Mick Hartley

When I was 11 or so, there was a boy in my class who was an atheist. It wasn’t something that was discussed, and I don’t recall how the subject came up, but I remember sneaking a look at him in morning prayers, and yes, there he was, brazen as you please, eyes wide open and not saying a word. My attitude, I think, was that this wasn’t a serious position. He couldn’t really be an atheist.

That seems to be the assumption of a number of critics when confronted with Richard Dawkins. Somehow, some way, he can’t actually mean what he says. Deep down he’s the same as the rest of us: the poor dear just won’t admit it. If his beliefs encompass anything more than tiny billiard balls pinging mechanically around a meaningless universe, then – aha! – that’s what we meant by religion anyway, so, voila, he really is religious.

Ruth Gledhill, the Times Religion Correspondent, called “The God Delusion” an atheistic rant. Later, in a review of the recent debate which brought together Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and AC Grayling, she decided she’d maybe been a bit harsh:

His problem is that he takes religion too literally, and as many have pointed out, is too fundamentalist about his own atheistic creed… But I hope I might have the opportunity to explore some of these areas in an interview with him soon. I’ll still be using in in my mind the nickname I have adopted for him: ‘Mobius Dick.’ But after last night I accept that Dr Dawkins does have more than two sides to his soul, more that two dimensions to his spirit. He just doesn’t know it… yet.

And now, with this interview, she at last has her chance to patronise him in person:

Richard Dawkins believes that children should grow up reading the Bible and has a “soft spot” for the Church of England. He also believes some of the historic atrocities of human behaviour were not inspired by religion, but were a result of our “ruthless Darwinian past”. And he believes in the possibility of a transcendent “intelligence” existing beyond the range of present human experience. It is just that he refuses to call it God.

These are just some of the more surprising confessions to come from the man variously described as Britain’s angriest atheist and the self-appointed Devil’s chaplain.

You see? He’s really quite cuddly. Quite human in fact. So he must be religious, but just doesn’t realise it.

In GD [The God Delusion], Dawkins quotes Einstein as saying that he prefers not to call himself religious, because that implies “supernatural”. But Einstein acknowledged that behind everything “there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly”.

Dawkins admits: “If that’s what you call religion then I’m religious.” But when I suggest that, in this case, he is in touch with the transcendent, he accuses me of “playing with words”. He says: “If by transcendent you mean what Einstein believed then yes, but what I think, to come back on your statement that more intelligent and sophisticated religious people believe something close to what Einstein and I believe, that may be true, but they are a tiny minority of religious people in the world. It’s the majority of religious people in the world that we have to worry about.”

He is really talking about the US here, where hundreds of thousands of people believe that the Universe is less than 10,000 years old. “

He’s really talking about the US here? That being, of course, the only place where religious fundamentalism is any kind of problem.

Being among those who have criticised Dawkins for an atheistic version of the fundamentalism he so detests, critics have accused me of mistaking his passion for fundamentalism. A more intelligent assault on his lack of beliefs came in sermons earlier this year at Westminster Abbey. The Rev Dr Nicholas Sagovsky, its Canon Theologian, accused him of lacking an “ethic of love”…

His passion and anger do stem from love, however, a love of the truth.

I fail to see what’s particularly intelligent about accusing Dawkins of lacking “an ethics of love”. It’s just name-calling. But Gledhill decides that he does in fact have a passion. He loves the truth. So it looks like this sinner can be saved, if only he can be made aware of the fact that, since God is Love, if he loves something – like the truth – then he’s being religious.

Reading too much of this sort of thing can turn your mind to mush.

He denies that he is setting up an alternative religion, an atheistic lack-of-belief system. He also resists the conclusion that, if God and religion are no more than human creations, his attack on religion is an attack on humanity, perhaps evidence of a certain degree of misanthropy. “There’s a lot to criticise in humanity that has nothing to do with religion, but that doesn’t detract from the importance of criticising religion as well and I would criticise the brutality of Stalin and Hitler, the idiotic beliefs that they had.”

Well of course he denies that atheism is itself a faith, because it quite clearly isn’t, except in the trivial sense that it requires a belief that there’s no god (Stephen Laws has offered a signed copy of his latest book for the “the most irritating, sinister or downright funny use of this ever-popular myth”). But now we get this: if religion is merely a human creation, then to attack religion is to attack humanity, and so is evidence of misanthropy. I must remember that one next time someone criticises astrology, or conceptual art, or, well, pretty much anything.

He is equally critical of fundamentalist Darwinism. “A lot of what is good about human history has been an emancipation, a weaning, of humanity away from our ruthless Darwinian past,” he says. “As a Darwinian, I see that.”

Well no: he isn’t being critical of fundamentalist Darwinism here. That’s an entirely different argument. He’s suggesting that through civilisation we’re able to liberate ourselves from the effects of “our ruthless Darwinian past”.

By now it is clear that the thing Dawkins really detests is not so much God, or even religion, but superstition.

What Dawkins is trying to suggest is that God and religion are superstition, but he’s obviously wasting his breath.

And finally, that line from her introduction: Dawkins apparently “believes in the possibility of a transcendent “intelligence” existing beyond the range of present human experience“? That’d be quite some admission, if he’d actually made it. This is the relevant passage:

[W]hat about those other dimensions that some scientists believe might exist? Yes, he concedes, modern physicists do talk about 11-dimensional space. “But that’s nothing to do with theology.” How does he know? Might not God exist in one of those states? “That might be true, but what’s sure, well, highly unlikely, is that anything that theologians of modern day or any day have to say is going to have anything to do with the wonder of what future physicists are going to discover. It’s going to dwarf not only modern-day science but present-day theology as well.”

But was there not, in his mind, a tiny possibility that one of these future physicists could discover God in one of these dimensions?

“Well, I’m convinced that future physicists will discover something at least as wonderful as any god you could ever imagine.” Why not call it God? “I don’t think it’s helpful to call it God.” OK, but what would “it” be like?

“I think it’ll be something wonderful and amazing and something difficult to understand. I think that all theological conceptions will be seen as parochial and petty by comparison.” He can even see how “design” by some gigantic intelligence might come into it. “But that gigantic intelligence itself would need an explanation. It’s not enough to call it God, it would need some sort of explanation such as evolution. Maybe it evolved in another universe and created some computer simulation that we are all a part of. These are all science-fiction suggestions but I am trying to overcome the limitations of the 21st-century mind. It’s going to be grander and bigger and more beautiful and more wonderful and it’s going to put theology to shame.”

I have no idea what prompted Dawkins to come out with these odd remarks. I suppose he was politely taking her suggestion seriously – yes, there might conceivably be some science-fiction scenario where a great intelligence blah blah. In the circumstances, though, it wasn’t a smart move. Inevitably Gledhill seizes on it as an admission that he believes there could be a transcendent intelligence. And so, you see, he really is religious after all.