I disagree with Dawkins on various things and I sense it’s become uncool to like him in even right-adjacent spaces, but he’s a really underrated writer. I mean sentence to sentence, clarity, span of reference, rather than his ideas per se… as you write he’s a dying breed, which is our loss.
I nearly cried reading this, Ed. I've waited decades to read an appreciation of Professor Dawkins - one of our all time great Britons - by one who is honestly a believer, secure enough in your faith that you don't sneer, as so many of his religious critics have, at an intellect so cathedral-like in its beauty. Thank you. This is truly beautiful writing about a truly beautiful mind.
Dawkins exemplifies the flowering of the Anglo mind: deeply curious, literary articulate (though I wish he had read more Dostoevsky and less Jane Austen), polite but aggressive at times, and imbued with the spirit of the European Enlightenment. I wish there were more people like this in the Arab world! On that note, I think that the English education system's apparent inability to "produce" more people like him is a true sign of Anglo civilization's decline!
And in this Eid afternoon, this made me laugh so hard!
“Once upon a time, I recall Dawkins referring to Catholicism as ‘the world’s second most evil religion’, which we regarded with pride at the Herald, and though the obvious follow-up question was not asked, there was little doubt which faith occupied the top spot in his worldview. Twitter was to make it obvious.”
“Dawkins’s Oxford circle is unusual, the people there selected for traits rare in the outside world. Without the binding power of religion, which makes our unusually social primate species able to co-operate in very large groups, it is certainly harder to foster or maintain civilisation.”
Exactly - that’s the take home. It is odd that people who are so clearly intelligent cannot see how different they are from the rest of humanity, by and large. Also worth mentioning that pretty little Oxford (the city and the university) was also built by people who were absurdly religious by today’s standards. Have atheists built anything comparable?
Good point. There are many people - like our Ed - who go: “Middle Ages Dark Ages all rubbish” and ignore Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Chartres etc. Westminster Abbey was built before 1066 FCS!
Very interesting - thanks. I was very much a Dawkins fan when younger, after reading the Selfish Gene and generally thinking the New Atheism was *obviously* correct and anyone objecting to it was *obviously* just not clever enough to understand the issues properly. Now I think it's all very much more complicated. Dawkins clearly still thinks that (a) religions are false and also (b) societies are better off without them. I wonder how he'd respond to the hypothetical possibility that (a) religions are false, but (b) societies quickly go off the rails without them. Would he cling on to the idea that it's better to stick to the truth, even at the cost of social decline/breakdown? Or would he tolerate some sort of noble lie, just to keep the things he likes (evensong, cricket on the green, etc)?
"New Atheism was fashionable, forming an identity glue for what Scott Alexander called the ‘blue tribe’ – secular, liberal university-educated urbanites with a strong sense of in-group." Do you mean the "gray tribe"
Scott talks a bit about how a pro-science, atheistic, very male coded gray tribe tried to separate from the "blue tribe" but the "gray tribe" and New Atheism kind of failed before splitting.
Thank you for this, Ed. It's been too long since I read Dawkins. I was a New Atheist when it was a thing, despite having gone off Dawkins briefly after 9/11 when I'd bought a few newspapers to try to work out what was going on, and what was going to happen, and Dawkins had a long piece in, I think, The Independent, which I found disappointing, because while he knew a bit about Islam, it was pretty clear that he didn't know enough, or anything about bin Laden really, to justify his essay. (Actually, I found pretty much all the background and opinion pieces disappointing, because nobody seemed to really understand the motivation. But I'd expected something from Dawkins, and didn't get it.)
I think part of the reason New Atheism died (apart from it being a phase or a fashion, and one for people who felt they had to move on every so often anyway) is that some of us, like me, were more clearly Islamophobic if you will, and others preferred the pushing at a greatly weakened Christianity, while pretending it was still strong.
"Maybe it was psychologically easier for people to blame all religions for the world’s problems than to admit that one particular faith made them nervous about getting on the Tube." THIS!
Not that it matters, but I seem to remember that Captain Cook used Sauerkraut rather than citrus fruits, and I've found a source which backs me.
"yet the rational argument for Christianity as a positive force flounders on the question of whether it is true.. ." I prefer William James' more pragmatic approach in "The Will to Believe" : the truth of an idea should be judged on the basis of its fruits, of the things it makes possible which otherwise could or would probably never have existed.
And in any event, who knows what it feels like to die?
I guess my position would be something like this: that for centuries past, Christian faith has given countless millions of our ancestors in the lower classes, men and women who otherwise were hopelessly trapped in meaningless lives (living in servitude essentially)—has given them hope, meaning, purpose, a sense of community; and in the process has also given them the strength to do things (make sacrifices, create institutions, etc.) which otherwise would not have been possible.
We, today, are the beneficiaries of their faith. Our job is to learn to appreciate that fact. That we no longer need faith is thanks to them and the heroic sacrifices they made.
Put another way, understanding, not belief, is the only thing required now, if only to preserve the accomplishments that faith has made possible (material affluence, political and economic freedom, liberal ideals and institutions, etc.).
What's more, and as an aside, I think it is a mistake to assume that our Christian ancestors were fools in their expectations of heavenly rewards. Life after death can be ruled out on rational grounds, that I will grant. But what happens in the process of dying (when the brain disintegrates) is another matter altogether. To assume we simply go out like match is an unwarranted assumption. We shouldn't underestimate what it may feel like to die, even if it lasts for only a short while. We might experience eternity in a grain of sand, to quote William Blake— death being "that great undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns," in the words of William Shakespeare. I suppose it all comes down to the nature of consciousness, which is a mystery we don't understand (and probably never will).
For any who are interested, here is an unfinished essay I was playing around with back during Covid: "On the Plausibility of God in a Scientific Age." https://shorturl.at/mIN38
I'm neither attacking yourself nor (God forbid!) William James. But his aphorism which you quote, that truth is a function of a decison's utility, is nonsense. Now I shall sound like Iris Murdoch (I wish!) But were *none* of us to exist, and so no action or outcome (/"fruits") be possible: then It would still be Truth. I'm no Platonist, just a statistican, but isn't that what he was on about? (Words on the internet can sound barbed without intent- I mean no snark, and I share your admiration for James.)
I can't remember James saying that, but from what I do remember, he was talking about pragmatism rather than ontology. And he was possibly thinking about evolution, which can neither be definitively refuted nor definitively proved, but is incredibly fecund.
What is true of Dawkins--a great inquiring mind--is true of every inquiring mind, regardless of religiosity. But, like all humans, he is liable to be wrong. I look at Dawkins and his like as tragically wrong about Christianity. It has been, overall, good for culture, even when it has been at odds with specific truths. The same cannot be said of many other religions; I include Islam, in spite of their preservation of much scholarship when Catholicism darkened rationality during the so-called Dark Ages, an ill-defined historical period.
There have been many periods during which ignorance has prevailed, usually times when tyranny prevailed, when common folk were prohibited or inhibited from literacy. During those times, when literacy is widespread, the literate tend to become hyper-protective of literacy. Things such as book burning, destruction of libraries, and so forth become more common. I view today's culture among those times. Today's steep decline in education is largely by design, marked by intellectuals' doubt of the ability of of the vast majority to attain 'true' literacy. The general attitude is that education is wasted on most, so dumbing down standards is necessary. Rather than openly admitting that commons people are too stupid to learn, thus raising the possibility of riot by the masses at being told the truth about their stupidity, they are mislead to believe that their 'education' is valid. High school graduation, and increasingly college graduation, is now seen more of a "right" than an achievement. Much that is now "taught" is false as well as worthless. Passing out diplomas has become a of no more value than giving glasses to the blind. The blizzard of social media is merely a false sense of confidence, a veneer cloaking ignorance.
The political comment you mention in the introduction: Dawkins was responding to an observation by Stephen Rose, who (just after Mrs Thatcher's 1979 election victory) had written:
"When the history of the move to the right of the late 1970s comes to be written, from law and order to monetarism and to the (more contradictory) attack on statism, then the switch in scientific fashion, if only from group to kin selection models in evolutionary theory, will come to be seen as part of the tide which has rolled the Thatcherites and their concept of a fixed, 19th century competitive and xenophobic human nature into power."
Dawkins replied that "One of the dominant messages of The Selfish Gene [...] is that we should not derive our values from Darwinism, unless it is with a negative sign. Our brains have evolved to the point where we are capable of rebelling against our selfish genes. The fact that we can do so is made obvious by our use of contraceptives. The same principle can and should work on a wider scale."
In the endnotes to the the 1989 edition, Dawkins again writes that "Critics have occasionally misunderstood The Selfish Gene to be advocating selfishness as a principle by which we should live!" - and it is in this endnote that Dawkins makes clear that he was a Labour voter in the 1970s and an anti-Thatcherite in the 1980s. Looking back at his original Chapter 1 (entitled "Why Are People?"), he writes:
"I must add that the occasional political asides in this chapter make uncomfortable rereading for me in 1989. ‘How many times must this [the need to restrain selfish greed to prevent the destruction of the whole group] have been said in recent years to the working people of Britain?’ (p. 8) makes me sound like a Tory! In 1975, when it was written, a socialist government which I had helped to vote in was battling desperately against 23 per cent inflation, and was obviously concerned about high wage claims. My remark could have been taken from a speech by any Labour minister of the time. Now that Britain has a government of the new right, which has elevated meanness and selfishness to the status of ideology, my words seem to have acquired a kind of nastiness by association, which I regret. It is not that I take back what I said. Selfish short-sightedness still has the undesirable consequences that I mentioned. But nowadays, if one were seeking examples of selfish short-sightedness in Britain, one would not look first at the working class."
A few years ago Dawkins was invited to speak by one of the debating societies of Trinity College Dublin, only to be disinvited when his negative view of Islam became known. The President of the Society actually said (I quote from memory): "We regret having to do this blablabla, but the comfort of our members is our highest priority," words that would have got her laughed off the chair back when I was an undergraduate.
What I found interesting about the affair was that Dawkins had presumably been invited as an anti-Christian speaker. *That* was just fine. But then it was like "Oh, you say he's anti-Islam too? Oh dear, well, we can't really have that ..." That a famously militant atheist would also be anti-Islam was not immediately obvious to the left-liberals who invited Dawkins, because the left tends to see Islam as an ethnic group rather than a religion.
"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing" - Pascal. Ed, this is a great appreciation of Dawkins. The "evangelical atheists" always struck me as blind to the limitations of reason in understanding human affairs. As an aside, I sure wish Pinker would get a haircut. His long curly locks give the impression of excessive vanity, which I don't think he really has.
I know the Pascal quote in French, but I'm not going to attempt to spell it out. (My written French is—what's the word?—diabolical.) I thought it translated as "The heart has reasons which (the) reason doesn't understand." Which has all sorts of interpretations such as "there is more than one kind of reason/rationality" or possibly that "human reason is limited, and cannot fathom the depths of God." (I believe something much closer to the first than the second.)
This reminds me that Voltaire said, "there is only one morality, as there is only one geometry." Alas, there is more than one geometry.
As for Pinker, he was born in 1954. Long hair was a thing when he was a student. It's not a sign of vanity. He's like a character in Dickens who wears breeches with stockings when the young folk have all adopted trousers. He's an old man faithful to the fashions of his youth. And good for him. Were he a vain man, he'd have shown up to audience with Dawkins wearing a baseball cap backwards and carrying a skateboard.
Central London, and really all of England is now much more Islamic than it was 25 years ago, in part thanks to Dawkins (devaluing our Christian heritage, lumping it together with Islam as 'religion', and somehow imaging that the post Christian future would be scientific rationalism). Maybe he's not that smart.
I have watched this man of great intellect and keen curiosity fail again and again when challenged by those whose knowledge now exceeds his own in the subject under debate, even churlishly walking out on a debate rather than defend his own theory. I wasn’t impressed.
"Islam is a magnificent religion that has also been, at times over the centuries, a glorious and generous culture ..." Seriously? Give me a reading list.
Great fan of Dawkins and totally understand how an atheist can be deeply affected by religious music. Remembering his particular love of Bach, and wanting a suitable musical accompaniment while reading your article I asked :
"Hey Siri. Play Ebarme Dich from Bach's St Matthew Passion"
I disagree with Dawkins on various things and I sense it’s become uncool to like him in even right-adjacent spaces, but he’s a really underrated writer. I mean sentence to sentence, clarity, span of reference, rather than his ideas per se… as you write he’s a dying breed, which is our loss.
100%. The Blind Watchmaker is also a great book
I nearly cried reading this, Ed. I've waited decades to read an appreciation of Professor Dawkins - one of our all time great Britons - by one who is honestly a believer, secure enough in your faith that you don't sneer, as so many of his religious critics have, at an intellect so cathedral-like in its beauty. Thank you. This is truly beautiful writing about a truly beautiful mind.
Dawkins exemplifies the flowering of the Anglo mind: deeply curious, literary articulate (though I wish he had read more Dostoevsky and less Jane Austen), polite but aggressive at times, and imbued with the spirit of the European Enlightenment. I wish there were more people like this in the Arab world! On that note, I think that the English education system's apparent inability to "produce" more people like him is a true sign of Anglo civilization's decline!
And in this Eid afternoon, this made me laugh so hard!
“Once upon a time, I recall Dawkins referring to Catholicism as ‘the world’s second most evil religion’, which we regarded with pride at the Herald, and though the obvious follow-up question was not asked, there was little doubt which faith occupied the top spot in his worldview. Twitter was to make it obvious.”
“Dawkins’s Oxford circle is unusual, the people there selected for traits rare in the outside world. Without the binding power of religion, which makes our unusually social primate species able to co-operate in very large groups, it is certainly harder to foster or maintain civilisation.”
Exactly - that’s the take home. It is odd that people who are so clearly intelligent cannot see how different they are from the rest of humanity, by and large. Also worth mentioning that pretty little Oxford (the city and the university) was also built by people who were absurdly religious by today’s standards. Have atheists built anything comparable?
Good point. There are many people - like our Ed - who go: “Middle Ages Dark Ages all rubbish” and ignore Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Chartres etc. Westminster Abbey was built before 1066 FCS!
Very interesting - thanks. I was very much a Dawkins fan when younger, after reading the Selfish Gene and generally thinking the New Atheism was *obviously* correct and anyone objecting to it was *obviously* just not clever enough to understand the issues properly. Now I think it's all very much more complicated. Dawkins clearly still thinks that (a) religions are false and also (b) societies are better off without them. I wonder how he'd respond to the hypothetical possibility that (a) religions are false, but (b) societies quickly go off the rails without them. Would he cling on to the idea that it's better to stick to the truth, even at the cost of social decline/breakdown? Or would he tolerate some sort of noble lie, just to keep the things he likes (evensong, cricket on the green, etc)?
"New Atheism was fashionable, forming an identity glue for what Scott Alexander called the ‘blue tribe’ – secular, liberal university-educated urbanites with a strong sense of in-group." Do you mean the "gray tribe"
Scott talks a bit about how a pro-science, atheistic, very male coded gray tribe tried to separate from the "blue tribe" but the "gray tribe" and New Atheism kind of failed before splitting.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/
Thank you for this, Ed. It's been too long since I read Dawkins. I was a New Atheist when it was a thing, despite having gone off Dawkins briefly after 9/11 when I'd bought a few newspapers to try to work out what was going on, and what was going to happen, and Dawkins had a long piece in, I think, The Independent, which I found disappointing, because while he knew a bit about Islam, it was pretty clear that he didn't know enough, or anything about bin Laden really, to justify his essay. (Actually, I found pretty much all the background and opinion pieces disappointing, because nobody seemed to really understand the motivation. But I'd expected something from Dawkins, and didn't get it.)
I think part of the reason New Atheism died (apart from it being a phase or a fashion, and one for people who felt they had to move on every so often anyway) is that some of us, like me, were more clearly Islamophobic if you will, and others preferred the pushing at a greatly weakened Christianity, while pretending it was still strong.
"Maybe it was psychologically easier for people to blame all religions for the world’s problems than to admit that one particular faith made them nervous about getting on the Tube." THIS!
Not that it matters, but I seem to remember that Captain Cook used Sauerkraut rather than citrus fruits, and I've found a source which backs me.
https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2018/06/sauerkraut-sugar-and-salt-pork-the-diet-on-board-cooks-resolution.html
Oh yes good point - and I should have known that as I wrote about it reviewing Will Storr's The Status Game
Come to think of it, I might have known about the sauerkraut from that post.
The New Atheism happened in the Noughties at a time of great optimism and prosperity.
Both of which have collapsed since, taking the New Atheism with them.
There are no atheists with sub-prime mortgages.
"yet the rational argument for Christianity as a positive force flounders on the question of whether it is true.. ." I prefer William James' more pragmatic approach in "The Will to Believe" : the truth of an idea should be judged on the basis of its fruits, of the things it makes possible which otherwise could or would probably never have existed.
And in any event, who knows what it feels like to die?
Pascal's wager seems like a pretty sensible way to view the issue, but I understand it's unsatisfying to many
I guess my position would be something like this: that for centuries past, Christian faith has given countless millions of our ancestors in the lower classes, men and women who otherwise were hopelessly trapped in meaningless lives (living in servitude essentially)—has given them hope, meaning, purpose, a sense of community; and in the process has also given them the strength to do things (make sacrifices, create institutions, etc.) which otherwise would not have been possible.
We, today, are the beneficiaries of their faith. Our job is to learn to appreciate that fact. That we no longer need faith is thanks to them and the heroic sacrifices they made.
Put another way, understanding, not belief, is the only thing required now, if only to preserve the accomplishments that faith has made possible (material affluence, political and economic freedom, liberal ideals and institutions, etc.).
What's more, and as an aside, I think it is a mistake to assume that our Christian ancestors were fools in their expectations of heavenly rewards. Life after death can be ruled out on rational grounds, that I will grant. But what happens in the process of dying (when the brain disintegrates) is another matter altogether. To assume we simply go out like match is an unwarranted assumption. We shouldn't underestimate what it may feel like to die, even if it lasts for only a short while. We might experience eternity in a grain of sand, to quote William Blake— death being "that great undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns," in the words of William Shakespeare. I suppose it all comes down to the nature of consciousness, which is a mystery we don't understand (and probably never will).
For any who are interested, here is an unfinished essay I was playing around with back during Covid: "On the Plausibility of God in a Scientific Age." https://shorturl.at/mIN38
I'm neither attacking yourself nor (God forbid!) William James. But his aphorism which you quote, that truth is a function of a decison's utility, is nonsense. Now I shall sound like Iris Murdoch (I wish!) But were *none* of us to exist, and so no action or outcome (/"fruits") be possible: then It would still be Truth. I'm no Platonist, just a statistican, but isn't that what he was on about? (Words on the internet can sound barbed without intent- I mean no snark, and I share your admiration for James.)
I can't remember James saying that, but from what I do remember, he was talking about pragmatism rather than ontology. And he was possibly thinking about evolution, which can neither be definitively refuted nor definitively proved, but is incredibly fecund.
Ontology is a luxury that only we moderns can afford.
What is true of Dawkins--a great inquiring mind--is true of every inquiring mind, regardless of religiosity. But, like all humans, he is liable to be wrong. I look at Dawkins and his like as tragically wrong about Christianity. It has been, overall, good for culture, even when it has been at odds with specific truths. The same cannot be said of many other religions; I include Islam, in spite of their preservation of much scholarship when Catholicism darkened rationality during the so-called Dark Ages, an ill-defined historical period.
There have been many periods during which ignorance has prevailed, usually times when tyranny prevailed, when common folk were prohibited or inhibited from literacy. During those times, when literacy is widespread, the literate tend to become hyper-protective of literacy. Things such as book burning, destruction of libraries, and so forth become more common. I view today's culture among those times. Today's steep decline in education is largely by design, marked by intellectuals' doubt of the ability of of the vast majority to attain 'true' literacy. The general attitude is that education is wasted on most, so dumbing down standards is necessary. Rather than openly admitting that commons people are too stupid to learn, thus raising the possibility of riot by the masses at being told the truth about their stupidity, they are mislead to believe that their 'education' is valid. High school graduation, and increasingly college graduation, is now seen more of a "right" than an achievement. Much that is now "taught" is false as well as worthless. Passing out diplomas has become a of no more value than giving glasses to the blind. The blizzard of social media is merely a false sense of confidence, a veneer cloaking ignorance.
Catholicism has almost never darkened rationality. Illiteracy was caused by poverty.
The political comment you mention in the introduction: Dawkins was responding to an observation by Stephen Rose, who (just after Mrs Thatcher's 1979 election victory) had written:
"When the history of the move to the right of the late 1970s comes to be written, from law and order to monetarism and to the (more contradictory) attack on statism, then the switch in scientific fashion, if only from group to kin selection models in evolutionary theory, will come to be seen as part of the tide which has rolled the Thatcherites and their concept of a fixed, 19th century competitive and xenophobic human nature into power."
Dawkins replied that "One of the dominant messages of The Selfish Gene [...] is that we should not derive our values from Darwinism, unless it is with a negative sign. Our brains have evolved to the point where we are capable of rebelling against our selfish genes. The fact that we can do so is made obvious by our use of contraceptives. The same principle can and should work on a wider scale."
In the endnotes to the the 1989 edition, Dawkins again writes that "Critics have occasionally misunderstood The Selfish Gene to be advocating selfishness as a principle by which we should live!" - and it is in this endnote that Dawkins makes clear that he was a Labour voter in the 1970s and an anti-Thatcherite in the 1980s. Looking back at his original Chapter 1 (entitled "Why Are People?"), he writes:
"I must add that the occasional political asides in this chapter make uncomfortable rereading for me in 1989. ‘How many times must this [the need to restrain selfish greed to prevent the destruction of the whole group] have been said in recent years to the working people of Britain?’ (p. 8) makes me sound like a Tory! In 1975, when it was written, a socialist government which I had helped to vote in was battling desperately against 23 per cent inflation, and was obviously concerned about high wage claims. My remark could have been taken from a speech by any Labour minister of the time. Now that Britain has a government of the new right, which has elevated meanness and selfishness to the status of ideology, my words seem to have acquired a kind of nastiness by association, which I regret. It is not that I take back what I said. Selfish short-sightedness still has the undesirable consequences that I mentioned. But nowadays, if one were seeking examples of selfish short-sightedness in Britain, one would not look first at the working class."
A few years ago Dawkins was invited to speak by one of the debating societies of Trinity College Dublin, only to be disinvited when his negative view of Islam became known. The President of the Society actually said (I quote from memory): "We regret having to do this blablabla, but the comfort of our members is our highest priority," words that would have got her laughed off the chair back when I was an undergraduate.
What I found interesting about the affair was that Dawkins had presumably been invited as an anti-Christian speaker. *That* was just fine. But then it was like "Oh, you say he's anti-Islam too? Oh dear, well, we can't really have that ..." That a famously militant atheist would also be anti-Islam was not immediately obvious to the left-liberals who invited Dawkins, because the left tends to see Islam as an ethnic group rather than a religion.
"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing" - Pascal. Ed, this is a great appreciation of Dawkins. The "evangelical atheists" always struck me as blind to the limitations of reason in understanding human affairs. As an aside, I sure wish Pinker would get a haircut. His long curly locks give the impression of excessive vanity, which I don't think he really has.
I know the Pascal quote in French, but I'm not going to attempt to spell it out. (My written French is—what's the word?—diabolical.) I thought it translated as "The heart has reasons which (the) reason doesn't understand." Which has all sorts of interpretations such as "there is more than one kind of reason/rationality" or possibly that "human reason is limited, and cannot fathom the depths of God." (I believe something much closer to the first than the second.)
This reminds me that Voltaire said, "there is only one morality, as there is only one geometry." Alas, there is more than one geometry.
As for Pinker, he was born in 1954. Long hair was a thing when he was a student. It's not a sign of vanity. He's like a character in Dickens who wears breeches with stockings when the young folk have all adopted trousers. He's an old man faithful to the fashions of his youth. And good for him. Were he a vain man, he'd have shown up to audience with Dawkins wearing a baseball cap backwards and carrying a skateboard.
Central London, and really all of England is now much more Islamic than it was 25 years ago, in part thanks to Dawkins (devaluing our Christian heritage, lumping it together with Islam as 'religion', and somehow imaging that the post Christian future would be scientific rationalism). Maybe he's not that smart.
I have watched this man of great intellect and keen curiosity fail again and again when challenged by those whose knowledge now exceeds his own in the subject under debate, even churlishly walking out on a debate rather than defend his own theory. I wasn’t impressed.
"Islam is a magnificent religion that has also been, at times over the centuries, a glorious and generous culture ..." Seriously? Give me a reading list.
Great fan of Dawkins and totally understand how an atheist can be deeply affected by religious music. Remembering his particular love of Bach, and wanting a suitable musical accompaniment while reading your article I asked :
"Hey Siri. Play Ebarme Dich from Bach's St Matthew Passion"
...Pause...
"OK. Now playing..Hank Williams"
I can see why Siri made the mistake. Kind of similar.