Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Never a First Human Being

Last year, right before pub­lish­ing his illus­trat­ed chil­dren’s book The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty, Richard Dawkins appeared at The New York­er Fes­ti­val and walked the crowd through a short thought exper­i­ment. Imag­ine pulling out your fam­i­ly geneal­o­gy. Now snap a pho­to of each ances­tor going back 185 mil­lion gen­er­a­tions. What would it show? First off, your very dis­tant grand­fa­ther was a fish. Sec­ond­ly, you can nev­er put your fin­ger on the very first human being, a prover­bial Adam and Eve. 185,000,000 snap­shots can nev­er cap­ture that one moment.

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  • M.E. says:

    oh, bor­ing. we come from our moth­ers. they bear us. yes, our fathers fer­til­ized the eggs that our moth­ers and fore­moth­ers bore, but let’s take a bet­ter look at what dawkins is say­ing. if every­one comes from the same species, how do we wind up com­ing from a fish?

    • Lady Jane says:

      I don’t think he means this to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly. He wants us to real­ize that life is on a con­tin­u­um, and that cling­ing to sto­ries that deny this as fact miss­es the point. If you fol­low his think­ing, he’s telling us that we may no long be “homo sapi­ens” and we don’t even real­ize it. Some­one 10k years from now could look back and clas­si­fy us as some­thing quite dif­fer­ent. Every­thing is chang­ing; we treat it like it’s sta­t­ic. (Homo Inter­neti­cus, per­haps.)

      • ‘Homo Sapi­ens’ is mere­ly a lin­guis­tic clas­si­fi­ca­to­ry con­struct any­way. What is actu­al­ly sig­ni­fies is sub­ject to insta­bil­i­ty. And there­in lies a prob­lem for sci­en­tists study­ing evo­lu­tion. If we’re not even sure what actu­al­ly con­sti­tutes ‘homo sapi­ens’, then it’s impos­si­ble to know when ‘homo sapi­ens’ came into being, let alone when ‘we’ might NOT be ‘homo sapi­ens’. It’s an odd thought exper­i­ment on Dawkins part — one that fails to acknowl­edge how sci­en­tists often make assump­tions from lim­it­ed knowl­edge them­selves (many sci­en­tists, for exam­ple, have no under­stand­ing of how their sci­en­tif­ic process is CULTURALLY con­struct­ed and there­fore sub­ject to problems/flaws in sci­en­tif­ic rea­son­ing — the old notion that ‘homo sapi­ens’ is a ‘pin­na­cle of evo­lu­tion’ being one of those prob­lems, thank­ful­ly cri­tiqued by Stephen Jay Gould I think).

  • Amando Savi says:

    Hi, M.E.

    The answer to your ques­tion is bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion work­ing through two main mech­a­nisms: muta­tion and nat­ur­al selec­tion. The process oper­ates so grad­u­al­ly across mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions, as Dawkins tells you, that there is no sin­gle gen­er­a­tion in which one can point to a demon­stra­bly new species sprout­ing from anoth­er. it’s just that over mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions, the morph does take place.

    It’s a mat­ter of per­cep­tion. Nature works on scales of time that we as indi­vid­u­als can­not reg­is­ter. There is no sin­gle day in which the Indi­an con­ti­nen­tal plate joined the Eurasian plate, but it happened–and, in geo­log­i­cal time, it hap­pened quick­ly. The Himalayas rep­re­sent quite a pile­up.

    This should be no great mys­tery. As Dawkins again points out, our own indi­vid­ual phys­i­cal mat­u­ra­tion also rep­re­sents a process of evo­lu­tion and growth. There is no sin­gle day in which a youth becomes an adult, but every­one knows youths do become adults. It’s just a grad­ual process. Look­ing at an indi­vid­ual day by day, we see the con­ti­nu­ity. When we stand at a more dis­tant van­tage point–as when we view pho­tos of our­selves tak­en years apart–we see the dif­fer­ences. We have no trou­ble iden­ti­fy­ing which stage is which, even though there nev­er was a sin­gle cal­en­dar date at which one stage total­ly end­ed as the next total­ly began.

    It works the same way with species. It’s good to remem­ber that terms like ‘species’ ‘youth’ and ‘adult’ ‘dusk’ and ‘night’ ‘cater­pil­lar’ and ‘but­ter­fly’ are words we invent to describe stages we observe. The process­es that gen­er­ate the stages hap­pen regard­less of what we call each stage, or whether we call them any­thing. Nature does what it does. We invent terms as we need them to talk about what we see.

    If evo­lu­tion is tru­ly a new con­cept to you, you haven’t been served well by your sci­ence teach­ers. For­tu­nate­ly, it’s nev­er too late to learn. Let me sug­gest a place to begin catch­ing up on what you missed: the FAQ page for the Depart­ment of Geol­o­gy at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty.

    Bay­lor, as you know, is a Bap­tist col­lege in Texas. It trains geol­o­gy grad­u­ates for suc­cess in many fields, includ­ing careers in the oil indus­try. The depart­ment offers an excel­lent sum­ma­ry of what is known about nat­ur­al time scales and organ­ic evo­lu­tion. You will want to give spe­cial atten­tion to the descrip­tion of the sci­en­tif­ic method.

    http://www.baylor.edu/geology/index.php?id=61728

    Enjoy.

  • a student says:

    oh…the same dis­cus­sion …if a homo erec­tus could’t gave birth to a homo sapi­ens how we end up humans? the answer: God cre­at­ed us.

  • Amando Savi says:

    Hel­lo again, M.E.

    Here is an excel­lent online resource for those try­ing to catch up on the state of nat­ur­al sci­ence. It’s a free PDF pub­li­ca­tion titled ‘Evo­lu­tion and the Fos­sil Record’. The authors are John Poje­ta, Jr and Dale A Springer.

    http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution.pdf

    This online book is very well done. The writ­ing is ele­gant, fac­tu­al, fas­ci­nat­ing and con­cise. Fine graph­ic images and side­bars illus­trate the con­cepts.

    You will be espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in page 11 where the top­ic of ‘species’ is pre­sent­ed. This page nice­ly address­es your ques­tion.

    The bio­log­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion:

    Species = a group of nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring pop­u­la­tions that can inter­breed and pro­duce off­spring that can inter­breed.

    The words ‘group’ and ‘pop­u­la­tions’ shows why one can’t point to an indi­vid­ual to locate the moment a page turns from this species to that one. When we use the word ‘species’ we are dis­cussing shared char­ac­ter­is­tics among breed­ing pop­u­la­tions. One only knows the page has turned from Homo erec­tus to Homo sapi­ens when enough Homo sapi­ens have been made.

    Enjoy.

  • RC says:

    A stu­dent: What a hor­ri­ble argu­ment. You might as well have said, “If a homo erec­tus could­n’t give birth to a homo sapi­ens, how did we end up as humans? Because space aliens genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered us and aban­doned us here after a space ship mal­func­tion.”

  • not buying it says:

    Does­n’t his thought exper­i­ment beg the ques­tion?

    If you start from the assump­tion of evo­lu­tion then, sure, there was no first human. But it only works if you are oper­at­ing under the open­ing assump­tion that we’ve evolved from oth­er “species” (how­ev­er you’re using the term), which has not and can not be proven.

    All he suc­ceed­ed in prov­ing is that a part of hold­ing to the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion is hold­ing to the asser­tion that there was no first human. I would think that that is an obvi­ous con­clu­sion an evo­lu­tion­ist must come to and this thought exper­i­ment is there­fore point­less.

  • Amando Savi says:

    RC,

    You’re point is valid, of course. As soon as we invoke an unprov­able con­jec­ture as expla­na­tion, any unprov­able con­jec­ture will do–and we’ve left the realm of sci­ence. But I think the stu­dent was describ­ing an implied argu­ment the stu­dent per­ceived in M.E.‘s ques­tion, not mak­ing that flawed argu­ment per­son­al­ly.

    For my part, I saw no need to treat M.E.‘s ques­tion as rhetor­i­cal. Why, when the ques­tion real­ly does have an answer? Going there lets us get back to sci­ence.

    I’m will­ing to grant M.E. cred­it for hav­ing healthy curios­i­ty. If that’s extend­ing too much cred­it in this case, no harm done. Oth­er read­ers will still find the links use­ful.

    ‘You live and learn. At any rate, you live.’
    — Dou­glas Adams

  • Amando Savi says:

    Not­Buy­ing,

    It only works if you are oper­at­ing under the open­ing assump­tion that cen­turies of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery have some­thing mean­ing­ful to tell us about earth his­to­ry, yes.

    As you prob­a­bly do that very thing when you vis­it an MD for a pre­scrip­tion, and as the good Bap­tists of Bay­lor do the same thing when they want to find oil in the ground so you can gas your car, you might want to be at least a lit­tle con­sis­tent and admit that maybe, just maybe, sci­ence has some light to shed on the his­to­ry of life as well.

    You will be hap­py to know that the PDF I linked is free. You don’t have to buy any­thing. Here it is again:
    http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution.pdf

    You will also be inter­est­ed in this spe­cif­ic page at the Bay­lor Geog­ra­phy FAQs:
    http://www.baylor.edu/geology/index.php?id=62340

    Enjoy.

  • Amando Savi says:

    Here’s the state­ment regard­ing evo­lu­tion made by a dif­fer­ent depart­ment at Bay­lor, the Depart­ment of Biol­o­gy:

    ‘Evo­lu­tion, a foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple of mod­ern biol­o­gy, is sup­port­ed by over­whelm­ing sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence and is accept­ed by the vast major­i­ty of sci­en­tists. Because it is fun­da­men­tal to the under­stand­ing of mod­ern biol­o­gy, the fac­ul­ty in the Biol­o­gy Depart­ment at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty, Waco, TX, teach evo­lu­tion through­out the biol­o­gy cur­ricu­lum. We are in accor­dance with the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for Advance­ment of Sci­ence’s state­ment on evo­lu­tion. We are a sci­ence depart­ment, so we do not teach alter­na­tive hypothe­ses or philo­soph­i­cal­ly deduced the­o­ries that can­not be test­ed rig­or­ous­ly.’

    http://www.baylor.edu/biology/index.php?id=77368

    I’m pro­vid­ing this because the link to the Biol­o­gy state­ment from the Geol­o­gy page is old. Bay­lor, you’ll remem­ber, is a Bap­tist uni­ver­si­ty. It’s also clear­ly a uni­ver­si­ty that knows sci­ence from non-sci­ence.

  • Amando Savi says:

    You will have noticed that Bay­lor’s Biol­o­gy Depart­ment says it is in accor­dance with the state­ment on evo­lu­tion from the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence. Here is that state­ment:

    http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2006/pdf/0219boardstatement.pdf

    Also free. Enjoy.

  • not buying it says:

    Aman­do,

    Grant­ed that the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion is the foun­da­tion of most of what sci­ence (not just biol­o­gy) is doing these days, and grant­ed that it is a the­o­ry based on obser­va­tions and evi­dence, and grant­ed that I rely on and am thank­ful for sci­ence for any­thing from med­i­cine to how my car works, and grant­ed that a Bap­tist uni­ver­si­ty teach­es it (not that that changes any­thing) my point remains that Dawkins’ thought exper­i­ment only proves how an evo­lu­tion­ist thinks. We already knew that’s how evo­lu­tion­ists think. Hooray! He’s a genius for point­ing out the obvi­ous.

    That any the­o­ry can be wrong, regard­less of the amount of evi­dence sup­port­ing it or the reli­gious affil­i­a­tion of the peo­ple teach­ing it, that sci­ence should con­tin­ue ques­tion­ing every the­o­ry until it is proven, and that the mer­it of a sci­en­tist rests not in his pre­con­cep­tions but in his own con­tri­bu­tions to knowl­edge is anoth­er dis­cus­sion prob­a­bly for a dif­fer­ent venue.

    I’m not buy­ing Dawkins’ chil­dren’s book. Thank you for the links. I hope to find time to give them a fair read­ing.

  • Amando Savi says:

    Not­Buy­ing,

    ‘Evo­lu­tion­ist’ is not the word you are look­ing for. The word is ‘sci­en­tist.’ Your quar­rel is with how sci­en­tists think.

    Speak­ing of ‘evo­lu­tion­ists’ makes as much sense as speak­ing of ‘tec­toni­cists’ or ‘germists’–which no one does, and for good rea­son. Talk­ing that way would sound as sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly illit­er­ate as it is.

    Evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry, tec­ton­ic the­o­ry, the germ the­o­ry of disease–these are not creeds to which an adher­ent sub­scribes. They are val­i­dat­ed mod­els of how the world works based on huge amounts of evi­dence gath­ered in con­sci­en­tious research. They are sub­ject to mod­i­fi­ca­tion as more evi­dence comes in.

    How are these mod­els val­i­dat­ed? Pri­mar­i­ly by their abil­i­ty to *pre­dict fur­ther dis­cov­er­ies.* They do this for us every day.

    A knowl­edge that old­er fos­sils are found at greater depths, togeth­er with a knowl­edge that species change over time, tells one where to dig if one wants to find fos­sils of a whale ances­tor that had toes. And that’s exact­ly where we find it.

    Mir­a­cle sto­ries don’t do this. You can believe or not believe mir­a­cle sto­ries but, either way, they aren’t sci­ence. They don’t do the work of sci­ence. No one can pre­dict new dis­cov­er­ies based on a mir­a­cle sto­ry. A mir­a­cle sto­ry does­n’t tell you where to find the fos­sil of the walk­ing whale. Or the next antibi­ot­ic-resis­tant strain of bac­te­ria. Or the old­est galax­ies. Sci­ence does.

    Glad though you may be to avail your­self of the ben­e­fits of sci­ence, your quar­rel is with the way sci­en­tists think. Sci­en­tists go by the results of research. Dawkins does. For some rea­son this annoys you.

    I’m glad you’re tak­ing a look at the links. A fair read­ing will show what I mean.

  • Historian says:

    I’m begin­ning to think Aman­do Savi is Richard Dawkins.

  • So todays fish in the sea are the fore­fa­thers of future humans. Dawkins dis­tant grand­fa­ther may have been a slug. Mine was­n’t.

  • Twofeet says:

    How is this dif­fer­ent from the Para­dox of the Heap? I am a mem­ber of the human species. Dawkins says only a human can father a human. So any being that stands in the ances­tral of the “father of” rela­tion to me is also a human. That would include my “185 mil­lionth great grand­fa­ther.” But Dawkins says he could have been a fish, a non-human. Con­tra­dic­tion.

  • Dark K says:

    Aman­do,

    Thank you for the link! It’s bril­liant. You made my day.

    Also, I think, you are very artic­u­late in your thoughts. If you already are not doing so, have you con­sid­ered teach­ing? :)

    Thanks again,

  • avid reader says:

    His­to­ri­an,

    I adore you for that com­ment.

  • Lane White says:

    The real para­dox is that two peo­ple can be exposed to this dis­cus­sion, with one under­stand­ing the beau­ti­ful sim­plic­i­ty with­in and the oth­er reject­ing it com­plete­ly, but always with igno­rance or fear as the dri­ver.

  • Ralph Dunn says:

    Sci­ence and reli­gion do have one thing in com­mon: they teach men to fly.

    Sci­ence teach­es men to build rock­et ships and fly them to the moon.

    Reli­gion teach­es men to com­man­deer air­planes and fly them into tall build­ings.

  • - says:

    “Dawkins says he could have been a fish, a non-human”
    no, not accord­ing to the text of this arti­cle, “each ances­tor going back 185 mil­lion gen­er­a­tions… your very dis­tant grand­fa­ther was a fish.”
    how­ev­er, the word­ing is loose. ‘grand­fa­ther’ is ‑2 gen, not ‑185m gen

  • Twofeet says:

    Again: if only humans can pro­duce humans, as Dawkins says, then no ances­tor of mine can be non-human. Dawkins must not mean what he says. It seems bet­ter to allow that “human” is vague, like “bald” or “tall”.

  • John Rowley says:

    Oh Dear. Im not 100% cer­tain but are you all Amer­i­cans? The rest of the civ­i­lized world got over this one 30 years ago. Its like lis­ten­ing to school­child­ren. Stop this cre­ation­ist non­sense now and come and join the rest of us. You can still believe in a god if you want and today there are thou­sands to choose from.

  • John Carvajal says:

    The only way that a species has to sur­vive is by adap­ta­tion to the changes in the envi­ron­ment; thus, between a gen­er­a­tion and the next there will be changes. This is almost impos­si­ble to see along 100 or 1000 or even 100000 years; that does­n’t mean human beings has always been the same.

  • Repo Man says:

    The entire point of sci­ence is lost some­where in the entrails of “log­i­cal” con­jec­ture the moment one tries to defend Dawkins’ thought exper­i­ment as being any­thing more than an exer­cise in how to think like a nat­u­ral­ist. Implied is the assump­tion that nature is an objec­tive, arbi­trary, non- men­tal, non- spir­i­tu­al process we are some­how luck­i­ly sit­u­at­ed to per­ceive and inter­pret from our extreme­ly lim­it­ed, equal­ly arbi­trary glim­mer of “empiri­cism”.

    That being said, the thought exper­i­ment is not irrel­e­vant because it can’t be proven, it’s irrel­e­vant because human thought pro­duced it. Have we for­got­ten that human thought tran­scends and there­fore eas­i­ly detached itself from the intel­li­gence of nature? Oh I for­got. Nature can be awe inspir­ing and mys­te­ri­ous but not cog­ni­tive. I rest my case.

  • Repo Man says:

    “Oh you stu­pid Amer­i­cans. Stop think­ing crit­i­cal­ly and just accept the author­i­tar­i­an con­sen­sus you whiny boobs.”

    Real­ly? Is that sup­posed to be an argu­ment? Shame on those who per­pet­u­ate such non­sense, even in light of some of the more naive and sim­plis­tic lay argu­ments from the reli­gious folks.

  • R.Dawkins says:

    Michael Crossan how do you know yours was­n’t, were you there ?

  • Jason Marriott says:

    I have noticed how most peo­ple just don’t grasp the con­cept “or rather don’t want to grasp the con­cept”. They take a few words out of what they hear and see and ignore the rest to make a con­clu­sion. I actu­al­ly heard the phrase the oth­er day “Blind belief in sci­ence” fun­ny that because sci­en­tists actu­al­ly have to prove a the­o­ry rather than just mak­ing stuff up.

  • Fishboy says:

    If you don´t under­stand, it doesn´t mean some­one else won‘t. Stu­pid amer­i­cans.

  • timm says:

    If there is not an evo­lu­tion­ary process under­way, then when new species are dis­cov­ered does that mean it was always there? Or does ‘God’ make new ones periodically/constantly?

  • Ian Atkinson says:

    Peo­ple who ask ques­tions like, ‘when did Homo erec­tus give birth to the first human,’ know they’re ask­ing a ridicu­lous ques­tion. They don’t care! They just want to pour their deri­sion and hatred onto sci­ence and don’t real­ly want an answer. They already know their ques­tion is the same as: when did a wolf give birth to the first spaniel, or when did and auroch give birth to the first Jer­sey cow?

    • newenglandsun says:

      It’s also high­ly racist. Nev­er­the­less, Catholics embrace this idea unto the death. Catholics say “Oh, we’re ‘smarter’ than all the rest of you” but the real­i­ty is they’re dumb­er than the rest of us.

  • Marcel says:

    Sim­ply because you fail to dis­cern dif­fer­ences does­n’t mean there are none. Dawkins is inten­tion­al­ly being obtuse here. There is obvi­ous­ly some point where we got a dif­fer­ent num­ber of chro­mo­somes than a fish. To inten­tion­al­ly not dis­cern this point is just stu­pid­i­ty. 185m gen­er­a­tions? Arbi­trary? No, I don’t think so. 185m * 20 years (com­mon­ly held gen­er­a­tional gap of humans, and if humans are fish, then fish too, right?) = 3.7b years. Which stops just before the first life (pri­ma­ry par­ents of all species) began on the plan­et. Pret­ty con­ve­nient dis­hon­esty there Dawkins. As usu­al.

    • babybaby0 says:

      The prob­lem of draw­ing sharp divi­sions across a con­tin­u­um (or in this case a qua­si-con­tin­u­um) is an old prob­lem that affects much more than biol­o­gy. The clas­sic par­a­digm is the ques­tion “What do you mean when you say point C is ‘between’ point A and point B? How far away from the con­nect­ing line is C allowed to be before we no longer say it’s ‘between’?“nDawkins is sim­ply stat­ing the obvi­ous fact that evo­lu­tion is too grad­ual to allow a clear answer to divid­ing-line ques­tions.

  • newenglandsun says:

    This is why Catholics are dumb. They require you to believe in this thing called mono­genism. Yet sci­ence strong­ly dis­proves this. Nev­er­the­less, Catholi­cism has assert­ed on its fol­low­ers the lie that we are all born of a sin­gle pair of par­ents and their best way to defend this is racism. It’s fun­ny and sad all at once but ALL Catholics are stu­pid and anti-sci­ence.

  • Guest says:

    Isnt there a contradiction?nif Dawkins says that there are only Homo sapi­ens that gave birth to Homo sapi­ens, then at 185 mil­lion gen­er­a­tions have to be Homo sapiens.nnnbut he also points out a Homo erec­tus is one of the 185 mil­lion gen­er­a­tions. and then a fish.nnnthose two state­ments are contradictory.nwhat am i miss­ing?

  • Stan says:

    I am no sure Dr. Dar­win under­stands mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy. nnnLet me extend Dr. Dar­win’s men­tal exper­i­ment a lit­tle more. In addi­tion to take a pic­ture of you and your father, attach also your DNA, i.e., how many pairs of chro­mo­some you have, and that of your father, and that of your father’ father. It is very dig­i­tal. Either you have 23 pairs (that you are human) or 24 pairs (that you are sort of ape). There is no dec­i­mal points in-between. nnnThe tran­si­tion from ape–like to human is a dis­tinc­tive tran­si­tion. Being eva­sive is to hind the prob­lem.

  • Vanyo says:

    While it’s true that there is no in between the change in chro­mo­some num­ber from 24 to 23, I don’t know that there’s any rea­son to believe that the change in chro­mo­some num­ber cor­re­spond­ed to “the tran­si­tion from ape–like to human”. A change in chro­mo­some num­ber is not required for a change in species.

    Bart, above, post­ed a link about the Sorites Para­dox, and it hits the nail on the head.

    If you’re human, your par­ents were human. Every organ­ism is the same species as its par­ents. Some would think that would mean that species nev­er change, but they do, grad­u­al­ly. The Sorites Para­dox makes the mis­un­der­stand­ing clear.

  • Steve says:

    Com­i­cal read­ing the com­ments of some of these cereation­ist fable beleiv­ing fools. Try­ing to claim they know more about biol­o­gy, or mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy than Dawkins. You are the very def­i­n­i­tions of igno­rance. Here’s the real­i­ty kid­dies, you are deter­mined to believe in your book of fables and fairy­tale God with no proof at all. Yet you claim you don’t believe sci­ence. I sug­gest the next time you get sick you do some chants to your invis­i­ble God, and for­get about what Dawkins and hos­pi­tals and Doc­tors draw upon name­ly sci­ence and rea­son. Stay home, do your lit­tle sil­ly chants, and let us know how it turned out for you. No cure for cre­ation­ist stu­pid, none.

  • Greg McDonald says:

    Well, for one thing, you miss your space bar a lot.

  • Fred Hill says:

    Sor­ry, Michael, you do have fish ances­try as does every oth­er amphib­ian, rep­tile, bird and mam­mal. Humans evolved from pri­or species just like every oth­er liv­ing thing. Your delu­sions of grandeur of hav­ing been spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed by some deity are sim­ply delu­sions built on pure myth with no basis in real­i­ty.

  • Jamie says:

    You read a biol­o­gy book and learn as opposed to ask­ing igno­rant and sil­ly ques­tions.

  • karl says:

    Once upon a noth­ing
    Some­thing blew apart?
    and the thoughts we think
    Are the universe’s fart?

  • David Calderhead says:

    Richard Dawkins is a seri­ous­ly delu­sion­al human being. So much intel­li­gence it’s dis­gust­ing to lis­ten to his fairy tales. So tell us oh great sci­en­tist what did homo sapi­ens do for 170,000 years between com­ing into exis­tence and actu­al­ly accom­plish­ing any­thing. That’s alaaaat of years of being too stu­pid to come up with any advance­ments. Evilu­tion is an evil lie. Us humans were cre­at­ed by God the Holy Trin­i­ty. There are no sub species or what­ev­er. You have humans and you have apes of all sorts. That’s it! Sim­ple enough. Sci­en­tist with a pride and arro­gance prob­lem so big that they come up with any crock of crap they can to try and prove The Bible and God the cre­ator wrong. The Big Bang is a Big Fan­ta­sy, Evo­lu­tion is just one of the dev­il’s tools to keep arro­gant humans from reciev­ing the only sal­va­tion for man which is only by receiv­ing Christ Jesus into your life as Lord and Sav­iour by faith and repen­tance. I apol­o­gize but I hate to see even old arro­gant anti-Chris­t­ian him­self Richard Dawkins end up lost for eter­ni­ty and all the oth­er mil­lions and mil­lions of peo­ple who have bought this evilu­tion lie nev­er come to a sav­ing Knowl­edge of Jesus Christ. I pray for Dawkins and all the rest with my heart to repent and believe the Good News of Jesus Christ.

  • John Studeny says:

    Which gawd I ask there has been so many are you speak­ing of Zeus, Jupiter, Ganesh,Budha or the god of Abraham??You can­not just say God mag­i­cal­ly con­struct­ed every­thing and call it a day lol😁😁😁

  • Just sayin says:

    Ok, a bit of a hasty gen­er­al­iza­tion there, and if you’re refer­ring to 9/11, that was under the influ­ence of a sin­gu­lar insane, human per­son, using reli­gion to twist peo­ple’s minds. In oth­er words, not the nature of reli­gion itself. If I were to do the same from the oth­er stand­point, it would be like this.

    Reli­gion and sci­ence do have one thing in com­mon: they tech men how to live

    Reli­gion teach­es us to appre­ci­ate each oth­er for the peo­ple we are

    Sci­ence says we are noth­ing more than a group of atoms that should be con­sumed and/or dealt with in oth­er ways to ben­e­fit our own sur­vival.

    That argu­ment I just made is com­plete­ly invalid but is vir­tu­al­ly the same thing you did.

  • hi says:

    No, in the Bible he made all crea­tures, in the begin­ning, so some may live in places we haven’t seen yet, or we just missed them the first time around. Addi­tion­al­ly, the exis­tence of God does not dis­prove evo­lu­tion itself, and the same goes for vice-ver­sa. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, God could have made all crea­tures with the abil­i­ty to evolve, this would make sense since he is (in the Bible) a being who knows all, and should antic­i­pate that his cre­ations would have to under­go changes to remain alive and sup­port his ulti­mate cre­ation, mankind. As I have said, the Bible does­n’t dis­prove evo­lu­tion, it just argues that humans them­selves did not evolve.

  • wannanah33 says:

    A lot of the respons­es here are bots, or peo­ple who are paid to inten­tion­al­ly sow dis­cord even when most peo­ple don’t feel that way.

    They are pur­pose­ful­ly cre­at­ing argu­ments that are non­sen­si­cal, to make it appear that more peo­ple like that actu­al­ly exist. There is a lob­by or group of peo­ple who have noth­ing bet­ter to do than to spend mon­ey hir­ing peo­ple to make non­sense com­ments in order to dis­par­age cer­tain peo­ple, in this case, Richard Dawkins.

  • wannanah33 says:

    A lot of the respons­es here are bots, or peo­ple who are paid to inten­tion­al­ly sow dis­cord even when most peo­ple don’t feel that way.

    They are pur­pose­ful­ly cre­at­ing argu­ments that are non­sen­si­cal, to make it appear that more peo­ple like that actu­al­ly exist. There is a lob­by or group of peo­ple who have noth­ing bet­ter to do than to spend mon­ey hir­ing peo­ple to make non­sense com­ments in order to dis­par­age cer­tain peo­ple, in this case, it’s Richard Dawkins.

  • Brian Deney says:

    Rewatch the video. Pay atten­tion this time. It’s per­fect­ly clear.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.