Richard Dawkins and the ignorance of ‘New Atheism’

I recently met an old friend at a party. She works for a Christian NGO. Later that evening we were introduced to a man with a background in software engineering. Having learnt about my friend’s job and then discovered that she goes to church, he asked her how old she thought the universe is. Her jaw dropped a bit. But she was composed enough to reply with a counter-question. ‘Did you know that it was a Catholic priest [the cosmologist Georges LeMaître] who proposed the Big Bang theory in the first place?’ Now it was the engineer’s turn to look shocked.

Some may dismiss this exchange as a flash in the pan. To others it will reflect a phoney war evident across Western culture and beyond. The frustration felt by this second group is well founded. Popular contemporary attitudes towards religion include condescending dismissal. The same applies to large sections of the media, universities and the arts establishment.