I don’t know how Richard manages to keep turning out pieces at the same time he’s trotting around the world giving talks and interviews. He must be able to turn out his inimitable prose very quickly. Yesterday he wrote about his interview with the odious reporter Adam Lusher; and yesterday he published an exchange of letters with Will Hutton of the Observer in that paper: “What is the proper place for religion in Britain’s public life?”

Both men admit to being “cultural Anglicans,” (what is that, exactly? How can you be a cultural Anglican when there’s no Anglican food?), and Richard points out that his Foundation doesn’t exist to promote atheism (though he’s glad to do that personally), but “reason and science,” in other words, secularism. Hutton takes issue with that:

I also think your distinction between atheism and secularism is sleight of hand. Secularism unsupported by atheism is nonsensical. The reason why a secularist objects so strongly about the extension of religion into the public sphere – and even its private practice – is because its adherents are delusional, and, using your own words, imposing a delusional set of values and practices on others.

If you take “secularism” in the sense of “not favoring one religion, or no religion, over others,” then the distinction is not a “sleight of hand.” As Dawkins points out, plenty of religious people and religious organizations promote secularism in the public sphere not because they think religion is a “delusion,” but because they worry about one religion getting the upper hand, forming a theocracy, and banning or marginalizing the others. Now I think that secularism will inevitably erode religion, because by refusing to marginalize atheists it prevents religion from dominating the public sphere, and also allows freedom of speech to those who espouse reason rather than superstition.

Richard makes a point that hasn’t been sufficiently emphasized:

That doesn’t mean religious people shouldn’t advocate their religion. So long as they are not granted privileged power to do so (which at present they are) of course they should. And the rest of us should be free to argue against them. But of all arguments out there, arguments against religion are almost uniquely branded “intolerant”. When you put a cogent and trenchant argument against the government’s economic policy, nobody would call you “intolerant” of the Tories. But when an atheist does the same against a religion, that’s intolerance. Why the double standard? Do you really want to privilege religious ideas by granting them unique immunity against reasoned argument?

Somebody needs to analyze why religious belief is so different from political belief. Perhaps the readers can weigh in here. Obviously your faith has much more powerful implications for your behavior and, especially, your postmortem fate, and perhaps that’s the reason. But I’ve seen nothing written about this.

Hutton:

Of course we can agree that nobody wants a theocracy, and the founders of both the American and Indian constitutions were right to protect their countries from that risk given the historic and cultural contexts in which they founded their states. But there was little risk of church and state eliding in Britain 200 years ago despite our very imperfect unwritten constitution; there is zero risk today. To raise its spectre is specious.

Zero risk? What about faith-based schools in the UK, where children are brainwashed and evolution is minimized or criticized? And doesn’t Hutton know about America, where theocratic values are being imposed by the government—even under Obama? Just read Sean Faircloth’s new book, Attack of the Theocrats, to see how the “wall of separation” between church and state has been severely eroded. (By the way, I highly recommend that book and will be reviewing it here soon.)

Hutton:

Jürgen Habermas says that human nature needs both secularism and rationality on one hand, and faith and belief on the other; that to imagine pure secularism is utopian. I am in the same place.

One-word response: Scandinavia.

I’ll let Richard have the last word, because, in my admittedly biased view, he gets the better of Hutton in this debate. Go read it.

It has been obvious since the publication of The God Delusion in 2006 that many supporters of religion have preferred to ignore its arguments and just repeatedly claim that it’s full of rage and hatred, fundamentalism and intolerance instead – traits that are not recognised by most people who have actually read it. The less-than-subtle message is: “He’s strident and shrill so you can ignore what he says.” Yet this alleged stridency consists in nothing more than clearly and reasonably challenging religious claims in the same straightforward way that no one bats an eyelid over when the subject is anything other than religion. And now, when the issue is not atheism at all, but the role of religion in public life, the same stunt is being pulled. The mere act of commissioning a scrupulously factual survey from a highly respected, impeccably impartial polling organisation has been described by an editorial in one of our leading newspapers as “hysterical”, and others are piling in with similarly intemperate words and rather desperate attempts to divert attention from the cool and sober findings of the research. . . . . . arguing against religious belief is not hysterical, militant, or totalitarian. It’s what we do in all other fields of discourse, where no one viewpoint can claim privileged immunity to argument.

And that should be the last word.