In the following video Richard Dawkins kindly refers to Ray Comfort as an "idiot." He also evades the question of what happened or existed before the "Big Bang" by stating that's a question for "cosmologists" whereas he (Dawkins) is a "biologist."
Update: If you're having trouble viewing the video click here and watch it at CNN.
How Science Thinks with Richard Dawkins, Friedrich Nietzsche and Others
What are the ideas behind the scientific revolution? Featuring interviews with Richard Dawkins, John Polanyi
and Lee Smolin from the TVO archive
Is Sex Irrational?
Evolutionary Biologist
As the legendary evolutionary biologist explains, human intercourse is far from a basic fact of life as the act throws away half of our genes and is therefore entirely irrational from an evolutionary perspective.
October 26, 2009 | In Science & Tech
Richard Dawkins is always brilliant.
As an evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins has broadened our understanding of the genetic origin of our species; as a popular author, he has helped lay readers understand complex scientific concepts. He's best-known for the ideas laid out in his landmark book The Selfish Gene and fleshed out in The Extended Phenotype: the rather radical notion that Darwinian selection happens not at the level of the individual, but at the level of our DNA. The implication: We evolved for only one purpose — to serve our genes.
Of perhaps equal importance is Dawkins' concept of the meme, which he defines as a self-replicating unit of culture -- an idea, a chain letter, a catchy tune, an urban legend -- which is passed person-to-person, its longevity based on its ability to lodge in the brain and inspire transmission to others. Introduced in The Selfish Gene in 1976, the concept of memes has itself proven highly contagious, inspiring countless accounts and explanations of idea propagation in the information age. In recent years, Dawkins has become outspoken in his atheism, coining the word "bright" (as an alternate to atheist), and encouraging fellow non-believers to stand up and be identified. His controversial, confrontational 2002 TED talk was a seminal moment for the New Atheism, as was the publication of his 2006 book, The God Delusion, a bestselling critique of religion that championed atheism and promoted scientific principles over creationism and intelligent design."Dawkins ... is a master of scientific exposition and synthesis. When it comes to his own specialty, evolutionary biology, there is none better."Jim Holt, The New York Times
Richard Dawkins, best known as the author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, is at the Atheist Alliance International Convention in Burbank, California, to discuss his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.
Mr. Dawkins says that the evidence for evolution is irrefutable. Many creationists would like to kill the messenger, Mr. Dawkins. His critics continue to ask him many questions: What about the gaps in the fossil record? How about the possibility of an intelligent designer?
Forty percent of Americans, according to polls taken by Gallup at regular intervals since 1982, deny that humans evolved from other animals and think that we were created by God within the last 10,000 years. Figures vary around the world. Eighty-five percent of Iceland's population believes we developed from earlier species, but only 27% share that view in Turkey, an Islamic country.
Mr. Dawkins was born in Nairobi in 1941, and left for England when he was 9. His father was an agricultural civil servant who inherited a dairy farm that had been in the family since 1723. Mr. Dawkins first doubts about God the year he left Africa, and he fell for Darwin in his mid-teens.
After studying zoology and animal behavior at Balliol College, Oxford, Mr. Dawkins taught zoology at Berkeley before returning to Oxford as professor for the public understanding of science, a fellowship endowed by Hungarian software billionaire Charles Simonyi.
Mr. Dawkins recently left this post to write, lecture and run the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, an organization dedicated to rationalist, humanist research and science education. Mr. Dawkins is keen to establish that his new book is not "The God Delusion." He wants to distance it from conversations about God.
Mr. Dawkins has a history of releasing his ideas into the world and letting others carry them. In this way, his books are his laboratories. Each of his books has been a response to some fallacy, an effort to dispel a common misconception.
Mr. Dawkins says that the vast majority of species may go extinct, but human beings are a remarkable species and given our advances in technology, we might survive extinction and that in 10 million years our descendants will still be here.
Mr. Dawkins is less sanguine about the fate of science. Despite exciting new discoveries, a dearth of students are going into scientific fields. To counteract this, Dawkins' next book will be for 12-year-olds, an expansion on a letter about the importance of critical thinking that he wrote to his daughter, Juliet, now a medical student, when she was 10.
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The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
By Richard Dawkins
Free Press, 470 pages, $30
Richard Dawkins on the O'RLY Factor, discussing his latest book The Greatest Show On Earth.
I'll listen when you get it ;)
The subject matter of this documentary frustrates me so much. I love the things this guy has to say and I really love the way this is presented. This is a documentary by Richard Dawkins called "The Root of All Evil?" It's a anti-religious documentary going into most major relgions across the world. He disccuses many of the gaps in these religions. I think it's interesting the way many of the people react in it. They are very similar, each getting fired up and boiling down to the same tactics to fight back. It's so hard for me to swallow the extreme beliefs in this video. I think it's pretty interesting to think about how each religion thinks they are right and all others are wrong. One HAS to be right and it's theirs of course. Haha. I hope this could possibly have some insight for some people. It's strongly based on scientific facts verus blind faith. The way it's presented is awesome and will defenitely make you think. This is broken into two parts that are 45 minutes each. Totally worth watching if you're into that sort of thing.
"The Root of All Evil?" Part 1
"The Root of All Evil?" Part 2
I made an edit because I realized the video doesn't work for some people. Here is a direct link to part 1. There is another link on that page for part 2. Enjoy!
