Yesterday I stumbled upon this interview, which was not included in Richard Dawkins’ “Root of All Evil?” movie. Here Dr. Dawkins interviews Dr. Alister McGrath, who currently teaches at Oxford University, the same school as Dr. Dawkins. Dr. McGrath has earned two PHDs from Oxford, one in molecular biophysics, and the other in theology. Here it the interview (provided by Dr. Dawkins himself) in its entirety:

You can also download the video in .MOV form (88mb)

Dr. Dawkins comes off relatively well in the video. Although he refers to some of his critics as “fleas” on his website, he does seem to have a certain respect for Dr. McGrath. It was refreshing to see an exchange between a prominent atheist and theist done in a respectful manner, but I would have much rather seen a real discussion between the two, instead of Dr. Dawkins posing all the questions (and his own views) with Dr. McGrath continually forced to be on the defensive.

I must comment that, although I thought Dr. McGrath handled the interview quite well, I don’t entirely agree with some of his responses. There were just a couple times where, as I watched and listened, I thought “No, no! I think I have a better reply than that!” While it no doubt seems rather presumptuous of me to disagree with someone like McGrath who holds two PHDs and has published dozens of books and academic articles, nevertheless I’ll try to make a few follow-up posts to this entry where I give my own responses to some of Dr. Dawkins’ questions.

Related Reading:

• The God Solution: A Reply to the God Delusion - One of my professors wrote this upcoming book (release date July 10 2007) that proposes a response to Dr. Dawkins’ popular book The God Delusion.

I can see that this ridiculousness is probably going to be fairly big. Already the old Da Vinci Code Blog was spammed by someone advertising the official website. (Posting twice from the same IP within minutes under different names.)

So I made up a page explaining some of the many problems with the James Cameron documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”, aka “Jesus Family Tomb”. It contains links to several other pertinent resources on this topic. Click below to read it:

Feel free to pass the link around, copy it to your own site, hang it on your fridge, whatever. I’ll work on it some more later when I have more time; this is a “preliminary” version. We already went through this once with the lamentable Da Vinci Code, and now it’s started all over again …

Related reading: In addition to my page linked above, a “Top Ten” list has been posted to Christian Newswire: Ten Reasons Why The Jesus Tomb Claim is Bogus: Leading Scholars Say Discovery Channel ‘Documentary’ Makes for Good TV, Bad History and Bad Science

Okay, after writing for the Discuss Da Vinci Blog (a dozen or so posts plus several dozen replies in the comments, some of them to some real … uh, “characters” …) I’ve had pretty much enough of Dan “it’s true, absolutely all of it, errr, except when it’s proven wrong or inconvenient for me” Brown’s novel.

However, I had to post this. An excellent documentary called The Real Da Vinci Code (hosted by Tony Robinson and originally broadcast a year or so ago) is now available on DVD. I highly encourage anyone who’s interested in the issues raised by the book to watch this documentary. It’s both scholarly and entertaining. Buy it from Amazon.com ($13.99US) or from your local DVD store.

The entire thing is also available to watch online for free here: The Real Da Vinci Code on Google Video (1 hour 41 minutes). Of course, since they are now (finally) selling a legit DVD version, you should really buy the DVD in addition to watching it online. Besides, it loses something watching it on the blurry Google Video box, especially when they are showing the documents, beautiful architecture, etc.

Further reading:

• TheLife.com’s Da Vinci Code site - Many useful articles.
• Criticisms of the Da Vinci Code - Some of the criticisms of the book & movie (Wikipedia entry).
• Glad you asked that: A Da Vinci Code primer - Answers to common questions.

TruthMedia has started a new blog to discuss movies, Movies at TheLife.com. Currently the focus is on The Nativity Story, a film that “follows the life of the Virgin Mary and Joseph over the two-year period immediately prior to the birth of Jesus and several years afterward” (from the Wikipedia article). After watching the trailer, I’m excited to see this movie. While The Passion of the Christ was rather disappointing (for both style and theological reasons, although there were some great moments in it) The Nativity Story looks like it should be a great film, and early reports seem to confirm this. Search out this film when it opens in theaters December 1, or if it’s not playing in your country, find a way to see it!

Related links:

• Video: Watch the Nativity Story trailer!
• Is the slaughter of the children historical? - As depicted in the trailer
• Who is Jesus? - A full study of his entire life on Earth