The great service of the militant atheists is that they shock believers into really deciding where they stand
NO DOUBT there are Christians praying daily for the conversion of those whom John Gray described in this newspaper in recent days as "evangelical atheists".
With tongue firmly in cheek, I would urge a more Augustinian approach. Augustine prayed: "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet."
Given the fact that Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens have between them managed to stimulate more debate on religion than any believer, perhaps something along the lines of, "Lord, may they be converted, but not yet", might be appropriate. Not before they have provoked a few more million people into clarifying where they stand in relation to faith.
For Richard Dawkins, bringing a child up in a religious faith is child abuse. Religion is responsible for all the ills of the world, but especially wars and violence. Science will save us all. Years ago, when Dawkins appeared on Irish radio, Pat Kenny reported with amusement that people who had not darkened the door of a church for 20 years were ringing up to refute his arguments.
Dawkins finds himself blessedly unburdened with the necessity to take his opponents' arguments seriously. After all, he states, if someone believes in fairies at the bottom of the garden, does one need to read up on fairies in order to show that their beliefs are nonsense? In this regard, he sounds like nothing so much as a caricature of a British missionary of the Victorian era, so utterly convinced of the superiority of his own civilisation that he does not have to understand anything about the culture he plans to save from the error of its ways. The natives must see the light, and abandon their stupid superstitions.
John Gray is also struck by the similarity to a caricature of a missionary. Gray is a sceptic, who believes that it is better to be unburdened by any spiritual beliefs. Unlike Dawkins, Gray takes his sources seriously and treats them with respect even when he disagrees. From his books it is clear that for Gray, Christianity is the source of a cardinal error, that is, the anthropocentric idea that there is something special about human beings. He believes that this has had disastrous consequences for the environment.
Like James Lovelock and his Gaia hypothesis, he looks with equanimity at the idea that humans may soon be virtually wiped out. He also faults the Judaeo-Christian tradition for the idea that history is linear, and leading somewhere. He sees an echo of this in the idea that secular humanists have, that progress in knowledge in science will inevitably be mirrored in progress in ethics.
So the evangelical atheists irritate him, not just for their attacks on religion, but for their refusal to see that this type of atheism mirrors the faith it rejects. He believes that to try to repress religion is a pointless exercise, as it will only see the religious impulse emerge in grotesque and deformed ways. For Gray, Marxism is a Christian heresy.
Philip Pullman tries to argue for atheism in his books aimed at young people in the same way that CS Lewis attempted to make the case for Christianity. Yet Pullman still believes that humans have free will. This, in Gray's view, is a highly questionable legacy of Christianity. He believes we are akin to ants on a log in a swift current in a river, who have the laughable idea that they can control the log.
While Gray is more respectful of religion than those who try to eradicate faith with quasi-religious zeal, ultimately, there is not much comfort in his world view. While the majority of people would agree that there are massive constraints on our freedom, most people would baulk at the idea that we lack all ability to be self-determining. Gray's vision is grim indeed.
Gray is a favourite of philosophers like Don Cupitt, an Anglican priest who gradually moved to a position where he does not believe in a traditional God, or Christ, but still agrees with the core ethical positions of Christianity. He does not believe that he is an atheist, although he denies all the core tenets of Christianity. He prefers the term "religious humanist".
There are a lot of people who share Cupitt's beliefs, even though they may regularly attend religious services. It is easy to see the attraction of such a position. It allows a person to recognise the social value of religion, its capacity at its best to inspire a person to become less selfish, and to build bonds both in communities and the world. Sadly, as CS Lewis points out, it is not an option that Christ would have endorsed.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes: "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse . . . let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
The great service that the militant atheists provide is that they shock believers into really deciding where they stand. Some will find they no longer believe, that they have worn an uncomfortable second-hand faith for years that never really fit them. Others will come to the realisation that their faith is something infinitely precious. Along with that realisation comes many of the propositions that Gray finds dubious - that human beings do hold a special place in the world, though not one that allows them to abuse and exploit the rest of creation. Human history is not just endless, meaningless repetition, but has a beginning and a purpose.
Despite what militant atheists believe, with assent to faith comes not certainty, but trust, not blind faith but a relationship. That relationship enables a person to tolerate the inevitable ambiguities, doubts and failures of trying to live out the implications of a world view not just very different to Dawkins', but also very different to the one held by Gray.