You won’t believe what the ultra-outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins is saying about Christianity.
We’re going to see precisely what he said and what it means for a Christian revival in Europe!
Highlights:
- “Dawkins wants a Christian culture without the Christian cult!”
- “Christianity is playing a significant role in the politics, if you can believe it, in the politics of some of the most secular and secularized nations in all of Europe. Nations like France, the Netherlands, and Hungary all have seen the rise of successful populist movements and parties that have drawn on the power of the Christian religion to define national and civilizational culture and identity.”
Timestamps: [01:04] The incoherence in Richard Dawkins’ argument
[07:17] How Dawkins appears oblivious as to why Islam is making such cultural headway throughout Europe
[09:29] How the Christian religion is making a huge comeback in British and Europe
Resources:
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Are we seeing the revitalization of conservative civilization? All over the world has been a massive backlash against globalization, its leftist leadership, and its anti-cultural liberal values. And it's just the beginning. I'm Dr. Steve Turling. I believe the liberal globalist world is at its brink, and a new conservative age is rising. Join me every day as we examine these worldwide trends, discover answers to today's toughest challenges. And together, learn to live in the present in life of even better things to cover. This is Turly Talks. You won't believe what the outspoken ultra-atheist Richard Dawkins is saying about Christianity. We're going to see for ourselves precisely what he said, and what it means for Christian revival in Europe. Hey gang, it's me, Dr. Steve, your patron professor here to help you stay sane. During these insane times. So make sure to smack that "bounce scry" button and let's dive right in. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the highly outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins has been considered one of the leaning voices of the so-called new atheist movement, which despite its marketing successes with the number of best-selling books and fawning media coverage, nevertheless represented a notoriously underwhelming, if not frankly incoherent, atheism. The new atheist fell way short of the hard-hitting moral atheism of Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, like we see in his work, "The Spake Zarathustra". Dawkins, along with the late Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, they represented, frankly, embarrassingly inept atheism. Their arguments were intellectually morally lazy. They were shockingly unexceptional, which again is surprising, especially in light of what someone like Nietzsche put forward just a century ago. What made Nietzsche's atheism so profound is that he openly recognized the historically unprecedented revolutionary power the Christian gospel in a way that these new atheists simply didn't. Well, that is until this Easter weekend. Well, I must say I was slightly horrified to hear that Ramadan is being promoted instead. I do think that we are culturally a Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian. I'm not a believer, but there's a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. So, you know, I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense. It's true that statistically the number of people who actually believe in Christianity and down, and I'm happy with that. But I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedral and our beautiful parish churches. So, I count myself a cultural Christian. I think it would matter if we, certainly if we substituted any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful. Wow, yes, the person you just heard was Richard Dawkins. And you'll notice, even though he's admitting how much he feels at home within a Christian cultural ethos, you'll notice precisely the kind of incoherence I've been talking about right there in his argument. Dawkins, at one at the same time, celebrates the loss of Christian faith in Britain while simultaneously he laments the loss of Christian culture. You see, this is the absurdity of this attempt at justifying this hard distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. Now, you can clearly make a conceptual distinction between those two. One could be a believer without actually participating in building a distinctively Christian culture, which unfortunately, I would argue, characterizes so much of evangelical and Catholic Christianity in America today. One can believe without belonging, as it were, and one can belong without believing, as is the case of Richard Dawkins. You can make that conceptual distinction, but practically, that conceptual distinction eventually disappears. In other words, the unintelligibility of Dawkins' argument really comes down to this. Dawkins wants a Christian culture without a Christian cult, and good freaking luck with that. Dawkins wants a Christian culture without the Christian cult. Remember, the term cult comes from Latin cultists, which simply means worship. It doesn't necessarily refer to the two people knocking at your front door wanting you to worship ahead of lettuce or something like that. That's a modern day usage of the term called some fringe religious group. It's actually the term we get the word culture from. Culture is the kind of society that springs out of the fountain of cult, out of the fountain of worship. Dawkins absurdity comes to the fore when we realize that he openly celebrates the loss of the Christian cult while he likes seeing that faith is waning in Britain, all the while lamenting the loss of Christian culture in Britain. And the very religious faith that he's so worried about replacing that Christian culture in Europe is precisely the one that refuses to make the very distinction he insists on. Wait until you see this. Hey, gang, as you know, our founding fathers created the American Constitution for the very purpose that our rights as citizens would be protected at the political and fundamental level. Over these past few years, however, we've directly witnessed the growing threats posed to those rights to fight back against this creep against our freedoms. I partnered with a group of amazing patriots who formed the Association of Mature American Citizens. 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Join AMAC today and help save our great nation. Click on that link below or visit amac.us/terley and choose the right plan for you and most importantly, for our nation. Well, which brings me to my supplementary point, which is that, as we know, church attendance is plummeting, but the building, the erection of mosques across Europe, I think 6,000 are under construction and there are many more, I mean, are being planned. So do you think you regard that as a problem? Do you think that matters? Yes, I do really. I mean, I don't, I choose my words carefully. I mean, if I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I choose Christianity every single time. I mean, it seems to me to be fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not. I think you're going to have to explain why you say that, Professor Dawkins. Why is Islam a profound? Well, the way... Fundamentally not decent, like Christianity. Yes, I mean, the way women are treated. I mean, Christianity is not great about that. It's had its problems with female vickers and female bishops and things. But there's an active hostility to women, which is promoted, I think, by the holy books of Islam. I'm not talking about individual Muslims who, of course, are quite different, but the doctrines of Islam, the hadiths and the Quran. It's fundamentally hostile to women, hostile to gays. And I find that I like to live in a culturally Christian country, although I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith. So there you have it. I mean, Dawkins appears rather oblivious as to why Islam is making such cultural headway throughout the continent of Europe, right? The very fact that Islamic cultures manifesting itself in Europe through the erection of minarets and mosques is evidence that that hard distinction that Dawkins insists upon between cult and culture does not exist among Islamists. And herein lies the key as to whether Christian civilization in Europe can still be saved. How do we rescue that connection between cult and culture, even as faith appears to be waning among Europe's indigenous population? Interestingly, scholars have noted that that rescue is actually happening. The Christian religion is actually making a huge comeback in Britain and Europe as a whole, and not just in terms of personal piety. Christianity is playing a significant role in the politics, if you can believe it, in the politics of some of the most secular and secularized nations in Europe. Nations like France, the Netherlands, and Hungary all have seen the rise of successful populist movements and parties that have drawn in the power of the Christian religion to define national, civilizational culture and identity. In France, for example, Marine Le Pen of National rallies openly declaring and celebrating France as a Christian nation and openly decries Islam as incompatible with French values. And this appears to be the key ingredient that Dawkins is both exemplifying in terms of his pro-Christian sentiments, although while missing in terms of his intellectual inconsistencies, Europe is indeed seeing the rise of what scholars call Christian civilizationalism, a civilizationalism that's not necessarily connected with religious belief and practice, but is most certainly connected with religious identity. In other words, identity, religious identity is more and more defining the boundaries of civilizations for Europe and its growing hostility to religions such as Islam. All throughout Europe, Christianity is rising to a political and cultural preeminence, not seen in nearly a century. A re-emergence considered by more and more people is essential for the recovery of a distinctively European culture and politics. More and more politicians and civic leaders are openly declaring that Christianity is the defining characteristic of Western civilization and only a robust defense of Christian culture is going to preserve that civilization from extinction. And that preeminence, even in the most secularized parts of Europe, is once again placing Christianity and Christian identity right smack in the middle of the public square. And that Christian chorus is ironically now redefining secularism and secular norms in the light of the preeminence of Christianity rather than the other way around. And astonishingly, even the world's staunchest atheist is now joining the choir. 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