Also, under the general title of The Protestant Atheism of Richard Dawkins, I am producing a critique of the ideology contained in the programmes. The latest page is The Historicism of Richard Dawkins 2: Scientific Capitalism.

I hadn’t heard of Richard Dawkins before seeing this programme, and after seeing it I was surprised to learn that Dawkins was well respected in any field. I won’t be rushing out to buy his books after seeing his stunted thinking in action in this programme.

It’s strange that a man who is apparently respected for his logical thinking and application of the “scientific method” feels that he has to resort to such inflammatory rhetoric at every turn, as you’ve mentioned above, Richard. Throughout the programme, Dawkins fails to demonstrate any ability to construct a sound line of reasoning. (As I’ve said, I haven’t read any of his books – perhaps he’s a little more thorough in his writing). He pulls up pitifully short of the mark on every path he sets out on. Take a look at Madeleine Bunting’s article in the Guardian for a number of ideas that should have been obvious to Dawkins but that, it turns out, he is too blinkered, irresponsible or lazy to consider himself.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the programme is Dawkins’s complete disdain and lack of respect for the ideas of anyone with a different world view from his own. As Bunting notes, “a misanthropy is increasingly evident in Dawkins’s anti-religious polemic.” Dawkins talks about religious extremists, and once or twice mentions suicide bombers. It doesn’t occur to him, however, to consider that he himself has something in common with these people - an unquestioning acceptance of his own belief systems and a complete disrespect for, and misunderstanding of, everyone else’s.

It’s difficult to know whether it was stupidity or shameless calculation that led Dawkins to select his particular interviewees. Most of the people he spoke to seemed as incapable of rational reflective thinking as Dawkins himself. But then, clearly, reasoned discussion was never an aim of Dawkins’s programme – on the odd occasion when an interviewee finds a chance to say something sensible and encourages Dawkins to look at his own beliefs, Dawkins merely throws out of the window what little reason he seemed capable up until then of employing and resorts instead to a temper tantrum. At one point he talks to a Jewish rabbi, and ends the scene shouting at the rabbi that his beliefs are “ridiculous!” after the rabbi interestingly touches upon the idea that Dawkins is a scientific fundamentalist.

One of Dawkins’s most remarkable statements was made to the evangelical, Ted Haggard, when Dawkins, after upsetting Haggard with some inane and provocative question, claims that he has “come to try and understand.” Unfortunately, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Dawkins makes no visible attempt to understand anything in the course of the programme. His “conversation” with Haggard, like the rest of the programme, was an exercise in criticism and attack. Rather than take the opportunity to engage Haggard in a sensible discussion and work with him to try to explore and understand his initial comments, Dawkins reduces the situation to a squabble when Haggard doesn’t immediately pay him the adulation to which Dawkins, for some reason, thinks he’s entitled. The most sensible statement in the programme comes at this point from Haggard when he says, “…you’ll find yourself right in some things, wrong in other things. But please, in the process of it, don’t be arrogant.” Here, Dawkins appears not to know quite what to do with himself, as he probably realises that he has been criticised rightly in what were probably the very terms in which he had intended to criticise Haggard. At this point, Dawkins looks like he doesn’t know whether to cry or to launch himself at Haggard.

Following this embarrassing scene, Dawkins tells the story of an old professor who one day was shown that his work over many years was fundamentally flawed. The professor in the story, seeing a large body of his work effectively being torn apart at the foundations, sincerely thanks the person who has shown him the error of his ways. Unfortunately, though, for all that Dawkins relates this story to us, it is precisely the professor’s sense of detachment that Dawkins miserably fails to bring to a programme that sorely needs it.