Richard Dawkins on the idea of Jesus and the Christian God - "Petty and Small Minded"

I made this short edit from this longer video . I find Richard Dawkin's very eloquent description of Christian's God and Jesus to be fascinating, enlightening, and even beautiful. I am so inspired, in fact, that I intend to show this clip at church on Sunday to introduce my message. I'll be sharing from James 2:14-26. it's a difficult passage.

I'm sure that there are other examples of Richard Dawkin's understanding and opinions on Jesus. I intend to find them, because I'd like to hear more. Though I do not agree with Dawkin's conclusion that the idea of the death of Jesus is "Petty and Small-Minded", I do think that in some ways he's going the right direction. From the perspective he is sharing, I think it would be quite correct to call this story shocking and foolish, and even absurd.

Not all my thoughts on this are fully formed yet, but I'm enjoying digging deeper. I may post more later.

(I didn't make this video. I edited it from a larger clip for the purpose of commentary and criticism. I encourage anyone viewing it to also watch it in it's greater context here. From my best understanding, this does not violate the copyright rules of fair use.)

Richard Dawkins is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author. A very popular and well respected atheist speaker and advocate, he has written several notable books, including "The God Delusion" in 2006. He was formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

In October of 2008 he was hosted by an American religious foundation to debate a Christian apologist (debater for Christianity) in Oxford. In the debate Dawkins suggested that perhaps he could debate with someone who was making a case for a deistic god (a creator who made the world and then let it be), but that he would not even consider the idea of Yahweh (Christian's God), because he believes it is absurd.

Unfortunately, this Christian apologist later used Dawkin's statement in a creative and misleading way to suggest that Dawkin's was conceding to a belief in deism himself. Whether the apologist actually misunderstood, or was being intentionally deceptive, this was clearly not what Richard Dawkin's intented by this suggestion. This is seen clearly in the original video from which this clip came.