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Richard Dawkins has inspired millions with his popular science books, yet also drawn fire for controversial remarks 鈥� particularly on religion. Rowan Hooper wanted to know how he feels about his public image and if, at 72, he worries his role as the world鈥檚 most famous atheist will eclipse his scientific legacy

You have just published part one of your memoir. Is it intended as a humanising exercise, to show you鈥檙e not a mean, nasty baddie?
I don鈥檛 know how many people think I鈥檓 mean. I鈥檓 certainly not and I didn鈥檛 consciously set out to do any image-cleaning or anything. I like to think it鈥檚 an honest portrayal of how I really am. And I hope it is human, yes.

Nevertheless, there鈥檚 a gulf between the real you and the caricature Richard Dawkins. How has that come about?
I have two theories which are not mutually exclusive. One is the religion business. People really, really hate their religion being criticised. It鈥檚 as though you鈥檝e said they had an ugly face, they seem to identify personally with it. There is a historical attitude that religion is off limits to criticism.

聯People hate their religion being criticised. It鈥檚 as if you said they had an ugly face聰

Also, some people find clarity threatening. They like muddle, confusion, obscurity. So when somebody does no more than speak clearly it sounds threatening.

You definitely polarise people. How do you feel about the hate mail you get?
I did with a woman playing the cello in the background. Sweet strains to contrast with this awful, 鈥測ou fucking wanker Dawkins鈥� and so on. Making comedy of it is a pretty good way of absorbing it.

Do you still get fan mail too?
Yes. The hate mail is illiterate but the opposite is actually very moving and I get very, very gratifying responses. I just got back from a tour of the US promoting this book and I noticed even more forcibly than before the enormous numbers of people who come into the book-signing queue, and they nearly always say something like, I became a scientist because of you, you鈥檝e changed my life.

Has what drives you changed over the years?
It hasn鈥檛 changed: a love of truth, a love of clarity, a love of the poetry of science. Insofar as I show hostility to alternatives, superstition and so on, it鈥檚 because they are sapping education and depriving young people of the true glory of the scientific world view 鈥� I care especially about children in this case. It鈥檚 tragic to see children being led into dark, pokey little corners of medieval superstition.

Would you rather be remembered for explaining science or taking on religion?
To me they amount to the same thing 鈥� they are different sides of the same coin. But I suppose I鈥檇 rather be remembered for explaining science. I would be upset if people dismissed my science because of the religion.

You have turned your attention to Islam recently. Why is that?
I think my love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned. It鈥檚 stymied by the conflict between being against misogyny and discrimination against women on the one hand, and on the other by the terror of being thought racist 鈥� driven by misunderstanding Islam as though it were a race. So people who would normally speak out against the maltreatment of women don鈥檛 do it. I do fret about what I see as a betrayal by my own people, the nice liberals.

Another battle of yours has been against group selection 鈥� the idea that evolution works by selecting traits that benefit groups, not genes. You destroyed that paradigm, but then it came back again.
Something else came back under the same name. If you look carefully it turns out to be things like kin selection rebranded as group selection. That irritates me because I think it is wantonly obscuring something that was actually rather clear.

I think part of why it came back is political. Sociologists love group selection, I think because they are more influenced by emotive evaluations of human impulses. I think people want altruism to be a kind of driving force; there鈥檚 no such thing as a driving force. They want altruism to be fundamental whereas I want it to be explained. Selfish genes actually explain altruistic individuals and to me that鈥檚 crystal clear.

What subjects currently interest you in evolutionary biology?
I鈥檓 fascinated by the way molecular genetics has become a branch of information technology. I wonder with hindsight whether it had to be that way, whether natural selection couldn鈥檛 really work unless genetics was digital, high-fidelity, a kind of computer science. In other words, can we predict that, if there鈥檚 life elsewhere in the universe, it will have the same kind of high-fidelity digital genetics as we do?

When we are able to muck around with our own genes more, where do you think it will take us?
The funny thing is that if you take the two parts of the Darwinian formula, mutation and selection, we鈥檝e been messing around with the selection part with just about every species 鈥� except our own. We have been distorting wolves to Pekineses and wild cabbages to cauliflowers, and making huge revolutions in agricultural science. And yet with a few exceptions, there have been no attempts to breed human Pekineses or human greyhounds.

Now the mutation half of the Darwinian algorithm is becoming amenable to human manipulation, people have jumped to asking questions 鈥� what鈥檚 going to happen when we start tinkering with genes? 鈥� while sort of forgetting that we could have been tinkering with selection for thousands of years and haven鈥檛 done it. Maybe whatever has inhibited us from doing it with selection will do the same with mutation.

Do you believe there is a genetic basis to irrationality?
It would be very surprising if there wasn鈥檛 a genetic basis to the psychological predispositions which make people vulnerable to religion.

One idea about irrationality that I and various other people have put forward is that the risks we faced in our natural state often came from evolved agents like leopards and snakes. So with a natural phenomenon like a storm, the prudent thing might have been to attribute it to an agent rather than to forces of physics. It鈥檚 the proverbial rustle in the long grass: it鈥檚 probably not a leopard, but if it is, you鈥檙e for it. So a bias towards seeing agency rather than boring old natural forces may have been built into us.

That may take quite a lot of overcoming. Even though we no longer need to fear leopards, we inherit the instincts of those who did. Seeing agency where there isn鈥檛 any is something that may have been programmed into our brains.

If we are irrational, perhaps one of the reasons people bristle at you is they feel their nature is under attack.
We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don鈥檛 think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we鈥檙e forever condemned to be irrational.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎 man for all reason鈥�