Scotch College

Christianity Is A Raging Infection Chaplain’s Reflection

So said Pliny to the Emperor. He was writing in 112 AD (The Letters of the Younger Pliny, 10:96). To Pliny's surprise those infected were “individuals of every age and class, both men and women.” And, worse still, “similarly fanatical” were Roman citizens who no longer worshiped the Emperor! Instead they swore loyalty and sang hymns “in honour of Christ, as if to a god”. Richard Dawkins, zoologist, and Charles Simonyi, Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, have also found Christianity to be an infection. Richard Dawkins’ in his recent TV program, The God Delusion, has made this point clearly. He is a skilled communicator and crusading atheist. In fact Dawkins has diagnosed all religion to be a destructive virus. He says “the time has come for people of reason to say: enough is enough. Religious faith discourages independent thought. It's divisive and it's dangerous.”

In reality Dawkins demolishes a man of straw. In The God Delusion he presents a truly bizarre range of religious extremism. Such religious fundamentalism, says Dawkins, is the cause of bigotry, violence and the wars that have plagued humanity. If only human beings would commit to rational scientific thinking we could achieve a more tolerant and understanding world. In fact, most people of faith are not as he presents them, and would deplore the views he deplores. Additionally, Dawkins is reluctant to connect the wars and mass killings carried out by communist regimes during the last century to state-sponsored atheism. Here he looks for closer analysis.

Barney Zwartz, religion editor of The Age comments:“He is not nearly as good a philosopher as he supposes, and when it comes to religion he is simply a bigot. He is on a relentless crusade against religion in any form, but cannot see that his own scientistic materialism is as much a dogmatic form of fundamentalist faith as those he despises.” This is Dawkins’ own fundamentalism. At least it can be said of the Christians who invented the term “fundamentalism” that they knew what their non-negotiable beliefs were, and wrote them large. Dawkins’ faith in science is fundamentally his unacknowledged religious commitment. For him, the essential truth of humanity is that we are “self-replicating entities” and “hosts for DNA parasites which are our genes.”

In his own fanaticism, Pliny wrote that he actively killed Christians because they refused to worship the Emperor. In addition, he noted that they pledged themselves “abstain from theft, robbery and adultery, and to commit no breach of trust.” Though ancients, they were highly principled and pursued transparent honesty. If that sounds like the foundation of a new world order that is precisely what it was. Their successors are found all over the world. In Dawkins’ own scientific community they can be found in the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. They can also be found here at Scotch College where the Christ is still worshiped and his teachings continue to be revered.

Graham Bradbeer