I won’t join the ranks of rabid finger-jabbers without a fight

NONE of us will get out of this thing alive. Some time i n the f uture – I hope it is not soon – Professor Richard Dawkins certainly will die.

For now, the 74- year- old evolutionary biologist has suffered a minor stroke and, in the vengeful glare of the religious extremist there is a glint of anticipation.

The reasoning (although I hesitate to call it such) is God gave Professor Dawkins his stroke, just as, in time, the great landlord in the sky will terminate this outspoken atheist’s tenancy on Earth. When He does, the Almighty will show t he t wittering scientist who is boss.

It is always this way with those who displease the zealots. Infidels experience the awesome power of divine justice when they die; the faithful simply go to a better place.

We cross now to the lane on the opposite extreme of the highway of modern thought where equality campaigners challenge the suitability of prospective Holyrood candidate Sophia Coyle because she is a Catholic who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.

Others there wonder what BBC Breakfast is playing at in giving Baptist Christian and creationist Dan Walker a job as a presenter. How, they ask, can a man who believes God created the Earth in six days as recently as 6,000 years ago present an impartial, factbased programme when his beliefs are an affront to logic?

What would happen, f or example, if he were forced to present last week’s finding that colliding black holes two billion light years away confirm Einstein’s thesis on gravita- tional waves? Wouldn’t his head explode live on air?

It is against this background that Free Church of Scotland Moderator David Robertson highlights a growing ‘intolerance’ of Christianity. He is probably right. Society does indeed appear less tolerant of people of faith today. But then, society seems less tolerant of pretty much everything.

‘It’s ironic that sometimes the best place to experience hate is to go to an anti-hate rally,’ he declares. Right again.

‘In the name of tolerance, the social media mob demand intolerance of anyone who does not share their views.’ Yup, that is the bile-filled diversity crusader’s paradox to a T.

Intolerance

Another irony Mr Robertson could have drawn attention to is that of the Christian complaining about secular intolerance of his views. For centuries churches marginalised their absentees, fining them, humiliating them, making examples of them to deter other potential free-thinkers. To live in 17th century Scotland as a secularist was to grapple most unavailingly with intolerance.

The tables have turned, but not entirely. There is a video on YouTube in which Professor Dawkins reads aloud his correspondence from Christian fundamentalists itching for God to smite him, salivating at the thought of the author of the abominable God Delusion ruing his own delusion for all eternity in the fiery pits.

Their hatred verges on the comic. Certainly he finds it all very amusing.

But the sobering reality is these people mean what they are saying. Both sides do. In a supposedly enlightened age, our intolerance of those with whom we disagree borders far too often on the fanatical.

Is it too melodramatic to suggest that we even-tempered souls in the middle of the road are assailed by a pincer movement of unbending dogma from either side? I do not want to be melodramatic.

There again, nor do I want to be turned into a rabid fingerjabber without a fight.

It is just two years since samesex marriage was approved by MSPs. For what it is worth, I approve of it too. But making it legal for two men or two women to marry does not make it a crime to believe the law should not have been passed.

Our private moral outlook need not mirror the legislative agenda of the government. We get to have opinions.

So Sophia Coyle thinks samesex marriage is wrong. Do we suggest her view falls so far outside the realms of respectability that anything else she has to say is beside the point? If so, in our haste to express diversity, we express totalitarianism.

So Dan Walker is a creationist who believes things that many of us find absurd. Is the sug- gestion seriously that those who hold no longer fashionable cosmological beliefs render themselves incompatible with the role of BBC broadcaster? It may be a good thing that Mr Walker is not a fossil scientist, a geologist or an astrophysicist. But I see no issue with his presenting TV programmes.

The real issue is intolerance – and the crushing of reasoned debate under the Twitterfuelled steamroller of hotheaded name-calling.

Decorum

I used to enjoy arguments. Once, as a philosophy student, I arrived at a tutorial to find it was just me and the tutor present. We argued solidly for an hour. I can still see the gleeful smile of this wizened man of letters as he weathered my gauche ideological onslaught. The good humour with which we debated has stayed with me long after the content of our discussion faded.

I remember, too, the scrupulous decorum with which publ i shed philosophers aimed precision missiles at each other’s houses of cards. To them, challenges were not just welcome but essential. For they were prospectors in pursuit of the unshakeable.

Today arguments are too often synonymous with aggravation. Tempers flare too easily – or else bystanders fearing a screaming match intervene with the pre-emptive fire hose.

The i nstinctive reaction to the rise of intolerance, to the bovver-booted mob rule polluting today’s dialogue is to steer clear of difficult issues. But it is the wrong one.

The result is too few of our opinions are fully road-tested. Extremism thrives and we are ill-equipped to kick it back into the gutter.