Evolutionary biology , 2008 Dawkins is known for his popularisation of the
gene as the principal
unit of selection in
evolution; this view is most clearly set out in two of his books: •
The Selfish Gene (1976), in which he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities". •
The Extended Phenotype (1982), in which he describes
natural selection as "the process whereby
replicators out-propagate each other". He introduces to a wider audience the influential concept he presented in 1977, that the
phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms. Dawkins regarded the extended phenotype as his single most important contribution to evolutionary biology and he considered
niche construction to be a special case of extended phenotype. The concept of extended phenotype helps explain evolution, but it does not help predict specific outcomes. Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as
spandrels, described by
Stephen Jay Gould and
Richard Lewontin) and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of
group selection as a basis for understanding
altruism. Altruism appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own chances for survival, or
fitness. Previously, many had interpreted altruism as an aspect of group selection, suggesting that individuals are doing what is best for the survival of the population or species as a whole. The British evolutionary biologist
W. D. Hamilton used gene-frequency analysis in his
inclusive fitness theory to show how hereditary altruistic traits can evolve if there is sufficient genetic similarity between actors and recipients of such altruism, including close relatives. Hamilton's inclusive fitness has since been successfully applied to a wide range of organisms, including
humans. Similarly, the evolutionary biologist
Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of
reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation. Dawkins popularised these ideas in
The Selfish Gene, and developed them in his own work. In June 2012 Dawkins was highly critical of his fellow-biologist
E. O. Wilson's 2012 book
The Social Conquest of Earth as misunderstanding Hamilton's theory of kin selection. Dawkins has also been strongly critical of the
Gaia hypothesis of the independent scientist
James Lovelock. Critics of Dawkins's biological approach suggest that taking the
gene as the unit of
selection (a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce) is misleading. The gene could be better described, they say, as a unit of
evolution (the long-term changes in
allele frequencies in a population). In
The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains that he is using the biologist
George C. Williams's definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency". Another common objection is that a gene cannot survive alone, but must cooperate with other genes to build an individual, and therefore a gene cannot be an independent "unit". In
The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins suggests that from an individual gene's viewpoint, all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted. Advocates for higher levels of selection (such as
Richard Lewontin,
David Sloan Wilson and
Elliott Sober) suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher
Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning
The Selfish Gene, has criticised gene selection, memetics and sociobiology as being excessively
reductionist; she has suggested that the popularity of Dawkins's work is due to factors in the
Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades. Besides, other, more recent views and analysis on his popular science works also exist. In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (what has been called 'The Darwin Wars'), one faction is often named after Dawkins, while the other faction is named after the American palaeontologist
Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of the pertinent ideas. In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over
sociobiology and
evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical. A typical example of Dawkins's position is his scathing review of
Not in Our Genes by
Steven Rose,
Leon J. Kamin and Richard C. Lewontin. Two other thinkers who are often considered to be allied with Dawkins on the subject are
Steven Pinker and
Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended
reductionism in biology. Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book ''
A Devil's Chaplain'' posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year. When asked whether
Darwinism influences his everyday apprehension of life, Dawkins says, "In one way it does. My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. That's never far from my thoughts, that sense of amazement. On the other hand, I certainly don't allow Darwinism to influence my feelings about human social life", implying that he feels that individual human beings can opt out of the survival machine of Darwinism since they are freed by the
consciousness of self. This was the seed of
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), which Dawkins calls his favorite of his books. With his student
Yan Wong, he coauthored ''
The Ancestor's Tale''. Based on
Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, the book is structured as a "pilgrimage to the dawn of evolution," with a band of travelers telling tales that illuminate aspects of biology. In 2005, during a pilgrimage to the
Galápagos, Dawkins wrote three new tales. He outlined the
evidence for evolution in
The Greatest Show on Earth.
"Meme" as behavioural concept in
New York City to discuss his book
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution in 2010 In his book
The Selfish Gene, Dawkins
coined the word
meme (the behavioural equivalent of a gene) as a way to encourage readers to think about how Darwinian principles might be extended beyond the realm of genes. It was intended as an extension of his "replicators" argument, but it took on a life of its own in the hands of other authors, such as
Daniel Dennett and
Susan Blackmore. These popularisations then led to the emergence of
memetics, a field from which Dawkins has distanced himself. Dawkins's
meme refers to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or set of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through communication and contact with humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Because memes are not always copied perfectly, they might become refined, combined, or otherwise modified with other ideas; this results in new memes, which may themselves prove more or less efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of
cultural evolution based on memes, a notion that is analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes. Although Dawkins invented the term
meme, he has not said that the idea was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist
Richard Semon. Semon regarded "mneme" as the collective set of neural memory traces (conscious or subconscious) that were inherited, although such view would be considered as
Lamarckian by modern biologists. Laurent also found the use of the term
mneme in
Maurice Maeterlinck's
The Life of the White Ant (1926), and Maeterlinck himself stated that he obtained the phrase from Semon's work.
Foundation In 2006 Dawkins founded the
Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (
RDFRS), a
non-profit organisation. RDFRS financed research on the
psychology of belief and religion, financed scientific education programs and materials, and publicised and supported
charitable organisations that are
secular in nature. In January 2016 it was announced that the foundation was merging with the American non-profit organisation
Center for Inquiry, with Dawkins becoming a member of the new organisation's board of directors.
Criticism of religion '', 2006 Dawkins was confirmed into the
Church of England at the age of 13, but began to grow sceptical of the beliefs. He said that his understanding of science and evolutionary processes led him to question how adults in positions of leadership in a civilised world could still be so uneducated in biology, and is puzzled by how belief in God could remain among individuals who are sophisticated in science. Dawkins says that some physicists use 'God' as a metaphor for the general awe-inspiring mysteries of the universe, which he says causes confusion and misunderstanding among people who incorrectly think they are talking about a mystical being who forgives sins, transubstantiates wine, or makes people live after they die. Dawkins disagrees with
Stephen Jay Gould's principle of
nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA), and suggests that the
existence of God should be treated as a scientific hypothesis like any other. Dawkins became a prominent
critic of religion and has stated his
opposition to religion as twofold: religion is both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence. He considers faith—belief that is not based on evidence—as "one of the world's great evils". On his
spectrum of theistic probability, which ranges from 1 (100 per cent certainty that a God or gods exist) to 7 (100 per cent certainty that a God or gods do not exist), Dawkins has said he is a 6.9, which represents a "de facto atheist" who thinks "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there". When asked about his slight uncertainty, Dawkins quips, "I am agnostic to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden". In May 2014, at the literary
Hay Festival in Wales, Dawkins explained that while he does not believe in the supernatural elements of the Christian faith, he still has nostalgia for the ceremonial side of religion. In addition to beliefs in deities, Dawkins has criticised religious beliefs as irrational, such as that
Jesus turned water into wine, that
an embryo starts as a blob, that
magic underwear will protect people, that
Jesus was resurrected, that
semen comes from the spine, that
Jesus walked on water, that
the sun sets in a marsh, that the
Garden of Eden existed in
Adam-ondi-Ahman in the
US state of
Missouri, that
Jesus's mother was a virgin, that
Muhammad split the Moon, and that
Lazarus was raised from the dead. Dawkins has risen to prominence in public debates concerning science and religion since the publication of his most popular book,
The God Delusion, in 2006, which became an international bestseller. As of 2015, more than three million copies have been sold, and the book has been translated into more than 30 languages. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural
zeitgeist and has also been identified with the rise of
New Atheism. In the book, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a
delusion—"a fixed false belief". In his February 2002
TED talk, titled "Militant atheism", Dawkins urged all atheists to openly state their position and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. Dawkins sees education and
consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination. These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term
bright as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a
naturalistic worldview. which would not "indoctrinate children" but would instead teach children to ask for evidence and be skeptical, critical, and open-minded. Such a school, says Dawkins, should "teach comparative religion, and teach it properly without any bias towards particular religions, and including historically important but dead religions, such as those of ancient Greece and the Norse gods, if only because these, like the Abrahamic scriptures, are important for understanding English literature and European history". Inspired by the consciousness-raising successes of
feminists in arousing widespread embarrassment at the routine use of "he" instead of "she", Dawkins similarly suggests that phrases such as "Catholic child" and "Muslim child" should be considered as socially absurd as, for instance, "Marxist child", as he believes that children should not be classified based on the ideological or religious beliefs of their parents. others, including the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist
Peter Higgs, the astrophysicist
Martin Rees, the philosopher of science
Michael Ruse, the literary critic
Terry Eagleton, the philosopher
Roger Scruton, the academic and social critic
Camille Paglia, the atheist philosopher
Daniel Came and the theologian
Alister McGrath, have criticised Dawkins on various grounds, including the assertion that his work simply serves as an atheist counterpart to religious fundamentalism rather than a productive critique of it, and that he has fundamentally misapprehended the foundations of the
theological positions he claims to refute. Rees and Higgs, in particular, have both rejected Dawkins's confrontational stance toward religion as narrow and "embarrassing", with Higgs equating Dawkins with the religious fundamentalists he criticises. The atheist philosopher
John Gray has denounced Dawkins as an "anti-religious missionary", whose assertions are "in no sense novel or original", suggesting that "transfixed in wonderment at the workings of his own mind, Dawkins misses much that is of importance in human beings". Gray has also criticised Dawkins's perceived allegiance to Darwin, stating that if "science, for Darwin, was a method of inquiry that enabled him to edge tentatively and humbly toward the truth, for Dawkins, science is an unquestioned view of the world". A 2016 study found that many British scientists held an unfavourable view of Dawkins and his attitude towards religion. In response to his critics, Dawkins maintains that theologians are no better than scientists in addressing deep
cosmological questions and that he is not a fundamentalist, as he is willing to change his mind in the face of new evidence. Dawkins has faced backlash over some of his public comments about Islam. In 2013 Dawkins
tweeted that "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than
Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the
Middle Ages, though." In 2016 Dawkins's invitation to speak at the
Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism was withdrawn over his sharing of what was characterised as a "highly offensive video" satirically showing cartoon feminist and Islamist characters singing about the things they hold in common. In issuing the tweet Dawkins stated that it "Obviously doesn't apply to [
sic] vast majority of feminists, among whom I count myself. But the minority are pernicious."
Criticism of creationism Dawkins is a prominent critic of
creationism, a religious belief that
humanity,
life, and the
universe were created by a
deity without recourse to evolution. He has described the
young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood". His 1986 book,
The Blind Watchmaker, contains a sustained critique of the
argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argues against the
watchmaker analogy made famous by the eighteenth-century English
theologian William Paley via his book
Natural Theology, in which Paley argues that just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things—with their far greater complexity—be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, unguided by any designer, nonintelligent,
blind watchmaker. lapel pin, at the 34th annual conference of
American Atheists (2008) In 1986 Dawkins and the biologist
John Maynard Smith participated in an
Oxford Union debate against
A. E. Wilder-Smith (a
Young Earth creationist) and
Edgar Andrews (president of the
Biblical Creation Society). In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague
Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of
engaging with them at all". He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public". In a December 2004 interview with the American journalist
Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know". When Moyers questioned him on the
use of the word theory, Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English". Dawkins has opposed the inclusion of
intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one". He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's
Rottweiler", a reference to the English biologist
Thomas Henry Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's
Bulldog" for his advocacy of
Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. He has been a strong critic of the British organisation
Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and whose work Dawkins has described as an "educational scandal". He plans to subsidise schools through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science with the delivery of books, DVDs and pamphlets that counteract their work.
Political views at the
Atheist Bus Campaign launch in London, January 2009 Dawkins is an outspoken
atheist and a supporter of various atheist, secular, and
humanist organisations, including
Humanists UK and the
Brights movement. Dawkins suggests that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, stressing that atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. He hopes that the more atheists identify themselves, the more the public will become aware of just how many people are nonbelievers, thereby reducing the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority. Inspired by the
gay rights movement, he endorsed the
Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly. He supported a UK atheist advertising initiative, the
Atheist Bus Campaign in 2008 and 2009, which aimed to raise funds to place atheist advertisements on buses in the London area. ,
Menlo Park,
California, 29 October 2006 Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the human population and about the matter of
overpopulation. In
The Selfish Gene, he briefly mentions population growth, giving the example of
Latin America, whose population, at the time the book was written, was doubling every 40 years. He is critical of
Roman Catholic attitudes to
family planning and
population control, stating that leaders who forbid
contraception and "express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation" will get just such a method in the form of
starvation. As a supporter of the
Great Ape Project—a movement to extend certain moral and legal
rights to all
great apes—Dawkins contributed the article 'Gaps in the Mind' to the
Great Ape Project book edited by
Paola Cavalieri and
Peter Singer. In this essay, he criticises contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous,
speciesist imperative". Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and
blogs on contemporary political questions and is a frequent contributor to the online science and culture digest
3 Quarks Daily. His opinions include opposition to the
2003 invasion of Iraq, the
British nuclear deterrent, the actions of the then-US President
George W. Bush, and the ethics of
designer babies. Several such articles were included in ''
A Devil's Chaplain'', an anthology of writings about science, religion, and politics. He is also a supporter of
Republic's campaign to replace the
British monarchy with a type of democratic
republic. Dawkins has described himself as a
Labour Party voter in the 1970s and voter for the
Liberal Democrats since the party's creation. In 2009 he spoke at the party's conference in opposition to
blasphemy laws,
alternative medicine, and
faith schools. During the
2010 United Kingdom general election, Dawkins officially endorsed the Liberal Democrats, in support of their campaign for electoral reform and for their "refusal to pander to 'faith. In the run up to the
2017 United Kingdom general election, Dawkins once again endorsed the Liberal Democrats and urged voters to join the party. In April 2021 Dawkins said on Twitter that "In 2015,
Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss". After receiving criticism for this tweet, Dawkins responded by saying that "I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic 'Discuss' question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in the U.S. now exploiting this issue". The
American Humanist Association retracted Dawkins's 1996 Humanist of the Year Award in response to these comments.
Robby Soave of
Reason magazine criticised the retraction, saying that "The drive to punish dissenters from various orthodoxies is itself illiberal". Dawkins has voiced his support for the
Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation that campaigns for democratic reform in the United Nations, and the creation of a more accountable international political system. Dawkins identifies as a feminist. He has said that feminism is "enormously important". Dawkins has been accused by writers such as
Amanda Marcotte, Caitlin Dickson and Adam Lee of
misogyny, criticising those who speak about sexual harassment and abuse while ignoring
sexism within the
New Atheism movement.
Views on postmodernism In 1998, in a book review published in
Nature, Dawkins expressed his appreciation for two books connected with the
Sokal affair:
Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science by
Paul R. Gross and
Norman Levitt and
Intellectual Impostures by
Alan Sokal and
Jean Bricmont. These books are famous for their criticism of
postmodernism in U.S. universities (namely in the departments of literary studies, anthropology, and other cultural studies). Echoing many critics, Dawkins holds that postmodernism uses
obscurantist language to hide its lack of meaningful content. As an example he quotes the psychoanalyst
Félix Guattari: "We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis." This is explained, Dawkins maintains, by certain intellectuals' academic ambitions. Figures like Guattari or
Jacques Lacan, according to Dawkins, have nothing to say but want to reap the benefits of reputation and fame that derive from a successful academic career: "Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content".
Other fields at Dawkins's home in 2018 while working on
Million (Part 2) In his role as professor for public understanding of science, Dawkins has been a critic of
pseudoscience and
alternative medicine. His 1998 book
Unweaving the Rainbow considers
John Keats's accusation that by explaining the
rainbow,
Isaac Newton diminished its beauty; Dawkins argues for the opposite conclusion. He suggests that deep space, the billions of years of life's evolution, and the microscopic workings of biology and heredity contain more beauty and wonder than do "
myths" and "
pseudoscience". He discussed "Science's Revelations" with
Ian McEwan on
In Our Time. For
John Diamond's posthumously published
Snake Oil, a book devoted to debunking
alternative medicine, Dawkins wrote a foreword in which he asserts that alternative medicine is harmful, if only because it distracts patients from more successful conventional treatments and gives people false hopes. Dawkins states that "There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work." In his 2007
Channel 4 film
The Enemies of Reason, Dawkins concluded that Britain is gripped by "an epidemic of superstitious thinking". Continuing a long-standing partnership with Channel 4, Dawkins participated in a five-part television series,
Genius of Britain, along with his fellow-scientists
Stephen Hawking,
James Dyson,
Paul Nurse and
Jim Al-Khalili. The series was first broadcast in June 2010, and focuses on major British scientific achievements throughout history. In 2014 he joined the global awareness movement
Asteroid Day as a "100x Signatory". In 2025, he joined
John McWhorter to discuss "The link between evolution and language". In 2026 in an op-ed for
Unherd, Dawkins claimed that AI is conscious after a conversation with
Anthropic's
Claude. == Awards and recognition ==