In a 2017 article in the journal Political Geography, Russell Foster, Nick Megoran and Michael Dunn describe what they deem to be the intrinsic violence and racism of atheist critics of religion, including Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Arguing that this racism is betrayed by their inclination to increasingly criticise Islam, they provide this piece of ‘evidence’:
While Christianity was initially, and occasionally still [is], the target of the New Atheists, the particular contempt which they reserve for Islam is reflected clearly in their language (Al-Jazeera, 2015; Ong, 2016).
All I will do here is follow one of these two references to see what the evidence for such a claim might be.
“Ong, 2016” refers to a 13 January 2016 article by Czarina Ong on the website of the UK evangelical Christian media company Christian Today, titled ‘Richard Dawkins says Christianity is world’s best defence against radical Islam’. These are the first three paragraphs:
Despite spending years criticising Christianity, well-known atheist Richard Dawkins is now admitting that Christianity is much better than Islam.
Dawkins even conceded that “Christianity may actually be our best defence against aberrant forms of religion that threaten the world,” according to The Gospel Herald.
Dawkins noted that Christianity, unlike Islam, does not make use of violent methods to fulfill its teachings. “There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings. I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death,” he said.
Foster, Megoran and Dunn seem to be referring to the phrase “abberant forms of religion that threaten the world” when they assert of the “New Atheists” that “the particular contempt which they reserve for Islam is reflected clearly in their language”.
Following the hyperlink to the Gospel Herald, another evangelical Christian media company (based in the USA), leads to a 12 January 2016 article by Elizabeth Delaney, which includes this:
For all of his disdain for the Christian religion and God, renowned atheist Richard Dawkins has actually been willing to admit that he sees Islam as a far bigger threat to world peace than Christianity. He has also willingly admitted that, “Christianity may actually be our best defense against aberrant forms of religion that threaten the world.”
Again we must follow a hyperlink, and this time we land on an article published on the Breitbart website that same day by a Thomas D. Williams, which begins:
In a text that is coursing about on social media, professional God-slayer Richard Dawkins begrudgingly admitted that Christianity may actually be our best defense against aberrant forms of religion that threaten the world.
So just by following a paper trail, we find that the specific text “Christianity may actually be our best defense against aberrant forms of religion that threaten the world”, a remark that both the Christian Today and Gospel Herald articles attributed to Richard Dawkins, actually comes from the Breitbart contributor Thomas D. Williams. Breitbart is a far-right, anti-immigration, pro-Christianity, anti-Islam American news outlet that favours conspiracy theories.
As it was the specific use of language by “the New Atheists” when they refer to Islam that Foster, Megoran and Dunn were referring to in their 2017 article in Political Geography, it is noteworthy that the specific use of language that they appear to be citing as an example was actually that of a contributor to Breitbart. Attributing to an atheist critic of religion a form of words that originates from Christian Islamophobia is a serious academic mistake.
Williams did actually quote Dawkins later in the article:
“I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse,” he said.
Although the text originated in 2010, it has taken on a second life, being sent to and fro on Facebook and Twitter and providing fodder for discussions, even among atheists, of the benefits of Christianity for modern society.
Although the link within is now dead, with help from the Wayback Machine, one finds that Williams was referencing an article on a blog called Transcultural Buddhism by one Sean Robsville, which includes:
From The Times:
“Even among the world’s most famous atheists, the crisis of faith among Christians in Europe has been met with concern.
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said: “There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings. I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death. I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse.”
And since it is apparently my job to do everyone’s referencing for them, I have found the 2 April 2010 article in The Times, a piece by Ruth Gledhill on diminishing religiosity in Europe and crises in the Catholic Church (it is paywalled, but there’s a copy of it elsewhere online). The article quotes Dawkins:
Even among the world’s most famous atheists, the crisis of faith among Christians in Europe has been met with concern.
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said: “There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings. I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death. I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse.”
As Gledhill does not cite any source, this is probably a comment that Dawkins supplied to her directly: journalists for national newspapers often just directly approach academics for an interview and academics will usually oblige, particularly for The Times. There are no results on any web search for this specific text dating from earlier than 2 April 2010.
So, although we do have evidence here of a miracle in the form of Williams accurately quoting from Dawkins later in the article, this is not a remark that Williams accurately paraphrases in writing that “professional God-slayer Richard Dawkins begrudgingly admitted that Christianity may actually be our best defense against aberrant forms of religion that threaten the world”. Dawkins described his ambivalence, and hedged his remarks with a significant use of the word “might”, and did not refer to any distinction between “aberrant” religion and entirely benign religion, and did not refer to Christianity being a “best defense” against Islam. Williams was speaking his own religious discourse here.
To count the stages of misreporting uncovered here in chronological order:
- In April 2010, the blogger Sean Robsville lazily referenced a quotation from Dawkins from an article in The Times.
- In January 2016, the Breitbart contributor Thomas D. Williams quoted Richard Dawkins indirectly, via Sean Robsville’s blog. As Williams mentions that this quotation has “taken on a second life, being sent to and fro on Facebook and Twitter”, what he means is that he has only just learned about it from Facebook and Twitter, which tracks with his citing a blog in referencing the original.
- Much worse, Breitbart contributor Thomas D. Williams took the text “I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse” and paraphrased it with “professional God-slayer Richard Dawkins begrudgingly admitted that Christianity may actually be our best defense against aberrant forms of religion that threaten the world”, which misrepresents Dawkins significantly.
- In the Gospel Herald article published later the same day in January 2016, Elizabeth Delaney quoted Thomas D. Williams’ paraphrase of Richard Dawkins as if it was text from Dawkins himself.
- In the Christian Today article published the next day, Czarina Ong also took the quotation that was actually from Thomas D. Williams and presented it as if it was from Richard Dawkins and also vastly misrepresented even that with the title, “Richard Dawkins says Christianity is world’s best defence against radical Islam”.
- In September 2017, Foster, Megoran and Dunn’s article in Political Geography channelled these multiple levels of evangelical Christian news-media misrepresentation in which a fictional Dawkins solely criticises Islam and praises Christianity as a global asset and present them as an item of evidence to show that criticisms of religion are the rantings of a clique of bigots. Such egregious misrepresentations of critics of religion are abundant in this article, as well as in Megoran and Foster’s research blog post about the Political Geography article for the academic blog The Conversation.
Atheist activists will often find themselves assailed from both sides like this: both rubbished as a bigot by some believers and ‘recruited’ by other believers as supposedly recommending their specific religion (or denomination) above others in a supposed demonstration of its spotlessness.
There is an intense irony in this instance of that assault from both sides, though: this team of three academics started out determined to class critics of religion as bigots, and found some ‘evidence’ of this in the form of Dawkins-recruiting Christian journalists attributing their own out-group attitudes to him. When the bigotry that a Christian ‘detects’ in atheists is actually the religiously motivated bigotry of their fellow Christians, they have inadvertently provided evidence in support of the criticism of religion that they are trying to stifle.
If you consider the ‘new atheists’ to be elitist or unempathetic or apt to mistake people for ideas, ask yourself: how much of what you think you know about their attitudes actually derives from such collaborations between believers and believers?
