You are here
Richard Dawkins is moving towards Christ
By Damian Thompson
THE TELEGRAPH
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/
May 24, 2014
What an extraordinary thing Richard Dawkins has just said at the Hay Festival (which the Telegraph is sponsoring): "I am a secular Christian, if you want to call me that.”
Now, I've said some jolly rude things about the professor in the past. But he did ask for it. For example (from 2009):
Richard Dawkins's latest attack on the Catholic Church is worthy of a dribbling loony on the top of a bus. He calls the Church "the greatest force for evil in the world", "an institution where buggering altar boys pervades the culture" and describes it "dragging its skirts in the dirt and touting for business like a common pimp".
Forgive the amateur psychology, but this sort of crazed invective (his, not mine) so often conceals a troubled fascination with the object of one's hatred. I've rarely met a homophobe, for example, who didn't have at least one gay friend. Anyway, Dawkins also said today that he still values "the ceremonial side of religion" while not believing in miracles – a position not far removed from that of Christians such as the great missionary-cum-organist Albert Schweitzer and indeed hundreds of latitudinarian Anglican clerics.
His comments may explain claims from friends in Oxford that they've seen someone looking remarkably like Richard Dawkins sneaking into services. But he goes a bit further. As our science correspondent Sarah Knapton reports:
Dawkins, 73, also said that he believes humans are destined to take a certain path in life, and that if they veer from it a “magnetic pull” will bring them back to their fate.
Gosh. Is this "magnetic pull" explained by the theory of evolution through natural selection (which I accept completely, by the way, having been convinced by Dawkins's brilliant Blind Watchmaker 30 years ago)? It doesn't strike me that way. It sounds as if it's inspired by the Christian teaching that human beings are endowed with a conscience.
No wonder Dawkins's fellow humanists find him such a trial. First he embarrasses them by denouncing faith with the zealot of a fundamentalist. Then, quietly, he reorientates himself towards the very things he's denounced.
As they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
END
