As evidence, Dawkins cited the way “women are treated” in Muslim communities. He then added, “Well, Christianity is not great about that. It’s had its problems with female vicars and female bishops and things.”
Notably, Dawkins himself has been the subject of accusations of misogyny in part for controversial remarks in which he seemed to cast doubt on the credibility of sexual assault allegations in cases where the alleged victim was drunk.
“But there’s an active hostility to women, which is promoted, I think, by the holy books of Islam. I’m not talking about individual Muslims, who of course are quite different,” Dawkins said. “But the doctrines of Islam—the Hadith and the Quran—is fundamentally hostile to women, hostile to gays, and I find that I like to live in a culturally Christian country, although I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith.”
Dawkins nevertheless said that pro-life advocacy in American Christianity is “a different matter entirely” and that young earth creationism is “pernicious nonsense, of course.”
In “The God Delusion,” Dawkins described the God of the Bible as “a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, phillicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
However, Dawkins criticized King Charles III for having been “rather sympathetic towards Islam” in the past, adding, “Insofar as Christianity can be seen as a [bulwark] against Islam, I think it’s a very good thing.”
“But I must emphasize that I think that the things that Christians believe are actually nonsense,” Dawkins said, going on to scoff at the idea that Jesus was born of a virgin. “I don’t want to be misunderstood; I mean I do think it’s nonsense.”
“Of course I don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead,” Dawkins said before conceding that Christianity “matters from a cultural point of view.”
