Article
Atheism
Belief
5 min read

Dawkins is wrong about the nature of belief

You can’t rejoice in its collapse and like its cultural inheritance too.
A man sits and speaks, against a background of a bookcase.
Dawkins on LBC.

Richard Dawkins sat in a tree,  

Sawing every branch he could see,  

As he sawed through the branch on which he sat,  

He raged, "It's not fair that I should go splat!" 

I am a recovering New Atheist. I was such a New Atheist that I have a claim to fame: I have given what-for to Anne Widdecombe and the Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja. I was there, as a spotty, greasy haired, angry teenager when Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry socked-it-to the Roman Catholics at an Intelligence Squared debate. The motion was ‘The Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World’. The question I asked was so poorly formed that the moderator deemed it a comment.  

I was a callow youth. Forgive me.  

I am now not quite so young and not quite so spotty. Now that I am a man, I have put away childish things. I have abandoned atheism and embraced faith in Jesus Christ. I am a priest in the Church of England, fully in favour of the Ten Commandments and the moral framework of the Church. Clearly, I’ve been on a journey.  

So, it seems, has Professor Richard Dawkins.  

The author of The God Delusion, and scourge of many public Christian thinkers and apologists, has recently made some turbulent waves. Having surfed the tides of New Atheism, he now seems to be swimming against the current. He is a proud ‘cultural Christian’. In an interview on LBC he forcefully defended the Christian inheritance of this country: 

“I do think that we are culturally a Christian country…I call myself a ‘cultural Christian’… I love hymns and Christmas carols…I feel at home in the Christian ethos… I find that I like to live in a culturally Christian country…” 

Professor Dawkins went on to clarify (several times!) that he doesn’t believe a single word of Christian doctrine or the Bible. He was cheered by the continued decline in the numbers of believing Christians in this country. This wasn’t his Christianity. He argued that the distinction between a ‘believing Christian’ and a ‘cultural Christian’ is such that one can be both a very firm atheist and a ‘cultural Christian’. He doesn’t want people believing the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection of Jesus, but he does want us to keep our Cathedrals and beautiful parish churches. At first reading this could be seen as positive - an unlikely defender of the Christian faith coming to the rescue of a beleaguered Church.  

It isn’t. 

What the interview demonstrated was that Professor Dawkins doesn’t really understand the nature of belief or the nature of culture. If he did, he would understand a basic principle: culture doesn’t just magically appear and grow. Culture is formed and maintained from fundamental beliefs.  

You can’t have the fruits without the roots. 

Professor Dawkins likes church music. He likes the architecture of grand Cathedrals. He likes living in a society with a Western liberal ethic. All three of these fruits have grown from roots of the Christian tradition, and not just any Christian tradition. They have grown out of the BELIEVING Christian tradition.  

Why on earth would people spend inordinate amounts of time and money building Cathedrals if they didn’t actually believe the worship of God was important? Why would musicians pour out the best of their creativity into sacred music if not for a love of Jesus? Why would they structure our society in a way that sees the care of the poor and oppressed as a fundamental necessity if they don’t take the Sermon on the Mount seriously? 

People don’t die because they quite like a soft cultural inheritance - they die because they believe! 

Professor Dawkins finds himself living in a world that has been so shaped and saturated by Christianity that even our secularism has been called ‘Christian’. He lives in a Christian house. He likes it. Now he thinks he can have it and keep it while seeking to undermine and destroy the very beliefs that are the foundation, the stones, the mortar. 

He can’t.  

You don’t get to demand that everyone build their house on sand, and then complain that it is collapsing…and he does worry that it is collapsing. Predictably, he opened the interview by discussing his qualms about Islam and how he wouldn’t want this country to change from being ‘culturally Christian’ to ‘culturally Muslim’: “Insofar as Christianity can be seen as a bulwark against Islam I think it’s a very good thing.” I find this invocation of my faith offensive - not just because I believe my faith is ‘the truth’ (not just a club for angry atheists to bash Muslims with), but because it is so stupid! 

I use the word advisedly.  

It is a comment from a man who can’t seem to understand cause-and-effect. People who don’t believe strongly in something don’t fight for it. Rejoicing in the collapse of Christian belief while expecting it to protect you from other religions is about as obtuse as an individual can get. The Church grew, and spread, and produced the hymns and cathedrals and ethics that Professor Dawkins loves so much, because of people’s firm belief in Jesus Christ as our Risen Saviour. People died to spread this faith - THIS CULTURE! As Tertullian said: “…the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.” People don’t die because they quite like a soft cultural inheritance - they die because they believe! 

It was this realisation that led me to where I am now. I found that everything I cared about flowed from the Christian faith I rejected, so I rejected it no more. I wanted to continue enjoying the ‘fruits’ of my ‘cultural Christianity’, so I stopped hacking away at the ‘roots’ of ‘believing Christianity’. Professor Dawkins is seemingly wilfully blind to this fact: ‘believing Christian’s make it possible to have ‘cultural Christians’. Take away the belief and just watch what happens to the culture. 

“I don’t was to be misunderstood. I do think it’s nonsense.” 

As a believing Christian I respond: can we please have our culture back, then? 

Article
Character
Comment
Friendship
Virtues
6 min read

Guiding’s new badges don’t deserve this media criticism

Encouraging interests builds character now and for tomorrow

Paula Duncan is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, researching OCD and faith.

Two Brownies point out their badges.
Girl Guiding.

As a Brownie leader, what I love about Girlguiding is the perfect blend of tradition and modernity. Lots of people will have memories of belonging to Brownies or Guides. In conversation, it’s often the uniforms that people mention first – for ex-Brownies it’s always the brown dresses, or the iconic yellow sweatshirt which has now been relaunched for adults as a retro range. I will admit to buying one almost immediately and have loved wearing my tribute to the Jeff Banks design era of uniform that I loved so much as a child.  

For those unfamiliar with the organisation, Girlguiding began in 1909 with a small group of girls who joined a Scout rally and bravely asked that there be ‘something for the girls’ too. Today, Girlguiding has four youth sections: Rainbows (aged 4-7), Brownies (7-10), Guides (10-14), and Rangers (14-18).  

I’m particularly excited to go back to our weekly meetings after the school holidays because a new range of interest badges have just been launched for all sections – 78 in total! These badges are designed so that girls can choose which activities they’d like to pursue – either a new skill or hobby or learning something new. Each badge fits into one of our six distinct programme areas: Be Well, Express Myself, Skills for My Future, Take Action, Know Myself, and Have Adventures.  

A lot of the publicity surrounding the badges has been really positive – praising the organisation for representing the interests of young people. The badges were designed, after all, with the input of members and with extensive testing by groups across the UK, and feedback from 11,000 girls about the new badge offerings. My Brownie unit enjoyed being part of the testing pool for the ‘Passions’ badge, which encouraged them to think more deeply about the hobbies they have and try some new pursuits. Reading the final version of the badge when it was released was brilliant because I could really see the impact of the Brownies’ feedback.  

I’ve been disappointed to see the organisation’s new badges be subject to some heavy media criticism and that headlines have been tailored to mock, rather than share the relevant and interesting content that the badges actually offer. The Telegraph used the current tensions around gender identity to create a clickbait title: “Girlguiding ‘hostess’ badge gets gender-neutral makeover” which, inevitably, caused a flurry of (largely unpleasant) Facebook comments about identity politics. While the article itself does well to describe some of the new badge offerings, leading with a controversial heading detracts from the truth that the previous ‘hostess’ badge was discontinued as part of the programme refresh and that member feedback brought about a return of a similar offering.  

Victoria Richards writes in The Independent that: ‘Girlguiding is […] modernising the way it interacts with young people. Speaking their language. After all, what use is an organisation for girls if nobody wants to join it?’  

This does not seem to be the opinion of Lucy Mangan who writes a particularly scathing indictment of the movement in general and in a large part advocates for teaching children how to use a gun and cut down trees. Obviously unfamiliar with the Girlguiding programme, she misses that our new interest badges are just that – part of a programme that encourages girls to pursue their own interests and often to try something new! “Interest” simply means that we allow girls to choose for themselves what they are interested in learning more about. We remain dedicated to teaching core life skills (things like first aid, I’d argue, rather than using a gun) as part of the Skills Builder set of badges that progress through each section.  

An opinion piece in The Express says: ‘The new Girl Guide badges are so easy, it’s like awarding a gold star for blinking’… This simply isn’t true; even the youngest members are encouraged to try something new or improve on a skill. It’s strange that none of these critical articles come from current members or leaders. Sometimes we do offer badges for participation at an event or marking on occasion but part of the joy of those is collecting them. I love looking for a badge patch when I’m on holiday and adding them to my camp blanket. There are some fantastic blankets out there – with badges from people’s travels, awards they’ve earned, and badges they’ve swapped with others they’ve met at events.  

Why shouldn’t we be encouraging our youngest members to have courage?

Most articles – including the BBC – have chosen to lead articles with the range of badges that fall under ‘Be Well’ or ‘Know Myself’ and are therefore designed to help young people learn valuable skills in self-care and identifying the things that are important to them. They are, by nature, designed to help young people learn more about themselves and how they interact with the world.  

This leads readers to believe that all badges are ‘self-centred’ as critics like Mangan have written. Why shouldn’t we be encouraging our youngest members to have courage? Girlguiding’s research has shown that 50 per cent of girls surveyed felt anxious about their future in 2024. Showing girls how to manage feelings of worry from a young age can only be a good thing. Our Rainbows are encouraged to “share the laughter with someone else.” Brownie Guides are working on their friendship badge are asked to “spend time with a new or old friend”.  

Dig a little further and look to the other interest badges and there can be no doubt that the programme Girlguiding offers is important and helps young people to challenge themselves and build new skills. The activities offered are relevant to the concerns of young people and the betterment of their communities. Rangers are supported to learn more about voting and how to ensure their voice is heard. In a world with fast fashion and markets like Temu dominating digital spaces, Guides can find out how to make informed decisions as part of their Conscious Consumer badge. 

Brownies can learn new languages or work towards their Mechanic badge. Even the youngest girls have the chance to learn about key principles of architecture in their Construction badge – the full syllabus of which is online. For critics who say that traditional skills like knot tying, sewing, or semaphore are forgotten by Girlguiding, all of these can be found in our Skills Builders and unit meeting activities. It can be so easy to be critical of something new or something that is changing without doing any further research to find out whether the headlines are accurate. Clickbait headlines are designed to drive up traffic and revenue, but something of the truth is lost in the process.  

I am incredibly proud to be part of an organisation that offers a rich, varied programme to young people. It has helped me grow from an anxious primary school child to a leader who can recognise the value of teaching life skills that are relevant to our time and place. Right now, girls need to have the resources and support to thrive in both the tangible world, and in an increasingly digital world.  

For those disheartened by the reception of the new badges, it’s worth looking to smaller news outlets. Those who have taken the time to garner responses from members and young people are much more encouraging and help to celebrate an exciting new step in our programme. I hope that those who can see the value of the programme offered to girls through Girlguiding can use this opportunity to find out more. If anything in this article has resonated with you, please do check out volunteer opportunities. 

From someone who likes to incorporate things like Star Trek into my academic work, why shouldn’t we be able to offer a badge about Fandoms? Why shouldn’t we celebrate the things that we enjoy? There really is something for every girl, even if the loudest voices in Facebook comment sections don’t make that clear. I’m incredibly proud to be part of an organisation that brings out the best in young people (and in me as an adult leader!).  

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