'Bullied and Brainwashed'

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Impressed by Dawkins's ardor against creationism, the American software billionaire Charles Simonyi endowed a chair for him at Oxford in "public understanding of science." From his chair Dawkins regularly expounds against belief as "a scientist," though technically he's a professor of science, not a working scientist. One of the first things Dawkins did from his tenured position was lead a crusade against Cambridge University's plan to endow a chair in theology. Theology is all ridiculous superstition, Dawkins said, and unworthy of being dignified by study.

Which brings us to the first problem with Dawkins's positions: he is arrogant. It's one thing to say that the other side is wrong--maybe there's no divine, believers may turn out wrong--and quite another to denounce the other side as ignorant, stupid, insane and so worthless its arguments should not even be heard. (Sorry, I left out wicked.) Saying the other side's argument should not be heard is at best plugging your fingers into your ears, at worst the instinct to suppress free thought; it's amazing to hear a tenured Oxford don essentially calling for intellectual restrictions.

Dawkins complains in the article that so many people believe things about science that are off the wall--for example, that early humans co-existed with dinosaurs--because their science educations are poor. He'll get no argument from me on that. But I suspect one reason so many Americans have a poor understanding of evolutionary theory is that overbearing figures such as Dawkins talk down to them and act contemptuous of their religious beliefs. So people respond--perhaps quite rationally--by screening out the views of scientists whose motives they distrust. In this regard, it is telling that polls show Americans overwhelmingly accept many findings of modern research, such as the theories of relativity and of cosmic expansion. The scientists who favor these ideas generally aren't in the habit of mocking peoples' faiths, and so they are believed by the general public. If Dawkins's professional goal is "public understanding of science," he is a flop, seemingly trying his best to make worse what he is supposed to fix.

These things said, let's focus for a moment on areas where Dawkins has strong points. The basic idea of evolution is, today, about as well established as the basic idea that the moon circles the Earth. Even Pope John Paul II has acknowledged that natural selection is "more than just a theory." There is a rich, close to overwhelming body of evidence that living things evolve in response to changes in their environments and to other forces: the extreme creationists who deny any kind of evolution at all really are flat-Earth types, and it is hard to find anything nice to say about their positions. Dawkins is right endlessly to call evolution an established fact.

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