Richard Dawkins considers himself a 'cultural Christian'

[Stella]

The famous British atheist Richard Dawkins, author of the book “The God Delusion,” said in a recent interview that he identifies as a “cultural Christian” and prefers Christianity to Islam, although he clarified that he does not believe “a word” of the Christian faith.

In the interview with Rachel Johnsonbroadcast on March 31 on LBC, Dawkins said he was “slightly horrified” to learn that Oxford Street in London was promoting Ramadan, the Muslim month for fasting, instead of Easter.

Dawkins went on to explain: “I do think we are culturally a Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian.”

“I’m not a believer, but there is a distinction between being a believing Christian and a cultural Christian,” Dawkins noted, adding: “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.”

After expressing his satisfaction at what he perceives as a decline in the number of Christians, the famous atheist noted that he “would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches.”

“So I call myself a cultural Christian and I think it would be truly dreadful if we substituted any alternative religion.”

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news ... -christian

This to me highlights the meaningless or hypocrisy of atheism. Human beings were made for community and communion. Atheism is like a barnacle on the ship of Christianity only surviving as an ideology on the backs of a godly fraternity. A bit like a teenage boy ranting against authority from the comfort of his parents basement.

[Doom]

Atheism is inherently bad on purely secular terms. It is known from sociological research that

Atheists are far more likely than theists never to marry, and not just never marry, but never have romantic relationships of any kind, even purely casual ones

Atheists rarely have children, if they do, they have only one. Richard Dawkins is a case in point, he has been married and divorced three times, but he has only one child in those three marriages, and he is 83 years old

Atheists tend to have little or no social life

Because of all these things, atheist life expectancy is an average of 10-15 years lower than theists

Atheism has a strong positive correlation with violent crime and deviant social behavior

Atheism is strongly correlated with traits like rudeness, self-centeredness, and a superiority complex, which tend to make people socially unpopular


On the other hand,

Christianity is positively correlated to agreeableness and the ability to get along with others, indeed Christianity has a record of reforming lives, for example, prisoners who convert to Christianity in prison are less likely to return to crime upon release

Christianity is positively correlated with peace and social order

Christianity is positively correlated with clean government, political stability, and government accountability

Christianity is positively correlated with concern for others and generosity with money. Christians make the vast majority of charitable contributions in the world, and most of the world's really big charities were founded by Christians

Christianity is positively correlated with literacy, rights for women, and education. The Catholic Church is the world's largest non-governmental provider of education and the world's largest non-governmental provider of health care.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

C. S. Lewis wrote somewhere about the word gentleman having lost its meaning over time. He feared that the same would happen to Christian. Dawkins is proving him correct.

[Doom]

C. S. Lewis wrote somewhere about the word gentleman having lost its meaning over time. He feared that the same would happen to Christian. Dawkins is proving him correct.

Well, "cultural Christianity" defined as people who reject Christianity but believe that Christian culture, including not just things like literature, architecture, and the like, but especially the Christian moral outlook of service to others, concern for the poor and/or oppressed and general social justice, is not a new phenomenon, and even the term has been around for deades Arguably, the idea goes back to the deism movement of the 17th and 18th centuries, and such people as Voltaire, and many of the Founding Fathers such as Jefferson and Franklin, would qualify under that definition.

[Gandalf the Grey]

Almost all the atheists that I know(and having been one myself) generally are atheists not out of truly having deeply examined either religion or even atheism and their relevant logical conclusions but rather are merely atheists because it's become "fashionable" and "progressive" to act-out anti-religious(and more specifically anti-Christian) sentiments.

What's interesting is that Dawkins used to be right there with Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty in the belief that the removal of all vestiges of Christianity from the West would necessarily lead finally to "the reign of rationalism and science over religion and superstition." To see that Dawkins has softened on that position is quite surprising. However I wonder if he's looking at the political landscape of London and the limp-wristed reaction of his government to the Pro-Hamas protests and is starting to see what religious theologians have been pointing out for decades: that without a strong religious moral ethic as the bedrock foundation to your society mere secular rationalism of its own merits isn't at all strong or even sufficient enough to hold back a countervailing religious framework.

Either way Dawkins here in a surprising bit of honesty shows himself here like most atheists in that they just want to have it both ways. They want to reject religion while at the same time they want the ethical foundation that provides them the ease and comfort that protects their rejection of religion.

[Jack3]

Atheism is inherently bad on purely secular terms. It is known from sociological research that

Atheists are far more likely than theists never to marry, and not just never marry, but never have romantic relationships of any kind, even purely casual ones

Atheists rarely have children, if they do, they have only one. Richard Dawkins is a case in point, he has been married and divorced three times, but he has only one child in those three marriages, and he is 83 years old

Atheists tend to have little or no social life

Because of all these things, atheist life expectancy is an average of 10-15 years lower than theists

Atheism has a strong positive correlation with violent crime and deviant social behavior

Atheism is strongly correlated with traits like rudeness, self-centeredness, and a superiority complex, which tend to make people socially unpopular


On the other hand,

Christianity is positively correlated to agreeableness and the ability to get along with others, indeed Christianity has a record of reforming lives, for example, prisoners who convert to Christianity in prison are less likely to return to crime upon release

Christianity is positively correlated with peace and social order

Christianity is positively correlated with clean government, political stability, and government accountability

Christianity is positively correlated with concern for others and generosity with money. Christians make the vast majority of charitable contributions in the world, and most of the world's really big charities were founded by Christians

Christianity is positively correlated with literacy, rights for women, and education. The Catholic Church is the world's largest non-governmental provider of education and the world's largest non-governmental provider of health care.

Sources?

[Doom]

Each one of those observations is a separate group of studies, to list them all would take 3-4 hours at minimum, and I am not going to invest that kind of time

[Riverboat]

I refuse to read anyone who libels the sainted Mother Theresa.

[gherkin]

I think you may be thinking of Hitchens.

[Riverboat]

Yes. I stand corrected.

[Jack3]

Each one of those observations is a separate group of studies, to list them all would take 3-4 hours at minimum, and I am not going to invest that kind of time

The point re: crime etc

[BobCatholic]

This sounds like grace is slowly melting his heart. VERY SLOWLY - mind you - but I wouldn't be surprised in 10-20 years he's a Catholic convert.