Dawkins' response to "What if you're wrong?"

This answer, which came after Richard Dawkins read excerpts from his incredible book, The God Delusion, was in response to an ignorant Liberty University student who asked him, "What if you're wrong?" about there being no god. For the uninitiated, Libery University is a religious school that was run by the charlatan Jerry Falwell, a place where they believe dinosaurs were on earth a few thousand years ago. They even have bones on display and claim they are somewhere around 4,000 years old, despite zero proof and no carbon/radioactive dating tests done, of course. Keep in mind this is a university with a science department.

But Dawkins' response, while a little terse, is spot on and legendary in the atheism communities. Here it is and then I'll comment further.




This is so eloquent and succinct, even if it is sarcastic. Why is it that people can't step back for a moment to realize this? What if I were born in Afghanistan? I'd be dissecting the Koran on here and leaving my Muslim faith behind, laughing at the prophet. If I were born in Ancient Greece, I'd be defying Zeus. Why are those gods any different? Because of some book of choice in the place of the world where I just happened to be born?

Some Christians may actually try to say we don't believe in Zeus or Thor because those are myths, to which I would laugh. First, they weren't myths to their respective believers in their time, and second, what makes them so certain their god isn't a myth? Their book was written by idiots in the desert. Zeus sent lightning bolts from the sky to prove his existence; why doesn't Jesus or Yahweh do something like this? Oh, is it because we know where lightning ACTUALLY comes from now? Of course it is. We grew up as a society and became educated about the world around us. Shouldn't we do the same thing with Jesus?

Such arrogance on the part of religions, but they have to be arrogant otherwise they run the risk of losing their coffer-fillers to rational thought.