Disco. finds a new way to be wrong

Bruce Chapman, head of the Discover Institute, has a problem. He objects to Richard Dawkins calling out Pat Robertson as a gigantic blowhard. And also doesn't think Dawkins should do things to help the Haitian people (as evidenced, perhaps, by the fact that Chapman and Disco. have taken no obvious steps to encourage aid to Haiti). After excusing Robertson's remarks, Chapman writes that Dawkins thinks:

Robertson must pay. So by amazing extension must Christianity in general, never mind the extent to which the massive outpouring of aid to Haiti is coming from Christian sources. Even the Red Cross is, after all, about a cross, isn't it?

Robertson may be tone deaf about the such events as the earthquake, but it is left to Dawkins to try to turn tragedy into an evangelizing opportunity. His article, if it were about politics, would be dismissed as propaganda. But the London Times seems to think it fit enough.

Now I've had some modest criticism of the Dawkins-organized fundraising efforts, efforts which themselves go to the Red Cross. But the notion that Dawkins is using this as a chance to evangelize is just pap, and a mean-spirited slur.

More of a slur, though, is the claim that the Red Cross is a religious organization. There is some dispute about the history of the Red Cross's name and chosen symbol, but the group has committed itself to a form of neutrality that prevents it from endorsing any religion at all, and the official story is that the Red Cross symbol is a reversed version of the Swiss flag, not an overt reference to the Christian cross. The Swiss flag is such a reference, of course, but over the last few centuries has also come to stand for a studied neutrality, exactly the image that the Swiss founders of the Red Cross wished to project as they organized a body which could operate freely in the battlefield and move across lines of battle without harm. To suggest that they are a religious group is a lie, and one that would do material harm if repeated too often.