Everyone knows Richard Dawkins is a good scientist. But he fails miserably as a public intellectual, says Carson Holloway at National Review Online
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.
Dawkins, however, appears to be utterly indifferent to the spiritual and emotional difficulties that his writings cause for many of his readers.
