The Genius of Charles Darwin by Richard Dawkins

source: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-genius-of-charles-darwin/4od#2919521

HASSNERS.org highlights

3 part series by Richard Dawkins. View episodes 1 & 2 now.

This work by crabsallover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Darwin Matrix Wallpaper

source: http://defendreason.ebaker.me.uk/2009/07/darwin-matrix-wallpaper.html

Grab the original here. I really like it, must have taken some work.

Did Darwin Kill God - BBC

source: http://richarddawkins.net/article,3707,n,n

HASSNERS.org highlights

HASSNERS.org comments

Science highlights errors in logic in the bible. Theologicians say that the statements that incorrect are metaphors which allows for deeper theological philosophising. They say the Book of Genesis should not be read literally. Cunningham says "they are stories that reveal deeper truths about the fundamental aspects of life". Genesis Chapter 1 says that plants were made on the third day and man on the sixth day. Genesis Chapter 2 says that Adam was made before ANY plants appeared. The two accounts in Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 directly contradict each other. Philo of Alexandria says that if there was a contradition then this was a clue to how the bible should be read ie metaphorially not literally. Philo said the allegorical was sometimes more important than the literal readings (ref: 6min 44s) and said that both stories are myths. You need myths & metaphors to convey complex truths says Cunningham (8 min 56s). If you read the bible literally you will have no room for theological reflection says Cunningham (10 min 28s)

My view
My view is that the bible is wholly man made. God (or gods) do not exist. So they have no involvement in writing the bible. Any mistakes or contradictions found in the bible are due to mistakes of the authors. Science illuminates these mistakes and contradications adding further weight to the hypothesis that the bible was written by man alone.

by BBC 2

Update 4/4: As noted by several people this is now available on YouTube so those outside of the UK can also watch the series
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=15EABEE7BCA86CB0

Click on the link to go to the BBC video site if you are viewing from a UK location. The video is not playable outside of the UK but a reader has sent in the subtitle teletext for the deaf.

Reposted from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jhfwt (available till 8 April 2009)

There are some who believe that Darwin's theory of evolution has weakened religion, fuelled in part by Richard Dawkins' publishing phenomenon The God Delusion. Conor Cunningham argues that nothing could be further from the truth.

Cunningham is a firm believer in the theory of evolution, but he is also a Christian. He believes that the clash between Darwin and God has been hijacked by extremists - fundamentalist believers who reject evolution on one side, and fundamentalist atheists on the other. Cunningham attempts to overturn what he believes are widely held but mistaken assumptions in the debate between religion and evolution.

He travels to the Middle East where he shows that from the very outset, Christianity warned against literal readings of the biblical story of creation. In Britain, he reveals that, at the time, Darwin's theory of evolution was welcomed by the Anglican and Catholic Churches. Instead, he argues that the conflict between Darwin and God was manufactured by American creationists in the 20th century for reasons that had very little to do with science and religion and a great deal to do with politics and morality.

Finally, he comes face to face with some of the most eminent evolutionary biologists, geneticists and philosophers of our time to examine whether the very latest advances in evolutionary theory do in fact kill God.

Note from Exec Producer, Jean Claude Bragard:

This programme, part of the BBC’s Darwin Season, came from the realisation that it would touch on issues raised by Richard Dawkins in his book 'The God Delusion'. The publishing phenomenon has fuelled a widespread perception that the theory of evolution makes belief in God redundant, even perhaps perverse. But how compelling was that argument? It was clear that many Christians have easily been able to reconcile their belief in God with the theory of evolution. How was this possible? This was the question we wanted to explore and so we invited Dr Conor Cunningham, a Christian but also an eminent philosopher and theologian from the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, to show how it was possible to believe in Darwin and God. Cunningham has just completed a book 'Evolution: Darwin's Pious Idea' to be published in the autumn, so he was ideally placed to explore this question. His argument is that we have been witnessing an unnecessary cultural war between religion and evolution that is damaging to both religion and science. Cunningham reveals that since the early days, mainstream Christianity’s view of God and Creation has not been literal. The idea of reading the Book of Genesis literally is essentially a 20th century American phenomenon that had very little to do with science and religion and a great deal to do with the morality and politics of the time.

Jean Claude Bragard
Executive Producer

The Science Studio - AC Grayling -The Good Life

a one hour conversation with philosopher Anthony Grayling October 3, 2008

Download Transcript

On Darwin
GRAYLING: Well of course, I’m a great admirer of Darwin. And I think his life and work is not just important from the point of view of the contribution that he made to the biological sciences, you know, a transforming, revolutionary contribution really, but also his life and work is in itself iconic in a certain way. Because if you think about his own personal progression from a kind of unreflective, nominal faith, the possibility of going into the church, and then his own realization as he traveled and studied and looked at evidence. Contrast, for example, Darwin’s journey, intellectual journey, from a reflex unquestioning Anglican to an agnostic or an atheist, to somebody like Edmund Gosse who, presented with the same sort of evidence, struggled like mad to hang onto his religious faith and to reinterpret everything in the light of it. Between the two of them they are, as it were, the opposite poles of something that happens when science really does come into conflict with the ancient stories, the ancient creation myths and the rest.

And so there is something very courageous and poignant about Darwin’s life, because for a very, very long time he kept quiet, realizing the implications of what he was going to say. Very early on, early in the 1840s, he wrote, “I feel as if I have killed God.” In a sense, of course, he had. And heaven knows what might have happened if, you know, Russel Wallace hadn’t come along and chivvied him up a little bit and got him to publish eventually. Perhaps it would have all been posthumous.

On Science v Religion
You know I sometimes think that one of the impulses, and there are many, to accepting a religious view of the world is that it provides a narrative and closure and it’s very neat, it’s got a beginning and an end, and it’s got some solace attached to the story about the end. Whereas science gives us something very open-ended and inconclusive, that you have to live with, not knowing what the answers are yet, but being prepared to seek them, to carry on looking for them, and to struggling with the new and sometimes more difficult questions that arise when you do come up with some solutions.

And so it is with personal life, thinking about how you’re going to accept the inevitability of loss or grief. So for example, the minute that you enter into a relationship with another person, especially if you love that other person, one or other of you thereby contracts for loss. You know, if you marry somebody, one of you is going to die before the other one does. Loving somebody is buying into a certainty that there’s going to be hurt involved in it at some point. But to recognize that that is, in fact, part of the value of what you’ve done, and to accept that it’s in this life now, in the span of that relationship, that all the best that you can make out of it must be made. Now that seems to me to be deep and courageous, that view of life. Whereas, sticking with a sort of reflex view of, oh it doesn’t matter because you’ll meet up again later, or you know, everything’s going to come right in the end, is, it’s a kind of shallow, inexpensive view of life, if you like.

On Bertrand Russell
BINGHAM: who influenced you the most in your thinking?
GRAYLING: Well it’s hard to say that. I think, in my sort of more technical work, I suppose Kant and Aristotle and people like that have been big influences. But somebody I regard as having been quite an exemplary philosopher, both in the technical sense and in the more public sense, would be somebody like Bertrand Russell. Now there was a man who, whatever else you think about him, at least spoke his mind, and I think made quite serious and important contributions to social changes. That book of his, for which he won the Nobel Prize, published in the early ‘30s, Marriage and Morals, was a book which, if you were to trace its influence on thinking in the post-war period, probably a very significant one. So you know, the social and moral revolution of the ‘50s and ‘60s may have something to do with what Russell had to say. If true, that shows you that philosophy does bake bread.

On Proselytising to children (@ 40 minutes)
BINGHAM : Are there any discoveries that you’d like to have made? Anything you’re…? GRAYLING: Well I wouldn’t have minded coming up with the general theory of relativity, for example, that would have been fun. But I think, what I would like now is, above all else, to discover a way of persuading everybody to leave kids alone, I mean small children alone, from the point of view of them with religious beliefs. If you’d only just leave children to get on with a standard course of education, perhaps learn about all the, you know, the mythologies and religions of the past, without being persuaded by parents or schools or society into one or another religious commitment, before they’re in a position to evaluate it properly, then I’m sure the influence of religion in society would be considerably less.

On Creationism in Science Lessons
BINGHAM: It is interesting that, I mean, literally in the last four days, five days after the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Michael Reiss, who is Director of Education at the Royal Society, which is Britain’s major academy of science, I suppose, founded in 1660, had to resign because he gave a talk entitled “Should creationism be a part of the school curriculum?” And I believe, I think he makes that case, does he not, I mean, he is indeed a cleric, isn’t he. Could you speak to this a little bit, because this is an interesting story?
GRAYLING: He’s Professor of Science Education at the Institute of Education at the University of London and he’s a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was their Director of Education Policy. Now it happens that he’s been; it was I think a mistake, on his part, and a misrepresentation, on the press’s part, which is the usual way that these things get out of hand. He said that he thought that when school pupils brought up the question of intelligent design or creationism in science classes, that science teachers should talk to them about it, should be prepared to respond and explain why the idea of creationist thing didn’t, doesn’t wash, and what the scientific view is. But the line that he was taking was that they should be treated with respect, these views, and they should be responded to. So you might think that that was a reasonable thing to say. But the Royal Society itself has always had, as a policy, since the issue really blew up, that I.D. and creationism have no place in the science curriculum at all, and that responsible science teaching should teach science and not, you know, all these different stories. And other people have commented, as I have myself done, that of course schoolchildren should be taught about the religions and the mythological traditions and the legends, on a comparative basis, as part of history or social studies or something. And that if these questions were to arise in a science class, that science teachers should say, the proper place for this discussion is in your history lesson or your social science lesson, although they could take the opportunity perhaps to talk a bit about why scientific method is the more appropriate thing to be applying to those sorts of questions. Seems to me that the, that Reiss’ resignation was the right thing, it was the right thing for the Royal Society to say, I’m afraid you’re going to have to quit this. Not because it’s strictly fair to Reiss, but because it reinforces the point that the Royal Society came to make, mainly that science is one thing, and that all the different sorts of creationist stories and legends, of which of course there are dozens and dozens, are more properly dealt with elsewhere.

On why Science matters
BINGHAM: What do you think we should do, what should be happening vis-à-vis science now, in terms of getting it before the public? Proposals?
GRAYLING: Well I think everybody in science who has the ability and the interest ought to be trying to communicate with a much wider audience about what they do, why they do it and why it matters. And that people who care about science, even if they’re not in science themselves, should support that and should try to make people conscious of the fact that there are a number of different sciences, that many of them are of great and immediate interest and importance to progressive flourishing of society and to individuals. Because the case is easily made in connection with biomedical sciences but, you know, even in pure research in physics and in chemistry, we never know what new ideas might come forward and new things be discovered, and that tends to happen all the time. So make the point that science is important, that investment, even in blue sky science, really matters, that as an intelligent, mature society, we should always be pushing the limits of research, always be prepared to put our hands in our pockets for the big things like the north-south hemisphere investigations of the sky, you know, because there’s been controversy about the funding of that just recently, the CERN project. You know, there are all these big endeavors, and all the really important projects involved with science education and public understanding of science and keeping science alive in schools, that all those things tremendously matter. Why they matter--say something about the history, because the history of science is very exciting--and the preparedness of governments and societies as a whole, really to fund this properly and make it work and put their shoulders to the wheel. That, I think, is what we need to be saying now, because so long as the caricature view prevails, and as long as there’s this, you know, polarized debate between religion, as if that were one thing, and science, as if that were one thing, goes on, what we’re going to get in the end is a very evacuated, a very tenuous understanding of both sides of the argument.

Darwin and Darwinism by Richard Dawkins

Explanation of why Darwin was important and the theory of Evolution by Natural Selection..

Source: Atheist Movies file: Darwin and Darwinism.rtf

Darwin and Darwinism
by Richard Dawkins

To most people through history it has always seemed obvious that the teeming diversity of life, the uncanny perfection with which living organisms are equipped to survive and multiply, and the bewildering complexity of living machinery, can only have come about through divine creation. Yet repeatedly it has occurred to isolated thinkers that there might be an alternative to supernatural creation. the notion of species changing into other species was in the air, like so many other good ideas, in ancient Greece. It went into eclipse until the 18th century, when it resurfaced in the minds of such advanced thinkers as Pierre de Maupertuis, Erasmus Darwin and the man who styled himself the Chevalier de Lamarck. In the first half of the 19th century the idea became not uncommon in intellectual circles, especially geological ones, but always in a rather vague form and without any clear picture of the mechanism by which change might come about. It was Charles Darwin (Erasmus's grandson) who, spurred into print by Alfred Russel Wallace's independent discovery of his principle of natural selection, finally established the theory of evolution by the publication, in 1859, of the famous book whose title is usually abbreviated to the Origin of Species.

We should distinguish two quite distinct parts of Darwin's contribution. He amassed an overwhelming quantity of evidence for the fact that evolution has occurred, and, together with Wallace (independently) he thought up the only known workable theory of the reason why it leads to adaptive improvement - natural selection.

Some fossil evidence was known to Darwin but he made more use of other evidence, less direct but in many ways more convincing, for the fact that evolution had taken place. the rapid alteration of animals and plants under domestication was persuasive evidence both for the fact that evolutionary change was possible and for the effectiveness of the artificial equivalent of natural selection. Darwin was particularly persuaded by the evidence from the geographical dispersion of animals. the presence of local island races, for example, is easily explicable by the evolution theory: the creation theory could explain them only by unparsimoniously assuming numerous 'foci of creation' dotted around the earth's surface. the hierarchical classification into which animals and plants fall so naturally is strongly suggestive of a family tree: the creation theory had to make contrived and elaborate assumptions about the creator's mind running along themes and variations. Darwin also used as evidence for his theory the fact that some organs seen in adults and embryos appear to be vestigial. According to the evolution theory such organs as the tiny buried hind-limb bones of whales are remnants of the walking legs of their terrestrial ancestors. In general the evidence for the fact that evolution has occurred consists of an enormous number of detailed observations which all make sense if we assume the theory of evolution, but which can be explained by the creation theory only if we assume that the creator elaborately set out to deceive us. Modern molecular evidence has boosted the evidence for evolution beyond Darwin's wildest dreams, and the fact of evolution is now as securely attested as any in science.

Turning from the fact of evolution to the less secure theory of its mechanism, natural selection, the mechanism that Darwin and Wallace suggested, amounts to the nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary characteristics. Other British Victorians, such as Patrick Matthew and Edward Blyth, had suggested something like it before, but they apparently saw it as a negative force only. Darwin and Wallace seem to have been the first to realise its full potential as a positive force guiding the evolution of all life in adaptive directions. Most previous evolutionists, such as Darwin's grandfather Erasmus, had inclined towards an alternative theory of the mechanism of evolution, now usually associated with Lamarck's name. This was the theory that improvements acquired during an organism's lifetime, such as the growth of organs during use and their shrinkage during disuse, were inherited. This theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics has emotional appeal (for example to George Bernard Shaw in his Preface to Back to Methuselah) but the evidence does not support it. Nor is it theoretically plausible. In Darwin's time the matter was more in doubt, and Darwin himself flirted with a personalised version of Lamarckism when his natural selection theory ran into a difficulty.

That difficulty arose from current views of the nature of heredity. In the 19th century it was almost universally assumed that heredity was a blending process. On this blending inheritance theory, not only are offspring intermediate between their two parents in character and appearance, but the hereditary factors that they pass on to their own children are themselves inextricably merged. It can be shown that, if heredity is of this blending type, it is almost impossible for Darwinian natural selection to work because the available variation is halved in every generation. Darwin knew this, and it worried him enough to drive him in the direction of Lamarckism. It may also have contributed to the odd fact that Darwinism suffered a temporary spell of unfashionableness in the early part of the 20th century. the solution to the problem which so worried Darwin lay in Gregor Mendel's theory of particular inheritance, published in 1865 but unfortunately unread by Darwin, or practically anyone else until after Darwin's death.

Mendel's research, rediscovered at the turn of the century, demonstrated, what Darwin himself had at one time dimly glimpsed, that heredity is particulate, not blending. Whether or not offspring are bodily intermediate between their two parents, they inherit, and pass on, discrete hereditary particles - nowadays we call them genes. An individual either definitely inherits a particular gene from a particular parent or it definitely does not. Since the same can be said of its parents, it follows that an individual either inherits a particular gene from a particular grandparent or it does not. Every one of your genes comes from a particular one of your grandparents and, before that, from a particular one of your great grandparents. This argument can be applied repeatedly for an indefinite number of generations. Discrete single genes are shuffled independently through the generations like cards in a pack, rather than being mixed like the ingredients of a pudding.

This makes all the difference to the mathematical plausibility of the theory of natural selection. If heredity is particulate, natural selection really can work. As was first realised by the British mathematician G H Hardy and the German scientist W Weinberg, there is no inherent tendency for genes to disappear from the gene pool. If they do disappear, it will be because of bad luck, or because of natural selection - because something about those genes influences the probability that individuals possessing them will survive and reproduce. the modern version of Darwinism, often called Neodarwinism, is based upon this insight. It was worked out in the 1920s and 1930s by the population geneticists R A Fisher, J B S Haldane and Sewall Wright, and later consolidated into the synthesis of the 1940s known as Neodarwinism. the recent revolution in molecular biology, beginning in the 1950s, has reinforced and confirmed, rather than changed, the synthetic theory of the 1930s and 40s.

the modern genetic theory of natural selection can be summarised as follows. the genes of a population of sexually interbreeding animals or plants constitute a gene pool. the genes compete in the gene pool in something like the same way as the early replicating molecules competed in the primeval soup. In practice genes in the gene pool spend their time either sitting in individual bodies which they helped to build, or travelling from body to body via sperm or egg in the process of sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction keeps the genes shuffled, and it is in this sense that the long-term habitat of a gene is the gene pool. Any given gene originates in the gene pool as a result of a mutation, a random error in the gene-copying process. Once a new mutation has been formed, it can spread through the gene pool by means of sexual mixing. Mutation is the ultimate origin of genetic variation. Sexual reproduction, and genetic recombination due to crossing over see to it that genetic variation is rapidly distributed and recombined in the gene pool.

Any given gene in a gene pool is likely to exist in the form of several duplicate copies, either all descended from the same original mutant, or descended from independent parallel mutants. therefore each gene can be said to have a frequency in the gene pool. Some genes, such as the albino gene, are rare in the gene pool, others are common. At the genetic level, evolution may be defined as the process by which gene-frequencies change in gene pools.

there are various reasons why gene-frequencies might change: immigration, emigration, random drift, and natural selection. Immigration, emigration, and random drift are not of much interest from the point of view of adaptation, although they may be quite important in practice. It is natural selection which accounts for the perfection of adaptation, for the complex functional organisation of life, and for such progressive qualities as evolution may (controversially) exhibit. Genes in bodies exert an influence on the development of those bodies. Some bodies are better at surviving and reproducing than others. Good bodies, i.e. bodies that are good at surviving and reproducing, will tend to contribute more genes to the gene pools of the future than bodies that are bad at surviving and reproducing: genes that tend to make good bodies will come to predominate in gene pools. Natural selection is the differential survival and differential reproductive success of bodies: it is important because of its consequences for the differential survival of genes in gene pools.

Not all selective deaths lead to evolutionary change. On the contrary, much natural selection is so-called stabilising selection, removing genes from the gene pool that tend to cause deviation from an already optimal form. But when environmental conditions change, either through natural catastrophe or through evolutionary improvement of other creatures (predators, prey, parasites, and so on), selection may lead to evolutionary change.

Evolution under the influence of natural selection leads to adaptive improvement. Evolution, whether under the influence of natural selection or not, leads to divergence and diversity. From a single ultimate ancestor, many hundreds of millions of separate species have, at one time or another, evolved. the process whereby one species splits into two is called speciation. Subsequent divergence leads to ever wider separation of taxonomic units - genera, families, orders, classes, etc. Even creatures as different as, say, snails and monkeys, are derived from ancestors who originally diverged from a single species in a speciation event.

Since the 1940s it has been widely accepted that the first step in the origin of species is normally geographical separation. A species is accidentally divided into two geographically separated populations. Often there may be sub-populations isolated on islands, where the word is generalised to include islands of water in land (lakes), islands of vegetation in deserts (oases) etc. Even trees in a meadow may be effective islands to some of their small inhabitants. Geographical isolation means no gene flow, no sexual contamination of each gene pool by the other. Under these conditions the average gene frequencies in the two gene pools can change, either because of different selection pressures or because of random statistical changes in the two areas, After sufficient genetic divergence while in geographical isolation, the two sub-populations are no longer capable of interbreeding even if later circumstances chance to re-unite them. When they can no longer interbreed, speciation is said to have occurred and a new species (or two) is said to have come into being. It is controversial whether geographical separation is always necessarily implicated in speciation.

Darwin made a distinction between natural selection, which favours organs and devices for survival, and sexual selection which favours competitive success in gaining mates, either by direct combat with members of the same sex, or by being attractive to the opposite sex (these are sometimes called intrasexual selection and intersexual selection, respectively, but the usage is misleading). Darwin was impressed by the fact that qualities of sexual attractiveness were often the reverse of qualities leading to individual survival. the gaudy and cumbersome tails of birds of paradise are a notorious example. they must hamper their possessors in flight, and certainly they are conspicuous to predators, but Darwin realised that this could be 'worth it' if the tails also attractive females. A male who manages to persuade a female to mate with him rather than with a rival is likely to contribute his genes to future gene pools. Genes for sexually attractive tails willy-nilly have an advantage that compensates for their admitted disadvantages.

the philosopher Daniel Dennett has written: "Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else." Comparative judgments like that are hard to make. But on one criterion Darwin's contribution surely heads the field. the sheer power of the idea, measured as the amount of explanatory work that it does, divided by the extreme simplicity of the idea itself, leaves one astonished that humanity had to wait till the mid nineteenth century before one of us thought of it.

A longer version of this article, authored by Richard Dawkins, first appeared in the British Edition of Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Encyclopedia 98.

Charles Darwin: 'Is man an ape or an angel?' The role of Alfred Wallace Rusell in discovery of Natural Selection

by Telegraph

Thanks to SPS for the link.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/17/scidarwin117.xml

Charles Darwin: 'Is man an ape or an angel?'

A century and a half after Darwin put forward the theory of natural selection, Steve Jones explains the power of his idea - and the stink it caused


In 1842, Queen Victoria went to London Zoo. She was not amused: "The orang-outang is too wonderful… he is frightfully, and painfully, and disagreeably human." A hundred and thirty-seven years later, David Attenborough entranced the world when he cavorted with gorillas in Life on Earth.

What amazed everyone, once again, was just how human they seemed - and, for the gorillas watching, how happy the famous presenter was to be checked for fleas. Far from finding that frightful, most people (and, perhaps, most gorillas) were charmed and delighted.

That great post-Victorian shift in attitude came from that most Victorian figure, Charles Darwin. A hundred and fifty years ago this month, one great stink was about to replace another. In June 1858, the London sky burnt furiously and the sewage in the Thames began to reek, so much so that the House of Commons had its curtains soaked in chemicals to keep the smell at bay.

Soon, the rains came and the Great Stench cleared, but on July 1 an overheated group of moustachioed men met at the Linnean Society to consider important business: to elect a vice-president, to accept a book on grasses, and to read aloud a note, On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection by a Mr Darwin and a Mr Wallace (neither of whom was present).

The event had no impact (there was only one comment: that "all that was new was false, and what was true was old"). But a year later came The Origin of Species, this time written by Darwin without the aid of Alfred Russell Wallace.

With it came the greatest intellectual stink of the 19th century.

As Disraeli put it: "Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new-fangled theories."

Most of his fellows agreed. Now, though, the idea that Homo sapiens is a shaven ape is both the foundation of modern biology and part of popular culture, where it belongs.

What was the Darwin-Wallace paper all about? Its logic is simple. There exists, within all creatures, variation passed from one generation to the next. More individuals are born than can live or breed. As a result, there develops a struggle to stay alive and to find a mate.

In that battle, those who bear certain variants prevail over others who are less well endowed. Such inherited differences in the ability to pass on genes - natural selection - mean that advantageous forms become more common as the generations succeed. In time, as new versions accumulate, a lineage may become so modified that it can no longer exchange genes with others that were once its kin. A new species is born.

In 1858, almost nothing was known of human evolution. Now, though, Darwin's whole case can be advanced in terms of apes and monkeys, of chimps and gorillas, and of men and women. We know more about our own past than that of any other species. A modern Darwin would turn to our own family of primates for all the evidence he needed.

Our new understanding of genetics makes the case. Every sperm and every egg ever made by all the billions of men and women who have ever lived is unique; a degree of diversity once almost unimaginable. Such variation is the key to the past and to the present - to ancestry and to kinship. It links life into a common web of descent.

The primates cluster together in a group that includes rabbits and flying lemurs, but does not admit horses, dogs or bats. Their kinship is revealed by a certain piece of mobile DNA that hops around the genome. It has been inserted in just the same place in all those creatures, proof that they share a common ancestor distinct from that of all other furry beings.

Chimps are our closest kin. They are not like us in many ways. They are hairy and do not show the whites of their eyes. The animals cannot float in water or cry when upset, do not bother with adolescence and, even in zoos, do not get Alzheimer's disease.

Male chimpanzees seal up their mates with a sticky plug after sex, while men do not. Females publicise the fact that they are fertile (unlike women, who conceal all signs of that crucial moment). Using a laser, we can measure how fast sperm swim.

Those from rhesus macaques, who have lots of mates, swim faster and lash harder than those of gorillas (where one male more or less monopolises the females). Chimpanzee sperm are almost as energetic as those of the macaque, while ours lag well behind (although they do beat the gorilla).

The much-quoted fact that we share 98 per cent of our genes with chimps misses the many bits that have been inserted or removed in the two lines. The real level is around 95 per cent - itself remarkable enough.

We have lost more DNA than the chimp since the split, and the human line is feebler than once it was. We became shaved monkeys because the code for the hair protein no longer functions. Samson lost his strength with his locks, and so did we:

the DNA responsible for certain powerful muscles (particularly those in the jaw), is out of action in ourselves, compared with our closest relative.

A chimp-style déjeuner sur l'herbe is also best avoided, for the animals have enzymes that break down the poisons in raw plants that are fatal to us. Chimpanzees need no kitchens, but they have kept many of the taste and smell genes lost in humans, perhaps because they need to be more careful when choosing food.

A closer look at the genes also hints that there has been more natural selection in the chimp line than in our own since the split: one gene in 60 bears the mark of the Darwinian lash, compared to half as many in humans.

And yet, as yet, no chimp has made a television programme. Mankind's success lies not in our bodies, but in our brains. Darwin noted: "There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense" - and he was right. Our cortex, the thoughtful bit, is five times larger than that of the chimpanzee. Baby chimps are born with a brain almost as big as an adult's.

Human babies, in contrast, continue to invest in grey matter until they are about two. Certain human brain genes have multiplied themselves when compared to their chimp equivalents. The brain uses a quarter of the entire energy of the body at rest - twice the proportion in chimps.

How can we afford it? We eat no more food than our kin, but we have a richer diet, with more meat and fewer roots, shoots and leaves. As a result, we need smaller intestines: the way to man's mind was through his guts.

That mind made the London sewers that cured the Great Stink, the theory of evolution, Life on Earth, and more. Disraeli was wrong. Man may be an ape, but his brain is on the side of the angels. Just watch Sir David Attenborough to see how.

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace's paper outlining the theory of natural selection was a milestone in the history of science - but how did it come about?

In an exclusive video interview, filmed for The Daily Telegraph, Sir David Attenborough discusses their breakthrough with Roger Highfield. Their work, he says, was not only an intellectual triumph - it was "one of the most heartening examples of good behaviour in science".

The idea that all animal life is related had been around since classical Greek times, but Darwin and Wallace suggested, for the first time, a mechanism by which that came about. The two arrived at the idea in very different ways: Darwin worked methodically, using his remarkable ability to make sense of a vast amount of data; Wallace had a brainwave while suffering from fever. He acknowledged the evidence accumulated by Darwin, which ensured the idea would be taken seriously: as Sir David says, "the two men had great respect for one another".

Sir David Attenborough on Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace's groundbreaking paper


Steve Jones is professor of genetics at University College London. His book 'Coral: A Pessimist in Paradise' (Little, Brown) was shortlisted for this year's Royal Society Prize for Science Books. The main prize was won last night by Mark Lynas for 'Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet' (HarperCollins)

Natural History Museum - Darwin200

Darwin200, a celebration of the life and legacy of one of the greatest ever scientists, Charles Darwin.

Darwin200 is a collaboration of organisations across the UK who are celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday in February 2009.

Although the bicentenary is next year, we are approaching a key anniversary on 1 July 2008, when it will be 150 years since Darwin and Wallace announced the theory that rocked science and society.

Scientists rally against creationist 'superstition'by Ian Johnston, The Independent

The Independent
via RichardDawkins.net

To mark a double anniversary celebrating Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, his supporters are taking the fight to their opponents

The rise of creationism in Britain to the point where four out of 10 Britons believe it to be the literal truth

– as well as the idea being taught in state-approved schools – has spread alarm throughout the scientific community.

But this week sees the start of a concerted fightback, as an

18-month celebration of evolution and its greatest proponent, Charles Darwin, gets under way, marking the 150th anniversary of the unveiling of his theory and the 200th anniversary of his birth.

People all over Europe will take part in a mass experiment to discover evolutionary changes to a species of snail; a major series of programmes is to be shown by the BBC; several books are to be published; and the Open University plans a new course on the subject.

Entries for a competition to design "Darwin's Canopy" – a piece of art to cover a ceiling in the Natural History Museum – will be unveiled this week, and the museum will hold a major exhibition on Darwin beginning in November.

Dr Bob Bloomfield, head of special projects at the museum and a key figure in the "Darwin200" project, said he was concerned by the prevalence of creationist ideas.

"The statistics in this country are quite frightening. If you add up the percentages that either believe in creationism or intelligent design, it is approaching 40 per cent,"

he said.

"I don't think society can be complacent when ideas which are unsound are perpetrated. We are trying not to compromise people's faith views, other than where they are absolutely inconsistent with science."

He said the teaching of creationism in schools was "very problematic".

Professor Jonathan Silvertown of the Open University, who is writing a book entitled 99% Ape: How Evolution Adds Up, said the OU would be running a course called Darwin and Evolution. "The idea is to give people a feel for the modern evidence," he said.

He and the geneticist Professor Steve Jones, of University College London, are involved in a mass science project to study changes in banded snails, by recruiting tens of thousands of people across Europe.

Professor Jones said religious students – even those studying medicine – were becoming increasingly vocal in their opposition to evolution, saying he was "telling lies and insulting people's religion" by teaching the subject.

"They want permission not to come to those lectures and sit those exam questions," he said. "I have been teaching genetics and evolutionary biology for 30 years and for the first 20 I think the issue arose once. That's changed."

It's official: religion has been debunked!

Submitted by Margaret Nelson (Suffolk Humanists) on Mon, 25/02/2008 - 12:26.

The following was posted on Facebook by Laurence Boyce of Cambridge (a member of the NSS and the Liberal Democrats), in response to the accusation from pro-religion people that he’s “a bigot” elsewhere on the Internet. Laurence wrote that one of his accusers had asked him …

… to justify my sweeping assertion that the claims of religion have largely been debunked by science and philosophy … determined to answer everyone's points (though nobody much was answering mine), I put together a little series of notes which I now collect here for future reference. Not to be taken too seriously – a bit like religion itself, I suppose!

With his permission, I’m sharing Laurence’s notes. Religious people of an easily-offended disposition are asked to read carefully, and learn.

___________

Contents

1. Plato
2. David Hume
3. Charles Darwin
4. Darwin's theory
5. Sam Harris
6. Reading list

1. Plato (428 - 347 BC)

OK, this is just a touch embarrassing. Hume and Darwin may have been largely responsible for holing religion below the waterline in modern times, but in fact God had already been dealt a fatal blow hundreds of years before Jesus and Mohammed even strutted their stuff. Here's the rough idea:

According to this story by Plato, Socrates meets a guy called Euthyphro on his way to the court house. He's going there to testify against his own father over something or other. So Socrates naturally asks him why the hell would he do that? Euthyphro replies that he believes it to be the will of the gods. And then Plato (in the words of Socrates) delivers the immortal punch line: "Do the gods wish for what is good, because it is good; or is what is good, good, because the gods wish for it?" Or something like that. This then came to be known as the Euthyphro dilemma, after the geezer who was off to condemn his dad because that's what he thought the gods wanted.

Here is Julian Baggini's version of the story from his amusing book of philosophical anecdotes, The Pig that Wants to be Eaten:

And the Lord spake unto the philosopher, "I am the Lord thy God, and I am the source of all that is good. Why does thy secular moral philosophy ignore me?"

And the philosopher spake unto the Lord, "To answer I must first ask you some questions. You command us to do what is good. But is it good because you command it, or do you command it because it is good?"

"Ur," said the Lord. "It's good because I command it?"

"The wrong answer, surely, your mightiness! If the good is only good because you say it is so, then you could, if you wished, make it so that torturing infants was good. But that would be absurd, wouldn't it?"

"Of course!" replieth the Lord. "I tested thee and thou hast made me pleased. What was the other choice again?"

"You choose what is good because it is good. But that shows quite clearly that goodness does not depend on you at all. So we don't need to study God to study the good."

"Even so," spake the Lord, "you've got to admit I've written some pretty good textbooks on the subject . . ."

So, after a moment's thought, we may see that God (or the gods) cannot reasonably be the source of all goodness. Whatever goodness is (and that is another question really), it is a standard against which both man and God must be measured equally. Unless we would prefer it that whatever God commands should go unchallenged, even including a command to torture infants.

But of course God would never issue evil commands like that. Well . . . not quite so fast. One biblical story that sticks in the memory is that of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22). God commands Abraham to offer up his son Isaac as a blood sacrifice because . . . well, God just needs a regular supply of blood sacrifice to keep him going. Don't you? So Abraham says, "right you are God," and takes Isaac up a distant mountain, puts him on a pyre, ties him down, sharpens the knife, raises it into the sky, ready to plunge it into the heart of his only son. By this stage, Isaac is really shitting himself. Then, at the very last moment, God says, "Aha!!! Only kidding!!!" Now both Abraham and Isaac are pissing themselves at the sheer hilarity of the situation. They're miles from home, cold and tired, Isaac is still tied down on the altar, and Abraham is laughing so hard that he can't even undo the knots.

The point of the story, as I'm sure you know, is that God was putting Abraham to the test – a test he passed with flying colours. But I don't see it that way at all. I think that both God and Abraham failed the test big time. God, for asking Abraham to do such a sick and twisted thing in the first place; and Abraham, for going along with it. Because, as Plato showed, God has to be judged by the same standards that we are judged. We have every right, and indeed a responsibility, to question God's wishes, to call God to account, and ultimately even to condemn God after a fair hearing.

Question for the reader: What would you do if God appeared to you in the middle of the night and asked you to kill your only child?

2. David Hume (1711 - 1776)

I love Hume. Not that I knew him personally you understand. The peaceable Scot who was way ahead of his time, and yet liked nothing better than to relax with his mates of an evening around the billiard table. Mindful of the fact that not so long ago, an eighteen year old student named Thomas Aikenhead had been convicted and hanged for "blasphemy," Hume had to tread with caution. For this reason, his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion were written in the form of a . . . dialogue (amazingly!) between fictional characters, and even then were only published posthumously. Here is an interesting passage from the Dialogues which is often cited for its spooky anticipation of Darwin:

If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel, when we find him a stupid mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out; much labour lost; many fruitless trials made; and a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making.

Wow! But for me, Hume's greatest contribution lies in his brilliant demolition of the whole concept of "miracles." While Protestants may feel a sense of smug superiority upon hearing of bleeding Catholic statues and the like, the truth is that miracles are central to the entire project of religion. For put simply, a miracle is the opening up of a channel of communication between the domains of nature and supernature. Normally the channel stays open for a very short period (for some reason) – but if there is no channel at all, if the two domains are completely cut off from one another, then . . . what is the point? You might as well be telling me about Pluto, which would doubtless be very interesting – but not that interesting.

Anyway, it all began when Hume was staying at the theological college of La Flèche in France, so he could get on with some writing in peace. One day, Hume fell into conversation with a Jesuit who sought to impress him with some tale about a miracle which had supposedly taken place within the college. Hume, deciding that this tommyrot simply had to stop, tried gently explaining his maxim (which we will come to in a minute). Upon hearing it, the Jesuit dropped his jaw like a fish and exclaimed, "But sir, if you are right about this, then the same would hold for all the miracles in the Bible!"

Hume was at a loss as to how to respond. Two paths opened before him: He could either slap his forehead and say, "Doh! Silly me! Just forget everything I said!" Or he could say, "Yes, well the Bible's a pile of shite – I thought we all knew that anyway." Uncertain of his ground, Hume beat a hasty retreat to his study and promptly wrote out his famous essay Of Miracles – first published in 1748, anonymously of course for fear of all the usual reprisals.

It's a terrific piece of prose in two parts, though Part I does most of the damage. Hume gradually assembles his argument that "a wise man [should] proportion his belief to the evidence," by way of an entertaining series of stories and anecdotes. In order to believe in a miracle, clearly some sort of evidence is required, but the key thing is that the evidence must scale with what is being claimed. Here is how Hume sums up his case in what, now I come to think of it, must be my favourite paragraph in the whole of the English language:

The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force which remains after deducting the inferior. When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

I love that, "When anyone tells me he saw a dead man restored to life." Not mentioning any names of course! Prison would have been no picnic for Hume – he certainly wouldn't have enjoyed the luxury of a billiard table in jail, like you would today. (What a foul disgrace that, even as I write, the Blasphemy Act of 1698 has yet to be repealed.)

There's also a bit of a technical argument to Hume's maxim. Even if the quality of the evidence were to surpass the required level, we are still left with this "mutual destruction of arguments" between the testimony on the one hand, and the entire weight of human experience on the other – experience which in general would suggest that the dead do not rise up from the grave. So, still no reason to stand back in amazement. Don't worry if you can't get your head around that part. The bottom line is that "miracles" are just a complete load of bollocks. At any time. In any place.

But for me, Hume's essay does so much more than simply procure for us a handy "miracle test" with which to shoo away simpletons making preposterous claims. Hume seems to be telling us that we wouldn't even want a miracle story to be true. For example, I love fine wines. The ones I love the best are the ones I can't afford. But had I been a guest of the Wedding at Cana, I think I would have taken Jesus to one side and given him a little lecture along the lines of: "Very clever superman, now why don't you just turn the wine back into water, and we'll say no more about it, eh? There's a good Saviour of mankind."

Think about it. What do we stand to gain? Some wine. What do we stand to lose? Reason and sanity. It hardly seems worth the risk. Certainly not for a wine which pre-dates the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée scheme. It does make you wonder though whether that story might not have been devised specifically to appeal to pissheads.

Question for the reader: Which do you think is more likely: that Jesus turned water into wine, or that somebody made that story up?

3. Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

Charles Darwin invented Darwin's theory of evolution. You knew that, didn't you? But possibly the most important thing to understand about Darwin's theory is that it is . . . just that – a theory. A bloody good theory, but nonetheless . . . just a theory. A theory of massive explanatory and predictive power, which has, over the course of the last century, forged a compelling unity and coherence out of the biological sciences, while simultaneously shedding a powerful light upon that which could scarcely be of greater import – the very nature of the human condition itself. But . . . when all's said and done (and I really can't stress this enough) . . . just a theory.

Darwin studied theology at Cambridge (now there's an irony) before heading off on a sailing trip around the Galápagos Islands off the coast of modern Ecuador. The adventure was to have a number of onerous consequences. Firstly, it resulted in Darwin losing his Christian faith. Sadly, he also lost his health which was never to return for the remainder of his life. And finally, he changed the world utterly and irrevocably. Not bad for a boat trip.

Darwin made a close study of fauna, especially finches, and discovered that they were all slightly different from one island to the next. This led him to the conclusion that, though distinct, the various species of finches were clearly descended from some common ancestor. So this got him to wondering whether in fact all species might not be related by way of a gradual series of increments, the overall difference (and this is the key insight) being one of degree not of kind.

Darwin spent the rest of his life working on his little theory, including a whacking eight years on barnacles alone. He liked barnacles. The writings of Thomas Malthus provided him with the explanatory mechanism – now known as "survival of the fittest" – for why species might undergo such a gradual "evolution." Really the only bit missing was the genetic understanding which was to come later. Eventually, spurred on by the knowledge that Alfred Wallace was coming to roughly the same conclusions, he let off his little bombshell in 1859.

Reaction to The Origin of Species was mixed. Some people said that his findings contradicted the Bible, and therefore could not possibly be true. These folk live on to this day and are known as "creationists," but they are a very tiny minority – in America, only 53% for instance (according to those pesky polls). Others performed a soft shoe shuffle and said that they had never really believed in Genesis literally anyhow. These people are called religious "moderates." Darwin's own reaction was a little more dramatic. He said he felt as though he were confessing to a murder.

But perhaps the most telling reaction of all came from the wife of the Bishop of Birmingham who is reported to have said to her husband, "My dear, let us hope that it is not true; but, if it is true, let us hope that it does not become generally known." So much for the Protestant liberal tradition! Of course I have no idea whether or not she actually said that, but it's certainly what she should have said. For nothing, but nothing, has been more corrosive to the project of religion than the theory of evolution through natural selection. Here's why:

Question for the reader: How concerned should we be to learn that the most powerful nation on Earth appears to be in the grip of a medieval superstition?

4. Darwin's theory

The first and perhaps most obvious problem is, as has already been touched upon, that evolution falsifies a literal interpretation of Genesis. However, most Christians don't seem to get too exercised over the fact that the "word of God" is wildly inaccurate. Six days, 14 billion years – we've all been there, especially the software engineers among us. Besides, this was not exactly news in 1859. Earlier that century, geologists had already noted, through studying rocks and stuff, that the biblical time-scales were simply infeasible.

Nevertheless, to this day the "debate" still largely seems to centre around questions concerning whether the Hebrew word for "day" means just one revolution of the earth, or whether it really means "f***ing ages." Indeed, there are times when I get to wondering if this fatuous argument is not prosecuted purely in order to distract attention away from what is possibly the bigger embarrassment – namely that evolutionary theory drives a coach and horses through the foundational Christian doctrine of the fall and redemption.

If you attend the extended Christmas or Easter liturgies, as bizarrely I still do, you will find that the story begins (where else?) with Adam eating an apple – the felix culpa from which all else follows. Of course modern Christians don't take this too literally either. There was no apple, no Adam and Eve as such, no serpent, no garden – rather the story merely symbolises mankind's fall from grace into its present disordered and unhappy state from which it now cries out to the Almighty for salvation. It's just an allegory, stupid!

Except . . . it's not exactly a brilliant allegory either. I thought that allegories were supposed to inform and illuminate, but this one just misleads. Because neither was there any "fall from grace." Instead, we started out as pond scum, became fish, then small furry creatures, monkeys, and finally humans (missing out a few steps there). And how did that happen? It all came about on account of the struggle for survival – a bitter and ongoing fight over finite resources – ultimately, a fight to the death. And get this: it's been that way for the best part of 500 million years. Here's Dawkins:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.

Great! And whose fault is all of that? It's God's fault. That's right – the big cheese himself. That's the way he chose to set things up, in his "infinite wisdom." But now, maybe sensing that we were not far off stumbling upon the truth, God plays an absolute blinder – he tries to blame it all on us! He tells us that all this misery is a consequence of human "sin" and then, just to complete the illusion, sends his only son to "save us" by allowing him to be brutally tortured and executed, doubtless imagining (correctly as it happens) that we might be impressed with that sort of thing.

This is what I mean when I state unequivocally that the position staked out by the religious moderate is intellectually and theologically bankrupt. I'm not terribly impressed with Christians who believe in evolution. Granted, they may not be flying in the face of modern science with all the arrogance and ignorance of an evangelical nut-job. No, instead they're just worshipping – yes, worshipping – the most cynical bastard in all of history, literature, or mythology.

I'm really looking forward to the day of judgement. I can't wait to see the look of dismay on God's face when it finally dawns on him that he's actually going to be entering the dock himself.

Question for the reader: Why would the omniscient, benevolent, and omnipotent creator of the universe appear to be so cruel, wasteful, and lazy?

5. Sam Harris (born 1967)

Sam Harris shot to prominence in 2004 with his best-selling book The End of Faith, which has managed to draw sharp criticism from religionist and secularist alike – a sure sign that he must be doing something right! It's a superb book – packed with useful insight and displaying a fine mastery of the English language to boot. I don't agree with all of it. In particular, the final chapter caused some of us a few difficulties, especially when he started quoting Padmasambhava approvingly! But for exposing the duplicitous role of the "religious moderate" in unwittingly providing comfort and cover for the extremist, I'm afraid he scores a perfect ten in my book. "By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally." I don't think I could have put it any better myself!

But that is all by the way, because our interest here is in questions of science and philosophy – and so to his lesser-known day job as a neuroscience PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles. When I first heard about Harris's research, I assumed that he was going to stick probes onto people's heads, and try to show that religious beliefs were fundamentally different in some way from "normal" beliefs. In fact, he's doing something far more interesting – he's trying to show that they're the same! I'll let him explain what he's up to:

What I believe, though cannot yet prove, is that belief is a content-independent process. Which is to say that beliefs about God – to the degree that they really are believed – are the same as beliefs about numbers, penguins, tofu, or anything else. This is not to say that all of our representations of the world are acquired through language, or that all linguistic representations are on the same logical footing. And we know that different regions of the brain are involved in judging the truth of statements drawn from different content domains. What I do believe, however, is that the neural processes governing the final acceptance of a statement as "true" rely on more fundamental, reward-related circuitry in our frontal lobes – probably the same regions that judge the pleasantness of tastes and odours. Truth may be beauty, and beauty truth, in more than a metaphorical sense. And false statements may quite literally disgust us.

All of this is very much in its infancy, and doubtless will not be the work of just one man. Ultimately this may turn out to be a futile quest – it may not be possible to prove that all belief is fundamentally on an equal footing, indeed it may not even be true. But we'll just follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if it leads to God (which would be a first)! If you're interested, Harris had an initial paper published before Christmas. It's available here (pdf), though I can't claim to understand any of it.

That said, I do find this idea highly plausible. We all know, or should do, just how malleable and suggestible the human brain is. One of my favourite demonstrations of this involves Derren Brown making a nice lady act like she was under some kind of voodoo spell. First, she can't move her legs, then she can't move her arms, and finally she can't even speak – all courtesy of Derren manipulating the little levers in her brain to convince her that there really might be something in this voodoo doll malarkey after all.

The moral is that, "As a nice lady thinks, so she will act." Or as Harris would say, "A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person's life." Yet, time and again, I seem to come right up against this tired old false dichotomy, so cherished by liberals, between belief and action. "People are free to think and say whatever they like, as long as they keep off my front lawn." If only I had a pound – hey, 50p even! – for every time I had heard that glib sentiment, I would have long since retired to Hawaii and you could all blissfully carry on without me.

Of course the sentiment is valid in a strictly legal sense but, in just about every other sense, it is hopelessly outdated. Beliefs are in no way separate from actions. In fact, beliefs are actions, and can be just as lethal. The neural activity which constitutes a belief connects directly to a nervous system running through your arm and finger, which pulls the trigger, that fires a bullet, that kills the President, which starts a nuclear war – it's all of a piece. To think otherwise, is essentially to buy into a philosophical dualism of the mind which bit the dust absolutely ages ago.

Beliefs have potentially devastating consequences – 9/11 should have proved that beyond any doubt but, as the fatuous search for "root causes" continues apace, one has to wonder whether 2,998 may not have died in vain. Yet Harris is out to show that the core beliefs motivating the hijackers – beliefs in the Koran, Islamic jihad, the afterlife, and so on – are fundamentally no different in character from beliefs about the weather! Of course, some of the more batshit crazy ideas may be a little harder to acquire, taking years of persistent indoctrination not unlike the lengthy process of learning a musical instrument. But once acquired – once the brain, finding that the belief "tastes good," grants it canonical status – then pretty much everything else follows for better or for worse.

Religious belief, or indeed any other belief, is emphatically not a private matter. Rather, a belief is merely an action primed, cocked, and ready for battle. If we are "as liberals" to insist that it is not beliefs but only actions which matter, then I fear we may find ourselves having to clear up the mess following one 9/11 and 7/7 after another. It is time that we went after the bad ideas with a vengeance. The claims of religion are false – we are now in a position to state this with overwhelming confidence. If liberalism means one thing, then it must surely be about setting the individual free. It isn't entirely clear to me just how shackling ourselves to the ignorance of the past can form any part of this project.

Question for the reader: When we observe how easily the mind may be altered by hypnosis or drugs, why do some of us appear to imagine that religion is quite incapable of performing the same trick?

6. Reading list

No lecture series, facetious or otherwise, would be complete without a recommended reading list. This basically covers the arse of the lecturer against the inevitable errors and omissions of his own exposition. "You'll have to turn to the reading list for a fuller treatment," he will say. So here it is!

• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding – A bit heavy going as you might expect, but the chapter on miracles is fairly readable, and that is the important bit.
• Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden – Explains evolution as only Dawkins can. Should be read by every child in the land.
• Sam Harris, The End of Faith – In my view, the best of the post 9/11 anti-God diatribes. Should be read by every condescending atheist in the land.
• Julian Baggini, Atheism – This tiny book sets out the philosophical arguments against God in the simplest possible terms. Another one for the Christmas stocking methinks.
• Victor Stenger, God, the Failed Hypothesis – And this one sets out the scientific arguments against God. Probably wouldn't appeal to those without a strong interest in science.
• Ludovic Kennedy, All in the Mind – Superb historical sweep charting the rise and fall of God. Great reference book.

OK, that's enough books. If you're still "doing God" after reading that little lot, then I don't think there's a great deal more I can do to help you. But make no mistake – you do need help! I think I'm going to leave the last word to Hume. This, the final paragraph from the Enquiry:

Tags: Religion, Atheism, Facebook, Debunking, God

Why Darwin matters

Thanks to a course member (JP) of the Oxford University "Philosophy Gym" for the link.

Big enough to undermine the idea of creation but simple enough to be stated in a sentence, the theory of natural selection is a masterpiece, writes Richard Dawkins

• Saturday February 9 2008

Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the most powerful idea ever. And like all the best ideas it is beguilingly simple. In fact, it is so staggeringly elementary, so blindingly obvious that although others before him tinkered nearby, nobody thought to look for it in the right place.

Darwin had plenty of other good ideas - for example his ingenious and largely correct theory of how coral reefs form -

but it is his big idea of natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species, that gave biology its guiding principle, a governing law that helps the rest make sense.

Understanding its cold, beautiful logic is a must.

Natural selection's explanatory power is not just about life on this planet: it is the only theory so far suggested that could, even in principle, explain life on any planet. If life exists elsewhere in the universe - and my tentative bet is that it does - some version of evolution by natural selection will almost certainly turn out to underlie its existence. Darwin's theory works equally well no matter how strange and alien and weird that extraterrestrial life may be - and my tentative bet is that it will be weird beyond imagining.

Explanation ratio

But what makes natural selection so special? A powerful idea assumes little to explain much. It does lots of explanatory "heavy lifting", while expending little in the way of assumptions or postulations. It gives you plenty of bangs for your explanatory buck. Its Explanation Ratio - what it explains, divided by what it needs to assume in order to do the explaining - is large.

If any reader knows of an idea that has a larger explanation ratio than Darwin's, let's hear it.

Darwin's big idea explains all of life and its consequences, and that means everything that possesses more than minimal complexity. That's the numerator of the explanation ratio, and it is huge.

Yet the denominator in the explanatory equation is spectacularly small and simple: natural selection, the non-random survival of genes in gene pools (to put it in neo-Darwinian terms rather than Darwin's own).

You can pare Darwin's big idea down to a single sentence (again, this is a modern way of putting it, not quite Darwin's):

"Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities (which occasionally miscopy) will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design."

I have put "which occasionally miscopy" in brackets because mistakes are inevitable in any copying process. We don't need to add mutation to our assumptions. Mutational "bucks" are provided free. "Given sufficient time" is not a problem either - except for human minds struggling to take on board the terrifying magnitude of geological time.

A certain kind of mind

It is mainly its power to simulate the illusion of design that makes Darwin's big idea seem threatening to a certain kind of mind. The same power constitutes the most formidable barrier to understanding it. People are naturally incredulous that anything so simple could explain so much.

To a naive observer of the wondrous complexity of life, it just must have been intelligently designed.

But intelligent design (ID) is the polar opposite of a powerful theory: its explanation ratio is pathetic. The numerator is the same as Darwin's: everything we know about life and its prodigious complexity. But the denominator, far from Darwin's pristine and minimalist simplicity, is at least as big as the numerator itself: an unexplained intelligence big enough to be capable of designing all the complexity we are trying to explain in the first place!

Here may lie the answer to a nagging puzzle in the history of ideas. After Newton's brilliant synthesis of physics, why did it take nearly 200 years for Darwin to arrive on the scene? Newton's achievement seems so much harder! Maybe the answer is that Darwin's eventual solution to the riddle of life is so apparently facile.

Claims to priority were made on behalf of others, and by Patrick Matthew in the appendix to his work On Naval Timber, as was punctiliously acknowledged by Darwin in later editions of the Origin. However, although Matthew understood the principle of natural selection, it is not clear that he understood its power. Unlike Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, who hit on natural selection independently, prompting Darwin to publish his theory, Matthew seems to have seen selection as a purely negative, weeding-out force, not the driving force of all life. Indeed, he thought natural selection so obvious as to need no positive discovery at all.

Garbled versions

Although Darwin's theory can be applied to much beyond the evolution of organic life, I want to counsel against a different sense of Universal Darwinism. This is the uncritical dragging of some garbled version of natural selection into every available field of human discourse, whether it is appropriate or not.

Maybe the "fittest" firms survive in the marketplace of commerce, or the fittest theories survive in the scientific marketplace, but we should at very least be cautious before we get carried away. And of course there was Social Darwinism, culminating in the obscenity of Hitlerism.

Less obnoxious but still intellectually unhelpful is the loose and uncritical way in which amateur biologists apply selection at inappropriate levels in the hierarchy of life. "Survival of the fittest species, extinction of poorly adapted species" sounds superficially like natural selection, but the apparent resemblance is positively misleading.

As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.

I'll end on a subtler legacy of Darwin's big idea.

Darwin raises our consciousness to the sinewy power of science to explain the large and complex in terms of the small and simple. In biology we were fooled for centuries into thinking that extravagant complexity in nature needs an extravagantly complex explanation. Darwin triumphantly dispelled that delusion.

There remain deep questions, in physics and cosmology, that await their Darwin. Why are the laws of physics the way they are? Why are there laws at all? Why is there a universe at all? Once again, the lure of "design" is tempting. But we have the cautionary tale of Darwin before us. We've been through all that before. Darwin emboldens us - difficult as it is - to seek genuine explanations: explanations that explain more than they postulate.

Richard Dawkin FRS is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. His latest book is The God Delusion

The Evolution Wars

a Powerpoint presentation about Evolution

Darwin Fish Exposes Christian Privilege

from Atheist Revolution by vjack

I like the Darwin fish. To me, it is a healthy pro-science statement. Of course, I acknowledge that it also carries an anti-religion connotation for some people due to its design (i.e., borrowing from the Christian design which came first) and the inevitable conflict between religion and science. I'm also aware that some people view displaying a Darwin fish as an act of symbolic aggression. More than just being an interesting symbol that is interpreted in diverse ways, the Darwin fish exposes the scope of Christian privilege and says volumes about the plight of nonbelievers.

I do not have a Darwin fish on my car, but I would very much like to. Why? I perceive it as one of the rare symbols which conveys both a pro-science and an anti-superstition sentiment simultaneously. Since I am both pro-science and anti-superstition, it is an unusually accurate symbol for my worldview. But the main reason I'd like to have one because of how it makes me feel when I see one on another vehicle. They are a rare sight around here, but when I glimpse one, it instantly puts a smile on my face. Suddenly I am no longer alone, even if only for a brief second on the road. I'd like to be able to spread that feeling to other freethinkers.

Isn't this the main reason why Christians put Jesus fish on their cars - they like how they feel when the see one on another car? I'd like to have the same option. If they have the right to be part of a Jesus fish community, communicating "I'm one of you" to other Christian drivers, I'd like to be able to do the same a nonbeliever.

I do not have a Darwin fish on my car because I am not interested in having my car vandalized. I have known a handful of people in this community who have had their vehicles vandalized other progressive symbols (e.g., anti-Bush and pro-Kerry bumper stickers), and I have heard conservative Christians talk about damaging vehicles for messages with which they disagreed. In other words, I have empirical evidence (e.g., reports of vandalism to vehicles displaying progressive symbols) to support my estimation of the likelihood of vandalism.

So while I have the right (in a legal sense) to display a Darwin fish, exercising it requires me to put my personal safety and my property in jeopardy. Christians do not have to worry about this when they affix a Jesus fish to their vehicles, put on a cross necklace, wear a Campus Crusade for Christ t-shirt, or engage in some other symbolic expression of their beliefs.

petition the Prime Minister to Remove Charles Darwin from being considered a respected individual

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We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Remove Charles Darwin from being considered a respected individual. More details

Submitted by ELIZABETH FISHER

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1. Remove the picture of the extremely racist Charles Darwin from the £10 note AND 2. If this country is not a racist country, let us rid ourselves of the religious (firmly held belief) filth of Darwins teachings! Do not teach his arrogant and UNSCIENTIFIC theology (his god was himself) in our schools and misname it as "science." If we teach Evolution, we should teach other (and more plauseable possibilities - i.e. Intelligen Design) beliefs.

Let us not forget that "race" is a made-up concept anyway. We should run away at full speed from any thing that has encouraged the actions of Adolf Hitler!

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