Militant Atheism: A Tribute to Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL was born on the 26th of March 1941 in Nairobi, Colony of Kenya, British Empire. His father, Clinton John Dawkins, was an agricultural civil servant in the British colonial service, in Nyasaland (now Malawi). His father was called up into the King's African Rifles during the second world war and was based in Kenya, returning to England in 1949, when Richard was eight. Both of his parents were interested in natural sciences, and they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms.

Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". Though he began having doubts about the existence of God when he was about nine years old, he was persuaded by the argument from design, an argument for the existence of God or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, or design in nature. By his mid-teens, he had instead concluded that the theory of evolution was a better explanation for life's complexity, and became non-religious.

Dawkins is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author. He was formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and was a fellow of New College, Oxford. He came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to evolutionary biology with the concept, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.

Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics.

Dawkins is a prominent and outspoken atheist, secular humanist, sceptic, scientific rationalist, and supporter of the Brights movement. He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler", by analogy with English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a delusion − as a fixed false belief. As of November 2007, the English language version had sold more than 2 million copies and had been translated into 31 other languages, making it his most popular book to date.

Reference: Wikipedia.org




Links:

The Origin of Species

Darwin and the case for 'militant atheism'

Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design

Dawkins: Evangelist an 'idiot' on evolution

Dawkins: The Origin of Species (YLE)

richarddawkinsfoundation.org

richarddawkins.net

youtube.com/user/richarddawkinsdotnet