Rote nonsense as usual , not one scientist believes that natural selection is a random process, but feel free to beat the tin drum. The attitude of all scientists is one of awe & excitement to study all the interelated diversities of life. And most all consider it a great privilege to know how that diversity of life originated and further learn how to protect & conserve that continued existence for posterity.
Richard Dawkins: I would not like to say that we are here today as a matter of chance, because natural selection is not a chance process. Mutation is a matter of chance, but natural selection is a non-random force, because generations of genes have been non randomly chosen for reproduction and survival. If people think that Darwin said that life was down to chance, then no wonder they object to it.
Richard Dawkins:
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I think that it is a privilege to understand where we come from, a privilege for all of us born after 1859, that to deny children that privilege is wicked, it’s a deprivation that should not be visited on any child, when the truth is so exciting. When we have shared ancestors with every living thing, we have a history of four billion years of slow, gradual evolution, that’s not something that we can easily take on board, but the effort of doing so is well worth it. It’s such a beautiful thought that we are the heirs of four billion years of evolution.
What evidence is there to prove that evolution and Darwin were right?
Richard Dawkins: Many pieces of evidence show that evolution is right. I’ll single out just two. The first is the distribution of animals across the globe. They are exactly as you’d expect them to be if evolution occurred. If you go to Australia all the mammals, save for one or two introduced by man, are marsupials. Why are they all there and not in Asia too? It’s exactly as you’d expect if animals evolved. It’s not the way it would be if God had gone around creating animals. Why on Earth would he have gone around creating animals in exactly the places where he would have created animals to give the false impression that evolution took place? If you believe in a god that plays those sorts of tricks then it’s not much of a god to believe in.
Secondly, if you look comparatively at all animals, especially biochemically: if you look at molecules in how they differ from animal to animal, or plant to plant, you find a hierarchical pattern of resemblance, which only makes sense if you assume that it’s a family tree, a pedigree. Everything – all the evidence – points to evolution. Once again the only way that you can maintain a creationist viewpoint is if you assume that God deliberately deceived us by planting molecules, that God played an elaborate trick on us.
Can you still have faith in God and evolution?
Richard Dawkins: There are plenty of theologians who believe in God and evolution, so, yes it is possible. I find it a little bit hard to do so because the main reason for believing in God is as the explanation for the living world. Once that’s gone, the most important argument for God has been kicked out and all you are left with is things like the Bible, which is pathetic: any fool can see is not written by God and it doesn’t have any special authority. Or you are left with personal experiences such as ‘God speaks to me’: if you’re convinced by that you’re convinced by that, but it’s pretty weak.
Why are you so convinced that God doesn’t exist?
Richard Dawkins: Well, I’m not really convinced that God does not exist. I’m simply turning the question around to say there is no positive reason to say that God does exist and he is therefore as likely to exist as the tooth-fairy or pink unicorns. So why bother to believe in something where there is no evidence, when there is so much for which there is evidence and you could spend a lifetime learning about it?
Is there any evidence for some sort of divine order, such as our consciousness or the beginning of the universe perhaps?
Richard Dawkins: The human consciousness is a great puzzle; it’s not helped by postulating anything supernatural. Human consciousness must stem from some brain stuff, either as a by-product or as an integral part of its function. The origin of the universe is another mystery, but physicists are working on it. Maybe one day we’ll understand it but, either way, postulating some sort of supernatural explanation doesn’t help us understand, because that simply raises bigger questions than it does answers.
So life is all a result of chance and molecular accidents?
Richard Dawkins: I would not like to say that we are here today as a matter of chance, because natural selection is not a chance process. Mutation is a matter of chance, but natural selection is a non-random force, because generations of genes have been non randomly chosen for reproduction and survival. If people think that Darwin said that life was down to chance, then no wonder they object to it.
Has human evolution come to an end?
Richard Dawkins: Nobody knows. If you look at the way natural selection happens, the fittest creatures have the most offspring and are usually the ones that survive. Over the last 2 or 3 million years humans have developed bigger and bigger brains, presumably because those with bigger brains survived better. But there’s no way to suggest that this is happening today, so there’s no reason to suppose that the same natural selection forces are taking place on humans today, though there are natural selection forces at work in terms of resistance to disease and things like that. If you came back in 10 million years then we’ll probably be extinct, because most species do go extinct. There’ll probably be something living but it won’t be our direct descendant.
Evolutionists are always very cautious to predict the future course of evolution for one species, but what they don’t mind doing is predicting the general direction of life – small herbivores, large herbivores, big carnivores – we can predict that we will get a similar range of animals, but we can’t predict what the descendants of mice, elephants or humans will look like. I think in a couple of million years humans will be extinct, but we may well have evolved into something else, especially if we colonise other worlds, then we may see natural selection taking place as species start diverging, as there’d be very little gene flow between the separate gene pools.
Why should National Geographic Channel and other media celebrate 200 years since Charles Darwin’s birth?
Richard Dawkins: The National Geographic Channel should celebrate his birth because Darwin is arguably the greatest thinker that humanity has ever produced. One should put him up there with Galileo, Einstein and Newton. In terms of the problems that he solved, perhaps it wasn’t as difficult to solve as it was for Einstein or Newton, but it was perhaps as revolutionary to preconceived ideas. Darwin has perhaps caused possibly the biggest revolution in humanity’s idea of man’s own nature. |
