I had the unpleasant experience of listening to Richard Dawkins give a 'talk' in the USA today that was originally recorded in 2002.
Dawkins is a self outed atheist and as such subscribes to a belief system that he makes a vast fortune from. He discredits any other belief system and appeals to a tribalistic group of people who have the same tribalistic needs as do the enlightened. His belief is not to believe in a deity preferring to anoint himself or more specifically scientists with the a god like status. He believes that he has been trapped in a world which prevents him from expressing his atheism and drops in names like Darwin (his god?) in every other paragraph along with the word 'believe' a lot.
In this talk, Dawkins is a hit before he opens his mouth, because his audience are there to cheer and applaud him. They want to be in his club, they want HIS bible to carry around, they want to feel they belong.
Like so many pretentious English people, Dawkins uses his Englishness as a tool of appeal. The Americans tend to love the English and their funny little accents. They all live in mansions drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. They all speak like Dawkins. He expresses the love affair with the US and kisses their American backsides at every opportunity. Thus engaging with his already awestruck audience by constantly appealing to their intelligence and stroking their over inflated egos by telling them they are sophisticated and throws in words like parsimonious and anthropocentricism as though its only they that would understand him and not the god believing proletariat. This from a man with a funny accent from a mansion in little old England. Yet clearly, this ill mannered buffoon is looking down his nose at his audience and is merely patronising them in order to increase the sale of his book by appealing to the very base psyche Americans believe that theirs is the greatest country on earth and he tells them so. He always uses child like notions to stress his point and uses it as a psychological tool on his audience. They don't believe in 'jew jew' at the bottom of the sea or the fairies as he mentions here.
He appeals to self guilt, but I am sure guilt has been applied to all children at some point in their lives, religious or otherwise. He obviously carries this around with him and is looking for a vent to throw this mysterious dark veil from himself and pat himself on his shoulder and say there there Richard there is no god so I need not feel guilty. Maybe Dawkins is just trying to over throw an overly religious family and stick the proverbial finger up at its over privileged background.
In this recording, Dawkins is clearly onto a winner with an audience desperate to meet their prophet and welcome his patronising manner. He is quick to dismiss the creator but fails miserably, indeed fails to attempt to prove its none existence. Dawkins' preference is to patronise the believers and makes reference to unintelligent people (the proletariat lynch mob) confusing a pediatrician with a paedophile as though their was some link between it and the none existence of god. Or was this once again a tribalistic all embracing tool to seek approval from his audience and foster a notion of enlightened superiority as only an Oxford educated buffoon could whilst masking his frequent twittery with an essence of eccentricity.
Despite all of this, I really despise Dawkins for two reasons. One, he proves absolutely nothing and two, he shows scant regard for believers. More specifically the people whose lives are drawing to an end and indeed rely on their religion for personal comfort at this difficult time and find great comfort from it. These people are quietly fearful of Dawkins' unbelievably closeted beliefs. For whilst they are just that a belief, that is little comfort for the millions of peoples who need such comfort. Having said all that, Dawkins' book will not stand the test of time like the Holy Qu'ran or the bible. It will only ever reach short lived cult like status which was not Dawkins' plan. Afterall, he was hoping to bestow god like status on scientists, and failed miserably.
