Tom Piatak

October 28, 2009

In response to Richard, I did not mean to suggest that England’s Anglican past makes the English particularly susceptible to atheism.  I meant to suggest that such English atheists as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Philip Pullman exhibit more hostility to Catholicism than they do to other faiths in part because of their English background.  This greater hostility is palpable, and is clearly shown by Dawkins’ latest outburst, which both condemns “Pope Ratzinger” and claims that the “Archbishop of Canterbury” exhibits a “saintly quality,” “a benignity of countenance,” and a “well-meaing sincerity.”

I also think that the rise of men like Dawkins is in part responsible for the decline of Britain, and I make that argument at length in the October 2009 issue of Chronicles.  The reason I make that argument is not Anglophobia, but because “We Americans, who owe so much to Britain and are more like the British than any other people in Europe, ignore at our peril the problems Britain is encountering from effectively abandoning Christianity and the rest of her heritage.”

Yes, Dawkins is not a buffoon as a scientist, but he seems to be doing little science these days, preferring instead to sound like Lord George Gordon on the eve of London’s No Popery Riot.  An analogue is Linus Pauling, a brilliant scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but who was also a moral and political cretin and a pro-Soviet agitator.  National Review properly treated Pauling with disdain, because of his moral and political idiocy.  As for me, I intend to give Dawkins the same level of respect he accords Pope Benedict XVI.