Have His Cake AND Eat It Prize

Over at normblog Norm Geras lets Richard Dawkins tell us that Dawkins likes to have his cake and eat it.

Geras first quotes Dawkins: "Beliefs and tastes, political biases and hobbies, these will tend, at least statistically, to pass longitudinally down generations, and nobody would wish it otherwise." [my italics]

Fine and dandy, isn't that? All very scientific and tidy; Nature at work, wot? But then Geras quotes Dawkins' also having written, "To slap a label on a child at birth - to announce, in advance, as a matter of hereditary presumption if not determinate certainty, an infant's opinions on the cosmos and creation, on life and afterlives, on sexual ethics, abortion and euthanasia - is a form of mental child abuse."

Well, I'll be a monkey's aunt: from Science to name-calling - child abuser - in One Easy Lesson.

"Beliefs...pass...down generations, and nobody would wish it otherwise" works for Dawkins so long as those beliefs are any but them thar religious beliefs? For Dawkins only religious beliefs passed "down generations" are a "form of mental child abuse"? Whom, Mr. Dawkins, would you nominate to decide which beliefs are fit and which are unfit for a parent to pass on? Belief in the UN? - chockablock with brutally repressive sharia states that have been tripping all over themselves to impose sharia as global law? Belief in Her Majesty's government which has privileged Moslem men to have four wives - all of whom may suck at the dole teat - while non-Moslem men, and all women may not have more than one spouse? Do you believe that belief in the UN and belief in Labour are beliefs which merit passing down?

Who, Mr. Dawkins, gets to be Boss of Approving and Disapproving Adherences for Subsequent Survival (BADASS)?

There's a cake you won't have and eat, Mr. Dawkins, even if Mr. Geras seems to favor your enjoying it both ways.