By - - THE SUNDAY TIMES (SRI LANKA)
Added: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:46:27 UTC

Smriti Daniel is pleasantly surprised to meet a ‘nice grandfather-like figure’– Richard Dawkins, a man with the reputation of being almost militant in his views about religion and evolution and easily one of the most controversial authors to grace the Galle Literary Festival. Pic by Indika Handuwala

I keep a wary eye peeled for religious fanatics and rabid atheists as I lead Dr. Richard Dawkins through the Governor’s Mansion in Galle. Both would only try to hijack my subject, (albeit for very different reasons) and I am intent on shepherding my charge through to where a modest verandah abuts a small garden. There two white chairs and a few minutes of quiet are waiting for us. As the 2012 Galle Literary Festival party gets into full swing on the crescent of lawn out front, Dawkins says he’s considering a trip to Matara.

It’s where his mother, Jean Ladner spent the first three years of her life. “Though she was very young, my mother remembers the elephants going by, each holding the tail of the one in front,” he says. “She was born in Colombo, her father, my grandfather, A.W. Ladner was in the Navy in the First World War and he was a radio engineer. He was employed to build a radio station in Matara where my mother lived as a small child. I know she would very much like it if I could go there and take some photographs.”

If you didn’t know him, the company he was in would decide whether you thought Dawkins was a celebrity or a pariah. For many, the world’s most famous atheist and evolutionary biologist is fighting the good fight – championing the cause of rationality and science, he is a vocal opponent of religious bigotry and fundamentalism. Alarmed and outraged, others see the most infamous member of the ‘Four Horsemen’ as propagating a brand of new atheism that verges on the militant. Even some fellow scientists and moderate believers have gone on record to protest what they consider his intellectual arrogance and dangerously polarising stance.
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TAGGED: CONFERENCES, RICHARD DAWKINS