Lord (Chris) Patten, new chairman of the BBC Trust, has
been sounding off, militantly, at the militancy of
atheists.
He scored a bit of an own goal, though, with this remark:
``It is curious that atheists have proved to
be so intolerant of those who have a faith," he said. "Their
books would be a lot shorter if they couldn't refer to the Spanish
Inquisition, but it is them who tend to have a level of Castillian
intolerance about them.''
Richard Dawkins replies (in an email to me, which he says I can
quote):
The God
Delusion would be precisely two
sentences shorter: "In this book, I have deliberately refrained
from detailing the horrors of the Crusades, the
conquistadores or the
Spanish Inquisition. Cruel and evil people can be found in every
century and of every persuasion."
