Salutory advice from Sir Peter Medawar

Apparently Richard Dawkins has decided that the time has come to turn up the heat on 'faithheads', to use his measured and rational expression, by employing ridicule and contempt. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/apr/30/religion-atheism-dawkins-contempt He suggests that his colleagues turn to the writings of the late Sir Peter Medawar for an exemplar, specifically Medawar's famous review of Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man.

If one relies to the extent that Dawkins does on do-it-yourself intellectual history then one will often turn up such rich ironies for others to enjoy. Few would have appreciated Medawar's dissection of Teilhard's 'incoherent rhapsody' as much as orthodox Catholic theologians. More seriously, it must be hoped that Dawkins uses his recent retirement for a careful (re)reading of Medawar. I would suggest that he starts with Advice to a Young Scientist, which contains some advice that old scientists might heed, specifically:

'there is no quicker way for a scientist to bring discredit upon himself and upon his profession than roundly to declare – particularly when no declaration of any kind is called for – that science knows, or soon will know, the answers to all questions worth asking, and that questions which do not admit a scientific answer are in some way non-questions.. that only simpletons ask and only the gullible profess to be able to answer. The existence of a limit to science is .. made clear by its inability to answer childlike elementary questions having to do with first and last things – questions such as "How did everything begin?"; "What are we all here for?"; "What is the point of living"’