Richard Dawkins is my fucking hero

[djdigit]

So from reading two of his books (The Selfish Gene and Unweaving the Rainbow), I thought Richard Dawkins was smart and articulate and most importantly, pretty much correct. After hearing him read excerpts from his most recent book, The God Delusion and hearing him answer questions afterward, I'm absolutely convinced. Damn! It's like hearing the

Comments

[andrivka]

They had a big article in Wired last month with Richard Dawkins featured in it, which led me to get his latest book as gifts for the holiday. I can't wait to read it!

[kahluagal]

yeah, Wired did the whole 'new atheists' as their cover story last month. With that and the whole 'why are atheists so angry' (as if atheists don't have enough to be upset about in the U.S.!) angle every time Dawkins or Sam Harris are mentioned

[djdigit]

> I don't much care for people that are so sure of their own "rightness" that they have no respect for others opinions.

From listening to him speak, I think it's clear that he does have tolerance (if not respect) for other opinions... what I really like about him is that he's fighting the pragmatic wrongness of religion more than he's asserting his "rightness"... and I'm thinking here of public policy, laws, decision making, morality, etc. He may come off as rabid and confrontational (I don't think he does, but I can see how he might give that impression to some people), but no more so than other historical figures who went "over the top" to bring awareness to an important social problem (suffrage for women, voting and equality for African Americans, tolerance/legal protection for gays and lesbians, etc, etc).

I think Dawkins might agree that he is a Fundamental Atheist in the way that there are Fundamental Christians, but he'd probably note that his fundament is orders of magnitude more solid

[djdigit]

Interesting... when I acquire and read The God Delusion, I'll keep your comments in mind. I'm undoubtedly biased toward liking him, but if my above assessment of his desired and effects is inaccurate, I'd like to know that.

[euneeblic]

Richard Dawkins is a huge influence on my favorite thinker, Daniel Quinn. It was for this reason that I read The Selfish Gene. I wasn't impressed. It seemed like a silly anthropomorphism of genetics. Not very scientific at all, really. Since he was such a heavy influence on Quinn, I did have the distinct feeling I didn't "get it." Now it's confirmed. :)

[djdigit]

It's been a while since I read The Selfish Gene, but from what I recall, he was explicitly not anthropomorphic in his reasoning... I don't remember the specific examples he gave, but I remember him debunking some intuitive assumptions about how evolution works that are wrong. Like, "Nature wants XYZ," which isn't how he was proposing people think about it. The basic idea was defining the unit on which natural selection operates... and incorporating a little game theory (which helped explain things like why male/female populations are roughly 50/50 despite the fact that a single male can reproduce with many females).

To make the material more accessible, he may have talked about what genes "want" in order to propagate, but I remember him being careful to make the point that they don't think, reason, etc. And he outlined the physical mechanisms by which their "behavior" arises.

Wish I could remember more details from the book :(.

[euneeblic]

Yeah, the whole meme idea. I think that's mainly what Quinn took away from The Selfish Gene. Now "meme" is just another internet buzzword. :)

[integreillumine]

hey! happy to share!