.... For Dawkins, says Lean, “everything great about the West is the result of secularism and everything miserable about the rest is the fault of religion.” This is Lean’s reductionism, not Dawkins’, but, I grant, he’s not far off the mark.
The Industrial and scientific revolutions, modern medicine, political pluralism, freedom of speech and even freedom of religion (re both, see the U.S. Constitution, First Amendment), equal rights, and all sorts of movements aiming to ameliorate humankind’s lot came about in the West after it smashed the shackles of religion, and those governing in its name, imposed on us for centuries.
We should not shy away from declaring this truth loudly and forcefully, and from defending it whenever and wherever it is necessary to do so. [Salon] Read more
