Dawkins, Richard
<p class="default">I also met Clark Kepler (great guy) and urged him to talk abt the Literary Circle.
I harangued Vivian, young person in charge of marketing, abt charging 5 bucks admission to event.
 
Oct 8, 2009 7:13 PM
I head Ricahrd speak on Oct 6 2009 at Keplers again.  (see Godless Geeks - chatted with them afterward.)
Leonard Tramiel and Mark Thomas and others.  Also see my letter below node to Richard.
Mark Thomas ... Silicon Valley atheists...
David Cowen (sp?) did the intro, as usual ... excellent!  His 7 yo boy answered Q's abt
evolution.  Giraffe with long necks can reach leaves that the other giraffes can't ;  they have babies
with long necks.  More of those babies survive.  Little boy is Elliot.
David...  Dawkins hopes to supplant theology and superstition.
*
Richard starts out with... opponents cite  ...  GAPS in the FOSSIL RECORD.
Rich:  forget the gaps...  we're lucky to have  fossils at all;  we do not need them to support evolution:
can do it without... they are a BONUS.
 
JBS Haldane:  Fossil rabbits in a Precambrian stratum... would place evolutionary theory in serious doubt.
 
Theory is VULNERABLE TO DISPROOF but not disproved.
 
Lucy Walked upright about 3.6 MYA.  brain size of a chimp.  Mary Leakey discovered her.
Australopithecus Afarensis.
 
Embriology:  Woman in the audience that Haldane was lecturing to said:  Professor, I just don't think its
possible to evolve from a single celled animal to a human being over millions of years.
He said:  Madam,  you did it!  and it only took you 9 months!
 
Don't need separate glass bottles for the chemical of life, cuz the enzymes keep them separate ...
they do not react without the enzymes.  Enzymes are critical to keep reactions separate.
 
Noah's ARK:  Mount Arrarat:  does not explain why the marsupials are only in Australia.
 
We don't need the sledge hammer (0f evolutionary theory evidence) to crack so fragile a nut (as intelligent design).
 
Arms races btwn  predators and prey -
 
Cheetah kills gazelles:  running machine vs an escaping machine.
 
Natural selection only cares abt selection and survival of individual genes.
 
Great with Question period.
 
Someone asks abt fine-tuned Universe:
 
His answer:  nobody's observing those Universes that are not fine-tuned just right.
Can't have life without chemistry.
 
Q:  how, when, why did Consciousness evolve?
 
A:  He does NOT KNOW!
 
?? do mollusks and octupi have consc?? he asks.
(implication is that  reptiles, mammals etc have it)
He says ... emergent property of brains!
He says... most interesting question in BIOLOGY!
 
He says there must be a biologic advantage to consciousness.
He's not sure what it is.
Is it possible to conceive (he asks rhetorically) of an animal only with robotic reflexes that
can exhibit complex behavior?  What would that look like?
 
He talks more abt fine-tuning.  Yes, many  physicists say it is fine-tuned.
knows must be twiddled precisely.  gravity, strong force, etc.
 
If you say, God must have done it, then u must ask where God came from, how was he created.
 
Martin Rees, he says, argues in favor of Anthropic Principle.  We are in only one of billions or
perhaps infinite # of Universe...  can onlyl observe ones that permit our existence.
 
Q:  which other species are as successful as humans: he says rats, ockroaches,  also bacteria.
(passenger pidgeons went extinct).
 
He is a CONSEQUENTIALIST... that's how he decides complex ethical issues eg
genetic manipulation.  must thinkv carefully abt any changes that are irrevocable.
 
Epic of Gilgmesh predates Noah's ARK ... Sumerian myth.
 
He briskly declines Q abt Free Will ... I have nothing to add (he recommends Dennett).
 
Q:Origins of Life:  not his specialty but you need replicators.currently fashionable thoery is RNA World:
mod good replicator and mod good enzyme.
current biology is a partnership btwn DNA (a great replicator) and proteins (great enzymes).
 
mitochondrial DNA:  replicates ONLY thru MOTHER.
Mitochondrial Eve is the latest coomon ancestor of all mankind.
All  Europeans descended from only 7 women.  All people on earth have only 20 variants of mitoch DNA.
Richard also mentions Brain Sykes  (his Oxofrd Colleague)  7 dts of Eve... fascinating stuff, see node.
 
There is also a Y chronosome ADAM ... lived abt 60k years ago.
 
05:33 PM, July 15, 2007
 
<b>Blasphemy is a Victimless Crime</b> .
 
Sean, Ken Lum and I heard Richard Dawkins yesterday at Kepler's.
beautiful presentation; he read from a prepared text for about 30 mins or so and then
answered questions for about 45 mins or so.
Beautiful speech , very academic.
 
Read British empiricists: John Locke, David Hume, John Stuart Mill.</p>