Richard Dawkins on Evolution and Religion

We have already addressed intelligent design's (ID’s) inability to gain support in the scientific community and the fact that ID can gain no practical benefit from scientific relativism. Moreover, we have considered religious approaches that allow one to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution through natural selection without rejecting belief in God. The apparent clash between science and religion is necessary to the survival of ID and creation science because if there is no inherent inconsistency between science and religion, there is no need for religion to play the proof game – that is, there is no need for a Big D of the gaps. ID advocates must manufacture the clash between religion and science to market design as the alternative to scientific materialism. Ironically, as Kenneth Miller has explained, they have been aided in this task by some of the brightest minds in science.

One of the most scathing critics of ID is leading evolutionary biologist and scientific advocate Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Dawkins's attack on the presumption-laden – and scientifically barren (from the perspective of normal science) – nature of ID is supported by much of the analysis in this book. Yet Dawkins goes beyond scientific analysis of ID and enters the debate over religion and specifically the existence of God or gods more generally. His entry into this debate should be welcomed by all thinking people as his work asks excellent questions, but as will be seen, his answers sometimes rely on obvious precommitments.