I’m going to take Mark’s CiF rant piece by piece just to show how dumb it is. I’m doing this because there’s been quite a lot of this anti-rational stuff about recently, and Mark’s a prime example of why it’s really vital not to pay attention to it.

God is behind some of our greatest art

Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped or future generations will be denied a source of inspiration

Oookay. Here we go!

1)      First things first, because you seem to be a little confused here, Mark. ‘The IDEA of God is behind some of our art’. Fixed that for you.

2.1) Richard Dawkins does not have an army of anything.

2.2) Richard Dawkins makes quite clear in The God Delusion that he is absolutely in favour of religious education. As he himself says,

A good case can indeed be made for the educational benefits of teaching comparative religion. Certainly my own doubts were first aroused ... by the lesson that the Christian religion in which I was brought up was only one of many mutually incompatible belief-systems. ... Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether any are ‘valid,’ let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so. (Dawkins 2007, pp.382-3)

Now, I’m not saying that it’s a bad sign that the author of this article is wrong three times in just the title and abstract. I’m going to ask you to draw your own conclusions.

And so the stellar casting in Doctor Who continues with the news that Professor Richard Dawkins, biologist and bestselling author of The God Delusion, is to appear in the current series as himself. On Outpost Gallifrey, the definitive Doctor Who website, I read that Russell T Davies, the show's executive producer, and all the crew were delighted to see Dawkins. "People were falling at his feet," says Davies. "We've had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins that people were worshipping."

It's a great tribute to our age that a scientist can still be greeted with more adulation than a pop princess. But I can't help noting the irony of the imagery that Dawkins' reception has conjured up. Falling at his feet? Worshipping? It all seems oddly reminiscent of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in the days before his Passion; a strange resonance for the scientist who has declared himself the champion of secularism in a world where, he claims, the delusions of faith are gaining an increasing stranglehold.

Riiight. It’s probably worth mentioning that Mark has actually checked out Outpost Gallifrey. This is the only actual research he appears to have done, so it would be a disservice to his scholarship not to note that he can successfully use browsing software. It’s just that for the most part he chooses not to.

3)      If you’d bothered to do more than the most cursory research, for example Google would have brought you this, you would have found that Richard Dawkins holds quite some significance for Doctor Who fans because

(a)     he was a close friend of Douglas Adams, sometime script editor of the show and

writer of at least 2 serials in its heyday.

(b)     He is married to Lalla Ward, who played Romana II in Doctor Who whilst

Adams was script editor.

(c) why wouldn’t you like him? It’s not like he bears any resemblance to the bizarre

character you’ve painted in this piece.

4)      It is not reminiscent of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. There are no similarities except that both are scenes in which someone is liked. You might as well say that my arrival at my birthday party is like the funeral of Bishop Romero. The reason you think it’s ‘strange’ is because it’s a completely unwarranted comparison. Have you ever noticed how bubblegum is kind of like that ball from The Prisoner? Isn’t that weird?

Christianity is a myth. But it's a myth that has helped us - and continues to help us - ask searching moral and philosophical questions. Ours is an age in which a lack of belief, at least in secular Europe, is prized. Before, having one overarching belief was central to life, guiding our choices.

5)         Ho hum. Still, at least you’re conceding the ground about actual facts and truth. This way I don’t have to waste any more time pointing out how little actual reason to suppose the existence of god there is.

6)      Actually, I think you’ll find that discussion about moral and philosophical questions was going on slightly before the Jesus myth. I believe it was Whitehead who said ‘all philosophy is a footnote to Plato,’ and although I don’t necessarily agree with that statement I think you will find if you can be bothered to look, Mark, that most post-Christian philosophy was built on the work of the Greeks – particularly Aristotle.

But now we're all supposed to travel light, be supple, so that we can swap jobs, partners or political allegiances at a moment's notice. But this perpetual state of agnosticism, this lack of commitment, must surely be corrosive.

7)      This supposition about how we’re supposed to live is yet another straw man. Well done, you must have enough to keep the cattle supplied all winter by now. Who says this? Certainly not Dawkins, who you’re supposed to be attacking (if you can remember your own abstract)

Those who are able to locate, and to explore intelligently, a system of belief, be that religious or political, are surely making a valuable contribution to our times. We may not share their beliefs, but we should treasure them.

8)      What does it mean to ‘locate, and to explore intelligently, a system of belief’? If a radical Islamist takes their ideological position to its logical end and starts a bombing campaign against Muslims who have lost their way, does that count as intelligent exploration? If not, why not? Shouldn’t you be wowing me with this Christian philosophy that helps you so much, rather than chucking ill-informed and poorly defined sophistry about?

9)      Whose beliefs should I treasure here? There are plenty of belief systems that I’m actively hostile to. Fascism, for example. Stalinism. Capitalism. What is there to treasure here? I should also add that if it is my belief that I don’t have to respect someone’s Catholicism to respect their right to believe it, your philosophy requires you to treasure that, even though it is fundamentally incommensurable with your own belief system. Wow, way to tie yourself up in knots there. I’d love to know how you’d react if you saw a racially motivated assault – how are you going to hug the guy on the ground as well as the guy putting the boot in?

As a child, I had a few years of passionate interest in the church. I'm not sure I ever connected with the spiritual aspect of God.

10)      Does this mean that you connected with the physical aspect of God then?

I went to a Methodist church, where we were more robustly pragmatic than metaphysical, but I loved biblical stories more than any other children's literature. The great, essential dramas of father and son, mother and child, brother and brother, were fought out on those pages and gripped my imagination. I loved the sometimes mysterious beauty of the King James Bible, and I loved singing along with the great marching, proto-socialist anthems of the Methodist church.

11)      You liked stories when you were a child. Thank goodness you got the ones with gods in then, because clearly if you’d had Harry Potter instead you’d have turned out much much worse.

As my teenage years hit, so did disillusion, and I retreated into my bedroom with a stack of records and John Peel for company. But I'm sure the narrative, ritual and music of the church were an essential part of my education as a writer. I'm not alone. The late Sarah Kane acknowledged that her youthful Christianity was the single most formative influence on her playwriting. It's strange to think that her Blasted and my Shopping and Fucking wouldn't have been written without the Christian church. But that's the truth. There's something about their sharp iconography and intense language that suggests a youthful experience of Christianity on the part of the writer.

12)     So what if Christianity influenced you? Are you really saying that you couldn’t have written anything without it, or that what you wrote wouldn’t have been as good if you hadn’t had that influence? How on earth can you possibly justify that claim?

And I resent the possibility that aggressive secularism would deny future generations this inspiration.

13)     And just to drag your resentment down to boring old facts again, Dawkins is actually in favour of R.E. so if his will were done on earth, your kids would be able to learn about a variety of religious belief in school (rather more varied than Methodism in fact). They just wouldn’t be taught that it was true. Which, since you’ve already acceded that your religion is a myth, shouldn’t really bother you now should it?

The Bible - as literature, if nothing else - should be an essential part of every child's experience. And children should study the great Christian art of the past, too. We often have a revisionist view of this great legacy of paintings, music and literature. Of course, we can't help denying the beauty and resonance of the Sistine Chapel, Handel's Messiah, Milton's Paradise Lost or the York mystery plays. But we like to tell ourselves that their creators were covert humanists, who wanted to make art and had no choice other than to make it within the confines of a church that held all the power and money.

14)     Oh, really? All of it? Including the bits that condone slavery, condemn homosexuality, and require you to kill people for planting different crops next to each other?

15)     Oh, really? Just the Bible then? Not the Koran, or the Torah, not the Analects or the Shruti and Smriti? Wow. For that matter, since you’re concerned for the safety of post-Christian philosophy, why not the Meditations, or An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding or Fear and Trembling or the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus or The World as Will and Representation or The Critique of Pure Reason or Twilight of the Idols? Thus Spake Zarathustra is a great piece of literature, by the way.

16)     I don’t know how many people attribute humanism to Michaelangelo. Certainly being gay in Roman Catholic Italy can’t have been much fun at times, but since humanism wasn’t invented it would seem really odd to attribute that to him. Let’s check your sources for this bold assertion. Oh, right. You haven’t given any.

This idea that all artists are essentially humanists is a comforting myth for an agnostic age. There is little evidence to support it. It is, if you like, the agnostic's delusion - because the very opposite is true. The greatest artists, from Matthias Grünewald in the 15th century to Benjamin Britten in the 20th, had a genuine Christian faith: complicated, questioning, agonised at times, as any intelligent faith should be, but a very real faith all the same.

17)     It certainly seems to be a myth. A myth that you just started, right now. Well done you – let’s see if it lasts as long as Jeebus, eh?

The church continues to play a largely beneficent role in the arts ecology of Britain. It maintains and restores the legacy of church architecture - an important collection of beautiful buildings whatever your beliefs. And churches up and down the country offer, as any working musician will testify, a fantastic programme of recitals and concerts of both secular and religious pieces, often for free or for a low ticket price. Areas where there is little access to live classical music are having that provision met almost entirely by the church. The more enlightened churches are still commissioning work, from paintings to sculptures and music.

18)     Landlords in maintenance of their property shocker.
19)     You obviously haven’t been to visit York Minster recently then. I go to the city every 2 months and I still can’t justify the ticket price to go in and have a look. To get in there and go up the tower I’d have to part with the best part of a tenner.

20)    Regarding the many beautiful buildings that you can see for free. Durham Cathedral for example. Good for them. What’s your point?

Of course, we have to guard against the aggressive and restrictive fundamentalism that has poisoned so much of America. In the US, evangelicals and fundamentalists have now strangled school curricula and stunted, if not actually dictated, the agendas of arts organisations, leaving the nation culturally poorer. But we're not America. Our Christian tradition is very different.

21)     Ah, so you’ve heard of the Vardys then? On the off-chance that you haven’t, luckily Dawkins has. In The God Delusion, which you’ll obviously be familiar with since you’ve attempted a character assassination of its author in the national press, Dawkins notes a lecture given by the head of science at Gateshead’s Emmanuel College in 2001. Entitled ‘The Teaching Of Science: A Biblical Perspective’(Dawkins 2007, pp.373-4) Stephen Layfield says

Let us state then right from the start that we reject the notion ... that there are ‘Two Books’ (i.e. the Book of nature & the Scriptures) which may be mined independently for the truth. Rather, we stand firm upon the bare proposition that God has spoken authoritatively and inerrantly in the pages of holy Scripture. ... the Scriptures of the Old & New Testaments ... provide us with a true account of Earth history which we ignore at our peril (ibid. pp.375-6)

So it’s a good job you actually did some research before you leapt there.

We should celebrate the Christian legacy in western art and society - and stop the Dawkins army from denying us the possibility of drawing inspiration from faith to create the art of the future.

22)     Actually Dawkins does like the bits of the Christian legacy that aren’t ideologically suspect. He says, for example,

Let me not labour the point. I have probably said enough to convince at least my older readers that an atheistic world-view provides no justification for cutting the Bible, and other sacred books out of our education. And of course we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage. (ibid. p.387)

So thank goodness you’ve not massively misrepresented his clearly stated arguments. And frankly, thank goodness that Dawkins is not a litigious man.

23)     Create faith-based art if you want. No one’s going to stop you. The Catholic church and the C of E are both richer than Croesus so I suspect there’ll always be grants for you.

24)     I can’t help suspecting that you’re not worried about an army of secularists, but that religious-inspired art is irrelevant to truth, at least as regards its religious content. Don’t worry though! If it’s good art, it will reveal the world of the artist regardless of whether they were right about their invisible friends.

25) Actually, I can’t help notice one other feature about yourself that has been revealed by this article – your monumental laziness. This has got to be one of the most poorly thought-out defences of religious thought that I have ever seen. Even John Gray went to the trouble to mis-quote Dawkins and use his words out of context – but that’s another story.

 
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dawkins, R. The God Delusion. Black Swan 2007.

 

According to Slashdot Richard Dawkins is going to be on Who!

The Indie reckons

"The evolutionary biologist and best-selling author of The God Delusion will appear as a guest star in the new series of Doctor Who, which began last night. "People were falling at his feet," says Davies, creator of the BBC's flagship show. "We've had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.""

I was going to spend all week moaning about Partners in Crime being so rubbish, but Russell, I've got to admit it - you know how to get round me! It's like some kind of fanboy intersection of greatness!

And just think about all the 6 degrees of separation fun to be had - with Dawkins it's practically a thornbush (Lalla, Douglas, Tom (sort of)). Well done, Russell T Davies!

Now go away and never write any more episodes ever again. Go on, FUCK OFF. Leave Steven Moffat in charge. Euros Lyn can do the directing. Go on, sod off.