More Richard Dawkins

Jeremy1952 · Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2003 7:22 am Post subject: More Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins: You Ask The Questions
(Such as: in the name of rationality, would you
like to see Father Christmas stamped out? And
would you spend the night in a haunted house?)

20 February 2003

The evolutionary biologist and author Richard
Dawkins was born in Nairobi in 1941. A graduate
of Oxford University, he has been a fellow of New
College, Oxford, since 1970; he became the first
Professor of the Public Understanding of Science
at the university in 1995. His first book, The
Selfish Gene, a radical updating of Darwinian
theory, was an immediate bestseller in 1976. He
is a confirmed atheist. He lives in Oxford with
his third wife, the actress Lalla Ward, and has a
daughter, Juliet, from a previous marriage.

In the name of rationality, would you like to see
Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy stamped out?
Patricia Kell, London

No. Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are part
of the charm of childhood. So is God. Some of us
grow out of all three.

Did you have a Pauline conversion to atheism? Or
did your beliefs evolve more slowly over time?
What changed your mind? Adam Elford, Northampton

I had a normal, decent Anglican upbringing, which
is to say that I was never brainwashed as I might
have been had I been brought up in another faith.

I toyed with atheism from the age of about nine,
originally because I worked out that, of all the
hundreds of religions in the world, it was the
sheerest accident that I was brought up
Christian. They couldn't all be right, so maybe
none of them was. I later reverted to a kind of
pantheism when I realised the shattering
complexity and beauty of the living world. Then,
around the age of 16, I first understood that
Darwinism provides an explanation big enough and
elegant enough to replace gods. I have been an
atheist ever since.

Do you think anyone who claims to have seen a
poltergeist has witnessed something objectively
real? Would you spend the night in a haunted
house? Mike Dell, Blakeney

The philosopher David Hume's put-down of miracles
can be adapted to poltergeists. If someone claims
to have witnessed a poltergeist, it may seem
improbable that he is a liar, a hoaxer or
deluded. But still it is more probable than the
claim itself. I like to think that I would spend
the night in a haunted house. But I am a human
being as well as a rationalist, and it is
possible that primitive fears would overtake me.

By analogy, reason convinces me that pain is only
a brain mechanism warning me not to damage
myself, so I should just ignore it. But I always
want an anaesthetic when the dentist drills.

What is beyond scientific explanation? Emma
Hutchins, Surbiton

There are things that science wasn't meant to
explain and doesn't try to, such as what is right
or wrong. There are things that science can't yet
explain but is working on. And there may be
things that science would like to explain but
never can. It is a simple (but distressingly
common) fallacy to presume that if something is
beyond science, it is not beyond religion, too.

Do you have a particular affinity with
chimpanzees? Sheila Anderson, by e-mail

No more than you do. You and I are exactly
equally close cousins of chimps, which means
very close indeed.

Is a scientist who believes in God a true
scientist? Bruce Kitts, Cardiff

Some of the greatest scientists who have ever
lived including Newton, who may have been the
greatest of all believed in God. But it was hard
to be an atheist before Darwin: the illusion of
living design is so overwhelming. My guess is
that if Newton were born today, he would be an
atheist.

A recent poll of scientists elected to the American
National Academy of Sciences (equivalent to
fellows of the Royal Society) revealed that 93
per cent are atheists. That figure drops to 60
per cent if you include scientists not elected to
the National Academy. It would be absurdly
arrogant for me to claim that the 7 per cent of
academicians who believe in God are not true
scientists.

One day, will it be possible to predict a child's
future at birth by testing its genes, foretelling
what diseases it will suffer from, what crimes it
will commit and how long it will live? If so, do
you welcome this? Kelly Stimpson, by e-mail

This prophecy is often made, but it is
exaggerated. If the effects of genes were all
that deterministic, identical twins would die
simultaneously and commit the same crimes even
if apart. The increased predictability we'll gain
from reading genomes cheaply will, for many
genes, be only statistical. But even the improved
statistical prediction will have a big impact on
the life-insurance industry. And there are some
terrible diseases whose heritability score is
one, meaning that if an identical twin dies of
the disease, his twin is bound to die of it, too.
When it becomes feasible to screen for such nasty
genes in the DNA of embryos, the moral case for
selective abortion will become overwhelming.

Sufferers from such inherited diseases sometimes
object, on the grounds that selective abortion
would have deprived them of existence. All of us
have to thank a ludicrously improbable chain of
past events for our existence. If a different
sperm in your father's ejaculate had won the race
to the egg... did your parents or grandparents
meet each other as a direct consequence of the
Second World War...? Many people could answer
yes. Do you, then, see this as grounds for
objecting to the suggestion that wars should be
abolished? Of course not: the idea is absurd.

Was your friend Douglas Adams right: is the
answer to life, the universe and everything 42?
If not, what is? And what was Adams right about?
Paula Guthrie, London

The scientific understanding of the universe is
so strange and unexpected to the human mind that
laughter may be the only way to cope. I think
that is one basis of Douglas Adams's unique
humour. Other science-fiction writers give us
goose pimples over the mystery in the universe.
Douglas Adams's response to the same kind of
mystery was to make us laugh. It is as though the
universe, as portrayed by science, were one big
Monty Python sketch.

Doesn't the fact that so many societies
throughout history have invented some sort of god
or gods suggest that humans really have a need to
believe in gods that in some way our brains
have a god-shaped hole, which we try to fill as
conveniently as possible? Charles Harry, Reading

You could be right, but the evidence is not
strong. Plenty of us lead happy and fulfilled
lives without plugging that hole. Or maybe the
hole is not god-shaped but understanding-shaped.
We have a need to understand where we came from;
understand our place in the universe. If that's
the real shape of the hole in our brains, science
will plug it more satisfyingly than religion.
Finally, if it turned out to be true that we have
a psychological need for gods, that emphatically
wouldn't prove that gods exist.

If, when you die, you find yourself unexpectedly
at the Pearly Gates, what would you say to St
Peter? Mark Richards, by e-mail

OK, I was wrong. But I was wrong for the right
reasons. Those guys in there were right. But just
look at their reasons.

'A Devil's Chaplain', a collection of Dawkins'
essays, is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson at
£16.99


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