‘The Root of All Evil?’, Richard Dawkins’ two-part programme on religion, the first of which was broadcast by Channel 4 last Monday, was entertaining stuff. Sadly, it was for the wrong reasons.

You don’t have to be professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford to have known what was coming. Britain’s best-known atheist is renowned for his persistent trivialisation of religion and his ability to demolish a straw man in seconds. Viewers could not have been surprised to see him interview cartoon opponents or wheel out the same stale, old criticisms.

So familiar were those criticisms, that at one point the programme felt more like a game of atheist bingo than a serious critique of contemporary religion. ‘Extremist’: check. ‘Delusion’: check. ‘Intolerant’: check. ‘Superstitious’: check. ‘Irrational’: HOUSE! The edge of any critique is blunted if used too carelessly or too often and, regrettably, we have heard these well-worn accusations year after year after year. The real entertainment came in guessing which word would pop up next.

This is a shame because, beneath the rhetoric and polemic, the programme touched on some serious questions. Doesn’t religion, by its very nature, segregate - something we can ill-afford in a globalising world? Don’t religious ideologies simply exacerbate political conflicts? How does the nature of religious evidence compare to that used in the natural sciences? How do you square the apparent wastefulness of the evolutionary process with a God of love?

Religions desperately need criticism. As the Church has learnt – time and again – Christianity drifts furthest from its moorings when it suppresses questions and crushes criticism. It needs critical partners with which to dialogue, to keep it fresh and faithful to Christ. As the reformers recognised, a reformed church is a church always reforming.

Dawkins’ inability to be a constructive partner in critical dialogue reflects the increasing nervousness of many secularists. Religion never did die a natural death and appears to be growing again, sometimes in unpleasantly militant forms.

Dawkins’ tone may, to be fair, change next week when he talks to more sophisticated religious advocates. Nevertheless, if his critique continues to disappoint, it should not leave Christians feeling smug, still less allow them to slip into intellectual laziness or stop them from engaging with other, more nuanced critics. If we are to ‘hold on to the good’, as it says in 1 Thessalonians 5.21, it is only because we have tested everything beforehand.

Nick Spencer

The second programme - 'The Virus of Faith' - is on Monday 16th January, on Channel 4, at 8pm.

additional resources

Christians in Science have some stimulating responses to Dawkins at their site, including dialogue between Dawkins and Michael Poole, and a collection of pieces by Alister McGrath. Visit www.cis.org.uk.

A summary of the programme can be found at www.channel4.com.

Prof Dawkins does not have an official website, but recommends John Catalano's unofficial portal, which, he suggests, does everything he could do and more... at www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins.

Read Nick Pollard's interview with Prof Dawkins in Third Way (1995), at www.thirdway.org.uk.

Wikipedia's entry for Richard Dawkins is at en.wikipedia.org.