I was like a boy in a candy shop - watching one of my heros, Richard Dawkins, take it to the ignorant religious fools on QandA this week. The exceptionally disturbing aspect of the session was that the most outspoken fools were Australian politicians. Julie Bishop, Steve Fielding and Tony Burke were all demonstrably brainwashed.
Steve Fielding takes the cake though. Now, whilst it seems that he may actually be a creationist and that he may actually belive the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, he did he best to avoid saying that until he was pressed. Why? Because his religious zealot supporters couldn't bare to hear him disagree with creationism and his slightly more progressive supporters would be embarrassed by his possible admition to believing in creationism. Mind you, he didn't actually use the word 'creationist' to begin with, he said 'crecheist'. I'm fine with that as I've seen some pretty good creche's around the country....
Julie Bishop on the other hand is a little firmer in her beliefs. She's and 'old-world' creationist which means that she's equally away with the fairies as her brand of God probably kick-started the big bang all those years ago. I think it was the stare of evil that she gave to an audience member that said it all though. How can a 'Christian' demonstrate such pure malice?
Tony Burke, out of the politicians, was something less fundamentalist than both of them however still put his ignorance on show. It almost seemed that all three pollies felt that they had to say Christian things just to keep their constituents on side.
Rabbi Ninio, whilst very capable of saying nice things and keen to please everyone managed to say a whole lot of nothing. Dawkins at one stage said he was "wondering what on Earth it meant..."
I've come away with two feelings from this weeks QandA - excitement at the exposure of our leaders as ignorant fools and embarrassment for same...
