The Great Communicator

This evening, zoologist Richard Dawkins will lecture in the Nieuwe Kerk. He became famous by reforming evolutionary biology and later for his crusade against religion. He has inspired and infuriated people. Five RUG scholars give their views on Dawkins.

By René Fransen

Richard Dawkins became famous for his books on evolutionary theory. In ‘The Selfish Gene’ (1976) he argued that the gene is the real centre of evolution. Genes use bodies to reproduce themselves. Everything we are and do is ultimately orchestrated by our genes and aimed at their propagation. The same goes for all living things.
Dawkins isn’t a top scientist (he has only a few dozen scientific papers to his name), but he is a great communicator. He has the gift of being able to put controversial ideas across and single-handedly changed the course of scientific enquiry.

Franjo Weissing, Professor of Theoretical Biology, had a very important early encounter with Dawkins. “When I was a third-year student of mathematics, back in 1977, I worked as a technical assistant for a big scientific conference in Bielefeld. Richard Dawkins spoke about selfish genes. He was booed, people tried to make him stop. I’d never seen any­thing like it.” The young Weissing later picked up a copy of ‘The Selfish Gene’ to see what all the commotion was about. “Someone standing behind me asked if I liked it. It turned out to be Dawkins himself.” Weissing got a discount and a signed copy. It changed his career. “I had been thinking about switching to biology and meeting Dawkins made my mind up.”
Dawkins came back to Bielefeld for the next few years and Weissing kept in touch. He developed a career in theoretical biology, studying the mechanisms behind evolution. “Dawkins really caused a paradigm shift with his books. But he was so forceful in his arguments that other views were blotted out. It was all genes, nothing else. Only over the last few years has the body as an important ‘player’ in evolution been reconsidered. But that’s the way scientific revolutions work. The pendulum swings from one extreme to another. Dawkins caused a revolution, but then in a sense he himself blocked further progress.”
Dawkins’ views on religion are not consistent with his views as an evolutionary biologist, Weissing thinks. “Selfish genes can create ugly but effective adaptations and Dawkins is always enthusiastic about this, except when it comes to religion.” But religion should be seen as exactly just such an adaptation, Weissing argues. “So it’s odd that in this case he only sees the negative side.”

Fred Keijzer works on the philosophy of biology at the Faculty of Philosophy. “I started reading ‘The Selfish Gene’ as a psychology student and thought it was an excellent piece of writing. Later on, though, I developed a broader view on evolution. I couldn’t agree with Dawkins’ stance that the genes are the only place where interesting things happen.” With his radical views and outspoken opinions, Dawkins thwarted a more balanced discussion, Keijzer feels. “He describes bodies as slaves to their genes. But you could argue with equal persuasiveness that it’s the other way round and that genes are slaves to the body, like a big library.”
Keijzer is not at all religious, but he can’t see why Dawkins is making such a song and dance about it. “From a scientific point of view, religion is a non-issue. I grant everyone their religion, as long as they don’t use it to make scientific claims, like the Intelligent Design movement.”

Behavioural biologist Simon Verhulst agrees with Keijzer. “I don’t understand why Dawkins needs so many books to make his point. However, I do see that some effort is needed to tell people about evolution, especially in the US, where so many people don’t believe evolution exists.” Verhulst does add: “You should respect other peoples’ values.”
To Verhulst, Dawkins stands alone in the way he popularized complex scientific principles for a wider audience: “Books like ‘The Selfish Gene’ and ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ are of the highest quality. They’ve had a far-reaching influence on evolutionary thinking, by introducing the concept that our purpose is to spread our genes.”

Peter Barthel is an astronomer and a science communicator. As a fellow communicator, he acknowledges the quality of Dawkins’ work. “He really can make a general audience understand neo-Darwinism. To me, fascination and understanding are key words in science communication and Dawkins gets full marks on both.”
But, Barthel continues, Daw­kins is also on a crusade against religion. “His viewpoint is that the only­ things that are real and important are what can be measured and observed by science, the material world.” Religion to him is just super­stition. “And he proclaims this with almost religious zeal: ‘There is no God and Dawkins is his prophet’. I do miss some nuance and modesty in his public statements.” But there’s probably a more subtle Dawkins as well, Barthel believes. “Discussions he’s had with the former Anglican Bishop of Oxford and with George Coyne, the former director of the Vatican Observatory, showed a much more subtle and modest Dawkins. And, to be fair, many religious believers are also not exactly exemplary in their modesty. We need modesty, because no one knows the full and complete truth.”

Kocku von Stuckrad specializes in the comparative and historical study of religion, and to him the way Daw­kins writes about religion and biology is very interesting. “About 100 years ago the sociologist Max Weber predicted that as a consequence of modernization science would take the place of religion in explaining who we are and what our place is in the universe.” Also, over the last few decades, the biological para­digm has become very dominant. Everything is explained in terms of biology: “Religion, gender differences, it’s all in the genes nowadays.” For a scholar of religion, this is interesting stuff. “The cognitive science of religion is a new and very stimulating field. Is it in our biological nature to attribute meaning to things and is it an adaptive trait to believe things that are, at best, very improbable?”
Dawkins is also a very active criti­caster of religion as well. “In that respect he is a bit naïve,” says Von Stuckrad. “Dawkins is strongly influenced by the American situation, which is reflected in his use of the term ‘religion’. He aims his blows mainly at a Protestant Christian image of religion, but religion is much broader than ‘belief in God’. The problem is that Dawkins seems to be talking about religion without really taking notice of the huge discussion about the very term and subject.” Dawkins’ strength is that he can fuel debates, get things moving. “But his weak point is that he is very polemic. He is part of an ideo­logical faction of radical atheists who could be a little bit more self-critical.”

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