Letter to Richard Dawkins

So, for a while now I’ve been trying to contact Professor Dawkins. So far unsuccessful, but one can always hope. Here’s my letter for him.

Dear Professor Dawkins,

I am an avid reader of yours from the Czech Republic. I write to you with a question in mind which pertains to the public advocacy for non-belief. I have been a strident atheist for the most of my life. I live in a prominently agnostic country—the Czech Republic (where some 80 % are non-declared or non-religious). Currently I am attempting to understand just how broader the struggle for secularism is, than only tackling the problem of organised religion. The post-communistic mentality of disbelief did not eradicate what I choose to call faith-based thinking. It should be noted here I am not addressing religious fundamentalism, but rather a general leniency toward general superstition and disregard for empirical reasoning.

Once I heard you mention moral relativism in a documentary, much in accord with what I happen to believe, but the core struggle which I identify in the fight for real secularism is another kind of relativism. It is the relativisation of truth, the philosophical stance that truth is relative and two contradictory truths can coexist. Should this principle be challenged aggressively by secularists?

However rational one is in everyday life, a majority of European populations, I suspect, are perfectly comfortable with the idea of plurality of truths. It seems this is why the religious mindset persists.It is why people fall for charlatanish alternative medicine practices.This is why stridently anti-religious Czechs believe in New Age therapies.Last but not least, it might be why we are overly tolerant toward extreme religious fundamentalists in Europe.

The last of these points is especially alarming, with the majority of the Czech people whom I know dismissing opposition to the threat of Muslim militancy as interfering with the credos of multiculturalism.So many argue that the ‘reality’ of Islam, of jihad and of Sharia is as good as our secular reality. In other words, our ‘truths’—which really seems to be a wrong term for ‘opinions’—are equal and deserve respect.

I would love to ask you about the idea of relativism and its, from my point of view, dangers when classical religious faiths are challenged.Is the seeming acceptance of ‘multiple truths’ a semantic problem, or is it more than that? Is there not a danger that a newly convinced agnostic-atheist, previously under the moderating influence of a major organised religion, becomes vulnerable to other covert ideologies requiring, as Bill Maher likes to say so eloquently, the purposeful suspension of critical thinking? Is it not the core of the problem that there is actually an accord between being an empirically-minded atheist and a die-hard religious fundamentalist: that at some point it is necessary to affirm that truth is absolute?

I shall be delighted if you find an opportunity to respond. Many thanks for what you do.

Sincerely,

David Novak