We on the other hand intend a principled transformation in the worldview of our entire society, a revolution of the greatest possible extent that will leave nothing out, changing the life of our nation in every regard.(from propaganda)
What Knox as a cleric impugns in the written works and the broadcasts of those listed is their animus towards religion which is never frankly admitted but advanced by distortion and omission. H.G. Wells in his Outline of History likened by Knox to 1066 and All That set the tone for others.
He has not been without imitators. Nobody, of course, has dared to cover precisely the same ground; he would be afraid of the comparison, for Mr. Wells is readable. But he has pointed the way to a number of anti-Christian writers, and in some case thinkers, who have learned to abandon the old method of direct attack, and bury all religious and metaphysical issues under a cloud of scientific information. This is the technique of the omniscientist; he does not make any sustained attack on religion; he dismisses it in a series of contemptuous allusions, giving us to understand that he is too busy talking about science to delay over such trifling matters. Meanwhile he contrives to insinuate that religion and science are necessarily incompatible; that everything, therefore, which he has said in praise of science is ipso facto a condemnation of religion. He will belittle Christianity by forced contrasts; now dwelling on the long “aeons” which elapsed between the appearance of Moses, now showing how ignorent and brutish the Middle Ages were by comparison with the civilization that dates from Darwin. He is the prophet of a new age, and he has the public ear. He astounds with outpourings of quaint scientific facts; he dazzles with glimpses of the incomprehensible. He creates the impression that religion is of yesterday, science of today.
New Atheists have gone back to firing plague corpses from catapults over the battlements. The Internet has changed everything and perhaps such sly acerbities as ‘and in some cases thinkers’ may be too subtle for distributed micro attention. Knox’s discussion of Sir Julian Huxley’s Religion without Revelation pub. in 1927 and in a revised edition in 1957 must be the topic for a separate post as it dissects the idea of 'religiosity without religion' which continues to coruscate and lure the magpie thinker.
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