Religion

Rationality doesn’t come cheap — not if you’re buying Richard Dawkins’ brand. In this week’s Spectator, Andrew Brown examines the costly cult of personality that has grown up around the professor; and the stratospheric cost of supporting his work. But your money doesn’t just aid Dawkins’ monstering of tithe-bloated religion — there are discounts and money-can-buy treats for non-believers too. So, what do you get? For $85 a month or $1,000 a year – Reason Circle membership Invitation to member-only event with personalities from Dawkin’s foundation A discount for all purchases in the richarddawkins.net store For $210 a month or $2,499 a year – Science Circle membership One ticket to an invitation-only

Where to start with Prof Dawkins’ latest observations about religion and fundamentalism? In response to questions from an audience in Edinburgh where he was promoting his autobiography this week he observed that ‘nice’ religious people give credence to suicide bombers. It’s remarkable, really, that after a good eight years of debate and dialogue with people like Rowan Williams and Jonathan Sacks — viz, perfectly rational believers — he can still say the following: ‘…there is a sense in which the moderate, nice religious people – nice Christians, nice Muslims – make the world safe for extremists. ‘Because the moderates are so nice we all are brought up with the idea that

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_14_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Andrew Brown and Daniel Trilling discuss the cult of Richard Dawkins” startat=788] Listen [/audioplayer]The other day I wrote something to upset the followers of Richard Dawkins and one of them tracked me down to a pub. I had been asked to give a talk to a group of ‘Skeptics in the Pub’ about whether there are any atheist babies — clearly not, in any interesting sense — and at the end a bearded bloke, bulging in a white T-shirt, asked very angrily where Dawkins had said there were any. I quoted a couple of his recent tweets on the subject: When you say X is the fastest growing

‘Richard Dawkins, what on earth happened to you?’ asks Eleanor Robertson in the Guardian today. Ms Robertson is a ‘feminist and writer living in Sydney’. She follows to the letter the Guardian’s revised style guide for writing about Prof Dawkins: wring your hands until your fingers are raw, while muttering ‘Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown’. For some time now Dawkins has been saying rude things about Muslims and feminists. This makes him a bigot in the eyes of the Left — and especially the Guardian, which is extraordinarily and mysteriously protective of Islam. As Robertson puts it: ‘Sure, he wrote some pop science books back in the

People talk about their commitment to equality and diversity so readily they must assume there is no conflict between the two. The phrase falls off the tongue as if it were an all-in-one package, and people can ‘celebrate diversity’ and support equal rights without a smidgeon of self-doubt. Until, that is, they have to make a principled choice. Then, whether they admit it or not, they find that they can believe in equality or they can believe in diversity, but they cannot believe in both. If this sounds like the start of a patient exploration of a delicate philosophical distinction, don’t be deceived. There is nothing difficult to understand, and my

Perhaps it’s my imagination, but every time the Rt Rev James Jones, former Bishop of Liverpool, pops up on Thought for the Day I hear an undertone of disappointed ambition. The same goes for Lord Harries, ex-Bishop of Oxford and, like Jones, once spoken of as a future Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s as if they’re saying: look how much poetry and gravitas I can pack into three minutes! I’d have been jolly good at Lambeth… listen to ‘Thought for the Day from the Rt Rev James Jones’ on Audioboo

Once again, a feeble desire to be democratic and appeal to potential church-goers has led the C of E into muddy waters. No, I’m not talking about women bishops, but the Church of England’s much more significant — and damaging – decision, rubber stamped last Sunday, to remove the Devil from the liturgy of Baptism. Instead of being asked to reject ‘the devil and all rebellion against God’, parents at a Christening will now blandly be asked to ‘turn away from sin’. The change of language means the liturgy is now so removed from the original Book of Common Prayer as to be unrecognisable, but members of the Synod were

Well, I think nobody really assumed that George Carey was the brightest button on the bench of bishops but the old bumbler has still managed to put a rocket into the debate on assisted suicide. By dint of a former Archbishop of Canterbury changing horses on the issue, it has wrecked the notion that there’s some sort of consensus on the Anglican side about this contentious question. Whenever anyone tries to give a Christian account of the matter they’ll be met with the riposte, ah, but that’s not what the Archbishop says. But what gets me is the notion that it has come as a revelation to poor old George

In many ways I’ve endured enjoyed a very fortunate life. Not least because, perhaps unusually, I’ve had almost no dealings with the National Health Service. I mean, apart from a couple of vaccinations before trips to heathen foreign parts I’ve hardly seen a doctor since I left school. This surprises me as much as it may surprise you. So I’m never quite sure what passes for ‘good’ service on the NHS. What is normal in an organisation of its size, diversity and complexity? And how, in any case, do we measure ‘success’? I have a sneaking suspicion that we often do so by rebadging failure as normal. As I type this, you see,

According to my colleague Melanie McDonagh (Spectator 21st June), religion makes you happy and churchgoing is good for you. Crikey, you could have fooled me. For sure, an ancient church or cathedral is a peaceful and moving place to visit. Religious music can also be very affecting — I love Haydn’s many masses and adore Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle — as can be its art. But, as the man said when looking at some vast triptych of the Crucifixion, ‘Great story, shame it ain’t true.’ I was confirmed into the Church of England when I was seventeen. I had agonised about this for ages and was a good three or

‘I deserted my children for my own personal happiness: it is as simple as that, regardless if I sometimes reassure myself with caveats, with a rationale which I have constructed for myself out of cardboard or tinplate over the years.’ So writes Rod Liddle in his brutally honest memoir-cum-polemic Selfish Whining Monkeys, which got a huge boost last Friday thanks to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s rational and entirely sane attack on him on Channel 4 (see above). I admit to being a fan of Rod. Like James Delingpole, I think of him as something of a  national treasure, although only in a sort of alternative reality — possibly a quite nightmarish one —