A word on Dawkins

Dawkins, unlike other famous scientists, is not a great scientist; he's not even a scientist. Most famous scientists (e.g., Richard Feynman, Francis Collins, Paul Berg, not to mention folks like Sherrington, Einstein and Darwin) became famous for their scientific work, then developed into public figures.

Gould, Wilson and Conway Morris all made original contributions to evolutionary theory before becoming public figures. Dawkins didn't - he took a fairly standard Mendelian/Darwinian picture of evolution and popularized it in The Selfish Gene. This work was not scientific, either in the naturalist or experimental tradition.

All of this is not exactly a knock on Dawkins. Dawkins's role has been to make public the dominant strain of evolutionary theory; this work, in some senses, is even more important than refining the theory. I firmly believe that the public needs to come to terms with developments in the biological sciences. As medicine becomes a necessity for optimal living, as neuroscience becomes a factor in criminal cases, as stem cells dominate the news, as the biological sciences come to dominate more of our lives, public understanding of science will be vital for a healthy democracy. Dawkins, more than almost any other figure, has helped biological science come out into the public.

But Dawkins's ideas are just that: ideas. They deserve evaluation on their merits. Doubting evolution is one thing, doubting Dawkins's version of it (as Gould did, and many other scientists do) is another. It should go without saying then, since Dawkins is not trained in philosophy, theology, cosmology, or even experimental science, that his ideas on God reflect no expertise or privilege: they are the ideas of a smart man with a sharp pen. Nothing more, nothing less. Again, that's not a knock - we each have to make our peace with the world without expert knowledge, and that's the way Dawkins has.