Posted on 07/20/2007 9:41:31 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
While many Americans know Oxford professor and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins for The Selfish Gene, the 1976 science bestseller that portrayed all life as a struggle to propagate DNA, they may be less familiar with his other identity as a crusading atheist. Yet last fall Dawkins made news with a new book, The God Delusion, dismissing all religious faith as “insanity.” Arguing that “natural selection and other scientific theories are superior to a God hypothesis in explaining the living world,” Dawkins says he wrote the book as a “consciousness-raising exercise,” in the hope that “religious believers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.” Toward this end, The God Delusion concludes with an international list of “friendly addresses for individuals needing support in escaping from religion.”
Reviews have been mixed. The New York Review of Books accused Dawkins of “scattershot reasoning” and “rhetorical excess,” while Britain’s leading Marxist critic, Terry Eagleton, dismissed The God Delusion in the London Review of Books as “a vulgar caricature of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.” Yet the book ranked number two in Amazon’s worldwide sales list, and is fueling an antireligious campaign in Britain, which Dawkins himself is leading, canvassing government ministers and promoting atheism in state schools. This effort has already notched successes in restricting religious rights, most notably in a new British law requiring Catholic adoption agencies to place children with gay and lesbian couples.
The National Secular Society (NSS), of which Dawkins is an honorary associate, has campaigned for a godless Britain since the nineteenth century, and devotes its Web site to decrying and ridiculing religious faith. The NSS, whose associates include twenty British parliamentarians, as well as such establishment cultural figures as the playwright Harold Pinter, vows to combat “religious power-seekers” and “put them in their place once and for all.” For his part, Dawkins has said he would remove all financial support from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim schools and make them teach atheism; prohibit hospital chaplains from solacing the ill; and undertake other measures to combat the “infantile regression” of religious belief. And what about parents who persist in telling their children about religion? “It’s probably too strong to say the state should have the right to take children away from their parents,” Dawkins told an interviewer. “But I think we have got to look very carefully at the rights of parents-and whether they should have the right to indoctrinate their children.”
According to Dawkins, morality is “biologically determined,” and all moral questions, from the prohibition of incest to the allocation of kidney machines, should be decided by “utilitarian moral philosophers” trained to assess the “balance of suffering and happiness” such questions address. “This is a very different way of doing morality than the absolutist way, which supposes some things are absolutely wrong,” Dawkins has argued.
Different, indeed. Brilliant as he may be in explicating biology for mass audiences, Dawkins goes badly astray when he ventures into moral speculation. Speaking at Oxford’s Literary Festival in 2006, alongside the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the Cambridge ethnologist Patrick Bateson, he insisted that human beings were growing “ever nicer” thanks to the decline of religion and the rise of science. Asked why the twentieth century had witnessed so many atrocities, he insisted Hitler and Stalin had been “quite mild” compared to the religious “monsters of the Middle Ages.” In a series on Britain’s Channel Four TV, he equated elderly pilgrims at Lourdes with suicide bombers on the London Underground. “Far from being beaten, militant faith is on the march all across the world with terrifying consequences,” Dawkins told TV viewers. “It’s something we must resist, because irrational faith is fuelling murderous intolerance throughout the world.”
Language like this would sound familiar to those who remember the campaign against religious faith in Eastern Europe, where claims about religion’s social divisiveness were used by totalitarian regimes to justify savage repression. Under such regimes, scientific atheism was a requirement for teachers and educators, legislators and ministers. Schools and colleges were seen as the frontline in a struggle against religious belief, a struggle that included removing Christian symbols and place names and disrupting Christian influences in marriage and family life. These were political systems in which just being a Christian was enough to attract the cold glare of suspicion and hostility. The utilitarian morality favored by Dawkins was given free rein.
Born into a British colonial family in Kenya, Dawkins is a self-described member of the political Left who lives comfortably in a 3 million-Euro house just off Oxford’s exclusive Norham Gardens. It is tempting to view him as a distinctly English eccentric, more outrageous than offensive, with middle-class secularist obsessions that hark back to the paternalism of figures such as the antireligious philosopher Bertrand Russell.
Yet this would be a mistake. For one thing, his atheist campaign, with its chilling eugenic undertones, appeals to many people raised with little knowledge or understanding of religious belief-people for whom the fear of Islam touched off by September 11 has metamorphosed into a public phobia about all religion. Such people may be tempted by Dawkins’s Darwinist notion of religious belief as a virus that infects inferior genes and needs “quarantining,” as well as by the summons to defend society against a rising tide of “religious fanaticism.”
For another, Dawkins has influential friends and formidable resources. Hostility to religion has a long tradition in the United Kingdom, where “organized religion” often sits uncomfortably alongside Anglo-Saxon empiricism and individualism, and anticlerical sentiment reflects the impatience of an antireligious elite that resents alternatives to its own way of thinking. Welcoming Dawkins’s new book, the veteran BBC broadcaster Joan Bakewell said the professor was right to be “not only angry but alarmed” at the spread of religious faith. The liberal peer, Lord Ralf Dahrendorf, who scrutinizes all legislation passing through the British Parliament, has also deplored threats to the “secular commitment” of Western societies. “The return of religion to politics-and to public life in general-is a serious challenge to the rule of democratically enacted law and the civil liberties that go with it,” Dahrendorf wrote in the Guardian, and he appealed to “enlightened communities” to respond accordingly.
Britain itself may already be feeling the effects of such “enlightened” thinking. A recent Education Bill amendment would have required Catholic schools and other church-owned colleges to reserve at least a quarter of their places for nonreligious children (it was reluctantly withdrawn by Britain’s education minister, Alan Johnson, after Catholic and Anglican leaders said they would create such places voluntarily). And an upcoming debate this month will center on the new Equality Bill, which threatens to deny religious organizations the right to follow conscience in dealings with homosexuals. Meanwhile, social services in several counties-including Dawkins’s native Oxfordshire-are reported to have denied adoption rights to Christian couples, after claiming the children in question could be “brainwashed.”
One church leader, Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow, has warned that the controversy over Catholic adoption agencies is just the “tip of the iceberg.” If enacted, new regulations “could compel religious organizations to renounce their activities or be removed from public life,” Conti warned. A new Charity Law is expected to withdraw tax-exempt status from religious bodies that fail to reflect “modern morals and existing orthodoxy,” even as Christian Union societies at British universities have had to resort to legal action after being denied facilities and having their bank accounts frozen. Meanwhile, Edinburgh University has banned copies of the Bible from student dormitories after condemning the Christian Union for violating its “equality and diversity policy” by claiming that “any sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage is not God-ordained.” And religious leaders have resisted attempts by secularist local councils to “de-Christianize” Christmas and Easter and remove Christian place-names from towns and cities-literally wiping religion off the map.
As for Dawkins, a new Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason was unveiled in December to fight the “scandal” of religious teaching in schools, and to prevent children from being “labeled with their parents’ religion.” With a Labor Party Humanist Group launched in Parliament earlier this year to “oppose faith schools,” Dawkins can be confident his campaign is flourishing. Britain’s crusading atheist looks set to fight on for his ideal utilitarian society, a brave new world in which secularism reigns supreme, while lives, values, and freedoms are ruled by scientists.
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ABOUT THE WRITER Jonathan Luxmoore Jonathan Luxmoore writes from Oxford and Warsaw. His book, Rethinking Christendom: Europe’s Struggle for Christianity, is published by Gracewing.
In relation to this, here is an interesting website for you to bookmark ( especially those following Dawkins’, Dennet’s, Hitchen’s and Sam Harris’ careers ) :
http://www.atheistdelusion.net/
He sure has changed since Hogans Heroes and hosting Family Feud.
So BreckGirl-esque.
So the atheists have raised the level of religious intolerance in Britain to the point where Catholic agencies are legally required to allow sexual deviants to adopt children yet Christian couples are denied the right to adopt.
Yes, sounds just like religious freedom under previous atheist regimes.
Britain is proving it deserves to be ruled by Sharia Law.
If they want God out of their country, God just might comply.
“utilitarian moral philosophers” Like Adolph Eichmann for example?
Evangelical Atheists! ***Shakes head***
Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t South Park(yes, I watch the series) make fun of this guy in two episodes last fall by having him fall in love with the transexual teacher then having otters follow him in the future?
Why is it these lunatics never go preach their drug induced delusions in Islamic countries? It is after all, the religion of bloodshed he should be most interested in converting it’s members to nice little atheists like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Genghis Kahn, Alexander the great, etc. all the peaceful atheists of history.
This is typical liberal cowardice. I don’t know how many times I’ve had arguments with them about whether they would like to live under Sharia, and they get out of the argument by saying “I’m against ALL fundamentalists of whatever religion!”
The problem for them is that at the moment the only thing between them and Sharia is (mostly) conservative Christians. It’s certainly not their long haired friends at Berkeley or Ithaca who are going to do something.
Utilitarian philosophy to rule? Why should I care about the greatest good for the greatest number in a Godless universe? Why should I let government ethical committees decide what is good?
Mrs VS
I don’t care what he believes in or call him names for it, why should he care about what others believe in and call them names for it? It looks like the most tolerant people are people of faith of some degree. (excluding Islam of course)
When you can neither prove, nor disprove, the existence of G*d, even atheism comes down to faith.
This guy is such a delusional ass.
I hope he has a lifetime supply of asbestos underwear, he’s going to need it
So in your world,pal,*nothing* is "absolutely wrong"? You're sicker than even I imagined.
Those atheists keep thinking that if they destroy Christianity, that nothing will fill the vacuum left behind. They are completely blind for some reason to Islams desire to fill that void, and that they are helping them do it.
There is no doubt at all that they will be the first victims of Islamic law enforcement, in fact the UK will look like it did centuries ago, with public lashings, beheadings, torture and mutilation becoming a weekly exhibition in the city streets.
1) There is no God.
2) I hate Him.
LOL!! That really sums it up, doesn't it. I don't believe in the Easter Bunny but it would be pretty silly to devote my life to proving he doesn't exist.
Meanwhile, Edinburgh University has banned copies of the Bible from student dormitories
Stop and think about these two statements.
Atheism is a religion.
I would love to know how any of these self-important pseudo-itellectual atheists think this universe was created. It’s a mental disorder, atheism. I feel very sorry for them all.
I do not think Dawkins wants God out of the Country I think Dawkins wants to be God, it seems in the end that is what his kind wants, my kindred left the UK, Ulster Presbyterians, to practice their religion more freely it is odd now that the threats are not coming from the Catholics but rather the British educated class.
Although most people would disagree, I think atheism is a religion thus making Dawkins a hypocrite.
If we categorize atheism as a religion, it’s one of absolute (there I said it!) narcissism. Even followers of the death-cult radical Islam believe in something greater than themselves.
“Asked why the twentieth century had witnessed so many atrocities, he insisted Hitler and Stalin had been “quite mild” compared to the religious “monsters of the Middle Ages.”
That statement alone proves the man an utter and complete moron. Combined, Nazism and Communism killed more people in one century, by far, than any other power or movement.
“So the atheists have raised the level of religious intolerance in Britain [...]”
You’re badly confused about the nature of toleration. We don’t tolerate what we agree with. If we tolerate anything it’s what disagree with.
He could spend every day on a street corner trying to convince Christians to give up their belief in God and still be an incredibly tolerant person. The key is whether he’d try to restrain somebody on the opposite corner who’s trying to convince atheists to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.
This is your chance to demonstrate your commitment to free speech and toleration of differing views with respect to religion. All you have to do is stand up and make it clearly known far and wide that while you disagree with the Dawkins, you’ll fight to the death to support his right to publish his views and attempt to convince others to embrace them.
I heard him in a panel discussion last week. Very articulate and very funny. But kind of a dinosaur in biology. He was asked a question about information theory, complexity and evolution and after he thrashed about for about two minutes demonstrating his complete lack of understanding of the subject (a very important one in microbiology as the genome is the encoding of information), one of his co-panelists bailed him out.
It's ironic that, at the point the english left has complete control of the Church of England and most educational institutions, the fastest growing church in England is evangelical Christianity. You now see signs for "Bible Churches" in England along the road. You wouldn't have seen that ten years ago.
All that said, England is now a deeply secular society. Christian missionaries have their work cut out for them there.
That is if life evolved in the first place and was not "designed" that way..
You know, from the git go..
Dawkins and Darwin (and others) missed that..
That life can discover electricity, physics and GOD..
“I think Dawkins wants to be God”
I think you want to be Dawkins.
“Why should I care about the greatest good for the greatest number in a Godless universe?”
Are you suggesting that the only motivation one has to care for others is believing God will torture us for eternity if we don’t?
From these statements alone, the reasonableness, wisdom and, dare I say, sanity of Dawkins' position are obvious.
Woo hoo! Woo hoo!
One set of rules for how electricity works, one set of still-being-discovered rules for physics, yet tens of thousands of ways of figuring out this whole God business.
I don't go around telling Christians, Jews, and Hindus what to believe about their religions, it's interesting to see all the religious folks who think they know what atheism is...
One wonders about his bitter,venomous hatred of God and religion
Man is by nature sinful, and in a state of rebellion against God. The only difference between us and Dawkins is God's grace.
“What Dawkins and Darwin Missed is that humans evolved to believe in God”
Ehhh. Not quite, since evolution takes place over very long periods of time and the Judeo-Christian conception of God only goes back some seven thousand years or so.
But it’s plausible we evolved to believe in magic and supernatural forces. There’s evidence of that going way way back, although I don’t understand why that would be a comforting thought for Christians.
“The only difference between us and Dawkins is God’s grace.”
Don’t you find yourself wishing from time to time that the Good Lord had a little more grace to spread around? Or is He just being stingy with it?
If there's any confusion here, it appears to be on your part in regards to what I posted.
The atheists in Britain have made it acceptable to discriminate against Christians (they cannot adopt) while passing laws that require Christian organizations to hand children over to sexual deviants.
That is intolerance in action.
And I would.
(is it inconsistent to qualify said support with "as long as he and his ilk don't try to ram the 'fairness doctrine' down our throats?" 8^)
Some religions are insane. Others are a force for good. Dismissing all of them is wrong.
The Good Lord is not “stingy” with Grace. Human beings are slow or unwilling to accept it.
IMHO
Are you suggesting that the only motivation one has to care for others is believing God will torture us for eternity if we don’t?
___________________________
No, there will be many agnostics/atheists who still care for others. There will also be those who go to pure materialism and choose either a life of hedonism or a life of taking care of their own and caring little about others - self-centered social Darwinism. There will be those who define “good” in rather monstrous ways.
The point being, if you throw God and traditional faith-based morality away, what you replace it with is up for grabs, and may not work out as Dawkins expects it would from his milieu.
Mrs VS
Not true.. Jesus came to make ALL religion on this planet obsolete, AND DID..
You'd think atheists would appreciate that..
The Clubs that christians form is another thing..
No, thanks I do not want after all, I find Dawkins rather dull. But in all seriousness if he gets what he wants, if seems like he would end up with most of the power and it seems he wants for force his ideas on the public with a God like power, and it would probably not be long before he would give himself a Nero like quality, if the Brits really want this they get what they deserve, but it would be better for all if Dawkins and Harris, and Htichens and the like just stay in their ivory tower and just try to impress each other.
Maybe this is my molinism, or maybe it is my background, but actually no. I grew up an atheist and I'd read several books by both Dawkins and Gould by the time I was 15. But I'm a Christian today. I think that part of the reason why secularism became such a powerful force is that society had forgotten just what life was like before society Christianized. The juxtoposition between the morality of the early Christians and Roman depravity is powerful. But even a powerful lesson can be forgotten after 1800 years.
Communism was of course the major lesson in what an atheist society is like. This is just an echo, but future generations of europeans forced to clean up the mess of social democracy, 55% out of wedlock chilbdbirth rates, and high proportions of Muslim will reinforce the distinction.
"There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." (Proverbs 14:12)
review
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