Dawkins vs. Dawkins

Jump to Comments

One of the most depressing things about online discussions of atheism is the presence of small herds of Dawkins fanboys who pride themselves on their “independent” thinking but somehow manage to hold the exact same viewpoints as Dawkins on everything from Einstein’s religious beliefs to the supposed irrelevance of Stalin’s atheism.
Interestingly, though, in an article I found posted on, of all places, Richard Dawkins’ website, Peter McKnight of the Vancouver Sun reveals that Dawkins himself is apparently a less fanatical Dawkinsist than most of his fans seem to be. McKnight notes that there seem to be two distinct Richard Dawkinses:

“First, there’s the fire-breathing Dawkins of literature, whose books and essays declare religion a virus of the mind, “comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate,” who maintains that religious instruction is a form of child mental abuse, and who will brook no opposition in his war on religious faith.

“Then there’s the personal Dawkins, the debonair Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a man who is polite and gracious to a fault.”

Interviewing Dawkins, McKnight found not only that the “personal Dawkins” was far less of a dick than the fire-breathing Dawkins we know and love (or, in our case, hate) but also that he graciously conceded many of the points the fanboys take as gospel:

Dawkins — in person at least, if not in print … admits that politics often plays a large role in much strife commonly attributed to religion. Despite “imagining” in The God Delusion that Northern Ireland’s “troubles” would not exist in an atheistic world, he now freely acknowledges that the troubles were largely a political matter. … He doesn’t necessarily think religion is the root of all evil, but rather is perhaps only a branch. …

“When confronted with scholarship concerning the important influence religion played in the development of scientific method in both the Islamic world and the Christian West, Dawkins, while admitting to a lack of knowledge of the history of science, said “it wouldn’t surprise me if religion had predisposed people to do better science.”

McKnight is left to wonder:

“But can we reconcile the two Richard Dawkinses — the literary one who has nary a good word to say about religion, and the personal one who admits that religion doesn’t have a stranglehold on terror, may inspire ethical behaviour, and may even have contributed to the scientific enterprise?”

God — or Dawkins — only knows.

Source: How to reconcile Richard Dawkins? by Peter McKnight

1 Comment

Filed under dawkins, reading

Tags: atheism, richard dawkins