In case you were on holiday in some far-off land where Twitter doesn’t reach (increasingly unlikely) last week, Richard Dawkins has been making headlines again.
INTRODUCTION
The potential to upset people in a talk about religion and welfare is almost limitless. You certainly don’t need a remarkable view to get a remarkable headline.
It didn't used to be like this. 50 years ago, in most parts of the country, you not only knew your neighbours but there was a reasonable chance that they were pretty much like you. You were involved in common local activities and institutions. Religiously, you probably behaved, believed and belonged in the same way as everyone else.
James Cary’s book is the exemplification of why you really should never judge a book by its cover. Or in this case why you shouldn’t trust publishers and their PR blurbs. The press release and introduction set you up to expect a highly developed argument, and it sounds an interesting one: the particular type of civilisation that is ruining our “perfectly decent society” is our institutions. “Why” he asks “are we so convinced that institutions will save us, when they are more likely to enslave us?” He will, we are told, desmonstrate this through five major institutions, the media/culture, the economy/banks, the state/politics and the church/religion.
The Bible is not interested in science in two different ways. First, it shows no awareness of the scientific process of hypothesis, observation, experimentation, verification/ falsification, review, publication, etc. for the obvious reason. Second, more frustratingly, it shows precious little curiosity about those subjects that we normally group under the rubric of science, such as the origin, age, size, structure, processes, and diversity of the physical world.
It has, perhaps predictably, been a lively weekend for the debate about religion in public life. The most interesting conversation however wasn’t the indomitable former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, taking a pop at David Cameron, nor a group of churches attacking the government on welfare reform. A more entertaining, and I think more telling debate was going on on Twitter between arch-secularist Evan Harris and Christianity’s poker playing defender, Victoria Coren. This highly engaging dingdong seems to be exactly what the medium was invented for. Impossible to capture in a screen grab, if you go to Evan Harris’s profile (@DrEvanHarris) and scroll down to 30th March you should be able to follow the thread.
Ian Blair, Baron Blair of Boughton, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, delivered the third annual Theos lecture on 16th November 2010.