Now, let us backtrack into Prof. Richard Dawkins’ background and how he came to discover, or invent, the beautifully sinister theory. As it turns out, Prof. Richard Dawkins started life as a child. Actually, he was born at a young age. Just a little comedy relief break. Our interest here is Prof. Richard Dawkins’ youth as he describes it to Steve Paulson who asked him, “You’ve written about going to church as a boy. When did you become an atheist?”
“I started getting doubts when I was about 9 and realized that there are lots of different religions and they can’t all be right. And which one I happened to be brought up in was an arbitrary accident. I then sort of went back to religion around the age of 12, and then finally left it at the age of 15 or 16.”
Paulson then asked, “Did God and religion just not make sense intellectually? Is that why you turned against religion?”
“Yes, purely intellectually. I was never much bothered about moral questions like, how could there be a good God when there’s so much evil in the world? For me, it was always an intellectual thing. I wanted to know the explanation for the existence of all things. I was particularly fascinated by living things. And when I discovered the Darwinian explanation, which is so stunningly elegant and powerful, I realized that you really don’t need any kind of supernatural force to explain it.”1
Elucidation of this matter is found in a discussion with the aforementioned Jonathan Miller that went thusly:
Jonathan Miller (JM), “So when, at the age of 16, you became acquainted with Darwin, was it because you were taught about Darwin, or you began reading The Origin of Species?”Prof. Richard Dawkins (RD), “No, it was because I was taught.”JM, “And were you taught by people who, as it were, were aware, or seemed to be aware of the fact that it would have theological consequences?”RD, “No, I don’t think so. I mean_that wasn’t the terms in which they put it anyway.”JM, “How soon in the lessons did you begin to see that it did have theological consequences – that it more or less knocked the idea of design on the head?”
RD, “I do remember that I understood the principle of Darwinism before I really believed it was big enough to do the job. So I understood the principle of it and realised that yes, that is a candidate explanation for doing this job but I still don’t think it’s a big enough one_it was only later that I decided yes – it is big enough.”
It would appear that when the very young Prof. Richard Dawkins was taught The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life it confirmed, or informed, or was an excuse for, realizing the doubts that he developed at nine years of age.