Devil's advocate, pun intended, but I don't see how that's the core issue. Science is also supposed to be secular, and yet with leftism dominating academia, here we have leftists using "female" to describe a man. Leftist dehumanization campaigns against political opponents allow them to justify not sticking to their alleged principles. The problem is that weak and/or malicious leftists in charge put politics ahead of principles in whatever form those principles take. As a result, they engage us and other dissidents with hypocrisy, a lack of fairness, contempt, and complete insincerity. Religious people can behave that way too -- look at the pope.
I think that what we're seeing is that it turns out it's not as easy to create an irreligious society as Dawkins may have hoped. In fact, it may even be impossible. You root out the trappings of religion, and something else that doesn't call itself a religion takes its place... but it turns out the new thing sure behaves a lot like a religion, and now it's what's shaping your society's mores. Christianity, whether you believe in it or not, mostly produced a reasonable, well-ordered society. Leftism... not so much.
Greece and Rome had very advanced moral frameworks long before Christianity came along. The educated classes didn't by and large believe their culture's polytheistic deities to be real, and morality was separate from religion considering that said deities were portrayed as behaving abominably anyways.
Over in the East, Confucianism was the prevailing moral framework, and it was secular. The Taoists combined religion with morality, as did the Buddhists, but neither managed to achieve the same level of hegemony in any large Eastern country like Christianity did for Western countries.
Dharmic religions resemble Abrahamic religions in terms of meticulously tying together a specific metaphysics, cosmology, epistemology, ethics, and even politics together into an all-encompassing system of thought. Plus you have monotheistic traditions like Zoroastrianism to contend with, not to mention Gnosticism.
Once a religion of the magnitude of Christianity starts falling, it might not be possible to stop it. Dawkins may be a materialist fool, but maybe we're at a historical moment akin to the fall of European "pagan" religions.
Maybe Mormonism or Gnosticism or Buddhism or Zoroastrianism or something we've never heard of will become the next big thing for Western societies in the coming millennia. People are becoming more curious about esotericism and the occult as well, though I strongly advise caution for anyone thinking of going down that path.
How's that uprooted atheist society working out for you Mr. Dawkins?
/Do the church bells still ring?
Devil's advocate, pun intended, but I don't see how that's the core issue. Science is also supposed to be secular, and yet with leftism dominating academia, here we have leftists using "female" to describe a man. Leftist dehumanization campaigns against political opponents allow them to justify not sticking to their alleged principles. The problem is that weak and/or malicious leftists in charge put politics ahead of principles in whatever form those principles take. As a result, they engage us and other dissidents with hypocrisy, a lack of fairness, contempt, and complete insincerity. Religious people can behave that way too -- look at the pope.
I think that what we're seeing is that it turns out it's not as easy to create an irreligious society as Dawkins may have hoped. In fact, it may even be impossible. You root out the trappings of religion, and something else that doesn't call itself a religion takes its place... but it turns out the new thing sure behaves a lot like a religion, and now it's what's shaping your society's mores. Christianity, whether you believe in it or not, mostly produced a reasonable, well-ordered society. Leftism... not so much.
Greece and Rome had very advanced moral frameworks long before Christianity came along. The educated classes didn't by and large believe their culture's polytheistic deities to be real, and morality was separate from religion considering that said deities were portrayed as behaving abominably anyways.
Over in the East, Confucianism was the prevailing moral framework, and it was secular. The Taoists combined religion with morality, as did the Buddhists, but neither managed to achieve the same level of hegemony in any large Eastern country like Christianity did for Western countries.
Dharmic religions resemble Abrahamic religions in terms of meticulously tying together a specific metaphysics, cosmology, epistemology, ethics, and even politics together into an all-encompassing system of thought. Plus you have monotheistic traditions like Zoroastrianism to contend with, not to mention Gnosticism.
Once a religion of the magnitude of Christianity starts falling, it might not be possible to stop it. Dawkins may be a materialist fool, but maybe we're at a historical moment akin to the fall of European "pagan" religions.
Maybe Mormonism or Gnosticism or Buddhism or Zoroastrianism or something we've never heard of will become the next big thing for Western societies in the coming millennia. People are becoming more curious about esotericism and the occult as well, though I strongly advise caution for anyone thinking of going down that path.