted lord lieutenants and other dignitaries cringing and fawning sycophantically all over him as though he were somebody we should respect. "
Blimey.
Many years ago, when I was a biology undergraduate, I very much admired 'The Selfish Gene', and urged friends to read it. What on earth happened to the scientist who wrote that book? He seems to have morphed into Ian Paisley.
Sipech 22 September 2010 5:41PM
And for those who have often claimed the Mr Dawkins is never rude, derisory or patronising, here is the evidence that contradicts that position.
saintzeno 22 September 2010 5:42PM
It suggests that we have rattled them so much that they have to resort to insulting us,
He meant that as a self deprecatory joke, surely?
urnotanatheist 22 September 2010 5:43PM
Camera they both drew better crowds then Richards to be fair.
deuterpe 22 September 2010 5:43PM
It's baffling how the Guardian can endorse such unsubstantiated vitriol. There is not an iota of objectivity here - what is the point in presenting such a coloured and skewed opinion? Dawkins seems so entrenched in his hatred that he's completely lost the plot. Its increasingly becoming an exercise in tolerance to read what he spews out.
Scheusslich 22 September 2010 5:45PM
He's finally lost it.
Did the Guardian receive this article in green crayon?
saintzeno 22 September 2010 5:45PM
@Sipech
And for those who have often claimed the Mr Dawkins is never rude, derisory or patronising, here is the evidence that contradicts that position.
The arguments that will surely follow in defence of this bile filled diatribe, will be along the lines of: it can't be rude or derisory if it is true.
You watch.
sonoftherock 22 September 2010 5:46PM
And by the way, why was the villain allowed to escape?
My understanding was that he was to be arrested with Robertson effecting the warrant, Dawkins putting on the handcuffs and Tatchell standing by with the taser.
peterNW1 22 September 2010 5:47PM
Dawkins quotes the Pope ...
"Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews ..."
Dawkins stops there, but the Pope continues ...
"... especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny."
twohitwonder 22 September 2010 5:49PM
Best response to the Professor's rage: "<A href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5spUtCNpLbQ">Dawkins discovers he can't arrest the Pope".
Bit lame that he re-visited the Hitler Youth line, given that Ratzinger only joined once it was legally obligatory. Still, when your argument's weak, you gotta work with what you've got.
twohitwonder 22 September 2010 5:50PM
Try that again:
"Dawkins discovers he can't arrest the Pope".
Gigolo 22 September 2010 5:50PM
Hitler was such a good Catholic that over 2,500 Catholic clergy were guests of the Third Reich in Dachau. They even had an accommodation block (all mod cons, including the scourge and the bastinado) all to themselves.
Hasselblad 22 September 2010 5:51PM
This is fantastic. How courageous of Dawkins.
I can remember as a seven year old boy at a Catholic primary school being given a check list of sins to confess to. I find it hard to imagine how different my life and feelings about myself would be if I hadn't had it rammed down my throat that I was born in sin.
ForgetIt 22 September 2010 5:52PM
Dear Richard
could it be that Scientific and Catholic methodology are simple two sides of the same coin?
Both revolve around the idea of FALLIBILITY - either
(A) of the scientific hypothesis (c.f. Karl Popper), or
(B) of the human being (cf. 10 commandments ).
Neither enterprise is of any worth if it loses its humility and denies the
the value of demonstrable failure.
Christians confront their own fallibility every Sunday in church.
You a good scientists should do so whenever you enter the lab and do an experiment.
Both cases indicate a RATIONAL outlook to the uncertain universe.
So why are you so one-sided?
peterNW1 22 September 2010 5:52PM
Richard Dawkins writes ...
"It probably is too harsh to expect the 14-year-old Ratzinger to have seen through the Nazis."
Josef Ratzinger was 12 when war broke out. He joined the Hitlerjugend after his 14th birthday because membership was compulsory.
Sipech 22 September 2010 5:53PM
saintzeno
The arguments that will surely follow in defence of this bile filled diatribe, will be along the lines of: it can't be rude or derisory if it is true.
Agreed. In fact, some of what he says (though not all) does have evidential basis and has a claim to truth. However, what he has done here, as with some of his writings (at least, some that I have read) is to mix truth with hyperbole and making a conclusion that is out of proportion. Here, we see the use of the term 'enemy' being espoused numerous times when the backup to it does not warrant such a violent term.
saintzeno 22 September 2010 5:58PM
@twohitwonder 5:50pm
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
urnotanatheist 22 September 2010 5:59PM
Dick says Hiitler was certainly not an atheist. Hitler said "We have no need of any God but Germany"
flibbly 22 September 2010 6:03PM
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urnotanatheist 22 September 2010 6:03PM
twohitwonder hilarious
Donella 22 September 2010 6:04PM
twohitwonder
That was one of the most hilarious sketches I've seen in a long time!!!! Fabulous!!
peterNW1 22 September 2010 6:08PM
Twohitwonder,
There could hardly have been a more topical answer. Brilliant timing!
Bubblecar 22 September 2010 6:14PM
Fine speech from Richard. I don't always agree with him, but when he takes on powerful, deserving targets, he does a damn good job of it.
urnotanatheist 22 September 2010 6:17PM
Hitlers Pope AGAIN Richard? See wartime chief rabbi of Rome AGAIN.
Stiffkey 22 September 2010 6:23PM
Twohitwonder
Just watched it. Fantastic. Dangerous stuff for those of us with dodgy bladders, though.
nickweb 22 September 2010 6:26PM
rather he said that Hitler was a Roman Catholic
Ermmm....maybe. But he did think that Jesus was an Aryan freedom fighter trying to throw off the yoke of evil semitic oppression. So perhaps not your typical catholic?
mab89 22 September 2010 6:31PM
I am not a Catholic and disagree with Pope Ratzinger on a number of counts but this article is just on so many levels utterly wrong that I feel that I must write someting. In this article once again Professor Dawkins launches yet another nauseatingly condescending attack on the Catholic Church. What a surprise- I must admit the rhetoric is very good but once you actually even scratch beneath the surface of some of the claims made here you see how poor the argument is.
The number of unsubstantiated arguments made in this piece is just beyond belief- the entire end of the article is just pure rhetoric with no relation to factual reality. I won't rebut every point in the article but on for example Dawkins argument that Hitler was a practicing Roman Catholic is frankly utterly absurd. Hitler in his actions in his life in no way could be described as a follower of Jesus Christ or a believer in Roman Catholic teaching. Dawkins again and again and again selectively uses history to present an atheist metanarrative where any event that does not fit into his worldview is cast aside. It is apparent that certain religious groupings (N.B not all of course) have caused great hurt in the world (Crusades of the Middle Ages etc). But Dawkins never seems to acknowledge (just read the God Delusion to see this) as Michael Shermer, a famous Australian sceptic has done, that "for every one of those grand tragedies there are ten thousand acts of personal kindness and social good that go unreported... Religion, like all social institutions of such historical depth and cultural impact, cannot be reduced to an unambiguous good or evil."
The tone is Professor Dawkins usual bullying tone ("Ratzinger is the enemy of humanity- what utter tripe- a completely subjective and unsubstantiated piece of rubbish that is based on his prejudices rather than any reasoned evidence at all) which basically seems to suggest that anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot (of course seeing as he likes the notion of "Brights," that rather hilarious PR disaster that the New Atheists went through in 2003, it is not particularly surprising). I would recommend that everyone reads Alister McGrath's "Mere Theology" chapter 10-11 where Dawkins and his New Atheism is ripped to shreds. Dawkins in this article illustrates that he is "an ivory tower atheist" (as McGrath asserts in his book) with no interest in considering the facts as they really are.
warmachineuk 22 September 2010 6:35PM
Dawkins missed out that excessive family size, meaning population growth, further overloads the resources of an overcrowded planet and strains the environment. Also, he ought to point that papal edicts about contraception are simply being ignored by many Catholics. However, it's still a well reasoned argument.
He shouldn't be too worried though. His expansion into the UK is to recruit those who don't like the concept of female and homosexual Anglican priests. People who can't hack the social revolutions of the 20th century. That's his ambition. That's just hilarious.
hillbillyzombie 22 September 2010 6:38PM
Well said, Dickie me lad. Like you, I've had my fill.
I'm still a bit taken aback by the sheer cynicism of the Vatican. While, tactically it may have seemed a good idea to pick a fight with the atheists and then poison the water by dragging in the Nazis, I think that strategically it was probably not a winning hand.
Should Ratzinger, then, be welcomed as the head of a church? By all means, if individual Catholics wish to overlook his many transgressions and lay out the red carpet for his designer red shoes, let them do so.
Agreed. The free exercise of religion is a key freedom and I'm sincerely happy for those who enjoyed the pastoral visit of their religious leader.
. . . he and his church foster the educationally pernicious doctrine that evidence is a less reliable basis for belief than faith, tradition, revelation and authority – his authority.
Yes, this is the key point and well stated. The idea that free people cannot govern themselves in open, democratic institutions is pernicious. Secular democracy is a precious gift of the Englightenment; please consider before you cede control of your fate to the discredited authorities of the past.
FreedomMatters 22 September 2010 6:42PM
Quite apart from the lifelong psychological damage caused by the guilt and fear that have made Catholic education infamous throughout the world
Makes you wonder why so many parents want to get their children into Catholic Schools doesn't it ?
Fiction 22 September 2010 6:43PM
He says it, and the apologists wont listen...
Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity. He only gets away with it because there are so many people programmed from an early age to revere him (or at least the office he holds).
@mab89
Hitler in his actions in his life in no way could be described as a follower of Jesus Christ or a believer in Roman Catholic teaching.
Way to miss the point by a mile. Did Dawkins say that Hitler was a practising catholic? No. Who brought the subject of Hitler up? Yes, it was Ratzinger.
bobkennedy 22 September 2010 6:44PM
Oh my god, an OPINION? in a newspaper column? How dare you print such an affront to objectivity! It almost seems like.... why, yes!..... on my second reading I can confirm that he actually seems to thoroughly dislike the pope. The pope for gosh's sake! That sweet old racist who only came over here to sweep the last few miscreant pedophiles under the rug and denounce free thought as being the source of the world's evil.
sidarthur 22 September 2010 6:45PM
nickweb
Ermmm....maybe. But he did think that Jesus was an Aryan freedom fighter trying to throw off the yoke of evil semitic oppression
This might help;
http://www.amazon.com/Aryan-Jesus-Christian-Theologians-Germany/dp/0691148058/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285020419&sr=1-3
ochongodeo 22 September 2010 6:47PM
This reminds me - I must get round to sending the local parish my Declaration of Defection (http://www.countmeout.ie/samples/DeclarationOfDefection.htm).
sidarthur 22 September 2010 6:47PM
mab89
Dawkins argument that Hitler was a practicing Roman Catholic is frankly utterly absurd.
Whooossh!
LucyQ 22 September 2010 6:49PM
Hear, hear Richard.
As I said to you on Saturday during the wonderful, joyous march through central London, we didn't pad our numbers by bringing in bus loads of children. If that had happened the Protest-the-Pope demonstration would have been accused of being immoral and rightly so. It struck me as odd that when the RC group couldn't sell tickets to their events that they resorted to bringing in the kids. I would dispute the claims of 500,000 at their various show events. Counting kids is not fair.
The fawning over Ratzinger by UK press was sickening and over the top. There was a lot of media making records of our protest yet hardly anything was broadcast. Ratzinger whinged on about the cult of celebrity but isn't that what his entourage was promoting? Even this whole quirky saint thing is about turning odd people into celebs.
It is really important to remember that Ratzinger is a German citizen first and that the Vatican isn't really a country but rather the H.Q. of a multinational corporation. None of us can book a hotel in the Vatican, emigrate there or do any of the normal things as happens in our home countries.
There were so many funny moments and people with many different reasons for being their. I asked a gal with the tree branches on her head if she was there as a Morris Dancer but it turned out that she is a Pagan. That made me laugh.
All in all it was a momentous event and I'm so proud of everyone that participated.
Best, Linda, Toronto
Stiffkey 22 September 2010 6:50PM
@Fiction
Who brought the subject of Hitler up? Yes, it was Ratzinger.
Is this what debate on CiF has come to?: You started it.
Sigh
cambusken 22 September 2010 6:51PM
Wow!! So he's finally flipped. I thought this was a fantastic rant, one of the best I have ever read, sustained in eye-popping mania from start to finish. Keep it up, Dickie, the world is watching (and lapping it up). No connection to history, religion, science or reason, though.
bromleyboy 22 September 2010 6:52PM
It is very sad how Dawkins, a very intelligent man who claims to value reason, has in recent times allowed his hatred of religion to cause him to go so wildly over the top. He seems to suffer from an extreme inner rage, which he tries to suppress in public. Having followed his writings on religion over the years, I think he snapped at the time of 9/11, when he appeared to adopt the view that to believe in Heaven causes one to do all sorts of evil deeds, glossing over the fact that Islam unreservedly condemns such deeds. By calling Islam and Catholicism evil religions, he is saying that 2 billion of the world's population are, in effect, evil. Because Dawkins has so completely lost his reason over these matters, people like me can never take seriously again anything he says about evolution or anything else scientific.
dollishillbilly 22 September 2010 6:52PM
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PhilDixon 22 September 2010 6:55PM
A Downfall subtitle thing? In 2010? You dragged us over here for that, Donella?
UlyssesRex 22 September 2010 6:55PM
Well I guess maybe this is a case of "If Dawkins invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil on the Guardian website" but here goes anyway:
Hitler was a horrible man in many ways but perhaps he was wise to play the gallery on religious matters, put on the role of the Christian there, play the atheist there, dress himself up as a pagan or a Muslim depending upon the circumstances. All in support of his murderous and ugly ideology but perhaps it is valid to adoopt pluralism, the influence of many intellectual strands upon us than to be like Pope Dawkins and Professor Ratzinger and stick dogmatically to one at the cost of all others for decade after decade, as part of furthering a humanistic strategy, one in which we're not all consumed in finding some narrow exclusive little theory which is basically just vanity and vitriol dressed up and proceeding to flog it.
I share Dawkins' secular liberalism to an extent and his charges against the Pope are mostly valid apart from his associating the teaching of Catholic dogma with sexual abuse which is ridiculous, hysterical and plays into the victimhood that many of the little Stalins who were brought up by priests but now have rejected that indoctrination for 'science' appear to feel. But Dawkins and Benedict are closer than they probably would consider comfortable, they're both famous for their hostility to what they term 'relativism', possibly even more than they detest each others' certainties. But perhaps the problem is with them, these titans of scientism and Catholicism, they have not grasped that there are different ways of looking at the world, including their own and that a healthy approach is to attempt to weave these into an attractive pluralistic basket in which we can all live and learn from each other. Instead they are both far too concerned with volleying insults at each other and then milking the others statements as much as they can by claiming to be offended. Let's stop playing their game and carry on with a better one *I'm trying to move mountains here but nvm!*.
ChinaBounder 22 September 2010 6:56PM
*Applause*
Well said, Professor Dawkins.
TheChesterbelloc 22 September 2010 6:59PM
Twohitwonder's post from 5.50pm is quite brilliant!
If CiF awards prizes for best article of the year, and best thread of the year, how about a prize for best single post?
The Guardian, "Comment is Free", 22 September 2010