“Admirably, Dawkins continually made it clear that his objective was to promote a clear understanding of the world as discovered through the scientific method, and if scientific facts caused offense with anyone, then so be it.”
For much of my life, merely hearing the name “Richard Dawkins” made my blood boil. Growing up as a Christian, Dawkins was the embodiment of evil, flooding the world with dangerous ideas about evolution and naturalism. Worse still, he was smug about it. With his quick wit and highfalutin Oxford accent, he was a Hollywood archetype of the brilliant professor. It is hard to express how much this irked me.
But that was decades ago. I have changed. The world has changed, a lot.
Last week, I reflected on the magnitude of this change while sitting at the top of Dolores Park in San Francisco. A soft orange light blossomed around the city’s skyline. Moments later, a dreamy, violet haze settled in as the sun sank into the Pacific. I was a long, long way from the small town where I grew up. Picking up my phone, I clicked on the Waymo app and summoned a driverless taxi to pick me up and drive me to the Masonic Auditorium, where Richard Dawkins was about to speak as part of his final tour in America. I could not imagine trying to describe any of this to a younger version of myself.
At the event, Dawkins took the stage to a standing ovation. Michael Shermer, the publisher of the magazine Skeptic, facilitated the conversation with Dawkins. Shermer began the discussion by holding up a copy of Dawkins’s new release, The Genetic Book of the Dead. Shermer advertised it as a “bookend” to Dawkins’s first work, The Selfish Gene, which was first published in 1976. Dawkins replied that he had not thought of it that way, but, yes, he liked the idea of it as a bookend to his early work.
In his initial remarks, Dawkins let out a cough and apologized for his voice. He was feeling sick. He looked frailer in person than he does on recorded interviews. He slouched in his chaired, shrugged off a few of Shermer’s prodding questions, apparently finding them too tedious to engage with and generally looked like he would have preferred to be quietly reading a book by candlelight in Oxford.
This was, after all, his “Final Bow” tour. He is 83.
Throughout the evening, however, there were moments when Dawkins came fully alive, dropping any hint of annoyance or lethargy. These were the moments when he spoke directly about evolution and biology. The topic of his new book is particularly fascinating, which (to quote from it) revolves around the idea that: “every animal is a written description of ancestral worlds” and “genes from the past can be seen as predicting the world into which an animal is going to be born.” Even as an octogenarian, Dawkins remains a gifted orator, and he is effortlessly able to make science accessible and exciting.
Unfortunately, the world has become less interested in Dawkins the biologist and instead has come to focus on Dawkins the social commentator. His opinions on sensitive topics such as Islam, identity, and the transgender debate have come to dominate the online discourse around him. In 2021, he famously lost his “Humanist of the Year” award for “demean[ing] marginalised groups.” Yet, never in the least bit intimidated or demoralized, he continues to ruffle the feathers of the progressive left, just as he did with the Christian right for so many years.
Halfway through his conversation with Dawkins, Shermer pivoted to culture war topics. First came religion. Dawkins stated that he finds the question of God’s existence fascinating because if God did exist, it would be a groundbreaking revelation to our understanding of the universe. However, shocking no one in the audience, he went on to say that science does not support the hypothesis that God exists.
Then came the trans discussion, which Shermer queued up with a hint of mischievousness in his voice, knowing the topic to be a hornet’s nest. As with the religion discussion, Dawkins kept the topic close to the realm of science. He has no interest in gender, he said, which is psychological and sociological, and only with sex, which is pure biology. When speaking of plants or animals, whether looking back into ancient history or into the present day, sex, he proclaimed, is binary; there is a small gamete and a large gamete and no third option. If Dawkins veered into the political, it was to state his opinion that biological males should not compete in sports against biological females.
The audience was broadly receptive to the discussion of these sensitive topics. When Dawkins stated his views about transwomen in women’s sports, at least half the audience broke into applause. During the question and answer portion, several people took issue with Dawkins over his views on Islam and transwomen, but the conversation remained civil, and Dawkins never lost the audience, even if he made some of the younger audience members squirm in their seats. Admirably, Dawkins continually made it clear that his objective was to promote a clear understanding of the world as discovered through the scientific method, and if scientific facts caused offense with anyone, then so be it.
Ross Andersen, who covered the Final Bow tour for the Atlantic, was unimpressed with Dawkins’s willingness to engage with controversial topics. According to the article, “Richard Dawkins Keeps Shrinking,” “As his career wraps up, a man of big ideas takes on ever smaller targets.”
“Dawkins seems to have lost his sense of proportion,” Andersen writes. “Now that mainstream culture has moved on from big debates about evolution and theism, he no longer has a prominent foe that so perfectly suits his singular talent for explaining the creative power of biology. And so he’s playing whack-a-mole, swinging full strength, and without much discernment, at anything that strikes him as even vaguely irrational.”
This criticism reads like a high-brow version of the snide advice given to opinionated athletes: “Shut up and dribble.” It is frankly a mystifying criticism to level against one of the world’s most outspoken public figures in a time when everyone gives an opinion on everything.
But, to the larger point, Dawkins no longer needs to focus his attention on the “big debates” about evolution and theism. He won these debates in the broader Western culture. Speaking personally, his books about evolution and religion helped persuade me to change my childhood convictions about religion, even though it took many years for me to come around to his combative style of speaking. Countless people have had similar experiences. For those who still question evolution and hold to strong beliefs about God, Dawkins’s works are out there in every library and book store across America. In the Muslim world, his books are available for free in multiple translations.
It is a safe bet that Dawkins’s views on contemporary culture war topics will also win. Religious revivals come and go. So-called “Great Awokenings” also come and go. (According to sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, there have been at least three major periods of “broad cultural unrest around identity issues” starting in the 1960s.) But the pursuit of truth through science and dispassionate reasoning is a bedrock. The path that Dawkins has tread throughout his career is a path that has successfully weathered shifting tides of culture, changes in politics, and technological advancements.
There will be some glad to see Dawkins leave the stage and fade from public view. However, the principles he championed will endure. For those whose blood boils at the mere mention of his name, his final bow offers a chance to reflect: Perhaps one’s discomfort is not with Dawkins the man but with his unabashed defense of scientific discovery.
Peter Clarke, a Merion West contributor, is a writer in San Francisco and the host of the podcast Team Futurism. He can be found on X @HeyPeterClarke
