The Quinque viæ ( Latin for " Five Ways ") (sometimes called "five proofs") are five logical arguments for the existence of God summarized by the 13th-century Catholic philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas in his book Summa Theologica . They are:
159-524: The God Delusion is a 2006 book by British evolutionary biologist and ethologist Richard Dawkins . In The God Delusion , Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator , God , almost certainly does not exist, and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion , which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence . He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig 's statement in Lila (1991) that "when one person suffers from
318-483: A Church of England ethos, where he was in Laundimer House. While at Oundle, Dawkins read Bertrand Russell 's Why I Am Not a Christian for the first time. He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford (the same college his father attended), graduating in 1962; while there, he was tutored by Nobel Prize -winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen . He graduated with a second-class degree. Dawkins continued as
477-407: A Darwinian explanation: altruistic genes , selected through the process of evolution, give people natural empathy. He asks, "would you commit murder, rape or robbery if you knew that no God existed?" He argues that very few people would answer "yes", undermining the claim that religion is needed to make us behave morally. In support of this view, he surveys the history of morality, arguing that there
636-568: A Labour voter in the 1970s and voter for the Liberal Democrats since the party's creation. In 2009, he spoke at the party's conference in opposition to blasphemy laws, alternative medicine, and faith schools. In the UK general election of 2010 , Dawkins officially endorsed the Liberal Democrats, in support of their campaign for electoral reform and for their "refusal to pander to 'faith ' ". In
795-521: A blind watchmaker, in that reproduction , mutation , and selection are unguided by any sentient designer. In 2006, Dawkins published The God Delusion , writing that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion . He founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science in 2006. Dawkins has published two volumes of memoirs , An Appetite for Wonder (2013) and Brief Candle in
954-666: A " cultural Christian " and a "cultural Anglican " in 2007 and 2013 and again in 2024. Dawkins explained, however, that this statement about his culture has "means absolutely nothing as far as religious belief is concerned." On his arrival in England from Nyasaland in 1949, at the age of eight, Dawkins joined Chafyn Grove School , in Wiltshire , where he says he was molested by a teacher. From 1954 to 1959, he attended Oundle School in Northamptonshire , an English public school with
1113-525: A "100x Signatory". He holds honorary doctorates in science from the University of Huddersfield , University of Westminster , Durham University , the University of Hull , the University of Antwerp , the University of Oslo , the University of Aberdeen , Open University , the Vrije Universiteit Brussel , and the University of Valencia . He also holds honorary doctorates of letters from
1272-412: A God or gods exist) to 7 (100% certainty that a God or gods do not exist), Dawkins has said he is a 6.9, which represents a "de facto atheist" who thinks "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there". When asked about his slight uncertainty, Dawkins quips, "I am agnostic to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of
1431-561: A basis for understanding altruism . Altruism appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own chances for survival, or "fitness" . Previously, many had interpreted altruism as an aspect of group selection, suggesting that individuals are doing what is best for the survival of the population or species as a whole. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton used gene-frequency analysis in his inclusive fitness theory to show how hereditary altruistic traits can evolve if there
1590-585: A belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation." On 3 October 2007, John Lennox , Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, publicly debated Richard Dawkins at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on Dawkins' views as expressed in The God Delusion , and their validity over and against the Christian faith. "The God Delusion Debate" marked Dawkins' first visit to
1749-674: A book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in 'anti-scientific' fairytales". In 2011, Dawkins joined the professoriate of the New College of the Humanities , a private university in London established by A. C. Grayling , which opened in September 2012. Dawkins announced his final speaking tour would take place in the Fall of 2024. Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of
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#17328516905361908-486: A book openly criticising religion , but his publisher had advised against it. By 2006, his publisher had warmed to the idea. Dawkins attributes this change of mind to "four years of Bush " (who "literally said that God had told him to invade Iraq "). By that time, a number of authors, including Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens , who together with Dawkins were labelled "The Unholy Trinity" by Robert Weitzel, had already written books openly attacking religion. According to
2067-722: A book review published in Nature , Dawkins expressed his appreciation for two books connected with the Sokal affair : Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt and Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont . These books are famous for their criticism of postmodernism in U.S. universities (namely in the departments of literary studies, anthropology, and other cultural studies). Echoing many critics, Dawkins holds that postmodernism uses obscurantist language to hide its lack of meaningful content. As an example he quotes
2226-522: A cause capable of generating these effects, and hence for a cause that is first in the hierarchical sense, not the temporal sense. Aquinas follows the distinction found in Aristotle's Physics 8.5, and developed by Simplicius, Maimonides, and Avicenna that a causal chain may be either accidental (Socrates' father caused Socrates, Socrates' grandfather caused Socrates' father, but Socrates' grandfather only accidentally caused Socrates) or essential (a stick
2385-459: A debate on Radio 3 Hong Kong , David Nicholls, writer and president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia , reiterated Dawkins' sentiments that religion is an "unnecessary" aspect of global problems. Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other". He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould 's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA). In an interview with
2544-470: A defence of atheism, but also goes on the offensive against religion. Dawkins sees religion as subverting science, fostering fanaticism , encouraging bigotry against homosexuals , and influencing society in other negative ways. Dawkins regards religion as a "divisive force" and as a " label for in-group/out-group enmity and vendetta". He is most outraged about the teaching of religion in schools, which he considers to be an indoctrination process. He equates
2703-409: A delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." In the book, Dawkins explores the relationship between religion and morality, providing examples that discuss the possibility of morality existing independently of religion and suggesting alternative explanations for the origins of both religion and morality. In early December 2006, it reached number four in
2862-531: A discussion of the ' Five Ways ' of Thomas Aquinas but never thought to avail himself of the services of some scholar of ancient and mediaeval thought who might have explained them to him ... As a result, he not only mistook the Five Ways for Thomas's comprehensive statement on why we should believe in God, which they most definitely are not, but ended up completely misrepresenting the logic of every single one of them, and at
3021-674: A field from which Dawkins has distanced himself. Dawkins's meme refers to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or set of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through communication and contact with humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Because memes are not always copied perfectly, they might become refined, combined, or otherwise modified with other ideas; this results in new memes, which may themselves prove more or less efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing
3180-460: A foreword in which he asserts that alternative medicine is harmful, if only because it distracts patients from more successful conventional treatments and gives people false hopes. Dawkins states that "There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work." In his 2007 Channel 4 TV film The Enemies of Reason , Dawkins concluded that Britain is gripped by "an epidemic of superstitious thinking". Continuing
3339-425: A form of an Eddington concession in saying that, although he would not accept it, a reasonably respectable case could be made for "a deistic god, a sort of god of the physicist, a god of somebody like Paul Davies , who devised the laws of physics, god the mathematician, god who put together the cosmos in the first place and then sat back and watched everything happen" but not for a theistic god. Several days later, in
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#17328516905363498-404: A framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution based on memes, a notion that is analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes. Although Dawkins invented the term meme , he has not said that the idea was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of
3657-572: A gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful theologians such as Bonhoeffer is that gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide. Dawkins does not claim to disprove God with absolute certainty. Instead, he suggests as a general principle that simpler explanations are preferable (see Occam's razor ) and that an omniscient or omnipotent God must be extremely complex (Dawkins argues that it
3816-483: A god. He states: "The main residual reason why I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life and feeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realised that Darwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under the argument of design. And that left me with nothing". This understanding of atheism, combined with his western cultural background, influences Dawkins as he describes himself in several interviews as
3975-483: A healthy, independent mind. He hopes that the more atheists identify themselves, the more the public will become aware of just how many people are nonbelievers, thereby reducing the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority. Inspired by the gay rights movement , he endorsed the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly. He supported a UK atheist advertising initiative,
4134-460: A hierarchy: a principal cause, rather than a derivative cause. In the world we see things that are possible to be and possible not to be. In other words, perishable things. But if everything were contingent and thus capable of going out of existence, then, nothing would exist now. But things clearly do exist now. Therefore, there must be something that is imperishable: a necessary being. This everyone understands to be God. The argument begins with
4293-437: A large portion of his 2003 book A Devil's Chaplain posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year. When asked if Darwinism influences his everyday apprehension of life, Dawkins says, "In one way it does. My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take
4452-455: A long-standing partnership with Channel 4 , Dawkins participated in a five-part television series, Genius of Britain , along with fellow scientists Stephen Hawking , James Dyson , Paul Nurse , and Jim Al-Khalili . The series was first broadcast in June 2010, and focuses on major British scientific achievements throughout history. In 2014, he joined the global awareness movement Asteroid Day as
4611-513: A medical professional. Calling this " social constructionism gone amok," Dawkins and Sokal argued further that "distort[ing] the scientific facts in the service of a social cause" risks undermining trust in medical institutions. In his role as professor for public understanding of science, Dawkins has been a critic of pseudoscience and alternative medicine . His 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow considers John Keats 's accusation that by explaining
4770-555: A member of the new organization's board of directors. Dawkins was confirmed into the Church of England at the age of 13, but began to grow sceptical of the beliefs. He said that his understanding of science and evolutionary processes led him to question how adults in positions of leadership in a civilised world could still be so uneducated in biology, and is puzzled by how belief in God could remain among individuals who are sophisticated in science. Dawkins says that some physicists use 'God' as
4929-433: A metaphor for the general awe-inspiring mysteries of the universe, which he says causes confusion and misunderstanding among people who incorrectly think they are talking about a mystical being who forgives sins, transubstantiates wine, or makes people live after they die. Dawkins disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould 's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) and suggests that the existence of God should be treated as
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5088-400: A misfiring of something useful" as for example the mind's employment of intentional stance . Dawkins suggests that the theory of memes , and human susceptibility to religious memes in particular, can explain how religions might spread like "mind viruses" across societies. He then turns to the subject of morality , maintaining that we do not need religion to be good. Instead, our morality has
5247-468: A necessary conclusion requires necessary premises), then there must exist an eternal agent which can account for the eternity of generation and corruption. To hold the alternative, namely that an infinite series of contingent causes would be able to explain eternal generation and corruption would posit a circular argument: Why is there eternal generation and corruption? Because there is an eternal series of causes which are being generated and corrupted. And why
5406-444: A position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field", and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins. He held that professorship from 1995 until 2008. Since 1970, he has been a fellow of New College, Oxford , and he is now an emeritus fellow. He has delivered many lectures, including
5565-553: A probe into whether The God Delusion was "an attack on holy values", following a complaint in November 2007. If convicted, the Turkish publisher and translator, Erol Karaaslan, would have faced a prison sentence of inciting religious hatred and insulting religious values. In April 2008, the court acquitted the defendant. In ruling out the need to confiscate copies of the book, the presiding judge stated that banning it "would fundamentally limit
5724-440: A proof of God if one first begins with a proposition that the universe can be rationally understood. Nevertheless, he argues that they are useful in allowing us to understand what God will be like given this initial presupposition. Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart says that Dawkins "devoted several pages of The God Delusion to a discussion of the 'Five Ways' of Thomas Aquinas but never thought to avail himself of
5883-584: A public debate in Inverness, Scotland, John Lennox used this part of Dawkins' speech out of context claiming that "Dawkins now believes that a good case can be made for deism", which Dawkins refuted in his conference in Atlanta, describing Lennox as insincere. The book was ranked second on the Amazon best-sellers' list in November 2006. The God Delusion has been translated into 35 languages. For The God Delusion , Dawkins
6042-418: A range of responses, both positive and negative. Metacritic reported that the book had a weighted average score of 59 out of 100, indicating "mixed or average reviews". On January/February 2007 issue of Bookmarks , the book received a [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] (3.0 out of 5) based on critic reviews with a summary saying, "This fatal flaw knocks his book down
6201-572: A religious one". He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler ", a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley , who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog " for his advocacy of Charles Darwin 's evolutionary ideas. He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science , which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and whose work Dawkins has described as an "educational scandal". He plans to subsidise schools through
6360-428: A research student under Tinbergen's supervision, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy degree by 1966, and remained a research assistant for another year. Tinbergen was a pioneer in the study of animal behaviour, particularly in the areas of instinct , learning, and choice; Dawkins's research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making. From 1967 to 1969, Dawkins was an assistant professor of zoology at
6519-662: A rung or two for critics, many of whom seem inclined to believe in Dawkins, if only he weren't so preachy". The book was nominated for Best Book at the British Book Awards , where Richard Dawkins was named Author of the Year. Nevertheless, the book received mixed reviews from critics, including both religious and atheist commentators. In the London Review of Books , Terry Eagleton accused Richard Dawkins of not doing proper research into
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6678-412: A scientific hypothesis like any other. Dawkins became a prominent critic of religion and has stated his opposition to religion as twofold: religion is both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence. He considers faith—belief that is not based on evidence—as "one of the world's great evils". On his spectrum of theistic probability , which ranges from 1 (100% certainty that
6837-413: A younger sister, Sarah. His parents were interested in natural sciences , and they answered Dawkins's questions in scientific terms. Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". He embraced Christianity until halfway through his teenage years, at which point he concluded that the theory of evolution alone was a better explanation for life's complexity, and ceased believing in
6996-425: Is a British evolutionary biologist , zoologist , science communicator and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford , and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. His book The Selfish Gene (1976) popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and coined the word meme . Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards. Dawkins
7155-410: Is a causal series in which the immediately observable elements are not capable of generating the effect in question, and a cause capable of doing so is inferred at the far end of the chain. Ordinatio I.2.43 ) This is also why Aquinas rejected that reason can prove the universe must have had a beginning in time; for all he knows and can demonstrate the universe could have been 'created from eternity' by
7314-514: Is a moral Zeitgeist that continually evolves in society, generally progressing toward liberalism . As it progresses, this moral consensus influences how religious leaders interpret their holy writings. Thus, Dawkins states, morality does not originate from the Bible, rather our moral progress informs what parts of the Bible Christians accept and what they now dismiss. The God Delusion is not just
7473-497: Is a prominent critic of creationism , a religious belief that humanity , life , and the universe were created by a deity without recourse to evolution. He has described the young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood". His 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker , contains a sustained critique of the argument from design , an important creationist argument. In
7632-437: Is a syllogism that produces scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is knowledge not simply that something is the case, but why it is the case, what causes bring it about. Perhaps we would do better to call it a scientific understanding of the fact known. This means that one may have cognition that something is true which is quite certain without having scientific knowledge... Criticism of the cosmological argument , and hence
7791-531: Is also known as the Teleological Argument . However, it is not a "Cosmic Watchmaker" argument from design (see below). Instead, as the 1920 Dominican translation puts it, The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world . The Fifth Way uses Aristotle's final cause . Aristotle argued that a complete explanation of an object will involve knowledge of how it came to be (efficient cause), what material it consists of (material cause), how that material
7950-419: Is being changed by something else. But this chain cannot be infinitely long , so there must be something that causes change without itself changing. This everyone understands to be God. Aquinas uses the term "motion" in his argument, but by this he understands any kind of "change", more specifically a transit from potentiality to actuality . (For example, a puddle growing to be larger would be counted inside
8109-509: Is easily explained by the fact that they consciously set those goals for themselves. The implication is that if something has a goal or end towards which it strives, it is either because it is intelligent or because something intelligent is guiding it. It must be emphasized that this argument is distinct from the design argument associated with William Paley and the Intelligent Design movement. The latter implicitly argue that objects in
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#17328516905368268-505: Is his scathing review of Not in Our Genes by Steven Rose , Leon J. Kamin , and Richard C. Lewontin. Two other thinkers who are often considered to be allied with Dawkins on the subject are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett ; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology. Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated
8427-409: Is logically impossible for a God to be simultaneously omniscient and omnipotent). As such he argues that the theory of a universe without a God is preferable to the theory of a universe with a God. The second half of the book begins by exploring the roots of religion and seeking an explanation for its ubiquity across human cultures. Dawkins advocates the "theory of religion as an accidental by-product –
8586-572: Is moving a stone, because a hand is simultaneously moving the stick, and thus transitively the hand is moving the stone.) An accidental series of causes is one in which the earlier causes need no longer exist in order for the series to continue. ... An essential series of causes is one in which the first, and every intermediate member of the series, must continue to exist in order for the causal series to continue as such. His thinking here relies on what would later be labelled "essentially ordered causal series" by John Duns Scotus . (In Duns Scotus, it
8745-502: Is no necessary connection between them and therefore we cannot necessarily reason from an observed effect to an inferred cause. Hume also argued that explaining the causes of individual elements explains everything, and therefore there is no need for a cause of the whole of reality. The 20th-century philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne argued in his book, Simplicity as Evidence of Truth , that these arguments are only strong when collected together, and that individually each of them
8904-542: Is not a fundamentalist, as he is willing to change his mind in the face of new evidence. Dawkins has faced backlash over some of his public comments about Islam. In 2013, Dawkins tweeted that "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though." In 2016, Dawkins' invitation to speak at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism
9063-411: Is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English." Dawkins has opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but
9222-500: Is rooted in Aristotle and Plato but its developed form is found in Anselm of Canterbury's Monologion . Although the argument has Platonic influences, Aquinas was not a Platonist and did not believe in the Theory of Forms. Rather, he is arguing that things that only have partial or flawed existence indicate that they are not their own sources of existence, and so must rely on something else as
9381-479: Is structured (formal cause), and the specific behaviors associated with the type of thing it is (final cause). The concept of final causes involves the concept of dispositions or "ends": a specific goal or aim towards which something strives. For example, acorns regularly develop into oak trees but never into sea lions. The oak tree is the "end" towards which the acorn "points," its disposition, even if it fails to achieve maturity. The aims and goals of intelligent beings
9540-400: Is sufficient genetic similarity between actors and recipients of such altruism, including close relatives. Hamilton's inclusive fitness has since been successfully applied to a wide range of organisms, including humans . Similarly, Robert Trivers , thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism , whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in
9699-757: Is that a gene cannot survive alone, but must cooperate with other genes to build an individual, and therefore a gene cannot be an independent "unit". In The Extended Phenotype , Dawkins suggests that from an individual gene's viewpoint, all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted. Advocates for higher levels of selection (such as Richard Lewontin , David Sloan Wilson , and Elliott Sober ) suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley , with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning The Selfish Gene , has criticised gene selection, memetics, and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist ; she has suggested that
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#17328516905369858-446: Is that evolution can explain the apparent design in nature. In The God Delusion he focuses directly on a wider range of arguments used for and against belief in the existence of a god (or gods). Dawkins identifies himself repeatedly as an atheist , while also pointing out that, in a sense, he is also agnostic , though "only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden". Dawkins had long wanted to write
10017-413: Is that the greatest in a genus is the cause of all else in the genus. This premise does not seem to be universally true, and indeed, Aquinas himself thinks that this premise is not always true, but only under certain circumstances: namely, when 1) the lesser things in the genus need a cause, and 2) there is nothing outside the genus which can be the cause. When these two conditions are met, the premise that
10176-450: Is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public." In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers , Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know". When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word theory , Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it
10335-640: Is there an infinite series of causes which are being generated and corrupted? Because there is eternal generation and corruption. Since such an explanation is not acceptable, there must be (at least one) eternal and necessary being. We see things in the world that vary in degrees of goodness, truth, nobility, etc. For example, well-drawn circles are better than poorly drawn ones, healthy animals are better than sick animals. Moreover, some substances are better than others, since living things are better than non-living things, and animals are better than plants, in testimony of which no one would choose to lose their senses for
10494-441: Is unhelpful. Regarding Rees' claim in his book Our Cosmic Habitat that "such questions lie beyond science; however, they are the province of philosophers and theologians", Dawkins asks "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?" Elsewhere, Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and
10653-413: Is weak. The 20th-century Catholic priest and philosopher Frederick Copleston devoted much of his work to a modern explication and expansion of Aquinas' arguments. More recently the prominent Thomistic philosopher Edward Feser has argued in his book Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide that Richard Dawkins , Hume, Kant, and most modern philosophers do not have a correct understanding of Aquinas at all; that
10812-462: Is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design as well as for being a vocal atheist . Some fellow academics have described Dawkins as a secular or atheist fundamentalist . Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker in 1986, arguing against the watchmaker analogy , an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms . Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to
10971-723: The New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list. More than three million copies were sold. According to Dawkins in a 2016 interview with Matt Dillahunty , an unauthorised Arabic translation of this book has been downloaded 3 million times in Saudi Arabia . The book has attracted widespread commentary and critical reception, with many books written in response. Dawkins has presented arguments against creationist explanations of life in his previous works on evolution . The theme of The Blind Watchmaker , published in 1986,
11130-570: The Time magazine, Dawkins said: I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science. Astrophysicist Martin Rees has suggested that Dawkins' attack on mainstream religion
11289-482: The 2003 invasion of Iraq , the British nuclear deterrent , the actions of then-US President George W. Bush , and the ethics of designer babies . Several such articles were included in A Devil's Chaplain , an anthology of writings about science, religion, and politics. He is also a supporter of Republic 's campaign to replace the British monarchy with a type of democratic republic . Dawkins has described himself as
11448-507: The Amazon retailer in August 2007, the book was the best-seller in their sales of books on religion and spirituality, with Hitchens's God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything coming second. This led to a 50% growth in that category over the three years to that date. Dawkins dedicates the book to Douglas Adams and quotes the novelist: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at
11607-514: The Atheist Bus Campaign in 2008 and 2009, which aimed to raise funds to place atheist advertisements on buses in the London area. Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the human population and about the matter of overpopulation . In The Selfish Gene , he briefly mentions population growth, giving the example of Latin America , whose population, at the time the book was written,
11766-493: The Biblical Creation Society ). In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of engaging with them at all". He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters
11925-928: The Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), the first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), the Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), the T. H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), the Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), the Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), the Tinbergen Lecture (2004), and the Tanner Lectures (2003). In 1991, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children on Growing Up in
12084-621: The Old South and the first significant discussion on this issue in the " Bible Belt ". The event was sold out, and The Wall Street Journal called it "a revelation: in Alabama, a civil debate over God's existence." Dawkins debated Lennox for the second time at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in October 2008. The debate was titled "Has Science Buried God?", in which Dawkins used
12243-471: The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science ( RDFRS ), a non-profit organisation . RDFRS financed research on the psychology of belief and religion , financed scientific education programs and materials, and publicised and supported charitable organisations that are secular in nature. In January 2016, it was announced that the foundation was merging with the Center for Inquiry , with Dawkins becoming
12402-455: The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science with the delivery of books, DVDs, and pamphlets that counteract their work. Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and a supporter of various atheist, secular, and humanist organisations , including Humanists UK and the Brights movement . Dawkins suggests that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, stressing that atheism is evidence of
12561-856: The Royal Society 's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards , and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science . In 2004, Balliol College, Oxford , instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities". In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to "write
12720-495: The University of California, Berkeley . During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War , and Dawkins became involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities. He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 as a lecturer. In 1990, he became a reader in zoology. In 1995, he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford,
12879-637: The University of St Andrews and the Australian National University (HonLittD, 1996), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2001 . He is one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society . In 1987, Dawkins received a Royal Society of Literature award and a Los Angeles Times Literary Prize for his book The Blind Watchmaker . In
13038-1075: The Zoological Society of London 's Silver Medal (1989), the Finlay Innovation Award (1990), the Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize (1994), the fifth International Cosmos Prize (1997), the Kistler Prize (2001), the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (2001), the 2001 and 2012 Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation , the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (2002),
13197-406: The argument from design for longer consideration. Dawkins concludes that evolution by natural selection can explain apparent design in nature. He writes that one of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain "how the complex, improbable design in the universe arises", and suggests that there are two competing explanations: This is the basic set-up of his argument against
13356-420: The gene as the principal unit of selection in evolution ; this view is most clearly set out in two of his books: Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels , described by Gould and Lewontin ) and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as
13515-466: The gene as the unit of selection (a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce) is misleading. The gene could be better described, they say, as a unit of evolution (the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population). In The Selfish Gene , Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams 's definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency". Another common objection
13674-417: The rainbow , Isaac Newton diminished its beauty; Dawkins argues for the opposite conclusion. He suggests that deep space, the billions of years of life's evolution, and the microscopic workings of biology and heredity contain more beauty and wonder than do " myths " and " pseudoscience ". For John Diamond 's posthumously published Snake Oil , a book devoted to debunking alternative medicine , Dawkins wrote
13833-418: The religious teaching of children by parents and teachers in faith schools to a form of mental abuse. Dawkins considers the labels "Muslim child" and "Catholic child" equally misapplied as the descriptions " Marxist child" and " Tory child", as he wonders how a young child can be considered developed enough to have such independent views on the cosmos and humanity's place within it. The book concludes with
13992-469: The 2007 Sunday Times Literary Festival. In Why there almost certainly is a God: Doubting Dawkins , philosopher Keith Ward claims that Dawkins mis-stated the five ways, and thus responds with a straw man . For example, for the fifth Way, Dawkins places it in the same position for his criticism as the Watchmaker analogy - when in fact, according to Ward, they are vastly different arguments. Ward defended
14151-739: The British Colonial Service in Nyasaland (present-day Malawi ), of an Oxfordshire landed gentry family. His father was called up into the King's African Rifles during the Second World War and returned to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited a country estate, Over Norton Park in Oxfordshire , which he farmed commercially. Dawkins lives in Oxford , England. He has
14310-513: The Dark (2015). Dawkins was born Clinton Richard Dawkins on 26 March 1941 in Nairobi , the capital of Kenya during British colonial rule . He later dropped Clinton from his name by deed poll because of confusion in America over using his middle name as his first name. He is the son of Jean Mary Vyvyan ( née Ladner; 1916–2019) and Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), an agricultural civil servant in
14469-466: The First Way, the causes Aquinas has in mind are not sequential events, but rather simultaneously existing dependency relationships: Aristotle's efficient cause . For example, plant growth depends on sunlight and water, which depend on "ideal atmospheric activities", which are "governed by more fundamental causes", and so on. Aquinas is not arguing for a cause that is first in a sequence, but rather first in
14628-439: The Five Ways in more detail in passing in multiple books. The first two Ways relate to causation. When Aquinas argues that a causal chain cannot be infinitely long, he does not have in mind a chain where each element is a prior event that causes the next event; in other words, he is not arguing for a first event in a sequence. Rather, his argument is that a chain of concurrent or simultaneous effects must be rooted ultimately in
14787-501: The Five Ways is given in the Summa theologiae . The Summa uses the form of scholastic disputation (i.e. a literary form based on a lecturing method: a question is raised, then the most serious objections are summarized, then a correct answer is provided in that context, then the objections are answered). A subsequent, more detailed, treatment of the Five Ways can be found in the Summa contra gentiles . Aquinas further elaborated each of
14946-399: The Five Ways. According to Dawkins, "[t]he five 'proofs' asserted by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century don't prove anything, and are easily [...] exposed as vacuous." In Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins , philosopher Keith Ward claims that Dawkins mis-stated the five ways, and thus responds with a straw man . For example, for the fifth Way, Dawkins places it in
15105-699: The Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (2006), and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (2009). He was awarded the Deschner Award , named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner . The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSICOP) has awarded Dawkins their highest award In Praise of Reason (1992). Five Ways (Aquinas) Aquinas expands
15264-612: The Norse gods, if only because these, like the Abrahamic scriptures, are important for understanding English literature and European history". Inspired by the consciousness-raising successes of feminists in arousing widespread embarrassment at the routine use of "he" instead of "she", Dawkins similarly suggests that phrases such as "Catholic child" and "Muslim child" should be considered as socially absurd as, for instance, "Marxist child", as he believes that children should not be classified based on
15423-632: The Universe . He also has edited several journals and has acted as an editorial advisor to the Encarta Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Evolution . He is listed as a senior editor and a columnist of the Council for Secular Humanism 's Free Inquiry magazine and has been a member of the editorial board of Skeptic magazine since its foundation. Dawkins has sat on judging panels for awards such as
15582-616: The Year Award in response to these comments. Robby Soave of Reason magazine criticised the retraction, saying that "The drive to punish dissenters from various orthodoxies is itself illiberal." Dawkins has voiced his support for the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly , an organisation that campaigns for democratic reform in the United Nations, and
15741-503: The arguments are often difficult to translate into modern terms. He has defended the arguments in a book at length. Atheist philosopher J.H. Sobel offers objections to the first three Ways by challenging the notion of sustaining efficient causes and a concurrent actualizer of existence. Atheist philosopher Graham Oppy has offered critiques of the arguments in his exchanges with Edward Feser and in his published work. Biologist Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion argues against
15900-570: The article 'Gaps in the Mind' to the Great Ape Project book edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer . In this essay, he criticises contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous, speciesist imperative". Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and blogs on contemporary political questions and is a frequent contributor to the online science and culture digest 3 Quarks Daily . His opinions include opposition to
16059-411: The assertion that his work simply serves as an atheist counterpart to religious fundamentalism rather than a productive critique of it, and that he has fundamentally misapprehended the foundations of the theological positions he claims to refute. Rees and Higgs, in particular, have both rejected Dawkins's confrontational stance toward religion as narrow and "embarrassing", with Higgs equating Dawkins with
16218-596: The benefits of reputation and fame that derive from a successful academic career: "Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content." In 2024, Dawkins co-authored an op-ed in The Boston Globe with Sokal criticizing
16377-509: The book has been translated into more than 30 languages. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist and has also been identified with the rise of New Atheism . In the book, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion —"a fixed false belief". In his February 2002 TED talk entitled "Militant atheism", Dawkins urged all atheists to openly state their position and to fight
16536-453: The book in languages such as Arabic and Bengali. There are also Telugu and Tamil translations of the book. The Richard Dawkins Foundation offers free translations in Arabic , Urdu , Farsi , and Indonesian . Non-exhaustive list of international editions: Chronological order of publication (oldest first) Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941)
16695-401: The book, Dawkins argues against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the eighteenth-century English theologian William Paley via his book Natural Theology , in which Paley argues that just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things—with their far greater complexity—be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares
16854-506: The book. He maintains that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific fact about the universe, which is discoverable in principle if not in practice. The book argues against the Five Ways . According to Dawkins, "[t]he five 'proofs' asserted by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century don't prove anything, and are easily [...] exposed as vacuous." Dawkins summarises the main philosophical arguments on God's existence , singling out
17013-438: The bottom of it too?" The book contains ten chapters. The first few chapters make a case that there almost certainly is no God, while the rest discuss religion and morality. Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four "consciousness-raising" messages: Chapter one, "A deeply religious non-believer", seeks to clarify the difference between what Dawkins terms "Einsteinian religion" and "supernatural religion". He notes that
17172-557: The boundaries of Aquinas' usage.) Since a potential does not yet exist, it cannot cause itself to exist and can therefore only be brought into existence by something already existing. Suarez contested the Aristotelian principle according to which all that moves is moved by something else (in Latin : omne quod movetur ab alio moveteur ), noting that living beings are capable of moving by themselves and are not moved by anything else, and that
17331-467: The causes to the effects; still, the proposition God exists can be "demonstrated" from God's effects, which are more known to us, through a so-called quia demonstration. However, Aquinas did not hold that what could be demonstrated philosophically (i.e. as general revelation ) would necessarily provide any of the vital details revealed in Christ and through the church (i.e. as special revelation ), quite
17490-505: The creation of a more accountable international political system. Dawkins identifies as a feminist. He has said that feminism is "enormously important". Dawkins has been accused by writers such as Amanda Marcotte , Caitlin Dickson, and Adam Lee of misogyny , criticizing those who speak about sexual harassment and abuse while ignoring sexism within the New Atheist movement . In 1998, in
17649-403: The eternal God. He accepts the biblical doctrine of creation as a truth of faith, not reason. For a discussion of a causal chain argument that is based on a created beginning, see Kalam cosmological argument . In the world, we can see that at least some things are changing. Whatever is changing is being changed by something else. If that by which it is changing is itself changed, then it too
17808-469: The existence of God, the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit , where he argues that the first attempt is self-refuting, and the second approach is the way forward. At the end of chapter 4 ("Why there almost certainly is no God"), Dawkins sums up his argument and states, "The temptation [to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself] is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises
17967-597: The expectation of future reciprocation. Dawkins popularised these ideas in The Selfish Gene , and developed them in his own work. In June 2012, Dawkins was highly critical of fellow biologist E. O. Wilson 's 2012 book The Social Conquest of Earth as misunderstanding Hamilton's theory of kin selection. Dawkins has also been strongly critical of the Gaia hypothesis of the independent scientist James Lovelock . Critics of Dawkins's biological approach suggest that taking
18126-608: The fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term bright as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a naturalistic worldview. He has given support to the idea of a free-thinking school, which would not "indoctrinate children" but would instead teach children to ask for evidence and be skeptical, critical, and open-minded. Such a school, says Dawkins, should "teach comparative religion, and teach it properly without any bias towards particular religions, and including historically important but dead religions, such as those of ancient Greece and
18285-444: The first of these – God as the "unmoved mover" – in his Summa Contra Gentiles . Aquinas thought the finite human mind could not know what God is directly, therefore God's existence is not self-evident to us, although it is self-evident in itself. On the other hand, he also rejected the idea that God's existence cannot be demonstrated: although it is impossible to give a so-called propter quid demonstration, going from
18444-442: The first three Ways, emerged in the 18th century by the philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant . Kant argued that our minds give structure to the raw materials of reality and that the world is therefore divided into the phenomenal world (the world we experience and know), and the noumenal world (the world as it is "in itself," which we can never know). Since the cosmological arguments reason from what we experience, and hence
18603-425: The former includes quasi-mystical and pantheistic references to God in the work of physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking , and describes such pantheism as "sexed up atheism". Dawkins instead takes issue with the theism present in religions like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. The proposed existence of this interventionist God, which Dawkins calls the "God Hypothesis", becomes an important theme in
18762-542: The freedom of thought". Dawkins' website, richarddawkins.net, was banned in Turkey later that year after complaints from Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya) for alleged defamation. By July 2011, the ban had been lifted. List of editions in English: The book has been officially translated into many different languages, such as Spanish, German, Italian, and Turkish. Dawkins has also promoted unofficial translations of
18921-546: The garden". In May 2014, at the Hay Festival in Wales, Dawkins explained that while he does not believe in the supernatural elements of the Christian faith, he still has nostalgia for the ceremonial side of religion. In addition to beliefs in deities, Dawkins has criticised religious beliefs as irrational, such as that Jesus turned water into wine , that an embryo starts as a blob, that magic underwear will protect you, that Jesus
19080-597: The greatest in the genus is the cause of all else in that genus holds, since nothing gives what it does not have. Since Aquinas is dealing specifically with transcendentals like being and goodness, and since there is nothing outside the transcendentals, it follows that there is nothing outside the genus which could be a cause (condition 2). Moreover, if something has less than the maximum being or goodness or truth, then it must not have being or goodness or truth in itself. For example, how could what has circularity itself be less than fully circular? Therefore, whatever has less than
19239-413: The heavens could be moved by a form internal to them. He then reformulated the principle to omne quod fit ab alio fit (everything that is made, is made by something else), and created the following argument: every entity is either made or not made and is uncreated; but all beings that are in the universe cannot be made; therefore it is necessary that there be some unmade, uncreated and eternal entity In
19398-673: The ideological or religious beliefs of their parents. While some critics, such as writer Christopher Hitchens , psychologist Steven Pinker and Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto , James D. Watson , and Steven Weinberg have defended Dawkins's stance on religion and praised his work, others, including Nobel Prize -winning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs , astrophysicist Martin Rees , philosopher of science Michael Ruse , literary critic Terry Eagleton , philosopher Roger Scruton , academic and social critic Camille Paglia , atheist philosopher Daniel Came and theologian Alister McGrath , have criticised Dawkins on various grounds, including
19557-463: The incursion of the church into politics and science. On 30 September 2007, Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens , Sam Harris , and Daniel Dennett met at Hitchens's residence for a private, unmoderated discussion that lasted two hours. The event was videotaped and entitled "The Four Horsemen". Dawkins sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination. These tools include
19716-527: The larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable". In addition, chapter 4 asserts that the alternative to the designer hypothesis is not chance , but natural selection . He dedicates a chapter of his book to criticism of the God-of-the-gaps argument. He noted that: Creationists eagerly seek
19875-518: The little-known German biologist Richard Semon . Semon regarded "mneme" as the collective set of neural memory traces (conscious or subconscious) that were inherited, although such view would be considered as Lamarckian by modern biologists. Laurent also found the use of the term mneme in Maurice Maeterlinck 's The Life of the White Ant (1926), and Maeterlinck himself stated that he obtained
20034-582: The maximum being or goodness or truth must need a cause of their being and goodness and truth (condition 1). We see various objects that lack intelligence in the world behaving in regular ways. This cannot be due to chance since then they would not behave with predictable results. So their behavior must be set. But it cannot be set by themselves since they are non-intelligent and have no notion of how to set behavior. Therefore, their behavior must be set by something else, and by implication something that must be intelligent. This everyone understands to be God. This
20193-423: The most basic levels." Christian philosopher Keith Ward , in his 2006 book Is Religion Dangerous? , argues against the view of Dawkins and others that religion is socially dangerous. Ethicist Margaret Somerville suggested that Dawkins "overstates the case against religion", particularly its role in human conflict. Many of Dawkins' defenders claim that critics generally misunderstand his real point. During
20352-433: The observation that things around us come into and go out of existence: animals die, buildings are destroyed, etc. But if everything were like this, then, at some time nothing would exist. Some interpreters read Aquinas to mean that assuming an infinite past, all possibilities would be realized and everything would go out of existence. Since this is clearly not the case, then there must be at least one thing that does not have
20511-458: The other faction is named after the American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould , reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of the pertinent ideas. In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology , with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical. A typical example of Dawkins's position
20670-421: The pattern that things exist with a purpose itself allows us to recursively arrive at God as the ultimate source of purpose without being constrained by any external purpose). Many scholars and commenters caution against treating the Five Ways as if they were modern logical proofs. This is not to say that examining them in that light is not academically interesting. Reasons include: A demonstration in Aristotle
20829-402: The phenomenal world, to an inferred cause, and hence the noumenal world, since the noumenal world lies beyond our knowledge we can never know what's there. Kant also argued that the concept of a necessary being is incoherent, and that the cosmological argument presupposes its coherence, and hence the arguments fail. Hume argued that since we can conceive of causes and effects as separate, there
20988-414: The phrase from Semon's work. In his own work, Maeterlinck tried to explain memory in termites and ants by stating that neural memory traces were added "upon the individual mneme". Nonetheless, James Gleick describes Dawkins's concept of the meme as "his most famous memorable invention, far more influential than his selfish genes or his later proselytising against religiosity". In 2006, Dawkins founded
21147-555: The popularity of Dawkins's work is due to factors in the Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades. Besides, other, more recent views and analysis on his popular science works also exist. In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (what has been called 'The Darwin Wars'), one faction is often named after Dawkins, while
21306-514: The possibility of going out of existence. However, this explanation seems to involve the fallacy of composition (quantifier shift). Moreover, it does not seem to be in keeping with Aquinas' principle that, among natural things, the destruction of one thing is always the generation of another. Alternatively, one could read Aquinas to be arguing as follows: if there is eternal change, so that things are eternally being generated and corrupted, and since an eternal effect requires an eternal cause (just as
21465-417: The psychoanalyst Félix Guattari : "We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis." This is explained, Dawkins maintains, by certain intellectuals' academic ambitions. Figures like Guattari or Lacan , according to Dawkins, have nothing to say but want to reap
21624-510: The question of whether religion, despite its alleged problems, fills a "much needed gap", giving consolation and inspiration to people who need it. According to Dawkins, these needs are much better filled by non-religious means such as philosophy and science. He suggests that an atheistic worldview is life-affirming in a way that religion, with its unsatisfying "answers" to life's mysteries, could never be. An appendix gives addresses for those "needing support in escaping religion". The book generated
21783-431: The religious fundamentalists he criticises. Atheist philosopher John Gray has denounced Dawkins as an "anti-religious missionary", whose assertions are "in no sense novel or original", suggesting that "transfixed in wonderment at the workings of his own mind, Dawkins misses much that is of importance in human beings". Gray has also criticised Dawkins's perceived allegiance to Darwin, stating that if "science, for Darwin,
21942-486: The reverse. For example, while he would allow that "in all creatures there is found the trace of the Trinity", yet "a trace shows that someone has passed by but not actually who it is." The first three ways are generally considered to be cosmological arguments . Aquinas omitted various arguments he believed to be insufficient or unsuited, such as the ontological argument made by Anselm of Canterbury . A summary version of
22101-661: The run up to the 2017 general election , Dawkins once again endorsed the Liberal Democrats and urged voters to join the party. In April 2021, Dawkins said on Twitter that "In 2015, Rachel Dolezal , a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss." After receiving criticism for this tweet, Dawkins responded by saying that "I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic "Discuss" question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It
22260-567: The sake of having the longevity of a tree. But judging something as being "more" or "less" implies some standard against which it is being judged. For example, in a room full of people of varying heights, at least one must be tallest. Therefore, there is something which is best and most true, and most a being, etc. Aquinas then adds the premise: what is most in a genus is the cause of all else in that genus. From this he deduces that there exists some most-good being which causes goodness in all else, and this everyone understands to be God. The argument
22419-403: The same position for his criticism as the watchmaker analogy , when in fact, according to Ward, they are vastly different arguments. Ward defended the utility of the five ways (for instance, on the fourth argument he states that all possible smells must pre-exist in the mind of God, but that God, being by his nature non-physical, does not himself stink) whilst pointing out that they only constitute
22578-582: The same year, he received a Sci. Tech Prize for Best Television Documentary Science Programme of the Year for his work on the BBC's Horizon episode The Blind Watchmaker . In 1996, the American Humanist Association gave him their Humanist of the Year Award, but the award was withdrawn in 2021, with the statement that he "demean[ed] marginalized groups", including transgender people, using "the guise of scientific discourse". Other awards include
22737-657: The scholastic distinction between primary and secondary causality, for instance, [Dawkins] imagined that Thomas's talk of a "first cause" referred to the initial temporal causal agency in a continuous temporal series of discrete causes. He thought that Thomas's logic requires the universe to have had a temporal beginning, which Thomas explicitly and repeatedly made clear is not the case. He anachronistically mistook Thomas's argument from universal natural teleology for an argument from apparent "Intelligent Design" in nature. He thought Thomas's proof from universal "motion" concerned only physical movement in space, "local motion," rather than
22896-438: The services of some scholar of ancient and medieval thought who might have explained them to him ... As a result, he not only mistook the Five Ways for Thomas's comprehensive statement on why we should believe in God, which they most definitely are not, but ended up completely misrepresenting the logic of every single one of them, and at the most basic levels." Hart said of Dawkins treatment of Aquinas' arguments that: Not knowing
23055-406: The source of their existence. The argument makes use of the theory of transcendentals : properties of existence. For example, "true" presents an aspect of existence, as any existent thing will be "true" insofar as it is true that it exists. Or "one," insofar as any existent thing will be (at least) "one thing." The premise which seems to cause the most difficulty among interpreters of the fourth way
23214-403: The topic of his work, religion, and further agreed with critics who accused Dawkins of committing straw man fallacies against theists. Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of The Dawkins Delusion? and Dawkins' God ) argues that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology , and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at
23373-602: The use of the terminology "sex assigned at birth" instead of "sex" by the American Medical Association , the American Psychological Association , the American Academy of Pediatrics , and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . Dawkins and Sokal argued that sex is an "objective biological reality" that "is determined at conception and is then observed at birth," rather than assigned by
23532-606: The utility of the five ways (for instance, on the fourth argument he states that all possible smells must pre-exist in the mind of God, but that God, being by his nature non-physical, does not himself stink) whilst pointing out that they only constitute a proof of God if one first begins with a proposition that the universe can be rationally understood. Nevertheless, he argues that they are useful in allowing us to understand what God will be like given this initial presupposition. Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart says that Dawkins "devoted several pages of The God Delusion to
23691-462: The very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. That's never far from my thoughts, that sense of amazement. On the other hand, I certainly don't allow Darwinism to influence my feelings about human social life", implying that he feels that individual human beings can opt out of the survival machine of Darwinism since they are freed by the consciousness of self. In his book The Selfish Gene , Dawkins coined
23850-494: The view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, unguided by any designer, nonintelligent, blind watchmaker. In 1986, Dawkins and biologist John Maynard Smith participated in an Oxford Union debate against A. E. Wilder-Smith (a Young Earth creationist) and Edgar Andrews (president of
24009-408: The word meme (the behavioural equivalent of a gene) as a way to encourage readers to think about how Darwinian principles might be extended beyond the realm of genes. It was intended as an extension of his "replicators" argument, but it took on a life of its own in the hands of other authors, such as Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore . These popularisations then led to the emergence of memetics ,
24168-469: The world do not have inherent dispositions or ends, but, like Paley's watch, will not naturally have a purpose unless forced to due some outside agency. The latter also focus on complexity and interworking parts as the effect needing explanation (e.g., that an eye has a complicated function therefore a design therefore a designer), whereas the Fifth Way takes as its starting point any regularity (e.g., that
24327-439: The world, we can see that things are caused. But it is not possible for something to be the cause of itself because this would entail that it exists prior to itself, which is a contradiction. If that by which it is caused is itself caused, then it too must have a cause. But this cannot be an infinitely long chain, so, there must be a cause which is not itself caused by anything further. This everyone understands to be God. As in
24486-420: Was a method of inquiry that enabled him to edge tentatively and humbly toward the truth, for Dawkins, science is an unquestioned view of the world". A 2016 study found that many British scientists held an unfavourable view of Dawkins and his attitude towards religion. In response to his critics, Dawkins maintains that theologians are no better than scientists in addressing deep cosmological questions and that he
24645-483: Was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue." In a recent interview Dawkins stated regarding trans people that he does not "deny their existence nor does he in anyway oppress them". He objects to the statement that a "trans woman is a woman because that is a distortion of language and a distortion of science". The American Humanist Association retracted Dawkins' 1996 Humanist of
24804-443: Was doubling every 40 years. He is critical of Roman Catholic attitudes to family planning and population control , stating that leaders who forbid contraception and "express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation" will get just such a method in the form of starvation . As a supporter of the Great Ape Project —a movement to extend certain moral and legal rights to all great apes —Dawkins contributed
24963-410: Was named Author of the Year at the 2007 British Book Awards . The Giordano Bruno Foundation awarded the 2007 Deschner Prize to Dawkins for the "outstanding contribution to strengthen secular, scientific, and humanistic thinking" in his book. Many books have been written in response to The God Delusion . For example: In Turkey , where the book had sold at least 6,000 copies, a prosecutor launched
25122-712: Was resurrected , that semen comes from the spine, that Jesus walked on water , that the sun sets in a marsh, that the Garden of Eden existed in Adam-ondi-Ahman , Missouri, that Jesus' mother was a virgin , that Muhammad split the Moon , and that Lazarus was raised from the dead . Dawkins has risen to prominence in public debates concerning science and religion since the publication of his most popular book, The God Delusion , in 2006, which became an international bestseller. As of 2015, more than three million copies have been sold, and
25281-416: Was withdrawn over his sharing of what was characterized as a "highly offensive video" satirically showing cartoon feminist and Islamist characters singing about the things they hold in common. In issuing the tweet, Dawkins stated that it "Obviously doesn't apply to vast majority of feminists, among whom I count myself. But the minority are pernicious." Dawkins also does not believe in an afterlife. Dawkins
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