Trina Hoaks Interviews Richard Dawkins

Posted on April 15, 2009 by Guest Contributor

Atheism Examiner (and contributor to this site) Trina Hoaks had a chance to interview Richard Dawkins over the weekend at the American Atheists conference.

The lead-up to the interview is almost as good as the interview itself!

It’s very exciting — even from the sidelines — seeing such a huge Dawkins fan get a chance to talk to him in person :)

There are three parts here.

Part 1 — The prelude

Part 2 — The man behind the image

Part 3 — The interview

I do have to point out the best part of the interview. It happens when Dawkins is talking about Ray Comfort‘s pathetic debate challenge:

Richard: Yes. He has challenged me to a debate. He has offered me $10,000. I said that if he would give $100,000 to my foundation, The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, which, of course, exists to expose people like him, that I would do it. I’ve heard nothing.

Trina: When I first heard about the challenged, I wrote an article on the Friendly Atheist Web site, which is run by Hemant Mehta, the author of I Sold my Soul on E-bay. Are you familiar with the site?

Richard: Yes.

Hells. Yes. My life is complete now.

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  • http://arkonbey.blogspot.com arkonbey

    I wonder how many times this joke has been made:

    “Trina Hoaks? Is that her real name?”

    ha.

  • Trina Hoaks

    I have heard it many times, arkonbey. :)

    It is my real name. I love it. And I thought it was so awesome that Richard was amused by it.

    Trina

  • Skeptimal

    Well done, Trina. It was fun to read.

  • The Unbrainwashed

    I agree. Your life IS complete!!! Congrats!

  • debg

    Congrats to you, Trina for the interview of a lifetime, and to you, Hemant, for the nod of a lifetime!

  • Brooks

    Is the interview down or is it just something wrong with the site? I tried clicking on the second half of the interview but it didn’t work.

  • Trina Hoaks

    I am not having trouble with accessing the articles. However, they are making improvements to the site on an ongoing basis, so it is possible that it will be a bit hung up from time to time. Sorry. :(

  • http://religiouscomics.net Jeff

    Trina,

    Thanks for reporting on the interview. I particularly liked your “Part 2: The man behind the image”.

    I personally know some fundamentalists who truly think that Richard is the personification of Satan himself. What you described, though, looks like a good role-model by anyone’s definition.

  • http://religiouscomics.net Jeff

    For those wanting to see the “Part 2″, at the time of this comment, the link from Hemant’s site is not working, but if you click on the link for one of the other interview parts, you can then click from that site over to part 2.

  • http://arkonbey.blogspot.com arkonbey

    @Trina: I hope you don’t think I was mocking you, that truly is an awesome name. It would be even more awesome if you could get a job a JREF ;)

  • Trina Hoaks

    arkonbey,

    I didn’t take it as mocking at all. :)

    Working at JREF, now that would be a hoot!

    And, thanks everyone for the kind words! :)

    Trina

  • http://cycleninja.blogspot.com Paul Lundgren

    No fair!!! Where do I go to have Richard Dawkins pimp my blog? Maybe if I made a contribution to the RDF…

  • http://friendlyatheist.com Hemant Mehta

    Link to Part 2 is fixed!

  • ash

    Mehta Stage One; get Dawkins to publicly acknowledge this site.

    Stage One: completed.

    Mehta Stage Two; get Dawkins to comment here.

    Stage Two: damn you PZ Myers!

  • «bønez_brigade»

    That was an excellent read. Thanks, Trina! It’s funny that he admitted to being “kicked ‘round the room” by a questioner. Certainly a feat for the questioner, for sure.

    As for his speech on Sat., I can just imagine some creatard taking a clip of the technical difficulties part — where the mic cut out, the lights flickered, and Dawkins said something like “what’s going on here?” — and applying a “that was God sending you atheists a message” spin to it. And that would be interesting, since most of Dawkins’ speech focused on quote-mining.

    BTW, we were also in the bar Fri. night when Dawkins was there, and we also had that “don’t want to bother him” feeling. We were the ones working on the 15-pin setup of empty Guinness bottles. Oddly, the bar owner didn’t get the memo that atheists like to keep on drinking after midnight.