Last night's Andrew Denton interview of Richard Dawkins was pretty fascinating. It seemed to me that Dawkins was quite defensive and almost ludicrously cautious; seemingly worrying all the time that Denton was setting him up for some sort of trap. For example, this exchange:
ANDREW DENTON: What's your definition of success?
RICHARD DAWKINS: ...Oh dear, I don't really answer that kind of question...
ANDREW DENTON: Why not?
RICHARD DAWKINS: ...I'm just trying, well, because I just think of it as a dictionary word, which has a dictionary definition and you can go and look it up. I don't have a personal...
ANDREW DENTON: Well, you don't have a marker in your life for what would be achievement?
And then this part where he seems unwilling to talk about emotions:
ANDREW DENTON: Is it possible to explain love?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I think it in principle can be explained but I don't actually have the internal wherewithal to explain it. I just experience it.
And this:
ANDREW DENTON: When do you laugh at yourself?
RICHARD DAWKINS: ...Are all the questions going to be like this?
ANDREW DENTON: Not all... do you find these very difficult?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Yes.
ANDREW DENTON: Well, why is that?
RICHARD DAWKINS: Um ... because they're about me, I suppose.
ANDREW DENTON: Some of the questions are about you and some are about your observation of other people.
I found this avoidance of the personal and emotional a strange contrast with his aggressiveness and apparent confidence in attacking belief in God.
1 comment:
"ANDREW DENTON: What's your moral code?
RICHARD DAWKINS: I suppose it's a version of the Golden Rule, don't do unto others what you wouldn't wish them to do to you. I do feel intense vicarious sadness when I encounter sadness in others."
I don't know how to reconcile this with the fact that he often takes delight in humiliating audience members who ask the wrong questions, sometimes quite innocently.
E.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-eAg7Z6m1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFamS4RGE_A
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