Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. He writes on evolution and is part of the new atheism that is evangelical. He thinks all religious people are idiots and rather than go his own confident way, he engages theists and confronts them.
He is a missionary, the Jehovah's Witness of atheism.
His most famous books are probably The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene.
He once stated, "An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf." Dawkins says that even moderate religious people "make the world safe for extremists." He would be classified as a leftist: He is a supporter of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats in Britain.
He is an equal opportunity scoffer. Here he is on Islam:
"I have criticised the appalling misogyny and homophobia of Islam, I have criticised the murdering of apostates for no crime other than their disbelief. ... Muslims themselves are the prime victims of the oppressive cruelties of Islamism."
Dawkins was scheduled to speak at an event with KPFA radio in Berkeley, California — until the local leftists realized that Dawkins had said some critical things about Islam. This is interesting because his anti-Christian sentiments are quite well known but apparently do not disqualify him from speaking at Berkeley. The station canceled the event, citing his "abusive speech." It explained: "We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn't know he had offended and hurt — in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people. KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech."
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