Rationalist Fanatics Unite!

Today Telic Thoughts is trumpeting a recent post by Michael Prescott on "irrational rationalists", in which Mr. Prescott reacts to a recent interview with Richard Dawkins that appears in a book entitled Secrets of Angels & Demons: The Unauthorized Guide to Dan Brown's Bestselling Novel. Prescott tees off with the following (rather snide) swipe:

...[Dawkins] is (rather generously) described as "one of the most distinguished biologists in the world today." Perhaps I'm unaware of his contributions to the field, but I'm under the impression that Dawkins has made his mark as a writer of popular books on biology, rather than in biological research.

Perhaps Mr. Prescott is unaware of Google as well, because had he done a quick search for "dawkins bibliography" the very first hit would have been a page containing a partial list of Dawkin's publications. On that page, he would have seen references to Dawkins' many peer-reviewed scientific works in journals like Nature, Science, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie, Parasitology, and others. A couple more obvious searches, and Prescott would have discovered that Dawkins has held professorships at UC Berkeley and Oxford, is a fellow of the New College, is currently holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on a scientist. And of course Dawkins' meme concept - the idea that evolutionary principles apply to any population of self-replicating entities, biological or not, that are subject to random variation and differential selection - has been enormously influential in science generally.

Of course, credentials aren't everything, but had Michael Prescott been aware of this information, he might have said to himself, "Gee, with his solid credentials in research, his professorships at some of the most prestigious universities in the world, his affiliations with learned societies, and his success in communicating some of the most difficult topics in contemporary biology to the lay public, maybe Dawkins is one of the more distinguished biologists around. Maybe I should do a little more homework before posting my reactions to this interview. Otherwise, I might end up writing a facile hack-piece that just winds up embarrassing me."

But I guess you didn't say that to yourself, did you, Michael?

Forgive my high dudgeon, but the sheer ignorance of Prescott's post is just staggering. Much of the remainder of his essay is divided between quibbling over non-issues (yes, a redwood tree does qualify as a creature, see this definition), misconstruing what Dawkins says in the interview (e.g. the difference between fully understanding principles like natural selection, versus fully understanding the exact pathways those principles follow in producing a particular result), and working up his own high dudgeon over Dawkins' decidedly non-middle-of-the-road opinions on religion.

But the worst part comes at the end, in which non-theistic rationalists like Dawkins are characterized as "fanatics", extremists on the order of the 9/11 hijackers:

We know all about religious fanatics in our post-9-11 world. But we need to know more about the rationalist fanatics who are their counterparts on the other side of the philosophical spectrum. For those interested in learning about them, Richard Dawkins is a good place to start.

Of course, Michael, why didn't I see it before: the religious nuts who are flying passenger jets into skyscrapers, murdering abortion doctors, bombing subways and releasing nerve gas in them, gloating over the torture and murder of gays, and killing rape victims in the name of "honor" - they're just the opposite side of the philosophical coin on which Richard Dawkin's head is engraved.

Oops, there I go again.

I don't really believe that Michael Prescott thinks there's some kind of (im)moral equivalence between violent religious zealots on the one hand and non-theistic rationalists on the other. At least I hope he doesn't. The hate, mayhem, violence, and war unleashed in the name of religious belief throughout history is undeniable, as is the material, societal, and, yes, spiritual progress that mankind has achieved over the last 400 years through rationalism and science. But you wouldn't know it from what he actually wrote, poisoned as it was by his poor research, sloppy thinking, and cheap rhetoric.