Why not the same rule for political intervention by outsiders, whether or not they are religious? While he, who is not Irish, thinks Mother Teresa had no right to express her opinion about divorce law reform in Ireland, he has no hesitation in telling Australians about what we should be doing in Iraq. He is a belligerent, unyielding disputant asserting that religion ought have no place at the table of public deliberation. But in God is Not Great he is not the bystander adjudicating between the fundamentalist Muslim suicide bombers and the conservative Christian backers of the Bush White House.
He is an acute journalistic critic of warring parties in any dispute. Instead of proposing strategies for weeding out religious fundamentalists who pose a threat to the freedom, dignity and rights of others, these authors are proposing a scorched earth policy of killing off all religion.Ĭhristopher Hitchens has visited most of the trouble spots of the world. The successful marketing of The God Delusion has now unleashed a steady flow of anti-religious rantings from intelligent authors who have thrown respect for the other and careful argument to the wind, staking bold claims for the destruction of religion. Dawkins and his ilk think religious belief of any kind is meaningless, infantile and demeaning, so nothing is lost by agitating in the most illiberal way for the suppression of all religion and not just religious extremism which causes harm to others.
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Imagine a call to ban all scientific inquiry because those who engage in responsible scientific inquiry may be providing the opportunity for fanatics to harness science for their own purposes. The same argument would not be put for scientific inquiry. Dawkins’ “take home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism – as though that were some kind of perversion of real, decent religion”. I now realise that Dawkins and his ilk are upset even by religious people like me, perhaps especially by religious people like me.ĭawkins claims that moderation in faith fosters fanaticism: “even mild and moderate religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes”. Like them, I had strong concerns about fundamentalists who used their simplistic religious beliefs to buttress their commitment to violent or undemocratic action. Prior to the publication of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (Bantam Press, 2006), I had presumed that in western intellectual circles the atheists were ahead on points and that they were little troubled by the doings of those they regarded as well meaning, slightly befuddled religious people. These two women had discovered my presence in the hospital and came to pray over me, telling me that I still had much work to do. I told her that we did not mess with Aboriginal matriarchs. One evening a charge sister asked if two women at my bedside were on the approved list. As the media had reported my hospitalisation, the hospital authorities had to place strict limits on visitors. None of this disrupted the hospital routine and it helped me in my hour of need. I received cards and greetings from people offering their prayers. Each day a different church volunteer came to my four bed ward offering me the Eucharist. I did not inquire, though I noted one wearing a hijab and some others wearing crosses or religious medals. Being in a state hospital, I had no idea of the religious affiliations, if any, of my doctors or nurses.
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These anti-religious tomes arrived at my bedside when I was hospitalised with acute renal failure. The Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Michel Onfray, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2007, 219ppĪgainst Religion, Tamas Pataki, Scribe, Melbourne, 2007, 136pp God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens, Twelve, New York, 305pp