The Times: Rees-Mogg misses the point. Again

The Times‘ resident fuddy-duddy, William Rees-Mogg, has taken a sideswipe at Dawkins’ recent opinion piece (also in The Times), sugar coating his reply as necessary ([a]fter all, Professor Dawkins is a scientist, and a good one. He has been thoroughly trained in the scientific method.), and again completely missing the point.

Rees-Mogg has decided to take Dawkins to task for noting that part of his book (The God Delusion) attacks what are called “crude rabble-rousing chancers” such as Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, rather than facing up to sophisticated theologians such as Bonhoeffer or the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Indeed, Bonhoeffer¹ and Williams are most excellent theologians, by which I mean that they’ve studied the various claims for their gods, thrown out those that are completely absurd, and kept those that, while not actually proving the existence of their respective gods, offer a kind of philosophical sophistication not found in the ludicrous claims and hate-riddled diatribes of the likes of Haggard, Falwell and Robertson.

Rees-Mogg also defends the traditional British varieties of christianity:

I believe it to be false. It is certainly false in England, where Professor Dawkins presumably meets most of his theist acquaintances. It is not true of Anglicans; it is not true of Roman Catholics. It is not true of their leaders. Whatever else may be said of the archbishops of Canterbury or Westminster, they do not bear the faintest resemblance to the personality or doctrine of bin Laden.

Very true, and all well and good.

Apart from the fact that Rees-Mogg has completely and utter failed to get what Dawkins was getting at. In the USA, the National Association of Evangelicals claims about 30 million members in it’s various sects and churches, comparable to the entire theistic community of the UK. Haggard was a head honcho in this organisation, before his very public and very hypocritical fall from grace. Similarly, Falwell and Robertson have huge numbers of followers, in addition to the cultural lures of TV stations, universities and ministries, with all of the wealth and influence that these institutions bring.

And these are just those christians in the USA, numbering in the (literally) hundreds of millions.

So, let us suppose that we concede that Dawkins isn’t arguing against the simpleminded religions of Haggard, Falwell and Robertson and their followers of that ilk. Neither is he talking about that of Bin Laden or the mullahs in Iran. Let us presume that he’s arguing against the religions of the great British unwashed.

What sort of concepts of theology are we left with? Yes, we indeed have the refined and polished theology of Williams and a few bishops. Perhaps there are a few lay people who have looked into their faith and attempted to answer those burning questions to their own satisfaction. But does Rees-Mogg seek to presume that each and every christian believer, or at least the vast majority, in the UK has examined their faith to a depth on par with these theologically trained “professionals” or enthusiastic amateurs?

To presume so is, in my opinion, absolutely naïve.

Most of the cultural christians in Britain are not trained in seminaries or schools of divinity in the nuances and subtleties of religious defence; they are trained by their parents who dragged them the church as children; they’re taught from the pulpit to believe, to follow and to defer those important interpretations of scripture to the priests and padres who so obviously know the mind of their god in far greater discernment than a mere pew-sitter is capable.

The Sunday churchgoers, by far the largest proportion of christians in the UK, are not theologically literate. Sure, they can rattle off a vague biblical reference or two if they think that it’s appropriate (q.v. Dot Cotton), try to be “good christian folk”. These are also the people who listen to their vicars and priests who tell them that they’re wicked and “sinful”, that the encroaching secularity of the country is a danger to their god’s purpose and desires, that they should follow their god’s will at all costs to their immortal souls. And then these people leave their churches and vote: they vote according to what they have been told is what their god wants them to do. They vote sanguinely according to the direction of their priests; unquestioningly, uncritically, unthinkingly. And then all of us are subject to the results of these votes.

It is exactly these people that The God Delusion is aimed at, not the “dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads”, but those who are ushered by their priests and vicars and, ultimately, their bishops and popes, those who have a vested interest in maintaining an influence on and domination over the innocently, or ignorantly, religious.

If Dawkins had used his book to address the arguments of Bonhoeffer or Bonaventure, Aquinas or Anselm, it would have rendered the entire project impotent, and it’s far too important a project to piss against the wind just to show deference to the theological etiquette of those who covet the status quo.

1. I’ll talk about him in the present tense, it reduces confusion [↩]

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