As ever, Gay manages to elicit some surprising revelations, such as Dawkins’ brief period of fervent Christianity, inspired by Elvis Presley, plus some highly controversial opinions about the harm done to children by religious instruction and about the morality of abortion. You can just imagine what Dawkins might have to say to God at the Pearly Gates…
Who’d have thought it? Prof. Richard Dawkins, the High Priest of atheist rationalism, was once a fervent Christian, inspired by the faith of Elvis Presley, no less. That unlikely combination of The King and The Lord is just one of the revelations in Gay Byrne’s compelling interview with the author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion.
Gay deftly probes Dawkins’ incendiary opinions that religious indoctrination can damage children more seriously than sexual abuse or that choosing not to abort a foetus with Down’s Syndrome can be “immoral.”
But he also finds Dawkins happy to acknowledge that human beings are more than the sum of their biological parts and perfectly ready to admit that applying his rationalist sledgehammer to fundamentalist religious nuts can be counter-productive:
“If you’re trying to persuade somebody of something, it’s not obvious that the best strategy is to make them look stupid.”
Dawkins resists the temptation to replicate Stephen Fry’s famous rant in the face of God, at the Pearly Gates, and chooses, instead, to present “this Master Scientist” with a series of questions about how the world works, “…before I’m sent downstairs.”
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