Professor Dawkins makes a festive vow to ‘destroy Christianity’
My old friend, Professor Richard Dawkins, is guest editor of the Christmas double issue of the New Statesman. And he makes a very decent fist of it.
His is a light touch to the magazine; a column on Islamism here, a piece by Rabbi Jonathan Romain on faith schools there. Prof. Dawkins himself pens a leader column as an open letter to David Cameron. It’s rather rambling and seems to forget from time [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] to time that it’s addressing the Prime Minister, as the good Professor describes, I [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] think, how he loves carols and secularism equally.
It’s unlikely to cause the political stir that Dr Rowan Williams’ contribution to the New Statesman generated last June. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s edition was the biggest seller since the one that directly followed 9/11. I know, because I organised it. Still, Prof. Dawkins has [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] a whole fortnight over Christmas to make up ground.
Coup: Professor Richard Dawkins is guest editor [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] of the New Statesman’s Christmas edition
But the centrepiece of this Christmas edition [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] is the main coup for the New Statesman an interview by Prof. Dawkins with Christopher Hitchens, the great polymath who today lost his fight against cancer. It’s a fascinating read over three double page spreads. Not least because Prof. Dawkins reveals a charming humility, allowing Hitchens to show his intellectual superiority at his own expense. Hitchens is thoughtful about CS Lewis and Christianity and rather leaves Prof. Dawkins floundering in his wake, occasionally interjecting little assents to show that he’s still there, as he struggles to keep up.
But one of these interjections is most revealing. About half way through, the Prof gets this in edgeways: ‘Do you ever worry that if we win and, so to speak, destroy Christianity, that vacuum would be filled by Islam?’
For all his claims that Christianity has been a brutal force throughout history, I’m sure Prof Dawkins’ attitude, revealed here, isn’t reciprocated. I don’t recall Rowan Williams talking about ‘destroying atheism’.
So it’s good to know, at last, where Prof Dawkins really stands and, incidentally, it’s not where the gracious, generous spirited and libertarian Hitchens stands. Hitchens hates totalitarianism. And it’s totalitarians who have tried and failed throughout history to ‘destroy Christianity’. Dawkins now sees that as a measure of winning. Good luck with that, Richard. And happy Christmas.
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