The Church of England is absolutely right to pray for Richard Dawkins
The C of E tweet praying for the atheist’s recovery isn’t trolling. Many Christians have reason to be grateful to him
Monday 15 February 2016 08.24 EST
Peter Ormerod
It should make no odds, really. If prayer works, then praying for Richard Dawkins may help him recover more quickly from his stroke. If it doesn’t, then it won’t. No harm done, either way.
That a well-wishing tweet from the Church of England should lead to quite such a reaction says something about the febrile nature of Christian-atheist relations at present. But we’ll lay aside for the moment any scepticism regarding what may have motivated the tweet in question. What’s more important is that believers embrace those, like Dawkins, who criticise their beliefs. Because the fostering and exploration of doubt has a fundamental role in the story of faith.
Dawkins may be called a “New Atheist”, but his atheism isn’t really new. He just happens to have articulated it especially clearly for this generation. One could be unkind and say that the church should be grateful to him for distracting attention from more pertinent and profound critiques (those offered by Freud, Nietzsche and Marx, for example), but there is no doubt that he has made the discussion of belief a mainstream topic. He has doubtless caused Christians to sharpen their thinking and question, or abandon, what they believe. Besides, many Christians will find common cause with him – not only in his critique of the dangerous absurdities of fundamentalism, but in his apparent desire for a more peaceful world (much as his Twitter feed at times suggests otherwise).
Dawkins stands in a long tradition of scepticism, stretching back through the likes of Bertrand Russell, Antony Flew and David Hume, right back to Epicurus and doubtless many beyond. It’s kept religious thought dynamic, and helped it evolve and move closer to truth. Indeed, so important has doubt of the existence and nature of God been to faith that the Judeo-Christian tradition has been a fount of it, from the biblical books of Job and Ecclesiastes to the cry of Jesus from the cross. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that Christianity “is much more atheist than the usual atheism".
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/15/church-england-pray-for-richard-dawkins-recovery-christians
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