Rather more generally, I think that it needs to be remembered the background against which Dawkins wrote The God Delusion.
The last decade or so has seen a rise in religious fundamentalism. Some of it has been obvious, such as Islamic terrorism or the hate and bile of the likes of Westboro Baptist Church (which was, incidentally, founded in 1955, but only rose to public notoriety in 1998 when it picketed the funeral of a victim of a homophobic murder).
But at the same time, religious groups have stepped up campaigns to, say, get creationism taught on an equal footing with science in schools – not just in the US, but in the UK too. That in particular, was a central plank of Dawkins's motivation for writing the book: the attempt to take religion into places that it has not been for many, many years (if ever).
In the UK we've also seen increasing activism by various religious groups, wanting plays closed, wanting books withdrawn from shops, wanting TV executives sacked for showing something that they don't personally like, objecting to cartoons that they don't like.
MPs have started using their position to surreptitiously push their own religious-based agendas.
Unelected, unaccountable leaders of mainstream religious groups have tried to use emotional blackmail against elected members of Parliament to get them to vote a certain way on particular debates – and at other times, they've attempted to blackmail government if they're not exempted from anti-discriminatory legislation.
And this is the UK I'm talking about.
Perhaps because many people within what we could call mainstream religion have fallen away from regular religious observance, there is a vacuum in the central area of what might be termed religious organisation. And fundamentalism is moving into that space.
The mainstream religions are trying to work out what to do. Events such as the Asian tsunami hit belief too – people found themselves finding that disaster incompatible with the idea of a loving god who had created everything. And interviewed on the radio and TV in the quest for answers, mainstream clergy had little to offer.
The Anglican communion is riven between liberals in the west and fundamentalists in the developing world. The current leader of the Catholic church is trying to drag Catholicism back into even more conservative waters (becoming increasingly fundamentalist in an effort to combat the combination of fundamentalism and general disbelief and/or lack of observance). The Pope even risk upsetting Jews, who he claims to respect, by re-introducing ultra-traditional liturgy that has the odd deprecating reference to Judaism, and revoking the excommunication of an ultra-traditional, splitting archbishop – who just happens to be a Holocaust denier too.
Until the last few years, I didn't even really know any other atheists. While my own faith had eventually disintegrated in around 2000, it wasn't as a result of any pressure. After it had gone, I didn't even think about the issue for some time, let alone talk about it with anyone. Now, atheists have started talking and have started engaging with the debate.
Personally, people can believe in fairies at the bottom of their garden, for all I care. But don't attempt to foist those beliefs onto my life. And, as the examples I've briefly outlined above illustrate, that is what some religious groups are trying to do.
Those are the sort of reasons that Dawkins wrote his book – and the sort of reasons that many atheists have, in effect, come out of the closet to pick up the debate. And it explains why this book is important – and why it's upset so many people.
The last decade or so has seen a rise in religious fundamentalism. Some of it has been obvious, such as Islamic terrorism or the hate and bile of the likes of Westboro Baptist Church (which was, incidentally, founded in 1955, but only rose to public notoriety in 1998 when it picketed the funeral of a victim of a homophobic murder).
But at the same time, religious groups have stepped up campaigns to, say, get creationism taught on an equal footing with science in schools – not just in the US, but in the UK too. That in particular, was a central plank of Dawkins's motivation for writing the book: the attempt to take religion into places that it has not been for many, many years (if ever).
In the UK we've also seen increasing activism by various religious groups, wanting plays closed, wanting books withdrawn from shops, wanting TV executives sacked for showing something that they don't personally like, objecting to cartoons that they don't like.
MPs have started using their position to surreptitiously push their own religious-based agendas.
Unelected, unaccountable leaders of mainstream religious groups have tried to use emotional blackmail against elected members of Parliament to get them to vote a certain way on particular debates – and at other times, they've attempted to blackmail government if they're not exempted from anti-discriminatory legislation.
And this is the UK I'm talking about.
Perhaps because many people within what we could call mainstream religion have fallen away from regular religious observance, there is a vacuum in the central area of what might be termed religious organisation. And fundamentalism is moving into that space.
The mainstream religions are trying to work out what to do. Events such as the Asian tsunami hit belief too – people found themselves finding that disaster incompatible with the idea of a loving god who had created everything. And interviewed on the radio and TV in the quest for answers, mainstream clergy had little to offer.
The Anglican communion is riven between liberals in the west and fundamentalists in the developing world. The current leader of the Catholic church is trying to drag Catholicism back into even more conservative waters (becoming increasingly fundamentalist in an effort to combat the combination of fundamentalism and general disbelief and/or lack of observance). The Pope even risk upsetting Jews, who he claims to respect, by re-introducing ultra-traditional liturgy that has the odd deprecating reference to Judaism, and revoking the excommunication of an ultra-traditional, splitting archbishop – who just happens to be a Holocaust denier too.
Until the last few years, I didn't even really know any other atheists. While my own faith had eventually disintegrated in around 2000, it wasn't as a result of any pressure. After it had gone, I didn't even think about the issue for some time, let alone talk about it with anyone. Now, atheists have started talking and have started engaging with the debate.
Personally, people can believe in fairies at the bottom of their garden, for all I care. But don't attempt to foist those beliefs onto my life. And, as the examples I've briefly outlined above illustrate, that is what some religious groups are trying to do.
Those are the sort of reasons that Dawkins wrote his book – and the sort of reasons that many atheists have, in effect, come out of the closet to pick up the debate. And it explains why this book is important – and why it's upset so many people.
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