Have you ever looked at the website of the Richard Dawkins http://richarddawkins.net, and then I mean especially the store section: http://store.richarddawkins.net/? I recently noticed that “they” (I don’t presume Dawkins is selling stuff in person) sell jewelry. In itself there’s of course nothing wrong with that. But notice that The Richard Dawkins store sells jewelry in the form of DNA-strands, and Darwin’s sketch of the tree of life. These apparently are adopted as the symbols of the atheism that Dawkins is preaching. It’s interesting to see how science and symbolism here go hand in hand. But what is also interesting, is particular dynamics that is at work here. Creationism and Intelligent Design are taking evolutionary theory as a symbol for evil. Evolutionary theory symbolizes everything that in the eyes of creationists and ID-adherents is morally wrong in our contemporary society. Creationists and ID-people consider especially Darwin’s tree of life, representing common ancestry, a deeply problematic symbol. And now here you have Richard Dawkins who does exactly that: Dawkins takes DNA and Darwin’s idea of the tree of life, and turns them into – yes jewelry, I know, but also – symbols for atheism. Science, symbolism, and ideology are getting lumped together in the discourse of the new atheism. In my view a highly problematic combination and potentially dangerous because of its ideological undertones. Wacky stuff.