Richard Dawkins’ outfit, the Foundation for Reason and Science (UK), published the results of a poll into the attitudes of British Christians towards politics, science and morality as well as their knowledge of their own faith.

Professor Dawkins (pictured) reckons the result buttress his secular agenda, showing as they do the waning influence of religion on British public life. But there is a sense in which the results undercut one of his main theses, namely that religion is something dangerous to society.

The survey showed that most Christians in Britain do not think religion should have a special influence on public policy. But what does ‘special’ mean? Believing religion shouldn’t have ‘special’ influence isn’t the same as believing it should have no influence.

The poll also found that 92 per cent of Christians agreed the law should apply to everyone equally, regardless of their personal religious beliefs. Again, what does that mean exactly on a case-by-case basis? For example, would those same people believe the usual uniform code in a place of work should be changed so that a Sikh man should be allowed to wear a turban or a Muslim woman a scarf?

Six in 10 respondents (61 per cent) agreed that homosexuals should have the same legal rights in all aspects of their lives as heterosexuals. But if you asked them whether an openly gay man should be ordained to the priesthood, what would they think?

The majority attitudes listed above as regards the law, politics etc are ones that Dawkins would deem as rational and tolerant and it is self-confessed Christians who espouse these opinions.

But doesn’t this rather undercut his thesis that religion is the everlasting foe of “rationality”, as Dawkins defines it? In his view, religion a delusion and precludes reasonable thinking altogether.

His poll actually reveals that in their attitudes to law and politics, Christians aren’t so different from other Britons. Therefore, why does he work himself into such a lather about them?

On another note, the poll also showed that the vast majority of Christians in the UK don’t attend weekly service, which Professor Dawkins took to mean that the vast majority of Christians aren’t really Christian.

But as Stephen Pollard wrote in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph: “If you were trying to come up with a definition of misplaced intellectual arrogance, you could not do better than having the planet’s most famous atheist issuing diktats on who does and doesn’t count as a proper Christian.” 

Finally, on a more amusing note, Professor Dawkins, appearing on the BBC’s Today programme on Radio Four to discuss the poll’s findings also announced that an “astonishing number [of Christians] couldn’t identify the first book in the New Testament”. 

However, he was unusually tongue-tied when another guest on the show, Rev Giles Fraser asked him what was the full title of Charles Darwin’s The Origin Of Species.

Dawkins’ reply was less than impressive: “On the Origin of Species…Uh…With, oh, God, On the Origin of Species. There is a sub-title with respect to the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.”

(As a matter of fact, the full title is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.)