Posted on 04/02/2024 10:24:19 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Atheist author Richard Dawkins described himself as a "cultural Christian" and lamented the faith's waning cultural influence in Europe, though he still derided its key tenets as "nonsense," during an interview on Easter Sunday.
Speaking with British journalist Rachel Johnson, Dawkins noted that the United Kingdom is "fundamentally a Christian country," and he still personally values the Christian ethos despite not believing the religion from which it emerged.
"I call myself a cultural Christian," said the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion. "I'm not a believer, but there's a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. And so, I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense."
"If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I choose Christianity every single time," he said. "I mean, it seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that, I think, Islam is not."
Dawkins argued that Islam is less compatible with British values than Christianity, particularly regarding the treatment of women and homosexuals.
"I'm not talking about individual Muslims, who, of course, are quite different," Dawkins said. "But the doctrines of Islam — the Hadith and the Quran — is fundamentally hostile to women, hostile to gays. And I find that I like to live in a culturally Christian country, although I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith."
Johnson, the sister of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, acknowledged that her own Christian faith "waxes and wanes," but asked Dawkins his predictions regarding the effects a culturally dominant Islam would have on bedrock English institutions such as the monarchy.
"I think it would be a terrible thing," Dawkins said. "And insofar as Christianity can be seen as a bulwark against Islam, I think it's a very good thing. In Africa, for example, where you have missionaries of both faiths operating, I'm on 'Team Christians,' as far as that's concerned."
Dawkins nevertheless dismissed the fundamental claims of Christianity, such as the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, emphasizing his belief that such supernatural assertions are "nonsense," though he acknowledged their importance "from a cultural point of view."
A survey of more than 3,000 U.K. adults commissioned by five Christian organizations in 2022 found that only 6% identify as "practicing Christians," with 42% identifying as "non-practicing Christians."
According to data released by the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics in 2022, Christianity is quickly dwindling in the country, with less than half of the population identifying as Christian since the country's first census in 1801.
The data showed that only 46.2% — or 27.5 million of the country’s more than 67 million people — say they are Christian. In the 2011 census, 59.3% of the population — or 33.3 million people — described themselves as Christian.
Islam, by contrast, has surged in the U.K., swelling from 2.7 million in 2011 to 3.9 million in 2021.
Excuse me sir, but I’d like to purchase one set of “Cultural Christianity”. You know, low crime, high trust, politeness, respect, consideration of others without all that talk of extramarital sex being sinful and abortion being murder.
Thank you for posting this.
The want the blessings of God, but not the morality.
You brought them in the country
Guess what? It’s a package deal. You don’t get to pick and choose. If you choose nothing that void is not going to remain empty. People need religion, and if you reject Christianity you will get something else , like the Church of the Holy Hammer and Sickle, or worse yet , Islam.
“I’m not a believer, but there’s a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian”.
Not according to scripture. Thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts for you. Like being cast into eternal darkness.
CC
Typical lib jackass.
Wants the benefits of a moral society without all the troublesome values.
I have often pondered over the last 40 years, since my stint in academia, how highly intelligent people such as those with whom I worked and consorted, could be so unaware. Dawkins is an outstanding example of the “bite the hand that feeds you” manner of thinking of the left. They never stop to think, “why is there none of the scholarship, free flow of ideas, and spirited debate of the west that we so love and benefit from to be found in certain other parts of the world?” Why indeed?
Maybe ideas really do have consequences.
Sorry, Dick, it doesn’t work that way. The 21st century is quickly proving that you can’t have “cultural Christianity” without a majority population of actual believing Christians. Oh, sure, for many, many centuries — probably since the time of Constantine— many unbelievers have undoubtedly been “free riders” of the benefits of Christian culture. But when non-believers achieve a “critical mass,” you get all sorts of bad outcomes... Muslim growth, violent nihilism, neopaganism, new-age occultism, witchcraft etc.
Wants all the blessings but none of the responsibility.
Lazy fat-a$$ parasite.
Will RD expect an air-conditioned room in Hell?
1 Corinthians 15:14
And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
Typical lefty reprobate. Leach off the very system you are trying to destroy. My disdain for these people is nearly unquenchable.
Nor the accountability to their Creator.
Yes.
If Christianity is “nonsense”, then why does it produce a culture you prefer?
How oblivious can someone be? The culture he prefers didn’t just come out of nothing. What comes out of nothing is darkness, cold and evil. The know-it-all atheist just can’t make the connection that something has to be behind it all to make that culture that he wants exist.
Declaration if Independence:
“....and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness....”
John Adams:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
******************************
Below is a link of a letter from Adams to Jefferson in 1813:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0208
Excerpt:
Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God: and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System.
A theocratic conquest of the world would propel everybody who survives into a new dark age.
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