Richard Dawkins - Fight for Your Belief

            Every day, when people turn on the news or open up some news magazine, there are always some smart looking guys talking about issues that most people care about in their daily life.  They are often people holds high educational degrees or know a lot of stuff in their fields.  Their words are convincing because they know and believe in what they are talking about.  Their words are influential because common viewers tend to have trust in experts.  They are what we called public intellectual, people who have expertise in one or more fields, but do not limit themselves in their own academic circles.  They spend time to reach out to mainstream readers and raise their opinions out load in public.  They try hard to connect with people, who understand so little of the world, and share their knowledge with others.  Some of them may do it for the fame, but many public intellectuals writes in hope that their action can change many people’s minds or even change the world.  However, the public who holds different views often criticizes those public intellectuals.  Richard Dawkins is one of those typical public intellectuals.  His strong supports on biological evolution, atheism and many other issues do not make him the most popular guy of the year, but his dedication in educating public put his name in the list of top 100 Public Intellectuals.

             Richard Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya on the 26^th of March in 1941.  His father was an agricultural civil servant but with a strong interest in natural science.  Dawkins’s parents were often answer his question with scientific explanations, but they are Christians.  Dawkins was raised to believe in god and bible.  However, as a teenager boy, Dawkins found that the theory of evolution is a better explanation for this complicated and wonderful world than the bible give to him.  Dawkins said, “the main residual reasonwhy I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life andfeeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realized thatDarwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under theargument of design.  And that leftme with nothing.”

Then, fallowing his passion, Dawkins studied zoology at Balliol College and Oxford.  He received his Master and Doctor degree as working for Nobel Prize-winning ethnologist Nikolaas Tinbergen.  After 2 years in University of California, Berkeley, he returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 and later on became Simonyi Professor for thePublic Understanding of Science at Oxford.  The expectation of this position was to make important contributions to the public understanding of scientific field.  From there on, to communicate with public and share his intellectual knowledge became his job.  He founded the Foundation for Reason and Science to promote studying sciences.  Dawkins has also given tons of public lectures, writing many books for the mainstream readers and participated in many television series to spread his knowledge and ideas crossed public communities.  One of the most outstanding works of his is The Selfish Gene.  The book was published in 1976.  In which, Dawkins explained and popularized the gene-centered view of evolution, which means that evolution occurs through the competition of different genes for survival.  He also introduced a term, meme, which is “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.”  As he stated in his book, “examples of memes are tuned, ideas, catch-phrase, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches.  Just as genes propagate themselves in the gen pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain.” 

The Selfish Gene is only one of his many works on the topic of evolution.  In all of his work, Dawkins stood strong on evolution as a fact instead of a theory in the common understanding.  In his publicseminar with Lawrence Krauss in 2008, he explained that there two definition oftheory in Oxford dictionary.  One is the common understanding of theory – an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action.  The other one is the one scientists use in their professions – a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.  Dawkins said that the theory of evolution is in the sense of the second definition, which it is not an unsupported idea but a well used explanation qualified as the basic of modern biology.   

 However, the most special about his work was not his clever ideas or fancy new terms, it is his public friendly writing style.  He used most easy untreatable words to explain complicated scientific ideas.  His books were not written for biologists like many other scientists.  His books were designed for common public.  This shows that he put educating public as his priority goal.  The reward was that his The God Delusion has sold more than two million copies in English and had been translated into 31 different languages. 

Besides writing books on scientific matters, Dawkins has also been deeply involved in political and social movements.  He is best known for his strong atheism belief.  As Stephen Weinberg said, “science doesn’t make it impossible to believe in God.  It just makes it possible to not believe in God.”  Dawkins is the one who took this possibility.  He has abandoned religion since he found Darwinism, and he has held his position strong for the past 50 plus years.  He explained in his popular non-fiction book, The God Delusion, that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist, and the belief in God is like a delusion.  He also quoted Robert Pirsing’s statement, “when one person suffers from a delusion its is called insanity.  When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.”  Dawkins raised four strong massages in this book,

1. Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
2. Natural selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a "God hypothesis"—the illusion of intelligent design—in explaining the living world and the cosmos.
3. Children should not be labeled by their parents' religion. Terms like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should make people cringe.
4. Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.

Moreover, Dawkins did not stop his atheism support at simply writing a book, he also spoke out in other public media, such as Television series The Purpose of Purpose.  Dawkins often identify himself not only as an atheist, but also a militant atheist, who would fight for atheism against religion influence in politics, education and many other areas for society.  For example, Dawkins out spoke against schools teach children creationism in basic education, and does not even mention evolution until the very last of biology class in secondary education.  He is also a big supporter of Brights Movement, which is a social movement that aims to promote public understand of the naturalistic view.  On the other hand, Dawkins does not want to separate atheists from rest of the world.  Unlike many religious people who think atheism make people have bad behaviors; Dawkins believed that there are almost not correlation between your belief and your behavior in general.  Said him, “An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”   Moreover, for Dawkins, atheism is not simply denying the existence of God or supernatural events.  It is a belief that can help people to open their minds and enjoy this wonderful world through the beauty of science.  He used term, non-theism, to describe the true atheism that he believed in, which is like agonist but instead of believe in equal chances of God’s existing or not existing, non-theism is in favor of the non-existence of God without denying it completely. 

Furthermore, Dawkins’s work did not only stay in Britain.  As being such strong atheist believer, when Dawkins saw such low support on evolution in US, there is no doubt that he would bring his ideas crossed Atlantic Ocean.  He said in his TED seminar,

“In professional circles everywhere, [evolution] it’s of course universally accepted. In non-professional circle outside America, it’s largely ignored. But in non-professional in America, It raises so much hostility, that it’s fair to say that American biologists are in the stage of war. “  

Dawkins went on about how deeply influenced the political structure is by religion in America.  For example, he mentioned George H W Bush’s statement of “I don't think atheists should be considered citizens or patriots since, we are one nation under God.” In the seminar, Dawkins called for atheists to speak out for their beliefs and also a separation of religion and political structure.  However, as a British, it may be hard for him to imagine the role of religion in this country.  Dr. Stephen Mack said in his blog,

“American democracy has always depended onpublic figures—and public intellectuals—whose work has been animated by strongfaith. Billy Graham’s efforts to promote racial harmony during the 1950s, andReinhold Neibuhr’s work for economic justice throughout his career come quicklyto mind. A deep religious sensibility has the power to make us feel a realkinship with others. And kinship tempers self-interest. This kind of“democratized” religion enlarges our sense of justice, moving it beyond aconcern for individuals alone toward a personal investment in the well being ofour countrymen.”

It may be true that America need religion, but for Dawkins, he believes those atheists are fully capable of whatever religious people are capable of doing.  He worries the positions and rights of the large population of atheists not only in America, but also in the world.  As Dr. Stephen Mack said, “a more important challenge wouldcenter on how religion is being used, not whether it is used,” perhaps religion can be used in a way that can help religious people as well as non-religious people.

              On the other had, as all public figures, Richard Dawkins’s strong position against religion puts him in the center of conservative’s criticism.  For example, T. J. Nelson wrote in his book review of The God Delusion, 

“Why would someone be so much of a grinch asto write a book as mean-spirited as this? Part of the answer may be that theauthor feels threatened by creationism and religious fundamentalists. Fear,along with a sense of victimhood (which is a unifying factor in many specialinterest groups), is one of the few emotions that can produce such smallness ofspirit.”  Moreover, as a “militantatheism,” 

Dawkins tends to use strong words against religion and many die-hard religious people.  It also many people in an uncomfortable position, as many people tend to be “polite” and “respectful” to other’s religious view.  Jim Holt stated in New York Times, Sunday Book Review,

“It’s all in good fun when Dawkins mocks abuffoon like Pat Robertsonand fundamentalist pastors like the one who created “Hell Houses” to frightensin-prone children at Halloween. But it is less edifying when he questions thesincerity of serious thinkers who disagree with him, like the late Stephen JayGould, or insinuates that recipients of the million-dollar-plusTempleton Prize, awarded for work reconciling science and spirituality, areintellectually dishonest (and presumably venal to boot). In a particularly lowblow, he accuses Richard Swinburne, a philosopher of religion and science atOxford, of attempting to “justify the Holocaust,” when Swinburne was strugglingto square such monumental evils with the existence of a loving God."   

However, in order to understand Dawkins’s words, people have to understand that he does not hate religion or religious people.  Dawkins is just desperately want the society of atheists, who tend to be separated and “polite,” to united and fight for the rights and attention that they deserved like many other minority groups.  He hopes for an atheism movement similar to the homosexual movements.  Just like Dawkins said in the end of his TED seminar, “let’s all stop being damn respectful.”