Where failed religions go when nobody follows

Richard Dawkins celebrates his own irrelevancy.

Richard Dawkins became famous by promoting a New Atheism, mostly by attacking Christianity. He ran with the pack including Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens, whose complete confidence in their denial of all faith sold millions of books, and ironically, led many of their followers—to faith.

New Atheism failed. Hitchens died in 2011. Harris has become a podcaster. And Dawkins has become largely irrelevant. Now Dawkins has appeared in an interview in LBC and declared himself a “cultural Christian,” taking sides in the vacuum left when faith in science and reason alone left the room.

On picking a religion, I agree with Dawkins. He said (choosing his words carefully) that between Islam and Christianity, he would “choose Christianity every single time.” Dawkins said that while not a believer, he considers himself a “cultural Christian.” On this, I must caution that a cultural Christian is not a Christian, but a rider upon the movement, accepting the benefits of a society aligned with those values, without contributing to the work of keeping them. Dawkins is not practicing any form of Christianity; he is like a surfer, merely riding the wave he did not create.

I’m not even sure Dawkins made an informed decision about it. So much for enlightened reason and the “God delusion.”

Clearly, he based his choice on his own personal bias, as an Englishman growing up in a place where “hymns and Christmas carols” and the “Christian ethos” were comfortable and smelled like home at the holidays. England is now a very different place than the memories of a young Dawkins, and it is this he seems to be lamenting. He holds Christianity—which he says of the faith, “I do not believe a word”—as the icon of a culture of decency and a history bending toward democracy and away from tyranny.

It’s really cozy for an aging white Brit to accept that Christianity is a good placeholder for democratic, liberal ideals. In England, during Dawkins’ formative years, a good “gentleman” was by necessity one who learned the Bible, along with the classics in the original Greek, and of course Latin. Attendance at chapel was mandatory; a gentleman does not shirk the duty of God and King (or Queen).

History paints a much different picture than Dawkins’ gauzy ideal of a Christian society. It also illuminates some misconceptions he holds about Islam, which he says is not a “fundamentally decent religion,” like Christianity. I have a mild objection to Dawkins judge-y playing the academic referee, comparing religions based on his own definition of decency. But I understand where he’s coming from.

He might benefit from a trip back to his old haunt, Oxford, for a lesson on the history of Islam and its beliefs. There’s whole libraries full of texts and historical records documenting centuries of peaceful coexistence of Christians and Muslims. The Ottoman Empire, an Islamic caliphate, was very pluralistic and quite tolerant of other religions. And of course, Christians did just as much conquering (the New World, anyone?) in the name of Christ as Muslims did in the name of Mohammed.

One could point to salient differences in the wording of the Quran versus the Old and New Testaments, of course, but that would mean doing some serious religious scholarship. That’s something Dawkins isn’t doing, because when he tried to debunk all religious faiths, he ended up realizing that there are worse things than faith in the God of Abraham. The Jacobins, Stalinists, and various stripes of communists have conducted some of the worst genocides and slaughters in history.

I agree with Dawkins in one other way. “It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion,” he said of Christianity, “in a way that I think Islam is not.” He used treatment of women as his example. Christian doctrine might have its problems with women (depending on whose teachings one follows), but it is a whole lot better, according to Dawkins, than “the Hadith and the Koran, which is fundamentally hostile to women and hostile to gays.” I’ll expand on that: the Bible says homosexuality is a sin in the sight of God, but Christ is the judge; the Muslim holy books say to kill them and let Allah sort them out.

It seems at 81 years old, Dawkins realized that societies can’t function on the ideals of people alone, without some kind of external structure for morality. Science and reason don’t provide that morality—they are merely engines for discovery and application of knowledge. Wisdom comes from experience, and morality comes from discipleship. It does indeed matter where one gets his discipleship. I’ll take “Samaritan’s Purse” over “ISIS-K” every day and twice on Sunday, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t bad Christian teachings.

It is insufficient to praise Christianity but to decry the faith that produces it. My friend, a Christian missionary who has his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Oxford, where Dawkins was a professor for years, told me he sometimes uses this quote: Yes yes, there are indeed good Catholics (and good Muslims) all over the world. They’re the ones who don’t take their religion seriously.

Describing “good” as the cultural half measure without real faith is Dawkins’ tell on himself.

His failure is not grasping that faith—not religion—is what attracts people to Christianity. Seeing God do the impossible, and changing the hearts of nonbelievers into disciples of love, is what draws us to the cross. Islam is a religion that requires control, of government, of politics, of society, in order to build discipleship. Christianity rejects control of this world in favor of a pilgrimage through it to a better kingdom. It takes faith to believe in the things that bring the fruit of love, kindness, patience, and joy.

Yes, it’s true that fewer and fewer people are going to church, and demographics are changing in England. Church attendance has also fallen off in the U.S., but not in other parts of the world. God works where he is welcome—underground churches in China, or believers in South America.

Cultural Christianity, as Dawkins has professed, is merely applause at the stage for what God does in His own power, without acknowledging the author and finisher of the faith that produced it. If everyone were what Dawkins professes to be, society would fail, just as the New Atheism failed. To quote Robert A. Heinlein, TANSTAAFL (“There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”). Someone’s go to put in the work to make a “decent” society, or a “decent” religion, go. Look at where America is heading without decency.

It doesn’t take a Christian to know this: Ben Shapiro devoted a large part of a Daily Wire monologue to explain “why cultural Christianity isn’t enough.” Shapiro is a practicing Jew. If you want to look at a people group that’s been persecuted by both Christians and Muslims, look to the Jews. The cultural Christians in old England, in all their piety, expelled the Jews in 1290. The Spaniards gave them the Inquisition. The Russians and Poles gave them the pogrom. And of course, we know what the Nazis gave them.

Christians who value culture and the trappings of religion, without the work of keeping it through faith in God and trust in the Bible, are the same ones who had blood on their hands throughout history. They are the ones Dawkins tried to lead into a glorious future of atheism, where they found Christ waiting for them—like Ayaan Hirsi Ali did.

Dawkins knows he has become irrelevant. He knows that very few take him seriously anymore. So he went to the place where so many have gone when their own ideas on religion left them alone, without any followers. I actually feel sorry for him. One day, I hope to read that he has found the real value in Christianity: Christ.