To:    richard.dawkins@zoo.ox.ac.uk
Re:    Response to Darwin's modern bulldog, Richard Dawkins
Date:  Tuesday 10 January 06

Dear Prof. Dawkins,
 
In response to your Channel 4 documentary, "The root of all evil", would you not agree that the way to tackle religion is to study and understand it from a biological and anthropological perspective?
 
It seems to me to that religion has very important psychological and social functions, which you dismiss as a "crutch", but which I believe should be a personal and social foundation. "Re ligare", from which the word, religion, is derived, means to "bind together", something which is essential for an individual and a society - and a deficiency of which is responsible for many of our present social woes.
 
Instead of just criticising and ridiculing conventional (and non-conventional) religion, which I'm guilty of too, we need to create better, more truthful and useful, alternatives (diversity being what gives beauty and stability not just to ecosystems), based not on the "gospel truth" but on "scientific truth" and a perpetual question mark, to serve our psychological and social needs and replace the religious substitutes of commercialism and consumerism (deeply rooted in our primitive animal nature) which are doing such damage to our planet and the future prospects for our children and coming generations.
 
Best regards from
 
Roger Hicks
www.spaceship-earth.org

Or more specifically: My (concept of) God
 

 
 
 



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