Apostate Sarah Thompson's father is the prophet of and leader of the FLDS church Warren Jeffs. Eventually, she and her mother left. This is Sarah's story of how she left the Church and adjusted to secular life.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) has been at the center of numerous controversies and scandals, many of which stem from its practice of polygamy. This religious denomination, known for its strict adherence to fundamentalist beliefs, has faced intense scrutiny over the years. Apostate Annie Elise from the YouTube channel "10 to LIFE" delves into the FLDS with biased eyes.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is a nonfiction book by author Jon Krakauer, first published in July 2003. He investigated and juxtaposed two histories: the origin and evolution of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and a modern double murder committed in the name of God by brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who subscribed to a fundamentalist version of Mormonism. The Laffertys were formerly members of a splinter group called the School of Prophets, led by Robert C. Crossfield (also known by his prophet name Onias). The group accepts many beliefs of the original LDS church at the time when it ceased the practice of polygamy in the 1890s, but it does not identify with those who call themselves fundamentalist Mormons. The book examines the ideologies of both the LDS Church and the fundamentalist Mormon polygamous groups, such as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church). The book was adapted as a limited series of the same name that began airing in April 2022 on FX on Hulu. Synopsis Murders The book opens with news accounts of the 1984 murder of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter Erica. Brenda was married to Allen Lafferty, the youngest of the Lafferty brothers. His older brothers Dan and Ron disapproved of their sister-in-law Brenda because they believed she was the reason Dan's wife left him (after refusing to allow him to marry a plural/second wife—his stepdaughters). Both men's extremism reached new heights when they became members of the School of the Prophets, founded and led by Robert C. Crossfield. After joining this group, Ron claimed that God had sent him revelations about Brenda. Communication with God is a core belief of fundamentalist Mormonism, as well as the mainstream LDS Church.[1] Ron showed the members of the School of Prophets a written "removal revelation" that allegedly called for the killing of Brenda and her baby. After other members of the School failed to honor Ron's removal revelation, the brothers quit the School. Dan claimed that he slit both of the victims' throats. But, at the 2001 trial, Chip Carnes, who was riding in the getaway car, testified that Ron said that he had killed Brenda,[2] and that Ron had thanked his brother for "doing the baby". After the murders, the police found the written "revelation" concerning Brenda and Erica. The press widely reported that Ron had received a revelation to kill the mother and child. Afterward, the Lafferty brothers conducted a recorded press conference at which Ron said that the "revelation" was not addressed to him, but to "Todd" [a drifter whom Ron had befriended while working in Wichita] and that the revelation called only for "removal" of Brenda and her baby, and did not use the word "kill". The jury at Ron's trial was shown these remarks of Ron denying he had received a revelation to kill Brenda and Erica.[3] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints history After opening with the Lafferty case, Krakauer explores the history of Mormonism, starting with the early life of Joseph Smith, founder and first prophet of the Latter Day Saint movement. He follows his life from a criminal fraud trial to leading the first followers to Jackson County, Missouri, and Nauvoo, Illinois. While violence seemed to accompany the Mormons, Krakauer notes that they did not necessarily initiate it. Early Mormons faced religious persecution from mainstream Protestant Christians, due to their unorthodox beliefs, including polygamy and ongoing revelation from God through living prophets. In addition they tended to conduct business and personal relations only with other members of their community. There were violent clashes between Mormons and non-Mormons, culminating in Smith's death on June 27, 1844, when a mob shot him after attacking him in Carthage Jail, where he was awaiting trial for inciting a riot after ordering, as Nauvoo's mayor, in conjunction with the City Council, the destruction of the printing press of the Nauvoo Expositor, a local publication which had been declared a public nuisance.[4] From Nauvoo, the Mormons trekked westward to modern-day Utah, led by Smith's successor Brigham Young (after some controversy). Arriving in what they called Deseret, many Mormons believed they would be left alone by the United States government, as the territory was then part of Mexico. Soon after their arrival, the Mexican–American War occurred, with Mexico's eventual defeat. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed on February 2, 1848, this land and the rest of what would become the American Southwest were ceded to the United States. Smith's highly controversial revelation of plural marriage threatened to split apart followers of the faith. The Utah Territory was a theodemocracy led by Brigham Young as Governor, where polygamy continued to be practiced for 43 years. Finally, on September 23, 1890, Wilford Woodruff, the fourth president of the Church, claimed to have received a revelation from God (known as the 1890 Manifesto) which officially banned polygamy. Six years later, Utah was granted statehood.[5] After the Manifesto, some members broke away from the mainstream church to form what eventually became the FLDS Church, the most popular group of fundamentalist Mormonism. The FLDS Church continues to encourage polygamy, as do some other breakaway groups. Comparisons Krakauer examines events in Latter Day Saint history and compares them to modern-day FLDS doctrine (and other minority versions of Mormonism, such as the Crossfield School of the Prophets). He examines the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre during the Utah War, in which Mormons and some local Paiute Indians rounded up and murdered approximately 120 members of the Baker–Fancher party of emigrants passing through their territory. These early self-proclaimed mormons went to great lengths to conceal their part in the massacre (including dressing as the Paiute and painting their faces in similar fashion). The Civil War interrupted investigations of the events, and no one was indicted until 1874, when nine men were charged. For nearly two decades the falsehood held that the massacre was due solely to the Paiute. The only person ever convicted in the affair was John D. Lee, a former member of the LDS Church. He was convicted and executed by the state in 1877 for his role in the crime. Krakauer cites information gleaned from several interviews with Dan Lafferty and former and current members of the Crossfield School of the Prophets, as well as other fundamentalist Mormons. He refers to several histories about the formation of Mormonism to tie the origins of the religion to the modern iterations of both the church and the fundamentalists.[6] Derivation of the title The title of the book is drawn from an 1880 address by John Taylor, the third president of the LDS Church, defending the practice of plural marriage: God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven against the Government. The United States says we cannot marry more than one wife. God says different.[7] Reception Charles Graeber of The Guardian listed the book in his top ten true crime books, and described Krakauer as "a master journalist and storyteller who is unfettered and unafraid of the true crime mantle. [He] pries open the golden doors to one of the newest and fastest-growing religions in America to set the stage for the non-fiction drama."[8] In advance of the book's release in 2003, Richard E. Turley, managing director of the Church History Department of the LDS Church, argued that the book contained historical errors and incorrect assertions, and showed "unfamiliarity with basic aspects" of the Church's history, theology and administrative structure, and criticized the work for lacking a "scientific methodology". He accused Krakauer of "condemn[ing] religion generally".[9] In his 2004 paperback edition of the book, Krakauer responded to these allegations, noting that Turley's pre-emptive "response" preceded the book's release, and that LDS leaders had explicitly advocated the whitewashing of LDS history, amongst other points.[10] Mike Otterson, managing director of public affairs for the LDS Church, condemned Krakauer's example of religious "zealots" to draw conclusions about all Mormons and any propensity for violence. Otterson said that, after reading the book, "One could be forgiven for concluding that every Latter-day Saint, including your friendly Mormon neighbor, has a tendency to violence. And so Krakauer unwittingly puts himself in the same camp as those who believe every German is a Nazi, every Japanese a fanatic, and every Arab a terrorist."[9] Television adaptation Main article: Under the Banner of Heaven (miniseries) In July 2011, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the book, with Ron Howard directing and Dustin Lance Black writing the screenplay.[11][12] In June 2021, it was announced that the book was being redeveloped as a limited series for FX, with Black still attached as writer, David Mackenzie serving as director, and Andrew Garfield, Gil Birmingham and Daisy Edgar-Jones to star. The series debuted in April 2022 on FX on Hulu.[13] Related documentary In 2015, Amy Berg released her independent documentary, Prophet's Prey, about fundamentalist Mormons practicing polygamy, based on the case of Warren Jeffs, sentenced to life for polygamy and abuse of minors. Krakauer participated in this film and appears on camera, as he continued his own investigation of sects that practiced polygamy. Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, both working on the television adaptation of the book as producers, were also executive producers of the documentary.[12]

Matt Walsh (born June 18, 1986)[1][2] is an American right-wing political activist, author, podcaster, and columnist.[3] He is the host of The Matt Walsh Show podcast and is a columnist for the American conservative website The Daily Wire. He has authored four books and starred in The Daily Wire online documentary film What Is a Woman?. In 2010, Walsh began his career as a talk radio host for two stations in Delaware, before moving to Kentucky and launching his own website in 2012.[4] He left WLAP in Kentucky when his show was cancelled in December 2013 and joined Blaze Media in 2014.[5] He joined The Daily Wire in 2017, and began hosting The Matt Walsh Show in 2018.[6] Walsh has appeared on several nationally syndicated publications and talk shows.[7][8] Walsh opposes transgender rights and has campaigned in opposition to groups providing or encouraging transgender health care, particularly for minors.[9][10][11][12] In 2022, Walsh released Johnny the Walrus, a children's book in which he compared being transgender to pretending to be a walrus,[13] and What Is a Woman?, a documentary film about gender identity in the United States.[14] Walsh has campaigned against several hospitals, comparing the transgender healthcare they provide to child sexual abuse, genital mutilation, and rape.[15][16] Career Walsh began his career as a talk radio co-host of The Matt and Crank Program at WZBH 93.5 FM in Georgetown, Delaware, from early 2010 to August 1, 2011, and then moved to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with WGMD 92.7 FM later that month, where he worked for less than a year.[4][17] In 2012, he moved to Lexington, Kentucky, joining NewsRadio 630 WLAP[citation needed] and launching a website, The Matt Walsh Blog, in which he discussed various issues from a conservative point of view.[5] Walsh announced in December 2013 that he was "leaving radio forever" to focus on blogging after his show was canceled.[4][5] Walsh began working for conservative media outlet Blaze Media starting in October 2014.[18] He was also a contributor to HuffPost[19] and began writing for The Daily Wire in October 2017.[20] He has appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight,[7][21] The Ingraham Angle,[22] Fox and Friends,[23][24] Dr. Phil,[8] as well as the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.[25] Walsh hosted The Matt Walsh Show on YouTube starting in April 2018 on weekdays; it is an hour in length.[6] According to Walsh, the show made $100,000 per month through advertisement revenue. Walsh announced in April 2023 that the show was being moved to the Daily Wire website after his YouTube channel was demonetized for repeatedly misgendering transgender woman Dylan Mulvaney.[26] Walsh's work has been supported by J. K. Rowling,[27] Elon Musk,[28][29] and some Republican legislators.[30][31] Rowling argued that Walsh's work "exposed" the "incoherence of gender identity."[32] In 2023, Walsh starred in a Daily Wire comedy film, Lady Ballers, which debuted on December 1, 2023. He portrayed the character of Kris Dilby, a woke beatnik.[33] Johnny the Walrus Main article: Johnny the Walrus On March 29, 2022, DW Books published Walsh's children's book Johnny the Walrus, which compares being trans to identifying as a walrus.[13] Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the book "hilarious".[34] Conservative news website TheBlaze called the book "an effort to push back against radical gender ideology which defies biological reality".[35] The satirist Andrew Doyle, writing in UnHerd, praised the book for mocking the "indoctrination of the young".[36] LGBTQ Nation denounced the book, calling it "anti-transgender" and a mockery of transgender youth, while PinkNews referred to it as "hateful" and "transphobic".[34][35] It was listed as the bestselling LGBT+ book on Amazon in December 2021 before Amazon recategorized it to Political and Social Commentary. Walsh called the recategorization "an unconscionable attack on gay rights and a horrific example of homophobia and gay erasure". Target removed the book from its online bookstore on the same day.[37] What Is a Woman? Main article: What Is a Woman? Walsh's online documentary film What Is a Woman?, released by The Daily Wire on June 1, 2022, at the beginning of Pride Month, featured Walsh asking the question "what is a woman?" to various people, and arguing for his own views.[44] Walsh had asked the same question in other appearances, including a Dr. Phil show on January 19, 2022, with transgender and non-binary people.[45][46] On June 14, Walsh published a book based on the documentary, entitled What Is a Woman?: One Man's Journey to Answer the Question of a Generation through DW Books.[47] The documentary received a divided reception from critics and political commentators. Detractors, such as AJ Erkert of Science-Based Medicine and Erin Rook of LGBTQ Nation, denounced the film as "propaganda", "transphobic lies", and "science denying". Erkert compared the documentary to the antiscience films Vaxxed and Expelled.[48][better source needed][43] Conservative commentators, such as Rich Lowry and Rod Dreher, praised the film as "mesmerizing" and "excellent".[49][50] Dimitrije Vojnov of Radio Television of Serbia said that Walsh could become the American right's equivalent of Michael Moore, and just as biased.[51] Eventbrite banned screenings of the documentary due to the service not permitting content that promotes "hate, violence, or harassment towards others and/or oneself". Walsh denied that the documentary was hate speech and criticized Eventbrite for permitting the screening of drag shows that allow children in attendance.[52] In February 2022, Eli Erlick, a transgender activist, alleged that Walsh had invited dozens of people to participate in the documentary under false pretenses.[53][54] Kataluna Enriquez, Fallon Fox, and other transgender public figures corroborated the account. Walsh created a group called the Gender Unity Project, which the activists said attempted to lure them into participating in the film.[54][55] The Gender Unity Project's Twitter account and website[56] were taken down shortly after the allegations went public.[57] Erlick claimed there were at least 50 other recruited interviewees, including a 14-year-old transgender girl.[57][58][59] Walsh's What Is a Woman? college tour attracted protests of his appearances for screenings at University of Houston and the University of Wisconsin.[60][61][62][63] For June Pride Month of 2023, The Daily Wire made What is a Woman? available for free on Twitter. The Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing tweeted that Twitter had canceled a plan to promote the video, reportedly because of misgendering, and said the video was being suppressed. Twitter CEO Elon Musk initially agreed to lift only some restrictions, but after pressure removed all restrictions and personally promoted the video.[64][65] Chiefs of Twitter's trust and safety division left the company on the same day.[64] The film's tally on Twitter showed more than 62 million views (previously known as impressions[66]) as of the afternoon of June 2 and 177 million for the week.[64][67] Walsh called Musk's promotion of the film a "huge win".[65] Views Walsh's views have mainly been described as right-wing[68][3][69][70][71] and conservative,[60][72][73][74] but also as far-right.[75][76][77] His commentary is sometimes described by media outlets as trolling or provocation.[78][79][80][39] He labels himself a "theocratic fascist" in his Twitter biography,[81][82] which he said was an ironic response to an opponent using the label as an insult.[83] Walsh has argued that the trial of Kenosha unrest shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted, was malicious prosecution.[84] He has argued for banning pornography and supports restricting abortion.[85] Walsh has argued that ozone depletion and acid rain were never serious problems, in tweets that Ars Technica described as "willfully ignoring some very well-documented history".[86] Walsh believes that cannabis should not be legal. He believes that it is more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco, and that it causes violence.[87][88][89] Regarding the casting of Halle Bailey in the live-action version of The Little Mermaid (2023), Walsh said on The Daily Wire, "from a scientific perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have someone with darker skin who lives deep in the ocean," and suggested that the mermaid should be translucent instead. Walsh's commentary was mocked on CNN by digital senior entertainment writer Lisa France, who said "racism is real, unfortunately, and people get so offended".[90] Later, Walsh said that "Translucent rights are human rights".[91] He jokingly called anime "satanic" in an answer to viewers' questions in one of his videos, adding "I have no argument for why it's satanic. It just seems that way to me."[92][93] He has called multiculturalism a "failed experiment".[94][third-party source needed]. LGBT issues Walsh is an opponent of the LGBT rights movement and the LGBT community, in particular the transgender rights movement and the idea of being transgender in general.[13][95] In February 2021, after a Gallup poll showed a sharp increase of people who identify as LGBT, especially bisexual and transgender, in Generation Z compared to previous generations, Walsh accused "the media, Hollywood, and the school system" of “recruiting” children into the LGBT community. Other commentators quoted by PinkNews argued that Walsh was wrong, attributing the increase to different factors, including an easing of social stigmas among younger people.[96] Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Walsh accused President Joe Biden of feminizing the U.S. military and recruiting lesbians who he said "can't do three pushups", and said that it was "not a coincidence that [Russia's invasion] happened after Biden spent his first year in office focusing primarily on wokeness".[97] The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg argued that Walsh's commentary, as well as that of other right-wing commentators, have caused an increase of anti-LGBT violence and sentiment in the United States.[98] The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described Walsh as one of the "peddlers of fear and disinformation about LGBTQ people" in the wake of the Club Q mass shooting in November 2022.[99] Walsh had previously said opposing all-age drag events was like fighting cancer,[75] and "just like cancer, stopping it is not a gentle or a painless process".[98][100] Following the shooting, Walsh lambasted critics of his rhetoric as "soulless demons" and "evil to the core", accusing them of using the shooting to "blackmail us into accepting the castration and sexualization of children".[101][102] He also rhetorically asked those on the left who felt that "the drag queen-child combination" would lead to "violent backlash" from right-wingers, "if it's causing this much chaos and violence, why do you insist on continuing to do it?"[103][104] Jeet Heer from The Nation described Walsh's comments, along with those of a few other right-wing figures, as "implicitly a threat," saying, "The right is trying to create a new lynching culture, with LGBTQ people as the target."[104] In April 2023, Walsh defended Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill, arguing that LGBTQ rights in Africa were a form of neocolonialism. The bill would enforce life in prison for anybody identifying as gay or bisexual. Walsh argued that opponents to the bill "don't think that Uganda has any particular right to govern itself and have its own culture and its own way of life."[105] Transgender issues Walsh speaking behind a podium, gesturing with his right index finger, in front of an out-of-focus illuminated background Walsh speaking at the 2022 AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona Walsh has repeatedly opposed the transgender community[13] and "gender ideology",[106] notably with his children's book Johnny the Walrus,[13] his documentary What Is a Woman?,[54] and campaigns involving hospitals and schools.[9][107] Walsh and his campaigns are sometimes described as anti-trans and transphobic.[68][59][43][60] Progressive magazine The New Republic named Walsh "Transphobe of the Year" in 2022, saying he "has made a name for himself by demonizing medical professionals and pushing conspiracy theories about 'grooming' and pedophilia in the LGBTQ community".[68] Walsh has referred to being transgender as a "delusion" and a "mental illness".[63] He has also argued that transgender people cannot "defend the logic of trans ideology" and that they have "embarked on a campaign to restructure all of human society".[106] Walsh argues that biological sex is what determines if someone is a man or a woman.[106] He has said that "I truly see the fight against gender ideology as the last stand for Western civilization ... Because if the sane side loses this, it's over."[106] Walsh has compared giving hormone treatments and gender-affirming surgery for transgender youth to "being sexually violated in a way that is just as depraved or damaging as molestation or rape". In May 2021, Walsh called doctors who perform gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth "Nazi scientist-evil", "pedophiles", and "plastic surgeons basically acting like Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre".[15][13] Walsh's views are in opposition to the stance of leading American medical groups, which have established guidelines to treat transgender youth; those groups and some research say that denying such care can lead to higher rates of suicide and other mental health issues.[9][71] He has also referred to these surgeries as "castration".[106] Walsh rented an apartment in Virginia for one day in 2021 to qualify to speak out against the Loudoun County School Board for allowing transgender students the use of restrooms matching their gender identity.[107] During his speech, which he later featured in his film What Is a Woman?, Walsh said: "You are all child abusers. You prey upon impressionable children and indoctrinate them into your insane ideological cult, a cult which holds many fanatical views but none so deranged as the idea that boys are girls and girls are boys."[43] In January 2022, Twitter suspended Walsh's account for 12 hours for tweets it deemed as hateful content against transgender people.[108][better source needed] In October 2022, Walsh encouraged his followers to misgender transgender people, writing that "we have made huge strides against the trans agenda", and that the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, which he called "the liberation of Twitter", will allow them to "ramp up our efforts even more".[72] In November 2022, Walsh was challenged as a guest on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience for suggesting that "maybe millions of kids" had been put onto puberty blockers. Producer Jamie Vernon interjected and stated that only 4,780 children had been put on puberty blockers within the past five years. Walsh lowered his guess to "hundreds of thousands" and said he "could be wrong", adding, "who are you gonna trust when they're telling you the numbers?"[25] Campaign against Eli Erlick In August 2022, Walsh accused transgender activist Eli Erlick of being a "confessed drug dealer" targeting children because of a deleted Instagram post in which she proposed sending surplus hormone therapy prescriptions—including hundreds of doses of testosterone, estradiol, and spironolactone—to transgender youth for free within states attempting to criminalize transgender healthcare for minors. Walsh reported her to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she was a PhD candidate. When the university did not respond to Walsh's report within a day, he said it was "time to escalate" and shared the contact information of various leaders of the university, while threatening to further escalate to the Board of Trustees, the university's donors, and to organize a protest on campus if the university continued to not respond.[109][10] The university said it "strongly supports transgender members of our community" and "takes allegations of illegal activity seriously, harassment included". Some conservative commentators reported Erlick to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.[10] Erlick claimed to never face investigation.[110][third-party source needed] Following Walsh's statements Erlick reported harassment on social media, including messages with anti-LGBT slurs and threats of physical violence. Erlick accused Walsh of "profiting from the moral panic over transness", "attacking free speech itself", and stochastic terrorism, which is incitement of violence against a target through mass media with plausible deniability. Walsh denied that his actions constituted stochastic terrorism and argued that sharing public contact information is not harassment.[10] Campaigns against hospitals providing transgender health care Further information: Boston Children's Hospital § Harassment campaign against gender-affirming care, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center § Transgender clinic In 2022, Walsh campaigned against hospitals providing transgender health care for youth.[9][111] Boston Children's Hospital, one of the hospitals denounced by Walsh and other right-wing figures, reported harassment, death threats, and a hoax bomb threat in August 2022 that led to a woman's arrest in September.[9][71][112] In September 2022, Walsh made accusations against another hospital, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), and its transgender clinic in Nashville, Tennessee.[16][9] Walsh said on his show that VUMC doctors "castrate" and "drug and mutilate" children.[113] He said on Twitter that VUMC considered transgender health care a "money-maker", that it threatened "consequences" for medical staff who declined to provide care, and that it tried to "enforce compliance" from hesitant parents of transgender youth.[9][16] Walsh criticized VUMC's "trans buddies" program and called its patient advocates "trans activists".[114] The New Republic described the accusations by Walsh as "cherry-picking informational content" and noted that Walsh had singled out doctors by name.[111] Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and other Republicans in the state called for an investigation into the hospital.[16][114] Walsh tweeted about meeting with Tennessee lawmakers on a bill to shut down the clinic.[111] VUMC reported harassment and threats against its staff, and there were calls for murders and arrests of VUMC doctors in far-right groups on Reddit and 4chan.[9] Vanderbilt took down its webpage about the clinic and said that Walsh had "misrepresent[ed] facts about the care" it provides.[9] On October 7, 2022, VUMC announced that it would pause gender-affirming surgeries for minors and review its practices.[115] Since 2018, VUMC provided an average of five such surgeries to minors annually. All patients were over 16-years-old and obtained parental consent. None have received genital surgery.[115] Walsh spoke at a Nashville rally organized by The Daily Wire called "The Rally to End Child Mutilation" on October 21, 2022, in opposition to transgender health care for minors. The rally, whose headline speakers included Tennessee Republican state senator Jack Johnson and representative William Lamberth, senator Marsha Blackburn, and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, drew between 1,500 and 3,000 people, including supporters and protesters.[31][11] Politicians After South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem permitted businesses to require a COVID-19 vaccine for their employees, Walsh criticized her by writing that she was only considered a frontrunner for the 2024 United States presidential election because of her physical attractiveness.[3] After Noem called his comment misogynistic, Walsh said he had no regrets but would "accept apologies from all of the performative idiots pretending to be offended by it".[116][better source needed] When U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted photos of her grandmother's house in Puerto Rico that was unrepaired in 2021, four years after Hurricane Maria, and blamed former President Donald Trump for not doing enough to help the recovery, Walsh criticized Ocasio-Cortez for not providing the money herself. He launched a crowdfunding effort to pay for the repairs and raised $100,000 in the first 24 hours, reaching the set goal of $48,990, but the grandmother refused the funds and GoFundMe shut the effort down after raising $104,000, with all of the money being returned to the donors. Ocasio-Cortez responded to the criticism by saying, "My abuela (Spanish: "grandmother") is okay ... but instead of only caring for mine & letting others suffer, I'm calling attention to the systemic injustices you seem totally fine [with] in having a US colony."[117] Walsh criticized Donald Trump in November 2022 for nicknaming Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis "Ron DeSanctimonious" ahead of the November 2022 midterm elections.[118] Catholic Church event cancellations St. Francis Xavier College Church, at Saint Louis University, canceled a speech by Walsh that it had planned to co-host with Young Americans for Freedom in December 2021. The church said it had decided that Walsh's "provocative positions on immigration, on communities of color, on Muslims, and on members of the LGBTQ community" were "in contradiction to Jesus' great commandment to love God and love our neighbor".[119][120] Walsh subsequently spoke at a different St. Louis venue.[121] In 2023, the University of San Diego, a private Catholic educational institution, refused Walsh permission to speak on campus, for the reason that they regarded his opinions as "Grossly Offensive".[122] Personal life Walsh is a practicing Catholic,[123] and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.[124] He is married to Alissa Ann Walsh (née Linnemann),[125] whom he met on eHarmony.[126] They have six children, including two sets of twins.[127][128] Alissa Walsh has written that she has had seven miscarriages.[129][130] Books The Unholy Trinity: Blocking the Left's Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender. New York: Crown Publishing Group (2017). ISBN 978-0-45149505-1, 0-45149505-5. Church of Cowards: A Wake-Up Call to Complacent Christians. Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway (2020). ISBN 978-1-62157920-5. OCLC 1141857412. Johnny the Walrus. Illustrations by K. Reece. Nashville, TN: DW Books (2022). ISBN 978-1-95600705-3, 1-95600704-0. What Is a Woman?: One Man's Journey to Answer the Question of a Generation. Nashville, TN: DW Books (2022). ISBN 978-1-95600700-8. OCLC 1322213918.

Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941)[3] is a British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, and author.[4] He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. His 1976 book The Selfish Gene popularised the gene-centred view of evolution, as well as coining the term meme. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards.[5] Dawkins is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design as well as for being a vocal atheist.[6] Some fellow academics have described Dawkins as a secular or atheist fundamentalist.[7][8][9] Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker in 1986, arguing 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, in that reproduction, mutation, and selection are unguided by any sentient designer. In 2006, Dawkins published The God Delusion, writing that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion. He founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science in 2006.[10][11] Dawkins has published two volumes of memoirs, An Appetite for Wonder (2013) and Brief Candle in the Dark (2015). Background Early life Dawkins was born Clinton Richard Dawkins on 26 March 1941 in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya during British colonial rule.[12] He later dropped Clinton from his name by deed poll.[3] He is the son of Jean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner; 1916–2019)[13][14] and Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), an agricultural civil servant in the British Colonial Service in Nyasaland (present-day Malawi), of an Oxfordshire landed gentry family.[12][15][16] His father was called up into the King's African Rifles during the Second World War[17][18] and returned to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited a country estate, Over Norton Park in Oxfordshire, which he farmed commercially.[16] Dawkins lives in Oxford, England.[19] He has a younger sister, Sarah.[20] His parents were interested in natural sciences, and they answered Dawkins's questions in scientific terms.[21] Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing".[22] He embraced Christianity until halfway through his teenage years, at which point he concluded that the theory of evolution alone was a better explanation for life's complexity, and ceased believing in a god.[20] He states: "The main residual reason why I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life and feeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realised that Darwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under the argument of design. And that left me with nothing."[20] This understanding of atheism combined with his western cultural background, informs Dawkins as he describes himself in several interviews as a "cultural Christian" and a "cultural Anglican".[23][24][25] Education The Great Hall, Oundle School On his return to England from Nyasaland in 1949, at the age of eight, Dawkins joined Chafyn Grove School, in Wiltshire,[26] where he says he was molested by a teacher.[27] From 1954 to 1959, he attended Oundle School in Northamptonshire, an English public school with a Church of England ethos,[20] where he was in Laundimer House.[28] While at Oundle, Dawkins read Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian for the first time.[29] He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford (the same college his father attended), graduating in 1962; while there, he was tutored by Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen. He graduated with a second-class degree.[30] Dawkins continued as a research student under Tinbergen's supervision, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy[31] degree by 1966, and remained a research assistant for another year.[32][33] Tinbergen was a pioneer in the study of animal behaviour, particularly in the areas of instinct, learning, and choice;[34] Dawkins's research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.[35] Teaching From 1967 to 1969, Dawkins was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities.[36] He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 as a lecturer. In 1990, he became a reader in zoology. In 1995, he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field",[37] and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.[38] He held that professorship from 1995 until 2008.[39] Since 1970, he has been a fellow of New College, Oxford, and he is now an emeritus fellow.[40][41] He has delivered many lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), the first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), the Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), the T. H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), the Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), the Tinbergen Lecture (2004), and the Tanner Lectures (2003).[32] In 1991, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children on Growing Up in the Universe. He also has edited several journals and has acted as an editorial advisor to the Encarta Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Evolution. He is listed as a senior editor and a columnist of the Council for Secular Humanism's Free Inquiry magazine and has been a member of the editorial board of Skeptic magazine since its foundation.[42] Dawkins has sat on judging panels for awards such as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards,[32] and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2004, Balliol College, Oxford, instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities".[43] In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in 'anti-scientific' fairytales."[44] In 2011, Dawkins joined the professoriate of the New College of the Humanities, a private university in London established by A. C. Grayling, which opened in September 2012.[45] Work Evolutionary biology Further information: Gene-centred view of evolution At the University of Texas at Austin, March 2008 Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene as the principal unit of selection in evolution; this view is most clearly set out in two of his books:[46][47] The Selfish Gene (1976), in which he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities." The Extended Phenotype (1982), in which he describes natural selection as "the process whereby replicators out-propagate each other". He introduces to a wider audience the influential concept he presented in 1977,[48] 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. Dawkins regarded the extended phenotype as his single most important contribution to evolutionary biology and he considered niche construction to be a special case of extended phenotype. The concept of extended phenotype helps explain evolution, but it does not help predict specific outcomes.[49] Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin)[50] and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene.[51] He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism.[52] Altruism appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own chances for survival, or "fitness". Previously, many had interpreted altruism as an aspect of group selection, suggesting that individuals are doing what is best for the survival of the population or species as a whole. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton used gene-frequency analysis in his inclusive fitness theory to show how hereditary altruistic traits can evolve if there is sufficient genetic similarity between actors and recipients of such altruism, including close relatives.[53][a] Hamilton's inclusive fitness has since been successfully applied to a wide range of organisms, including humans. Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation.[54] Dawkins popularised these ideas in The Selfish Gene, and developed them in his own work.[55] In June 2012, Dawkins was highly critical of fellow biologist E. O. Wilson's 2012 book The Social Conquest of Earth as misunderstanding Hamilton's theory of kin selection.[56][57] Dawkins has also been strongly critical of the Gaia hypothesis of the independent scientist James Lovelock.[58][59][60] Critics of Dawkins's biological approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of selection (a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce) is misleading. The gene could be better described, they say, as a unit of evolution (the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population).[61] In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams's definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency".[62] Another common objection is that a gene cannot survive alone, but must cooperate with other genes to build an individual, and therefore a gene cannot be an independent "unit".[63] In The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins suggests that from an individual gene's viewpoint, all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted. Advocates for higher levels of selection (such as Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, and Elliott Sober) suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning The Selfish Gene,[64][65] has criticised gene selection, memetics, and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist;[66] she has suggested that the popularity of Dawkins's work is due to factors in the Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades.[67] Besides, other, more recent views and analysis on his popular science works also exist.[68] In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (what has been called 'The Darwin Wars'),[69][70] one faction is often named after Dawkins, while the other faction is named after the American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of the pertinent ideas.[71][72] In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical.[73] A typical example of Dawkins's position is his scathing review of Not in Our Genes by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin, and Richard C. Lewontin.[74] Two other thinkers who are often considered to be allied with Dawkins on the subject are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology.[75] Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book A Devil's Chaplain posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year. When asked if Darwinism informs his everyday apprehension of life, Dawkins says, "In one way it does. My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. That's never far from my thoughts, that sense of amazement. On the other hand, I certainly don't allow Darwinism to influence my feelings about human social life", implying that he feels that individual human beings can opt out of the survival machine of Darwinism since they are freed by the consciousness of self.[19] "Meme" as behavioural concept Main article: Meme Dawkins at Cooper Union in New York City to discuss his book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution in 2010 In his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins coined the word meme (the behavioural equivalent of a gene) as a way to encourage readers to think about how Darwinian principles might be extended beyond the realm of genes.[76] It was intended as an extension of his "replicators" argument, but it took on a life of its own in the hands of other authors, such as Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. These popularisations then led to the emergence of memetics, a field from which Dawkins has distanced himself.[77] Dawkins's meme refers to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or set of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through communication and contact with humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Because memes are not always copied perfectly, they might become refined, combined, or otherwise modified with other ideas; this results in new memes, which may themselves prove more or less efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution based on memes, a notion that is analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.[78] Although Dawkins invented the term meme, he has not said that the idea was entirely novel,[79] and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon.[80] Semon regarded "mneme" as the collective set of neural memory traces (conscious or subconscious) that were inherited, although such view would be considered as Lamarckian by modern biologists.[81] Laurent also found the use of the term mneme in Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the White Ant (1926), and Maeterlinck himself stated that he obtained the phrase from Semon's work.[80] In his own work, Maeterlinck tried to explain memory in termites and ants by stating that neural memory traces were added "upon the individual mneme".[81] Nonetheless, James Gleick describes Dawkins's concept of the meme as "his most famous memorable invention, far more influential than his selfish genes or his later proselytising against religiosity".[82] Foundation Main article: Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science In 2006, Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS), a non-profit organisation. RDFRS financed research on the psychology of belief and religion, financed scientific education programs and materials, and publicised and supported charitable organisations that are secular in nature.[83] In January 2016, it was announced that the foundation was merging with the Center for Inquiry, with Dawkins becoming a member of the new organization's board of directors.[84] Criticism of religion Lecturing on his book The God Delusion, 24 June 2006 Dawkins was confirmed into the Church of England at the age of 13, but began to grow sceptical of the beliefs. He said that his understanding of science and evolutionary processes led him to question how adults in positions of leadership in a civilised world could still be so uneducated in biology,[85] and is puzzled by how belief in God could remain among individuals who are sophisticated in science. Dawkins says that some physicists use 'God' as a metaphor for the general awe-inspiring mysteries of the universe, which he says causes confusion and misunderstanding among people who incorrectly think they are talking about a mystical being who forgives sins, transubstantiates wine, or makes people live after they die.[86] He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA)[87] and suggests that the existence of God should be treated as a scientific hypothesis like any other.[88] Dawkins became a prominent critic of religion and has stated his opposition to religion as twofold: religion is both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence.[89] He considers faith—belief that is not based on evidence—as "one of the world's great evils".[90] On his spectrum of theistic probability, which ranges from 1 (100% certainty that a God or gods exist) to 7 (100% certainty that a God or gods do not exist), Dawkins has said he is a 6.9, which represents a "de facto atheist" who thinks "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there." When asked about his slight uncertainty, Dawkins quips, "I am agnostic to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden."[91][92] In May 2014, at the Hay Festival in Wales, Dawkins explained that while he does not believe in the supernatural elements of the Christian faith, he still has nostalgia for the ceremonial side of religion.[93] In addition to beliefs in deities, Dawkins has criticized religious beliefs as irrational, such as that Jesus turned water into wine, that an embryo starts as a blob, that magic underwear will protect you, that Jesus was resurrected, that semen comes from the spine, that Jesus walked on water, that the sun sets in a marsh, that the Garden of Eden existed in Adam-ondi-Ahman, Missouri, that Jesus' mother was a virgin, that Muhammad split the moon, and that Lazarus was raised from the dead.[101] Dawkins has risen to prominence in public debates concerning science and religion since the publication of his most popular book, The God Delusion, in 2006, which became an international bestseller.[102] As of 2015, more than three million copies have been sold, and the book has been translated into over 30 languages.[103] Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist and has also been identified with the rise of New Atheism.[104] In the book, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—"a fixed false belief".[105] In his February 2002 TED talk entitled "Militant atheism", Dawkins urged all atheists to openly state their position and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science.[106] On 30 September 2007, Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett met at Hitchens's residence for a private, unmoderated discussion that lasted two hours. The event was videotaped and entitled "The Four Horsemen".[107] Dawkins sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination.[36][108][109] These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term bright as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a naturalistic worldview.[109] He has given support to the idea of a free-thinking school,[110] which would not "indoctrinate children" but would instead teach children to ask for evidence and be skeptical, critical, and open-minded. Such a school, says Dawkins, should "teach comparative religion, and teach it properly without any bias towards particular religions, and including historically important but dead religions, such as those of ancient Greece and the Norse gods, if only because these, like the Abrahamic scriptures, are important for understanding English literature and European history."[111][112] Inspired by the consciousness-raising successes of feminists in arousing widespread embarrassment at the routine use of "he" instead of "she", Dawkins similarly suggests that phrases such as "Catholic child" and "Muslim child" should be considered as socially absurd as, for instance, "Marxist child", as he believes that children should not be classified based on the ideological or religious beliefs of their parents.[109] While some critics, such as writer Christopher Hitchens, psychologist Steven Pinker and Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto, James D. Watson, and Steven Weinberg have defended Dawkins's stance on religion and praised his work,[113] others, including Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, astrophysicist Martin Rees, philosopher of science Michael Ruse, literary critic Terry Eagleton, philosopher Roger Scruton, academic and social critic Camille Paglia, atheist philosopher Daniel Came and theologian Alister McGrath,[120] have criticised Dawkins on various grounds, including the assertion that his work simply serves as an atheist counterpart to religious fundamentalism rather than a productive critique of it, and that he has fundamentally misapprehended the foundations of the theological positions he claims to refute. Rees and Higgs, in particular, have both rejected Dawkins's confrontational stance toward religion as narrow and "embarrassing", with Higgs going as far as to equate Dawkins with the religious fundamentalists he criticises.[121][122][123][124] Atheist philosopher John Gray has denounced Dawkins as an "anti-religious missionary", whose assertions are "in no sense novel or original", suggesting that "transfixed in wonderment at the workings of his own mind, Dawkins misses much that is of importance in human beings." Gray has also criticised Dawkins's perceived allegiance to Darwin, stating that if "science, for Darwin, was a method of inquiry that enabled him to edge tentatively and humbly toward the truth, for Dawkins, science is an unquestioned view of the world."[125] A 2016 study found that many British scientists held an unfavourable view of Dawkins and his attitude towards religion.[126] In response to his critics, Dawkins maintains that theologians are no better than scientists in addressing deep cosmological questions and that he is not a fundamentalist, as he is willing to change his mind in the face of new evidence.[127][128][129] Dawkins has faced backlash over some of his public comments about Islam. In 2013, Dawkins tweeted that "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though."[130] In 2016, Dawkins' invitation to speak at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism was withdrawn over his sharing of what was characterized as a "highly offensive video" satirically showing cartoon feminist and Islamist characters singing about the things they hold in common. In issuing the tweet, Dawkins stated that it "Obviously doesn't apply to vast majority of feminists, among whom I count myself. But the minority are pernicious."[131] Criticism of creationism Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism, a religious belief that humanity, life, and the universe were created by a deity[132] without recourse to evolution.[133] He has described the young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood".[134] His 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argues against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the eighteenth-century English theologian William Paley via his book Natural Theology, in which Paley argues that just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things—with their far greater complexity—be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, unguided by any designer, nonintelligent, blind watchmaker.[135] Wearing a scarlet 'A' lapel pin, at the 34th annual conference of American Atheists (2008) In 1986, Dawkins and biologist John Maynard Smith participated in an Oxford Union debate against A. E. Wilder-Smith (a Young Earth creationist) and Edgar Andrews (president of the Biblical Creation Society).[b] In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of engaging with them at all". He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public."[136] In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know." When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word theory, Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English."[137] Dawkins has opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one".[138] He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler",[139][140] a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and whose work Dawkins has described as an "educational scandal". He plans to subsidise schools through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science with the delivery of books, DVDs, and pamphlets that counteract their work.[141] Political views Further information: Political views of Richard Dawkins With Ariane Sherine at the Atheist Bus Campaign launch in London, January 2009 Dawkins is an outspoken atheist[142] and a supporter of various atheist, secular,[143][144] and humanist organisations,[145][146][147][148] including Humanists UK and the Brights movement.[106] Dawkins suggests that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, stressing that atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.[149] He hopes that the more atheists identify themselves, the more the public will become aware of just how many people are nonbelievers, thereby reducing the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority.[150] Inspired by the gay rights movement, he endorsed the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly.[151] He supported a UK atheist advertising initiative, the Atheist Bus Campaign in 2008 and 2009, which aimed to raise funds to place atheist advertisements on buses in the London area.[152] Speaking at Kepler's Books, Menlo Park, California, 29 October 2006 Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the human population and about the matter of overpopulation.[153] In The Selfish Gene, he briefly mentions population growth, giving the example of Latin America, whose population, at the time the book was written, was doubling every 40 years. He is critical of Roman Catholic attitudes to family planning and population control, stating that leaders who forbid contraception and "express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation" will get just such a method in the form of starvation.[154] As a supporter of the Great Ape Project—a movement to extend certain moral and legal rights to all great apes—Dawkins contributed the article 'Gaps in the Mind' to the Great Ape Project book edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer. In this essay, he criticises contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous, speciesist imperative".[155] Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and blogs on contemporary political questions and is a frequent contributor to the online science and culture digest 3 Quarks Daily.[156] His opinions include opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq,[157] the British nuclear deterrent, the actions of then-US President George W. Bush,[158] and the ethics of designer babies.[159] Several such articles were included in A Devil's Chaplain, an anthology of writings about science, religion, and politics. He is also a supporter of Republic's campaign to replace the British monarchy with a type of democratic republic.[160] Dawkins has described himself as a Labour voter in the 1970s[161] and voter for the Liberal Democrats since the party's creation. In 2009, he spoke at the party's conference in opposition to blasphemy laws, alternative medicine, and faith schools. In the UK general election of 2010, Dawkins officially endorsed the Liberal Democrats, in support of their campaign for electoral reform and for their "refusal to pander to 'faith'".[162] In the run up to the 2017 general election, Dawkins once again endorsed the Liberal Democrats and urged voters to join the party. Dawkins discusses free speech and Islam(ism) at the 2017 Conference on Free Expression and Conscience. In April 2021, Dawkins said on Twitter that "In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss." After receiving criticism for this tweet, Dawkins responded by saying that "I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic "Discuss" question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue."[163] The American Humanist Association retracted Dawkins' 1996 Humanist of the Year Award in response to these comments.[164] Robby Soave of Reason magazine criticized the retraction, saying that "The drive to punish dissenters from various orthodoxies is itself illiberal."[165] Dawkins has voiced his support for the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation that campaigns for democratic reform in the United Nations, and the creation of a more accountable international political system.[166] Dawkins identifies as a feminist.[167] He has said that feminism is "enormously important".[168] Dawkins has been accused by writers such as Amanda Marcotte, Caitlin Dickson, and Adam Lee of misogyny, criticizing those who speak about sexual harassment and abuse while ignoring sexism within the New Atheist movement.[169][170][171] Views on postmodernism See also: Social construction of gender In 1998, in a book review published in Nature, Dawkins expressed his appreciation for two books connected with the Sokal affair: Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt and Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. These books are famous for their criticism of postmodernism in U.S. universities (namely in the departments of literary studies, anthropology, and other cultural studies).[172] Echoing many critics, Dawkins holds that postmodernism uses obscurantist language to hide its lack of meaningful content. As an example he quotes the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari: "We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis." This is explained, Dawkins maintains, by certain intellectuals' academic ambitions. Figures like Guattari or Lacan, according to Dawkins, have nothing to say but want to reap the benefits of reputation and fame that derive from a successful academic career: "Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content."[172] In 2024, Dawkins co-authored an op-ed in The Boston Globe with Sokal criticizing the use of the terminology "sex assigned at birth" instead of "sex" by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dawkins and Sokal argued that sex is an "objective biological reality" that "is determined at conception and is then observed at birth," rather than assigned by a medical professional. Calling this "social constructionism gone amok," Dawkins and Sokal argued further that "distort[ing] the scientific facts in the service of a social cause" risks undermining trust in medical institutions.[173] Other fields Musician Jayce Lewis at Dawkins' home in 2018 while working on Million (Part 2) In his role as professor for public understanding of science, Dawkins has been a critic of pseudoscience and alternative medicine. His 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow considers John Keats's accusation that by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton diminished its beauty; Dawkins argues for the opposite conclusion. He suggests that deep space, the billions of years of life's evolution, and the microscopic workings of biology and heredity contain more beauty and wonder than do "myths" and "pseudoscience".[174] For John Diamond's posthumously published Snake Oil, a book devoted to debunking alternative medicine, Dawkins wrote a foreword in which he asserts that alternative medicine is harmful, if only because it distracts patients from more successful conventional treatments and gives people false hopes.[175] Dawkins states that "There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work."[176] In his 2007 Channel 4 TV film The Enemies of Reason, Dawkins concluded that Britain is gripped by "an epidemic of superstitious thinking".[177] Continuing a long-standing partnership with Channel 4, Dawkins participated in a five-part television series, Genius of Britain, along with fellow scientists Stephen Hawking, James Dyson, Paul Nurse, and Jim Al-Khalili. The series was first broadcast in June 2010, and focuses on major, British, scientific achievements throughout history.[178] In 2014, he joined the global awareness movement Asteroid Day as a "100x Signatory".[179] Awards and recognition Receiving the Deschner Prize in Frankfurt, 12 October 2007, from Karlheinz Deschner He holds honorary doctorates in science from the University of Huddersfield, University of Westminster, Durham University,[180] the University of Hull, the University of Antwerp, the University of Oslo, the University of Aberdeen,[181] Open University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel,[32] and the University of Valencia.[182] He also holds honorary doctorates of letters from the University of St Andrews and the Australian National University (HonLittD, 1996), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2001.[1][32] He is one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society. In 1987, Dawkins received a Royal Society of Literature award and a Los Angeles Times Literary Prize for his book The Blind Watchmaker. In the same year, he received a Sci. Tech Prize for Best Television Documentary Science Programme of the Year for his work on the BBC's Horizon episode The Blind Watchmaker.[32] In 1996, the American Humanist Association gave him their Humanist of the Year Award, but the award was withdrawn in 2021, with the statement that he "demean[ed] marginalized groups", including transgender people, using "the guise of scientific discourse".[183][163] Other awards include the Zoological Society of London's Silver Medal (1989), the Finlay Innovation Award (1990), the Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize (1994), the fifth International Cosmos Prize (1997), the Kistler Prize (2001), the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (2001), the 2001 and 2012 Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (2002),[32] the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (2006),[184] and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (2009).[185] He was awarded the Deschner Award, named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner.[186] The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSICOP) has awarded Dawkins their highest award In Praise of Reason (1992).[187] Dawkins accepting the Services to Humanism award at the British Humanist Association Annual Conference in 2012 Dawkins topped Prospect magazine's 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up.[188][189] He was shortlisted as a candidate in their 2008 follow-up poll.[190] In a poll held by Prospect in 2013, Dawkins was voted the world's top thinker based on 65 names chosen by a largely US and UK-based expert panel.[191] In 2005, the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded him its annual Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his "concise and accessible presentation of scientific knowledge". He won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2006, as well as the Galaxy British Book Awards's Author of the Year Award for 2007.[192] In the same year, he was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007,[193] and was ranked 20th in The Daily Telegraph's 2007 list of 100 greatest living geniuses.[194] Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done the most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year; it is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins's own efforts.[195] In February 2010, Dawkins was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.[196] In 2012, a Sri Lankan team of ichthyologists headed by Rohan Pethiyagoda named a new genus of freshwater fish Dawkinsia in Dawkins's honor. (Members of this genus were formerly members of the genus Puntius).[197] Personal life Dawkins has been married three times and has a daughter. On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married ethologist Marian Stamp in the Protestant church in Annestown, County Waterford, Ireland;[198] they divorced in 1984. On 1 June 1984, he married Eve Barham (1951–1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter. Dawkins and Barham divorced.[199] In 1992, he married actress Lalla Ward[199] in Kensington and Chelsea, London. Dawkins met her through their mutual friend Douglas Adams,[200] who had worked with her on the BBC's Doctor Who. Dawkins and Ward separated in 2016 and they later described the separation as "entirely amicable".[201] Dawkins identifies as an atheist who is a "cultural Anglican", associated with the Church of England, and a "secular Christian".[202][203][204][205] On 6 February 2016, Dawkins suffered a minor haemorrhagic stroke while at home.[206][207] Dawkins reported later that same year that he had almost completely recovered.

Joe Rogan and Michael Shermer talk about Mormon History and Plural Marriage.