Dawkins methodically covers the field - all forms of theism, the arguments for the existence of God, the omnipresent fact of a religious impulse. Yet The God Delusion can still evidence the best of English empirical thinking.
So the books tend to be testimony to exasperation. Islamic jihad seems to have terror stalking the entire globe. Protestant fundamentalism is seen to have some responsibility for America blundering on into irreparable self-harm. Religious conflict was localised: Catholics fought Protestants in Belfast.īut now the dikes are down and religious problems have spilled over and become a universal threat. A generation ago religious power was contained: the evangelical preachers of the United States were thought of as effective but corralled. Yet Onfray's and Dawkins's books are tracts for a time of need - the sudden worldwide awareness of the power and problems of religion.
We can no more tolerate neutrality and benevolence toward every conceivable form of discourse, including that of magical thinking, than we can lump together executioner and victim, good and evil." This last page fiat follows 15 pages on Islam being, of its nature, fascist. What this means is that "all discourse does not carry the same weight - the discourse of neurosis, hysteria and mysticism proceeds from another world than that of the positivist.
Onfray calls for a secularism purged of its kowtowing to Judeo-Christian principles. It bears no relation to its own title ( Traite d'atheologie in the French), cramming into its last two pages a few thoughts for a positive ideology and even then it can only be negative. It is all slogans, abstractions and rant. And yes, his 25th book, The Atheist Manifesto, is a thoroughgoing dud. Michel Onfray is 49, teaches philosophy at an institution he founded and named the Popular University of Caen.
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