Did Richard Dawkins Admit to Intelligent Design?

This comes up in discussions with tedious regularity.

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/did-richard-dawkins-admit-to.html

Let us, being brave and fearless enquirers into the truth, see what Dawkins himself says about this interview.

"I was charitable enough to think he [Stein] was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet ... The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved... ."

Now say what you like about Richard Dawkins, but he is a gentle and impeccably polite, quintessentially English, man, with a beautifully elegant and lucid way with language. For him to call Ben Stein a "stupid man" takes English understatement to its limit. The use of the phrase, coming from Dawkins, indicates utter contempt, and rage at the dishonesty of Stein's subterfuge.

We should all feel contempt and rage at anyone who tries to dishonestly get false propaganda mileage out of often selectively edited or presented interviews and quote mined articles.

Here are Dawkins' full comments on the matter. https://web.archive.org/web/20080406092110/http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394,Lying-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins

More on misrepresentation and quote mining -

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/lies-damned-lies-and-mined-quotes.html
https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/quote-mining.html
https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/qote-mining-or-how-to-lie.html

A comment from FaceBookLand says, 

"Here's the problem that I find. If you can actually get an atheist to be truthful, he will admit everything.Seems like it's intelligently decided but because an atheist has a personal problem with there being a God they become intellectually dishonest and lie.

Dawkins like any atheist hates God. They are emotionally connected to their opinions against the very idea that God exists I believe because God to them is an extremely scary concept. They refuse to even entertain it."

To which, Sally Hawksworth replied,

"Here’s the problem that I find : that so many theists, like you, have a very false idea of what motivates most atheists and agnostics."

Here, for instance, you assert that atheists hate God. Some atheists, particularly those that escaped with difficulty from a controlling religious community, do hate the picture of God presented by that religion, or at least certain features of it. For instance, someone who was told by the religious leaders that God will condemn him to be tortured in Hell for eternity because of his sexuality, or his unbelief, is unlikely to feel positive towards the figure of God presented by those teachers, even if they don’t think this God actually exists.

But in most cases when a person says that they think that some supernatural or fantasy figure doesn’t actually exist, it isn’t because they don’t WANT it to exist, or that they hate the idea of it, or are scared of it. They just don’t believe that it’s real. I don’t believe vampires exist (except the bats). I probably would be scared if I thought they did, but that’s not why I don’t believe in them. I rather like the idea of mermaids, and I’m not scared of them, but I don’t think they are real. I love the idea of flying fire breathing dragons, and I don’t believe they have ever existed.

And it is not dishonesty that has made so many scientists reject Intelligent Design as a scientific hypothesis. Evolution by natural selection actually makes much better sense to them, as an explanation for what they see in the natural world. There are any number of features in particular species that seem expertly designed to help them to survive and propagate themselves. But why would one and the same Intelligent Designer carefully design predators with features that aid them in killing and eating prey, and prey with features that aid them in escaping from those predators? Why would an Intelligent Designer create entirely aquatic whales as air breathing mammals, rather than as fish extracting their oxygen from the water? Why is the giraffe’s pharyngeal nerve so oddly positioned? Why condemn emperor penguins to months on end standing around starving and near freezing in blizzards with an egg or young chick balanced on their feet?"