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April 2, 2024 - 4:00pm
Despite decades of championing atheism, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins described himself on LBC this weekend as a “cultural Christian”. This, many have hastened to point out, is not novel: he has identified as such since 2007, and says little in the interview that he has not expressed elsewhere (albeit this time with an added dig at recent public displays of Islam, which he claims is not, unlike Christianity, a “fundamentally decent” religion).
This means he is “happy” that “the number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down” but would “not be happy” if “we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches”. Given the correlation between the two, such an attitude hardly seems tenable. It is, as American cultural commentator Rod Dreher remarked, as absurd as someone who “greatly enjoys eating, but is also glad that farms in his country are closing and that gardens are not being planted”.
That the fruits of Christianity can be saved while its roots are severed speaks to a naivety that is perhaps typical of Dawkins’s generation. Baby boomers wanted to tear down the conventions of traditional society and yet, at the same time, overwhelmingly benefitted from them. They championed the sexual revolution, for example, but have themselves enjoyed the stability of monogamous marriage. Dawkins’s belief that it is possible to reap the cultural benefits of Christianity while publicly undermining its legitimacy is perhaps an expression of this generational mentality.
But it is also a belief — and a naivety — that goes back to the European Enlightenment. Though Dawkins’s embrace of “the Christian ethos” might seem surprising given the extremity of his anti-religious polemics, his position is remarkably similar to that of modernity’s founding fathers. Like him, the liberals of the 17th and 18th centuries believed it was possible to renounce the truth claims of Christianity while still upholding its social and cultural mores.
Locke, for example, was highly critical of the “superstitions” of traditional religion, yet his political philosophy rested upon Christian foundations. He took it for granted that people would exercise liberty in accordance with basic Christian morals, the truth of which he deemed so ubiquitous that it did not need to be explicitly stated. Locke assumed that even a secular society would be governed by citizens with a Christian character and culture, even when there was no religious or political order to shape and sustain them.
A closer parallel can be drawn with the French liberal theorist Montesquieu. Perhaps the Dawkins of his time, Montesquieu ruthlessly refuted and mocked religious beliefs, but took an instrumentalist view of their social order. “We owe to Christianity,” he wrote, “a certain political law, and in war a certain law of nations — benefits which human nature can never sufficiently acknowledge”. He too was especially eager to assert the superiority of this system in the face of Islam, writing that “while the Mahommedan princes incessantly give or receive death, the religion of the Christians renders their princes […] less cruel.” For Montesquieu as with Dawkins, Christianity is a “fundamentally decent” religion — a fundamental decency he believed was so self-evident that it could survive any attack on its truth claims.
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SubscribeThere are cultural Christians, cultural Muslims, cultural Jews, cultural Buddhists, cultural Taoists and so on.
I’d assert that the cultural types can rub along tolerably well together but when spiritual legitimacy rears its head then violence eventually follows.
One should be careful what one wishes for.
I think the post-reformation/post-enlightenment grouping of all belief systems which allow for the possibility of things humans cannot know or understand under a single umbrella, generically just “religion” is incredibly silly.
I think the major world religions have incredible distinct differences and always have. ‘Scientific rationalism’ on the other hand is relatively narrow and mostly just exists in opposition to traditional christianity. Even in places like Maoist China, the tenets of anti-religious establishment and sentiment came from post-Christian thinkers of western Europe.
It may seem “silly” to you, but the one thing common to all religions is a reaching out for something you’ve managed to identify: “things which humans cannot know or understand”.
In doing so, you’ve ignored the all-too-human tendency to project our hopes and fears onto an imaginary being to whom we’re meant to feel grateful and to ‘worship’. Why should any of us ‘worship’ such a thing, even if it could be proven to exist? That’s a serious question, by the way.
To honor that which blesses us with things seems instinctive. Sun worshippers, for example. Taylor Swifties. Sports team fanatics. Why shouldn’t it apply to a god? To those who worship a god it is far from imaginary.
Well, at least you’ve had the bottle to answer.
Since none of us, pre-conception, chose to be “blessed” and just for one moment taking it that a god conferred life upon us, we’d simply be the subject of its whim. Any god that needed our gratitude wouldn’t be worthy of being a god, simply a narcissist.
I challenge anyone to come up with a better reason for feeling the need to ‘worship’ their god.
Since the reason we exist is God, surely giving Him a bit of one’s time (on Sundays especially) is merely being gracious.
Unless one thinks one would be better off never having been born – which is a symptom of depression.
I’ve got a good reason to honour a God (by whatever cultural tradition) and place an allegiance to your God above all earthly authorities. If all there is ,is here on this earth and in this life (and there is fabulous loads) but then anyone who controls here and controls our systems controls us and the project is to OWN us and ENSLAVE us. Don’t they call it Tech serfdom or something like that. Worship,that is difficult for me. As an Ugly Female my reception and treatment by the world is not.such as to have me joyfully thanking a God for creating me in such intricate detail. I mean he was either having a.bad day with no good coffee available or He felt in need of a Cosmic Joke. I go for the latter. I think I’ll have a little fun. Ill make a human with no beauty ,intellect or savvy and put my creation in a world where you need at least one,or two to even survive and then I’ll point and laugh. Still God may Be a Bit of a b*****d but I’m sticking to my allegiance to Him. He did at least let me go to Paris!
Why assume ‘god needed our gratitude’? What would ‘need’ mean in that sentence? This has little relationship to the God of Christian theology.
It is always amazing to see how little ‘deniers’ and ‘skeptics’ have actually thought about what religious belief is or entails. They have constructed in their minds a sort of jokey historical caricature of provocative things various Enlightenment philosophes wrote, and assume that jokey caricature is an ‘argument against God’ or something.
There are those atheists who claim that if you’re going to believe in God you might as well believe in the the Great Spaghetti Monster in the Sky. To which I say, “yet you seem to believe in the Great Spaghetti Source of Meaning in the Sky”. They are never able to explain the many plainly observable phenomena of human experience which testify to our relentless belief that our existence has meaning.
I agree, this does seems narcissistic-in fact I would categorically reject a God who demanded worshiping on the basis that I don’t respect people who demand applause!
However, I do wonder if the word “worship” has been mistranslated, or the meaning has changed over time.
Apparently God in a Christian sense likes relationship, and so perhaps, like a regular family, he likes a designated day to spend time together…??
Because God is good and kind – and the only source of goodness and kindness.
And because without Him, our society is collapsing.
Incidentally, as figments of God’s imagination, held in being solely by Him, we aren’t in a position to call God “imaginary.”
God is good and kind….ok.But for a lot of us .. people,our experiences in life have not borne this out.
God’s kindly purposes are often thwarted by the untrammelled freewill of human beings and of nature.
People who say things like your saying ie smug bastards,are always amiable,good looking people who were popular at school,have lots of friends – without even trying,have no trouble getting lovers,one goes off, there’ll be another one along in a minute. You always get the job as you’re the face the y can live in with in the office every day,but all credit,you are super competent and worth your salary,but you get the full praise and credit for the good work you do that your ugly colleague (how’d he slip in) doesn’t get for working twice as hard. So to you a belief is an unnecessary crutch for poor useless people. You have an innate moral compass. You know its wicked,evil and stupid to kill your step-sister by locking her in a big suitcase. Her death was not intended. So obviously the sensible course dictated by your moral compass is to go to B+Q and buy a chain saw. Then saw her body up into bits,put the bits in a number of smaller suitcases and ask a number of friends,you have loads of friends,you’re a nice person,to store the cases in their.sheds. Which they do until they start to notice a strange and disturbing smell. This horrible story is true,it happened in recent years in a road near by and for me,it put the kibosh on this idea that everybody has a moral compass. But I already knew that as I don’t have one either. And I’m sure I’ve got ‘you” totally wrong,you’re not.smug and it hasnt all just.dropped in your lap+.to some people I am that one!
Please identify what you mean by ‘cultural Muslim’?
I don’t think so. Christianity is somewhat unique in the sense that Christian values are generally applicable universally (turning the other cheek, loving one’s neighbour as oneself, caring for the meek and the poor etc) even if one is not a practicing Christian. It is therefore possible to be a “cultural Christian” without being an “actual” Christian, this pretty much sums up the current state of the entire Western world. However this does not necessarily hold true with other religions. There is no such thing really as being a “cultural Muslim” or a “cultural Buddhist”. You are either a Muslim, or you’re not. You’re either a Buddhist, or you’re not.
Correlation does not equal causation, learn to hold two beliefs at once
That’s the definition of Orwellian Doubethink.
I think that’s a valid point, Elizabeth. I have recently become quite comfortable with the notion that belief and disbelief, along with hatred and love, anger and sympathy, etc., can and do, in fact, coexist within the same person in different proportions and at different times. Think of one’s relations with one’s parents, friends, other loved ones. They can shift from hot to cold and many points in between. As Heraclitus (I think) said: “Everything moves, nothing stands still.” We’re part of that.
It’s artificially limiting to think that belief, love, etc., are static states. We confuse ourselves by thinking so. I’ve always suspected that most believers experience serious bouts of disbelief, and many disbelievers may wonder if their certainty is the final truth.
We’re complicated creatures and our language may not always accommodate that reality.
Maybe we’re simply in sync with the mysterious, impossible realities of the quantum world, where things are 0’s AND 1’s, and Shrodinger’s cat is alive AND dead.
Yeah – but it’s difficult for us to be both alive and dead.
Perhaps we’re just changeable and divided.
Of course Dawkins in his infamous book, attempts to deny that those human emotions & attributes don’t actually exist
As someone who has long needed to moderate my public views on all religions, I think that the overriding problem is that certain religions, currently Islam (but previously others) can be excessively intolerant of dissent, both within and without their ranks. Most religious folks are deeply wary of non-believers and antagonistic to dissenters in their midst. This knee-jerk insecurity is very revealing to me. If however, I try to discuss this, I am mostly rejected out of hand as a troublemaker; so now I have stopped engaging with any of these people at all. The same goes for that other institution I cannot agree with – the parasitic royal family.
This is too sweeping and general. There’s no context but I will debate you all day on the theory that belief in God leads one to be more irrational than someone that constructs a “Scientific” Moral Value System.
the parasitic royal family
You’re not the first sawing off the branch you’re sitting on
It’s not insecurity. It’s sensible.
Christianity is dying, it will continue to die and will be consigned to a minority ‘cult’.
Man is not reliant on Christianity for his values, Christianity is but 2000 years old, our values are in our DNA, we are a naturally caring and innovative species.
Our values and our way of living will continue to evolve without a God forced upon us by religions who wish to control us.
I would say that our values are not in our DNA, they are given to us by society. Historically in the west this was Christianity, but it doesn’t have to be. But there does have to be something, otherwise we revert back to the animal state that is coded in our DNA.
Way before Christianity man had his values, hence it’s in our dna.
Animals too have a caring side, however clearly more primitive, it’s in their dna
There were other societies with values before Christianity…
I do agree there has to be something in our DNA. However, what is in DNA is built on by civilisation / society / religion by encouraging what it sees as good behaviour and punishing what it decides is bad.
Gorillas, chimps etc have societies, but we wouldn’t regard them as societies we’d want to live in because there’s not much more than DNA and are therefore pretty brutal.
What were the values of classical Greece or Rome ?
Slavery and war, principally. And esp in Greece’s case, paedophilia.
What hope did individuals have in such societies ?
None, not even the richest individuals – because if Heaven doesn’t exist, there’s no hope.
Where? Ancient societies believed the strong will inherit the earth, the first shall be first. Nowhere and at no time were we all “equal” in the eyes of the law for example. Man had his values, but they weren’t what we accept in the West as morally correct.
Chimps chase down trespassers and tear them limb from limb.
Christianity is doing great in the non Western world.
I think you mean Africa, even the USA with 91% professig to be Christians it has diminished to 24% by 2022.
Typo … 64%
Because so much of US Christianity has been insincere or political, so is dying out.
Our values are in our DNA? How could that be?
Instinctive care for the welfare of another human being. Good example would be how the native Indians of America saved the pilgrims from starvation.
Good example, but I was asking a literal question. Are instincts something that is in our DNA, created by evolution? Seems impossible.
How do you account for our species and others having a caring instinct, without which it’s young would not have survived.
Hence it’s in our dna to ensure the survival of the species
That’s really terrible reasoning. You really should read Dawkins. The fact that we care for our genetically related children in no way suggests we have a generalised caring instinct. Nor does our dna give a hoot about the survival of the species.
This is actually no better than assuming lionesses are kind to antelope because they are kind to their own young.
This is incorrect. We produce the hormone oxytocin in response to pregnancy, labour and breastfeeding. This would be impossible without the mechanisms to do this being in our dna.
Instincts are in DNA – almost all animal behaviour is instinct, from a bird building a nest to a lion wanting to eat antelope. Nurturing young, an example of caring, is also an instinct.
But more complex values will largely come from society.
Where are instincts in DNA? We have mapped the human genome, but we have no sign of any instincts encoded in them. If you mean that instincts are inherited, that seems true. But the mechanism of inheritance of instincts seems not to be DNA.
To give some numbers, human DNA contains about 750 megabytes of data. Less than 50 megabytes of that data is unique to humans. Hard to say that everything that is inherited is packed in 50 megabytes of data. But if a trait like an instinct is not in DNA, where is it?
I’m not a geneticist so I can’t answer your question. But consider this –
A bird like a blue t*t builds a nest and raises its young. Those young then learn to feed themselves and the following year build their own nest and raise their young. But they have never seen this happen. Did the other blue tits tell them despite not having a language? Did they find out from Google?
It’s complex behaviour and it is not taught. It is an instinct.
They are, but not directly. There is no dna sequence adverting that “when an orange cat with stripes comes into your sight you should run”. There are dna codes for creating a complex anatomical limbic system that regulates hormones (such as adrenaline) that produce sensations (such as increased heart rate to increase your ability to run away fast) and emotions such as fear. There are innate sensations that make us fearful, and as we grow we learn to predict what things trigger these unpleasant sensations (such that we recognise a category of thread such as predators, and quickly learn to recognise what they look/smell/sound like).
Have you read about the way the Comanche treated both whites and other tribes.
And their subsequent extermination by the pilgrims.
Was that instinctive care too ?
The pilgrims didn’t do that, and they weren’t exterminated. There existed many tribes and like every society that lived alongside each other fought amongst themselves.
Because they listened to one stupid person. If they’d followed their natural instinct and killed all the new arrivals. Well,it might have held off the inevitable or even created a different USA.
They were initially hoping to obtain their firearms to either protect or oppress other tribes. They weren’t sitting in a circle singing kumbaya.
That’s it, in a nutshell. One can be a ‘cultural Christian’, or even just a plain old Christian, without belief in a deity. The principles that the gospels tell us Christ preached with regard to our relationships with our fellow men and women stand in their own right, and need no divine underpinning.
To believe otherwise is to disregard the thousands of years of civilisation leading up to the point where the historical figure we refer to as Christ intervened. All that organising these principles into different religions does is set one against another, with the obvious results of conflict and persecution. Who needs that? It’s the absolute bane of humanity.
Israelis and Palestinians are quarrelling over LAND not religion.
Were the two world wars religious ?
Jesus Christ taught: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and strength and mind” (orig a quote from Deuteronomy).
Jesus was also a terrifying hell-fire preacher warning us of the consequences if we chose evil instead of good.
And he was not all kind or even tolerant of the Pharisees and the Jewish political establishment who were actually in the political terms of the day “the good guys. The Pharisees in particular were all Gretas,insisting that if everybody lived a highly ordered and tidy and clean life creating no pollution (but that was moral pollution then) the people could avert God’s Wrath and Save The Earth. It’s all very well saying they deserved the sharp edge of Jesus tongue because they were.hypocrites but Jesus in no.way suggested that God’s Love would be available to them.
Jesus wanted not only to save people in general from the false religiosity of the Pharisees – He also wanted to save the Pharisees from themselves.
Good people, like Jesus. aren’t always “nice” people.
It’s not “dying” at all. What you just said is reliant on the same Faith Principles of Scientism (Scientific Socialism) that every Marxist relies on.
You’re just taking pragmatic leaps of Faith and not asking why. There’s zero grounding. The idea that “humans are naturally caring” was the inspiration for the French Revolution and Russian Revolution. Not exactly “compassionate movements.”
The Bible teaches the opposite principle of what you just claimed. It teaches humans are inherently selfish. That seems to equate alot more with evolutionary biology than the Pragmatic Scientism you’re relying on.
So how is Christianity going to collapse if its fundamentally more empirical than the “Science” that the “Enlightened” are declaring?
Sounds a little pollyanna-ish. Before Christianity we thought it was ok to commit incest, human sacrifice, sodomy, cannibalism, animal worship, torture, and execution without trial. We are all descended from people who did extremely nasty things to each other, not because they needed to, but because they wanted to.
Religion is not really about telling people what to do just for the sake of it, it describes a set of behaviors that will help a culture survive and thrive no matter what tribulations they face. Just look at the ancient Jews. They’ve clung to their faith and are still around thousands of years later despite being the most hated people on earth.
I’d even go so far as to say that religion is a necessary prerequisite to social evolution, and that without it we eventually succumb to the suicidal cultural ennui that engulfed other once-great civilizations.
That’s to say too much. Different civilisations have taken against different practices – it is not only Christianity that outlawed human sacrifice. Indeed it was already outlawed by the Jews. And even Socrates was famously put on trial, he wasn’t simply executed out of hand.
Except when we are not, of course. Then we gas each other, drop atomic bombs on each other, carry out genocide, burn down each others cities, and torture each other for fun. When we are not being quite that mean, we enslave each other, work each other to death and stand idly by while others of our species starve. Oh and then there is the Viking blood eagle, the rack, burning at the stake etc
We are very definitely a species with more than one side.
A caring species ?
There’s little in human history except injustice, oppression, hatred, war etc.
Which get even worse when people stop being religious.
In any case, it’s the West that is dying. Globally, Christianity is doing well, despite massive persecution from radical Muslims.
“Our values are in our DNA, we are a naturally caring and innovative species.” DNA is not the beginning point just as Christianity is not the beginning point.
In 2004, the atheist world was shocked when famed British atheist Antony Flew announced that he believed in the existence of God. For decades he had heralded the cause of atheism. It was the incredible complexity of DNA that opened his eyes.
In Flew’s own words, he simply “had to go where the evidence leads.”
DNA is an incredibly detailed language, revealing vast amounts of information encoded in each and every living cell – which could not have arisen by accidental, mindless chance. Information requires intelligence and design requires a designer.
The “values” and “naturally caring” and “innovative” manifestations were put in the DNA. Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” Genesis 1:26
The fall of man crippled the language; explaining why mankind mirrors the designer’s intentions poorly through history AND will continue to do so…
Cultures enlightened by Christianity flourished. Its demise (Christianity will never die, Cultural Christianity, yes) will not mean more freedom but less. A “godless world” doesn’t mean no religion it just means the rejection of the true God. There is no void – man will have a religion! (It’s in the DNA)
“…as absurd as someone who greatly enjoys eating, but is also glad that farms in his country are closing and that gardens are not being planted“. And in fact our western leadership cadre holds that exact position with regard to agriculture and food security.
And electricity.
What always strikes me about Dawkins and other atheists is their theological ignorance.
Many aetheists, like myself, were educated at Church schools, in my case a Methodist School in the 1950’s … what a nightmare experience that church was
I have heard others saying this. Not only is it an abject failure on their part, but also a failure on yours. The failure of one school to adequately educate & explain the theology that underpins their existence is one thing. But isn’t it rather deficient on your part to conclude that because one institution is poor, that an entire faith is false because of that?
What strikes me about believers of religious texts is their wilful ignorance of science.
How does science contradict the religious texts ?
It doesn’t.
Noah living to 950, all of us being descended from Adam and Eve despite them only having 3 sons
It’s allegory,it’s metaphorical,it’s metaphysical,it’s similes,it’s stories because.humans love stories. Our minds are all the time transforming our lived experience into a story. Oh,just me.
Actually no,the number of you tubers telling us their story and we love following.it proves out story.telling nature. Anyway they didn’t have ultra-processed food back then so no wonder they were healthy! Ha ha.
Those downvotes are worrying.
There does seem to be a well supported view here that much of the current malaise in the west would be solved if we all started going to church again. The articles around cultural Christianity have been interesting this week. But one thing missing is that you are not going to convince people that the existence of a supreme being as defined by a set of texts is true, especially the woolly ones who claim to be ‘spiritual but not religious’. Accepting the supernatural may in fact be hardwired into a lot of people, but press them on it and they don’t really know what they believe. Some of my family, friends and colleagues are socially observant (various UK Christian faiths) and respectful of tradition, but the number of actual believers is very few. I suspect that throughout human history, a great many people held sceptical views about whatever deity was in fashion at the time. Going with the flow was important for group survival and, most likely, individual survival if open dissent carried serious consequences.
The problem is, that ship sailed a long time ago. People aren’t going to go back to the religion of their ancestors – barring some kind of dystopic descent into the past.
The biologists say we’re all descended from one pair of human beings.
No they don’t. Where did you get that idea?
If you’re thinking of “mitochondrial Eve” and “Y-chromosome Adam”, there were millions of other people around at the same time they were. Their significance is that all the other female lines other than Eve’s died out eventually on that gene allele. Same thing with “Adam” and male lines. Anyway, they estimate they lived 20-30 thousand years apart. Here’s an illustration. Suppose someone is born with a genetic mutation that made a blue dot on their forehead. Fast-forward 100,000 years. If everyone had that blue dot on their forehead at that point, this original mutant person would be that “Adam” or “Eve”.
I’m interested in your evidence for that bold statement
Theyve got all the naughty bits of the OT on speed dial.
There is no need to know anything about theology. Theology is not for the atheists to convince them, it is for the believers to explain what is already believed.
Christianity is far more interested in social justice issues than recovering it’s roots.
As for Dawkins, he is many different things, and on this matter could be called hypocritical, what he is not however is naive.
Besides, if he was asked ‘do you appreciate Christian architecture?’, it would be derisable to say he did not.
“Not having gotten men to practice what she teaches, the contemporary Church has resolved to teach what they practice.” (Nicolás Gomez-Davila)
It is not Christianity that is too concerned with social justice issues, it is individual Christians and their major denominations.
I’m not sure that the morals of Christianity cannot be separated from the belief system. In fact, I think they can be. As Thomas Jefferson did with his Jefferson Bible. (The trouble with Islam is that if you do that, there’s not much left. Same with the Old Testament.)
Take an example. Most Christian churches believe in the doctrine of the trinity. Three hypostases but one ousia. It’s an odd doctrine that is impossible to explain. A mystery that, as far as I can see, doesn’t matter a whit in the real world.
Can’t we just junk a lot of this “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” nonsense? This trinity and this transsubstantiation? Would we lose anything if we did? Can our society be firmly based on the Christian ethic even with empty Christian churches?
I would counter that Jeffersonian-style Christianity was only possible because of ‘normal’ Christianity.
I would even argue that many of the Protestant sects only really exist because more traditional Christian churches exist. This is not to say that those Protestant churches objectively are bad things – but that certain types of things can only really exist in opposition or contrast to more fundamental and stable things.
This is quite apparent with modern western progressivism, which pretty clearly has no objective goals, but is simply reactionary against traditional standards and objective values.
The American celebrations of this Easter specifically as trans-day-of-visibility, compared to last year when it did not coincide with Easter, is a great example of this. (March 31st was only chosen for that day in 2023, when it was easy to anticipate it overlapping with Easter the next spring.)
What then is the essence of the traditional Christian church that enables Jeffersonian Christianity? In other words, what does the church add to the ethic?
Belief in Heaven and Hell and the necessity of choosing between them.
“(March 31st was only chosen for that day in 2023, when it was easy to anticipate it overlapping with Easter the next spring.)”
The first March 31 “trans-day-of-visibility” was in 2009.
I really don’t understand why it’s an issue whether (once in a very many years) Easter and “trans-day-of-visibility” coincide or not.
Why would that matter ?
To be clear, I don’t see the use of a specific “trans-day-of-visibility” either, or any “day of…”. Seems a bit strange that only once a year a specific important subject should get special attention. Important issues (not that I find the visibility of trans persons that anyway) should be getting attention regularly.
And nowadays it seems that all days are claimed for a specific issue (sometimes even multiple issues), which negates the objective anyway. If every day is “special”, none of the days are special.
Why take the trouble to behave in a Christian way – which it’s very difficult to do, in fact – if you don’t believe in Christianity ?
Thank you for the article!
Dawkins suffers the classic syndrome of really intelligent and well-educated people – they think they can account for all of the causes and effects of complex systems simply by exercising their minds. They also give themselves far too much credit for being the person they are and finding the success in life that they have.
There is a reason Christianity sees pride as the greatest and most fundamental vice.
Karl Marx is another example of a brilliant and brilliantly-educated intellectual whose intellectualisms plunged much of humanity into death and destitution.
(This is not an inevitability of course – Nietschze provides somewhat of a counter-example…)
More than agree.
I would only add that their pride is perhaps the main reason why they are so often completely immoral on each level.
I remember how shocked I was that Einstein, while living with his mistress, was sending his underwear to his wife to wash.
I agree with your point, but I would not describe any of the people you mention as really intelligent.
If they were really intelligent surely they would be aware of the fundamental fallacy in the position they adopt
Yes, agree.
No, they are just cognitively dissonant and guilty of the kind of ‘compartmentalism’ that they attribute to intelligent Christians.
Dawkins got in trouble when he pointed out no Muslims got a Nobel prize since the 13th century . The Mussies shot a cannon warning across his timbers and ever since then he keeps his head down and if asked about Islam “won’t go there”. All these bold speakers to power are like that,they quail before real power. Me too. Except no one.notices me and my pathetic ramblings.
Indeed. Me too.
Isn’t it funny how the state cowers before those parts of the population that carry a real threat of violence or which carry political clout in the right circles but beats down on all others
The ancient Greeks conceptualized different types of intelligence. Wisdom (sophia) was different than techne (technical knowledge). Dawkins is smart but not wise. There is a great difference between the two.
That is a very important point
Great comment. You don’t hear the old adage much now – ‘pride before a fall’. Only thing I’d take issue with, it’s not actually ‘really intelligent’ to believe you can work everything out from first principles – nobody is more wrong than somebody who thinks they’re always right.
You’re interpreting Dawkins through your own perceptions. I’m pretty sure he accounts for causes and effects through reasoned, scientific procedures as far as possible. He will understand that we don’t, and probably can’t, know everything but we can keep searching for answers and keep testing them against alternative theories and new evidence.
Alternatively we can follow a theory that can’t be tested. That’s fine as long as it’s harmless. It may also produce fabulous art, architecture, literature or whatever based on imagination, fellowship or whatever it takes to inspire people.
There is no conflict between a passion for scientific discovery and a love of fine culture. I expect Dawkins appreciates the world’s finest mosques and temples with their glorious designs and patterns.
The author is putting her own naivety on display with this article, which is surprising (or is it?) given her work “at the intersection of religion, politics and culture”.
Does she think for one minute that Dawkins hasn’t thought through what she maintains is his naivety? I find myself in the very same position of appreciating the beauty and communal value of church architecture, for instance. In the end, even if their intention was to build in praise of their deity, such architecture was designed, planned and built – sometimes over the course of several generations – by human ingenuity.
It could be argued they wouldn’t have done so but for their beliefs, but all that those generations of builders were doing was responding to the cultural conditions at the times in which they lived. It gave meaning to their lives at a time when many of them would have no access to reading material (even if they could read) except that which was controlled by the Church. Criticising Dawkins for the centuries of change that’ve lead to our present-day dilemmas isn’t just naive, but culturally blind.
If religion doesn’t inspire beautiful architecture and music – what will do so instead ?
Love, war, suffering, the human body, human activities, nature, etc.
Such subjects have been an inspiration for ages and continue to be.
Religion always has just been one of the inspirations.
However for many centuries religion was one of the few institutions with power, besides royalty and nobility (later on the merchant class and even later rich industrialists appeared).
Only the rich and powerful were able to commission art or buildings and of course a religious institution would demand a religious subject (or building for worship i.e. indoctrination).
Royalty and nobility were both very dependent on religion for their validity (f.i. kings were often depicted as the representative of god for the nation) and the trope “piously suffering during your miserable life will lead to an eternal afterlife in heaven” kept the poor majority subjugated most of the time.
So not strange that they also often requested religious subjects.
Of course besides that the majority of royalty and nobility (and merchants later on) believed the religious doctrine as well, so I expect they preferred putting part of their wealth in religious inspired art and buildings to increase their chance in a place in heaven.
It’s far more fundamental than that, which is the point I think you’re missing. Without Christianity, we go back to the norms that were changed by Christianity – slavery, rule by the most brutal, discarding the weak or sick. We assume that we have moved past these, but that’s only because of Christian assumes we still (just about) inherit as the air we breathe. Once the roots have died, there is no real grounding for anything based on the assumption of equal dignity to everyone. I assume you haven’t read Tom Holland’s Dominion?
If Christianity changed slavery, it certainly took a very long time to do so…
Almost 2000 years.
Not odd at all. I like visiting stately homes, though I wouldn’t support the levels of inequality that produced them.
Much depends on whether, being downstream of Christianity, we are convinced by its morality, or at least some of it – or whether we see this as just a cultural habit (a tradition) which, without its religious underpinning, is unconvincing. The latter is the nietzschean position, the former, presumably, is Dawkins.
It’s entirely consistent to feel that the world is better downstream of Christianity, and to want to keep it that way, even if we are unconvinced by its metaphysical claims.
You can try to construct a new society with a new set of Ethos. You don’t even need to call the new ethos a religion but eventually it will contain a Golden Calf in short order. Probably less than a decade.
It will merge Science with Politics, Entertainment and everything will fall under the window of Collective “Interconnectedness” and be almost indistinguishable from previous attempts to do the same.
Christianity is based on faith in the real existence of God and Christ’s resurrection. Cultural religion is a falsity and will fail against anyone who actually believes in his god.
Dawkins is a stupid persons idea of an intelligent person
Just curious: who is your idea of an intelligent person?
Most people are smart enough to understand thst a great deal of wisdom and truth lie in all the major spiritual traditions and that their scriptures and rituals are a strange kind of language that lolinks us to a truth and mystery beyond the visable . They realise you shouldnt denigrate other religions and cultural traditions or indeed your own, particularly in a world where materialism in the broadest sense and in all its forms leads to depression and laziness. Its not that Dawkins is wrong but that he is blinded by a narrow, rational intellect. That is stupid really. There isnt a better word
Rowan Williams
The man who presided over the downfall of his denomination? Ridiculous.
Naive or disingenuous? What if all Dawkins is doing is trying to redeem himself without admitting, maybe even to himself, that he was wrong?
I expect Dawkins is bricking it now the likelihood of losing his lovely sinecure cash income job or whatever it is could be gone now there is a real possibility that the Muslim population base creates a wide enough power base for the Muslim population to Democratically get political control by purely democratic means. And then shut it down of course. I would. And we know what Mussies do to unbelievers.
We all thought The Crusades of way,way back were quaint and a bit silly. Now we see just how much we owe our,yes,misguided and stupid ancestors but they knew that The Evil.Empire had to be kept at bay..Tell me why there are thousands of USA citizens who are the descendants of black slaves but there are no descendants of black slaves in Turkey or the old Ottoman territory. You tell me why?
A friend of mine who works at Blackwells Music Shop in Oxford relates how some years ago, Dawkins bought a recording of Bach’s Mass in B minor and made the observation ‘that if anything could convert me to believing in God, this would be it’
This is a common phenomenon – some of the greatest interpreters of Bach, as well as music lovers would dissociate themselves from actual Christian beliefs while (understandably) relishing the music that they inspired. Needless to say, Bach, who had no time at all for ‘the Enlightenment’ would have been horrified that anyone would listen to the music while ignoring or dismissing the theology of the texts – this would be even more of an issue with the Passions and the Cantatas -‘mere entertainment;’ albeit of the highest quality,
It’s worth reminding ourselves that there is no Muslim equivalent of Bach, Byrd, Messiaen or Stravinsky….or John Donne, Milton Gerard Manley Hopkins or TS Eliot for that matter. And no representational art, of course.
I never cease to be amazed at the vitriol, bile, fear, and hysteria which the name ‘Dawkins’ instils in ‘Christians’. It’s as if their belief, rather than a source of strength, is a crutch to prop up their desperation, delusions, or inadequacies, and some naughty man threatens to kick it away. The splendour of cathedrals and religious buildings has nothing to do with ‘god’, any more than the religious paintings with an unhealthy obsession with naked children have, though I stand to be corrected by those with more theological knowledge. No, they are the ways that warring religious franchises signalled their domination, meant to impress and intimidate the ignorant and superstitious. Dawkins’ crime is that he refuses to be intimidated. And let’s face it, if you could you’d burn him at the stake, wouldn’t you? Just like in the good old days, when Christianity really did dominate.
His attitude is quite understandable to me. Yesterday I was driving through the countryside around Los Olivias, CA enjoying the beautiful vineyards and wineries very much and hoping they stayed as beautiful.
I don’t drink wine.
I think the attitude of Dawkins being expressed in this article is the exact opposite of what you are describing. He is someone that “drinks wine” (enjoys the cultural fruit of Christianity) but doesn’t care if the vineyard is not tended and is dying (the roots of the religion are not being nurtured).
Esme finishes this very interesting and provocative article by saying “Like any organism, Christianity must recover its roots, or it will die”. Yet she does not consider that Dawkins’ embrace of cultural Christianity as a start in that potential process? The point is this: Twenty years ago even cultural Christianity would’ve been scorned; now the most evangelical atheists embrace it. That is the thing of interest here, not so much whether cultural Christianity is robust or pure enough to reform the bonds of our moral community.
Patrick Dineen has written an excellent book on this very topic – Why Liberalism Failed (Yale University Press, 2018)
Why are Christians so excited about something Dawkins has been saying for years?
Surely they should concentrate their energies on, what appears to the outsider, like a growing agnosticism among church leaders, who seem more interested in peddling the nostrums of wokery and climate catastrophism than the Word? Then again, promoting irrational fears has always been a key marketing ploy for godly activists, whatever the brand.
We’re told nowadays that The Good Book should be viewed metaphorically rather than literally. Fair enough. But that leads inexorably to the position that God too is a metaphor, which is an atheist position.
Am unconvinced by the notion that liberalism, tolerance, universal rights, democratic accountability and the like owe a considerable debt to Christianity. A thorough historical debits n credits analysis would not, I reckon, turn out all that favourably for theocrats.
Of the Abrahamic outfits, the Jews are the best. They don’t overdo the proselytising, and hence have a lower quotient of insane and dysfunctional types in their ranks. At least, they seem to have functioning membership standards.
Read “Dominion” by Tom Holland and then come back. He systematically charts (as an agnostic) the debt that Western thought owes to Christianity.
The Great Mosque of London, formerly St Paul’s Cathedral
Again with the ‘boomer’ bashing in service of whatever point an author wants to make? Do you have nothing else? It’s like being trapped in the feckin Guardian again and again and again…
Boomers are the cause generally, sorry.
I suppose Mr Dawkins’ life’s work has been an exercise in rejecting God, and his most recent statement is simply an act of breaking the second commandment. He seems intent upon using God’s word to jumpstart his new religion.
The entire project of the modern West can be summed up as “Christianity without Christ”. This has been well described in Tom Holland’s popular book “Dominion”. Dawkins is an example of somebody who at least admits to this, but really this could be said of the entire Western world at this point in time. We will espouse what are essentially Christian values (freedom, respect for individuals etc.) but without the person of Christ. Tom Holland points out that these values are not “universal” or “self evident”. They are in fact a radical overturning of the prevailing “might is right” system of values espoused by the Roman and all other previous empires. The Western world is the heir of these values, but has chosen to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
“Christianity without Christ” does not work. Without the person of Christ, it becomes merely a set of abstract values. Without the cornerstone, the building crumbles.
Restoring the cornerstone (i.e. Christ) to his rightful place in this hierarchy of values requires, above all, humility and repentance. We don’t see much of that around.
The uncomfortable truth is that the core teaching of Christianity is that human salvation was and is achieved through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus on the cross. This is indeed an uncomfortable truth, but you can’t have it both ways. You’re either a Christian, who believes in the entirety of the Christian teaching, or you’re not. This whole “cultural Christian” business is at the end of the day, meaningless.
Modernity has produced an astonishing mischaracterization of religion, particularly christianity. But then, this mischaracterization is thoroughly consistent with the modernist project. Modernity pretends, perhaps intentionally, perhaps not, that christianity and the bible are trying to explain to us how life, the universe, and everything works and what it’s made of (creation story etc.). Silly modernity, thinking that what the universe is is more interesting than what it’s for. Modernity’s fatal mistake is it’s inability (or unwillingness) to ask the right questions. Ironic, given that it’s raison de’tre was to question.
This new debate around Dawkins makes me laugh. The man that for years didn’t just say that God didn’t exist, but who was very active in public debates that mocked & derided Christianity, is now saying he’s culturally a member of a religion who worship a God he says doesn’t exist.
To be fair to Dawkins he’s always been full of contradictions. His infamous ‘dancing to our DNA’ statement was obviously fiction as it was evident anyone back when he made the statement, that it’s not how humans are made or operate.
So we learn that Dawkins’s ideas are the natural consequence of him being of a certain generation, the baby boomers, who, according to the author, are “naive”. Who else are naive? European enlightenment figures like Locke or Montesquieu. Who see through their naiveté like knife thru butter? The millennials, of course, who learn everything that needs to be known from each other.
The second paragraph gives the intellectual deficit and self-serving narrative of the author away. It is perfectly possible to live life as a ‘cultural Christian’ without Churches, while impossible to eat food unless it is farmed or grown – well at least until lab grown protein and produce become widely distributed and affordable (which they will).
Being a cultural Christian simply means following the guidance of the second 5 of the 10 commandments. Those that propose instructions to live by, while the first 5 instruct how to worship a god who promises you will spend eternity in hell and damnation if you don’t worship them.