Rowan Williams laid into Richard Dawkins yesterday. Not too surprising really, but while I find Dawkins’ abrasive style irritating, Williams does talk some guff:
The Archbishop of Canterbury launched a fierce attack yesterday on the modern cult of atheism and singled out the eminent scientist Richard Dawkins.
I suggest that Williams gets out his dictionary and looks up the word “cult”.
The closest definition to the use Williams uses is “an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, esp. as manifested by a body of admirers” but even that is stretching it. Atheism is the lack of belief in god(s), we don’t venerate anything because there is nothing to venerate. There is no movement, there is no person at the centre of such a movement, there is no worship – just a lack of belief; nothing more. We simply do not share Williams’ belief in a mythical supernatural being. The idea that atheists can be ordered into a group or cult is absurd in the extreme – the only commonality is our lack of belief and to be bound by a lack of something is plain daft.
Dr Rowan Williams responded to critics of religion by arguing that atheists had missed the point and failed to understand what Christians really believe in.
This is both patronising and insulting, although I have come to expect nothing less. I was brought up with the Christian faith, was confirmed and regularly attended church until my late teens, so I know exactly what Christians believe in; I believed it once myself. Having been brought up in the faith and having questioned it, I realised that the belief was too absurd to maintain, contradicting as it did, the evidence of the world about me. That Williams can continue to believe is fine – if that’s what floats his boat; but in complaining that atheists do not understand his beliefs, he demonstrates crass ignorance; an assumption that we have not been there ourselves and subsequently rejected it; rather that we have never believed and so do not understand. Such fiction is necessary to maintain his weak argument. Indeed, it is he who does not understand what we believe – or in this case, do not believe.
I’ve said it a number of times, but it seems that this tiresome man is reiterating the same tiresome argument trotted out by the religious time and time again. So, again; atheism is not a religion, it is not a belief system, it is not a cult. It is a lack of belief, just as baldness is a lack of hair, just as not collecting stamps is not a hobby. For an intelligent man, Dr Williams is being remarkably dense.
We do not share his belief in supernatural beings, nothing more, nothing less. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?
F***ing bollocks, the lot of it.
Commonsense says that atheism must pre-date organised religion by a heck of a long time. And superstition probably came somewhere in between. So atheists can look down on religion as Johnny-Come-Lately upstarts.
But, it’s just as true to say there are also Christians who were brought up in atheist households, know where atheists are coming from, believed what they were taught until their own mid-teens, been there themselves & rejected it etc. Doesn’t prove anything either way.
Hilary, my point is that Williams is being arrogant in assuming that atheists do not understand what he believes. It was an illogical and somewhat stupid statement. I was not brought up in an overtly Christian household, I followed the faith of my own volition, so I definitely understand what he believes.
The likelihood of an atheist converting to theism, while possible is rather more unlikely, I suspect. Once you realise that religion requires belief without evidence or proof – and that what evidence there is contradicts the myths and legends being peddled as truth, it’s somewhat difficult to go back.
Longrider, Dr Williams is an educated man, and I think he’s making the educated man’s mistake here of condensing a long chain of internal reasoning into a single piece of shorthand, “cult of atheismâ€, and believing that this makes it into a soundbite. Of course it doesn’t really. It just leaves him wide open to attack. It would have been perhaps more accurate for him to have said “cult of Dawkins.†Except that this would then sound like an attack on the man himself, not on his views. Which of course would be a very unchristian stance for the Archbishop to take!
Obviously, atheism, in the sense that Mark Wadsworth and you use the word – the unreflecting pragmatism of animals, and presumably also of our remote ancestors – is not a cult. It’s closer almost to Zen “mindfulnessâ€, if anything. But, I don’t think, from Dawkins’s pronouncements, that his atheism is of this kind. One has the impression that he regards Science not just as a useful tool, but as the one method of revealing actual Truths, although there’s no evolutionary reason why human perceptions of – and reactions to – the universe should be any more privileged in that regard than those of any other animal. For all we know, we might be like a dog turning itself pointlessly round and round before it lies down. I think Dawkins believes we’re somehow privy to a higher order of knowledge than this; and he’s certainly given his opinion on how humans should behave, which takes him well into the murky region of free will and metaphysics. If he stuck to saying “science is what we do because it’s worked, so far, and also trying to see what might work better,†I’d accept his position as consistent. But it seems to me that there are aspects of his belief that can’t be adduced by “evidence or proof”, as you say, and so the Archbishop’s criticism, though perhaps badly worded, is at least understandable.
Hilary, quite. I would accept Rowan Williams’ points more readily if he didn’t try to lump all atheists together. Soundbites are always a bad idea.
I find Dawkins irritating for much the same reason that the religious do. My own position is closer to Buddhism than Dawkins’ nihilism, which was my point our lack of belief in gods being the only aspect we share in common. Attempting to lump us together as a cult is silly and as irritating as Dawkins’ attacks on religion. Now, it may well be that there is a cult of Dawkins…