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A Devil's Chaplain is a 2003 book of selected essays and other writings by Richard Dawkins. The book contains 32 essays covering subjects including pseudoscience, genetic determinism, memetics, terrorism, religion and creationism. A section of the book is devoted to Dawkins' late adversary Stephen Jay Gould.
The book's title is a reference to a quotation of Charles Darwin, made in reference to Darwin's lack of belief in how "a perfect world" was designed by God: "What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature!"
The book is divided into seven sections as follows:
- Science and Sensibility – essays largely concerning science and the scientific method.
- Light Will Be Thrown – essays on Darwinian topics.
- The Infected Mind – a selection of anti-religious writings.
- They Told Me, Heraclitus – some eulogies for late friends.
- Even the Ranks of Tuscany – a section devoted to the late Stephen Jay Gould.
- There is All Africa and her Prodigies in Us – essays connected with Africa.
- A Prayer for My Daughter – an open letter to Dawkins' daughter Juliet, concerning the importance of evaluating evidence.
External links
- Review by Michael Ruse, 2003. "Through a Glass, Darkly." American Scientist.
Notes
- This was written in 1857 as Darwin worked towards the publication of his theory, and has been related to his memories of his time at university when an "Infidel home missionary tour" by the Reverend Robert Taylor warned Darwin of the dangers of dissent from church doctrine. While Taylor was subsequently nicknamed "the devil's chaplain," the term goes back further, and Geoffrey Chaucer has his Parson say "Flatereres been the develes chapelleyns, that syngen evere placebo."
