I enjoyed reading your feature on Richard Dawkins and the ‘New Atheism’ currently gripping the theory of evolution. However, you failed to mention a very important aspect of this debate - one that would go a long way toward elucidating the kind of dogmatic mindset behind the New Atheism movement.
In 1995, when Richard Milton was commissioned by the British weekly newspaper, the ‘Times Higher Education Supplement’, to write a critique of Darwinism, Richard Dawkins did everything he could to censor the article. This included a letter writing campaign, and contacting the editor of the paper, Auriol Stevens, to bully him into removing the piece.
They eventually did, and Richard Dawkins was successful in his censorship.
Regardless of whether you believe in God or not, it’s a sad state when Dawkins, as ‘Professor of the Public Understanding of Science’ gives up his scientific objectivity to suppress opinions that don’t agree with his own. This kind of action effectively stops the evolution of humanity that Dawkins so cherishes and exposes the fact that scientific dogma is just as damaging as religious dogma.
Richard Dawkins is not a hero or champion of anything. Rather, he represents a turning back toward the pre-Enlightenment era fear that gave birth to both Religious and Scientific fundamentalism – a desperate grasping toward anything solid, be it the religion of faith or the religion of matter.
Ray WeigelTraverse City, Michigan
