Greed Disappoints

Journalists Richard Behar of Time Magazine and John Sweeney of Panorama BBC UK wrote about greed in a religious context. Your reflection from a religious standpoint is important.

The Emptiness of Theology

by Richard Dawkins

A dismally unctuous editorial in the British newspaper The Independent recently asked for a reconciliation between science and "theology." It remarked that "People want to know as much as possible about about their origins." I certainly hope they do, but what on earth makes one think that theology has anything useful to say on the subject?

Science is responsible for the following knowledge about our origins. We know approximately when the universe began and why it is largely hydrogen. We know why stars form and what happens in their interiors to convert hydrogen to the other elements and hence give birth to chemistry in a world of physics. We know the fundamental principles of how a world of chemistry can become biology through the arising of self replicating molecules. We know how the principal of self replication gives rise, through Darwinian selection, to all life, including humans.

It is science and science alone that has given us this knowledge and given it, moreover, in fascinating, over-whelming, mutually confirming detail. On every one of these questions theology has held a view that has conclusively been proved wrong.

Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunize against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria.
Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin. Science can predict when a particular comet will reappear and, to the second, when the next eclipse will appear. Science has put men on the moon and hurtled reconnaissance rockets around Saturn and Jupiter. Science can tell you the age of a particular fossil and that the Turin Shroud is a medieval fake. Science knows the precise DNA instructions of several viruses and will, in the lifetime of many present readers, do the same for the human genome.
What has theology ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has theology ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? I have listened to theologians, read them, debated against them; I have never heard any of them say anything of the smallest use; anything that was not either platitudinously obvious or downright false. If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the smallest difference? The achievements of theologians don't do anything, don't effect anything, don't mean anything. What makes anyone think that "theology" is a subject at all?

"The Emptiness of Theology" by Richard Dawkins published in "Free Inquiry" Spring 1998.

Can't this type of talk be used to subdue the poorest of the poor and encourage them from taking action necessary to lead better lives?

Consider:

We are poor, this is our lot, we will not be greedy.

Blessed are the poor, they will inherit....

Don't aspire beyond your "station," that is merely greedy desire.

Seems like a great way to promote the "status quo" with respect to inequitable social strata. Very self-serving.

JerseyRomer

Everyone who went to the trouble of writing an essay deserves at least one comment. Let's see.

Oh yeah, recently there was a greedy man who felt so bad about the money he had made investing in the stock market he cried all the way to the bank, Bear Sterns. When he got there he found out that most all of his money was gone. What a relief that surely must have been having been saved from his sin of greed. But why is the man still crying?

Oh yeah, he now has a greedy 800 million dollar capital loss to offset future greedy capital gains. It will be a while before he will pay any of those greed-less taxes. Greed can sure lead to hell alright.

Somewhere I heard that not paying taxes was not greedy. I guess greedily not wanting to pay taxes and, "we are all sinners" only applies to Republicans. I was almost sure this man was a Republican. Maybe 800 million dollar losses is how greed is cured and Republicans turned into Democrats?