"I first wrote that in a book review in the New York Times in 1989, and it has been much quoted against me ever since, as evidence of my arrogance and intolerance. Of course it sounds arrogant, but undisguised clarity is easily mistaken for arrogance. Examine the statement carefully and it turns out to be moderate, almost self-evidently true.
By far the largest of the four categories is "ignorant", and ignorance is no crime .... Anybody who thinks Joe DiMaggio was a cricketer has to be ignorant, stupid, or insane (probably ignorant), and you wouldn't think me arrogant for saying so. It is not intolerant to remark that flat-earthers are ignorant, stupid, or (probably) insane. It's just true. The difference is that not many people think Joe DiMaggio was a cricketer, or that the Earth is flat, so it isn't worth calling attention to their ignorance. But, if polls are to be believed, 100 million U.S. citizens believe that humans and dinosaurs were created within the same week as each other, less than ten thousand years ago. This is more serious. ...
I don't withdraw a word of my initial statement. But I do now think it may have been incomplete. There is perhaps a fifth category, which may belong under "insane" but which can be more sympathetically characterized by a word like tormented, bullied, or brainwashed. Sincere people who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the massive evidence of science on the one hand, and their understanding of what their holy book tells them on the other. I think this is one of the truly bad things religion can do to a human mind. There is wickedness here, but it is the wickedness of the institution and what it does to a believing victim, not wickedness on the part of the victim himself. "
Ignorance Is No Crime by Richard Dawkins
Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 21, Number 3.
Well, I'd say I'm very confident of the fact of evolution,
but Dawkins is very confident indeed, eh?
(Of course, he should know.)
"The scientist is concerned above all with the truth, with simply seeing things as they are, regardless of any other interests or concerns. The job of the public intellectual is not so simple. As an intellectual, he is certainly concerned with the truth as it is discovered by his intellect. Yet he is also concerned with the public things, that is, with the common good, and therefore with the well-being and needs of his fellow citizens. And while the truth is assuredly not in principle hostile to human well-being, neither is every truth unproblematically consistent with human well-being in every instance. ...Links are mine -- ed.
What is Dawkins’s response to those for whom his popularization of evolution causes so much pain?
(It causes these people pain because they don't agree with it. Now either it is right and they are wrong, or it is wrong and they are right. In the first case, is it preferable to believe a consoling lie or a harsh truth? In the second case, they already believe the truth, and is not a certain amount of "Christian pity" in order for the poor misguided?) Essentially it is this: 'Keep a stiff upper lip.' If 'something is true', he responds, 'no amount of wishful thinking can undo it.' No doubt this is correct. But we might with as much propriety ask Dawkins: 'If something is painful, does its truth justify inflicting it on people who find it disturbing?' (I.e., Do people have the right do be ignorant? Do they have the right to be wrong?) Let us grant — only, to be sure, for the sake of argument — that Dawkins’s Darwinian explanation of Life, the Universe, and Everything is true. Does this in itself justify his strident shoving of it into our public discourse, knowing full well the emotional distress it will cause the spiritually sensitive? ...
Dawkins contends that the meaningfulness of life need not depend on any notions of the ultimate purpose of the cosmos. He would probably assert that those who seek such cosmic justifications for the things they love are suffering a form of false consciousness imposed by the cultural influence of Biblical religion. Whatever the origins of such transcendent aspirations, however, it is an undeniable fact that countless human beings really do experience the meaningfulness of their lives as somehow bound up with their conviction that the universe possesses ultimate meaning. Dawkins’s ruthless indifference to them makes a tangled web of many of his fellow human beings’ most cherished sentiments and beliefs. (Well then, too bad for their cherished sentiments and beliefs. This sounds awfully callous, but what is the alternative? "Believe lies, if you find them comforting"? As Dawkins himself said on this,"Some of us would scorn to be consoled by a falsehood.")