Oxford Scientist Launches Sharp Critique of Religion
It was standing room only at Lowell Hall yesterday evening and a line of would-be attendees (myself included) went around the block. Did anyone hear Dawkins’s talk yesterday? Luckily a Crimson writer got in and summarized it, saying that Dawkins refers to religion as a “virus,” not a function of evolution and “devise” and socially “costly.” It would be interesting to know his views on specific religions; I wonder if he treats them too generally, or if he ever read anything like James’s “The Varieties of Religious Experience” or Ian Barbour’s “Religion and Science,” not that these would change his mind, just broaden it, perhaps. The second lecture is today at 5, same place.