Richard Dawkins is discovering that the postchristian society he helped bring about isn’t necessarily to his liking:
The College Historical Society (the Hist) has tonight rescinded its invitation to Richard Dawkins to address the society next year.
Auditor of the Hist Bríd O’Donnell announced the cancellation in a statement on her Instagram page, saying that she had been “unaware of Richard Dawkins’ opinions on Islam and sexual assault until this evening”, adding that the society “will not be moving ahead with his address as we value our members comfort above all else”.
“The invitation to Richard Dawkins to speak at the society was made by my predecessor and I followed up the invitation with limited knowledge of Mr. Dawkins”, O’Donnell said. “I had read his Wikipedia page and researched him briefly. Regretfully I didn’t look further into him before moving forward with the invitation.”
“I want to thank everyone who pointed out this valuable information to me”, O’Donnell added. “I truthfully hope we didn’t cause too much discomfort and if so, I apologise and will rectify it.”
No Christianity, no inquiry, no science. Dawkins’s central thesis was not only wrong, it was backward. Christianity and science are not only NOT at war, Christianity is a necessary condition for science, logically, historically, and observably.
UPDATE: Bruce Charleton notes that Richard Dawkins simply lacks the intellectual courage to question his godless convictions, or even to contemplate the relevant evidence.
A few years ago I met Richard Dawkins at a small, relaxed party.
I had a question I wanted to put to him.
At the time I was not a Christian, but I was interested in religions and was (for example) studying religiosity and atheism in relation to personality.
I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence it had undergone a significant Christian revival.
The point I put to Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world.
How, I asked, could this be – if Christianity was culturally inimical to science?
Dawkins simply shook off this point, with a literal shake of his head looking downwards, and the comment to the effect that the scientists and Christians were two entirely different groups of people.