Britain's chief rabbi accuses Richard Dawkins of anti-Semitism in his view of the Bible

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Psalms 14:1a (also Psalms 53:1a)

As reported by Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 14, 2012:

Britain's chief rabbi has accused the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins of relying on an anti-Semitic view of the Bible in his recent book.

Speaking at a debate filmed by the BBC earlier this month in Salford, Sacks said that a remark in Dawkins’s best-selling book "The God Delusion" was based on “centuries of prejudice.”

"I read it as a profoundly anti-Semitic passage,” the chief rabbi said.

Sacks was referring to a passage in the book that said the God of the Old Testament was the “most unpleasant character in all fiction”.

Dawkins, a professor at Oxford University, dismissed the allegation as “ridiculous” and said he was not “anti-Jewish” just “anti-God”.

Dawkins said he was joking when he asserted that the stories of the Old Testament suggested God was “jealous,” “petty,” “pestilential,” a “megalomaniac” and a “bully."

“There are Christian atheists and Jewish atheists, you read the Bible in a Christian way," Sacks said in response. "Christianity has an adversarial way of reading what it calls the Old Testament -- it has to because it says 'We’ve gone one better, we have a New Testament.'"

Of course, Rabbi Sacks' comment that there are "Christian atheists" is just as silly as the drivel spewed by Richard Dawkins.