When the Edinburgh Science Festival announced a few weeks ago that there would be an encounter between me and Richard Dawkins on April 1, a newspaper scented blood. They sent us both a questionnaire which previewed what they thought the topics of the debate should cover, and asked us to fill it in. Meekly, I was about to comply, till I saw Richard Dawkins' riposte. He informed the newspaper that he was looking forward to a civilised conversation with Richard Holloway, and had no intention of allowing the newspaper either to steal his thunder or anticipate his tone. No article appeared.
But we certainly had a civilised conversation that ranged widely over the advertised topic of Religion, God and Science. I am emphasising the civilised nature of the event, because there is an erroneous opinion out there that Richard Dawkins is a rottweiler who savages all who care to disagree with him on the great existential issues. Richard Dawkins himself believes that in our era of contrived controversy there are not enough opportunities for polite yet challenging encounters between people on the great issues that face us.
We agreed that, as far as we know, we are the only animals on the planet who are an object of interest to themselves, and that in us the universe has started asking questions about itself, the kind of questions I wrestle with in BETWEEN THE MONSTER AND THE SAINT: REFLECTIONS ON THE HUMAN CONDITION, to published by Canongate this summer. It is our fascination with the questions we are born with that has given rise to religion, philosophy and science. While we both agreed that agnosticism about God's existence was the intelligent default position, he tilted more to absolute atheism that I did. I argued strongly for a humanistic way of following the Christian religion and refused to accept that only a supernatural understanding of its myths is honest. Naturally, he didn't quite buy that, but he did appear to respect it: hard not to, mind you, when the Astronomer Royal describes himself as a practising but unbelieving Christian.
And there was some good rough and tumble during questions from the audience. In his reply to one question he told us that a lot of science teachers are encountering students who describe themselves as Young Earth creationists, holding that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. This, he said, was no small error: it is equivalent to claiming that, despite the evidence, the width of North America from coast to coast is only 7.8 yards. But, then, the last thing you can have with a Creationist is a civilised conversation.
