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THE EMPEROR'S INCOHERENT NEW CLOTHES – POINTING THE FINGER AT DAWKINS' ATHEISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2010

Peter S. Williams
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Extract

With the publication of The God Delusion (Bantam, 2006) Richard Dawkins became enthroned as the unofficial ‘Emperor’ for a cadre of writers advancing a rhetorically robust form of anti-theism dubbed ‘The New Atheism’ by Wired Magazine contributing editor Gary Wolf. Many have cheered Dawkins and his court, seeing in their writings just what they long to see. For, after the fashion of the fairy-tale Emperor's fabled new clothes, the ‘new atheism’ has seen naturalism wrapping itself in a fake finery of counterfeit meaning and purpose.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 9 , Issue 24 , Spring 2010 , pp. 29 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2010

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References

NOTES

1 Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, (London: Bantam, 2006), p. 286Google Scholar.

2 Dawkins, Richard, ‘Afterword’ in Brockman, John (ed.), What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, (London: Pocket Books, 2006), p. 307Google Scholar.

3 Dawkins, Richard, ‘God's Utility Function’, Scientific American, (November, 1995), p. 85Google Scholar.

4 Dawkins, Richard, A Devil's Chaplain, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), p. 248Google Scholar.

5 William Provine, ‘Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy?’ @ http://www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or161/161main.htm

6 Dawkins, Richard, quoted by Beauregard, Mario & O'Leary, Denyse, The Spiritual Brain, (New York: Harper One, 2007), p. 118Google Scholar.

7 Humphrys, John, In God We Doubt, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007), pp. 16–17Google Scholar.