Richard Dawkins' Mean and Nasty Review of Behe's Book and Dawkins' Moral Reasoning

Perhaps I missed Richard Dawkins' real point in his review of Michael Behe's book.

Behe has now replied directly to Dawkins' attack. As noted in my last post, I was pondering the tone used by each person. I found Dawkins' review to be mean, nasty, and containing at least one really bad argument. Behe puts it this way: "Other Darwinist reviewers have blustered; Dawkins is the only one who has dripped venom." Behe then goes on to reply in civil, measured words.

Perhaps Dawkins was trying to give an example of his moral philosophy? Perhaps he is showing how to laugh at the moral principle of showing respect and decency to one's adversaries and dealing with them using civil discourse? As he said:

Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car.

Perhaps Dawkins intended to give us a glimpse of how everyone will relate when all the world religions have been wiped away, and everyone has been freed from the useful fiction of a morality calling for civil discourse.

The EvoNews comment on all this is here.

Another post of mine on this topic is Biologist Morality and the Darwinian Cosmology.