Evan Davis speaks to Richard Dawkins.

Clinton Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is an English^[4][5] ethologist, evolutionary biologist,^[6] and writer. He is anemeritus fellow of New College, Oxford,^[7] and was the University of Oxford‘s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.^[8]

Dawkins is a noted atheist, a patron of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement,^[9] and is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argues against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he introduced intoevolutionary biology the influential concept that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism’s body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms. This concept is presented in his book The Extended Phenotype.^[10]

He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—”a fixed false belief”.^[11]:5 As of January 2010, the English-language version had sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages.^[12] Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science to promote the teaching of evolution and to counteract those who advocate classroom programmes that teach against evolution.