davidould.net

non angelus, sed anglus!

Just more evidence that Dawkins (and Andrew Brown) are wrong

It’s ironic, isn’t it? Men like Dawkins constantly tell us that it’s religious people who cause the most problems, who are responsible for the most misery, and so on. We point them to Pol Pot, to Stalin, to other rampantly evil atheists but they don’t want to know. Religious people, we’re told, are the problem.

Well, I beg to differ. On the contrary, it’s the atheists who are repeatedly more nasty.

Now why am I saying this? Well, because there is a little drama (for want of a better word, this is a blog after all) going on in the world of UK newpapers’ religion correspondents. It started less than a week ago with the untimely death at his own hands of Chris Morgan, former religious affairs correspondent for the Sunday Times.

Blogging compatriot, Ruth Gledhill, colleague of Morgan and religious correspondent at the Times, described herself as “heartbroken“ upon the news. Damian Thomson, religious correspondent at the Telegraph, wrote this:

He was a complicated and private man who was deeply scarred by bereavements in his own family. Yet his simple delight in the good things of life – especially lunch at the Connaught – was a joy to behold.

Simply put, here was a tragic story of a man who seems to have been unable to cope with the pressures that life put upon him.

Why do I write about this? Well, it’s a curious thing. Doing the limited thing that I do for Stand Firm means that I move on the very periphery of their world. But here are things that affect people that, due to the nature of the internet, I am in a sense hearing from every day. You cannot help but feel some of the pain as you read what these people are writing.

Which is why it was particularly distressing to read this piece from Thomson today:

Less than week after the religious commentator Chris Morgan took his own life, his virulent critic Andrew Brown has published an appalling article in the Church Times describing him as “someone who [would] sell out old friends for a story”.

He also takes Chris to task for not being more open about his private life, saying that this privacy “removed much of the pleasure I might have had from his company”. But that didn’t stop Brown from accepting his hospitality: there is a sneer in his tone as he relates how Chris entertained him in the grandest London restaurants, possibly (reckons Brown) at a time when he could no longer afford it.

Thomson is obviously upset, and who can blame him?

There is, of course, some truth in what Brown says: there always is. Chris was driven to despair by the demands of his newsdesk, and there were times when he overstepped the mark. I told him so. Andrew Brown did too, in the most withering and sardonic commentaries that never failed to wound him.

“Why does he go after me like this?” he would ask. The answer, sometimes, was because he deserved it. More often, however, I could not understand why Brown insisted on attacking an obviously fragile man so remorselessly.

So who is Andrew Brown?

Many religious correspondents are religious. It stands to reason that people write about something that interests them. Andrew Brown writes about religion not because he is religious but, like his colleague Stephen Bates, because he is to varying degrees anti-religious. Here, for example, is what he writes in a review of Dawkins’ work:

It has been obvious for years that Richard Dawkins had a fat book on religion in him, but who would have thought him capable of writing one this bad? Incurious, dogmatic, rambling and self-contradictory, it has none of the style or verve of his earlier works.

In his broad thesis, Dawkins is right. Religions are potentially dangerous, and in their popular forms profoundly irrational. The agnostics must be right and the atheists very well may be. There is no purpose to the universe. Nothing inconsistent with the laws of physics has been reliably reported. To demand a designer to explain the complexity of the world begs the question, “Who designed the designer?“ It has been clear since Darwin that we have no need to hypothesise a designer to explain the complexity of living things. The results of intercessory prayer are indistinguishable from those of chance.

Brown recognises, with the rest of us, that Dawkins has issues. But he accepts his basic premise - there is no God. Brown is an atheist.

The point of all this? Well, the simple anecdotal evidence that, once again, it’s the non-religious that Dawkins really should have in his sights. And this isn’t out of any particular loyalty to Gledhill or Thomson. Ruth knows enough of me by now to know that I think her Anglican position is a bit “wet” (of course, personally I think she’s A1; she even sent me a Christmas Card right round the globe!). Thomson is a conservative Roman Catholic - and none of my readers could be under any impression that I am at all sympathetic to that position. But they’re both people who hold a religious belief with integrity and passion. And they both responded with compassion to the tragic death of Morgan.

Whereas the atheist got nasty. Go figure.

UPDATE: Ruth Gledhill writes:

Chris was a thin-skinned, extremely sensitive man. Brown’s casually-cruel barbs upset him terribly. I would hate to have Brown’s conscience at the moment, if such a thing exists.
...
Please all joining me in praying, not just for the soul of Christiopher Morgan, but also for that of Andrew Brown. He can still be saved. Even where there is no ‘Life’, there can still be hope.

Posted by on 06/06 at 08:45 PM

  1. “Nothing inconsistent with the laws of physics has been reliably reported”. Well, there is just this one thing. THe Big Bang defies the laws of Newtonian physics, and no plausible quantum explanation exists. Realistically, the writers of Dr Who have more plausible explanations than most atheists. Sad really. Not only are these kinds unnecessarily (even by secular standards - unnecessarily) unkind, they’re also far more dogmatic than most of the Evangelical Christians I know.

    Posted by on 06/08 at 06:14 AM

  2. Who says I am anti-religious? I may not share your particular form of religious belief David - I don’t know because I have never heard of you before - but that doesn’t mean I am anti-belief.  Just possibly some,  by no means all, believers.

    Posted by on 06/11 at 10:44 PM

  3. thanks for coming by here Stephen, particularly to this obscure corner of the internet.

    Since you are, no doubt, a careful reader, I will assume that you were in a hurry when you read my piece. What I actually wrote was:

    like [Andrew Brown’s] colleague Stephen Bates, because he is to varying degrees anti-religious

    As you note, you are against some forms of religious expression. And when you don’t agree with someone you are on record as using some quite cleverly pejorative language.

    I wouldn’t protest too loudly.

    Posted by on 06/12 at 09:37 AM

  4. David: I am not protesting too loudly, but you do seem to somewhat confused in equating criticism of some people’s expression of their beliefs with therefore being anti-religious, in whatever varying degree. Perhaps you are one of those happy people who believe religiously-inclined folk can do no wrong.  Are all forms of religious expression equally valid, benign and beyond criticism in your view - in which case there’s probably very little need for your blog, or most of the others - and is any criticism therefore, ipso-facto, to varying degrees anti-religious?
    I am grateful that you have ever bothered to read my words and that you think them in some degree clever, if pejorative. I don’t suppose you ever noticed the many occasions when I wrote positively about religion and religious people of many varieties, as it might therefore have rather undermined your thesis….but, as I have now given up writing about religion for the Guardian, you can happily forgo the dubious pleasure of reading my words in future with impunity.

    Posted by on 06/12 at 08:18 PM

  5. Not at all, Stephen. I am more than aware of the difference between criticising expression of belief and criticising belief itself and I’m certainly not of the view that all forms of religious belief are valid.

    I’m simply pointing out that you hold what might accurately be described as thinly-veiled contempt for some expressions of religious belief. You are “anti” them in a most vigorous way. I can’t, for example, remember the last time that you represented a conservative evangelical view fairly and objectively.

    What I’m now curious about is why you are protesting <u>so</u> loudly.

    Posted by on 06/12 at 08:29 PM

  6. Stephen wrote:

    Thank you. I think I have made my point and I don’t intend to engage publicly with you further.
    Except to say this: I think if you read my book A Church at War you will find that I conducted a number of interviews with a range of conservative evangelicals and none has ever alleged in any forum that I misrepresented them, or did not represent their views thoroughly. In another instance, last year I wrote a lengthy profile of Peter Akinola, for which I was complimented by Martyn Minns and Chris Sugden. If they’re not entirely beyond your pale, you may care to note that my wife is a charismatic evangelical and my three children have been brought up in the evangelical tradition, rather than the Catholicism of my upbringing, so I think you can scarcely insinuate that I am hostile to evangelicalism in general. I take it you are a conservative evangelical yourself?

    In his article on Akinola readers will enjoy Stephen’s objective representation of conservative evangelicals. In particular they will note the way that he tells us:

    [homosexuality] seems almost an obsession with the archbishop, as well as a means of pointing out his moral superiority over equivocating, hesitant, intellectually fastidious westerners such as Rowan Williams.

    As Akinola has sauntered amiably around

    [Jefferts-Schori] is, to be subjected to haranguing questions

    Akinola seems much more obsessed with what gay white men get up to than with some of the abuses in Africa

    Sunning herself by the hotel swimming pool, Angela Minns, ... Several times spurned for a bishopric in the US before throwing his lot in with Nigeria, her husband has been constantly by the archbishop’s side this week.

    So let’s be clear. This is no attempt to accurately portray conservative evangelicals such as Akinola as who they really are - Christan leaders who would rather not have to be debating human sexuality but will do so if it means maintaining loyalty to Christ.

    Rather, Bates wants us to understand them as arrogant, obsessed, self-congratulating bigots, uninterested in any proper justice, and surrounded by lackeys who only took the job because they couldn’t get one elsewhere.

    Stephen Bates, objective? Let the reader decide.

    Posted by on 06/12 at 09:34 PM

  7. This reader is pretty clear of the objectivity of Stephen Bates, and his evidence as presented above speaks volumes.  David Ould is clearly unable to claim that same objectivity, and by his own admission does not treat all expressions of religious belief with equal respect, let alone validity. I can only assume you are related to the Peter Ould of Anglican Extreme (sic) fame, who fills the website with comments of an extreme right wing nature and allows posters on the forum to regularly offend decent human beings by a failure to moderate.
    I can only advise readers to look at Andrew Browns’s website and read contributors comments about his CT piece there. Doing so might achieve some balance.

    Posted by on 06/12 at 11:41 PM

  8. thanks for your comments “sound” (and why is it that people don’t use their real names when they’re having a go at someone?).
    I note you share Stephen’s view of objectivity:
    “Extreme” “extreme right wing nature” “offend decent human beings”.

    Either way, good to have you here.

    Posted by on 06/13 at 06:58 AM

  9. Well I don’t share your terribly subjective view David, that’s for certain.
    In my experience, the best religious affairs correspondents this country ever had were Gerald Priesthand (RIP) and Rosemary Harthill. And I think the best commentator at present seems to be the Catholic, Cristina odone.  Beyond that, my experience has been that Stephen Bates has presented the most balanced view of situations.  If yours has not been that experience, then we simply can differ - that’s allowed in the real world.
    The problem about the unreal world of Anglican Extreme (and it is extreme, there can be no question about that) and places like Standfirm is that they don’t actually allow that anyone who disagrees might have a valid view. 
    But I am at least grateful that you printed my first comment. That shows a more open mind that your website otherwise suggest….
    As for not using real names….that demands a level of trust which does not yet exist. Maybe in the fulness of time it will.

    Posted by on 06/13 at 04:47 PM

  10. as you wish, “sound”.

    Posted by on 06/13 at 08:53 PM
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