I was never planning on reading Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion—I don’t think it’ll tell me anything I don’t already know—but this review, from the Times Literary Supplement, has made me consider giving the book a shot.

Where I think Dawkins goes wrong is that, like Henry V after Agincourt, he does not seem to realize the extent to which his side has won. Setting aside the rise of Islam in Europe, the decline of serious Christian belief among Europeans is so widely advertised that Dawkins turns to the United States for most of his examples of unregenerate religious belief. He attributes the greater regard for religion in the U.S. to the fact that Americans have never had an established Church, an idea he may have picked up from Tocqueville. But although most Americans may be sure of the value of religion, as far as I can tell they are not very certain about the truth of what their own religion teaches. According to a recent article in the New York Times, American evangelists are in despair over a poll that showed that only four percent of American teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. The spread of religious toleration provides evidence of the weakening of religious certitude. Most Christian groups have historically taught that there is no salvation without faith in Christ. If you are really sure that anyone without such faith is doomed to an eternity of hell, then propagating that faith and suppressing disbelief would logically be the most important thing in the world—far more important than any merely secular virtues like religious toleration. Yet religious toleration is rampant in America. No one who publicly expressed disrespect for any particular religion could be elected to a major office.

Even though American atheists might have trouble winning elections, Americans are fairly tolerant of us unbelievers. My many good friends in Texas who are professed Christians do not even try to convert me. This might be taken as evidence that they don’t really mind if I spend eternity in hell, but I prefer to think (and Baptists and Presbyterians have admitted it to me) that they are not all that certain about hell and heaven. I have often heard the remark (once from an American priest) that it is not so important what one believes; the important thing is how we treat each other. Of course, I applaud this sentiment, but imagine trying to explain “not important what one believes” to Luther or Calvin or St. Paul. Remarks like this show a massive retreat of Christianity from the ground it once occupied, a retreat that can be attributed to no new revelation, but only to a loss of certitude.

“It’s not so important what one believes”? That statement is more than a retreat; it’s akin to conceding victory to non-Christians—this American priest is essentially telling people that they can still go to heaven even if they don’t believe in Christ. Which begs the question: why believe in the first place? Yet the American priest illustrates a larger problem, which has long plagued Christianity (as well as other religions): adherents can’t seem to make up their minds and settle on one way of interpreting biblical doctrine. But if it comes down to interpretation—which it always does—then no one version of Christianity, or any other religion, can be considered right or wrong.

Whatever one thinks of the Muslims who blow themselves up in crowded cities in Europe or Israel or fly planes into buildings in the U.S., who could dispute that the certainty of their faith had something to do with it? George W. Bush and many others would have us believe that terrorism is a distortion of Islam, and that Islam is a religion of peace. Of course, it is good policy to say this, but statements about what “Islam is” make little sense. Islam, like all other religions, was created by people, and there are potentially as many different versions of Islam as there are people who profess to be Muslims. (The same remarks apply to [Terry] Eagleton’s highly personal account of what Christianity “is.”) I don’t know on what ground one can say that a peaceable, well-intentioned person like Abdus Salam was any more a true Muslim than the murderous holy warriors of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, the clerics throughout the world of Islam who incite hatred and violence, and those Muslims who demonstrate against supposed insults to their faith, but not against the atrocities committed in its name. (Incidentally, Abdus Salam regarded himself as a devout Muslim, but he belonged to a sect that most Muslims consider heretical, and for years was not allowed to return to Pakistan.) Dawkins treats Islam as just another deplorable religion, but there is a difference. The difference lies in the extent to which religious certitude lingers in the Islamic world and in the harm it does. Richard Dawkins’s even-handedness is well-intentioned, but it is misplaced. I share his lack of respect for all religions, but in our times it is folly to disrespect them all equally.

I’m not sure if it’s folly to disrespect all religions equally, since Christianity can be just as violent and dangerous as Islam. Religious extremism, culminating in terrorism and murder, isn’t something that’s only found in the Islamic world.