The other night, I rewatched most of Richard Dawkins’ two-part documentary, The Root of All Evil? (remember the question mark, he had to fight for it!). Overall, I liked it, but I had a few criticisms that I actually had the opportunity to personally deliver to him last year, which he then asked me to write up and send to him. That’s when I first heard that he was planning a new documentary series. Since then, I have been anxiously waiting to see if its producers would take my criticism seriously.

So, I finally saw the long-awaited first part of Dawkins’ new documentary, Enemies of Reason. I must say they have done a splendid job. Dawkins obviously has more experience this time: the script is better and he’s more relaxed in front of the camera. Of course, this could be related to him not having to face Ted Haggard this time. But still.

I would also say that the program is more complete in terms of what is raised and who is interviewed. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Derren Brown, although I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t do a cold read on Dawkins himself. That would have been a sight for sore eyes! Especially since the medium Dawkins had just visited was a complete failure.

At one point they test self-proclaimed (what else) “dowsers”, whose task is to find bottles of water in a double-blind test. They all fail, obviously. I have seen something similar up close when the Swedish Humanist Association organized a test on Swedish television in which a tarot expert faced fifteen black boxes. In each box there was a different book. All he had to do was place the book name tags in the box on the right. We had even been kind enough to give him a list of the books beforehand so he could prepare. Needless to say, he was unsuccessful; in fact, he didn’t hit any of them. And he did exactly what the dowsers did: after the initial shock, he began to make excuses for why he hadn’t made it.

Parallels to The Root of All Evil? It can be found. Dawkins explores various superstitious practices and beliefs, discusses science and reason, and finally points out that just as religious moderates directly or indirectly empower and protect their extremist brethren, seemingly harmless and superficial spiritualist nonsense is merely a symptom. . from the same disease that gives rise to science-hating postmodernism, paranoid conspiracy theories, and self-serving quackery.

Finally (I can hear you all thinking about it!), what was my review? They heard me? Well, in the first series, there were several instances where science is depicted with cold, hard images of lonely people surrounded by machines, while religion is depicted with warm, blurry images of people gathered together, singing and chanting. In a documentary that tries to speak for science and reason, I think we can do everything we can to avoid falling into the all-too-common prejudice that science is hard, cold, and boring, and that scientists are lonely and socially handicapped. Especially since Dawkins has a way with words like no other when it comes to describing how wonderful this world really is.

And, to my great satisfaction, it actually seems like they listened to someone, if not me. Aside from some historical black and white images of old experiments, what we get when Dawkins talks about science are flowers, beautiful landscapes, smiling people, etc. Good job!