This morning I revisited an interview on YouTube that the BBC had with Richard Dawkins about atheism.
Erudite, intelligent, clearly thought-out reasoning - what you would expect from Dawkins.
He has though become the public face of atheism following the success of his (allegedly) controversial book "The God Delusion". I have read the book, agreed with much what was in there, and nodded at times when he confirmed what I have come to accept was the case in the light of 40 years worth of non-belief and investigations into the subject.
Not that I agreed with everything, I hasten to add.
Years ago I read Bertrand Russell on the subject, and was awe-struck at the clarity and profundity of his arguments. I also as a student read writers from the French enlightenment like Diderot and D'Holbach, who spoke eloquently on the subject. And before I even became an atheist I read part of the work Roman writer, Lucretius ("De Rerum Natura"), where in an early scientific analysis of the nonsense of belief and the facts of how things really work, the writer set out one of the early works of genius on the subject.
This is 2000 years ago, and you can go back another 500 years to ancient Greece to find atheists, people with a clear scientific mind-set, who embraced atheistic concepts.
It is not simply a fad of the age. It is not simply the product of Darwinism (many people in the USA, in particular, automatically associate Darwin with atheism as if the theory did not exist before him - it did, it had for over 2,000 years, and Darwin was simply another important influence upon the thinking involved - bringing forth a whole new set of scientific principles to consider).
But in the age where the media has become at once potent and poisonous, there seems to be a need to identify a cause or a belief system or support of a series of principles by giving it a human face - an Aunt Sally to be knocked over if you like. I was not "converted" to atheism by reading Dawkins's book, it merely reinforced some of the views that I already held.
If other people are convinced by the work and become atheists, all well and good. It would be particularly valuable if that happened in the "Muslim world" for example, where the capacity to even challenge the status quo is prohibited.
On the subject of which, I come to the case of Anjem Choudary. If Richard Dawkins has become the public face of atheism, Choudary has become, in the UK at least, the public face of unreasoned militant Islam. Given some of his beliefs and the incendiary statements that he has issued, it remains a source of surprise to me that he has not been charged with incitement to terrorism in the UK, and that the USA has not sought his extradition for the same.
Obviously he manages to walk the necessary legal tightrope (as a qualified lawyer he would know the traps to avoid), where the organisations that he supports are banned, but as an individual he is not prosecuted.
He is, and should be, entitled IMHO to practise his belief system in as far as that it affects himself, and himself alone. Once you start spreading it into the public domain though and affecting other individuals, then you have crossed a significant line where you are infringing upon the rights of others to decide for themselves.
And there is no doubt in my mind that much about Choudary is as political as it is religious.
The fact though that he has become this public face has led to exposés, like the one in the UK tabloid, the Daily Mail, two years ago indicating that in his student days he was an alcohol abuser, a person who experimented with drugs, and a notorious womaniser.
All well and good - but the item (typical of the conservative tabloids in the UK) did not produce one shred of evidence, and merely came across as a standard piece of character assassination.
He may well deserve to have his character assassinated, but that is another matter. If he did behave like this in the past and renounced his conduct (many converts to all faiths do this on a regular basis), that does not invalidate his current beliefs. That he wrote off the article as a complete fabrication does not alter anything either.
Eventually his public face can well disappear (I would not be surprised to see this Islamofascist murdered by someone from the standard Euro-Fascist fringe like the EDL at some point). The dangerous belief system that he propagates, and which needs to be excoriated for the brutal sham that it is, will continue with different leadership and different public faces.
There is a battle of minds to be won, modern logic versus 1600 year old barbarous myth. There is also a need to look at the economic problems faced by the portion of society that is drawn into this antiquated belief system as it can see no other way out of its despair.
That, though, given the failure of the various economic systems of whatever type, across Europe as a whole, is wishing for the proverbial moon.
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