The Enemies of Reason

I’ve just been made aware (thanks to a couple of videos posted by Cosmic Afterthoughts) of two episodes of a new Dawkins documentary called The Enemies of Reason, where Dawkins’ takes to task woo in general and, inter alia, über-woo-merchant Deepak Chopra in particular, which I’m looking forward to.

Is it rational that the dead can communicate with the living and give sound advice on how they should live their lives? What about sticking pins into your body to free the flow of Chi energy and cure your illness? Or the bending of spoons using your mind alone?¹ Is that rational?

Richard Dawkins doesn’t think so, and feels it is his duty to expose those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell.

He will take on the world’s leading proponents in their field of expertise, meet the victims who have used them and expose the history of the movements – from the charlatans who have milked these practices to the experiments and testing that have failed to produce conclusive results.²

I expect that it’ll probably be televised on Channel 4, but I can’t confirm that from either the show web site or Channel 4’s web site, although Dawkins posts on his own web site:

I’ll tell you everything I know. It will be a two-parter presented by me, in two successive weeks, like Root of All Evil? The title is no longer going to be The Rational Inquirer³, but will be The Enemies of Reason, which is Channel Four’s preferred title. The date of transmission was originally going to be January 2007, then it was moved to February, then the forecast was moved to April. The current forecast for transmission is July or August. I don’t know why the date keeps getting moved like this. It will not be about religion, but about all the other kinds of irrationality — astrology, dowsing, homeopathy, crystal healing etc.
Richard Dawkins, 27 March 2007

On a slightly amusing side-note, I was a little confused about what the domain name (rdfrights.com) hosting the above page indicated, whether it was “RDF rights” (as in Dawkins’ RDF) or “RD frights” (which tickled me when I considered it in an “Argh! It’s him!” kind of way, you know, the kind of reaction that Dawkins seems to elicit in some religious circles) before I realised it was actually RDF Rights (nothing to do with the other RDF), part of the RDF Media group. ⁴

See? If I hadn’t been so sceptical, I might not have checked it out, and remained clueless. Scepticism good, ignorance bad.

1. I wonder if this is Dawkins moving in Randi’s territory [↩]
2. Sounds like it [↩]
3. nice pun! [↩]
4. Well, I did say slightly amusing! [↩]

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