Final Thoughts on Richard Dawkins

He wants to be remembered as a lover of science and truth.

After I gave the backstory on why I wanted to go see Richard Dawkins in Dallas a few weeks ago (Thanks, Richard Dawkins), I promised to share my thoughts on his “Final Bow” talk. By the way, I’m writing from Ireland where I began studies in postgraduate philosophy this week. It’s been a whirlwind week!

The night of the talk, my friend Briana Jansky and I took our seats, snapped some selfies, and noted that the theater was about 80% full. The lights dimmed. Dawkins and his co-host came on the stage and sat in nice chairs atop a Persian rug. And they just talked. For the first part of the evening, the co-host asked Dawkins a series of question about evolution and what it tells us today. The last half hour Dawkins took audience questions. Surprisingly, most of the evening was not about atheism but about his new, and possibly last, book on evolution. So, I’ll give my thoughts on Dawkins the biologist and Dawkins the atheist separately.

Dawkins the Biologist

You would not have known Dawkins is an atheist from the interview with his co-host. The two focused on his new book, The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, which was released on September 17, 2024. Dawkins’ basic premise is that the genetics of all living things can be read as a book. Genes, he says, archive the entire ancestry of an organism. Because the genes determine the body, Dawkins concludes that genes are responsible for the organism’s behavior. He promotes his book as a “groundbreaking new approach to the evolution of all life.”

He elaborated on some of the examples found in the book description.

A perfectly camouflaged desert lizard has a desiccated landscape of sand and stones 'painted' on its back. Its skin can be read as a description of ancient deserts in which its ancestors survived – and, before that, of the worlds of its more remote ancestors: a genetic book of the dead.

But such descriptions are more than skin-deep. The fine chisels of Darwinian natural selection carve their way through the very warp and woof of the body, into every biochemical nook and corner, into every cell of every living creature. A zoologist of the future, presented with a hitherto-unknown animal, will be able to reconstruct the worlds that shaped its ancestors, to read its unique 'book of the dead'.

The idea that an organism’s genes tell the story of its past is not a new one. In his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, Dawkins argued that nature is “blind” in the sense that genetic changes and natural selection cannot look forward. Nothing in nature, on Dawkins’ account, therefore, works toward a purpose or end. The title “Blind Watchmaker” was a take on William Paley’s watchmaker argument for the existence of God. (I’m not a fan. See 4a here: “Is Anything Artificial in Naturalism?”) Dawkins held that natural selection guides evolution. Small changes in an individual’s genes (mutations) arise randomly from chemical differences during replication, and if such a change renders the organism better able to survive and reproduce, then the change persists into the next generation. But, he said, this process is random, not design.

What’s new? Dawkins now suggests that the genes will fully tell the story in a complete genotype-to-phenotype match. To whatever extent the genome becomes a record of evolutionary changes, it should be possible to reconstruct details of the past. (Note: I have not read the book. I am going from his talk.) Everything about an organism can be known from the genes, not just the individual but all the ancestors as well. This is similar to the idea in neuroscience that every brain state can be matched to a configuration of atoms and molecules in the brain. It is a grand idea, but it can only ever be speculation. And that speculation must come through the lens of reductionism, the philosophical idea that presumes biology, and life itself, is reduced to matter. That worldview is 1) outside the boundary of biology, 2) cannot be proven by biology, and 3) constrains the biologist to nature alone. I let go of that worldview a long time ago when I realized science could not answer my biggest questions about life.

Reductionism is pervasive in science today. Scientists only consider nature in terms of material and efficient causality while formal and final causality are ignored. Within the boundaries of science, a reductionist approach works to a large extent. It requires you to put on a lab coat but not consider why you do so. I lived that way for years.

However, to make sense of science as a work of the human intellect, to ask bigger questions about origins and purpose, one needs to look up from the ground, so to speak, and out into the greater landscape of reality. Dawkins’ view prevents that discussion from ever occurring. It was not a view I could be happy with, and it is the reason I pursued philosophy and theology — to learn from all those before me who ripped the blinders off and tried to see more of the world.

Nevertheless, when pressed by the co-host on whether we can totally predict evolution by studying the past, Dawkins said, “No.” He acknowledged that we cannot know the future even if the future of evolution is constrained by the past. I enjoyed listening to him as a biologist who is fascinated with his science. It’s hard not to be positively affected by his life’s work and enthusiasm. I can respect his views even if I will not limit myself to them.

Dawkins the Atheist

After the interview with the co-host on stage, Dawkins took questions from the audience that were written on post cards and pre-selected. Now the evening turned to atheism. I’m pretty sure that’s why most people were there.

“Why do we have to respect religious views?” Dawkins suggested it is because atheists are “too nice,” and that inspired a round of applause. He thinks atheists are “ultra-respectful” and for that reason have forfeited their lobbying power and influence on culture.

“What do you mean you are a cultural Christian?” Dawkins said he was raised in a Christian society, and that it is no big deal he adopts his society’s views. He is still an atheist and doesn’t need to believe in God any more than he would believe fairies exist. He doesn’t need such nonsense. More applause.

“Do you hope we achieve a secular society?” Yes, he said he hopes that someday, after his lifetime, that the world’s cultures will embrace a long-term scientific worldview. He said that science tells us why we exist, and we do not need the “superstition” of religion, which he hopes will someday fall away. More applause.

“How do we promote scientific literacy?” He said that people must stop misinformation about science, especially that kind of information which comes from the religious. He called for atheists to be more proactive in reaching this goal and said that he “tends to think you can’t have God and evolution.” A science-based society will have to get rid of God.

—>As a science educator, I have some thoughts to interject here. The first time I taught chemistry was to high school students in the 1990s. I was a non-religious, Ayn Rand Einsteinian in a power suit. As much as I wanted to role model the vision of feminine success, teaching chemistry was frustrating. Sure, the rare student just loved science, but for the most part trying to get teens to care about the periodic table, balancing equations, and calculating with ideal gas laws was like pulling their teeth. I tried to make the class a challenge by giving thorough lectures, lots of notes written on the chalkboard, daily tests, and projects so that a good grade in my class would be a bragging right. But that approach to education was vain, and I knew it. I left my teaching position to go back to graduate school (my own vanity), and ten years later left my job as a DuPont Senior Research Chemist to stay home and raise children. Then I become Catholic. I teach chemistry and physics to college philosophy and theology majors now, and it is a game changer to teach from a different worldview.

Now I tell students that “science is the study of the handiwork of God,” freeing them from an unreasonable burden of memorizing a bunch of facts and details they will not need in life. I instead try to inspire them to awe and wonder at the order in the universe at the smallest scales. I guide them out of their comfort zones into the laws, theories, models, and equations that underlie macroscopic experience. These are smart, competent people. They don't need dumbing-down. They need to see above and beyond science to the reasons why science matters. So, yes, my students must calculate but the purpose is so they can grapple first-hand with natural order. My methods work. A college where I teach asks students what was particularly effective about the professor's approach. One student replied: “Her enthusiasm! And the way she integrated God into the studying as well; it made me so much more interested.” I’m proud of that feedback.

Back to Dawkins—>

In the context of his statement about God and evolution, he wondered why, if there is a God, pseudogenes exist. Pseudogenes are nonfunctional segments of DNA that form as extra copies of functional genes during duplication or transcription. They seem wasteful, i.e., junk DNA. I think his implication was that if an intelligent designer exists, he will throw out junk and run a more efficient process. Therefore, belief in God is unwarranted.

Maybe Dawkins was just making a quip, but I do not see how pseudogenes are an argument against belief in God or intelligent design.

Computer engineers do the same thing. When you store a file on a server and then delete it, the file is actually still there — a pseudofile, if you will. The operating system no longer points to that file, so it seems deleted. However, the computer does not expend the energy and time to delete the file. Why erase files if you don’t need to? At some point the data can be written over with new data, and the file will then be truly deleted, but until such occurrence, the old file is retrievable. Humans design the process this way for, you guessed it, efficiency.

Likewise, pseudogenes eventually are deleted. Scientists have also discovered that some pseudogenes have a role after all, from bacteria to humans. So, this seemed like a silly example for Dawkins to use as an insult to believers.

The evening finished with deeper questions.

“Are there ethical boundaries with genetic engineering?” Yes, he said, though he had no guidance on what those boundaries might be.

“Can the religious and non-religious work together in society?” Yes, he said, we can because we are (evolved to be) social.

“How do you want to be remembered?”

“As a lover of science and truth.”

I am 100% sure that he meant that, and I will always be happy I was there to hear him say it. The audience gave him a standing ovation. The lights came on. Briana and I lined up to exit the auditorium. I looked around from our perch in the center mezzanine and wondered if any of those “too nice” and “ultra-respectful” atheists were conflicted about how they would work toward a society which embraces a long-term scientific worldview free of religion unless their own genetic book of the dead dictated that they were born to do so.