Oliver Kamm differs with Dawkins:

Secularism is the principle that there be no religious test for public office. Beliefs about first and last things, and religious worship, are private choices in which the state has absolutely no legitimate role. Secularism protects religious liberty by…abstaining from the choice of one religion against another, or of religious belief against non-belief. Atheism is a private belief, and one I hold; it is not a position that should occupy civic space, any more than should the monotheistic religions.

Even many advocates of secularism get this wrong. I agree with a good deal of the argument of Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion, and consider, as Dawkins does, that there is an essential conflict between science and religion. (This is not due to any particular finding of scientific inquiry, such as the fact of evolution, which it’s perfectly possible for a theist to accept. It is due rather to the different ethos of science, which is questioning, and that of religion, which is by definition the explication of a body of beliefs. One is critical; the other is dogmatic.) My difference with Dawkins is on politics and social questions.

The cause of secularism is politically vital. But there is no political case for atheism. (I do believe, as a pragmatic point, that society would be better off if there were more atheists around; but I also believe that society would be better off if moderate religion, accommodating itself to secular government and education, supplanted religious absolutism. A consistent secularist would be indifferent between these possibilities.)…

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