![]() He embraced Christianity until halfway through his teenage years, at which point he concluded that the theory of evolution alone was a better explanation for life's complexity, and ceased believing in a god. Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". His parents were interested in natural sciences, and they answered Dawkins's questions in scientific terms. His father had inherited a country estate, Over Norton Park in Oxfordshire, which he farmed commercially. His father was called up into the King's African Rifles during the Second World War and returned to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. He is the son of Jean Mary Vyvyan ( née Ladner 1916–2019) and Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), an agricultural civil servant in the British Colonial Service in Nyasaland (present-day Malawi), of an Oxfordshire landed gentry family. He later dropped Clinton from his name by deed poll. Dawkins has published two volumes of memoirs, An Appetite for Wonder (2013) and Brief Candle in the Dark (2015).ĭawkins was born Clinton Richard Dawkins on 26 March 1941 in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya during British colonial rule. He founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science in 2006. In 2006, Dawkins published The God Delusion, contending that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker, in that reproduction, mutation, and selection are unguided by any sentient designer. Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker in 1986, arguing against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. ĭawkins is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design as well as for being a vocal atheist. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards. His 1976 book The Selfish Gene popularised the gene-centred view of evolution, as well as coining the term meme. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author.
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