Richard Dawkins has some regrets – Washington Examiner

Richard Dawkins, one of the worlds foremost atheists who has spent much of his career advocating his atheism and ridiculing anyone who disagrees, apparently has some regrets.

In an interview this weekend, Dawkins admitted he is concerned about the decline of Christianity in the Western world and even described himself as a cultural Christian.

I do think that we are culturally a Christian country, Dawkins told Leading Britains Conversation, a British talk-radio station. I call myself a cultural Christian. Im not a believer. And so you know, I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. If we substituted [Christianity] with any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful.

Believers and nonbelievers alike would be forgiven for laughing off Dawkinss concerns. This is, after all, the man who, in a book called The God Delusion, argued not only that God does not exist but that if he did, he should be considered a sadomasochist and megalomaniac. This is also the man who encouraged his fellow atheists to ridicule and show contempt for people of faith and their doctrines, the same man who claimed it is worse to teach children to believe in God than to sexually abuse them.

In other words, there are few people alive who are more responsible for denigrating Christianity and encouraging people to abandon it in droves than Dawkins.

Of course, the decline of Christianity in the West is a serious problem with implications for us all. What Dawkins has realized, perhaps too late, is that the Christian ethos, as he described it, is the very foundation of the laws and institutions upon which Western society depends. Equal justice under the law, the importance of the family unit, the need for community, and the importance of self-control and personal responsibility in a self-governing society all find their basis in biblical teachings. The very concept of human rights is rooted in the belief that all human beings have divine value that no person can take from them.

Strip society of these values by encouraging people to reject their source, and it turns out that what were left with is a soulless, depressed, and increasingly unjust culture. Get rid of God, and everyone starts to think of themselves as their own gods.

Dawkins apparently recognizes the problem with this, which is why he now argues that Christianity in particular is necessary, if only to regulate the publics behavior while, of course, continuing to argue that religion itself is bad. One has to wonder whether such an inconsistency requires greater mental gymnastics than simply believing in God.

Regardless, its obvious Dawkins believes he can have the societal benefits that Christianity provides while rejecting its core doctrines. T.S. Eliot once described this mindset aptly: Do you need to be told that even such modest attainments as you can boast in the way of polite society will hardly survive the faith to which they owe their significance?

If Dawkins is willing to admit that the Christian faith offers the best chance at a well-ordered society, the first thing he should ask himself is how he is able to determine which values might make for a well-ordered society in the first place. As C.S. Lewis put it, If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark.

The second question he should ask is: Why? Why is this faith the most conducive to a free and just society? Indeed, why are its tenets undeniably linked to human flourishing? Could it be because Christianity is rooted in an unchanging truth about who we are and what we need?

Perhaps Dawkins is on the path toward recognizing this fact and, Lord willing, submitting to it. Far worse have been saved by his grace, including a man who once sanctioned the killing of Christians for sport only to become the greatest defender of the faith. The apostle Pauls testimony is an example for us all even for Dawkins.

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Richard Dawkins has some regrets - Washington Examiner