Re: Dawkins the 'Cultural Christian'

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> wrote:

https://catholicherald.co.uk/im-a-cultural-christian-declares-richard-dawkins-the-worlds-most-famous-atheist/
 
https://tinyurl.com/2xw2x96a
 
<quote>
…  Mr Dawkins, 83, said: "I do think we are culturally a Christian
country. I call myself a cultural Christian." He said: "I'm not a
believer, but there is a distinction between being a believing
Christian and a cultural Christian.
 
He added: "I love hymns and Christmas carols and I sort of feel at
home in the Christian ethos, and I feel that we are a Christian
country in that sense."
 
… [he] also said he “would not be happy if, for example, we lost all
our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches”.
 
He continued: “So I call myself a cultural Christian and I think it
would be truly dreadful if we substituted any alternative religion.”
 
... He said however that although he recognised its benefits of
Christian culture and enjoyed "living in a culturally Christian
country" at the same time he did "not believe a word of the Christian
faith".
 
</quote>
 
Dawkins has blamed religion for most of the evil in the world and has
described teaching religion to children as worse than sexual abuse.
Beats me how he can see "cultural" benefit in something so bad. Mind
you, he has come out with some rather weird views in recent years.
 

I think the key contrast for Dawkins here is with the Islam bugbear.
Remember clockboy?
https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/25/europe/uk-richard-dawkins-clock-boy-ahmed-mohamed/

Or this gem:
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/365473573768400896

Hemant Mehta offers a perspective on this:
https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/richard-dawkins-says-christianity

Also, there’s an undercurrent of regret brewing amongst some IDW atheists
that the alleged success of “new atheism” had opened a god-sized hole
making people susceptible to wokeism. It’s called the substitution
hypothesis. Peter Boghossian, another IDW atheist, is a proponent. You
can’t make this shit up if you tried. The atheist right wing is dovetailing
with conservative Christians on some social issues.