Here’s some vintage Richard Dawkins. Back in 1991, the Oxford University biologist presented a series of lectures for the Royal Institution. In the very first lecture (presented above), Dawkins forces his audience to confront some big questions. (What’s the origin of life? Where do we fall in the scheme of life on planet Earth? What’s our role in the larger universe? etc.) And he reminds us that we’re extremely privileged to have the brains and tools (namely, reason and science) to make sense of the awesome wonders that surround us. We’ve evolved and grown up, he says. We don’t need superstition and the supernatural to explain it all. We just need ourselves and our faith in science and its methods. It’s classic Dawkins.
The 55-minute talk is now added to our YouTube favorites, and we’ve also added Dawkins’ YouTube Channel to our collection of Intelligent YouTube Channels.
Dawkins may contend that “[w]e don’t need superstition and the supernatural to explain it all.” But he also concedes — as he must — that science is also incapable of explaining it all. He apparently believes, however, that someday science will be able to do so. That seems as much an article of “faith” as those who believe in the “superstitions” Dawkins takes so much pleasure in deriding.