His position is , unambiguously
Does this one bugs registered like a valid point?
For reasons of space, I shall pass over the routine recital, now given in hundreds of the reviews, of most of the points in Dawkins' book The God Delusion, and concentrate my review on one point only, which he deals with on pages 339,340.  His position is, unambiguously, that there cannot be any such thing as `human' ethics or morality, and he tells us why:  there is no real, meaningful distinction between a human being and a brute beast.  I am astonished that this passage is not more frequently commented on.Dawkins simply ignores the critical issue of human rationality. Flying in the face of all the evidence, he assumes (I insist, he assumes, he does not prove) that Homo sapiens, absolutely like every other form of life on earth, is simply a bundle of cells.  He says (p. 340):  "The evolutionary point is very simple.  The humanness (italicised) of an embryo's cells cannot confer upon it any absolutely discontinuous moral status."  I must underline what Dawkins is saying.  He is not saying that man is `like' the brute beast in some ways ('Intelligent Design' authors like Antony Latham, Alister McGrath and Michael Behe who attack Dawkins' atheism have no difficulty in accepting common descent, shared cellular similarities with the rest of creation, in varying degrees).  He is saying that man is `no more than' a brute beast in any way, is no more than a collection of cells.Dawkins explicitly rejects the idea that any moral consideration can apply to humans simply as humans. He rejects the idea that there is anything that clearly separates human beings from non-human animals. This follows from his view that limits everything to pure Darwinian evolution of matter from matter.  He believes in the evolution of the non-human animal into the human animal, body, mind, 'spirit', 'soul', religion, science, and all.  He tells us (p. 339):  "Notice now that 'pro-life' doesn't exactly mean pro-life ('life' is italicised) at all.  It means pro-human('human' is italicised)-life."  Of necessity this must mean that he views all merely brute animal life as equal with human life.Notice the monstrous conclusion that follows from this.  It destroys any possibility that Dawkins' version of Darwinism can be right.  "The granting of uniquely special rights to cells of the species 'Homo sapiens' is hard to reconcile with the fact of evolution" (p. 339).  I repeat this:  "The granting of uniquely special rights to cells of the species 'Homo sapiens' is hard to reconcile with the fact of evolution."  I conclude:  It is not only hard, it is impossible (which is what Dawkins clearly means us to understand).  And therefore, for me, on the grounds of the evidence provided to any observer (even a Darwinian observer) that Homo sapiens and the brute beast are not the same, Dawkins' 'fact of evolution' must be abandoned.  I see no alternative to this.  Dawkins is utterly indefensible here.  But his arrogance blinds him to the absurdity of his own position, for he goes on immediately:  "Admittedly, this [irreconcilability between the pro-lifers and the Darwinists] will not worry those many anti-abortionists who don't understand that evolution is a fact!" (Dawkins is responsible for the exclamation mark.)  Dawkins has just proved, to my satisfaction, that 'the fact of evolution' cannot be a 'fact' because of the manifest monstrousness of the conclusion that he sees as necessarily following from his position.  Surely the idea that a human being is fully and exhaustively defined by its having "cells of the species 'Homo sapiens' ", to use Dawkins' own words, in exactly the same way as any other living organism is fully and exhaustively defined by its having cells of its own species, is an intolerable assumption that, I repeat, will not stand one moment's observation of the world about us.  This Dawkinsism must be exploded for the absurdity that it is.Dawkins takes as proved (but doesn't prove) the existence of 'intermediate species' (Dawkins' words) between man and any brute beast you care to name.  So Dawkins asks the question: "Would these [intermediate] creatures 'count as human' or not?" Dawkins replies (p. 340) that only 'absolutists' "must answer the question, in order to apply the moral principle of granting humans unique and special status because they are human" (Dawkins puts the last four words in italics (p.340). Dawkins scorns this 'absolutist' position.  He says:  "To a consequentialist like me, the question doesn't deserve an answer, for nothing turns on it."  Can Dawkins be really aware of what he is saying?  He tells us that it doesn't matter if we are humans or brute beasts, "for nothing turns on it".  Once again, this must be exploded for the absurdity that it is.He goes on (p.340): "Even if a clear answer [as to whether a living being is a human or a brute beast] might be attempted for Australopithecus, the gradual continuity that is an inescapable feature of biological evolution [another glib assumption of Dawkins that he doesn't prove] tells us that there must be some intermediate who would lie sufficiently close to the 'borderline' to blur the moral principle and destroy its absoluteness. A better way to say this is that there are no natural borderlines in evolution. The illusion of a borderline is created by the fact that the evolutionary intermediates happen to be extinct. Of course, it could be argued that humans are more capable of, for example, suffering than other species. This could well be true, and we might legitimately give humans special status by virtue of it." (Understand what Dawkins is saying: the only reason that he can find for granting human beings any 'unique and special status' 'because they are human', is that the human may be more conscious of suffering than the brute beast.  Dawkins continues: "But evolutionary continuity shows that there is no absolute (in italics) distinction."  Yet again, an absurdity to be addressed and condemned.Understand again what Dawkins is saying: There is no absolute distinction between human beings and brute beasts - or any other of the now-lost 'intermediate species'.  He goes on: "Absolutist moral discrimination is devastatingly undermined by the fact of evolution.  [I riposte:  Exactly the opposite statement is true:  'The fact of evolution is devastatingly undermined by absolutist moral discrimination'.] An uneasy awareness of this fact might, indeed, underlie one of the main motives creationists have for opposing evolution: they fear what they believe to be its moral consequences. They are wrong to do so" [Are they really? Am I then free to judge Dawkins the same way that I judge a brute beast? Does Dawkins accept that it is acceptable for a human being to be a carnivore?  Where do I draw the line in my choice of meat meals?]  "but", Dawkins goes on, "in any case, it is surely very odd to think that a truth about the real world can be reversed by considerations of what would be morally desirable." Really?  This is intolerable reasoning.  It is not odd, it is essential, that what is 'morally desirable' must rule the world.  Law and order would collapse otherwise. Murder and lying and stealing and adultery are 'truths about the real world'. Morality is a truth of the real world. Without 'morally desirable' judgments, which Dawkins' Darwinism considers to be impossible, the quiet world of scholarship (and even scholarship is impossible as a strict Darwinian evolution from matter) that Dawkins inhabits would collapse into sheer barbarism, '(human) nature red in tooth and claw'. Dawkins' philosophical ramblings here are simply derisory.Ruse and Wilson, `respected giants in this field' of moral philosophy and science, find it "easy to conceive of an alien intelligent species evolving rules its members consider highly moral but which are repugnant to human beings, such as cannibalism, incest, the love of darkness and decay, parricide and the eating of faeces ... " (quoted in Latham's The Naked Emperor, pp, 154,155). Dawkins' reasoning above forces him to accept such a scenario as unobjectionable morally for us humans now. 