Atheism Is The New Fundamentalism - Grayling & Dawkins Show Otherwise

Last night saw another great debate courtesy of Intelligence Squared. The motion – Atheism is the new fundamentalism. For the motion - Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford and Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph. Against the motion, two heroes of Freethought, A.C Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at London University, and Richard Dawkins, who needs no introduction.

The debate kicked off with Richard Harries taking to the podium. He defined the fundamentalism of ‘new atheism’ under four headings, but they essentially boiled down to two: first, new atheism is impervious to facts and second, it only picks on the weakest arguments of its opponents. After a good start, it all got rather embarrassing for Harries. His first argument, as one twitter user put it, was essentially this – ‘most artists in history were Christian, so there’. Atheists often forget, said Harries, that Eliot and Auden, two great poets, were both Christian. The obvious response being ‘so what?’. Not only is the observation irrelevant and simply a result of the historical domination of the Church, it is simply wrong. Atheists don’t ignore this (personally, my favourite poet is Eliot), it just doesn’t come up in arguments because it is a moot point – perhaps someone should have told Harries this.

Then came Anthony. Grayling has the soft-spoken, charming manner of an English country gentleman but he compliments this with fantastic observation and a great intellect. His speech, though eloquent, was unfortunately not dreadfully relevant to the motion. It was, however, a pleasure to hear such a mind talk about atheism, secularism and humanism.

Grayling later referred to Charles Moore’s speech as a series of ad hominem attacks on Richard Dawkins. This was perhaps slightly unfair, but Moore certainly focused on Dawkins’ work with a certain intensity. His main criticism was of what he described as a ‘WWII searchlight’ approach. Dawkins, he argued, glances briefly at Christianity, criticising it at a basic level, finding the weakest forms and interpretations and proceeding to massacre them. He said Dawkins was an accuser and maintained a pitiful almost ‘murderous’ attitude to others. ‘It was Rev. Green, in the nursery, with the Bible’ said Harries (Dawkins excellently pointing out that in the U.S version of Cluedo, Rev. Green is simply called Mr. Green, as it is inconceivable that a Reverend could do any wrong). The accusation even arose that Dawkins felt intelligent people were ‘better people’ for it, in reference to the questionnaire cited in The God Delusion (which he boldy held high and displayed to the audience at one point) showing that a higher proportion of MENSA members are atheists. By this moment the audience was getting restless and Moore was stretching the time limit. Determined to finish with a flourish by quoting Shakespeare, he pressed on. One amusing moment came when Moore reached a pause, and some audience members clapped impatient and wanting him to finish; he seemed to take it as encouragement. Readers of this blog may be interested in a comment made by Moore during the questioning; that atheism was simply a teenage phase. I encourage you in your writing to show him it is much more than simply a phase.

Dawkins strode to take his place with huge applause behind him. Even watching the live stream, you could sense that this was the moment people were looking forward to. Dawkins, amiably, stuck to the topic and didn’t disappoint. He defined fundamentalism as blind obedience to a holy book or catechism and argued an important feature that characterised it was extremism. Addressing these two points, Dawkins simply pointed out that ‘new atheism’ is not a belief system, only a belief in evidence and always willing to change its mind when new evidence comes to light. He described the excitement scientists feel about what they don’t know, and indeed, by acknowledging there is an awful lot still to learn, the charge of fundamentalism really disappears. Discussing extremism, he used an argument many of his readers will be familiar with. Stalin and Mao, though atheists, did not commit their crimes in the name of atheism. When a questioner raised this once more, Dawkins called it a‘monstrous’ suggestion. “Science flies you to the moon” he said “religion flies you into buildings”. Dawkins was really on top form. This was certainly one of his best performances.

However, the most revealing and certainly entertaining moment came during the questioning. When Harries asked Dawkins about a comment made in his speech (Dawkins said ‘When was the last time you ever heard these words from a pulpit - “On the balance of probabilities, you should do action x”’), claiming that Dawkins himself never made such statements about God and he would like him to point one out to him in his writing, Dawkins simply replied ‘Chapter 4 of my book. It’s called Why there is almost certainly no God’. I think after this moment, it really did become clear that Grayling and Dawks had won the day.

A vote taken before the debate revealed 333 were for the motion, 675 were against and 389 didn’t know with around 200 who didn’t vote. Afterwards this became 85 don’t knows’, 363 for the motion and 1070 against. The online poll was more revealing – 35 for and 877 against. Perhaps we atheists are more computer-savy? Whatever the reason, a good night for ‘new atheism’.

The link to the debate will be posted when it is uploaded. As an aside, the Hitchens/Fry Catholicism debate is now up unedited. Here is the link.