Starting at the bottom: Should a public school (i.e. "government" school) teacher lead the class in their respective prayers? Does the teacher get to recite the prayer of their own religion in class? Dawkins' family was, like many upper middle class English families, nominally Anglican. They observed some of the rituals and recited prayers, including in public school (yes, their private) but they were never terribly religious. In other words, they were typical, educated mid-century Anglicans. Famously, he was "touched-up" a bit by a teacher and professed that it didn't harm him in the slightest. My earlier point was that he was never much more than nominally Anglican in the first place, and only as a preteen, so there was almost nothing for him to give up. Catholicism certainly didn't use to be so science-friendly, as you well know. To the extent that it now is is completely attributable to science. It had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a scientific worldview by science . Still, there is their troubling position on birth control. And, I repeat (with corrections): So, we come today, to a rational form of Christianity retreating ever-further into increasingly ethereal and philosophical domains, protected from scientific refutation by ever-more modest truth claims. They are becoming, effectively, declawed and defanged. That means that non-fundamentalist, religious intellectuals are not making supernatural claims that contradict science. Thus, they have retreated to a philosophical domain that is completely unlike religion of X number of years ago. Again, which Christianity is the "true" Christianity? If you're going by the numbers, then in the U.S., you are vastly out-numbered, I'm afraid. |