When Prospect magazine listed Britain's leading public intellectuals in 2004 and invited readers' votes, it was Richard Dawkins who emerged as No 1. Nine years on, the biologist, author and campaigner has bettered that by topping its "world thinkers" rankings, beating four Nobel prize winners (and another contender regarded as certain to receive one soon) in a poll based on 65 names chosen by a largely US- and UK-based expert panel.
Joining him in the top 10 are the psychologists Steven Pinker (3) and Daniel Kahneman (10), the economists Paul Krugman (5) and Amartya Sen (7) and the philosopher Slavoj Žižek (6), who all, like him, figured in the magazine's first list of world-class thinkers in 2005.
To qualify for this year's world thinkers rankings, it was not enough to have written a seminal book, inspired an intellectual movement or won a Nobel prize several years ago (hence the absence from the 65-strong long list of ageing titans such as Noam Chomsky or Edward O Wilson); the selectors' remit ruthlessly insisted on "influence over the past 12 months" and "significance to the year's biggest questions".
As for Dawkins, the continuation of wars of religion and terrorist atrocities informed by it means his atheist crusade remains relevant to the year's biggest questions, despite the end of the Bible-bashing, war-mongering Bush era in which he first raised his banner – this week his 670,000 Twitter followers could find him (between musings about socks) rejoicing in France's legalisation of gay marriage, ridiculing a journalist's Muslim beliefs, and retweeting a story that the older Boston bomber "was angry that the world pictured Islam as a violent religion". On Monday, no doubt manfully resisting efforts to deify or idolise him, the world No 1 will attend the premiere in Toronto of a documentary about his roadshow (with Lawrence Krauss) promoting science and reason.
I personally have a great admiration for Richard Dawkins, and his courage in the face of incredibly vicious attacks and attempts to marginalize him or shut him up.
I think that what Dawkins, and of course Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennet, and the late great Christopher Hitchens as well, have done is to place themselves firmly on the front line, fully accepting the volley of anger and hatred directed toward them, in order to clear a path for those who will come behind them.
In many ways I think they can be given some credit for the increase in atheism among the younger generation, and perhaps their work will someday be seen as instrumental in ushering in the end of organized religion's grip of terror on this country, and on many developing countries around the world.
That would be a legacy well worth celebrating.
Here is what Professor Dawkins identifies as the "Problem with Religion" in his own words.
I think the world that he envisions is infinitely more beautiful than the one we enjoy today.
This is a powerful piece of video. How does a grandmother get the message to her grandchildren without alienating the parents?
ReplyDelete“God gave you a brain and, he expects you to use it.”
DeleteIf the kids know it’s OK to question, and not “the devil” whispering, they stand a good chance of creating a personal and socially acceptable moral code.
"I think the world that he envisions is infinitely more beautiful than the one we enjoy today."
ReplyDeleteThat's a loaded closing statement Gryph, because the people who Dawkins takes on, are the ones that don't care for a beautiful world for us and our children today or tomorrow; they just want to go to that other place, the afterworld, where they think there is purpose.
What is our point in life, if we are to only look forward to Earth's destruction or just individual death? How can you look at your beautiful baby and think, I can't wait til we all meet our maker? When you yourself have become one?
5:06, I think I would be than willing to give them a hand along that path to their desired destination if that's what it takes for peace and quiet!
DeleteAs for your last paragraph of questions, I have to say that for a tremendous number of them they are simply acting out what was brainwashed into THEM by THEIR parents and so on back into the dark corners of Man's existence in time.
Most of them. Some are just plain screwed up. Does that give the "most of them" an excuse to be ignorant and blind and stupid? Not in the least. It merely explains one facet of it.
I am grateful that we are living in a time when we have access to the internet (well, a lot of us, anyway) and can research for ourselves if we have half a brain. I believe that is one of the main reasons we are seeing an explosion in the number of non-believers today. (I won't say atheists or agnostics or whatever, just non-believers. It covers the gamut.)
I just wish I was going to live long enough to actually see when we are the majority and those clinging to an organized religion are in the minority. At 65, I think that won't happen. Nice dream, though.
PS: Who says there has to be a "point in life"?
DeleteHey Gryphen I have an interesting fundie story for you that I think you will like! I have chronic back pain issues and last week was in hospital for a few days getting it settled and getting a pain management plan. I was in a terrible state, sobbing and rocking in pain as I begged for help overnight which is when I really suffer very much. I was in the high dependency unit (one step down from intensive care) which meant I had one nurse dedicated to me and the next bed overnight. I was talking to her and I broke out in tears and said that I don't know how I can keep up with life under these circumstances (I cannot work physical jobs so I'm trying to finish my masters to work in an office setting). It's easy, she told me. The reason why I am suffering so badly is because I have not dedicated my life to Jesus and that 'the devil' was inside me causing me the backpain.
ReplyDeleteThis was of course outrageous and I could have gotten her into trouble or even possibly fired. But I'm not that sort of person so I decided to push back in the hope that in future she keeps quiet instead of causing good people in the hospital any extra anguish by being told such nasty things.
'there is no devil. He's made up! There is probably no god either' I said.
'Yes there is' she threw back 'when I got cancer I prayed to Jesus and he healed me. He heals people who have faith in him.'
'Wow! So you rejected surgery and chemotherapy? That's amazing!' I mocked her.
'No' she answered, sounding flat.
'So only bad people who are tempted by 'the devil' die? People who believe in Jesus strong enough and pray strong enough never die?!'
She then walked away. I sincerely hope she has stopped saying nasty things to people and causing them emotional pain. What a piece of work; she actually thinks she was doing good when really she was an evil, mean spirited cow. I'm glad I hurt her feelings and she slunk away. Fundies are the worst!
You should have said that she was not being professional and to
Deletekeep her opinions to herself if she wants to keep her job. There's no point in arguing with these people they have no rational but fear of losing their job might be enough to silence them.
I was robbed.
ReplyDeleteThe other evening, while channel surfing, I came upon a local pastor giving his sermon on the local access channel. Well, all of what he was saying seemed strange to me but what really struck me was his concern that he would be being selfish if he mourned his children going to hell if that was to be their end. Somehow I cannot imagine looking at my child, or any child for that matter, and contemplating their spending eternity in hell. There is a kind of religiosity going on today that is so addled and wrong and yet many people seem to be lapping it up. In different parts of the world it takes different forms but it's all the same really - and really crazy.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
Beaglemom, I see it a lot with parents who disown their children because they are gay. If that is what they call "the love of God", I can do without it.
DeleteAnd I do quite well, thank you very much!
I also see it (from my own family, no less!) when someone marries someone of another race. Or another faith. Or....
Richard Dawkins is my 15 year old son's favorite thinker. My son has read most of his books took a day off from school to attend his lecture at the University of Texas during the Freethinkers Conference. We live in Texas and believe me, it is not easy to read a Dawkins book at school; even the teachers have something to say about it...since finding Dawkins my kid has become a outspoken atheist and I am a proud but worried Mom. The religious nuttery is thick in Texas.
ReplyDeleteDeeTex, I can understand your concern. I was "caught" carrying a book entitled "The Naked Ape" with my books while in high school in the sixties in SC. Carrying, mind you, not reading.
DeleteThe teacher noticed the book and went ballistic! Yelling and screaming and cursing me and everything else. Fortunately for me, one of my classmates sneaked out of the class and ran to the Principal's office and the two of them ran back and arrived in time to see the teacher grab the library book and rip it in half. (I was smart enough to realize this person was nuts and didn't react in any way. I didn't get angry or upset, even. In fact I didn't say a word.
Those of us in that school were very fortunate to have a forward thinking principal who believed in defending whoever was RIGHT. The Principal ordered the teacher home and took the matter up with the school board. That ended the career of that particular teacher at that school. (I sincerely hope that it was ended PERMANENTLY!)
And in those days there weren't as many zealots as today. I can understand why you are concerned for your son's safety and well-being, however.
It's hell being a free thinker and even worse when it is a free thinker concerning religion.
Tell him for me, though, if you would, that there are MANY people who think as he does and that he is NOT alone. Please?
Don't worry Mom, you are in good company and so is your son.Keep up the good fight. I had the some problem, but now my daughter is attending the top public university in the country studying molecular genetics. We saw Prof. Dawkins at her university and got his autograph after the lecture. Coolest thing ever.
DeleteMy 15 yr old idolizes RD. I let him take a day off from school to travel to Austin to hear him lecture at the Univ. of Texas. He was enthralled. He has read almost all of RD's books, and gets plenty of comments when he reads at school (even the teachers have something to say). Since reading and seeing RD, my kid has become more outspoken and emboldened to look religious fervor/intolerance and bullshit in the eye and call it what it is, brainwashing...
ReplyDeletethis is not an easy position in Texas, but I am so proud of my kiddo for not letting the religious nuttery get away with it. Congrats to Mr. Dawkins!
An extended excerpt from Terry Eagleton's review of The God Delusion (link below): Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster. These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.
ReplyDeleteDawkins on God is rather like those right-wing Cambridge dons who filed eagerly into the Senate House some years ago to non-placet Jacques Derrida for an honorary degree. Very few of them, one suspects, had read more than a few pages of his work, and even that judgment might be excessively charitable. Yet they would doubtless have been horrified to receive an essay on Hume from a student who had not read his Treatise of Human Nature. There are always topics on which otherwise scrupulous minds will cave in with scarcely a struggle to the grossest prejudice. For a lot of academic psychologists, it is Jacques Lacan; for Oxbridge philosophers it is Heidegger; for former citizens of the Soviet bloc it is the writings of Marx; for militant rationalists it is religion.
What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case? Dawkins, it appears, has sometimes been told by theologians that he sets up straw men only to bowl them over, a charge he rebuts in this book; but if The God Delusion is anything to go by, they are absolutely right. As far as theology goes, Dawkins has an enormous amount in common with Ian Paisley and American TV evangelists. Both parties agree pretty much on what religion is; it’s just that Dawkins rejects it while Oral Roberts and his unctuous tribe grow fat on it.
As the aforenoted atheist, Bertrand Russell, wrote: Everyone knows that to read an author simply in order to refute him is not the way to understand him.
Sadly even as great a mind as his couldn't always follow his own advice.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching
Mr. Lewis? What is your point?
ReplyDeleteI would really like to be able to understand what you are attempting to say with this excerpt.
Kindly clarify.
According to the Guardian article, Mr. Dawkins won "World's Top Thinker" because of his atheism. The irony of the award, in my view, lies in his lack of thinking and research on the subject matter, as rather forcefully stated in the excerpt.
ReplyDeleteI don't see anything wrong with being an atheist, but someone receiving such an award should at least have thought more than cursorily about the topic.
Many people in the US and abroad were raised Atheist. I've never been encouraged to "look down" on any people of faith or religion unless the "do harm" with their beliefs, and also if their beliefs run counter to actual scientific and technological posits.
DeleteI've always felt sad for folks that rely on Bronze Age "wisdom" as a yard stick for their lives as my immediate family, and my broader family of Atheists would rather progress with the future our humankind, rather than being stultified by the words and actions of people that lived many thousands of years ago.
That being said, I would never proselytize to those that actually believe in any sort of religion or any type of god, I'm just happy to have been given the opportunity to not be burdened by it.
And how much of his work have YOU read?
DeleteI can tell you from personal experience that one doesn't have to have
deciphered Thomas Aquinas or Scotus to understand the basic facts that Mr. Dawkins is making most of the time. (Although I can say I HAVE read both.)
And that is that believing in a god or gods almost requires a sort of mental shut down in certain areas. Just ignoring the contradictions in the bible, for instance, requires one to stop thinking critically.
Many of his thoughts may have come from other's minds. I don't know. I've not read enough of his writings to be able to say. But I DO know that what the award is FOR - as is clearly stated in the boundaries and guidelines set up by the committee - is "influence over the past 12 months" and "significance to the year's biggest questions".
A far as I am able to decipher, that doesn't appear to require deep, fresh thinking, nor new arguments. It requires INFLUENCE being applied in a way to affect people's minds and their ways of thinking. Further, it means (at least to me) an ability to force others to THINK about what the subject is. It also can mean that arguing AGAINST something can add "significance to the year's biggest questions". And religion was - and is - certainly a significant question of the year.
In other words, the award is not for original thought necessarily. It is for forcing the ATTENTION of the world onto a question of importance.
All of this is clear to me when reading what was put out by the The Guardian, as quoted by Gryphen - especially the last paragraph of that article.
Simply put, Dawkins was able to argue firmly and convincingly enough to raise reasonable doubts and create questions about the subject he was (and is) concerned about. In his world, that is the dangers of religion and belief in gods who (according to him) don't exist.
I would say he has succeeded in having "Influence over the past 12 months" by doing so.
Leland,
DeleteI don't dispute that many find Dawkins' views influential. The award is sufficient proof of that to me. However, I, and a few others, find that perspective ironic, which is not to argue I believe you too should find it so. If my view was shared by those who voted for Dawkins he wouldn't have won the award.
In answer to your first question, I've read enough of his work to see the difference between his educated and "fundamentalist" (to borrow Peter Higgs' description) views.
Dawkins is much clearer about the distinction between facts and opinions in his work on the evolutionary process. Not only is he well aware when his views are inductive leaps (e.g. the true quanta of evolution are genes and not organisms which he argues are just the media of environmental interaction- the arena where genes extended into the macro world get phenotyped, if you will) he wants his readers to also be so aware.
Even though I disagree with some of his views on the evolutionary process- I suspect a more balanced gene to organism perspective will prove more predictive- I find his thinking on that topic wonderfully educated and a delight to read (even if, at times, I see the dogmatist in him running a bit to freely).
As noted above, his Atheist views lack the erudition of his earlier work.
In other words, the best examples of Dawkins' thought in the context of long term influence, in my view, are his earlier evolution focused works, NOT those which won him the award.
Please note, these are my opinions (if the liberal sprinkling of "in my view"s wasn't sufficient), some (many) might disagree.
That short clip explains it all so eloquently. More good has been done in this world through the pursuit of Science than in the name of any religion.
ReplyDeleteI've seen this trend in my kid's peers and it gives me hope.