Religion
Related: About this forumCall off the faith wars
My fellow atheists, its time we admitted that religion has some points in its favour
Douglas Murray
9 February 2013
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, Williamss successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, made the point that the role of religion in our national discussion is by no means absent.
The more I listened to Dawkins and his colleagues, the more the nature of what has gone wrong with their argument seemed clear. Religion was portrayed as a force of unremitting awfulness, a poisoned root from which no good fruit could grow. It seems to me the work not of a thinker but of any balanced observer to notice that this is not the case. In their insistence to the contrary, a new if mercifully non-violent dogma has emerged. And the argument has stalled.
These new atheists remain incapable of getting beyond the question, Is it true? They assume that by true we agree them to mean literally true. They also assume that if the answer is no, then that closes everything. But it does not. Just because something is not literally true does not mean that there is no truth, or worth, in it.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8839081/call-off-the-faith-wars/
Douglas Murray is also a British neoconservative.
I listened. Don't agree with his neoconservatism but comprehend a bit better.
rug
(82,333 posts)cbayer
(146,218 posts)Well said and I am glad to hear more and more people saying it.
okasha
(11,573 posts)He knows what his niche audience wants to hear, and he says it.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)And I am glad to see it.
He's a self-professed anti-theist and no different than anyone else who broadbrushes whole communities for who they are or what they believe.
mr blur
(7,753 posts)cbayer
(146,218 posts)dimbear
(6,271 posts)Or don't bite off more than you can chew. Set a smaller goal, like gradually educating the world in a long struggle.
LeftishBrit
(41,205 posts)Last edited Fri Feb 8, 2013, 09:24 AM - Edit history (1)
Though he is not as socially conservative as some on that paper, he is as you say one big neocon: he is on the board of the Henry Jackson Society, and is the author of a book called - I am not kidding you - 'Neoconservativism: Why We Need It'. He is also right-wing on economic issues. And Americans may be interested in this tribute that he wrote to Robert Bork, victim of evil Ted Kennedy: ( - as I don't agree with Murray, in case it needs to be said!)
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/douglas-murray/2012/12/robert-bork-1927-2012/
I agree that it is pointless and unfair to treat all religious people as bad, all religion as a poisonous influence. But I don't think many people do.
rug
(82,333 posts)LeftishBrit
(41,205 posts)In the UK, there is less association in general between religion and politics than in the USA; and also open atheism is far commoner. It would be unusual (though it happens) for an atheist to be an extreme social conservative; but nothing particularly incompatible between being an atheist and a neocon or economic right-winger.
rug
(82,333 posts)Unusual but not contradictory.
Response to rug (Original post)
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