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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.”

 

By Matt Ridley | Tagged:  Uncategorized