“For the liberal state to accommodate a diversity of beliefs while having few positive convictions is one of the more admirable achievements of civilization.”
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The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds, ' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that.
The British are supposed to be particularly averse to intellectuals, a prejudice closely bound up with their dislike of foreigners. Indeed, one important source of this Anglo-Saxon distaste for highbrows and eggheads was the French revolution, which was seen as an attempt to reconstruct society on the basis of abstract rational principles.
