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  2. The man behind the...
  3. The man behind the selfish gene, memes, and gerin oil*
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The man behind the selfish gene, memes, and gerin oil*

BMJ 2006; 333 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0609337 (Published 01 September 2006) Cite this as: BMJ 2006;333:0609337
  1. Balaji Ravichandran, student editor1
  1. 1Student BMJ

Thirty years ago, Richard Dawkins had his first book The Selfish Gene published, and he continues to write one bestseller after the next. Balaji Ravichandran caught up with him in the lead up to the publication of his next book, boldly titled The God Delusion

You are primarily a scientist, an ethologist to be precise, who studies animal behaviour. Would you agree that in recent years it has been your opposition to religion that has kept you in the public eye, rather than your scientific work?

Well, I suppose it is true, to some extent. I'm quite passionate about scientific truth, and I see religion as a competitor to scientific truth. Religion, in my opinion, offers an alternative view of the cosmos and of life, and to that extent it is pernicious. In the United States, this is particularly bad, manifesting itself as an outright hostility to biology and evolution.

Is your fervent opposition to religion an integral part of your role as a professor of public understanding of science at Oxford University?

Yes, you could say that. But, even without the scientific dimension, I'm worried as a citizen of the world, seeing all the wars, the massacres, the killings, the mayhem, and the destruction that is done in the name of religion.

You once said, “The alleged marriage between religion and science is a shallow, empty, spin doctored sham.” Do you think religion and science are fundamentally irreconcilable?

There is one kind of religion to which I don't absolutely object. I call it Einsteinian religion. Physicists often use the word “God” metaphorically to refer to something that has yet to be explained in scientific terms. Stephen Hawking is another physicist who uses God in an Einsteinian sense. But I think that this use is a bit unfortunate, as it is open to misunderstanding. If you're talking about a faith based supernatural God who answers prayers and pardons sinners, who instructs human beings to bomb people of other religion, then no, religion …

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