Richard Dawkins.

MBM

Well-known member
The Dawk

I like his science books - Selfish Gene is a classic. He can explain tricky ideas in a simple, direct way. Like Steve Jones, I suspect he may be a better communicator than research scientist (altho I am unqualified to judge this - someone smack me down).

But his attitude towards religion often strikes me as childish. "Stop teasing those Christians/Muslims/Buddhists, Richard." he's kinda an evangelical atheist.
 

soi

Member
i like the teasing, i think a good teasing is needed. not ridicule or belittling but proper challenges to what otherwise goes unquestioned. some of his letters to the guardian though, i'm like richard you sound like a sixth former! stop it now before it gets embarrassing!

mind you, he's shit at riding a bike, he's nearly killed me 5 or 6 times
 

bruno

est malade
go dawkins!

i have to agree that he's almost comically evangelical but really, what good things has religion brought to the world lately? it deserves a nice, firm slap in the face and this doc does just that.
 

swears

preppy-kei
go dawkins!

i have to agree that he's almost comically evangelical but really, what good things has religion brought to the world lately? it deserves a nice, firm slap in the face and this doc does just that.

Too right. People are far too wet when it comes to religion. How do you expect people to reject selfish, consumerist, hive-mind modern living when they can't even get over the idea it's a total fluke that we even exist? (Which, to my mind is beautiful.)
 
Last edited:

blunt

shot by both sides
Personally, and I know it's deeply unfashionable, but I've always found Dawkins to be a thoroughly disagreeable little shit.

I had to force myself to sit through The Root of All Evil? on Channel 4 (how he must have balked at the lawyers' insistence that they add a question mark there). Listening to him in conversation with carefully selected religious extremists was rather like listening to a debate as to which is the better language, German or Chinese. How exhausting.

Whenever he appears to offer up his brand of rationalist absolutism, I'm put in mind of nothing but those diagrams in which the political spectrum is rendered not as a straight line, but as a circle (apologies for the poor quality link. it's the only one I could find). Listening to him opine that, "For good people to do evil things, that takes religion", you might as well be listening to a representative of the Taliban with his polarity reversed.

I'll confess to having read only The Selfish Gene, and that quite some time ago. It's clearly an important work but, like MBM, I'd be interested to know how it's viewed by his peers (I believe, for example, that Hawking is viewed as a bit of an irrelevance by others in his field). However, whenever Dawkins tries to make points of any social or political significance, I end up wanting to chew my own face off.
 
Last edited:
Top