Aug 28, 2015 10:25 PM
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/au...nce-review
EXCERPT: [...] Writing in the Observer some years ago, Robin McKie described him as “the Dirty Harry of science”, and a Spectator review defined what it means to be “Dawkinised”: “Not just to be dressed down or duffed up, it is to be squelched, pulverised, annihilated, rendered into suitably primordial paste.”
Commentators disagree about whether there is a mismatch between the public rage and what Dawkins is like when he is not, so to speak, “miked up”. But he tells us a bit about himself here and elsewhere, and what he sees when he looks in the mirror is the face of a man who is considerate, pleasant and even tolerant: “I’ve never been the sort of firebrand that I’ve been made out to be. I’m actually quite a mild person.”
He thinks of himself as driven not by fulminating hostility to religion – that’s actually incidental, he insists – but by enchantment with scientific rationality and the beauty of knowledge. He wants us all to share in the certainty that scientific reason offers. Why would anyone choose religious hocus-pocus over that?
Of course, spades ought to be called spades, and opponents of evolution must be either “ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked”. But there has never been anything personal in his opposition to religion or to scientific error. It’s no crime to be stupid; you’re just in need of Dawkinsian correction: read the books; see the light.
When he was subwarden of New College, Oxford, he had no problem saying grace – this was, after all, not error, just meaningless rhetoric. He got on well with the college chaplain, who seemed in many ways a decent sort, and he enjoyed all his meetings with the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, “one of the nicest men I’ve ever met”.
[...] At his best, Dawkins has written with passion, urgency and clarity, and, if crushing the creationists and convincing the enemies of reason of their stupidity has secured him a reputation as something of a one-trick pony, it has been a polished trick and a best-in-show pony.
But this is not Dawkins at his best. "Brief Candle" consists of scattered reflections on a life and on a set of public performances. It adds only a little to the science lessons and, compared with the first volume of the memoirs (which was itself a guarded performance), it’s stingy with insights into his personal life....
EXCERPT: [...] Writing in the Observer some years ago, Robin McKie described him as “the Dirty Harry of science”, and a Spectator review defined what it means to be “Dawkinised”: “Not just to be dressed down or duffed up, it is to be squelched, pulverised, annihilated, rendered into suitably primordial paste.”
Commentators disagree about whether there is a mismatch between the public rage and what Dawkins is like when he is not, so to speak, “miked up”. But he tells us a bit about himself here and elsewhere, and what he sees when he looks in the mirror is the face of a man who is considerate, pleasant and even tolerant: “I’ve never been the sort of firebrand that I’ve been made out to be. I’m actually quite a mild person.”
He thinks of himself as driven not by fulminating hostility to religion – that’s actually incidental, he insists – but by enchantment with scientific rationality and the beauty of knowledge. He wants us all to share in the certainty that scientific reason offers. Why would anyone choose religious hocus-pocus over that?
Of course, spades ought to be called spades, and opponents of evolution must be either “ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked”. But there has never been anything personal in his opposition to religion or to scientific error. It’s no crime to be stupid; you’re just in need of Dawkinsian correction: read the books; see the light.
When he was subwarden of New College, Oxford, he had no problem saying grace – this was, after all, not error, just meaningless rhetoric. He got on well with the college chaplain, who seemed in many ways a decent sort, and he enjoyed all his meetings with the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, “one of the nicest men I’ve ever met”.
[...] At his best, Dawkins has written with passion, urgency and clarity, and, if crushing the creationists and convincing the enemies of reason of their stupidity has secured him a reputation as something of a one-trick pony, it has been a polished trick and a best-in-show pony.
But this is not Dawkins at his best. "Brief Candle" consists of scattered reflections on a life and on a set of public performances. It adds only a little to the science lessons and, compared with the first volume of the memoirs (which was itself a guarded performance), it’s stingy with insights into his personal life....