There’s a Monty Python skit for every occasion. In the case of Darwinian atheist Richard Dawkins’s avoiding a debate with Stephen Meyer on the Piers Morgan show, the one that comes to mind is the musical number from Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Eric Idle as “Brave, Brave, Brave, Brave Sir Robin.”* As his taunting minstrels sing, “Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about, / and gallantly he chickened out. / Bravely taking to his feet, / he beat a very brave retreat.”
An Inference to Intelligent Design
If I were an atheist, I would feel pretty discouraged about now by the New Atheist icon. On the approach of the 20th anniversary of Dawkins’s bestselling The God Delusion, Meyer challenged him in the pages of The Telegraph, arguing that biology and cosmology increasingly support an inference to intelligent design, not to atheism. That could explain why the ranks of the New Atheist movement seem to have thinned so dramatically.
Dawkins wrote a response in the same newspaper that largely avoided the science, and even refused to address Meyer by name. When Piers Morgan invited Meyer and Dawkins to discuss the issue on his program, where Dawkins and Meyer have both been guests separately in the past, Meyer agreed while Dawkins, according to Morgan, didn’t return the phone call.
A Long Step Down
Instead, for the occasion, an atheist champion was found in the form of American non-scientist Matt Dillahunty, who at least showed up — not that he’s the most articulate fellow or the most persuasive debater you could hope for. From Dawkins to Dillahunty, it’s a long step down.
The lesson may be that if the leading New Atheist feels, evidently, that the science underlying his argument can’t be defended, then his cause has really drawn to a close. Denis Noble, the Oxford University biologist and an irritant to Dawkins, has said that “Neo-Darwinism is dead.” So, it seems, is the New Atheism.
* Yes, I realize Dawkins hasn’t been knighted, unlike the fictional Sir Robin.