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Hitler's Rabbi

Recently, Professor Richard Dawkins compared Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to Adolf Hitler. Although, Richard Dawkins was later careful to qualify his comparison of a Jewish Rabbi to Hitler it was surely a qualification that could only be justified in the mind of Richard Dawkins who has invested a large portion of his life directing his particular and peculiar prejudice towards those with whom he disagrees.

He wrote thusly in responding to Rabbi Boteach’s shock at being compared to Hitler:

“I did not say you think like Hitler, or hold the same opinions as Hitler, or do terrible things to people like Hitler. Obviously and most emphatically you don’t. I said you shriek like Hitler. That is the only point of resemblance, and it is true. You shriek and yell and rant like Hitler. Not all the time, of course. You also tell very good jokes, and tell them brilliantly. You deservedly get lots of laughs, as a good comedian should. But throughout your speeches you periodically rise to climaxes of shrieking rant, and that is just like Hitler.”

That certainly clarified matters: Rabbi Boteach is only somewhat like Hitler yet, more like a clown. Makes one wonder: what is worse, a shrieking rant or very calmly comparing a Rabbi (or anyone) to Hitler?

Rabbi Boteach wrote an open letter to Richard Dawkins in which, amongst other things, he directed Richard Dawkins to video footage of a debate between the two of them which Richard Dawkins denied having ever ocurred. This was a debate at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford (10-23-96) between Richard Dawkins and chemistry Prof. Peter Atkins on one side and Prof. Keith Ward, Oxford’s Regius Professor of Divinity and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on the other.

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Richard Dawkins appears to have a serious memory loss problem at least with regards to debates which he lost. In this case, he initially wrote, “Are you, perhaps, in the habit of fantasizing about debates that never took place?” but then excused himself thusly, “If we really did have a debate in St. Catherine’s I am happy to apologize for forgetting it, although I don’t think it is much to apologize for” and “what was at worst a trivial slip of my memory, I said that you had always been chairman in your debates, never a debater.” [italics in original]
Another memory lapse occurred in relation to the 2-14-86 “Huxley Memorial Debate” at Oxford University. The debate was entitled: “That the Doctrine of Creation is more valid than the Theory of Evolution.” The participants were the then “Dr.” Richard Dawkins, and Prof. John Maynard-Smith against Prof. Edgar Andrews and Dr. Arthur Wilder-Smith (if you are interested in this debate, its controversy and Richard Dawkins’ memory lapse see here, here and here).

Moreover, Rabbi Boteach challenged Richard Dawkins to another debate.
Richard Dawkins responded by not even responding but completely ignored the request.

Furthermore, Rabbi Boteach called into question Richard Dawkins professorship.
Richard Dawkins responded by not even responding but completely ignoring the issue.

Also, Rabbi Boteach mentioned that Oxford does not recognize an official Jewish chaplain and proposed the following, “Perhaps, as a man of liberal ideology, Richard, you will use your influence at the university to have them recognize an official Jewish chaplain in due course and I would view this as ample atonement for your outrageous Hitler comment.”
Richard Dawkins responded by not even responding but completely ignoring the request.

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Lastly, it may be of interest to note that one of Richard Dawkins’ “New Ten Commandments” (of which he lists 15) reads as follows:

“Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.”1

However, part of Richard Dawkins’ reluctance to further engage Rabbi Boteach is his refusal to debate “Creationists,” a term under which he fallaciously places Intelligent Design proponents as well (see here for more on this issue). Here are some reasons as to why Richard Dawkins does not keep to his own commandment:
A creationist group called Answers in Genesis interviewed Richard Dawkins in 1997, eventually this interview was included in a video entitled “From a Frog to a Prince.” Much controversy has ensued form this event-Richard Dawkins’ point of view can be found here and Answers in Genesis’ here. Let us grant Richard Dawkins’ retelling as it appears in ch. 2, essay 3 of his book of essays entitled “A Devil’s Chaplain.” There he wrote, in part:

“In September 1997, I allowed an Australian film crew into my house in Oxford without realizing that their purpose was creationist propaganda_they issued a truculent challenge_only a creationist would ask_it was the point I tumbled to the fact that I been duped into granting an interview to creationists – a thing I normally don’t do, for good reasons. In my anger I refused to discuss the question further, and told them to stop the camera. However, I eventually withdrew my peremptory termination of the interview, because they pleaded with me that they had come all the way from Australia specifically to interview me.”

Clearly, censorship and cutting off dissent are Richard Dawkins’ modis operandi. But he did claim to have “good reasons.” Before getting to those reasons, perhaps he should have edited the commandment to read, “Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent, unless you have a good reason for doing so” (read the qualifier as “A good and convenient subjective reason”) in which case the commandment is null and void.

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But what are those good reasons? Richard Dawkins has answered that question in Why I Won’t Debate Creationists. In that article he addresses all practitioners of “real science,” those who have “a passionate conviction that such wonders [the wonders of the natural world] deserve nothing less than a purely natural explanation.” I must admit that I am not quite certain what passion and conviction have to do with real science. The long and short of Richard Dawkins’ reason is encapsulated in his following remark as he mockingly plays the creationist, “Look at me, I’m having a debate with one of the big boys. Doesn’t that just prove that creationism is being taken seriously in the universities?”
Incidentally, he was specifically referring to Philip Johnson who is not a creationist (surely such factual accuracy is beyond Richard Dawkins’ concerns although they did share some very interesting correspondence in which Johnson urged Richard Dawkins to become active in science and assist the public understanding thereof).
Referring to himself and Steven Jay Gould reference is made to “our refusal to engage in public debates with creationists,” and they seek to encourage others to censor and cut off dissent, “we don’t do debates with creationists, and encouraging other scientists to refuse for the same reason,” they “encourage others to refuse all debating invitations from pseudoscientists avid for publicity.”

Another person whom Richard Dawkins refuses to debate is Dinesh D’Souza. And no wonder, considering that Christopher Hitchens (who has debated D’Souza) described him to Richard Dawkins as “one of the much more literate and well-read and educated of our antagonists” (see the “Cosmology and the Pathetic Bible” portion of this essay).

It is difficult to discern why Richard Dawkins would compare anyone at all, much less a Rabbi, to Hitler. Surely, there are been many well know people who shriek, yell and rant. So why choose Hitler? Richard Dawkins has also correlated creationism with Nazism and any evolutionist who is not as fundamentalistic as himself as an appeaser of creationists, whom he correlates with Hitler (“the Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists” as he terms these evolutionists2). Having had some experience with people who are saturated with prejudice, I am lead to suspect that his thoughts occur to him through a murky cloud of prejudice that obscured a natural tendency that is present in most people to moderate ourselves. Ultimately, only Richard Dawkins trully knows.

Rabbi Boteach’s open letter is found here and Richard Dawkins’ response here.
Part I of Rabbi Boteach’s Canadian presentation (the one that earned him the Hitler label) is found here and Part II here.
The full, two-hour, video of the debate from 1996 at Oxford University are available on shmuley.com and beliefnet.com.Two articles of interest are:

Evolutionist compares rabbi to Hitler! Religious leader responds with challenge to debate, again

Rabbi reveals video of debate that “didn’t happen” Says “man as honorable as Dawkins will correct the error”


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