'DNA is so exactly like a computer language'

Britain’s most famous atheist Richard Dawkins has always been a figure of controversy. Part two of his autobiography, now out, picks up from the publication of The Selfish Gene. A combative presence on Twitter, he is a surprisingly much quieter personality behind the scenes.

Brief Candle in the Dark opens with your 70th birthday celebration where you say that, subjectively, you “felt like a 25-year-old”. Is that still the case?

I feel pretty juvenile. I feel full of joy of life, and spring, and things like that. I don’t feel very responsible. I don’t feel very grown up.

You were young when you wrote The Selfish Gene. Looking back, does it strike you as a young man’s book?
I don’t take back any of it which, in a way, is regrettable, because scientists rather pride themselves on changing their minds, unlike politicians, who are accused of flip-flopping. But no, I stand by the central message of The Selfish Gene, almost more so in some ways. I think the central message has been vindicated since I wrote it.

It’s amazing how much the world has changed since then, and particularly in the world of genetics, isn’t it?
Everything about biology has become almost a branch of information technology because DNA is so exactly like a computer language. That was implicit in Watson and Crick in 1953, but somehow it’s become increasingly obvious.

You held the chair at Oxford in the Public’s Understanding of Science. What’s the biggest gap in most people’s understanding of science?
As a biologist, it would be the amazing fact that from primeval simplicity, the laws of physics, without ever being violated, can give rise to something as prodigiously complicated as you are; that you can do mathematics and language and poetry. You do see, don’t you, what an astounding thing it is that the mere atoms, which in most of the rest of the universe just make rocks or sand; that mere atoms can be put together in staggeringly complicated ways to create something that can walk and talk and love and run and swim and think and play music and wonder.

You’re a master of the Twitter storm, aren’t you?
I’m not sure master is the right word. Victim might be the better word.

Do you feel you’ve been terribly misunderstood, or have you enjoyed having a bit of a ruck?
I hate a bit of a ruck. They are nearly always due to misunderstandings.

What does it feel like to be in the middle of one?
I’m quite relieved not to have been the victim of a real witch hunt, like some people have, because Twitter, the internet, generally, is tailor-made for the kind of mob-rule witch hunts which, in the Middle Ages, literally ended with people being burned.

Do you think about ageing and death?
Yes. I don’t relish the process of dying, partly because doctors are not vets and are not allowed to put you out of your misery. But as for being dead, I think my attitude to that is … Mark Twain said it humorously when he said: “I was dead for billions of years before I was born, never suffered the smallest inconvenience.” One of the things that is potentially frightening about death is eternity, but eternity is what’s frightening, and it is so frightening that the best way to spend it would be under a general anaesthetic, which is what’s going to happen.