Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

British evolutionary biologist and author

Richard Dawkins has been the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford since 1995. The "On Faith" panelist did his D.Phil under the Nobel Prize-winning zoologist Niko Tinbergen. After two years as an Assistant Professor of Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, he returned to Oxford in 1970 as Lecturer in Animal Behaviour and a Fellow of New College. The British evolutionary biologist is noted for his writings defending evolution. An atheist, his latest book is The God Delusion(2006). He is the author of eight other books: The Selfish Gene (1976), The Extended Phenotype (1982), The Blind Watchmaker (1986), River Out of Eden (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), A Devil's Chaplain (2003), and The Ancestor's Tale (2004). A Festschrift volume, Richard Dawkins: how a scientist changed the way we think was published in 2006 by Oxford University Press. Dawkins, who holds eight honorary degrees in science and literature, has also presented BBC science documentaries, including Nice Guys Finish First, The Blind Watchmaker and Seven Wonders of the World. On Channel Four he presented Break the Science Barrier with Richard Dawkins and Root of All Evil?. In 1991 he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children on BBC under the general title Growing Up in the Universe. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society. His medals and prizes include the Sillver Medal of the Zoological Society, the Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society, the Nakayama Prize, the Cosmos International Prize, the Kistler Prize and the Shakespeare Prize. Close.

Richard Dawkins

British evolutionary biologist and author

Richard Dawkins has been the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford since 1995. The "On Faith" panelist did his D.Phil under the Nobel Prize-winning zoologist Niko Tinbergen. After two years as an Assistant Professor of Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, he returned to Oxford in 1970 as Lecturer in Animal Behaviour and a Fellow of New College. more »

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January 1, 2007 12:23 AM

Let's Hope It's A Lasting Vogue

Athorism is enjoying a certain vogue right now. Can there be a productive conversation between Valhallans and athorists? Naïve literalists apart, sophisticated thoreologians long ago ceased believing in the material substance of Thor's mighty hammer. But the spiritual essence of hammeriness remains a thunderingly enlightened relevation, and hammerological faith retains its special place in the eschatology of neo-Valhallism, while enjoying a productive conversation with the scientific theory of thunder in its non-overlapping magisterium. Militant athorists are their own worst enemy. Ignorant of the finer points of thoreology, they really should desist from their strident and intolerant strawmandering, and treat Thor-faith with the uniquely protected respect it has always received in the past. In any case, they are doomed to failure. People need Thor, and nothing will ever remove him from the culture. What are you going to put in his place?

Atheism means non-belief in the particular cult that happens to pervade the society under discussion. In America that means the cult of Yahweh, the God of the Jews commandeered by the Christians, Muslims and Mormons. Today, everyone takes it for granted that we are all atheists with respect to Thor and Wotan, Zeus and Poseidon, Mithras and Ammon Ra. If asked why you don't believe in Thor's hammer, you would probably say something like "Why is the onus on me to justify my nonbelief in Thor, given that there is not the smallest positive reason for belief?" You might go further and add that thunder, which was at one time attributed to Thor's hammer, now has a better explanation in terms of electric charges in the clouds. While technically agnostic about all those ancient gods, and about fairies and leprechauns too (you can't disprove them either), in practice we don't believe in any of them, and we feel no onus to explain why.

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