August 13, 2014
Because moderate Christians and Muslims are so pleasant people believe that religion is good, decent, ordinary churchgoers have helped enable religious fundamentalists to become suicide bombers by being “so nice” that people do not question their faiths, Richard Dawkins has argued.
Dawkins, the evolutionary scientist and outspoken atheist, said moderate Christian and Muslim believers had inadvertently paved the way for extremists by saying they had made non-evidence-based belief a “legitimate reason” for their behaviour, he claimed they have now helped “make the world safe” for fundamentalists to exist.
“It’s very important that we should not demonise ordinary, law-abiding, very decent Muslims which of course is the vast majority in this country, but what I do think about the difference, and let’s leave out Muslims specifically, but the difference between moderate religious people and extremist fundamentalists is that although of course it’s only a tiny minority of any sect which is ever going to get violent or horrible, there is a sense in which the moderate, nice religious people – nice Christians, nice Muslims – make the world safe for extremists, because the moderates are so nice we all are brought up with the idea that there’s something good about religion faith. That there’s something good about bringing children up to have a faith, which means to believe something without evidence and without the need for justifying it.” he said
