Atheists vs Dawkins

Sometimes a perfectly good argument can be stretched too far. I heard the resulting snapping noise last week in Cambridge during a debate with Richard Dawkins. We were meant to be on the same side at the Union. But over some months the motion hardened and eventually became ‘This House believes religion should have no place in the 21st century.’ While an atheist myself, it seems to me that claiming that religion should disappear is not just an overstatement but a seismic mistake. So I joined Rowan Williams and my close enemy Tariq Ramadan in trying to explain to Dawkins and co where they might have gone wrong.

The Union was packed, with screens relaying the debate live around the building. It was a reminder — a few days before Justin Welby, Williams’s successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, made the point — that the role of religion in our national discussion is by no means absent.