Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »
OPINION:"Opposition to religion occupies the high ground, intellectually and morally," wrote Martin Amis recently. Over the past few years, leading writers and thinkers have published best-selling tracts against God. But the "secular fundamentalists" have got it all wrong, according to John Gray.
AN ATMOSPHERE of moral panic surrounds religion. Viewed not so long ago as a relic of superstition whose role in society was steadily declining, it is now demonised as the cause of many of the world's worst evils. As a result, there has been a sudden explosion in the literature of proselytising atheism. A few years ago, it was difficult to persuade commercial publishers even to think of bringing out books on religion. Today, tracts against religion can be enormous money-spinners, with Richard Dawkins's The God Delusionand Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Greatselling in the hundreds of thousands. For the first time in generations, scientists and philosophers, high-profile novelists and journalists are debating whether religion has a future. The intellectual traffic is not all one-way. There have been counterblasts for believers, such as The Dawkins Delusion?by the British theologian Alister McGrath and The Secular Ageby the Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor. On the whole, however, the anti-God squad has dominated the sales charts, and it is worth asking why.
