[Home]RichardDawkins

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http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_dawkins/index.shtml

Married to Lalla 'Romana II' Ward.

Has rather controversial views on religion and child rearing.
What are his views on child rearing? --DR
He's said that declaring a child to be of a particular religion before they're old enough to understand the concept "is a form of [mental child abuse]" (third paragraph). - MoonShadow
Most of his rant is perfectly reasonable, about the dangers of segregating religious teachings from an early age - he doesn't actually object to the parents attempting to sway their child to their religion - only to the automatic assumption that they will succeed.  I've certainly seen other writers go further in this line of thought - though to be fair such writers also term religion a disease...  --Vitenka
In TheGodDelusion? he seems to say that children cannot be considered to be religious as they are too young to make such decisions. I had a discussion with Sally about this where she said she thought that was rubbish, and I'm inclined to agree. --RobHu

Irritates a lot of people. Says beliefs should be based on observations, not the other way around.
Is this so unreasonable? --RobHu

It's not so much his views that annoy people, I think. I agree with most of what he says, but he annoys me greatly, simply because of the way he says it. Being militant and in-your-face really doesn't help to get your point across... -- Xarak
PeterTaylor has a different gripe about the way he says things, having read most of The Blind Watchmaker. It claims to be a scientific book, but uses the success of a really contrived GA program as evidence for macroevolution.
I think Stephen J Gould's books on evolution are very good. I havn't read any of Dawkins', so I can't directly compare the two, but you might find Gould less of a "hardliner". -- Xarak
Gould and Dawkins come from opposite schools of neo-Darwinist theory. Both described each others theories' as "interesting but wrong". There is some debate as to whether or not the Gould/Dawkins? argument was a difference of model or a difference of interpretation. SunKitten probably understands this better than I do. --SF

Best known for the books "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker".

"People are just a mechanism used by DNA to create more DNA."

Recently wrote directly about his thoughts on religion in TheGodDelusion?

See also: Meme

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