Reposted from The (Toronto) Globe and Mail:


The world's best-known atheist talks to John Allemang about life, dinosaurs and a cabinet minister he calls a 'complete idiot'

There's at least one thing Richard Dawkins has in common with the God he so famously (and successfully) doesn't believe in: Each of them has a reputation for being rather solemn when it comes to explaining the meaning of things.

The omnipotent author of The Ten Commandments presumably doesn't worry about what people think, but the bestselling author of The God Delusion is a little more sensitive. "I'd like to think my book is full of jokes," says the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a title that now more often requires him to challenge the misunderstandings preferred by the public in these unenlightened times.

When 42 per cent of the Canadian population, according to a recent Angus Reid poll, profess to believe that dinosaurs roamed the Earth alongside humans in recent history, a devoted Darwinian like Dr. Dawkins is compelled to take his mission more seriously than he might like.

But in doing so, and insisting with every bit of scientific rigour he can bring to bear that God is a cruel delusion, he worries that his brand of atheism might begin to be seen as the no-fun choice, a scholarly attack on the easy certainties of religion with little to offer humanity by way of an alternative.

So here's The Word According To Richard Dawkins, delivered not through stone tablets handed down from the holy ozone layer but over bitter coffee in a Toronto bistro: Good times start with atheism.

"Life is joyful," he says, going into one of his flights of evolutionist ecstasy, "and it becomes even more joyful when you know it's finite, because you've got to make the most of it while you've got it. You don't have to regard existence as this 'vale of tears,' a preparation for a better life to come where you have to live in misery in this life because you're going to reap your reward in heaven - not a bit. This is it, so you better make the most of it."

Atheists, like new-age Hollywood starlets, live in the moment - and this is a good one for Dr. Dawkins. His book has sold more than a million copies worldwide and has just been released in paperback. An endless promoter of himself as well as of public understanding, he visited Toronto to attend a two-day thinkfest called ideaCity at which he was a marquee attraction.

In all his atheistic immediacy, there's none of that worry about Judgment Day's eternal torment, the post-mortem investigation at the Pearly Gates that inspires the Oxford professor's jokey side. "Why are there so many old people in church?" he asks, pauses the required beat, then answers. "Cramming for the final."

The atheist's life course is exam-free, at least if you don't count earthbound challenges such as Preston Manning's attack on The God Delusion published in The Globe and Mail this week. Mr. Manning, acknowledging the runaway success of atheism promoters such as Dr. Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) and Sam Harris (The End of Faith), took the know-it-all forces of godlessness to task for acting like a 21st-century Inquisition, with the cruelties of their cold logic picking up where the burning-at-the-stake part left off. While Mr. Manning's main concern seemed to be that the atheists were getting a bit above themselves in trying to monopolize the Truth, he used a particularly Canadian argument for diversity to try to undermine The God Delusion.

Dr. Dawkins is inclined to say religion endures in the age of science because it is passed on from parent to child as an adaptive trait - children who listen to what their elders tell them have a better chance of staying alive than those who don't.

Keeping this in mind, he calls it "child abuse" to label children Catholics or Amish or Muslims when they are too young to have thought critically about their imposed beliefs. With typical relentlessness, he goes on to chide liberals who hesitate to join him in critiquing parental indoctrination because they're too willing to respect cultural diversity.

Spotting an opening, Mr. Manning idly pondered whether atheism's inquisitors were intent on moving in on Canada's most spiritual sector, the aboriginal peoples: "...To suggest that their children should be taken away from them and re-educated in some sort of scientific residential schools," he wrote, "would be to make a grievous mistake."

In fact, the allied forces of militant atheism have never called for science-based kiddie concentration camps, and Dr. Dawkins is more heartened than exasperated by the misrepresentation. "Preston Manning's suggestion that I want to take children away from their parents and deprive them of their heritage may be libellous, but I really can't be bothered to find out. Manning's article is interesting only as an indication of how desperately panicked religious apologists of his kind are becoming."

It wasn't so long ago that the conservative Christian viewpoint was in the ascendancy and more difficult to dismiss, as shown by the electoral successes of George W. Bush, Stephen Harper and even Dr. Dawkins's pious compatriot Tony Blair. But when a book like The God Delusion sells a million copies and is being translated into 31 languages, it's clear that atheists and humanists shouldn't have been so easily cowed.

And yet when Democratic presidential candidates in the United States are given a chance to distance themselves from the Republican holy warriors, they still to a man (and woman) testify to a belief in the God that Dr. Dawkins finds so deluding.

"No doubt all of them do that to win votes," he says with a pragmatism that doesn't always come across in his writing. "I can't say I exactly blame them for that. I wonder if they're right, though. It does occur to me that all these closeted unbelievers might be a hell of a lot more numerous than people realize. It may be one of the downsides of democracy that you have to pander to the lowest common denominator, but it's never clear to me why you'd pander to the religious constituency when the free-thinking constituency might actually be rather big."

This comes from a man who doesn't testify in those U.S. court cases about the teaching of evolution because "I'm not a good politician. ... One of the things the creationist lobby wants to hear is that evolutionism leads to atheism, and since I'd have to say that to a jury, the evolutionists would lose the case immediately."

Dr. Dawkins may be right about not being an effective politician. He is often accused of being shrill and insensitive in his attacks on religion ("Religion has come to expect a free ride and not to be criticized the way we'd criticize, say, a sports team"), but for him that's just a professional style. "Scientists are accustomed to calling a spade a spade. If something is nonsense, it shouldn't be seen as hurtful to criticize it."

For all his truth-telling rigour and eagerness to spot delusions, Dr. Dawkins can be surprisingly willing to play along with less enlightened members of the species. As a senior fellow at an ancient Oxford college, he is often called upon to recite the Latin grace before dinner. He does so cheerfully, quoting the principle enunciated by a flexible and comfort-loving atheist colleague that "I will not utter falsehoods, but I have no objection to uttering meaningless statements."

But he clearly has his limits. He takes as an example the fundamentalist Christian view that the Earth, beginning with Genesis, is 6,000 years old - a statement of faith he labels "completely childish and insane." I can't help mentioning that Canada's Minister of Public Security, Stockwell Day, has been known to express this belief in his time.

"This man is a cabinet minister?" Dr. Dawkins says incredulously, ordering me to make note of his rolling eyes. "Tell him his belief is equivalent to believing that the width of North America, from shall we say New York to San Francisco, is 7.8 yards - that's the scale of the error he's buying into. This man is the minister responsible for security? He's clearly a complete idiot - or ignorant, anyway. Ignorance by itself is no crime, but ignorance in a cabinet minister is."

He makes another joke, pointing out that it's a lot harder for terrorists and dinosaurs to sneak across the border when it's only 7.8 yards wide. And then, like a good scientist (and a bad politician), Dr. Dawkins submits his rhetoric to scrutiny. Is it really the case, he asks himself, questioning his previous assumption, that "someone whose view of the universe is so cockeyed is disqualified from making sensible decisions about human politics? I suppose in a strict sense it doesn't matter, because you don't have to know how old the world is to protect the state.

"Yet," he adds, because a spade remains a spade, "I can't help feeling that you should not trust the decision-making ability of a man whose view of the world is so wrongheaded. If you thought the Earth was flat - and it's about as absurd - could you still protect Canada's borders?"

John Allemang is a feature writer with The Globe and Mail.