I’ve just returned from our family holiday on a Spanish campsite, some of which has been spent in shorts and t-shirt under a shady tree with a good book.

It’s become my habit to take a weighty tome or two with me each summer, hoping that the children will be so engaged in jumping off the pool diving board and Sally with her camera that I can lose myself in a mental challenge which busy life at home does not easily facilitate.

Alan Storkey’s stimulating and original ‘Jesus and Politics’ was my introduction to heavyweight holiday reading, followed by Haykal’s laborious, pedantic but informative 600-page ‘The Life of Muhammad’ a couple of years later. This year I took ‘Matters of Life & Death’ by Christian ethicist John Wyatt (which opened my eyes to the heartless – and of course unchristian – treatment of weak, vulnerable and disabled people implicit in the Ronald Dworkin and Peter Singer type of secular humanism) and best-seller ‘The God Delusion’ by atheist Richard Dawkins, and it’s to the latter we turn in this post.

I approached Dawkins with some trepidation. I have of course read some of his articles and once I listened to him and his wife, Doctor Who actress Lalla Ward, ridiculing religion and especially Christianity on stage at, I think, ULU in Bloomsbury.

But, perhaps affected by the Spanish sun, I decided I’d give him full credit and try to get inside his ‘evidence-based’, ‘rational’ and naturalist arguments against the existence of God. “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down,” writes Dawkins (p28). Apprehensively, I determined to be open and vulnerable to his evidence and arguments, with the attendant risk that his book might in some way undermine my faith.

My concern was entirely misplaced as, delightfully, Dawkins is his own worst enemy; in this book the world-renowned zoologist is so patently unbalanced and blinded by his prejudice and atheist ideology that he couldn’t find a real duck let alone persuade it to quack. He entertained me but he hasn’t convinced me to give up on God. Rather he has opened my eyes to the weakness of his atheist case and – in that sense – confirmed my faith.

On the first page of the book he commences his initially modest but certainly unnecessary personal abuse (“faithheads”) and maligning of adversaries’ motives (academic opponents’ arguments based partly on their personal, genuine and often difficult conversion from atheism to Christianity are airily dismissed as “one of the oldest tricks in the book”); the abuse and maligning intensifies as the book progresses, and Dawkins is soon as happy to include dissenting atheists as much as religious opponents. By page 25 his self-confessed mission to be a “consciousness-raiser” for atheists is resulting in populist and risible over-statement (“There is no such thing as a Christian child”) and, soon, unrefined rabble-rousing. On page 51 he offers his famed paragraph of un- and pseudo-scholarly bias, bigotry, blindness and buffoonery (“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving, control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, meglomanical, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”)

But it was just a fifth of the way through (on page 81 to be precise; the book has 420 pages) that Dawkins finally lost me. Stephen Jay Gould was – he died in 2002 – an eminent evolutionary biologist, campaigner against creationism and agnostic who wrote in his book Rocks of Ages that science, which deals with the empirical realm, and religion, which deals with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value, are ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ (NOMA); the how question is categorically different from the why question. It’s an unexceptional if limiting solution to the science/religion debate.

Dawkins is a scientist who, he claims, draws conclusions only from hard facts and clear evidence; if there was incontrovertible proof of the existence of God he would change his mind immediately and convert. This sounds terrific – right up until you read Dawkins on Gould on page 81 where you realise it is patently untrue. Dawkins has creedal beliefs and doctrines as strong as any red-neck fundamentalist believer. Gould’s NOMA directly conflicts with Dawkins’ ideological scientism (which reckons science has or will have the answer for virtually every question), so “I simply do not believe that Gould could possibly have meant much of what he wrote in Rocks of Ages”!

Gould’s book says one thing plainly and clearly. Dawkins, away with the fairies, flying teapots and little green men, and against the written evidence, believes it simply must mean something else. It’s classic Dawkins self-delusion.

I’m still finishing the book which is littered with other Dawkins doctrines, dogmas, beliefs and creedal statements for which there is no proof, inadequate verification or, worse, contradicting evidence. Critic Terry Eagleton reckons Dawkins, like fellow bestselling atheist Christopher Hitchens, “plays to the high-minded liberal-humanist prejudices of (his) elite audience” (here). Certainly Dawkins is sniffily elitist and no doubt plays well in the salons of Hampstead and Islington. But his book displays breathtaking and sometimes hilarious bigotry and his chosen weapons are simplistic brutal insult, satire and derision. Believers are treated with contempt – which in a perverse way soon becomes a compliment.

He is to atheism what Nick Griffin is to patriotism. Philosophy professor Michael Ruse reckons The God Delusion makes him ashamed to be an atheist (here); the British National Party makes people ashamed to be British.

Dawkins is atheism’s rabble-rouser who preaches well to the choir and is no doubt achieving his mission of raising the consciousness of committed non-believers. Believers and agnostics shouldn’t buy a copy; he’s already rich enough from the royalties. But borrow one from the library – there’s nothing to fear from this high-voltage diatribe and much to laugh at and enjoy. You certainly won’t be persuaded.

It’s ironic that progressive Muslim Dr Taj Hargey of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, (here) asserts what radical-progressive Christian Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia doubts (here), that there is now active discrimination against Christianity in the UK – much of the responsibility for which I reckon lies at the door of this country’s particular brand of aggressive New Atheist secularisation.

Such discrimination in schools was highlighted in an Ofsted report published three weeks ago (here). And a publication ‘A New Inquisition: Religious Persecution In Britain Today’ launched a couple of week ago by the independent non-religious think-tank Civitas (here) and dedicated to Ben and Sharon Volgelenzang (see my previous post here) highlights how recent religious hatred legislation has been used in an “at best arbitrary and at worst biased” way particularly against Christians.

But discrimination against Christians in the UK is nothing compared to the persecution of Christians abroad. Over the past month:

On 1st July, Muhammad Guul Hashim Idiris, a convert from Islam, was publicly executed in the Hudur district of Somalia, apparently because of his Christian views (here).

On 5th July Maher el-Gowhary, also a convert from Islam who in the face of deep hostility is trying to get his conversion recognised by the Egyptian authorities, was ferociously attacked on a Cairo street while accompanied by his lawyer (here). According to Maher the attackers intended to behead him.

On 16th July Pastor Artur Suleimanov, another convert from Islam, was shot dead outside his church in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan (here).

On 17th July, at least eight Christians including the wife, two children and grandson of a priest were slaughtered in a previously peaceful village near Jos, Nigeria, (here) where the wider conflict is a complex tribal and economic/land issue as well as a religious one (here).

On 20th July, two local Christians questionably accused of blaspheming Islam’s prophet were shot dead outside court in Faisalabad, Pakistan (here).

On 27th July, a Christian centre in West Java, Indonesia, was attacked by Islamic extremists and buildings were destroyed (here).

There are fewer than sixty Catholic priests in Turkey and in June the fifth to be shot or stabbed in the past four years was killed and decapitated by Islamic ritual (here).

In Iraq the campaign of violence against Christians is so decimating and displacing the community that some commentators reckon it is possible Christianity’s 2000-year history in Iraq could end within a generation (here).

It is right of course that discrimination against Christians in the UK should be challenged by Hargey, Ofsted, Civitas and others.

But it is abroad where the real Christian persecution is taking place.

(Incidentally, I spoke outside 10 Downing Street yesterday at a protest against Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws. Organised by the British Pakistani Christian Association (here) and including Sikhs and people from other persecuted Pakistani minority faiths, it was held on the anniversary of the Gojra atrocity – see my previous post here – and had Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali (here), who is himself a refugee from death-threats in Pakistan, as keynote speaker.

I don’t hold much hope. Not only is the Pakistan government unwilling to address the evil effects of the blasphemy laws in their own country, they are actively promoting what is effectively a global Islamic blasphemy law at the United Nations. Pakistan, on behalf of the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, etc, who are not exactly known for promoting human rights – proposed the Combating Defamation of Religions resolution (here) which was passed at the United Nations Human Rights Council in March; indicatively and ominously the resolution highlights Islam and Muslims four times but cites no other religion. It certainly makes no mention of the defamed and mistreated Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmadiyya Muslim sect in the Islamic Republic’s own backyard.)

Midnight on Monday found me in BBC Radio 5 Live’s studios at White City discussing faith schools with Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society. We were on Tony Livesey’s late night chat show, and the issue triggering the discussion was the news that Foreign Secretary and avowed atheist David Miliband is avoiding the local state primary school near his home in Camden and sending his five year old adopted son instead to a church school further away (here). Apparently Miliband’s wife Louise attends the Anglican church linked to the school.

It is of course amusingly reminiscent of – but less spectacular than – the decision a few years ago by left-wing former fire-brand Diane Abbott MP to shun local Hackney schools and send her son to the private £10,000-a-year City of London School (here).

But it is the disingenuous nature of Keith Porteous Wood’s National Secular Society that I want to discuss here rather than the hypocrisy or otherwise of David Miliband or Diane Abbott. I’m not surprised that, when push comes to shove, parents want to do the best for their children, nor that the Milibands have chosen a church school in order to achieve this.

But the real hypocrisy and rank cant lies with the NSS, and Keith Porteous Wood is a pleasant and occasionally formidable spokesman for this deceptive organisation. NSS is better described as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The organisation likes to present itself as a benign pressure group that aims to achieve an equitable and just secular society in which religious viewpoints are appropriately represented but restricted in public life. “We campaign… against the undue influence of religion in public affairs and education,” purrs the NSS website (here) claiming they also defend values such as human rights and freedom of speech. NSS, it seems, would persuade us that it promotes a sort of ‘procedural secularism’ (to use the jargon) that includes a neutral public square where no religious worldview predominates and where the state benevolently holds the ring between alternative and often competing beliefs and creeds. This secularism entails a separation of religion and state and non-discrimination between religions by the state that guarantees plurality and religious freedom. For historical and pragmatic reasons I personally wouldn’t advocate disestablishing the national church, for instance, but for many people such ‘procedural secularism’ is an attractive way of organising public affairs, and they point to the US and India as societies where religion thrives within a secular framework.

But in fact the National Secular Society offers no such benign vision. Rather it is another vehicle for shrill and aggressive New Atheism, whose intention is not only to ride religion out of public life, but also to attack faith – especially Christianity – wherever it finds it, including in private belief and practice. According to New Atheists, religion should not even be carried on by consenting adults in private. Their virulent strain of ‘ideological secularism’ (to use the jargon again) which attempts to exclude or severely control religion in private as well as public, is what NSS in fact promotes.

How do I know? NSS’s real motives are uncovered by the ‘debaptism’ campaign currently running on the organisation’s website (here) in which we are urged to ‘Liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had!’ For a ‘bit of fun’ you can also purchase from NSS your very own ‘Certificate of Debaptism’ printed, indeed, on quality parchment paper. Yippee!

Baptism of course is a sacred Christian initiation rite as old as the faith itself. It is personal to the believer and his/her family and is carried out in and by the church. It has no impact whatever on public life or wider social policy.

So why is the NSS sticking its nose into our private business? Because it is two-faced, publicly proclaiming its vocation to promote fairness and restrict religious privilege in public life whilst actually using this as a front for its all-consuming anti-Christian crusade.

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett et al are open and honest about their desire to eradicate Christianity. The duplicitous National Secular Society is not.

And that’s why Keith Porteous Wood could only talk cant about Christian and church schools on Monday night.

It was the 19th century biologist T H Huxley – aka ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ for his public support for Charles Darwin’s recently published theory of evolution – who said that “The great tragedy of Science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” We’ve recently seen the slaying of the beautiful hypothesis of man-made climate change by the ugly fact of the human frailty of scientists courtesy of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia.

The clandestine release of CRU’s confidential emails and documents on the internet (here) – inevitably now called ‘Climategate’ – may prove to be to science what the Telegraph’s publication of MP’s expenses is to politics. And in a wider sense it’s possible it will also   be as undermining to Richard Dawkins   and his fellow science-worshippers as child-abuse by priests and nuns is to the Roman Catholic Church.

On the top global issue of the day where accurate scientific analysis is vital, and just before the Copenhagen summit, we discover – surprise, surprise – that scientists (the high priests of Dawkins’ God-forsaken new religion, Science-is-God) seem to have feet of clay and are subject to the same mendacity and prejudice (Christians call it ‘sinfulness’) as the rest of us. It appears the CRU’s climate-change conclusions do not exactly exhibit ex cathedra infallibility nor are their theories quite as flawless as holy writ.

The ‘ugly fact’ of scientists’ frailty was amply illustrated on BBC TV’s Newsnight on Friday when Professor Andrew Watson from the School of Environmental Sciences also at the University of East Anglia attempted to defend his colleagues at the CRU in a head-to-head debate with ‘Global Warming Contrarian’ Marc Morano speaking from Washington. As I watched Prof Watson’s woeful performance, I was persuaded to take a significant mental step towards the sceptics’ camp.

It was appalling. The main thrust of Prof Andrew’s argument was that underlying CRU research is sound and that the critics are simply mounting a campaign of “character assassination” against CRU personnel. But he became shrill in his protests. He rolled his eyes like a schoolboy in a tantrum. “Stop shouting” he squealed at the bullish American. “Will you shut up just a second?” he yelped.

His piece de resistance came at the end. “What an arsehole,” spat out this esteemed professor who had previously objected to character assassination and was hereby exposed as a vulgar and intolerant hypocrite. It was an expletive for which the BBC subsequently had to apologise. (Watch key moments from Andrews’ performance here.)

Was this an example of the cool, logical, objective, factual, dispassionate, reasoned, rational, evidence-based argument of one of Dawkins’ scientists – the exact opposite (according to Dawkins) of the subjective, biased, emotional, irrational, unreasonable, partial, perverse mumbo-jumbo of religious people?

Actually, the childishness, prejudice, petulance and condescending conceitedness displayed by the professor was breathtaking. No wonder Americans think the English are a whingeing supercilious lot.

No wonder too that the arguments of global-warming sceptics are gaining traction against the theories of climate-change scientists.

A couple of weeks ago or so I watched the final programme in Richard Dawkins’ Channel 4 series ‘The Genius of Charles Darwin’.I generally try to avoid personal denigration, preferring to assess someone’s ideas and opinions rather than their character. (It is of course a false if civilising dichotomy to separate a person from his/her views as ideas don’t exist in a vacuum, they come from a personality. In many ways ideas reflect the person.)

However on this occasion I’m willing to state categorically that however articulate and intelligent, Dawkins is a fool and he’s an important reminder of Churchill’s dictum that scientists (and those like Dawkins who worship a scientific world-view) should be on tap but not on top. On the key issues of life my pre-teen daughters have more real insight and wisdom than the high-flying high-profile former professor from Oxford University.

Personally I’m agnostic about whether we evolved over millennia or were created literally in seven days, and I’ll happily concede that Dawkins makes an enthusiastic case for the former. However it doesn’t seem all that important especially as by his own scientific criteria Dawkins will never be able to prove a key component of today’s evolutionary theory: the Big Bang was by definition a one-off and therefore cannot be subject to the repeated and rigorous testing that scientific analysis requires. It must always remain a theory and therefore ultimately a matter of, well, belief – rather like the 39 Articles of Religion of the Church of England. In the programme Dawkins came across as a sincere, passionate but slightly dotty high priest of this new religion and presumably his bank balance is following the ever-upward trajectory of his unintended and equally dotty alma mater from another new religion, Rev Sun Myung Moon of the Moonies.

My problem is not with evolutionary theory per se but with Dawkins’ insistence that science has (or will have one day) the complete explanation for all things. Dawkins is locked into a mechanistic materialist and therefore limited view of the world in which nothing can exist unless it can be seen, measured, tested and exactly evaluated. “Where’s the evidence for God?” he cries. “Show me the provable facts and I’ll believe!”

Poor Dawkins. No doubt he’s an excellent scientific thinker and apologist. But what about love, beauty and truth: there can be no measurable scientific, logical or rational explanation for them so do they not exist? How about the human potential inherent in my young daughters that will blossom in unknown ways as the years unfold: it cannot be measured so does it not exist? What about the effect on a concert audience of the first movement of Beethoven’s sublime ‘Moonlight’ sonata played perhaps by Daniel Barenboim (here); Dawkins-style science cannot begin to explain the magic of the moment so did it not happen? How about Gazza’s stunning volley into the Scottish net in Euro 96; scientific logic cannot explain, understand or predict Gascoigne’s flash of genius, so what exactly are we watching on the video (here) Professor Dawkins?

And how about poetry, dance and the imaginative arts? Beyond technical support, what has science usefully to offer towards the illogical creativity inherent in all these?

The programme showed Dawkins foolishly worshipping the small god of his own closed scientific belief system. It would be funny if it wasn’t evidently so persuasive to so many in our secular age.

Instead it’s tragic.

Douglas Murray is a man in a hurry – or at least a man rapidly on the move.

Youthful founding director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, political columnist, lonely defender of neo-conservatism, luminary of BBC programmes such as Question Time and The Moral Maze and biographer of Oscar Wilde’s homosexual lover Lord Alfred Douglas, Murray is a rising star on the national political scene.

I was at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre a couple of years ago where, before a huge audience, he and Daniel Pipes trounced Ken Livingstone and Salma Yaqoub at the then Mayor’s showcase ‘Clash of Civilisations’ debate. Murray was entertaining, incisive and outstanding.

I also know personally that he is generous and sensitive.

I was saddened therefore to read his recent Spectator article ‘Studying Islam has made me an Atheist’  in which he blames the ‘repetitions, contradictions and absurdities’ of the Quran for turning him against all holy books including the Bible of his own Christian heritage. ‘Holy texts are an accretion of human effort and human error… Scepticism of the claims made by one religion (Islam) was joined by scepticism of all such claims… Muhammad made me an atheist.’

Although he went to church with his family on the Big Day three weeks ago, it was his first non-believing Christmas.

I can understand where he is coming from. Like Murray I was brought up an Anglican and like Murray my religion ebbed and flowed. (As Boris Johnson puts it, “My faith is a bit like Magic FM in the Chilterns, the signal comes and goes.”) But following university and business school, I had drifted into long-term indifferent agnosticism by my mid-twenties.

But what pulled me up short and converted me into an irrevocably committed Christian just before my 30th birthday was precisely that which Murray has so recently rejected – the scriptures, and in particular the account of Christ in the New Testament.

I found that the Bible isn’t primarily a set of propositional truths, ancient stories, beautiful poetry or abstract theology – although it is these. Neither is it just great literature like Shakespeare – although the 1611 Authorised Version gives the Bard more than a run for his money.

I found rather that the scriptures are alive and active. They have the ability to reach out and pluck at your heart strings and/or punch you on the nose in a way unknown to other literature.

So when Shakespeare puts in King Lear’s mouth “I am a man more sinned against than sinning,” we may begin at last to engage sympathetically with Lear in his steady decline from tyrant to tragedy, but we leave the theatre personally unchallenged.

However, when the New Testament tells us that the pre-existent Son of God, facing betrayal, scourging and an excruciatingly painful death, tells his followers “Now (am I) glorified and God is glorified (in me)… A new commandment I give you: Love one another,” we cannot walk away unchallenged. Christ is making huge claims about himself and his demise and significant demands on his followers.

Either he is completely nuts or he is who he says he is.

As I wrestled with the scriptures I found the truth slowly got hold of me from out of its pages. In the end I could do nothing but stop arguing, chuck in the towel and admit that Jesus Christ is indeed the ultimate reality.

Precise accuracy in the material or measurable sense was no longer of major concern. The Bible had revealed profound truth that transcended this limited physical world in a way that Shakespeare cannot. Despite myself, I had come into a deep personal commitment.

Douglas Murray’s issue about the accuracy or error of the Bible is important, but not – in my experience – with regard to personal faith. The key question is whether it speaks to you in a life-challenging way.

When Jesus tells us ‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’ is that just an interesting Christian ethic? Or is it a command from our Maker to be complied with?

The decision, as they say, is yours.

The excellent new music and arts centre, Kings Place, behind Kings Cross station, is the venue for The Classical Opera Company’s current Mozart Week.

Last night my wife and I went there to listen to Mozart wizard, Ian Page, and six singers as they took us on a journey through all the composer’s operas from his first, Apollo et Hyacinthus, to his last, Die Zauberflote.  (Page points out the mysteriously neat chronological coincidence of the ‘A’ and ‘Z’ of Mozart’s operas.)

It was entrancing. Staged in the soaring Hall One which apparently is lined throughout in veneer garnered from a single, 500-year-old Black Forest oak and has ‘the elegance and grandeur of a Greek temple,’ Page’s skill at the piano and his authoritative and enthusiastic introduction to each piece, together with the rich variety of voices and personalities accompanying him – it all resulted in an evening to remember.

But what struck me most was the sheer unadulterated genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Born in 1756, he wrote his first symphony at 8 years of age and completed his first full opera at age 11. Composer of over 600 pieces many of which are utterly sublime (personally I can listen endlessly to most of his piano concertos), he died aged just 35 while working on his Requiem Mass.

Like a shooting star he enlightened the musical firmament for just a short while before he burnt out, but his legacy is enduring – more than 200 years after his death there is no sign of his popularity or signal influence waning.

But last night as I listened, uplifted not only by the ability of the performers to entertain and inspire but by the brilliance of Mozart’s music, I was struck again by the inadequacy of the atheist position. If there is no God, where does Mozart’s transcendent genius come from?

If we are here ultimately as the result of blind chance and chemical/biological processes and if there is no Intelligence behind the universe, Mozart must have been a chance phenomenon, the result of the roll of some cosmic dice (but then, who rolled the dice?).

How much more fulfilling, satisfying and true to acknowledge Mozart not only as a being created in his own right but also as a specific gift to humankind from a benevolent God who is interested in and involved with His creation.

We cannot now thank Mozart for his music but we can be elevated out of the world’s limitations of time and space (for us, yesterday evening at Kings Place) by offering gratitude to the Creator of the universe for His gift of Mozart’s creativity.

There is a story about a soldier of the 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment who, at the end of 24 hours of ditch-by-ditch, mound-by-mound, close-quarter fighting with well-positioned Argentine infantry at Goose Green in the Falklands, came across a tape of Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto in the pocket of a dead Argentine soldier. Exhausted by his efforts, filthy from endless crawling through mud and crouching in ditches, his ears still ringing and nerves jangling, shocked by the lives of close colleagues lost during the fight, relieved that the enemy had surrendered and that the sounds of battle were stilled, and elated to be alive, he inserted the recording into his personal stereo and played the slow second movement.

Put yourself in the shaken soldier’s position and then listen to the genius of Beethoven in the simplicity of that tender and soothing piece. Besides the sheer universality of the music – the appreciation of which bound together two combatants from opposite sides of the world – I defy anyone to conclude from the music itself that there is no God.

Where else could such divine harmony come from?