Swedish TV seems to be pretty interesting, why can’t American TV be like that? In this show, Brandon Flowers of the Killers was invited with ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, as well as a Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang and a TV host Ulrika Jonsson to discuss about religion!
Oooohhhh such a taboo subject in the US! Don’t even dare to question religion here! But when the Mormon is in the room, Swedish people not only ask the hard question, but also invite evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to join the conversation. Now, I am totally bias of course, because Dawkins is a brilliant person and I am a big fan. These days, he is criticizing Mormons more than ever, because of the upcoming presidential elections with a Mormon in the race, and in the following video, ouch! Let's say that he doesn’t disappoint! He crushed Flowers’ religion as he should do, saying in the Killers frontman's face that Joseph’s Smith book is a fake, as everyone should know: Smith was a con-artist, even arrested and convicted in New York. if you read about him, it’s totally incredible that people do still believe in his book based on fake golden plates written in an imaginary language that, conveniently, only Smith was able to translate!
Now all religions are crazy, but some are crazier than others, and Brandon Flowers looks so embarrassed, surprised and totally pissed off when Dawkins tells him his religion is a fake, and he even denies that Smith was convicted.
I know people are going to be offended watching this, because we are raised in the idea we should respect religions, but just like Dawkins, I think this is total non-sense. As Flowers states it, it’s our choice to make a decision to follow a religion or not, and we do not hesitate to criticize any other choice people make, so why not religion?
But poor Brandon Flowers, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and he took all the heat because of Romney’s candidature! Sure he says he has a religion that gives him all the answers and makes him happy, but there is so much more in the picture. What you believe has consequences and sometimes huge ones. When a 14-year-old Pakistan girl is shot in the head in the name of religion, when a senate candidate explains his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape just because he believes that life is a gift from an invisible man in the sky, when the future president of the US may soon be a man whose religion will probably make him end funding for clinics that provide abortion services, propose ‘fetal personhood’ laws that will outlaw some forms of contraception and stem cell research,… more than ever, we should openly criticize religions and expose the danger of blind belief!
Since that time, Flowers has responded to Dawkins, in an interview he gave to the Guardian:
‘I gave some decent answers that were edited out. So, the world is against the Christian man.
Did you know Dawkins was going on?
I found out the day before and I know who he is, and I knew about The God Delusion and all of those things. For him he sees the beauty in science proving something and finding out origins of things. And that's enough for him. Nothing that science will ever find will disprove that God had a hand in it, for me. So it's a useless debate. And nothing that has been found has changed the gospel that I believe in.
Did you speak to him on the phone afterwards, as was mooted?
No, I would like to. I have issues with him. He generalizes things about my church and kind of drags it through the dirt a lot.’
It is obvious that the world has been quite fair to the Christian man, and there is no way it is an useless debate, science is winning, as the hand of God has considerably shrunk its grip on the world since, let’s say, Galileo.. but yeah we will never agree on anything.