Stump the Christian?

[SteveII]

Here is a link to Dawkins' entire speech that the Wiki quote poorly referenced:
https://ladydifadden.wordpress.com/2012/...ally-2012/

For those interested I think you'll find Dawkins' comments a bit different than previously characterized, particularly this bit:

We need intelligent design. We need to intelligently design our morals, our ethics, our politics, our society. We need to intelligently design the way we run our lives, not look back to scrolls — I was going to say ancient scrolls, they’re not even very ancient, about 800 BC the book of Genesis was written. I am often accused of expressing contempt and despising religious people. I don’t despise religious people; I despise what they stand for. I like to quote the British journalist Johann Hari who said, “I have so much respect for you that I cannot respect your ridiculous ideas.”

Here is the 'mocking' comment with a bit more context:

By the way, when we went on to ask a specific question of these only 54 percent: “What do you do when you’re faced with a moral dilemma? Where do you turn?” Only 10 percent turned to their religion when trying to solve their moral question. Only 10 percent. The majority of them said, “I turn to my innate sense of goodness” and the next most popular answer was “I turn to advice from relatives and friends”.


So when I meet somebody who claims to be religious, my first impulse is: “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you until you tell me do you really believe — for example, if they say they are Catholic — do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer it turns into the body of Christ? Are you seriously telling me you believe that? Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood?” Mock them! Ridicule them! In public!
Don’t fall for the convention that we’re all too polite to talk about religion. Religion is not off the table. Religion is not off limits.

Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated and need to be challenged and, if necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt.

So when somebody makes a claim that transubstantiation is real, but offers no support for the claim, why shouldn't it be mocked? It's patently ridiculous. The defense given is that I should ignore it for the sake of entertaining the entire worldview, which despite being burdened with absurdities, somehow becomes reasonable from a broad perspective. What Dawkins understands, that is being tiptoed around here, is that people that have no problem believing they're eating a piece of Jesus every weekend cannot be expected to be persuaded through rational debate. You have said as much yourself in that some may reevaluate specific points, but should never be expected to give up the ghost.

The context doesn't change my point much. The final sentence you pasted still calls for "ridiculed with contempt" "if necessary. What does that mean? Is there a line where things like transubstantiation crosses but belief in God or heaven does not so no ridicule required or is everything to be ridiculed because it starts with the absurd notion that God exists? 

BTW, I don't believe the Catholic church's teaching on that either (which was internally developed and not from the Bible). It is obviously symbolic.