A plea for a scientific utopia from a world-class hater

Science In The Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist, By Richard Dawkins, Bantam Press, €20

Richard Dawkins believes that science has many of religion’s virtues and none of its vices PIc: Murdo Macleod

Reading a great deal of Richard Dawkins over a short period of time is an unsettling experience. He is a writer of tremendous clarity and force – a world-class hater, in the tradition of Voltaire. He can be invigoratingly dismissive and thrillingly caustic about the idiocies of contemporary life.

In a lecture on the legacy of the 20th century (included in his new omnibus of ephemera, Science in the Soul), Dawkins laments that ...