Notorious atheist Richard Dawkins lamented the loss of Christianity’s influence in a recent appearance, going so far as to declare himself a “cultural Christian.”
While Dawkins achieved some notoriety for his work in the field of biology, he became best known for his vocal opposition to religion in general and Christianity in particular. Now that official Christianity has been banished from his native England, the biologist is surprised to find that the country, far from becoming a secular utopia, is slowly being conquered by Islam. Like many atheists, Dawkins is realizing, belatedly, that the religious beliefs he worked so hard to destroy were actually the foundations of his civilization.
Christianity was successfully purged from public life, but instead of being replaced by reason and rationality, a much more extreme denial of reality took hold.
Dawkins has been a public opponent of Christianity since the 1980s, but with the publication of his 2006 book The God Delusion, the scientist became the most prominent figure in the burgeoning New Atheist movement. I became one of them. New Atheists see themselves as champions of enlightenment and reason, ultimately purging the last vestiges of religious nonsense from the Western mind and realizing the true promise of classical liberal ideology. Ta.
Although the New Atheism movement was an online affair that existed primarily on internet message boards such as Reddit and video platforms such as YouTube, several conventions and other public events were organized around the movement.
Along with several best-selling books, it was the public forums that attracted the most attention for the New Atheists. These debates were often held at universities and featured prominent figures in the movement in verbal discussions with apologists from a variety of religions, although Christianity was most frequently targeted. was. Before Ben Shapiro became known for owning blue-haired college feminists with facts and logic, New Atheists were making a spectacle out of dismantling Christianity.
The New Atheists lost as much as they won, but many of them had mastered the sordid style of sophism that was popular at the time, and the crowd was on their side. Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, dubbed the “Four Horsemen” by fans, are an apocalyptic film whose mission is to end the reign of ignorant religion and usher humanity into a more evolved era. He is a leading vanguard. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Somali Muslim, is often cited as the fifth “Jockey” and regularly attended atheist conferences.
Along the way, opponents warned the Four Horsemen that the Christianity they were gleefully dismantling was not just a collection of Bronze Age myths, but an important aspect of society. Dawkins and his New Atheist compatriots dismissed these warnings as the last desperate gasps of a fading superstition that was attempting to remain relevant in the face of modernity. Religion is a refuge for the weak and ignorant, a foolish fable told by the rubes of the frontiers to their children. The inevitable march of progress cannot be stopped, and the New Atheists will be its intellectual defenders.
The first hint that all might not be well in the brave new world that atheists were building came with the birth of a woke revolution on college campuses.
New Atheism has always been dominated by leftists who consider themselves pro-feminist, pro-LGBTQ, and anti-racist. But now many of their allies are making very strange claims. Feminists argue that there are no statistical differences between men and women, minority activists argue that any differences in material outcomes are due to racism, and LGBTQ activists argue that men are less likely to become women. He claimed that there was. All of this is clearly empirically false, and this goes to the heart of atheists’ belief that religion is the main source of opposition to scientific truth. Christianity was successfully purged from public life, but instead of being replaced by reason and rationality, it was replaced by a far more extreme denial of reality.
The second and most significant blow to the New Atheists’ delusions followed the immigration crisis in Europe.
As millions of immigrants flooded the shores of the Western world, it soon became clear that the lack of a cohesive religious identity was making it difficult for indigenous peoples to resist the cultural onslaught. . Europe’s elites, raised on a steady diet of liberal ideology, were unable to formulate a reason to deny entry to the large influx of Muslim immigrants, often competing to see who could be more tolerant. .
Although these immigrants were willing to absorb the economic wealth of their new host countries, they had no interest in assimilating into a culture they believed to be weak and decadent. Muslims have very different ideas about how to deal with pride parades and scantily clad feminist protesters, and the sheer scale of immigration means that large-scale efforts must be made to protect these beliefs from liberal re-education. ethnic ghettos may be formed. Terrorism, sexual assaults against women, and restricted areas where police cannot enter have become the norm.
This is the discomfort that Douglas Murray expressed in the title of his book The Strange Death of Europe. Without Christianity to spiritually animate other aspects of its cultural identity, Europe gradually lost the will to live and abandoned its destiny to new and energetic peoples fundamentally hostile to the European way of life. It looked like it did.
In an interview with British radio, Dawkins focused on the symbols of Christianity in his youth that were lost as Easter replaced Ramadan and abandoned cathedrals became mosques. The biologist is happy to hear that fewer people are believing in Christianity, but he says it’s sad to see the hymns, Christmas carols and Christian churches associated with Britain being replaced by other cultures. repeated.
Dawkins is a child clutching a handful of dead flowers that he cut from the base a long time ago, wondering why they withered. Despite repeated warnings from his Christian interlocutors, Dawkins believed that the traditions that formed his cultural identity were foolish and unnecessary, and could be discarded without much consequence. Ta. This scientist also assumed that respect for scientific truth is universal, rather than a highly specific outcome of a particular culture.
So now Dawkins, the archenemy of religion, has followed in the footsteps of his New Atheist colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali and declared himself a cultural Christian, but no tears have been shed for him. Unlike Ali, who seems sincerely trying to understand the value of faith, Dawkins still celebrates its demise. His lament is that of an old man who sees the culture he helped kill disappear, and who finds himself growing lonely and cold without knowing why. The era of the New Atheists has passed as the delusions of rational, secular utopia fade into the distance. The future belongs to believers, and the only question is which faith will guide the future of the West.
