The often controversial evolutionary biologist and author on hate mail, J.K. Rowling and death.
The evolutionary significance of consciousness.
Dawkins, whose own social media posts in relation to Islam and transgender issues have occasionally landed him in hot water, has admitted he occasionally censors his public statements nowadays. But when I ask him about it, he falls silent. “Let’s talk about my books, shall we?” The short answer: yes. “I’m what Americans would call a liberal – I’m of the left politically and I tend to see myself as a feminist humanist. So, criticism from people who I think of as ‘my people’ hurts me in a way that criticism from religious people doesn’t – I don’t give a damn about that.
There was a time – when the “New Atheism”, championed by big beasts of disbelief such as Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, was adopted as a mantra by many on the left – when some of his more controversial statements, would pass mostly without comment. But in the “woke” era, the more inclusive instincts of the left sometimes butt up against the science-based rationalism of the atheists.
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