New Atheists allowed the trans cult to begin. Christianity can now end
by Tim Stanley, Telegraph:
By discrediting religion, Dawkins and his acolytes created a void that a new, dangerous ideology filled.
We all love a repentant sinner. After a decade of encouraging the trans cult, the elite has realised that it’s a dreadful idea and is nimbly backing away. Self-ID is out; the Tavistock clinic is closing. Gender services will return via NHS England, but with a minimum age of seven – just in time for one’s first communion.
But don’t let the powerful tell you trans was a one-off mistake, a wrong-turn down a blind alley from which we can reverse. It was, and remains, our direction of travel. It’s the consequence of tearing up the old maps by which we once lived, inviting us to plot our own chaotic routes to nowhere. Yes, I blame Richard Dawkins for a lot.
I recently stumbled upon a popular online video of the philosopher Peter Boghossian interviewing the journalist Helen Joyce about what Joyce regards as the trans madness. He notes that the two of them were once supporters of the New Atheism – the noughties movement, spearheaded by Dawkins, that sought to discredit religion.
Do you ever wonder, he asks, if we were wrong? Wrong, because the “vast majority” of New Atheists went on to become fanatically woke. Even Dawkins, who insists sex is a biological reality, has been mildly cancelled; the American Humanist Association took away his humanist of the year award. Could it be, Boghossian suggests, that without religion, people “go to crazy town” and “believe things even far more out there than walking on water”?
Well, he can’t say he wasn’t warned! The key error of the New Atheists was to insist that all faith is equally irrational, that if you open the door to just a bit of theology, you’ll end up with fundamentalism. Refusing to take seriously what they regarded as a fantasy, they failed to appreciate the difference between, say, al-Qaeda and Anglicanism. Baby, bathwater; it was all thrown out.
Had they done the lightest of reading, they’d have realised Christianity was influenced by Greek philosophy; that it experienced a Renaissance and a Reformation; engaged creatively with the Enlightenment; and provided the philosophical foundation for liberal democracy, while holding it together by encouraging us to be law abiding or compassionate. After two thousand years, the Christian church has a contribution to make to discourse; it might even act as a referee, gently discouraging false ideas and providing intellectual support to the good.
And yet, today, the Christian clergy is almost silent on trans. Why?
Read here (£)
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