God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions (and other belief systems) who is either the ''sole'' deity in monotheism, or a ''single'' deity in polytheism.

God is most often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence.

God has also been conceived as being incorporeal (immaterial), a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent". These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers, including Maimonides, Augustine of Hippo, and Al-Ghazali, respectively. Many notable medieval philosophers and modern philosophers have developed arguments for and against the existence of God.

Etymology and usage

The earliest written form of the Germanic word ''god'' comes from the 6th century Christian Codex Argenteus. The English word itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic * ''ǥuđan''. Most linguists agree that the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form was based on the root , which meant either "to call" or "to invoke". The Germanic words for ''god'' were originally neuter—applying to both genders—but during the process of the Christianization of the Germanic peoples from their indigenous Germanic paganism, the word became a masculine syntactic form.

In the English language, the capitalized form of ''God'' continues to represent a distinction between monotheistic "God" and "gods" in polytheism. The English word God and its counterparts in other languages are normally used for any and all conceptions and, in spite of significant differences between religions, the term "God" remains an English translation common to all.. The same holds for Hebrew ''El'', but in Judaism, God is also given a proper name, the tetragrammaton (written YHWH), in origin the name of a Edomite or Midianite deity, Yahweh. In many translations of the Bible, when the word "LORD" is in all capitals, it signifies that the word represents the tetragrammaton. ''Allāh'' ( ''allāh'') is the Arabic term with no plural or gender used by Muslims and Arabic speaking Christians and Jews meaning "The God" (with a capital G), while "ʾilāh" ( ''ellāh'') is the term used for a deity or a god in general. God may also be given a proper name in monotheistic currents of Hinduism which emphasize the personal nature of God, with early references to his name as Krishna-Vasudeva in Bhagavata or later Vishnu and Hari.

General conceptions

There is no clear consensus on the nature of God. The Abrahamic conceptions of God include the monotheistic definition of God in Judaism, the trinitarian view of Christians, and the Islamic concept of God. The dharmic religions differ in their view of the divine: views of God in Hinduism vary by region, sect, and caste, ranging from monotheistic to polytheistic to atheistic. Divinity were recognized by the historical Buddha, particularly Śakra and Brahma. However, other sentient beings, including gods, can at best only play a supportive role in one's personal path to salvation. Conceptions of God in the latter developments of the Mahayana tradition give a more prominent place to notions of the divine.

Oneness

Monotheists hold that there is only one god, and may claim that the one true god is worshiped in different religions under different names. The view that all theists actually worship the same god, whether they know it or not, is especially emphasized in Hinduism and Sikhism.

Islam's most fundamental concept is a strict monotheism called tawhīd. God is described in the Qur'an as: "Say: He is God, the One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him." Muslims repudiate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus, comparing it to polytheism. In Islam, God is beyond all comprehension or equal and does not to resemble any of his creations in any way. Thus, Muslims are not iconodules are not expected to visualize God.

Henotheism is the belief and worship of a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities.

Theism, Deism and Pantheism

Theism generally holds that God exists realistically, objectively, and independently of human thought; that God created and sustains everything; that God is omnipotent and eternal; personal and interacting with the universe through for example religious experience and the prayers of humans. It holds that God is both transcendent and immanent; thus, God is simultaneously infinite and in some way present in the affairs of the world. Not all theists subscribe to all the above propositions, but usually a fair number of them, c.f., family resemblance. Catholic theology holds that God is infinitely simple and is not involuntarily subject to time. Most theists hold that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, although this belief raises questions about God's responsibility for evil and suffering in the world. Some theists ascribe to God a self-conscious or purposeful limiting of omnipotence, omniscience, or benevolence. Open Theism, by contrast, asserts that, due to the nature of time, God's omniscience does not mean the deity can predict the future. "Theism" is sometimes used to refer in general to any belief in a god or gods, i.e., monotheism or polytheism.

Deism holds that God is wholly transcendent: God exists, but does not intervene in the world beyond what was necessary to create it. In this view, God is not anthropomorphic, and does not literally answer prayers or cause miracles to occur. Common in Deism is a belief that God has no interest in humanity and may not even be aware of humanity. Pandeism and Panendeism, respectively, combine Deism with the Pantheistic or Panentheistic beliefs discussed below.

Pantheism holds that God is the universe and the universe is God, whereas Panentheism holds that God contains, but is not identical to, the Universe; the distinctions between the two are subtle. It is also the view of the Liberal Catholic Church, Theosophy, some views of Hinduism except Vaishnavism which believes in panentheism, Sikhism, some divisions of Neopaganism and Taoism, along with many varying denominations and individuals within denominations. Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, paints a pantheistic/panentheistic view of God — which has wide acceptance in Hasidic Judaism, particularly from their founder The Baal Shem Tov — but only as an addition to the Jewish view of a personal god, not in the original pantheistic sense that denies or limits persona to God.

Other concepts

Dystheism, which is related to theodicy is a form of theism which holds that God is either not wholly good or is fully malevolent as a consequence of the problem of evil. One such example comes from Dostoevsky's ''The Brothers Karamazov'', in which Ivan Karamazov rejects God on the grounds that he allows children to suffer. Another example would be Theistic Satanism.

Nontheism holds that the universe can be explained without any reference to the supernatural, or to a supernatural being. Some non-theists avoid the concept of God, whilst accepting that it is significant to many; other non-theists understand God as a symbol of human values and aspirations. Others such as Dawkins see the idea of God as entirely pernicious.

In modern times, some more abstract concepts have been developed, such as process theology and open theism. The contemporaneous French philosopher Michel Henry has however proposed a phenomenological approach and definition of God as phenomenological essence of Life.

Existence of God

Many arguments which attempt to prove or disprove the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, and other thinkers for many centuries. In philosophical terminology, such arguments concern schools of thought on the epistemology of the ontology of God.

There are many philosophical issues concerning the existence of God. Some definitions of God are sometimes nonspecific, while other definitions can be self-contradictory. Arguments for the existence of God typically include metaphysical, empirical, inductive, and subjective types, while others revolve around perceived holes in evolutionary theory and order and complexity in the world. Arguments against the existence of God typically include empirical, deductive, and inductive types. Conclusions reached include: "God does not exist" (strong atheism); "God almost certainly does not exist" (''de facto'' atheism); "no one knows whether God exists" (agnosticism); "God exists, but this cannot be proven or disproven" (weak theism); and "God exists and this can be proven" (strong theism). There are numerous variations on these positions.

Some theologians, such as the scientist and theologian A.E. McGrath, argue that the existence of God cannot be adjudicated on for or against by using scientific method.

Specific attributes

Epitheta

It is difficult to distinguish between proper names and epitheta of God. Throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bible there are many names for God that portray his (God is always characterised as male in Biblical sources, except ) nature and character. One of them is ''elohim'', (which is actually a ''plural'' word). Another one is ''El Shaddai'', meaning “God Almighty”. A third notable name is ''El Elyon'', which means “The Most High God”.

God is described and referred in the Quran and hadith by certain names or attributes, the most common being ''Al-Rahman'', meaning "Most Compassionate" and ''Al-Rahim'', meaning "Most Merciful" (See Names of God in Islam).

Vaishnavism, a tradition in Hinduism, has list of titles and names of Krishna.

Relationship with creation

Christian theologian Alister McGrath writes that there are good reasons to suggest that a "personal god" is integral to the Christian outlook, but that one has to understand it is an analogy. "To say that God is like a person is to affirm the divine ability and willingness to relate to others. This does not imply that God is human, or located at a specific point in the universe." Muslims believe that the purpose of existence is to worship God.

Adherents of different religions generally disagree as to how to best worship God and what is God's plan for mankind, if there is one. There are different approaches to reconciling the contradictory claims of monotheistic religions. One view is taken by exclusivists, who believe they are the chosen people or have exclusive access to absolute truth, generally through revelation or encounter with the Divine, which adherents of other religions do not. Another view is religious pluralism. A pluralist typically believes that his religion is the right one, but does not deny the partial truth of other religions. An example of a pluralist view in Christianity is supersessionism, i.e., the belief that one's religion is the fulfillment of previous religions. A third approach is relativistic inclusivism, where everybody is seen as equally right; an example in Christianity is universalism: the doctrine that salvation is eventually available for everyone. A fourth approach is syncretism, mixing different elements from different religions. An example of syncretism is the New Age movement.

Theological approaches

Theologians and philosophers have ascribed a number of attributes to God, including omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, perfect goodness, divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. God has been described as incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the greatest conceivable being existent. These attributes were all claimed to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars, including St Augustine, Al-Ghazali, and Maimonides.

Many medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God, while attempting to comprehend the precise implications of God's attributes. Reconciling some of those attributes generated important philosophical problems and debates. For example, God's omniscience may seem to imply that God knows how free agents will choose to act. If God does know this, their apparent free will might be illusory, or foreknowledge does not imply predestination; and if God does not know it, God may not be omniscient.

However, if by its essential nature, free will is not predetermined, then the effect of its will can never be perfectly predicted by anyone, regardless of intelligence and knowledge. Although knowledge of the options presented to that will, combined with perfect-infinite intelligence, could be said to provide God with omniscience if omniscience is defined as knowledge or understanding of all that is.

The last centuries of philosophy have seen vigorous questions regarding the arguments for God's existence raised by such philosophers as Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Antony Flew, although Kant held that the argument from morality was valid. The theist response has been either to contend, like Alvin Plantinga, that faith is "properly basic"; or to take, like Richard Swinburne, the evidentialist position. Some theists agree that none of the arguments for God's existence are compelling, but argue that faith is not a product of reason, but requires risk. There would be no risk, they say, if the arguments for God's existence were as solid as the laws of logic, a position summed up by Pascal as: "The heart has reasons which reason knows not of."

Most major religions hold God not as a metaphor, but a being that influences our day-to-day existences. Many believers allow for the existence of other, less powerful spiritual beings, and give them names such as angels, saints, djinni, demons, and devas.

Secular views regarding God

Stephen Jay Gould proposed an approach dividing the world of philosophy into what he called "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA). In this view, questions of the supernatural, such as those relating to the existence and nature of God, are non-empirical and are the proper domain of theology. The methods of science should then be used to answer any empirical question about the natural world, and theology should be used to answer questions about ultimate meaning and moral value. In this view, the perceived lack of any empirical footprint from the magisterium of the supernatural onto natural events makes science the sole player in the natural world.

Another view, advanced by Richard Dawkins, is that the existence of God is an empirical question, on the grounds that "a universe with a god would be a completely different kind of universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference." Carl Sagan argued that the doctrine of a Creator of the Universe was difficult to prove or disprove and that the only conceivable scientific discovery that could challenge it would be an infinitely old universe.

Anthropomorphism

Pascal Boyer argues that while there is a wide array of supernatural concepts found around the world, in general, supernatural beings tend to behave much like people. The construction of gods and spirits like persons is one of the best known traits of religion. He cites examples from Greek mythology, which is, in his opinion, more like a modern soap opera than other religious systems. Bertrand du Castel and Timothy Jurgensen demonstrate through formalization that Boyer's explanatory model matches physics' epistemology in positing not directly observable entities as intermediaries. Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie contends that people project human features onto non-human aspects of the world because it makes those aspects more familiar. Sigmund Freud also suggested that god concepts are projections of one's father.

Likewise, Émile Durkheim was one of the earliest to suggest that gods represent an extension of human social life to include supernatural beings. In line with this reasoning, psychologist Matt Rossano contends that when humans began living in larger groups, they may have created gods as a means of enforcing morality. In small groups, morality can be enforced by social forces such as gossip or reputation. However, it is much harder to enforce morality using social forces in much larger groups. Rossano indicates that by including ever-watchful gods and spirits, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.

Distribution of belief in God

As of 2000, approximately 53% of the world's population identifies with one of the three primary Abrahamic religions (33% Christian, 20% Islam, <1% Judaism), 6% with Buddhism, 13% with Hinduism, 6% with traditional Chinese religion, 7% with various other religions, and less than 15% as non-religious. Most of these religious beliefs involve a god or gods. Abrahamic religions beyond Christianity, Islam and Judaism include Baha'i, Samaritanism, the Rastafari movement, Yazidism, and the Unification Church.)

See also

God the Father

God in Christianity

God the Father in Western art

God in Islam

God in Judaism

God in Sikhism

God in the Baha'i Faith

God in Hinduism

God (male deity)

Posthuman god

Notes

References

External links

Concept of God in Christianity

Concept of God in Islam

God Christian perspective

God in Judaism

Hindu Concept of God

Jewish Literacy

Mystical view of God

Relation of God to the Universe

Discussion about God in Germany 2009

Category:Allah Category:Bahá'í belief and doctrine Category:Creator gods Category:Deities Category:Spirituality Category:God in Christianity Category:Divine command theory

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Coordinates	55°55′″N36°52′″N
name	John Lennon
alt	A bearded, bespectacled man in his late twenties, with long dark brown hair and wearing a loose-fitting pajama shirt, sings and plays an acoustic guitar. White flowers are visible behind and to the right of him.
background	solo_singer
birth name	John Winston Lennon
birth date	October 09, 1940
birth place	Liverpool, England, UK
death date	December 08, 1980
death place	New York, New York, US
instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano, harmonica, harmonium, electronic organ, six-string bass
genre	Rock, pop
occupation	Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, artist, writer
years active	1957–75, 1980
label	Parlophone, Capitol, Apple, EMI, Geffen, Polydor
associated acts	The Quarrymen, The Beatles, Plastic Ono Band, The Dirty Mac, Yoko Ono
notable instruments	Rickenbacker 325Epiphone CasinoGibson J-160E }}

John Winston Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Along with fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.

Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved as a teenager in the skiffle craze; his first band, The Quarrymen, evolved into The Beatles in 1960. As the group disintegrated towards the end of the decade, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced the critically acclaimed albums ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' and ''Imagine'', and iconic songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine". After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to devote time to his infant son Sean, but re-emerged in 1980 with a new album, ''Double Fantasy''. He was murdered three weeks after its release.

Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, his writing, his drawings, on film, and in interviews, becoming controversial through his political and peace activism. He moved to New York City in 1971, where his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a lengthy attempt by Richard Nixon's administration to deport him, while some of his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement.

As of 2010, Lennon's solo album sales in the United States exceed 14 million units, and as writer, co-writer or performer, he is responsible for 25 number-one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. In 2002, a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted him eighth, and in 2008, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked him the fifth-greatest singer of all-time. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

History

1940–57: Early years

Lennon was born in war-time England, on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Julia and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman who was away at the time of his son's birth. He was named John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, and then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His father was often away from home but sent regular pay cheques to 9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool, where Lennon lived with his mother, but the cheques stopped when he went absent without leave in February 1944. When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after the family, but Julia—by then pregnant with another man's child—rejected the idea. After her sister, Mimi Smith, twice complained to Liverpool's Social Services, Julia handed the care of Lennon over to her. In July 1946, Lennon's father visited Smith and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him. Julia followed them—with her partner at the time, 'Bobby' Dykins—and after a heated argument his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them. Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her. It would be 20 years before he had contact with his father again.

Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, he lived with his aunt and uncle, Mimi and George Smith, who had no children of their own, at Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton. His aunt bought him volumes of short stories, and his uncle, a dairyman at his family's farm, bought him a mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles. Julia visited Mendips on a regular basis, and when he was 11 years old he often visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she played him Elvis Presley records, and taught him the banjo, learning how to play "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino.

In September 1980 he talked about his family and his rebellious nature: }}

He regularly visited his cousin, Stanley Parkes, who lived in Fleetwood. Seven years Lennon's senior, Parkes took him on trips, and to local cinemas. During the school holidays, Parkes often visited Lennon with Leila Harvey, another cousin, often travelling to Blackpool two or three times a week to watch shows. They would visit the Blackpool Tower Circus and see artists such as Dickie Valentine, Arthur Askey, Max Bygraves and Joe Loss, with Parkes recalling that Lennon particularly liked George Formby. After Parkes's family moved to Scotland, the three cousins often spent their school holidays together there. Parkes recalled, "John, cousin Leila and I were very close. From Edinburgh we would drive up to the family croft at Durness, which was from about the time John was nine years old until he was about 16." He was 14 years old when his uncle George died of a liver haemorrhage on 5 June 1955 (aged 52).

Lennon was raised as an Anglican and attended Dovedale Primary School. From September 1952 to 1957, after passing his Eleven-Plus exam, he attended Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool, and was described by Harvey at the time as, "A happy-go-lucky, good-humoured, easy going, lively lad." He often drew comical cartoons which appeared in his own self-made school magazine called ''The Daily Howl'', but despite his artistic talent, his school reports were damning: "Certainly on the road to failure ... hopeless ... rather a clown in class ... wasting other pupils' time."

His mother bought him his first guitar in 1956, an inexpensive Gallotone Champion acoustic for which she "lent" her son five pounds and ten shillings on the condition that the guitar be delivered to her own house, and not Mimi's, knowing well that her sister was not supportive of her son's musical aspirations. As Mimi was sceptical of his claim that he would be famous one day, she hoped he would grow bored with music, often telling him, "The guitar's all very well, John, but you'll never make a living out of it". On 15 July 1958, when Lennon was 17 years old, his mother, walking home after visiting the Smiths' house, was struck by a car and killed.

Lennon failed all his GCE O-level examinations, and was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art only after his aunt and headmaster intervened. Once at the college, he started wearing Teddy Boy clothes and acquired a reputation for disrupting classes and ridiculing teachers. As a result, he was excluded from the painting class, then the graphic arts course, and was threatened with expulsion for his behaviour, which included sitting on a nude model's lap during a life drawing class. He failed an annual exam, despite help from fellow student and future wife Cynthia Powell, and was "thrown out of the college before his final year."

1957–70: The Quarrymen to The Beatles

1957–65: Formation, commercial breakout, and touring years

The Beatles evolved from Lennon's first band, the Quarrymen. Named after Quarry Bank High School, the group was established by him in September 1956 when he was 15, and began as a skiffle group. By the summer of 1957 the Quarrymen played a "spirited set of songs" made up of half skiffle, and half rock and roll. Lennon first met Paul McCartney at the Quarrymen's second performance, held in Woolton on 6 July at the St. Peter's Church garden fête, after which McCartney was asked to join the band.

McCartney says that Aunt Mimi: "was very aware that John's friends were lower class", and would often patronise him when he arrived to visit Lennon. According to Paul's brother Mike, McCartney's father was also disapproving, declaring Lennon would get his son "into trouble"; although he later allowed the fledgling band to rehearse in the McCartneys' front room at 20 Forthlin Road. During this time, the 18-year-old Lennon wrote his first song, "Hello Little Girl", a UK top 10 hit for The Fourmost nearly five years later.

George Harrison joined the band as lead guitarist, even though Lennon thought Harrison (at 14 years old) was too young to join the band, so McCartney engineered a second audition on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, where Harrison played "Raunchy" for Lennon. Stuart Sutcliffe, Lennon's friend from art school, later joined as bassist. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Sutcliffe became "The Beatles" in early 1960. In August that year The Beatles, engaged for a 48-night residency in Hamburg, Germany, and desperately in need of a drummer, asked Pete Best to join them. Lennon was now 19, and his aunt, horrified when he told her about the trip, pleaded with him to continue his art studies instead. After the first Hamburg residency, the band accepted another in April 1961, and a third in April 1962. Like the other band members, Lennon was introduced to Preludin while in Hamburg, and regularly took the drug, as well as amphetamines, as a stimulant during their long, overnight performances.

Brian Epstein, The Beatles' manager from 1962, had no prior experience of artist management, but nevertheless had a strong influence on their early dress code and attitude on stage. Lennon initially resisted his attempts to encourage the band to present a professional appearance, but eventually complied, saying, "I'll wear a bloody balloon if somebody's going to pay me". McCartney took over on bass after Sutcliffe decided to stay in Hamburg, and drummer Ringo Starr replaced Best, completing the four-piece line-up that would endure until the group's break-up in 1970. The band's first single, "Love Me Do", was released in October 1962 and reached #17 on the British charts. They recorded their debut album, ''Please Please Me'', in under 10 hours on 11 February 1963, a day when Lennon was suffering the effects of a cold, which is evident in the vocal on the last song to be recorded that day, Twist and Shout. The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership yielded eight of its fourteen tracks. With few exceptions—one being the album title itself—Lennon had yet to bring his love of wordplay to bear on his song lyrics, saying: "We were just writing songs ... pop songs with no more thought of them than that–to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant". In a 1987 interview, McCartney said that the other Beatles idolised John: "He was like our own little Elvis ... We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest".

The Beatles achieved mainstream success in the UK during the beginning of 1963. Lennon was on tour when his first son, Julian, was born in April. During their Royal Variety Show performance, attended by the Queen Mother and other British royalty, Lennon poked fun at his audience: "For our next song, I'd like to ask for your help. For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands ... and the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewellery." After a year of Beatlemania in the UK, the group's historic February 1964 US debut appearance on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' marked their breakthrough to international stardom. A two-year period of constant touring, moviemaking, and songwriting followed, during which Lennon wrote two books, ''In His Own Write'' and ''A Spaniard in the Works''. The Beatles received recognition from the British Establishment when they were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1965.

Lennon grew concerned that fans attending Beatles' concerts were unable to hear the music above the screaming of fans, and that the band's musicianship was beginning to suffer as a result. Lennon's "Help!" expressed his own feelings in 1965: "I ''meant'' it ... It was me singing 'help'". He had put on weight (he would later refer to this as his "Fat Elvis" period), and felt he was subconsciously seeking change. The following January he was unknowingly introduced to LSD when a dentist, hosting a dinner party attended by Lennon, Harrison and their wives, spiked the guests' coffee with the drug. When they wanted to leave, their host revealed what they had taken, and strongly advised them not to leave the house because of the likely effects. Later, in an elevator at a nightclub, they all believed it was on fire: "We were all screaming ... hot and hysterical." A few months later in March, during an interview with ''Evening Standard'' reporter Maureen Cleave, Lennon remarked, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink ... We're more popular than Jesus now—I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity." The comment went virtually unnoticed in England but caused great offence in the US when quoted by a magazine there five months later. The furore that followed—burning of Beatles' records, Ku Klux Klan activity, and threats against Lennon—contributed to the band's decision to stop touring.

1966–70: Studio years, break-up and solo work

Deprived of the routine of live performances after their final commercial concert on 29 August 1966, Lennon felt lost and considered leaving the band. Since his involuntary introduction to LSD in January, he had made increasing use of the drug, and was almost constantly under its influence for much of the year." According to biographer Ian MacDonald, Lennon's continuous experience with LSD during the year brought him "close to erasing his identity". 1967 saw the release of "Strawberry Fields Forever", hailed by ''TIME'' magazine for its "astonishing inventiveness", and the group's landmark album ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'', which revealed Lennon's lyrics contrasting strongly with the simple love songs of the Lennon–McCartney's early years.

In August, after having been introduced to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group attended a weekend of personal instruction at his Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, Wales, and were informed of Epstein's death during the seminar. "I knew we were in trouble then", Lennon said later. "I didn't have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music, and I was scared". They later travelled to Maharishi's ashram in India for further guidance, where they composed most of the songs for ''The Beatles'' and ''Abbey Road''.

The anti-war, black comedy ''How I Won the War'', featuring Lennon's only appearance in a non–Beatles' full-length film, was shown in cinemas in October 1967. McCartney organised the group's first post-Epstein project, the self-written, -produced and -directed television film ''Magical Mystery Tour'', released in December that year. While the film itself proved to be their first critical flop, its soundtrack release, featuring Lennon's acclaimed, Lewis Carroll-inspired "I am the Walrus", was a success. With Epstein gone, the band members became increasingly involved in business activities, and in February 1968 they formed Apple Corps, a multimedia corporation comprising Apple Records and several other subsidiary companies. Lennon described the venture as an attempt to achieve, "artistic freedom within a business structure", but his increased drug experimentation and growing preoccupation with Yoko Ono, and McCartney's own marriage plans, left Apple in need of professional management. Lennon asked Lord Beeching to take on the role, but he declined, advising Lennon to go back to making records. Lennon approached Allen Klein, who had managed The Rolling Stones and other bands during the British Invasion. Klein was appointed as Apple’s chief executive by Lennon, Harrison and Starr, but McCartney never signed the management contract.

At the end of 1968, Lennon featured in the film ''The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus'' (not released until 1996) in the role of a Dirty Mac band member. The supergroup, comprising Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell, also backed a vocal performance by Ono in the film. Lennon and Ono were married on 20 March 1969, and soon released a series of 14 lithographs called "Bag One" depicting scenes from their honeymoon, eight of which were deemed indecent and most of which were banned and confiscated. Lennon's creative focus continued to move beyond The Beatles and between 1968 and 1969 he and Ono recorded three albums of experimental music together: ''Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins'' (known more for its cover than for its music), ''Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions'' and ''Wedding Album''. In 1969 they formed The Plastic Ono Band, releasing ''Live Peace in Toronto 1969''. In protest at Britain's involvement in the Nigerian Civil War, Lennon returned his MBE medal to the Queen, though this had no effect on his MBE status, which could not be renounced. Between 1969 and 1970 Lennon released the singles "Give Peace a Chance" (widely adopted as an anti-Vietnam-War anthem in 1969), "Cold Turkey" (documenting his withdrawal symptoms after he became addicted to heroin) and "Instant Karma!".

Lennon left the group in September 1969, and agreed not to inform the media while the band renegotiated their recording contract, but he was outraged that McCartney publicised his own departure on releasing his debut solo album in April 1970. Lennon's reaction was, "Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it!" He later wrote, "I started the band. I disbanded it. It's as simple as that." In later interviews with ''Rolling Stone'' magazine, he revealed his bitterness towards McCartney, saying, "I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record." He spoke too of the hostility he perceived the other members had towards Ono, and of how he, Harrison, and Starr "got fed up with being sidemen for Paul ... After Brian Epstein died we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us when we went round in circles?"

1970–80: Solo career

1970–72: Initial solo success and activism

In 1970, Lennon and Ono went through primal therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov in Los Angeles, California. Designed to release emotional pain from early childhood, the therapy entailed two half-days a week with Janov for four months; he had wanted to treat the couple for longer, but they felt no need to continue and returned to London. Lennon's emotional debut solo album, ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' (1970), was received with high praise. Critic Greil Marcus remarked, "John's singing in the last verse of 'God' may be the finest in all of rock." The album featured the songs "Mother", in which Lennon confronted his feelings of childhood rejection, and the Dylanesque "Working Class Hero", a bitter attack against the bourgeois social system which, due to the lyric "you're still fucking peasants", fell foul of broadcasters. The same year, Tariq Ali's revolutionary political views, expressed when he interviewed Lennon, inspired the singer to write "Power to the People". Lennon also became involved with Ali during a protest against ''Oz'' magazine's prosecution for alleged obscenity. Lennon denounced the proceedings as "disgusting fascism", and he and Ono (as Elastic Oz Band) released the single "God Save Us/Do the Oz" and joined marches in support of the magazine.

With Lennon's next album, ''Imagine'' (1971), critical response was more guarded. ''Rolling Stone'' reported that "it contains a substantial portion of good music" but warned of the possibility that "his posturings will soon seem not merely dull but irrelevant". The album's title track would become an anthem for anti-war movements, while another, "How Do You Sleep?", was a musical attack on McCartney in response to lyrics from ''Ram'' that Lennon felt, and McCartney later confirmed, were directed at him and Ono. However, Lennon softened his stance in the mid-1970s and said he had written "How Do You Sleep?" about himself. He said in 1980: "I used my resentment against Paul ... to create a song ... not a terrible vicious horrible vendetta ... I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and The Beatles, and the relationship with Paul, to write 'How Do You Sleep'. I don't really go 'round with those thoughts in my head all the time".

Lennon and Ono moved to New York in August 1971, and in December released "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". To advertise the single, they paid for billboards in 12 cities around the world which declared, in the national language, "WAR IS OVER—IF YOU WANT IT". The new year saw the Nixon Administration take what it called a "strategic counter-measure" against Lennon's anti-war propaganda, embarking on what would be a four-year attempt to deport him: embroiled in a continuing legal battle, he was denied permanent residency in the US until 1976.

Recorded as a collaboration with Ono and with backing from the New York band Elephant's Memory, ''Some Time in New York City'' was released in 1972. Containing songs about women's rights, race relations, Britain's role in Northern Ireland, and Lennon's problems obtaining a green card, the album was poorly received—unlistenable, according to one critic. "Woman Is the Nigger of the World", released as a US single from the album the same year, was televised on 11 May, on ''The Dick Cavett Show''. Many radio stations refused to broadcast the song because of the word "nigger". Lennon and Ono gave two benefit concerts with Elephant's Memory and guests in New York in aid of patients at the Willowbrook State School mental facility. Staged at Madison Square Garden on 30 August 1972, they were his last full-length concert appearances.

1973–75: "Lost weekend"

While Lennon was recording ''Mind Games'' (1973), he and Ono decided to separate. The ensuing 18-month period apart, which he later called his "lost weekend", was spent in Los Angeles and New York in the company of May Pang. ''Mind Games'', credited to the "Plastic U.F.Ono Band", was released in November 1973. Lennon also contributed "I'm the Greatest", to Starr's album ''Ringo'' (1973), released the same month. (an alternate take, from the same 1973 ''Ringo'' sessions, with Lennon providing a guide vocal, appears on ''John Lennon Anthology'').

In early 1974, Lennon was drinking heavily and his alcohol-fuelled antics with Harry Nilsson made headlines. Two widely publicised incidents occurred at The Troubadour club in March, the first when Lennon placed a menstruation "towel" on his forehead and scuffled with a waitress, and the second, two weeks later, when Lennon and Nilsson were ejected from the same club after heckling the Smothers Brothers. Lennon decided to produce Nilsson's album ''Pussy Cats'' and Pang rented an Los Angeles beach house for all the musicians but after a month of further debauchery, with the recording sessions in chaos, Lennon moved to New York with Pang to finish work on the album. In April, Lennon had produced the Mick Jagger song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)" which was, for contractual reasons, to remain unreleased for more than 30 years. Pang supplied the recording for its eventual inclusion on ''The Very Best of Mick Jagger'' (2007).

Settled back in New York, Lennon recorded the album ''Walls and Bridges''. Released in October 1974, it yielded his only number-one single in his lifetime, "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", featuring Elton John on backing vocals and piano. A second single from the album, "#9 Dream", followed before the end of the year. Starr's ''Goodnight Vienna'' (1974) again saw assistance from Lennon, who wrote the title track and played piano. On 28 November, Lennon made a surprise guest appearance at Elton John's Thanksgiving concert at Madison Square Garden, in fulfilment of his promise to join the singer in a live show if "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night"—a song whose commercial potential Lennon had doubted—reached number one. Lennon performed the song along with "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Saw Her Standing There", which he introduced as "a song by an old estranged fiancee of mine called Paul".

Lennon co-wrote "Fame", David Bowie's first US number one, and provided guitar and backing vocals for the January 1975 recording. The same month, Elton John topped the charts with his cover of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", featuring Lennon on guitar and back-up vocals. He and Ono were reunited shortly afterwards. Lennon released ''Rock 'n' Roll'' (1975), an album of cover songs, in February. "Stand By Me", taken from the album and a US and UK hit, became his last single for five years. He made what would be his final stage appearance in the ATV special ''A Salute to Lew Grade'', recorded on 18 April and televised in June. Playing acoustic guitar, and backed by an eight-piece band, Lennon performed two songs from ''Rock 'n' Roll'' ("Stand By Me", which was not broadcast, and "Slippin' and Slidin'") followed by "Imagine".

1975–80: Retirement and return

With the birth of his second son Sean on 9 October 1975, Lennon took on the role of househusband, beginning what would be a five-year hiatus from the music industry during which he gave all his attention to his family. Within the month, he fulfilled his contractual obligation to EMI/Capitol for one more album by releasing ''Shaved Fish'', a compilation album of previously recorded tracks. He devoted himself to Sean, rising at 6 am daily to plan and prepare his meals and to spend time with him. He wrote "Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love)" for Starr's ''Ringo's Rotogravure'' (1976), performing on the track in June in what would be his last recording session until 1980. He formally announced his break from music in Tokyo in 1977, saying, "we have basically decided, without any great decision, to be with our baby as much as we can until we feel we can take time off to indulge ourselves in creating things outside of the family." During his career break he created several series of drawings, and drafted a book containing a mix of autobiographical material and what he termed "mad stuff", all of which would be published posthumously.

He emerged from retirement in October 1980 with the single "(Just Like) Starting Over", followed the next month by the album ''Double Fantasy'', which contained songs written during a journey to Bermuda on a 43-foot sailing boat the previous June, that reflected Lennon's fulfillment in his new-found stable family life. Sufficient additional material was recorded for a planned follow-up album ''Milk and Honey'' (released posthumously in 1984). Released jointly with Ono, ''Double Fantasy'' was not well received, drawing comments such as ''Melody Maker'''s "indulgent sterility ... a godawful yawn".

8 December 1980: Death

At around 10:50 pm on 8 December 1980, as Lennon and Ono returned to their New York apartment in The Dakota, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times at the entrance to the building. Lennon was taken to the emergency room of the nearby Roosevelt Hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:07 pm. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of ''Double Fantasy'' for Chapman.

Ono issued a statement the next day, saying "There is no funeral for John", ending it with the words, "John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him." His body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Ono scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later created. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life; as of 2011, he remains in prison, having been denied parole six times.

Personal relationships

Cynthia Lennon

Lennon and Cynthia Powell met in 1957 as fellow students at the Liverpool College of Art. Although being scared of Lennon's attitude and appearance, she heard that he was obsessed with French actress Brigitte Bardot, so she dyed her hair blonde. Lennon asked her out, but when she said that she was engaged, he screamed out, "''I didn't ask you to fuckin' marry me, did I?''" She often accompanied him to Quarrymen gigs and travelled to Hamburg with McCartney's girlfriend at the time to visit him. Lennon, jealous by nature, eventually grew possessive and often terrified Powell with his anger and physical violence. Lennon later said that until he met Ono, he had never questioned his chauvinistic attitude to women. The Beatles' song "Getting Better", he said, told his own story, "I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace".

Recalling his reaction in July 1962 on learning that Cynthia was pregnant, Lennon said, "There's only one thing for it Cyn. We'll have to get married." The couple were married on 23 August at the Mount Pleasant Register Office in Liverpool. His marriage began just as Beatlemania took hold across the UK. He performed on the evening of his wedding day, and would continue to do so almost daily from then on. Epstein, fearing that fans would be alienated by the idea of a married Beatle, asked the Lennons to keep their marriage secret. Julian was born on 8 April 1963; Lennon was on tour at the time and did not see his son until three days later.

Cynthia attributes the start of the marriage breakdown to LSD, and as a result, she felt that he slowly lost interest in her. When the group travelled by train to Bangor, Wales, in 1967, for the Maharishi Yogi's Transcendental Meditation seminar, a policeman did not recognise her and stopped her from boarding. She later recalled how the incident seemed to symbolize the ending of their marriage. After arriving home at Kenwood, and finding Lennon with Ono, Cynthia left the house to stay with friends. Alexis Mardas later claimed to have slept with her that night, and a few weeks later he informed her that Lennon was seeking a divorce and custody of Julian on grounds of her adultery with him. After negotiations, Lennon capitulated and agreed to her divorcing him on the same grounds. The case was settled out of court, with Lennon giving her £100,000, and custody of Julian.

Brian Epstein

The Beatles were performing at Liverpool's Cavern Club in 1962, when all four Beatles were introduced to Epstein after a midday concert. Epstein was homosexual. According to biographer Philip Norman, one of his reasons for wanting to manage the group was that he was physically attracted to Lennon. Almost as soon as Julian was born, Lennon went on holiday to Spain with Epstein, leading to speculation about their relationship. Questioned about it later, Lennon said, "Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense relationship. It was my first experience with a homosexual that I was conscious was homosexual. We used to sit in a café in Torremolinos looking at all the boys and I'd say, 'Do you like that one? Do you like this one?' I was rather enjoying the experience, thinking like a writer all the time: I am experiencing this." Soon after their return from Spain, at McCartney's twenty-first birthday party in June 1963, Lennon physically attacked Cavern Club MC Bob Wooler for saying "How was your honeymoon, John?" The MC, known for his wordplay and affectionate but cutting remarks, was making a joke, but ten months had passed since Lennon's marriage, and the honeymoon, deferred, was still two months in the future. To Lennon, who was intoxicated with alcohol at the time, the matter was simple: "He called me a queer so I battered his bloody ribs in".

Lennon delighted in mocking Epstein for his homosexuality and for the fact that he was Jewish. When Epstein invited suggestions for the title of his autobiography, Lennon offered ''Queer Jew''; on learning of the eventual title, ''A Cellarful of Noise'', he parodied, "More like ''A Cellarful of Boys''". He demanded of a visitor to Epstein's flat, "Have you come to blackmail him? If not, you're the only bugger in London who hasn't." During the recording of "Baby, You're a Rich Man", he sang altered choruses of "Baby, you're a rich fag Jew".

Julian Lennon

Lennon's first son, Julian, was born as his commitments with The Beatles intensified at the height of Beatlemania during his marriage to Cynthia. Lennon was touring with The Beatles when Julian was born on 8 April 1963. Julian's birth, like his mother Cynthia's marriage to Lennon, was kept secret because Epstein was convinced public knowledge of such things would threaten The Beatles' commercial success. Julian recalls how some four years later, as a small child in Weybridge, "I was trundled home from school and came walking up with one of my watercolour paintings. It was just a bunch of stars and this blonde girl I knew at school. And Dad said, 'What's this?' I said, 'It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds.'" Lennon used it as the title of a Beatles' song, and though it was later reported to have been derived from the initials LSD, Lennon insisted, "It's not an acid song." McCartney corroborated Lennon's explanation that Julian innocently came up with the name. Lennon was distant from Julian, who felt closer to McCartney than to his father. During a car journey to visit Cynthia and Julian during Lennon's divorce, McCartney composed a song, "Hey Jules", to comfort him. It would evolve into The Beatles song "Hey Jude". Lennon later said, "That's his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian ... he turned it into 'Hey Jude'. I always thought it was about me and Yoko but he said it wasn't."

Lennon's relationship with Julian was already strained, and after Lennon and Ono's 1971 move to New York, Julian would not see his father again until 1973. With Pang's encouragement, it was arranged for him (and his mother) to visit Lennon in Los Angeles, where they went to Disneyland. Julian started to see his father regularly, and Lennon gave him a drumming part on a ''Walls and Bridges'' track. He bought Julian a Gibson Les Paul guitar and other instruments, and encouraged his interest in music by demonstrating guitar chord techniques. Julian recalls that he and his father "got on a great deal better" during the time he spent in New York: "We had a lot of fun, laughed a lot and had a great time in general."

In a ''Playboy'' interview with David Sheff shortly before his death, Lennon said, "Sean was a planned child, and therein lies the difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child. He's still my son, whether he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn't have pills in those days. He's here, he belongs to me, and he always will." He said he was trying to re-establish a connection with the then 17-year-old, and confidently predicted, "Julian and I will have a relationship in the future." After his death it was revealed that he had left Julian very little in his will.

Yoko Ono

Two versions exist of how Lennon met Ono. According to the first, on 9 November 1966 Lennon went to the Indica Gallery in London, where Ono was preparing her conceptual art exhibit, and they were introduced by gallery owner John Dunbar. Lennon was intrigued by Ono's "Hammer A Nail": patrons hammered a nail into a wooden board, creating the art piece. Although the exhibition had not yet begun, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but Ono stopped him. Dunbar asked her, "Don't you know who this is? He's a millionaire! He might buy it." Ono had supposedly not heard of The Beatles, but relented on condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon replied, "I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." The second version, told by McCartney, is that in late 1965, Ono was in London compiling original musical scores for a book John Cage was working on, ''Notations'', but McCartney declined to give her any of his own manuscripts for the book, suggesting that Lennon might oblige. When asked, Lennon gave Ono the original handwritten lyrics to "The Word".

Ono began telephoning and calling at Lennon's home, and when his wife asked for an explanation, he explained that Ono was only trying to obtain money for her "avant-garde bullshit". In May 1968, while his wife was on holiday in Greece, Lennon invited Ono to visit. They spent the night recording what would become the ''Two Virgins'' album, after which, he said, they "made love at dawn." When Lennon's wife returned home she found Ono wearing her bathrobe and drinking tea with Lennon who simply said, "Oh, hi." Ono became pregnant in 1968 and miscarried a male child they named John Ono Lennon II on 21 November 1968, a few weeks after Lennon's divorce from Cynthia was granted.

During Lennon's last two years in The Beatles, he and Ono began public protests against the Vietnam War. They were married in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for peace. They planned another Bed-In in the United States, but were denied entry, so held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance". They often combined advocacy with performance art, as in their "Bagism", first introduced during a Vienna press conference. Lennon detailed this period in The Beatles' song "The Ballad of John and Yoko". Lennon changed his name by deed poll on 22 April 1969, adding "Ono" as a middle name. The brief ceremony took place on the roof of the Apple Corps building, made famous three months earlier by The Beatles' ''Let It Be'' rooftop concert. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he was not permitted to revoke a name given at birth. After Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-sized bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on The Beatles' last album, ''Abbey Road''. To escape the acrimony of the band's break-up, Ono suggested they move permanently to New York, which they did on 31 August 1971.

They first lived in the St. Regis Hotel on 5th Avenue, East 55th Street, then moved to a street-level flat at 105 Bank Street, Greenwich Village, on 16 October 1971. After a robbery, they relocated to the more secure Dakota at 1 West 72nd Street, in May 1973.

May Pang

ABKCO Industries, formed in 1968 by Allen Klein as an umbrella company to ABKCO Records, recruited May Pang as a receptionist in 1969. Through involvement in a project with ABKCO, Lennon and Ono met her the following year. She became their personal assistant. After she had been working with the couple for three years, Ono confided that she and Lennon were becoming estranged from one another. She went on to suggest that Pang should begin a physical relationship with Lennon, telling her, "He likes you a lot." Pang, 22, astounded by Ono's proposition, eventually agreed to become Lennon's companion. The pair soon moved to California, beginning an 18-month period he later called his "lost weekend". In Los Angeles, Pang encouraged Lennon to develop regular contact with Julian, whom he had not seen for two years. He also rekindled friendships with Starr, McCartney, Beatles' roadie Mal Evans, and Harry Nilsson. Whilst drinking with Nilsson, after misunderstanding something Pang said, Lennon attempted to strangle her, relenting only when physically restrained by Nilsson.

On moving to New York, they prepared a spare room in their newly rented apartment for Julian to visit. Lennon, hitherto inhibited by Ono in this regard, began to reestablish contact with other relatives and friends. By December he and Pang were considering a house purchase, and he was refusing to accept Ono's telephone calls. In January 1975, he agreed to meet Ono—who said she had found a cure for smoking—but after the meeting failed to return home or call Pang. When Pang telephoned the next day, Ono told her Lennon was unavailable, being exhausted after a hypnotherapy session. Two days later, Lennon reappeared at a joint dental appointment, stupefied and confused to such an extent that Pang believed he had been brainwashed. He told her his separation from Ono was now over, though Ono would allow him to continue seeing her as his mistress.

Sean Lennon

When Lennon and Ono were reunited, she became pregnant, but having previously suffered three miscarriages in her attempt to have a child with Lennon, she said she wanted an abortion. She agreed to allow the pregnancy to continue on condition that Lennon adopt the role of househusband; this he agreed to do. Sean was born on 9 October 1975, Lennon's 35th birthday, delivered by Caesarean section. Lennon's subsequent career break would span five years. He had a photographer take pictures of Sean every day of his first year, and created numerous drawings for him, posthumously published as ''Real Love: The Drawings for Sean''. Lennon later proudly declared, "He didn't come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish."

Former Beatles

Although his friendship with Starr remained consistently warm during the years following The Beatles' break-up in 1970, Lennon's relationship with McCartney and Harrison varied. He was close to Harrison initially, but the two drifted apart after Lennon moved to America. When Harrison was in New York for his December 1974 ''Dark Horse'' tour, Lennon agreed to join him on stage, but failed to appear after an argument over Lennon's refusal to sign an agreement that would finally dissolve The Beatles' legal partnership. (Lennon eventually signed the papers while holidaying in Florida with Pang and Julian.) Harrison incensed Lennon in 1980 when he published an autobiography that made little mention of him. Lennon told ''Playboy'', "I was hurt by it. By glaring omission ... my influence on his life is absolutely zilch ... he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."

Lennon's most intense feelings were reserved for McCartney. In addition to attacking him through the lyrics of "How Do You Sleep?", Lennon argued with him through the press for three years after the group split. The two later began to reestablish something of the close friendship they had once known, and in 1974 even played music together again, before growing apart once more. Lennon said that during McCartney's final visit, in April 1976, they watched the episode of ''Saturday Night Live'' in which Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 cash offer to get The Beatles to reunite on the show. The pair considered going to the studio to make a joke appearance, attempting to claim their share of the money, but were too tired. Lennon summarised his feelings towards McCartney in an interview three days before his death: "Throughout my career, I've selected to work with...only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono....That ain't bad picking."

Along with his estrangement from McCartney, Lennon always felt a musical competitiveness with him and kept an ear on his music. During his five-year career break he was content to sit back so long as McCartney was producing what Lennon saw as mediocre "product". When McCartney released "Coming Up" in 1980, the year Lennon returned to the studio and the last year of his life, he took notice. "It's driving me crackers!" he jokingly complained, because he could not get the tune out of his head. Asked the same year whether the group were dreaded enemies or the best of friends, he replied that they were neither, and that he had not seen any of them in a long time. But he also said, "I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on."

Political activism

Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon as what they termed a "Bed-In for Peace" at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel; the March 1969 event attracted worldwide media ridicule. At a second Bed-In three months later at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal Lennon wrote and recorded "Give Peace a Chance". Released as a single, it was quickly taken up as an anti-war anthem and sung by a quarter of a million demonstrators against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC, on 15 October, the second Vietnam Moratorium Day.

Later that year, Lennon and Ono supported efforts by the family of James Hanratty, hanged for murder in 1962, to prove his innocence. Those who had condemned Hanratty were, according to Lennon, "the same people who are running guns to South Africa and killing blacks in the streets. ... The same bastards are in control, the same people are running everything, it's the whole bullshit bourgeois scene." In London, Lennon and Ono staged a "Britain Murdered Hanratty" banner march and a "Silent Protest For James Hanratty", and produced a 40-minute documentary on the case. At an appeal hearing years later, Hanratty's conviction was upheld.

Lennon and Ono showed their solidarity with the Clydeside UCS workers' work-in of 1971 by sending a bouquet of red roses and a cheque for £5,000. On moving to New York City in August that year, they befriended two of the Chicago Seven, Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Another peace activist, John Sinclair, poet and co-founder of the White Panther Party, was serving ten years in prison for selling two joints of marijuana after previous convictions for possession of the drug. In December 1971 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 20,000 people attended the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally", a protest and benefit concert with contributions from Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, and others. Lennon and Ono, backed by David Peel and Rubin, performed an acoustic set of four songs from their forthcoming ''Some Time in New York City'' album including "John Sinclair", whose lyrics called for his release. The day before the rally, Michigan State had drastically reduced the penalties for Sinclair’s crimes and three days after the rally, he was released on bail. The performance was recorded and two of the tracks later appeared on ''John Lennon Anthology'' (1998).

Following the ''Bloody Sunday'' incident in Northern Ireland in 1972, in which 13 unarmed civil rights protesters were shot dead by the British Army, Lennon said that given the choice between the army and the IRA (who were not involved in the incident) he would side with the latter. Lennon and Ono wrote two songs protesting British presence and actions in Ireland for their ''Some Time in New York City'' album: "Luck of the Irish" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday". In 2000, David Shayler, a former member of Britain's domestic security service MI5 suggested that Lennon had given money to the IRA though this was swiftly denied by Ono. Biographer Bill Harry records that following Bloody Sunday, Lennon and Ono financially supported the production of the film ''The Irish Tapes'', a political documentary with a Republican slant.

According to FBI surveillance reports (and confirmed by Tariq Ali in 2006) Lennon was sympathetic to the International Marxist Group, a Trotskyist group formed in Britain in 1968. However, the FBI considered Lennon to have limited effectiveness as a revolutionary since he was "constantly under the influence of narcotics".

Deportation attempt

Following the impact of "Give Peace a Chance" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", both strongly associated with the anti–Vietnam War movement, the Nixon administration, hearing rumours of Lennon's involvement in a concert to be held in San Diego at the same time as the Republican National Convention, tried to have him deported. Nixon believed that Lennon's anti-war activities could cost him his re-election; Republican Senator Strom Thurmond suggested in a February 1972 memo that "deportation would be a strategic counter-measure" against Lennon. The next month the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began deportation proceedings, arguing that his 1968 misdemeanor conviction for cannabis possession in London had made him ineligible for admission to the United States. Lennon spent the next three and a half years in and out of deportation hearings until on 8 October 1975, when a court of appeals barred the deportation attempt, stating " ... the courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds." While the legal battle continued, Lennon attended rallies and made television appearances. Lennon and Ono co-hosted the ''Mike Douglas Show'' for a week in February 1972, introducing guests such as Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale to mid-America. In 1972, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the INS defending Lennon, stating:

John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to the country’s so-called art institution. They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only help others to see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass media. Hurray for John and Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!

On 23 March 1973, Lennon was ordered to leave the US within 60 days. Ono, meanwhile, was granted permanent residence. In response, Lennon and Ono held a press conference on 1 April 1973 at the New York City Bar Association, where they announced the formation of the state of Nutopia; a place with "no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people". Waving the white flag of Nutopia (two handkerchiefs), they asked for political asylum in the US. The press conference was filmed, and would later appear in the 2006 documentary ''The U.S. vs. John Lennon''. Lennon's ''Mind Games'' (1973) included the track "Nutopian International Anthem", which comprised three seconds of silence. Soon after the press conference, Nixon's involvement in a political scandal came to light, and in June the Watergate hearings began in Washington, DC. They led to the president's resignation 14 months later. Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, showed little interest in continuing the battle against Lennon, and the deportation order was overturned in 1975. The following year, his US immigration status finally resolved, Lennon received his "green card" certifying his permanent residency, and when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president in January 1977, Lennon and Ono attended the Inaugural Ball.

FBI surveillance and declassified documents

After Lennon's death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information Act request for FBI files documenting the Bureau's role in the deportation attempt. The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon, but refused to release most of them on the grounds that they contained national security information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. It took 14 years of litigation to force the FBI to release the withheld pages. The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favourable decision in their suit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit in 1991. The Justice Department appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in April 1992, but the court declined to review the case. In 1997, respecting President Bill Clinton's newly instigated rule that documents should be withheld only if releasing them would involve "foreseeable harm", the Justice Department settled most of the outstanding issues outside court by releasing all but 10 of the contested documents. Wiener published the results of his 14-year campaign in January 2000. ''Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files'' contained facsimiles of the documents, including "lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug charges". The story is told in the documentary ''The U.S. vs. John Lennon''. The final 10 documents in Lennon's FBI file, which reported on his ties with London anti-war activists in 1971 and had been withheld as containing "national security information provided by a foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality", were released in December 2006. They contained no indication that the British government had regarded Lennon as a serious threat; one example of the released material was a report that two prominent British leftists had hoped Lennon would finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room.

Writing and art

Lennon's biographer Bill Harry writes that Lennon began drawing and writing creatively at an early age with the encouragement of his uncle. He collected his stories, poetry, cartoons, and caricatures in a Quarry Bank High School exercise book that he called the ''Daily Howl''. The drawings were often of crippled people, and the writings satirical, and throughout the book was an abundance of wordplay. According to classmate Bill Turner, Lennon created the ''Daily Howl'' to amuse his best friend and later Quarrymen band mate, Pete Shotton, to whom he would show his work before he let anyone else see it. Turner said that Lennon "had an obsession for Wigan Pier. It kept cropping up", and in Lennon's story ''A Carrot In A Potato Mine'', "the mine was at the end of Wigan Pier." Turner described how one of Lennon's cartoons depicted a bus stop sign annotated with the question, "Why?". Above was a flying pancake, and below, "a blind man wearing glasses leading along a blind dog—also wearing glasses".

Lennon's love of wordplay and nonsense with a twist found a wider audience when he was 24. Harry writes that ''In His Own Write'' (1964) was published after "Some journalist who was hanging around The Beatles came to me and I ended up showing him the stuff. They said, 'Write a book' and that's how the first one came about". Like the ''Daily Howl'' it contained a mix of formats including short stories, poetry, plays and drawings. One story, "Good Dog Nigel", tells the tale of "a happy dog, urinating on a lamp post, barking, wagging his tail—until he suddenly hears a message that he will be killed at three o'clock". ''The Times Literary Supplement'' considered the poems and stories "remarkable ... also very funny ... the nonsense runs on, words and images prompting one another in a chain of pure fantasy". ''Book Week'' reported, "This is nonsense writing, but one has only to review the literature of nonsense to see how well Lennon has brought it off. While some of his homonyms are gratuitous word play, many others have not only double meaning but a double edge." Lennon was not only surprised by the positive reception, but that the book was reviewed at all, and suggested that readers "took the book more seriously than I did myself. It just began as a laugh for me".

In combination with ''A Spaniard in the Works'' (1965), ''In His Own Write'' formed the basis of the stage play ''The John Lennon Play: In His Own Write'', co-adapted by Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy. After negotiations between Lennon, Spinetti and the artistic director of the National Theatre, Sir Laurence Olivier, the play opened at the Old Vic in 1968. Lennon and Ono attended the opening night performance, their second public appearance together to date. After Lennon's death, further works were published, including ''Skywriting by Word of Mouth'' (1986); ''Ai: Japan Through John Lennon's Eyes: A Personal Sketchbook'' (1992), with Lennon's illustrations of the definitions of Japanese words; and ''Real Love: The Drawings for Sean'' (1999). ''The Beatles Anthology'' (2000) also presented examples of his writings and drawings.

Musicianship

Instruments played

His playing of a mouth organ during a bus journey to visit his cousin in Scotland caught the driver's ear. Impressed, the driver told Lennon of a harmonica he could have if he came to Edinburgh the following day, where one had been stored in the bus depot since a passenger left it on a bus. The professional instrument quickly replaced Lennon's toy. He would continue to play harmonica, often using the instrument during The Beatles' Hamburg years, and it became a signature sound in the group's early recordings. His mother taught him how to play the banjo, later buying him an acoustic guitar. At 16, he played rhythm guitar with the Quarrymen. As his career progressed, he played a variety of electric guitars, predominantly the Rickenbacker 325, Epiphone Casino and Gibson J-160E, and, from the start of his solo career, the Gibson Les Paul Junior. Occasionally he played a six-string bass guitar, the Fender Bass VI, providing bass on some Beatles' numbers that occupied McCartney with another instrument. His other instrument of choice was the piano, on which he composed many songs, including "Imagine", described as his best-known solo work. His jamming on a piano with McCartney in 1963 led to the creation of The Beatles' first US number one, "I Want to Hold Your Hand". In 1964, he became one of the first British musicians to acquire a Mellotron keyboard, though it was not heard on a Beatles' recording until "Strawberry Fields Forever" in late 1966.

Vocal style

When Lennon recorded "Twist and Shout", the final track during the mammoth one-day session that captured the band's 1963 debut album ''Please Please Me'', his voice, already compromised by a cold, came close to giving out. Lennon said, "I couldn't sing the damn thing, I was just screaming." In the words of biographer Barry Miles, "Lennon simply shredded his vocal cords in the interests of rock 'n' roll." The Beatles' producer, George Martin, tells how Lennon "had an inborn dislike of his own voice which I could never understand. He was always saying to me: 'DO something with my voice! ... put something on it ... Make it ''different''.'" Martin obliged, often using double-tracking and other techniques. Music critic Robert Christgau says that Lennon's "greatest vocal performance ... from scream to whine, is modulated electronically ... echoed, filtered, and double tracked."

As his Beatles' era segued into his solo career, his singing voice found a widening range of expression. Biographer Chris Gregory writes that Lennon was, "tentatively beginning to expose his insecurities in a number of acoustic-led 'confessional' ballads, so beginning the process of 'public therapy' that will eventually culminate in the primal screams of 'Cold Turkey' and the cathartic ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band''." David Stuart Ryan notes Lennon's vocal delivery to range from, "extreme vulnerability, sensitivity and even naivety" to a hard "rasping" style. Wiener too describes contrasts, saying the singer's voice can be "at first subdued; soon it almost cracks with despair" Music historian Ben Urish recalls hearing The Beatles' ''Ed Sullivan Show'' performance of "This Boy" played on the radio a few days after Lennon's murder: "As Lennon's vocals reached their peak ... it hurt too much to hear him scream with such anguish and emotion. But it was my emotions I heard in his voice. Just like I always had."

Legacy

Music historians Schinder and Schwartz, writing of the transformation in popular music styles that took place between the 1950s and the 1960s, say that The Beatles' influence cannot be overstated: having "revolutionized the sound, style, and attitude of popular music and opened rock and roll's doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts", the group then "spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock's stylistic frontiers". Liam Gallagher, his group Oasis among the many who acknowledge the band's influence, identifies Lennon as a hero; in 1999 he named his first child Lennon Gallagher in tribute. On National Poetry Day in 1999, after conducting a poll to identify the UK's favourite song lyric, the BBC announced "Imagine" the winner.

In a 2006 ''Guardian'' article, Jon Wiener wrote: "For young people in 1972, it was thrilling to see Lennon's courage in standing up to [US President] Nixon. That willingness to take risks with his career, and his life, is one reason why people still admire him today." Whilst for music historians Urish and Bielen, Lennon's most significant effort was "the self-portraits ... in his songs [which] spoke to, for, and about, the human condition."

Lennon continues to be mourned throughout the world and has been the subject of numerous memorials and tributes. In 2010, on what would have been Lennon’s 70th birthday, the John Lennon Peace Monument was unveiled in Chavasse Park, Liverpool, by Cynthia and Julian Lennon. The sculpture entitled ‘Peace & Harmony’ exhibits peace symbols and carries the inscription “Peace on Earth for the Conservation of Life · In Honour of John Lennon 1940–1980”.

Awards and sales

The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership is regarded as one of the most influential and successful of the 20th century. As performer, writer or co-writer Lennon has had 25 number one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. His album sales in the US stand at 14 million units. ''Double Fantasy'', released shortly before his death, and his best-selling, post-Beatles' studio album at three million shipments in the US, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The following year, the BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music went to Lennon. Participants in a 2002 BBC poll voted him eighth of "100 Greatest Britons". Between 2003 and 2008, ''Rolling Stone'' recognised Lennon in several reviews of artists and music, ranking him fifth of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time" and 38th of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time", and his albums ''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' and ''Imagine'', 22nd and 76th respectively of "The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) with the other Beatles in 1965. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Discography

''Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins'' (with Yoko Ono) (1968)

''Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions'' (with Yoko Ono) (1969)

''Wedding Album'' (with Yoko Ono) (1969)

''John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band'' (1970)

''Imagine'' (1971)

''Some Time in New York City'' (with Yoko Ono) (1972)

''Mind Games'' (1973)

''Walls and Bridges'' (1974)

''Rock 'n' Roll'' (1975)

''Double Fantasy'' (with Yoko Ono) (1980)

''Milk and Honey'' (with Yoko Ono) (1984)

''Menlove Ave.'' (1986)

Notes

Lennon was responsible for 25 Billboard Hot 100 number one singles as performer, writer or co-writer. Solo (2): "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", "(Just Like) Starting Over". With The Beatles (20): "Can't Buy Me Love", "I Feel Fine", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "Love Me Do", "She Loves You", "A Hard Day's Night", "Eight Days a Week", "Help!", "Ticket to Ride", "Yesterday", "Paperback Writer", "We Can Work It Out", "All You Need Is Love", "Hello Goodbye", "Penny Lane", "Hey Jude", "Something/"Come Together", "Get Back", "Let It Be", "The Long and Winding Road"/"For You Blue". As co-writer of and performer on release by another artist (1): "Fame" (David Bowie). As co-writer of releases by other artists (2): "A World Without Love" (Peter and Gordon), "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (Elton John).

Citations

References

Further reading

Kane, Larry (2007). ''Lennon Revealed''. Running Press. ISBN 9780762429660

Pang, May; Edwards, Henry (1983). ''Loving John: The Untold Story''. Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-37916-6.

Wiener, Jon. The John Lennon FBI Files

Yorke, Richard (1969). "John Lennon: Ringo’s Right, We Can’t Tour Again", ''New Musical Express'', 7 June 1969, reproduced by ''Crawdaddy!'', 2007.

External links

The Liverpool Lennons

''BBC'' Archive on John Lennon

''NPR'' Archive on John Lennon

John Lennon and Yoko Ono – slideshow by ''Life magazine''

John Lennon hosted by EMI Group Limited

Unveiling of ‘Peace & Harmony’, European Peace Monument – Dedicated to John Lennon

Category:1940 births Category:1980 deaths Category:Alumni of Liverpool College of Art Category:People educated at Quarry Bank High School Category:Assassinated English people Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:Brit Award winners Category:British anti-war activists Category:British people murdered abroad Category:Capitol Records artists Category:COINTELPRO targets Category:Critics of religions or philosophies Category:Deaths by firearm in New York Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English experimental musicians Category:English film actors Category:English male singers Category:English pacifists Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English rock guitarists Category:English rock pianists Category:English rock singers Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English-language singers Category:Feminist musicians Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Male feminists Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire Category:Murdered musicians Category:Nonviolence advocates Category:People convicted of drug offenses Category:People murdered in New York Category:Plastic Ono Band members Category:Religious skeptics Category:Rhythm guitarists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:The Beatles members Category:The Dirty Mac Category:The Quarrymen members Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Yoko Ono

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Coordinates	55°55′″N36°52′″N
name	Richard Dawkins
birth name	Clinton Richard Dawkins
birth date	March 26, 1941
birth place	Nairobi, Kenya Colony
nationality	British
education	MA, DPhil (Oxon)
alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
doctoral advisor	Nikolaas Tinbergen
doctoral students	Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley
occupation	Ethologist
years active	1967–present
employer	University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of Oxford
organization	Fellow of the Royal SocietyFellow of the Royal Society of Literature
known for	Gene-centered view of evolution, concept of the meme, as well as advocacy of atheism and science.
notable works	''The Selfish Gene'' (1976)''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982)''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1986)''The God Delusion'' (2006)
influences	Charles Darwin, Ronald Fisher, George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, Daniel Dennett, Bertrand Russell
spouse	Marian Stamp Dawkins (m. 1967–1984)Eve Barham (m. 1984–?)Lalla Ward (m. 1992–present)
children	Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984)
parents	Clinton John DawkinsJean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner)
awards	Faraday Award (1990)Kistler Prize (2001)
website	The Richard Dawkins Foundation
footnotes	}}

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book ''The Selfish Gene'', which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term ''meme''. In 1982 he introduced an influential concept into evolutionary biology, presented in his book ''The Extended Phenotype'', 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 is an atheist and humanist, a Vice President of the British Humanist Association and supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book ''The Blind Watchmaker'', he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a ''blind'' watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book ''The God Delusion'', Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—a fixed false belief. As of January 2010 the English-language version has sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages, making it his most popular book to date.

Biography

Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya. His father, Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), returning to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited Over Norton Park, which he turned from a country estate into a commercial farm. Both his parents were interested in natural sciences; they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms.

Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". Though he began having doubts about the existence of a god when he was about nine years old, he was persuaded by the argument from design, an argument for the existence of a god or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, or design in nature, and embraced Christianity.

He attended Oundle, a Church of England school, Dawkins' research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.

From 1967 to 1969, he 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 heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities. He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 taking a position as a lecturer, and in 1990, as 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", and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.

Since 1970 he has been a fellow of New College. He has delivered a number of inaugural and other lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), T.H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), Tinbergen Lecture (2004) and Tanner Lectures (2003). In 1991 he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children. He has also served as editor of a number of journals, and has acted as editorial advisor to the ''Encarta Encyclopedia'' and the ''Encyclopedia of Evolution''. He is a senior editor of the Council for Secular Humanism's ''Free Inquiry'' magazine, for which he also writes a column. He has been a member of the editorial board of ''Skeptic'' magazine since its foundation.

He has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards, 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". 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."

Personal life

On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married fellow ethologist Marian Stamp in Annestown, County Waterford, Ireland; they divorced in 1984. Later that same year, on 1 June, he married Eve Barham (19 August 1951–28 February 1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford). Dawkins and Barham divorced; she died of cancer. In 1992 he married actress Lalla Ward in Kensington and Chelsea, London. Dawkins met her through their mutual friend Douglas Adams, who had worked with her on the BBC's ''Doctor Who''.

Work

Evolutionary biology

In his scientific works, Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene-centred view of evolution. This view is most clearly set out in his books ''The Selfish Gene'' (1976), where he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities", and ''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982), in which he describes natural selection as "the process whereby replicators out-propagate each other". In his role as an ethologist, interested in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he advocates the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution.

Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin) and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism. This behaviour appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own fitness. Previously, many had interpreted this as an aspect of group selection: individuals were doing what was best for the survival of the population or species as a whole, and not specifically for themselves. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton had used the gene-centred view to explain altruism in terms of inclusive fitness and kin selection − that individuals behave altruistically toward their close relatives, who share many of their own genes. 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. Dawkins popularised these ideas in ''The Selfish Gene'', and developed them in his own work.

He has also been strongly critical of the Gaia philosophy theory of the independent scientist James Lovelock.

Critics of Dawkins' approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of ''selection'' − of a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce − is misleading, but that the gene could be better described as a unit of ''evolution'' − of the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population. In ''The Selfish Gene'', Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams' definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency." Another common objection is that genes cannot survive alone, but must cooperate to build an individual, and therefore cannot be an independent "unit". In ''The Extended Phenotype'', Dawkins suggests that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, 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 Elliot 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'', has criticised gene selection, memetics and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist and suggests that the popularity of Dawkins' work is due to factors in the Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades.

In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (the so-called 'Darwin Wars'), one faction was often named after Dawkins and its rival after the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of pertinent ideas. 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. A typical example of Dawkins' position was his scathing review of ''Not in Our Genes'' by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and Richard C. Lewontin. Two other thinkers on the subject often considered to be allied to Dawkins are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology. 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.

Dawkins' book ''The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution'' expounds the evidence for biological evolution. All of his previous works dealing with evolution had assumed its truth, and not explicitly provided the evidence to this effect. Dawkins felt that this represented a gap in his oeuvre, and decided to write the book to coincide with Darwin's bicentennial year.

Meme

Dawkins coined the word ''meme'' (the behavioral equivalent of a gene) to describe how Darwinian principles might be extended to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. This has spawned the field of memetics. Dawkins' ''memes'' refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or a complex of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes are not always copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting 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, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes. Since originally outlining the idea in his book ''The Selfish Gene'', Dawkins has largely left the task of expanding upon it to other authors such as Susan Blackmore.

Although Dawkins invented the specific term ''meme'' independently, he has not claimed that the idea itself was entirely novel, 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. In 1904 Semon published ''Die Mneme'' (which appeared in English in 1924 as ''The Mneme''). This book discussed the cultural transmission of experiences, with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent also found the term ''mneme'' used in Maurice Maeterlinck's ''The Life of the White Ant'' (1926), and has highlighted the similarities to Dawkins' concept.

Criticism of creationism

Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism (the religious belief that humanity, life and the universe were created by a deity, without recourse to evolution). He has described the Young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood," and his 1986 book, ''The Blind Watchmaker'', contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argued against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the 18th-century English theologian William Paley in his book ''Natural Theology''. Paley argued 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, nonintelligent, ''blind'' watchmaker.

thumb|left|Dawkins at the 34th annual conference of American Atheists, 2008In 1986 Dawkins participated in a Oxford Union debate, in which he and English biologist John Maynard Smith debated Young Earth creationist A. E. Wilder-Smith and Edgar Andrews, president of the Biblical Creation Society. 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."

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."

Dawkins has ardently opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one". He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler", 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 he plans—through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science—to subsidise the delivery of books, DVDs and pamphlets to schools, in order to counteract what he has described as an "educational scandal".

Advocacy of atheism

Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and a prominent critic of religion. In an interview with Thomas Bass for a book published in 1994 he described himself as a 'fairly militant atheist'. In 1996, when asked if he'd prefer to be known as a scientist or a militant atheist, he replied "Bertrand Russell called himself the Passionate Sceptic. It's aiming high, but I'll shoot for that." Dawkins is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, a vice-president of the British Humanist Association (since 1996), a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In 2003 he became a signatory of the humanist manifesto ''Humanism and Its Aspirations'', published by the American Humanist Association. As a result of his advocacy of atheism, Dawkins has sometimes been described as a vocal, militant rationalist, and as "the UK's Chief Atheist".

Dawkins believes that his own atheism is the logical extension of his understanding of evolution and that religion is incompatible with science. In his 1986 book ''The Blind Watchmaker'', Dawkins wrote:

{{blockquote| An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. }}

In his 1991 essay "Viruses of the Mind" (from which the term ''faith-sufferer'' originated), he suggested that memetic theory might analyse and explain the phenomenon of religious belief and some of the common characteristics of religions, such as the belief that punishment awaits non-believers. According to Dawkins, faith − belief that is not based on evidence − is one of the world's great evils. He claims it to be analogous to the smallpox virus, though more difficult to eradicate. Dawkins is well-known for his contempt for religious extremism, from Islamist terrorism to Christian fundamentalism; but he has also argued with liberal believers and religious scientists, from biologists Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins to theologians Alister McGrath and Richard Harries. Dawkins has stated that his opposition to religion is twofold, claiming it to be both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence. However, he describes himself as a "cultural Christian", and proposed the slogan "Atheists for Jesus".

Following the 11 September 2001 attacks, when asked how the world might have changed, Dawkins responded:

{{blockquote| Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful! }}

Dawkins has especially risen to prominence in contemporary public debates relating science and religion since the publication of his 2006 book ''The God Delusion'', which has achieved greater sales figures worldwide than any of his other works to date. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist, central to a recent rise in the popularity of atheistic literature. ''The God Delusion'' was praised by among others the Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto and James D. Watson and by psychologist Steven Pinker. In the book, Dawkins suggested that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. He sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination. 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. Dawkins notes that feminists have succeeded in arousing widespread embarrassment at the routine use of "he" instead of "she". Similarly, he suggests, a phrase such as "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should be considered just as socially absurd as, for instance, "Marxist child": children should not be classified based on their parents' ideological beliefs. According to Dawkins, there is no such thing as a Christian child or a Muslim child, as children have about as much capacity to make the decision to become Christians or Muslims as they do to become Marxists. Critics have said that the programme gave too much time to marginal figures and extremists, and that Dawkins' confrontational style did not help his cause and exhibited similarities with the approaches of religious fundamentalists more than with the approaches of the dispassionate, analytic approach of 'hard' science; Dawkins rejected these claims, citing the number of moderate religious broadcasts in everyday media as providing a suitable balance to the extremists in the programmes. He further remarked that someone who is deemed an "extremist" in a religiously moderate country may well be considered "mainstream" in a religiously conservative one. The unedited recordings of Dawkins' conversations with Alister McGrath and Richard Harries, including material unused in the broadcast version, have been made available online by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Dawkins' work has been controversial, and a number of Christian thinkers have responded to it. For example, Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of ''The Dawkins Delusion'' and ''Dawkins' God'') maintains that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?", and − in the paperback edition of ''The God Delusion'' − he refers to the American biologist PZ Myers, who has satirised this line of argument as "The Courtier's Reply". Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 ''Sunday Times'' Literary Festival.

Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other". He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria. In an interview with ''Time'' magazine, Dawkins said:

I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.

Astrophysicist Martin Rees, who has described himself as an unbeliever who identifies with Christianity from a cultural perspective, has suggested that Dawkins' attack on mainstream religion is unhelpful. Regarding Rees' claim in his book ''Our Cosmic Habitat'' that "such questions lie beyond science", Dawkins asks "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?" Elsewhere, Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation." He has said that the publication of ''The God Delusion'' is "probably the culmination" of his campaign against religion.

In 2007 Dawkins founded the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly and proudly. Inspired by the gay rights movement, Dawkins hopes that atheists' identifying of themselves as such, and thereby increasing public awareness of how many people hold these views, will reduce the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority.

In September 2008, following a complaint by Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar, a court in Turkey blocked access to Dawkins' website ''richarddawkins.net''. The court decision was made due to "insult to personality". As of 8 July 2011, ''richarddawkins.net'' is no longer blocked in Turkey.

In October 2008, Dawkins officially supported the UK's first atheist advertising initiative, the Atheist Bus Campaign. Created by Guardian journalist Ariane Sherine and administered by the British Humanist Association the campaign aimed to raise funds to place atheist adverts on buses in the London area, and Dawkins pledged to match the amount raised by atheists, up to a maximum of £5,500. However, the campaign was an unprecedented success, raising over £100,000 in its first four days, and generating global press coverage. The campaign, started in January 2009, features adverts across the UK with the slogan: "''There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.''" Dawkins said that "this campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think — and thinking is anathema to religion."

In 2010 Dawkins supported legal efforts to charge Pope Benedict XVI with crimes against humanity. Dawkins and fellow anti-religion campaigner Christopher Hitchens were believed to have explored the option of attempting to have the Pope arrested under the same legal principle that saw Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested during a visit to Britain in 1998. Dawkins has given support to the idea of an atheists' "free thinking" school, that would teach children to "ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded".

On 15 September 2010, Dawkins, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in ''The Guardian'', stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI making a ''State'' visit to the United Kingdom.

Richard Dawkins Foundation

In 2006 Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS), a non-profit organisation. The foundation is in developmental phase. It has been granted charitable status in the United Kingdom and the United States. RDFRS plans to finance research on the psychology of belief and religion, finance scientific education programs and materials, and publicise and support secular charitable organisations. The foundation also offers humanist, rationalist and scientific materials and information through its website.

Other fields

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'' takes John Keats' accusation that, by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton had diminished its beauty, and 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". Dawkins wrote a foreword to John Diamond's posthumously published ''Snake Oil'', a book devoted to debunking alternative medicine, in which he asserted that alternative medicine was harmful, if only because it distracted patients from more successful conventional treatments, and gave people false hopes. Dawkins states that "there is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work."

Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the planet's human population, and about the matter of overpopulation. 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.

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".

Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and weblogs on contemporary political questions; his opinions include opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the British nuclear deterrent and the actions of U.S. President George W. Bush. 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 the Republic campaign to replace the British monarchy with a democratically elected president. Dawkins has described himself as a Labour voter in the 1970s 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'."

In the 2007 TV documentary ''The Enemies of Reason'', Dawkins discusses what he sees as the dangers of abandoning critical thought and rationale based upon scientific evidence. He specifically cites astrology, spiritualism, dowsing, alternative faiths, alternative medicine and homeopathy. He also discusses how the Internet can be used to spread religious hatred and conspiracy theories with scant attention to evidence-based reasoning.

Continuing a long-standing partnership with Channel 4, Dawkins participated in a five-part television series ''The Genius of Britain'', along with fellow scientists Stephen Hawking, James Dyson, Paul Nurse, and Jim Al-Khalili. The five-episode series was broadcast in June 2010. The series focussed on major British scientific achievements throughout history.

Dawkins presented a More4 documentary entitled 'Faith School Menace' in which he argued for "us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which... bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children."

In 1998 Dawkins expressed his appreciation for two books, famous for their criticism of postmodernism in US universities, in departments like literary studies, anthropology and other cultural studies; the two books are ''Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science'' (by Gross and Levitt) and ''Intellectual Impostures'' (by Sokal and Bricmont), both related to the Sokal affair hoax. In the same occasion Dawkins also criticised Cambridge University for awarding philosopher Jacques Derrida an honorary doctorate.

In 2011 Dawkins joined the professoriate of the New College of the Humanities, a new private university in London established by A. C. Grayling, which is scheduled to open in September 2012.

Awards and recognition

Dawkins was awarded a Doctor of Science by the University of Oxford in 1989. He holds honorary doctorates in science from the University of Huddersfield, University of Westminster, Durham University, the University of Hull, and the University of Antwerp, and honorary doctorates from the University of Aberdeen, Open University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the University of Valencia. 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 the Royal Society in 2001. 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 the BBC ''Horizon'' episode ''The Blind Watchmaker''.

His other awards have included the Zoological Society of London Silver Medal (1989), Finlay innovation award (1990), the Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize (1994), the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year Award (1996), the fifth International Cosmos Prize (1997), the Kistler Prize (2001), the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (2001), the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (2002) and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (2009).

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. He has been short-listed as a candidate in their 2008 follow-up poll. In 2005 the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded him its 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 and the Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year Award for 2007. In the same year, he was listed by ''Time'' magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and he was ranked 20th in ''The Daily Telegraph'''s 2007 list of 100 greatest living geniuses. He was awarded the Deschner Award, named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner.

Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year. It is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins' own work.

In February 2010 he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.

Media

Selected publications

(Scheduled to publish on 4 October 2011)

Documentary films

''Nice Guys Finish First'' (1986)

''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1987)

''Growing Up in the Universe'' (1991)

''Break the Science Barrier'' (1996)

''The Root of All Evil?'' (2006)

''The Enemies of Reason'' (2007)

''The Genius of Charles Darwin'' (2008)

''Faith School Menace'' (2010)

Other appearances

''Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth'' (2008) – as himself

''Doctor Who: The Big Bang'' (2010) – as himself

Notes

b. The debate ended with the motion "That the doctrine of creation is more valid than the theory of evolution" being defeated by 198 votes to 115.

References

External links

General

Official website

Richard Dawkins' page on Academia.edu

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

Video

National Geographic Interviews – A series of video interviews with National Geographic Channel with Richard Dawkins on Darwin, Evolution and God.

TED Talks: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism at TED in 2002

TED Talks: Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe at TED Global in 2005

Video interview with Riz Khan for Al Jazeera English

Video interview at Big Think

Selected writings

Viruses of the Mind (1993) – Religion as a mental virus.

The Real Romance in the Stars (1995) – A critical view of astrology.

The Emptiness of Theology (1998) – A critical view of theology. (Alternative link at RDFRS.)

Snake Oil and Holy Water (1999) – Suggests that there is no convergence occurring between science and theism.

What Use is Religion? (2004) – Suggests that religion may have no survival value other than to itself.

Race and Creation (2004) – On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved.

The giant tortoise's tale, The turtle's tale and The lava lizard's tale (2005) – A series of three articles written after a visit to the Galápagos Islands.

Dawkins' ''Huffington Post'' articles

Audio

Richard Dawkins on RadioLIVE's Weekend Variety Wireless – Richard Dawkins appears live on New Zealand's RadioLIVE, taking calls from the audience.

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Coordinates	55°55′″N36°52′″N
region	Western philosophy
era	20th century philosophy
colour	#B0C4DE
name	Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
birth date	May 18, 1872
birth place	Trellech, Monmouthshire, UK
death date	February 02, 1970
death place	Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales, UK
school tradition	Analytic philosophy
main interests	Metaphysics, epistemology, logic, mathematics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, ethics, philosophy of religion, history of philosophy
Influences	Mill, Peano, Frege, Santayana, Leibniz, Hume, Locke, Wittgenstein, Spinoza, Whitehead
Influenced	WittgensteinAyerCarnapGödelPopperQuineChomskyAustinKripkeSchlickTarskiWaismannDavidson EddingtonTuringVuilleminMcDowellKumarAlbert Ellis
notable ideas	Logical atomism, theory of descriptions, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, Russell's paradox, Russell's teapot.
notable ideas	Analytic philosophy, logical atomism, theory of descriptions, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, Russell's paradox, Russell's teapot
signature	}}

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he imagined himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things in any profound sense. He was born in Wales, into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain.

Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the early 1900s. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein, and is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, ''Principia Mathematica'', an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy." His work has had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, computer science (see type theory and type system), and philosophy, especially philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.

Russell was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed free trade and anti-imperialism. Russell went to prison for his pacifism during World War I. Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then criticised Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament. One of his last acts was to issue a statement which condemned Israeli aggression in the Middle East.

In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."

Biography

Ancestry

Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire, Wales, into an influential and liberal family of the British aristocracy. His paternal grandfather, John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, was the third son of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, and had twice been asked by Queen Victoria to form a government, serving her as Prime Minister in the 1840s and 1860s. The Russells had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power and the peerage with the rise of the Tudor dynasty. They established themselves as one of Britain's leading Whig families, and participated in every great political event from the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536–40 to the Glorious Revolution in 1688–89 to the Great Reform Act in 1832.

Russell's mother Katharine Louisa (1844–1874) was the daughter of Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley, and was the sister of Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle. Kate and Rosalind's mother was one of the founders of Girton College, Cambridge.

Russell's parents were radical for their times. Russell's father, Viscount Amberley, was an atheist and consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor, the biologist Douglas Spalding. Both were early advocates of birth control at a time when this was considered scandalous. John Russell's atheism was evident when he asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russell's secular godfather. Mill died the year after Russell's birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russell's life.

Childhood and adolescence

Russell had two siblings: Frank (nearly seven years older than Bertrand), and Rachel (four years older). In June 1874 Russell's mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachel's death. In January 1876, his father also died of bronchitis following a long period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of their staunchly Victorian grandparents, who lived at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park. John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, his grandfather, who had been Prime Minister, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. As a result, his widow, the Countess Russell (née Lady Frances Elliot), was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russell's childhood and youth.

The countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and successfully petitioned the Court of Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberley's will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Despite her religious conservatism, she held progressive views in other areas (accepting Darwinism and supporting Irish Home Rule), and her influence on Bertrand Russell's outlook on social justice and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life — her favourite Bible verse, 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil' (Exodus 23:2), became his motto. The atmosphere at Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression and formality; Frank reacted to this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings.

Russell's adolescence was very lonely, and he often contemplated suicide. He remarked in his autobiography that his keenest interests were in religion and mathematics, and that only the wish to know more mathematics kept him from suicide. He was educated at home by a series of tutors. His brother Frank introduced him to the work of Euclid, which transformed Russell's life.

Also, during these formative years, he discovered the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In his autobiography, he writes: "I spent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart, knowing no one to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to reflect how wonderful it would have been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether I should meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much sympathy." Russell claimed that beginning at age 15, he spent considerable time thinking about the validity of Christian religious dogma, and by 18 had decided to discard the last of it.

University and first marriage

Russell won a scholarship to read for the Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, and commenced his studies there in 1890. He became acquainted with the younger G.E. Moore and came under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead, who recommended him to the Cambridge Apostles. He quickly distinguished himself in mathematics and philosophy, graduating as a high Wrangler in 1893 and becoming a Fellow in the latter in 1895.

Russell first met the American Quaker Alys Pearsall Smith when he was 17 years old. He became a friend of the Pearsall Smith family—they knew him primarily as 'Lord John's grandson' and enjoyed showing him off—and travelled with them to the continent; it was in their company that Russell visited the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and was able to climb the Eiffel Tower soon after it was completed.

He soon fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, who was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, and, contrary to his grandmother's wishes, married her on 13 December 1894. Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while he was cycling, that he no longer loved her. She asked him if he loved her and he replied that he didn't. Russell also disliked Alys's mother, finding her controlling and cruel. It was to be a hollow shell of a marriage and they finally divorced in 1921, after a lengthy period of separation. During this period, Russell had passionate (and often simultaneous) affairs with a number of women, including Lady Ottoline Morrell and the actress Lady Constance Malleson.

Early career

Russell began his published work in 1896 with ''German Social Democracy'', a study in politics that was an early indication of a lifelong interest in political and social theory. In 1896, he taught German social democracy at the London School of Economics, where he also lectured on the science of power in the autumn of 1937. He was also a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

He now started an intensive study of the foundations of mathematics at Trinity during which he discovered Russell's paradox which challenged the foundations of set theory. In 1903 he published his first important book on mathematical logic, ''The Principles of Mathematics'' showing that mathematics could be deduced from a very small number of principles, and contributing significantly to the cause of logicism.

In 1905 he wrote the essay "On Denoting", which was published in the philosophical journal ''Mind''. Russell became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1908. The first of three volumes of ''Principia Mathematica'', written with Whitehead, was published in 1910, which, along with the earlier ''The Principles of Mathematics'', soon made Russell world famous in his field.

In 1910 he became a lecturer in the University of Cambridge where he soon received an approach from the Austrian engineering student Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became his PhD student and whom he viewed as a genius and a successor who would continue his work on logic. He spent hours dealing with Wittgenstein's various phobias and his frequent bouts of despair. This was often a drain on Russell's energy, but Russell continued to be fascinated by him and encouraged his academic development, including the publication of Wittgenstein's ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' in 1922. Russell delivered his lectures on Logical Atomism, his version of these ideas, in 1918 before the end of the First World War and whilst Wittgenstein was still a prisoner of war.

First World War

During the First World War, Russell was one of a very small number of intellectuals engaged in pacifist activities, and, in 1916, he was dismissed from Trinity College following his conviction under the Defence of the Realm Act. He was charged a fine of 100 Pounds Sterling which he refused to pay, hoping that he would be sent to prison, but they instead sold his books at auction to raise the money. The books were bought by friends and he later treasured his copy of the King James Bible that was stamped "Confiscated by Cambridge Police." Russell was released from prison in September 1918. He was reinstated 1919, resigned 1920, was Tarner Lecturer 1926, and became a Fellow again 1944–1949. A later conviction for publicly lecturing against inviting the US to enter the war on Britain's side, resulted in six months' imprisonment in Brixton prison (see ''Bertrand Russell's views on society'').

Between the wars, and second marriage

In August 1920, Russell travelled to Russia as part of an official delegation sent by the British government to investigate the effects of the Russian Revolution. He met Vladimir Lenin and had an hour-long conversation with him. In his autobiography, he mentions that he found Lenin rather disappointing, sensing an "impish cruelty" in him and comparing him to "an opinionated professor". He also cruised down the Volga on a steam-ship. Russell's lover Dora Black also visited Russia independently at the same time — she was enthusiastic about the revolution, but Russell's experiences destroyed his previous tentative support for it. He wrote a book "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism" about his experiences on this trip, which included 24 others from Britain, all of whom came home thinking well of the regime, despite Russell's attempts to change their mind. For example, he told them that he heard shots fired in the middle of the night and was sure these were clandestine executions, but the others maintained that it was only cars backfiring.

Russell subsequently lectured in Beijing on philosophy for one year, accompanied by Dora. He went there with optimism and hope, as China was then on a new path. Among other scholars there was Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet and also a Nobel Laureate. While in China, Russell became gravely ill with pneumonia, and incorrect reports of his death were published in the Japanese press. When the couple visited Japan on their return journey, Dora notified the world that "Mr. Bertrand Russell, having died according to the Japanese press, is unable to give interviews to Japanese journalists." The press were not amused and did not appreciate the sarcasm.

On the couple's return to England on 26 August 1921, Dora was six months pregnant, and Russell arranged a hasty divorce from Alys, marrying Dora six days after the divorce was finalised, on 27 September 1921. Their children were John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell, born on 16 November 1921 and Katharine Jane Russell (now Lady Katharine Tait) born on 29 December 1923. Russell supported himself during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics, and education to the layman. Some have suggested that at this point he had an affair with Vivienne Haigh-Wood, first wife of T. S. Eliot.

Together with Dora, he also founded the experimental Beacon Hill School in 1927. The school was run from a succession of different locations, including its original premises at the Russells' residence, Telegraph House, near Harting, West Sussex. On 8 July 1930 Dora welcomed her third child, a daughter, Harriet Ruth. After he left the school in 1932, Dora continued it until 1943.

Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, in 1931, Russell became the 3rd Earl Russell. He once said that his title was primarily useful for securing hotel rooms.

Russell's marriage to Dora grew increasingly tenuous, and it reached a breaking point over her having two children with an American journalist, Griffin Barry. They separated in 1932 and finally divorced. On 18 January 1936, Russell married his third wife, an Oxford undergraduate named Patricia ("Peter") Spence, who had been his children's governess since the summer of 1930. Russell and Peter had one son, Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell, who became a prominent historian and one of the leading figures in the Liberal Democratic party.

Second World War

Russell opposed rearmament against Nazi Germany, but in 1940 changed his view that avoiding a full scale world war was more important than defeating Hitler. He concluded that Adolf Hitler taking over all of Europe would be a permanent threat to democracy. In 1943, he adopted a stance toward large-scale warfare, "Relative Political Pacifism": War was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils.

Post-Second World War

Before the Second World War, Russell taught at the University of Chicago, later moving on to Los Angeles to lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was appointed professor at the City College of New York in 1940, but after a public outcry, the appointment was annulled by a court judgement: his opinions (especially those relating to sexual morality, detailed in ''Marriage and Morals'' ten years earlier) made him "morally unfit" to teach at the college. The protest was started by the mother of a student who would not have been eligible for his graduate-level course in mathematical logic. Many intellectuals, led by John Dewey, protested against his treatment. Albert Einstein's often-quoted aphorism that "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds..." originated in his open letter in support of Russell, during this time. Dewey and Horace M. Kallen edited a collection of articles on the CCNY affair in ''The Bertrand Russell Case''. He soon joined the Barnes Foundation, lecturing to a varied audience on the history of philosophy; these lectures formed the basis of ''A History of Western Philosophy''. His relationship with the eccentric Albert C. Barnes soon soured, and he returned to Britain in 1944 to rejoin the faculty of Trinity College.

Later life

During the 1940s and 1950s, Russell participated in many broadcasts over the BBC, particularly The Brains Trust and the Third Programme, on various topical and philosophical subjects. By this time Russell was world famous outside of academic circles, frequently the subject or author of magazine and newspaper articles, and was called upon to offer up opinions on a wide variety of subjects, even mundane ones. En route to one of his lectures in Trondheim, Russell was one of 24 survivors (among a total of 43 passengers) in an aeroplane crash in Hommelvik in October 1948. ''A History of Western Philosophy'' (1945) became a best-seller, and provided Russell with a steady income for the remainder of his life.

In a speech in 1948, Russell said that if the USSR's aggression continued, it would be morally worse to go to war after the USSR possessed an atomic bomb than before it possessed one, because if the USSR had no bomb the West's victory would come more swiftly and with fewer casualties than if there were atom bombs on both sides. At that time, only the USA possessed an atomic bomb, and the USSR was pursuing an extremely aggressive policy towards the countries in Eastern Europe which it was absorbing into its sphere of influence. Many understood Russell's comments to mean that Russell approved of a first strike in a war with the USSR, including Lawson, who was present when Russell spoke. Others, including Griffin who obtained a transcript of the speech, have argued that he was merely explaining the usefulness of America's atomic arsenal in deterring the USSR from continuing its domination of Eastern Europe.

In 1948, Russell was invited by the BBC to deliver the inaugural Reith Lectures - what was to become an annual series of lectures, still broadcast by the BBC. His series of six broadcasts, titled Authority and the Individual explored themes such as the role of individual initiative in the development of a community and the role of state control in a progressive society. Russell also continued to write about philosophy. He wrote a foreword to ''Words and Things'' by Ernest Gellner which was highly critical of the later thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and of Ordinary language philosophy. Gilbert Ryle refused to have the book reviewed in the philosophical journal ''Mind'' which caused Russell to respond via the Times. The results was a month-long correspondence in the Times, between the supporters and detractors of Ordinary language philosophy which was only ended when the Times published an editorial about the matter, which was critical of both sides but agreeing with the opponents of Ordinary language philosophy.

In the King's Birthday Honours of 9 June 1949, Russell was awarded the Order of Merit, and the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. When he was given the Order of Merit, King George VI was affable but slightly embarrassed at decorating a former jailbird, saying that "You have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted." Russell merely smiled, but afterwards claimed that the reply "That's right, just like your brother" immediately came to mind.

In 1952, Russell was divorced by Spence, with whom he had been very unhappy. Conrad, Russell's son by Spence, did not see his father between the time of the divorce and 1968 (at which time his decision to meet his father caused a permanent breach with his mother).

Russell married his fourth wife, Edith Finch, soon after the divorce, on 15 December 1952. They had known each other since 1925, and Edith had taught English at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, sharing a house for 20 years with Russell's old friend Lucy Donnelly. Edith remained with him until his death, and, by all accounts, their marriage was a happy, close, and loving one. Russell's eldest son, John, suffered from serious mental illness, which was the source of ongoing disputes between Russell and John's mother, Russell's former wife, Dora. John's wife Susan was also mentally ill, and eventually Russell and Edith became the legal guardians of their three daughters (two of whom were later found to have schizophrenia).

In 1962, Russell played a public role in the Cuban Missile Crisis: in an exchange of telegrams with the Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev assured him that the Soviet government would not be reckless. Russell also wrote to President Kennedy, who returned his telegram unopened.

Political causes

Russell spent the 1950s and 1960s engaged in various political causes, primarily related to nuclear disarmament and opposing the Vietnam war (see also Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal). The 1955 Russell–Einstein Manifesto was a document calling for nuclear disarmament and was signed by 11 of the most prominent nuclear physicists and intellectuals of the time. He wrote a great many letters to world leaders during this period. He was in contact with Lionel Rogosin while the latter was filming his anti-war film ''Good Times, Wonderful Times'' in the 1960s. He also became a hero to many of the youthful members of the New Left. In early 1963, in particular, Russell became increasingly vocal about his disapproval of what he felt to be the US government's near-genocidal policies in South Vietnam. In 1963 he became the inaugural recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, an award for writers concerned with the freedom of the individual in society. In October 1965 he tore up his Labour Party card because he suspected the party was going to send soldiers to support the USA in the Vietnam War.

Final years and death

Russell published his three-volume autobiography in 1967, 1968, and 1969. On 23 November 1969 he wrote to ''The Times'' newspaper saying that the preparation for show trials in Czechoslovakia was "highly alarming". The same month he appealed to Secretary General U Thant of the United Nations to support an international war crimes commission to investigate alleged torture and genocide by the USA in South Vietnam. The following month, he protested to Alexei Kosygin over the expulsion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the Writers Union.

On 31 January 1970, Russell issued a statement which condemned Israeli aggression in the Middle East and called for Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied in 1967. This was Russell's final political statement or act. It was read out at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo on 3 February 1970, the day after his death.

Russell died of influenza on 2 February 1970 at his home, Plas Penrhyn, in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, Wales. His body was cremated in Colwyn Bay on 5 February 1970. In accordance with his will there was no religious ceremony; his ashes were scattered over the Welsh mountains later that year.

In 1980, a memorial to Russell was commissioned by a committee including A. J. Ayer. It consists of a bust of Russell in Red Lion Square in London sculpted by Marcelle Quinton.

Titles and honours from birth

Russell held throughout his life the following styles and honours:

from birth until 1908: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell

from 1908 until 1931: The Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell, FRS

from 1931 until 1949: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, FRS

from 1949 until death: The Right Honourable The Earl Russell, OM, FRS

Views

Views on philosophy

Russell is generally credited with being one of the founders of analytic philosophy. He was deeply impressed by Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) and wrote on every major area of philosophy except aesthetics. He was particularly prolific in the field of metaphysics, the logic and the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, ethics and epistemology. When Brand Blanshard asked Russell why he didn't write on aesthetics, Russell replied that he didn't know anything about it, "but that is not a very good excuse, for my friends tell me it has not deterred me from writing on other subjects."

Views on society

Political and social activism occupied much of Russell's time for most of his life, which makes his prodigious and seminal writing on a wide range of technical and non-technical subjects all the more remarkable. Russell remained politically active almost to the end of his life, writing to and exhorting world leaders and lending his name to various causes. He was also famously noted for saying "No one can sit at the bedside of a dying child and still believe in God."

Russell determined man to be "the product of causes . . . his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms, that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins -- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. . . ."

Selected works

Selected bibliography of Russell's books

This is a selected bibliography of Russell's books in English sorted by year of first publication.

1896. ''German Social Democracy''. London: Longmans, Green.

1897. ''An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1900. ''A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1903. ''The Principles of Mathematics'', Cambridge University Press.

1905. ''On Denoting'', Mind, vol. 14. ISSN: 00264425. Basil Blackwell.

1910. ''Philosophical Essays''. London: Longmans, Green.

1910–1913. ''Principia Mathematica">Principia Mathematica'' (with Alfred North Whitehead). 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1912. The Problems of Philosophy''">''The Problems of Philosophy''. London: Williams and Norgate.

1914. ''Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy''. Chicago and London: Open CPublishing.

1916. ''Principles of Social Reconstruction''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1916. ''Justice in War-time''. Chicago: Open Court.

1917. ''Political Ideals''. New York: The Century Co.

1918. ''Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays''. London: Longmans, Green.

1918. ''Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1919. ''Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy''. London: George Allen & Unwin. (ISBN 0-415-09604-9 for Routledge paperback) (''Copy at Archive.org'').

1920. ''The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1921. ''The Analysis of Mind''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1922. ''The Problem of China''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1923. ''The Prospects of Industrial Civilization'', in collaboration with Dora Russell. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1923. ''The ABC of Atoms'', London: Kegan Paul. Trench, Trubner.

1924. ''Icarus; or, The Future of Science''. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.

1925. ''The ABC of Relativity''. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.

1925. ''What I Believe''. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.

1926. ''On Education, Especially in Early Childhood''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1927. ''The Analysis of Matter''. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.

1927. ''An Outline of Philosophy''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1927. ''Why I Am Not a Christian">Why I Am Not a Christian''. London: Watts.

1927. ''Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell''. New York: Modern Library.

1928. ''Sceptical Essays''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1929. ''Marriage and Morals''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1930. ''The Conquest of Happiness''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1931. ''The Scientific Outlook''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1932. ''Education and the Social Order'', London: George Allen & Unwin.

1934. ''Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1935. ''In Praise of Idleness''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1935. ''Religion and Science''. London: Thornton Butterworth.

1936. ''Which Way to Peace?''. London: Jonathan Cape.

1937. ''The Amberley Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley'', with Patricia Russell, 2 vols., London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press.

1938. ''Power: A New Social Analysis''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1940. ''An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

1945. A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day''">''A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day''. New York: Simon and Schuster.

1948. ''Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1949. ''Authority and the Individual''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1950. ''Unpopular Essays''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1951. ''New Hopes for a Changing World''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1952. ''The Impact of Science on Society''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1953. ''Satan in the Suburbs and Other Stories''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1954. ''Human Society in Ethics and Politics''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1954. ''Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1956. ''Portraits from Memory and Other Essays''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1956. ''Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950'', edited by Robert C. Marsh. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1957. ''Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects'', edited by Paul Edwards. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1958. ''Understanding History and Other Essays''. New York: Philosophical Library.

1959. ''Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1959. ''My Philosophical Development">My Philosophical Development''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1959. ''Wisdom of the West'', edited by Paul Foulkes. London: Macdonald.

1960. ''Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind'', Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company.

1961. ''The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell'', edited by R.E. Egner and L.E. Denonn. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1961. ''Fact and Fiction''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1961. ''Has Man a Future?'', London: George Allen & Unwin.

1963. ''Essays in Skepticism''. New York: Philosophical Library.

1963. ''Unarmed Victory''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1965. ''On the Philosophy of Science'', edited by Charles A. Fritz, Jr. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

1967. ''Russell's Peace Appeals'', edited by Tsutomu Makino and Kazuteru Hitaka. Japan: Eichosha's New Current Books.

1967. ''War Crimes in Vietnam''. London: George Allen & Unwin.

1951–1969. ''The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell'', 3 vols.. London: George Allen & Unwin. Vol 2 1956

1969. ''Dear Bertrand Russell... A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public 1950–1968'', edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils. London: George Allen and Unwin.

Note: These are major publications. Russell also wrote many pamphlets, introductions, articles and letters to the editor. His works also can be found in any number of anthologies and collections, perhaps most notably ''The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell'', which McMaster University began publishing in 1983. This collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works is now up to 16 volumes, and many more are forthcoming. An additional three volumes catalogue just his bibliography. The Russell Archives at McMaster University also have more than 30,000 letters that he wrote.

Additional references

Russell

1900, ''Sur la logique des relations avec des applications à la théorie des séries'', ''Rivista di matematica 7'': 115–148.

1901, ''On the Notion of Order'', ''Mind (n.s.) 10'': 35–51.

1902, (with Alfred North Whitehead), ''On Cardinal Numbers'', ''American Journal of Mathematics 23'': 367–384.

1948, BBC Reith Lectures: Authority and the Individual A series of six radio lectures broadcast on the BBC Home Service in December 1948.

Secondary references

John Newsome Crossley. ''A Note on Cantor's Theorem and Russell's Paradox'', ''Australian Journal of Philosophy 51'': 70–71.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. ''The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940''. Princeton University Press.

''Bertrand Russell: A Political Life'' by Alan Ryan 1981

Books about Russell's philosophy

''Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments'', edited by A. D. Irvine, 4 volumes, London: Routledge, 1999. Consists of essays on Russell's work by many distinguished philosophers.

''Bertrand Russell'', by John Slater, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994.

''Bertrand Russell's Ethics''. by Michael K. Potter, Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2006. A clear and accessible explanation of Russell's moral philosophy.

''The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell'', edited by P.A. Schilpp, Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1944.

''Russell'', by A. J. Ayer, London: Fontana, 1972. ISBN 0-00-632965-9. A lucid summary exposition of Russell's thought.

''The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-Body Problem'', by Celia Green. Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2003. ISBN 0-9536772-1-4 Contains a sympathetic analysis of Russell's views on causality.

''Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship'', by Nicholas Griffin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Biographical books

''Bertrand Russell: Philosopher and Humanist'', by John Lewis (1968)

''Bertrand Russell'', by A. J. Ayer (1972), reprint ed. 1988: ISBN 0-226-03343-0

''The Life of Bertrand Russell'', by Ronald W. Clark (1975) ISBN 0-394-49059-2

''Bertrand Russell and His World'', by Ronald W. Clark (1981) ISBN 0-500-13070-1

''Bertrand Russell: Mathematics: Dreams and Nightmares'' by Ray Monk (1997) ISBN 0-75380-190-6

'' Bertrand Russell: 1872–1920 The Spirit of Solitude'' by Ray Monk (1997) ISBN 0-09-973131-2

''Bertrand Russell: 1921–1970 The Ghost of Madness'' by Ray Monk (2001) ISBN 0-09-927275-X

''Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth'' by Apostolos Doxiadis, and Christos Papadimitriou (2009)

See also

Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club

Notes

Further reading

Bertrand Russell. 1967–1969, ''The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell'', 3 volumes, London: George Allen & Unwin.

Wallechinsky, David & Irving Wallace. 1975–1981, "Famous Marriages Bertrand Russell & Alla Pearsall Smith, Part 1" & "Part 3", on "Alys" Pearsall Smith, webpage content from ''The People's Almanac'', webpages: Part 1 & Part 3 (accessed 8 November 2008).

Russell B, (1944) "My Mental Development", in Schilpp, Paul Arturn "The Philosophy of Betrand Russell", New York, Tudorm 1951, pp 3–20

External links

;Other writings available online

"A Free Man's Worship" (1903)

"The Elements of Ethics" (1910)

War and Non-Resistance (1915)

The War and Non-Resistance—A Rejoinder to Professor Perry (1915)

The Ethics of War (1915)

''Justice in Wartime'' (1917)

''Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel'' (1917)

"Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?" 1930

''Legitimacy Versus Industrialism 1814–1848'' (1935)

"Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?" (1947)

"Ideas that Have Harmed Mankind" (1950)

"What Desires Are Politically Important?" (1950)

''An Outline of Philosophy'' (1951)

''Is There a God?'' (1952)

''The Scientific Outlook'' (1954)

"16 Questions on the Assassination" (of President Kennedy) (1964)

;Audio

Works by Bertrand Russell in audio format from LibriVox

Sound clips of Bertrand Russell speaking

;Other

Pembroke Lodge — childhood home and museum

The Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly

The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation

Bertrand Russell in Japan

Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery

The Bertrand Russell Archives

Resource list

The First Reith Lecture given by Russell (Real Audio)

Nobel Prize

Bertrand Russell at 100 Welsh Heroes

Key Participants: Bertrand Russell – ''Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement: A Documentary History''

PM@100: LOGIC FROM 1910 TO 1927 Conference at the Bertrand Russell Research Centre (McMaster University, Ontario, Canada), to be held on 21–24 May 2010, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Principia Mathematica.

Bertrand Russell Society Bulletin (2011-present)(Kris Notaro and David Blitz)

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Coordinates	55°55′″N36°52′″N
name	James Cleveland
background	solo_singer
birth date	December 05, 1931
death date	February 09, 1991
origin	Chicago, Illinois
instrument	Vocals, Piano
genre	Gospel music
label	States, Savoy
associated acts	Albertina Walker (Queen of Gospel Music) Roberta MartinThe Cleveland SingersThe Caravans
website	}}

The Reverend Dr. James Cleveland (December 5, 1931 - February 9, 1991) was a gospel singer, arranger, composer and, most significantly, the driving force behind the creation of the modern gospel sound, bringing the stylistic daring of hard gospel and jazz and pop music influences to arrangements for mass choirs. He is known as the King of Gospel music.

Biography

Early life and career

Born in Chicago, he began singing as a boy soprano at Pilgrim Baptist Church, where Thomas A. Dorsey was minister of music and Roberta Martin was pianist for the choir. He strained his vocal cords as a teenager while part of a local gospel group, leaving the distinctive gravelly voice that was his hallmark in his later years. The change in his voice led him to focus on his skills as a pianist and later as a composer and arranger. For his pioneering accomplishments and contributions, he is regarded by many to be one of the greatest gospel singers to ever live.

Musical career

Work with The Gospelaires

In 1950, Cleveland joined the Gospelaires, a trio led by Norsalus McKissick and Bessie Folk, who were associated with Martin. Martin hired him as a composer and arranger after the group disbanded. His arrangements of songs such as "(Give Me That) Old Time Religion" and "It's Me O Lord" transformed them, giving a rocking lilt and insistent drive to old standards.

The Caravans

Cleveland subsequently went to work for Albertina Walker, popularly referred to as the "Queen of Gospel" and the Caravans as a composer, arranger, pianist and occasional singer/narrator. In November 1954, Albertina Walker provided him the opportunity to do his very first recording. By staying out of the studio for a while, she convinced States Records to allow him to record with her group. He continued to record with The Caravans until States closed down in 1957. He left and returned to the Caravans a number of times to join other groups, such as the Gospel All-Stars and the Gospel Chimes, where he mixed pop ballad influences with traditional shouting. In 1959 he recorded a version of Ray Charles' hit "Hallelujah I Love Her So" as a solo artist.

James Cleveland Records with The Angelic Choir

James Cleveland signed with "Savoy Records"in 1962 and recorded albums with The Angelic Choir, of Nutley, New Jersey under the direction of Rev. Lawrence Roberts. Two "live" albums were recorded Vol.1 and Vol.2, one of which included the song "How Great Thou Art" which was an organ solo narrated by Rev. Cleveland as a("young boy")named Billy Preston played. Then in 1963 he recorded his critically acclaimed Gospel Million Seller album "Peace Be Still".

Before these albums were recorded, no other gospel artist had recorded using this type of live format. Each album to include his albums "Stood On The Banks Of Jordan" in 1964 and "Give Me My Flowers" 1965 gave the listener the feeling that they were listening in and experiencing a church service- with James Cleveland ministering in song and word just to them. This style has been mimmicked over and over again to this day.

''The Love of God''

He became known by more than just the professionals within gospel music with his version of the Soul Stirrers' song, "The Love of God", backed by the Voices of Tabernacle from Detroit. Rev. Cleveland migrated to Los Angeles as Minister of Music at Grace Memorial Church of God in Christ. In Los Angeles, Cleveland attained even greater popularity working with keyboardist Billy Preston and the Angelic Choir of Nutley, New Jersey; his recording of "Peace Be Still" (in 1963), an obscure 18th-century madrigal, sold hundreds of thousands of copies thanks to Cleveland's comforting growl and emotional command, his popularity grew to great acclaim, causing him once again to return to the road, this time with the newly organized James Cleveland Singers, Odessa McCastle, Georgia White, and Eugene Bryant, along with Billy Preston. In 1964 Cleveland re-organized The James Cleveland Singers again this time the group was made up of - Odessa McCastle, Roger Roberts and Gene Viale. In 1965, Cleveland added Clyde Brown and Charles Barnett to his group, which by then was traveling extensively throughout the United States and abroad into the late 60's, performing in all major venues, this collaboration brought memorable recordings such as "Heaven That Will Be Good Enough For Me", "Two Wings", "The Lord Is Blessing Me Right Now" and many others. From the 70's until 1990, Cleveland would bring together a number of artists to back him on appearances and records. He backed acts as well, contributing for instance, to one of Elton John's songs,''Boogie Pilgrim.'' He would also continue to appear and record with some of the greatest Gospel Choirs of that time.

Gospel Workshop of America

Cleveland capitalized on his success by founding his own choir, the Southern California Community Choir, as well as a church, Cornerstone Institutional Baptist Church, that went from a handful of congregants (10) to thousands of members during his life. His influence stretched even further: like Dorsey before him, he taught others how to achieve the modern gospel sound through his annual Gospel Singers Workshop Convention, put on by the Gospel Music Workshop of America ("GMWA"), an organization that Cleveland founded along with Queen of Gospel Albertina Walker, and now which has over 30,000 members in 150 chapters. The GMWA has produced, among others, John P. Kee.

Musical style

The style he pioneered — large disciplined organizations who used complex arrangements and unusual time signatures to turn their massive vocal power to achieve the propulsive rhythms, intricate harmonies and individual virtuosity of the greatest groups of gospel's Golden Age — was still the wellspring for the mass choirs of that era.

Death and controversy

Cleveland died in 1991 in Culver City, California. Though his death has often been euphemistically labeled as having been as a result of heart failure, there has been an enduring question as to whether or not Cleveland actually succumbed to AIDS-related complications. Cleveland is interred at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. and meanwhile neither of the aforementioned controversial issues is widely wished to be brought up for discussion within the gospel music community.

Awards

Grammy Award won for Best Gospel Album by a Choir or Chorus 1990: The Southern California Community Choir: ''Having Church'' Grammy Award won for Best Soul Gospel Performance, Traditional 1980: James Cleveland & The Charles Fold Singers: ''Lord, Let Me Be an Instrument'' Grammy Award won for Best Soul Gospel Performance, Traditional 1977: James Cleveland: ''James Cleveland Live at Carnegie Hall'' Grammy Award won for Best Soul Gospel Performance 1974: James Cleveland & The Southern California Community Choir: ''In the Ghetto''

References

;Other References

External links

Biography of Rev. James Cleveland

Category:American gospel singers Category:African American musicians Category:Musicians from Chicago, Illinois Category:Savoy Records artists Category:1931 births Category:1991 deaths Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Burials at Inglewood Park Cemetery Category:Baptists from the United States