By MARCUS BERKMANN - SPECTATOR BOOK CLUB
Added: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 UTC

http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/5438263/the-teacher-you-wish-youd-had.thtml

Sometimes you can become too well known. For years Richard Dawkins was a more than averagely successful media don, an evolutionary biologist, fellow of New College, writer of popular science books and tousle-haired face of rationalism on countless television shows. It was a good living, and kept us all entertained, but for Dawkins it wasn’t enough. So he wrote The God Delusion, an unambiguous attack on religion and the religious. I should probably say at this stage that I am not a believer, but it does seem to me that if people want to believe in a god or gods, that’s very much up to them. In his stridency, Dawkins inadvertently aligned himself with the fundamentalists he hates so much: he became identified as a sort of fundamentalist atheist. Many people, it turned out, felt as he did: 1.5 million of them have bought the book in English, and it has been translated into 30 languages. In this country, though, I suspect that his reputation was harmed by the escapade. We aren’t keen here on such fervent demonstrations of certainty. And we may not be entirely convinced that a scientist’s rigour is the best tool to use against religion, which after all is irrational, and proud of it.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/5438263/the-teacher-you-wish-youd-had.thtml

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