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shminux comments on In Defense of Tone Arguments - Less Wrong
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Of course. Dawkins preaches to the converted. I doubt that he ever seriously put himself into the mindset of a devout person for the purpose of writing a convincing argument.
His early works, such as The Selfish Gene, were actually really good books for convincing somebody of an alternative to creationism or guided creation, however. (Which isn't the same as convincing somebody of atheism, but does give somebody paralyzed by the question of where complex life came from a much-needed line of retreat.)
I saw someone reading The Selfish Gene on an airplane the other day, and a similar thought came to mind. I thought, "Ah, I should say hello to this person when we get off the plane. Failing that, give the official rationalist nod of affirmation. Go science!" (I missed the person leaving while trying to get to my book bag in the overhead compartment).
After, I decided that I would have had a similar urge to express my admiration to anyone I saw reading any Dawkins book, except the God Delusion. I'm happy to have a conversation with a fellow science lover. Not nearly as much with a fellow God hater.
upvoted for this.
Selfish Gene itself is indeed quite sufficient to convince most thinking young people that evolution provides a far better explanation of how we got to be the way we are. It communicated far better than anybody else the core theories of neo-Darwinism which gave rise to evolutionary psychology, by stating bluntly the Copernican shift from group or individual selection to gene selection. Indeed, I'd still recommend it as the starting point for anybody interested in wading into the field of evolutionary psychology: you should understand the fairly elegant underlying theory before doing the deep dive into what is now a far less elegant and organized study (in part because many of its practioners still don't understand the underlying theory).
Dawkins also had some very interesting theories of his own about evolution and animal behavior in Extended Phenotype, and despite his skill as a communicator of science it's a great loss that he largely discontinued his actual research in science.
In Blind Watchmaker he actually expresses quite a bit of understanding and empathy for major creationist arguments, especially the watchmaker argument, in the process of debunking them far better than any evolutionist had ever debunked them before.
Since then, he's gone downhill, becoming by now pedantic and repetitive and shrill. Of course he went downhill from a great height very few of us will ever hope to achieve, but it's sad nevertheless.
I thought The Greatest Show On Earth (2010) was fantastic, and I'm currently rereading it. (I recommend this book to everyone. If you thought you understood evolution, you'll understand it better.) The first paragraph of the first chapter summarises just why Dawkins is so generally pissed off with religion these days:
As someone noted elsewhere (Ben Goren on Jerry Coyne's site), a lot of why Dawkins is perceived as "shrill" and, e.g., Carl Sagan isn't, despite Sagan's words on religion being at least as uncompromising, is that "Richard is an excited and exciting tenor who sounds like he’s just drank a pot of tea while Carl is a relaxed and relaxing baritone who sounds like he’s just smoked a bowl of pot." (And likely had.) (This is apart from general tone argument considerations, in which merely objecting is dismissed as "shrill" no matter the actual tone.)