Richard Dawkins on Evolution

 

The evolutionary biology professor at Oxford University, whose book The Greatest Show on Earth is now in paperback says we are all Africans. We don't have to go back very far and in about 100,000 years, all our ancestors lived in Africa, where Africans walked out of Africa. It's not that long ago. So we are Africans, actually; we're African apes. And summer brings us all together. A woman said to him that she does not believe in evolution and believes it's a myth because she said, How come we don't see apes evolving? Now? Why don't you go to the zoo and see the monkey evolving? You know, before our eyes. It's not just that it suggests that she thinks that monkeys turn into humans overnight. But it's also the fact that monkeys are very good at doing what they do. They live on trees. And it's a very good thing to be a monkey. If you're up a tree, you might as well say, why aren't humans turning into monkeys? We have a common ancestor with monkeys which lived about 20 million years ago, and we both have been evolving ever since. It's as simple as that. But that does seem to suggest that the monkeys are more primitive and more interesting. Primitive means more like our ancestors. So if you looked at the common ancestor of humans, and it's up there, and then we come down, that common ancestor would have looked much more like a monkey than it looks like a human. So we probably would have called it a monkey. In his book, which is marvelous, interesting, even to the average person, which is what I am, an average person, if I could appreciate it, anyone can because I'm not a science person. He talks about, for example, the fact that lizards, even in our lifetimes, were moved to an island right where they never were before. And we saw it in just a matter of decades. I mean, most evolution happened before we were born and took much too long for us to see. But there are just a few examples. And these lizards are one. They were moved from one island in the Mediterranean to another, and within a couple of decades, they had evolved into a completely new diet. And that just didn't change their jaws or even change their stomachs, and they now have stomach valves. In just a couple of decades. Just think what could be achieved in a million years 100 million years. So when people say the Bible is real, what they're really saying is that ancient people somehow have more knowledge of it. Some of them are wiser. That's silly, right? Because wisdom develops on the shoulders of other people. I mean, there could be no Einstein without Newton, right? We're not even talking about the ancient Greeks and we're talking about a tribe of wandering Middle Eastern herdsmen. Why would they have any wisdom about the origin of the world or the origin of anything else? That particular myth is the myth that just by sheer chance, the Judeo Christian myth happens to have come to our civilization. There are 1000s of myths in the world. None of them are any better than any of the others; some of them are a lot more poetic than that one. You can come out as an atheist, don't be afraid to come out. We're not in the business of outing people. People make out themselves and all we do is encourage them. Keep it out, keep religion out of schools, keep religion out of politics. I want to hear your answer. To the people that saw you speak about this, who say well, you know, atheists are responsible for really all the horrible things that have happened in the last century because Hitler and Stalin and Mao were all atheists and look what they did. Hitler was a Roman Catholic, and even if he wasn't who he was, even if he wasn't, his soldiers, his foot soldiers who did the horrible things were either Catholic or Lutheran. And they had been schooled for centuries to hate Jews. Both Catholics and Lutherans had been trained to believe Jews were responsible for killing Jesus. So Hitler had a right-field advantage. To plow there in the Christian heritage of Germany. But could I add something to that? Because I've thought about this. I've been confronted with this myself many times, which is that I think people get hung up on the word religion. Hitlerism, Stalinism, Maoism, stated, really, they were religions and hence Hirohito in Japan. It was a godlike figure. The real crux of it is that anytime that people give up on logic and put their faith in someone, Kim Jong Il in North Korea mythology around him, they said that the first time he played golf he had 11 holes in one; that's religion. That's right. And the point is that there is no logical pathway that would lead you from atheism to doing those terrible things. Right. That is a logical pathway that would lead to either that would lead to that either from a Christian religion or something like that, or from one of these state religions, like Nazism, like Stalinism, and so on. You really can justify doing those awful things if you believe in something as strongly as religious people do. But nobody's going to go and kill for the sake of atheism. Why on earth would you be in France this week? They passed a law that you cannot wear the burqa. Now, I know you feel, as I do, it doesn't really matter what you wear, but just speak a little bit about what goes on in schools of law. I mean, I think there are as you imply, that are much worse things than the clothes you wore a couple of months ago. I visited a British Islamic school, one of the best in the country. And the headmaster was a leading, leading Muslim in Britain. And I spoke to about six of the girls; only the girls and boys are kept strictly separate, of course. And I learned that every single pupil in that school did not believe in evolution. And the pupils that I spoke to quite clearly think that the Quran is a superior source of scientific information than evidence. And they told me, for example, that salt water and fresh water don't mix because it says that in the Quran. Now, alas, I lacked the presence of mind to turn to the teacher sitting next to me and say, will you please the very next science lesson, get some saltwater, get some fresh water, and mix them and see what happens? Well, my guess is that even if she did that, even if she did that, and sure enough, they would mix they still would believe the Quran because the Quran takes precedence over fact, evidence whether water is salt or fresh shed floats.