Richard Dawkins speaking to Park High School youths

[Asmodean]

I netgrazed my way across this video some time ago, and while professor Dawkins is not saying anything profound to any reasonably well-educated person, I think this is worth sharing, if nothing else, for the patience he demonstrates in this video. Many associate Dawkins with a sort-of-aggressive, sort-of-uncompromising stance he takes in debates, but while debates are there to be won, conversations are there to learn, and I think this one is a fine example.

One thing I think I would have done differently, is the approach to the beat-up old question of "how can A live with only half a B?" Personally, I find the top-down approach more persuasive to the uninitiated. Reverse-engineer rather than build up, you know.

A short and simple version is that humans have never had "half a heart." Our specie emerged with an already sophisticated blood pump, but one does can look at it this way: my parents had slightly less well adapted hearts than the one I have. Their parents had slightly less well adapted hearts than my parents and so on until we come to a point where the parents are no longer human, but still have perfectly functional hearts. If we keep rewinding the clock, the species posessing the organ in question will change and, as we step back further in time, the complexity of the organ will decrease until it disappears entirely.

In any case, I think there may be some hope for the religious kids in the UK. Some of them seem to listen and hear what's being said... If only that were the case in the less civilized corners of the world, then maybe we would... Well, see some unmanned interstellar travel in my lifetime, for instance.

[Davin]

I think that went well. I never read any of his books, so maybe that's why I don't get the same impression of him as other people do. Do me he just seems polite, patient, and understanding.

[Asmodean]

Indeed. Also, he does master the art of being interesting. With a teacher of his calibre, I think I might have developed an interest in biology far earlier than I did.

[Icarus]

Thank you for that Asmo.  Dawkins does remarkably well with these students. He is not the least pugnacious as we know he can be. Prior to this, I had him categorized as a hard case guy.

Another thing that impressed me is the behavior of the student audience. They all seem to be paying attention. Am I to reckon that the British student is more disciplined than the American counterpart? We have some exceptional students on this side of the pond but we also have more than a sufficiency of disruptive, inattentive, adolescent shit heads.  I have had some experience in the school setting so I speak with some degree of authority.

Good on Richard and good on those kids.