New Atheists and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Articles | New Atheists and the Dunning-Kruger Effect | Phillip Jensen:

And that brings us back to the Dunning-Kruger effect that the less competent you are the more confident you are likely to be. To launch out on a world-wide campaign on subjects over which you know little and have researched less – to say nothing of intentionally not studying because you do not believe – is less than acceptable as genuine public debate or academic discussion, to say nothing of failing in the art of war.

It was Prof. Dawkin’s great hero Charles Darwin who wrote in his introduction to The Descent of Man:''Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.''