Richard Dawkins speaks on evolutionary biology at USC

Cover of Richard Dawkins' latest book

Last night at the University of South Carolina, a few friends and I went to hear a lecture by the internationally acclaimed Richard Dawkins.  He spoke on evolutionary biology, and since he's on a book tour, read us several excerpts at length from his latest published work, 'The Greatest Show on Earth.'  The sheer number of people that attended (the arena seats four thousand) convinced me that the topic of faith and reason is not dead as many have imagined it to be.  Considering that we live in the Bible belt, the notion that religious things are falling out of favor could be absurd or foreign.  But then again, our ever increasing communicativeness, may have flung wide the portals to the rest of the world and its ideas for Bible belt Americans.  

The truth, per Richard Dawkins and most of the four thousand attendees last night, is that evolution is a fact supported by inalienable evidence with minor gaps here and there.  In defense of the missing links found in the evolutionary line, Dawkins said in his markedly English accent, "We are very lucky to have fossils at all."  To all of those people in the coliseum, evolution was a fact beyond questioning, and anyone who believes or even hints otherwise, is clearly a fool.  This person has their head in the clouds, playing with a cosmic invisible friend.  Dawkins and his followers see people who believe in the divine as poor, unenlightened people who are in need of some real scholastic help, who do not exercise basic logic and choose to believe a fairy tale in the face of blatant evidence against it.  

Is this true, or is this a way to win the battle before it has begun?  Can one take the stage, characterize his opponent as the most base creature that's ever lived, degrade his intellect and maybe his integrity and then expect it to be a fair fight?  I would rather, and I'm sure the rest of the intellectual community, would rather hear the two equal parties disagree over the main issue than to degrade one or the other to the lowliness of worms then attempt to get anything accomplished besides a lopsided view of reality.  Granted, last night's lecture was not a debate, so there was no defender of religion or any other view besides Dawkins' own, but the metaphorical flogging still almost seemed excessive.  The people that sat around me were verbally militant during the Q & A towards any voices that seemed to sing to a different tune than that of evolutionary biology.

The night was interesting on many levels.  It was intriguing to hear the new thoughts of Dawkins on as well-known a theory as evolution in his new book.  I personally heard about the lecture only an hour before it started, and therefore had no idea how many people to expect or what format the lecture would take on.  Even before parking the car, my friends and I could see the lines of people funneling into the coliseum--that settled that.  It just proved to me, as mentioned before, that this topic is not going away.  The Bible belt is loosening, if you will.  Other voices are emerging from a once singular melody.  The attitude of the crowd during Dawkins' reading, seemed as if they already knew his new material and agreed whole-heartedly, as if they themselves had originated the thoughts.  The frequency of applause reminded me of the form of a presidential speech.  I got to observe first hand the spiritual temperature of at least the biology majors of USC, and it was informative but not surprising. Religious people were once caricatured as the learned and brilliant members of society from early history, but we are in an age when the religious are quite commonly called fools, the uneducated and the deceived of society--the great blemish on the face of the intellectual world in this progressive day.  Why is this relevant today?  Why must we consider faith and reason together?  Can you have one without the other?  Dawkins and his followers would like to say that to have faith means to throw reason to the wind.  I would like to argue that faith and reason can walk hand in hand on the winding path of an active thought life.  As we seek to determine what is true in this world, let us consider the main issue, civilly engage our minds, and earnestly determine to be informed as we search for the intersection of faith and reason.  

For more information:  

http://richarddawkins.net/  (The Official Richard Dawkins Site)

http://thoughtairballoons.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-notes-from-richard-dawkins-lecture.html  (my notes on the lecture)