Part of a series on
Fertile Crescent mythology
Mesopotamian religion
Primordial beings Apsû & Tiamat Lahmu & Lahamu Anshar & Kishar Mummu
Seven gods who decree Four primary Anu Enlil Ki Enki Three sky Ishtar Sin Sama
The great gods Adad Annunaki Asaruludu Ashnan Enbilulu Enkimdu Ereshkigal Inanna Lahar Nanshe Nergal Nidaba Ningal Ninkasi Ninlil Ninsun Ninurta & his heroic mace Nusku Uttu
Demigods & heroes Adapa Enkidu Enmerkar Geshtinanna Gilgamesh Lugalbanda Shamhat Siduri Tammuz Utnapishtim
Spirits & monsters Good beings Humbaba Kingu Kishar Mamitu Siris Zu Evil beings Asag Edimmu Hanbi Kur Lamashtu Namtar Pazuzu Rabisu
Tales from Babylon Enûma Eliš Atra-Hasis Marduk & Sarpanit Agasaya Bel Kingu Mami Nabu
Other traditions
Arabian Levantine Near Eastern religions
v t e

In Sumerian mythology, Anu (also An; (from Sumerian *An 𒀭 = sky, heaven)) was a sky-god, the god of heaven, lord of constellations, king of gods, Consort of Antu, spirits and demons, and dwelt in the highest heavenly regions. It was believed that he had the power to judge those who had committed crimes, and that he had created the stars as soldiers to destroy the wicked. His attribute was the royal tiara. His attendant and minister of state was the god Ilabrat.

He was one of the oldest gods in the Sumerian pantheon, and part of a triad including Enlil, god of the air and Enki, god of water. He was called Anu by the Akkadians. By virtue of being the first figure in a triad consisting of Anu, Enlil, and Enki (also known as Ea), Anu came to be regarded as the father and at first, king of the gods. Anu is so prominently associated with the E-anna temple in the city of Uruk (biblical Erech) in southern Babylonia that there are good reasons for believing this place to have been the original seat of the Anu cult. If this is correct, then the goddess Inanna (or Ishtar) of Uruk may at one time have been his consort.

Sumerian religion[link]

Ur III Sumerian cuneiform for An (and determiner for deity DINGIR)..

Anu had several consorts, the foremost being Ki (earth), Nammu, and Uras. By Ki he was the father of, among others, the Annuna gods. By Uras he was the father of Nin'insinna. According to legends, heaven and earth were once inseparable until An and Ki bore Enlil, god of the air, who cleaved heaven and earth in two. An and Ki were, in some texts, identified as brother and sister being the children of Anshar and Kishar. Ki later developed into the Akkadian goddess Antu. Also known as "Keffen Anu," "Kef," and "Keffenk Anum."

Anu existed in Sumerian cosmogony as a dome that covered the flat earth; Outside of this dome was the primordial body of water known as Tiamat (not to be confused with the Subterranean "Apsû").^[1]

In Sumerian, the designation "An" was used interchangeably with "the heavens" so that in some cases it is doubtful whether, under the term, the god An or the heavens is being denoted. The Akkadians inherited An as the god of heavens from the Sumerian as Anu-, and in Akkadian cuneiform, the DINGIR character may refer either to Anum, or to the Akkadian word for god, ilu-, and consequently had two phonetic values, an and il. Hittite cuneiform as adapted from the Old Assyrian kept the an value but abandoned il.

Assyro-Babylonian religion[link]

The doctrine once established remained an inherent part of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion and led to the more or less complete disassociation of the three gods constituting the triad from their original local limitations. An intermediate step between Anu viewed as the local deity of Uruk, Enlil as the god of Nippur, and Ea as the god of Eridu is represented by the prominence which each one of the centres associated with the three deities in question must have acquired, and which led to each one absorbing the qualities of other gods so as to give them a controlling position in an organized pantheon. For Nippur we have the direct evidence that its chief deity, En-lil, was once regarded as the head of the Sumerian pantheon. The sanctity and, therefore, the importance of Eridu remained a fixed tradition in the minds of the people to the latest days, and analogy therefore justifies the conclusion that Anu was likewise worshipped in a centre which had acquired great prominence.

The summing-up of divine powers manifested in the universe in a threefold division represents an outcome of speculation in the schools attached to the temples of Babylonia, but the selection of Anu, Enlil (and later Marduk), and Ea for the three representatives of the three spheres recognized, is due to the importance which, for one reason or the other, the centres in which Anu, Enlil, and Ea were worshipped had acquired in the popular mind. Each of the three must have been regarded in his centre as the most important member in a larger or smaller group, so that their union in a triad marks also the combination of the three distinctive pantheons into a harmonious whole.

In the astral theology of Babylonia and Assyria, Anu, Enlil, and Ea became the three zones of the ecliptic, the northern, middle and southern zone respectively. The purely theoretical character of Anu is thus still further emphasized, and in the annals and votive inscriptions as well as in the incantations and hymns, he is rarely introduced as an active force to whom a personal appeal can be made. His name becomes little more than a synonym for the heavens in general and even his title as king or father of the gods has little of the personal element in it. A consort Antum (or as some scholars prefer to read, Anatum) is assigned to him, on the theory that every deity must have a female associate. But Anu spent so much time on the ground protecting the Sumerians he left her in Heaven and then met Innin, whom he renamed Innan, or, "Queen of Heaven". She was later known as Ishtar. Anu resided in her temple the most, and rarely went back up to Heaven. He is also inclued in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and is a major character in the clay tablets.

See also[link]

	Mythology portal
	Ancient Near East portal

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Anu.

• Hurrian mythology
• Jabru
• Melek Taus
• Mesopotamian mythology

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Jordon, Michael (1993). Encyclopedia of Gods: Over 2,500 Deities of the World. New York: Facts on File, Inc.. ISBN 978-0-8160-2909-9. 
• Kramer, Samuel N. Sumerian Mythology: a Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

v t e Sumerian mythology An • Apsu • Anshar • Enki • Enlil • Isinu • Nammu • Antu • Ninki • Zu • Ninhursag • Ereshkigal • Hushbishag • Ishtar • Kingu • Nanna • Nebo • Nabu • Namtar • Nergal • Nidaba • Ningal • Ninisinna • Ninkasi • Ninlil • Sin • Tiamat • Utu • Nusku • Utukku • Shamash • Dumuzi • Gilgamesh • Geshtinanna • Gugalanna • Huwawa • Enkidu • Inanna

David Icke
Icke in 2008
Born	David Vaughan Icke (1952-04-29) 29 April 1952 (age 60) Leicester, England
Residence	Ryde, Isle of Wight
Occupation	Writer and speaker
Years active	Since 1990
Known for	Football, television sports, books on global politics
Political party	Formerly the Green Party
Website
www.davidicke.com Icke's YouTube channel.

David Vaughan Icke (pronounced /aɪk/, or IKE, born 29 April 1952) is an English writer and public speaker, best known for his views on what he calls "who and what is really controlling the world." Describing himself as the most controversial speaker in the world, he is the author of 19 books and has attracted a global following that cuts across the political spectrum. His 533-page The Biggest Secret (1999) has been called "the Rosetta Stone for conspiracy junkies."^[1]

Icke was a well-known BBC television sports presenter and spokesman for the Green Party, when in 1990 a psychic told him he was a healer who had been placed on Earth for a purpose, and that the spirit world was going to pass messages to him so he could educate others. In March 1991 he held a press conference to announce that he was a "Son of the Godhead" – a phrase he said later the media had misunderstood – and the following month told the BBC's Terry Wogan show that the world would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes. He said the show changed his life, turning him from a respected household name into someone who was laughed at whenever he appeared in public.^[2]

He continued nevertheless to develop his ideas, and in four books published over seven years—The Robots' Rebellion (1994), And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), The Biggest Secret (1999), and Children of the Matrix (2001)—set out a moral and political worldview that combined New-Age spiritualism with a passionate denunciation of totalitarian trends in the modern world. At the heart of his theories lies the idea that a secret group of reptilian humanoids called the Babylonian Brotherhood controls humanity, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.^[3]

Michael Barkun has described Icke's position as "New Age conspiracism," writing that he is the most fluent of the conspiracist genre. Richard Kahn and Tyson Lewis argue that the reptilian hypothesis may simply be Swiftian satire, a way of giving ordinary people a narrative with which to question what they see around them.^[4]

Personal life and career[link]

Early life and education[link]

Icke was born in Leicester General Hospital to Beric Vaughan Icke and Barbara J. Icke, née Cooke, who were married in Leicester in 1951. Icke was the middle child; there was a brother seven years older, and another seven years younger. Beric had wanted to be a doctor, but his family had no money, so he joined the Royal Air Force instead. He was awarded a British Empire Medal for gallantry in May 1943 after helping to save the crew of an aircraft that had crashed into the Chipping Warden air base in Oxfordshire. Along with a Squadron Leader, he ran into the burning aircraft, without protective clothing, and saved the life of a crew member who was trapped inside.^[5]

After the war, Beric got a job in the Gents clock factory, and the family lived in a slum terraced house on Lead Street, near Wharf Street in the centre of Leicester. When Icke was three, they moved to a housing estate known as the Goodwood, one of the 1950s council estates the post-war Labour government built. "To say we were skint," he wrote in 1993, "is like saying it is a little chilly at the North Pole." He remembers having to hide under a window or chair when the council man came to collect the rent—after knocking, the rent man would walk round the house peering through the windows to see whether anyone was at home. His mother never explained that it was about the rent; she just told him to hide, and Icke writes that he still gets a fright whenever he hears a knock on the door.^[6]

He was always a loner, spending hours playing with toy steam trains, and preferring to cross the street rather than speak to anyone. He attended Whitehall Infant School, then Whitehall Junior School, where he spent most of his time feeling nervous and shy, often to the point of almost fainting during the morning assembly and having to leave before he passed out. The family doctor suggested a referral to a child psychologist, but his father put his foot down.^[7]

Football and first marriage[link]

He made no effort at school and failed at practically everything, but when he was nine, he was chosen for the junior school's football team. It was the first time he had succeeded at anything, and he came to see football as his way out of poverty. He played in goal, which he writes suited the loner in him and gave him a sense of living on the edge between hero and villain.^[7]

After failing his 11-plus exam in 1963, he was sent to the city's Crown Hills Secondary Modern, rather than the local grammar school, where he was given a trial for the Leicester Boys Under-Fourteen team. He decided to leave school at 15 after being talent-spotted by Coventry City, who signed him up in 1967 as their youth team's goalkeeper. He also played for Oxford United's reserve team and Northampton Town, on loan from Coventry. Rheumatoid arthritis in his left knee, which later spread to the right knee, ankles, elbows, wrists, and hands, stopped him from making a career out of football. Despite often being in agony during training, he managed to play part-time for Hereford United – including in the first team when they were in the Fourth Division of the English Football League, and when they were promoted to Division Three – before the pain in his joints forced him to retire in 1973 at the age of 21.^[9]

He met his first wife, Linda Atherton, in May 1971 at a dance at the Chesford Grange Hotel near Leamington Spa; she was working as a van driver for a garage in Leamington. Shortly after they met, Icke had another one of the huge rows he had started having with his father—always a domineering man, his father was upset that Icke's arthritis was interfering with his football career—so he packed his bags and left home. He moved into a tiny bedsit and worked in a local travel agency during the day, travelling to Hereford twice a week in the evenings to play football. He and Linda were married on September 30 that year, four months after they'd met. A daughter was born in March 1975, followed by a son in December 1981, and another son in November 1992. Though the couple divorced in 2001, they remain good friends; she runs his publishing arm, David Icke Books, as well as producing some of his DVDs.^[10]

Sports presenter[link]

The loss of his position with Hereford meant that he and his wife had to sell their home, and for several weeks they lived apart, each moving in with their parents, but he found a job in 1973 as a reporter with the weekly Leicester Advertiser, through a contact who was a sports editor at the Daily Mail. He moved on to the Leicester News Agency, and through them did some programmes for BBC Radio Leicester, then worked his way up through the Loughborough Monitor, the Leicester Mercury, and BRMB Radio in Birmingham.^[11]

He worked for two months in Saudi Arabia in 1975, helping them run their national football team; it was intended to be a longer-term position, but he missed his wife and new daughter so much that he decided not to return after his first holiday back to the UK. He got his job back at BRMB, then applied successfully to work for Midlands Today at the BBC's Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham, and in 1981 moved on to become a sports presenter for the BBC's national programme, Newsnight. The following year he achieved his ambition when offered a job co-hosting Grandstand, at the time the BBC's flagship national sports programme.^[12]

He moved in 1982 to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, somewhere he had always wanted to live. He appeared on the first edition of British television's first national breakfast show, the BBC's Breakfast Time, on 17 January 1983, presenting the sports news for them until 1985. He also published his first book that year, It's a tough game, son!, about how to break into football.^[13]

He continued to work for BBC Sport until 1990, often on Grandstand and snooker programmes, and also at the 1988 Summer Olympics, but despite his professional success – he was by then a household name – a career in television began to lose its appeal for him. He wrote in Tales from the Time Loop (2003) that he was beginning to find television workers insincere, shallow, and vicious, with rare exceptions.^[14] His contract with the BBC was terminated in August 1990 thanks to a political row, when he refused to pay his Community Charge, a controversial local tax introduced that year in England by Margaret Thatcher. He did end up paying it, but his announcement that he was willing to go to jail rather than pay prompted the BBC, by charter an impartial public-service broadcaster, to distance itself from him.^[15]

Green Party, meeting with psychic healer[link]

Icke had begun to flirt with fringe medicine and New Age philosophies during the 1980s, in an effort to find relief from his arthritis, and this encouraged his interest in Green politics.^[16] He wrote his second book in 1989, It Doesn't Have To Be Like This, an outline of his views on the environment, and became involved with the Green Party from 1988 to 1991, rising to become one of their four Principal Speakers, a position the party had created in lieu of a leader. The Observer called him "the Greens' Tony Blair."^[17] He was regularly seen at high-profile events. He was invited in 1989 to debate animal rights during a televised debate at the Royal Institute of Great Britain, alongside Tom Regan, Mary Warnock, and Germaine Greer, and in September 1990 his name appeared on advertisements for a children's charity along with Audrey Hepburn, Woody Allen, and other celebrities.^[18]

He wrote that 1989 was a time of considerable personal despair for him, and it was during this period that he began to feel a presence around him.^[19] In March 1990 he had a sudden feeling while standing in newsagent's that a magnetic force was pulling his feet to the ground, and said he heard a voice tell him to look at a particular section of books. One of the books there was by Betty Shine, a psychic healer in Brighton. He decided to visit her to ask for help with his arthritis.^[20]

Icke said he had a mystical experience near this pre-Inca burial site in Peru.

Shine told him during their third meeting that she had a message for him from Wang Yee Lee, a being who she said looked like a Chinese mandarin and had Socrates standing next to him.^[21] The message was that Icke had been sent to heal the Earth. He would become famous, but would face opposition. The spirit world was going to pass ideas to him, which he would speak about to others, sometimes not understanding the words himself. She said he would write five books in three years; that in 20 years there would be a different kind of flying machine, where we could go wherever we wanted and time would have no meaning; and there would be earthquakes in unusual places, because the inner earth was being destabilized by having oil taken from the seabed.^[22]

As part of the process of making sense of this, he decided in February 1991 to visit the pre-Inca Sillustani burial ground near Puno, Peru, and while there felt drawn to a large mound of earth, at the top of which lay a circle of waist-high stones. As he stood in the circle, he again felt his feet pulled to the earth as if by a magnet, and an urge to outstretch his arms. His feet started vibrating, and his head felt as though a drill was passing through it. Two thoughts entered his mind: that people will be talking about this in 100 years, and then, "it will be over when you feel the rain." He said his body started shaking as though plugged into an electrical socket and new ideas began to pour into him. Then it started raining, and the experience ended as suddenly as it had begun. He described it later as the "kundalini"—a term from Indian yoga describing a libidinal force that lies coiled at the base of the spine—exploding up through his spine, activating his brain and his chakras, or energy centres, triggering a higher level of consciousness.^[23]

He returned to England and began to write a book about the experience, Truth Vibrations, which was published in May that year. At a Green Party conference in Wolverhampton on 20 March 1991, before the book appeared, he resigned from the party, telling them he was about to be at the centre of "tremendous and increasing controversy," and winning a standing ovation from them after the announcement.^[24]

Turquoise period[link]

What followed was what Icke calls his "turquoise period." He writes that he had been channelling for some time, and had received a message through automatic writing that he was a "Son of the Godhead," interpreting "Godhead" as the "Infinite Mind."^[25] He now began to wear only turquoise, which he saw as a conduit for positive energy. He had met Deborah Shaw, an English psychic living in Calgary, Alberta, in August 1990, and after he returned from Peru, they began a relationship, which led to the birth of a daughter in December 1991. At one point, Shaw moved in with him and his wife. Shaw changed her name to Mari Shawsun, while Icke's wife became known as Michaela, which she said was an aspect of the Archangel Michael. They became known in the press as the "turquoise triangle."^[17]

In March 1991, a week after he resigned from the Green Party – and shortly after his father died – the three of them held a press conference to announce that Icke was a son of the Godhead. He said the world would end in 1997, preceded by a number of disasters, including a severe hurricane around the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, eruptions in Cuba, disruption in China, a hurricane in Derry, and an earthquake on the Isle of Arran. Los Angeles would become an island, New Zealand would disappear, and the cliffs of Kent would be under water by Christmas. He told reporters the information was being given to them by voices and automatic writing.^[26]

He wrote in 1993 that he had felt out of control during the press conference. He heard his voice predict the end of the world, and was appalled. "I was speaking the words, but all the time I could hear the voice of the brakes in the background saying, 'David, what the hell are you saying?'" His predictions were splashed all over the next day's front pages, to his great dismay.^[27]

Terry Wogan interview[link]

The headlines attracted an invitation to appear on the BBC's prime-time Terry Wogan show, Wogan, on 29 April 1991. When asked if he was claiming to be the son of God, he did not disagree, and amid laughter from the studio audience, he repeated that Britain would soon be devastated by tidal waves and earthquakes.^[28] He also talked about politics and the environment:

When you survey the world today ... when a child dies in this world of preventable disease every two seconds, when the economic system of this world must destroy the Earth simply for that system to survive; when you see all the wars, and when you see all the pain, and when you see all the suffering, is it a force of love and wisdom and tolerance that is in control of this planet?^[30]

The interview proved devastating for him. The BBC was criticized for allowing it to go ahead, Des Christy in The Guardian calling it a "media crucifixion."^[31] Wogan interviewed Icke again in 2006, acknowledging that his comments during the first interview had been "a bit sharp."^[28] Icke disappeared from public life for a time, unable to walk down the street without people mocking him. His children were followed to school by journalists and ridiculed by schoolmates, and his wife would open the back door to get the washing in only to find a camera crew filming her.^[32] He told Jon Ronson in 2001:

One of my very greatest fears as a child was being ridiculed in public. And there it was coming true. As a television presenter, I'd been respected. People come up to you in the street and shake your hand and talk to you in a respectful way. And suddenly, overnight, this was transformed into "Icke's a nutter." I couldn't walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at. It was a nightmare. My children were devastated because their dad was a figure of ridicule.^[29]

Writing and lecturing[link]

Icke said the interview had been the making of him in the end, that the laughter had set him free. He wrote that every bridge back to his past was ablaze, giving him the courage to develop his ideas without caring what anyone thought of him.^[33] He continued to write, turning himself into a prolific and popular author and speaker, and in 1995 set up his own publisher, Bridge of Love Publications, later called David Icke Books.^[34] He met his second wife, Pamela Leigh Richards, in Jamaica in 1997. He and Linda divorced in 2001, though they remain the best of friends, and she is involved in the management of his publishing business. He and Pamela married in 2001 and separated in 2008.^[35]

Icke addressed the Oxford Union in 2008.

Lewis and Kahn write that Icke has produced a consolidation of all conspiracy theories into one project with unlimited explanatory power, his work cutting across class lines and political divisions.^[36] By 2006 he had lectured in 25 countries, his lectures were attracting audiences of several thousand, his books had been translated into eight languages, and his website was getting 600,000 hits a week. The Biggest Secret went through six reprintings between 1999 and 2006, and Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster (2002) became a top-five seller in South Africa.^[34]

He has become known in particular for his lengthy lectures, sometimes speaking for up to eight hours, then selling DVDs of the talks produced by his ex-wife, Linda Atherton. In February 2008 he was invited to address the Oxford Union, the University of Oxford's debating society. His book tour for Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More (2010) encompassed lectures in Australia, Croatia, the Netherlands, and the United States, and ends in October 2012 with a talk at London's Wembley Arena, tickets ranging from ₤35 to ₤55. During the tour, he received a standing ovation in November 2011 in New York after an eight-hour lecture to a 2,000-strong crowd at the Nokia Theater in Times Square.^[37]

He stood for parliament in the UK in July 2008 as "Big Brother—The Big Picture" in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, coming 12th with 110 votes and losing his deposit. He explained that he stood because, "if we don't face this now we are going to have some serious explaining to do when we are asked by our children and grandchildren what we were doing when the global fascist state was installed. 'I was watching EastEnders, dear' will not be good enough."^[38]

Key ideas[link]

Icke combines metaphysical discussion about the nature of the universe and consciousness with conspiracy theories about public figures being satanic paedophiles, and how apparently random events are attempts to control humanity. He argued in The Biggest Secret that human beings originated in a breeding program run by a race of reptilians called Anunnaki from the Draco constellation, and that what we call reality is just a holographic experience; the only reality is the realm of the Absolute. He believes in a collective consciousness that has intentionality; in reincarnation; in other possible worlds that exist alongside ours on other frequencies; and in acquired characteristics, arguing that our experiences change our DNA by downloading new information and overwriting the software. We are also able to attract experiences to ourselves by means of good and bad thoughts.^[39]

Global Elite[link]

Icke argues that humanity was created by a network of secret societies run by an ancient race of interbreeding bloodlines from the Middle and Near East, originally extraterrestrial. Icke calls them the "Babylonian Brotherhood." The Brotherhood is mostly male. Their children are raised from an early age to understand the mission; those who fail to understand it are pushed aside. The spread of the reptilian bloodline encompasses what Norman Simms calls the odd and ill-matched, extending to 43 American presidents, three British and two Canadian prime ministers, various Sumerian kings and Egyptian pharaohs, and a smattering of celebrities such as Bob Hope. Key Brotherhood bloodlines are the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, various European royal and aristocratic families, the establishment families of the Eastern United States, and the British House of Windsor—Icke identified the Queen Mother in 2001 as "seriously reptilian."^[40]

The Illuminati, Round Table, Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations, are all Brotherhood created and controlled, as are the media, military, CIA, Mossad, science, religion, and the Internet, with witting or unwitting support from the London School of Economics.^[41] At the apex of the Brotherhood stands the "Global Elite," identified throughout history as the Illuminati, and at the top of the Global Elite stand the "Prison Wardens." The goal of the Brotherhood—their "Great Work of Ages"—is world domination and a micro-chipped population.^[40]

Reptoid hypothesis[link]

Icke introduced the reptoid hypothesis in The Biggest Secret (1999), which identified the Brotherhood as descendents of reptilians from the constellation Draco, who walk on two legs and appear human, and who live in tunnels and caverns inside the earth. He argues that the reptilians are the race of gods known as the Anunnaki in the Babylonian creation myth, Enûma Eliš.^[42] According to Barkun, Icke's idea of "inner-earth reptilians" is not new, though he has done more than most to expand it.^[43]

The Draco constellation from Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius, 1690. Icke's "reptoid hypothesis" posits that humanity is ruled by descendents of reptilians from Draco.^[44]

Lewis and Kahn write that Icke has taken his "ancient astronaut" narrative from the Israeli-American writer, Zecharia Sitchin, who argued—for example in Divine Encounters (1995)—that the Anunnaki had come to Earth for its precious metals. Icke argues that they came specifically for "monoatomic gold," a mineral he says can increase the carrying capacity of the nervous system ten thousandfold. After ingesting it, the reptilians can process vast amounts of information, speed up trans-dimensional travel, and shapeshift from reptilian to human form.^[45] They use human fear, guilt, and aggression as energy. "Thus we have the encouragement of wars," he wrote in 1999, "human genocide, the mass slaughter of animals, sexual perversions which create highly charged negative energy, and black magic ritual and sacrifice which takes place on a scale that will stagger those who have not studied the subject."^[46] Lewis and Kahn argue that Icke is using allegory to depict the alien, and alienating, nature of global capitalism.^[47]

Icke writes that the Anunnaki have crossbred with human beings, the breeding lines chosen for political reasons, arguing that they are the Watchers, the fallen angels, or "Grigori," who mated with human women in the Biblical apocrypha. Their first reptilian-human hybrid, possibly Adam, was created 200,000–300,000 years ago. There was a second breeding program 30,000 years ago, and a third 7,000 years ago. It is the half-bloods of the third breeding program who today control the world, more Anunnaki than human, he writes. They have a powerful, hypnotic stare, the origin of the phrase to "give someone the evil eye," and their hybrid DNA allows them to shapeshift when they consume human blood.^[48]

In Children of the Matrix (2001), he added that the Anunnaki bred with another extraterrestrial race called the "Nordics," who had blond hair and blue eyes, to produce a race of human slave masters, the Aryans. The Aryans retain many reptilian traits, including cold-blooded attitudes, a desire for top-down control, and an obsession with ritual, lending them a tendency toward fascism, rationalism, and racism. Lewis and Kahn write that, with the Nordic hypothesis, Icke is mirroring standard claims by the far right that the Aryan bloodline has ruled the Earth throughout history.^[49]

Dimensions[link]

The reptilians not only come from another planet, but are also from another dimension, the lower level of the fourth dimension, the one nearest the physical world. Icke writes that the universe consists of an infinite number of frequencies or dimensions that share the same space, just like television and radio frequencies. Some people can tune their consciousness to other wavelengths, which is what psychic power consists of, and it is from one of these other dimensions that the Anunnaki are controlling this world—though just as fourth-dimensional reptilians control us, they are controlled, in turn, by a fifth dimension. The lower level of the fourth dimension is what others call the "lower astral dimension." Icke argued that it is where demons live, the entities Satanists summon during their rituals. They are, in fact, summoning the reptilians.^[50] Barkun argues that the introduction of different dimensions allows Icke to skip awkward questions about which part of the universe the reptilians come from, and how they got here.^[51]

Problem-reaction-solution[link]

In Tales From The Time Loop (2003), Icke argues that most organized religions, especially Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are Illuminati creations designed to divide and conquer the human race through endless conflicts, as are racial, ethnic, and sexual divisions. He cites the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 as examples of events organized by the Global Elite.^[52] The incidents allow the Elite to respond in whatever way they intended to act in the first place, a concept Icke calls "order out of chaos," or "problem-reaction-solution". He writes that there are few, if any, public events that are not engineered, or at least used, by the Brotherhood:^[17]

Image by Neil Hague from Icke's Infinite Love is the Only Truth (2005), showing the Brotherhood, or "Red Dresses." This image depicts George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II as members of the Brotherhood.

You want to introduce something you know the people won't like. ... So you first create a PROBLEM, a rising crime rate, more violence, a terrorist bomb ... You make sure someone else is blamed for this problem ... So you create a "patsy," as they call them in America, a Timothy McVeigh or a Lee Harvey Oswald. ... This brings us to stage two, the REACTION from the people—"This can't go on; what are THEY going to do about it?" ... This allows THEM to then openly offer the SOLUTION to the problems they have created ..."^[53]

Red Dresses[link]

In Infinite Love is the Only Truth (2005), Icke introduces the idea of "reptilian software." He says that there are three kinds of people. The highest level of the Brotherhood are the "Red Dresses." These are "software people," elsewhere called "reptilian software," or "constructs of mind." They lack consciousness and free will, and their human bodies are holographic veils.^[54]

A second group, the so-called "sheeple"—the vast majority of humanity—have what Icke calls "back seat consciousness." They are conscious, but they do whatever they are told and are the main source of energy for the Brotherhood. They include the "repeaters," the people in positions of influence who simply repeat what other people have told them. Doctors repeat what they are told in medical school and by drug companies, teachers repeat what they learned at teacher training college, and journalists are the greatest repeaters of all. The third group, by far the smallest, are those who see through the illusion; they are people like Neo from the film, The Matrix. They are usually dubbed dangerous or mad. The "Red Dress" genetic lines keep obsessively interbreeding to make sure their bloodlines are not weakened by the second or third levels of consciousness, because consciousness can rewrite the software.^[54]

Moon Matrix[link]

The Moon Matrix is introduced in Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More (2010), in which he writes that the Earth and the collective human mind are manipulated from the Moon, a spacecraft and inter-dimensional, inter-density portal controlled by the reptilians. The Moon Matrix is a broadcast from that spacecraft to the "human body-computer," specifically to the left hemisphere of the brain, which gives us our sense of reality. He writes: "We are living in a dreamworld within a dreamworld—a Matrix within the virtual-reality universe—and it is being broadcast from the Moon." Unless people force themselves to become fully conscious, their minds are the Moon's mind, an idea further explored in his Remember Who You Are: Remember 'Where' You Are and Where You 'Come' From (2012).^[55]

Reception[link]

Protests[link]

In The Robots' Rebellion (1994), Icke introduced the idea that the Global Elite's plan for world domination was laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax published in Russia in 1903, which supposedly presented a plan by the Jewish people to take over the world.^[56] According to Mark Honigsbaum, Icke refers to it 25 times in the Robot's Rebellion, calling it the "Illuminati protocols."^[57]

In his 2001 documentary about Icke, Jon Ronson cited this cartoon, "Rothschild" (1898), by Charles Léandre, arguing that Jews have long been depicted as lizard-like creatures out to control the world.^[58]

The Protocols portrays the Jewish people as "cackling villains from a Saturday matinee," as Jon Ronson put it in his documentary about Icke, David Icke, the Lizards and the Jews (2001).^[56] It was published in English in 1920 by The Dearborn Independent, Henry Ford's newspaper, becoming mixed up with conspiracy theories about anti-Christian Illuminati, international financiers, and the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking dynasty. After it was exposed that year as a hoax by The Times of London, Michael Barkun writes that it disappeared from mainstream discourse until interest in it was renewed by the American far right in the 1950s.^[56] Barkun argues that Icke's reference to it is the first of a number of instances of him moving dangerously close to antisemitism.^[59]

Icke's use of the Protocols was greeted with dismay by the Green Party's executive. They had allowed him to address the party's annual conference in 1992, despite the controversy over his Wogan interview, but in September 1994 decided to deny him a platform.^[60] Icke wrote to The Guardian protesting against the decision, denying that The Robots' Rebellion was antisemitic, and rejecting racism, sexism and prejudice of any kind, but in the same letter insisted that whoever wrote the Protocols "knew the game plan" for the 20th century.^[61] Barkun argues that Icke was trying to have it both ways, offended by the allegation of antisemitism while "hinting at the dark activities of Jewish elites."^[62]

Alick Bartholomew of Gateway, Icke's former publisher, said that an early draft of And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995) contained material questioning the Holocaust, and that Icke was dropped because of it.^[57] Sam Taylor wrote in The Observer in 1997 that, having read the material, he did not believe it was antisemitic, but argued that Icke was "tapping into a seriously paranoid, aggressive strain in U.S. society."^[63] Louis Theroux cautioned in 2001 that it might not only be unfair to Icke to allege that he is associating Jews with the Global Elite, but it also lends a seriousness to ideas that would otherwise not deserve it.^[64] Icke said it was "friggin' nonsense" that his reptiles represented Jews. "There is a tribe of people interbreeding," he told Jon Ronson in 2001, "which do not, do not, relate to any Earth race ... This is not a Jewish plot. This is not a plot on the world by Jewish people".^[65]

Icke was briefly detained by immigration officials when he entered Canada in 2000, after his name was added to a watch list because of complaints from the Canadian Jewish Congress.^[66] His books were removed from Indigo Books, a Canadian chain, and several stops on his speaking tour were cancelled, as was a lecture in October 2000 at Blackheath Concert Halls in London, for the same reason.^[67] Human rights lawyer Richard Warman, working at the time for the Canadian Green Party, took credit for much of this in Jon Ronson's documentary about Icke, which catalogued some of the cancelled appearances.^[68]

Academic views[link]

Michael Barkun of Syracuse University writes that Icke is the most fluent of the conspiracy writers.^[69]

Michael Barkun sees Icke as a professional conspiracy theorist of the Alex Jones variety, and the most fluent of the genre.^[69] He calls Icke's work "improvisational millennialism," with an end-of-history scenario involving a final battle between good and evil. Because everything is connected in the conspiracist world view, Barkun writes, every source can be mined for links. The greater the stigma attached to an idea, the more attractive it becomes, and the vehemence with which the mainstream rejects an idea is almost a measure of its validity. For Icke, the widespread ridiculing of the lizard theory is a guarantee that there's something to it, Barkun argues.^[51]

According to Barkun, Icke has actively tried to cultivate the far right. In 1996, he spoke to a conference in Reno, Nevada, alongside opponents of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act—which mandates background checks on people who buy guns in the United States—including Kirk Lyons, a white nationalist lawyer who has represented the Ku Klux Klan.^[51]

Barkun argues that the relationship between Icke, the militias, and the Christian Patriots is complex because of the New Age baggage Icke brings with him, and he stresses that Icke is not actually a member of any of these groups, but he has nevertheless absorbed the world view of the radical right virtually intact. "There is no fuller explication of its beliefs about ruling elites than Icke's," he writes. Icke regards Christian patriots as the only Americans who understand the truth about the New World Order, but he also told a Christian patriot group: "I don't know which I dislike more, the world controlled by the Brotherhood, or the one you want to replace it with."^[51]

Tyson Lewis and Richard Kahn see Icke differently, more as a spiritual philosopher, arguing that it's not clear he believes in the reptilians himself. They write that there is an almost obsessive-compulsive element to his writing, which includes anything he can find to support a narrative that connects ancient Sumer to modern America, in a way that "defies the laws of academic gravity," and which they say offers unlimited explanatory power. They argue that the lizards may be allegorical, a Swiftian satire intended to alert people to the emergence of a global fascist state. In Children of the Matrix, Icke writes that, if the reptilians did not exist, we would have to invent them. "In fact," he says, "we probably have. They are other levels of ourselves putting ourselves in our face."^[70]

Lewis and Kahn make use of Douglas Kellner's distinction in Media Spectacle (1995) between a reactionary clinical paranoia—a mindset dissociated from reality—and a progressive, critical paranoia that confronts power. They argue that Icke displays elements of both, writing that what they call his "postmodern metanarrative" may be a way of giving ordinary people a narrative structure within which to question what they see around them.^[71]

Works[link]

Books

Video

See also[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: David Icke

• Erich von Däniken
• Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa
• Zecharia Sitchin

Notes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• DavidIcke.com.
• Banyan, Will. "The Big Picture" A review of Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster (pdf), Paranoia Magazine, October 2003.
• Kay, Jonathan. "When paranoia goes intergalactic", The National Post, 12 May 2011.
• Shermer, Michael. "Illuminati, The New World Order & Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists (PCTs)", The Skeptic's Dictionary, 2006.
• Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. Mjf Books, 1997.

Audio/video

• Britton, Fern. Interview with David Icke, 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, BBC's Coast to Coast People, 1991.
• Icke, David. Presenting snooker, BBC, 1980s.
• Icke, David. "Does the Animal Kingdom need a Bill of Rights?", Royal Institute of Great Britain, Arena, BBC 2, 1989.
• Icke, David. "Live at the Oxford Union", February 2008.
• Icke, David. "Still crazy after all these years", from The Lion Sleeps No More DVD, 2010.
• Kent, Arthur. "Secret Societies", interview with David Icke, History Channel, 2001.
• Maher, Bill. Interview with David Icke, Religulous, 2008.

Richard Dawkins
Dawkins in 2010 at Cooper Union in New York City
Born	Clinton Richard Dawkins (1941-03-26) 26 March 1941 (age 71) Nairobi, Kenya Colony
Nationality	British
Education	MA, DPhil (Oxon)
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation	Ethologist
Years active	1967–present
Employer	University of California, Berkeley University of Oxford
Organization	Fellow of the Royal Society Fellow 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 work(s)	The Selfish Gene (1976) The Extended Phenotype (1982) The Blind Watchmaker (1986) The God Delusion (2006)
Influenced by	Charles Darwin, Ronald Fisher, George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, Daniel Dennett, Bertrand Russell, Nikolaas Tinbergen, John Maynard Smith, Robert Trivers
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 Dawkins Jean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner)
Awards	ZSL Silver Medal (1989) Faraday Award (1990) Kistler Prize (2001)
Website
The Richard Dawkins Foundation

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,^[1] and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.^[2]

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.^[3]

Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement.^[4] 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."^[5] As of January 2010 the English-language version has sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages.^[6]

Biography[link]

Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya.^[7] His father, Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010),^[8] was an agricultural civil servant in the British colonial service, in Nyasaland (now Malawi). Dawkins has a younger sister.^[9] His father was called up into the King's African Rifles during World War II,^[10][11] returning to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited a country estate, Over Norton Park, which he turned into a commercial farm.^[8] Both his parents were interested in natural sciences; they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms.^[12]

Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing".^[13] He was confirmed, and embraced Christianity until his mid-teens, at which point he concluded that the theory of evolution was a better explanation for life's complexity, and ceased believing in a god.^[9] Dawkins states: "the main residual reason why I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life and feeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realised that Darwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under the argument of design. And that left me with nothing."^[9]

He attended Oundle, a Church of England school,^[9] from 1954 to 1959. He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Nobel Prize–winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, graduating in 1962. He continued as a research student under Tinbergen's supervision, receiving his M.A. and D.Phil. degrees by 1966, and remained a research assistant for another year.^[7] Tinbergen was a pioneer in the study of animal behaviour, particularly in the areas of instinct, learning and choice.^[14] Dawkins' research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.^[15]

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.^[16] 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",^[17] and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.^[18]

Since 1970 he has been a fellow of New College.^[19] 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).^[7] 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.^[20]

He has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards,^[7] 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".^[21] 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."^[22]

Personal life[link]

On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married fellow ethologist Marian Stamp in Annestown, County Waterford, Ireland;^[23] they divorced in 1984. Later that same year, on 1 June, he married Eve Barham (19 August 1951^[24]–28 February 1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford).^[24] Dawkins and Barham also divorced^[25] and she later died of cancer.^[26][27] In 1992 he married actress Lalla Ward^[25] in Kensington and Chelsea, London.^[24] Dawkins met her through their mutual friend Douglas Adams,^[28] who had worked with her on the BBC's Doctor Who.

Work[link]

Evolutionary biology[link]

Dawkins at the University of Texas at Austin, March 2008

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".^[29] 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)^[30] and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene.^[31] He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism.^[32] 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.^[33][a] 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.^[34] Dawkins popularised these ideas in The Selfish Gene, and developed them in his own work.^[35]

He has also been strongly critical of the Gaia philosophy theory of the independent scientist James Lovelock.^[36][37][38]

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.^[39] 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."^[40] Another common objection is that genes cannot survive alone, but must cooperate to build an individual, and therefore cannot be an independent "unit".^[41] 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,^[42][43] has criticised gene selection, memetics and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist^[44] 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.^[45]

In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (the so-called 'Darwin Wars'),^[46][47] one faction was often named after Dawkins and its rival after the American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of pertinent ideas.^[48][49] 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.^[50] 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.^[51] 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.^[52] 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.^[53] 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.^[54]

Meme[link]

Dawkins coined the word meme (the behavioural equivalent of a gene) as a way to encourage readers to think about how Darwinian principles might be extended beyond the realm of genes.^[55] Indeed, it was intended as an extension of his "replicators" argument, but it took on a life of its own in the hands of other authors such as Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. These popularisations then led to the emergence of the field of memetics, from which he has distanced himself.^[56]

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.^[57]

Although Dawkins invented the specific term meme independently, he has not claimed that the idea itself was entirely novel,^[58] 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.^[59] 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.^[59] Author James Gleick describes Dawkins’ concept of the meme as "his most famous memorable invention, far more influential than his selfish genes or his later proselytizing against religiosity".^[60]

Criticism of creationism[link]

Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism (the religious belief that humanity, life and the universe were created by a deity,^[61] without recourse to evolution^[62]). He has described the Young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood",^[63] 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.^[64]

Dawkins at the 34th annual conference of American Atheists, 2008

In 1986 Dawkins participated in an 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.^[b] In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of engaging with them at all". He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public."^[65]

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."^[66]

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".^[67] He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler",^[68] 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".^[69]

Advocacy of atheism[link]

Dawkins lecturing on his book The God Delusion, 24 June 2006.

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".^[70] In 1996, when asked if he would 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."^[71] Dawkins is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society,^[72] a vice-president of the British Humanist Association (since 1996),^[7] a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland,^[73] a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board,^[74] a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism,^[75] and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.^[76] In 2003 he became a signatory of the humanist manifesto Humanism and Its Aspirations, published by the American Humanist Association.^[77] As a result of his advocacy of atheism, Dawkins has sometimes been described as a vocal, militant rationalist,^[78][79] and as "the UK's Chief Atheist".^[80]

Dawkins believes that his own atheism is the logical extension of his understanding of evolution^[81] and that religion is largely incompatible with science.^[82] In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins wrote:

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.^[83]

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.^[84] Dawkins is well known for his contempt for religious extremism, from Islamist terrorism^[85] to Christian fundamentalism; but he has also argued with liberal believers and religious scientists, from biologists Kenneth Miller^[86] and Francis Collins^[87] to theologians Alister McGrath and Richard Harries.^[88] 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.^[89] However, he describes himself as a "cultural Christian",^[90] and proposed the slogan "Atheists for Jesus".^[91]

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

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!^[92]

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.^[93][94] The God Delusion was praised by among others the Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto and James D. Watson and by psychologist Steven Pinker.^[95] In the book, Dawkins suggested that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.^[96] He sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination.^[16][97][98] 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.^[98] 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.^[98] 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.^[96]

In January 2006 Dawkins presented a two-part television documentary The Root of All Evil?, addressing what he sees as the malignant influence of religion on society. The title itself is one that Dawkins disliked, noting that religion shouldn't be regarded as the root of all evil.^[99] 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;^[100][101] 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.^[102] 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.^[103]

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.^[104] In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?",^[105] 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".^[106] Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 Sunday Times Literary Festival.^[107]

Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other".^[108] 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.^[109]

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.^[110] 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?"^[111][112] 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."^[84] As examples of "good scientists who are sincerely religious", Dawkins names Arthur Peacocke, Russell Stannard, John Polkinghorne and Francis Collins, but says "I remain baffled ... by their belief in the details of the Christian religion."^{[113][114][115][116][117]} He has said that the publication of The God Delusion is "probably the culmination" of his campaign against religion.^[118]

In 2007 Dawkins founded the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly and proudly.^[119] 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.^[120][121]

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".^{[122][123][124][125][126][127]} As of 8 July 2011, richarddawkins.net is no longer blocked in Turkey.^[128]