This goes to print on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. So allow me to pitch in to February’s religion-versus-secularism debate from a new direction. As an unbeliever I wish to complain on behalf of serious religious belief. Faith is being defended by the wrong people, in the wrong way.
‘Faith’ means faith. Doubt is not faith. Faith is not seeking but finding. Real Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Jewish believers are being patronised by kindly agnostics who privately believe that the convictions of those they patronise are delusions. A lazy mish-mash of covert agnosticism is being advanced in defence of religion as a social institution. But ‘whatever floats your boat’ is not the wellspring of Judaic belief. The God of the Gap is not the God of Islam. Jesus did not come to earth to offer the muzzy comforts of weekly ritual, church weddings and the rhythm of public holidays.
In an astonishing foray into a disgraceful sort of journalism the Sunday Telegraph now claims to have discovered that Professor Dawkins is descended from slave-owners. You make a fool of yourself, not Dawkins, with this kind of rubbish, so his critics must be blinded by anger. How to explain this?
It was a coincidence between two minor pieces of news that seems to have unleashed the media storm. First, a limited judicial decision ruled that Bideford councillors may not include prayers on their official agenda. Then survey data from the National Secular Society publicised by Richard Dawkins suggested that most declared Christians lack both knowledge of their faith and serious conviction. The surprising burst of energy this released has included interventions from the (Muslim) Chairman of the Conservative party, from Daniel Finkelstein, the Archbishop of York, Giles Coren, the Queen and Eric Pickles.
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