Yelling insults won't reduce the appeal of extremist religious belief. We need to be more shrewd about this peculiarly modern phenomenon.
Well, I suppose you could say I asked for it (email me if you have been converted by Richard Dawkins from a believer to an atheist) - and I've had plenty of emails. They make interesting reading but the pattern is not one that surprises me hugely. With one exception, my correspondents all said they were agnostic and Dawkins' The God Delusion has made them into atheists. There was one Muslim from Singapore who said the book had actually converted him from belief to atheism - Richard Dawkins will be glad to hear.
But for the most part, agnostic to atheist is a significantly different proposition to Dawkins' declared aim of converting religious believers into atheists. So I stand by my conclusion that this genre of New Atheism will not achieve its declared purpose - it will not roll back the rise of a particular form of extremist religious belief which - and here Dawkins and I can agree - is a threat to peace and tolerance.
What Dawkins and his fellow atheists do achieve is morale raising among American atheists. Emails and posts portrayed a picture of beleaguered victimhood - of atheists "branded as moral degenerates" for their views, as one email put it. This is how American this debate sounds; I really don't believe in the UK that atheists are a persecuted minority; the British are pretty phlegmatic about faith, they prefer religion private so no one bothers an atheist or a religious believer unless they insist on banging on about their beliefs.
On the other side of the Atlantic, it may well be a different picture and if so, I'd be the first to argue for tolerance and respect for atheism. I don't much like the kind of political culture such as in America where it is close to impossible to admit you're an atheist. If Dawkins has helped America to more acceptance of such a position, all to the good. But I also raise the concern that his form of atheism is mimicking the kind of intolerant bigotry we've seen in the past from the religious. As one person put it, it's payback time - atheists are simply giving back what religions have handed out for centuries. Well, exactly. And what's the point of that?
Once you get past a lot of the abuse on Comment is free, there's an important debate that fascinates people about the nature of religious belief. Faith has clearly failed to explain how the universe works and science has succeeded, but faith hasn't withered away. As one person put it, "is there only one kind of truth - one that is provable and scientific and that is the one by which religion must be judged" and they concluded by asking "what about other kinds of truth - such as artistic, emotional - which we find valuable and enriching?" What science can't satisfactorily answer - or express - for many believers and non-believers alike is that search for meaning, human connectedness and elusive human experiences such as peace. Nor does it provide any map for the development of greater insight or compassion. Dawkins may say he finds all that in science - good for him. For many of the rest of us, science doesn't - and perhaps traditional religion doesn't either - so we're still looking.
What surprises me - and perhaps by now, it shouldn't - is how any criticism of Dawkins prompts such a vociferous response. Yet I acknowledged plenty of common ground; much of the political charge sheet of the New Atheists against a Christian fundamentalism in the US is deeply disturbing. I share the New Atheists' horror at the mad beliefs about the second coming and the end of the world; I totally agree that the religious right should not be able to impose their beliefs on science education - intelligent design, creationism and all that hocus pocus.
But I differ on tactics, and I do so because it seems to me that extremist religious belief is a peculiarly modern phenomenon driven by the trauma of globalisation and modernity. We need to be much more shrewd about how we handle religious extremism. In many contexts - particularly Islam - it has become a political identity. Religion has re-emerged in the wake of the failure of secular political movements such as communism and socialism. The disorientating pace of social and economic change exacerbates people's need for security and certainty. Yelling scornful insults at this swelling band of benighted believers will only encourage them to draw the wagons up tighter around the laager.
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