I read a great article by Madeleine Bunting in last weekend’s Guardian. She spoke about how Richard Dawkins and others are fashionably trashing religion in their books, but often going too far in their excoriation to be taken seriously. Take Sam Harris’ two bests sellers: The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation and Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Both have risen from relative obscurity to make money from the neo-athesism bandwagon. And we are told that many more are on the way.
Now it could be said many people will never actually read their books cover to cover. They will just sit on a coffee table collecting dust. Maybe.
From my experience, reading other blogs devoted to this subject, a lot of the disciples of Dawkins et al have been drawn in from their own disaffection with religion. In short, it’s payback time!
Personally, I am not too perturbed by the surge of interest in these kind of polemical academics. On the contrary, I am excited that they are getting all puffed up about religion. As Oscar Wilde said, “The only thing worse about being talked about is not being talked about. If religion was a dying phenomenon in the 21st century, surely the biggest insult you could make is to let it pass away in obscurity? But, no, the arrogance of some academics gets the better of them. On short, science has got overtly political. And the university professors rather look like they are enjoying the attention.
The problem is that science is needed by religion. And vice versa, but maybe both sides need to grow up. As Anselm famously said, “Faith seeks understanding”. At least, thankfully, no one has mentioned Galileo and Pope Urban VIII yet.
The danger of religious fundamentalism of course needs to be addressed. We do need to understand why someone walks onto a bus with a backpack full of explosives to kill innocent children who, seconds before, are laughing together and planning a football match after school. To us, it’s terrorism, but to the religious zealot, it’s freedom.
It is also far too simplistic to equate American fundamentalism with Islamic fundamentalism. This is lazy thinking to my mind and not even worthy of a Third in a Comparative Religions Degree. The day I see a Christian suicide bomber walk onto a packed tube in London then, perhaps, I will revise my position. That is not to say the increasingly spiritualised politics of America isn’t worrying and needs addressing. Of course it does. Education is required, but polarising each other’s positions to the point of ridicule is surely counter-productive. Whatever happened to deference in our Christian-based liberal democracy? Faith and Reason; faith and reason…
Sadly, I can’t find Madeleine Bunting’s article on Guardian Unlimited, but if you have any joy locating it, please let me know.
ASD
