1. Comment #224784 by Noodly on August 5, 2008 at 4:20 pm

"Misc." has a lot to answer for!

Edit: the original title was "More reviews of 'The Genius of Charles Darwin' by Misc."

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2. Comment #224800 by Elwood Herring on August 5, 2008 at 4:42 pm

I think Deborah Orr might want to check up on how long ago life actually started, or maybe it was a genuine typo that reduced the time period she quoted by a factor of a thousand.

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3. Comment #224804 by Janus on August 5, 2008 at 4:49 pm

So much stupidity in those 'reviews'.

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4. Comment #224807 by J Mac on August 5, 2008 at 4:56 pm

I had friends who were journalist majors in college, a degree for the weak minded. Everytime I ask myself, "where do they get these people?", I just remember those former J. students and say, "oh yeah, I remember now".

An acquaintance of mine failed out of his first year of a journalism major. So he went online, got ordained, and now he's a pastor TEACHING others what to believe.

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5. Comment #224821 by Elwood Herring on August 5, 2008 at 5:14 pm

My post on the Telegraph page, in case it isn't published:

I was impressed by Dawkins pointing out that Darwin spent many years going over the facts he'd unearthed in order to polish his theory.

This little easily-overlooked point bears examining more closely.

In other words:
Theories are not "incomplete facts".

Again:
THEORIES don't BECOME facts.
Theories EXPLAIN facts.

I'd like to take that little gem of knowledge and beat it over the heads of the "only a theory" crowd until they get concussion.

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6. Comment #224824 by J Mac on August 5, 2008 at 5:27 pm

I think Lewis Black said it best:

Lewis Black

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7. Comment #224844 by Lemniscate on August 5, 2008 at 6:50 pm

What anodyne twaddle those 'reviews' are.

The Guardian, the Independent and the Telegrath go for the boring canard of Dawkins as a mirror of theistic fundamentalism - Orr thinks "Dawkins has come to resemble that which he most despises." Each article that uses this appears to think it undeniably witty and insightful, too...

It's evident that the only criterion used for fundamentalism/extremism is being literal minded and passionate about one's arguments. Being so is only assigned the epithet of fundamentalism/extremism because of the atmosphere of unjustified respect for religious beliefs that moderate faith has cultivated for its own muddle-headed, metaphorical sake.

All of these articles show a basic lack of understanding and argument, further convincing me of the need for a national injection shot of unsweetened rationality.

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8. Comment #224876 by Laurie Fraser on August 6, 2008 at 12:52 am

Oi! Stop knocking Nancy Banks-Smith (of the Grauniad). She is a divine wordsmith.

And a complete twat, as are all these pseudos. And why, may I ask, did three of them see fit to include a review of something about "Kylie's body double?" What is it with the British and their fascination with some talentless ditz that we managed to export years ago?

fucktards, the lot of them.

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9. Comment #224881 by Richard Dawkins on August 6, 2008 at 12:58 am

Depressing as the Telegraph review was, the comments posted after it are mostly very encouraging.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/08/05/nosplit/bvtv05last.xml

Richard

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10. Comment #224887 by 8teist on August 6, 2008 at 1:16 am

O M G Laurie , there are 2 Kylies? Maybe there is a dog after all..........:o

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11. Comment #224892 by Laurie Fraser on August 6, 2008 at 1:22 am

8teist - I understand what you mean, but wouldn't it be wonderful if popular culture could adore women with brains and talent, rather than ephemeral beauty?

(Sorry about getting all serious - no, fuck it. I'm up to here with the worship of the vacuous, especially twits of the order of Kylie Minogue.)

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12. Comment #224899 by Sargeist on August 6, 2008 at 1:41 am

I have no idea if Kylie Minogue is a twit, or not. But she does have a nice bottom.

Her sister Dannii seems to be more of a twit, but unless I met her and spent lots of time with her, I would have only a media-based opinion.

I agree wholeheartedly, of course, with your dismay at the worship of the vacuous. My personal bugbear at the moment concerns teenage males who wear their jeans too low, while showing their underwear. I see no point, purpose or sense to it.

The female version of this seems lately to involve having one tracksuit leg rolled up higher than the other one.

Anyone who disputes that memes exist need only look at these examples of bizarre and otiose behaviour to be shown otherwise.

Does anyone know what the rolled-up leg thing is all about? Feel free to PM me (I don't get enough - waaah!)

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13. Comment #224903 by mmurray on August 6, 2008 at 1:48 am

Thanks for the torrent link on the front page and whoever put it up.

Michael

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14. Comment #224906 by Sargeist on August 6, 2008 at 1:56 am

To try hard to be on topic, I went off to read some of the comments on the Telegraph review, because Richard posted the link.

Aside from disliking the way that I have to start at the bottom and work up (no, not Kylie again) I found the following comment by Murray G to be particularly dismaying:

"evolution offers a far richer and more spectacular view of life than any religious story".
Nobody can deny that the visual display of power offered by Dawkins in this programme, depicting wild animals and their battle of "survival of the fittest" was indeed spectacular. Yet how depressing!
The winners are those who are the quickest, strongest and the cleverest. So if you are none of these you are simply worthless and here to be exploited by those who are.
Morality is for fools and you are only here to live then die and do what you can to survive whilst awaiting your fate.
Gods creation and his eternal plan for us is far more beautiful and richer than any theory purported by man. Look around the world and tell me that we are not becoming more like these wild animals resulting in pain and suffering for millions. Accept that as the truth and my ultimate reality? No chance!
Jesus offers us love, forgiveness and eternal life. What a different world we would live in if we followed our dear Lords teachings. This forgiveness is offered even to our current most famous and deluded exponent of religious hatred, Professor Richard Dawkins himself.
The Bible is far richer and believable than any fairytale purported by the mind of man.
God Bless.

I'm afraid that I read this with a constant open-mouthed "Wha?!" expression. This mantra of "there is no morality without god" or "there is no purpose without god" seems to be so hard to eradicate. Why do these people never realise that Natural Selection says nothing about ethics. It does not say "it is right for the strong to beat the weak", it simply points out that, by doing so, the strong get to reproduce more.

The comment by Murray G really emphasises the assertions of the religious, and how they are actually bereft of any evidential justification. What is god's eternal plan? Why is the bible more believable than evolution? Why? *tumbleweed*

And this:

Look around the world and tell me that we are not becoming more like these wild animals resulting in pain and suffering for millions.

is just the same old thing that people have trotted out for centuries, if not millennia. To some people, things are always worse now than they have ever been.

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15. Comment #224909 by padster1976 on August 6, 2008 at 2:11 am

1st off - did anyone else notice that 3 of the reviews implied a double review with the inclusion of the kylie body double programme?

One can only surmise by the total lack of any substantive discussion on said programme that the inclusion in the title was to only cast Dawkins programme in a certain type of light - a 'big brother show' quality of light.

Deborah orr is an idiot - life started 4 million years ago eh? Er, right-oh! So she knows what she's talking about then!

Her 'review' was a blatant ad hominem argument - even stating that dawkins 'had no faith in social darwinsim'. Yes, she is that intellectually redundant! Mainly her piece seemed to be an exercise in how many 'ironic' reference to religion can I get in describing Dawkins. Oh, and how angry Dawkins gets.

Verdict - shit. For all of them.

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16. Comment #224910 by beeline on August 6, 2008 at 2:21 am

I'm afraid I agree with some of the negative reviews (although not the ones that don't understand evolution or science, obviously).

The programme was far below the quality that I was expecting and looking forward to. I was hoping that he would be able to produce a programme actually on Darwin and his life and work, rather than driving the Dawkins steamroller straight through the front door and making it all about his personal crusade. You've done your religion-bashing, now raise yourself above your ridiculous enemies for a moment and show how wonderful and glorious science is, without having to bash the people that don't get it. You HAVE to charm them.

The script seemed to concentrate largely on Dawkins, rather than on his subject, and any documentary maker should realise that that's a dreadful mistake to make if you want to present your material in a balanced manner, which you certainly can without lowering yourself to a fighting stance from the word go.

I'm afraid to say that the camerawork was really quite poor and amateurish too, and this detracted quite a lot from the presentation of the piece. Sure, there were some nice shots, but it was very uneven and actually very poorly thought out in a number of places - especially the piano keyboard illustration of the evolutionary timeline, whose scale was lost at each shot.

It pains me to say this, and I would expect to attract some bad feeling, but I feel it's important to say it. It's not enough, Richard, to carry on banging your drum in this insensitive manner, and just repeating 'evolution is a fact, evolution is a fact' because to those that don't understand science, you sound EXACTLY like a preacher delivering a dogmatic decree. You are, at face value (which is, after all, the first and often only impression people have) INDISTINGUISHABLE from any other preacher who's shouting "I've got the facts, and everyone else is wrong."

You should, in my opinion and experience explaining science, not concentrate your approach on the words 'fact', 'truth' or belief, because these words have the dreadful reek of dogma and belief about them in nearly everyone's mind. Language has this effect, and you can't escape it, however loudly you bang your fists.

Instead, you should concentrate on talking about the idea that evolution IS, like everything else in our body of knowledge, a THEORY. It is, of course, an exceptionally good one in that it stands up to anything that we've SO FAR found to throw at it, like relativity, quantum mechanics, etc, but to jump ahead of yourself and call it 'true' is to invite people to go 'meh' and turn away. This approach is the only one that embraces the honesty of the scientific stance.

If you don't change your use of language, people will just interpret you the way they interpret anyone who approaches them with 'the truth', and you won't even get the chance to show them the evidence because they won't yet understand what it means. You've already lost them.

Audiences won't, by and large, react well to being TOLD something. In a documentary format, and in most literary formats, you'll do far better to SHOW them.

Sorry, but I'm disappointed that your documentary work falls so far short of your literary output. :-(

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17. Comment #224911 by sean salvador on August 6, 2008 at 2:22 am

So, not really reviews at all then? More like commentaries.
Very droll.

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18. Comment #224913 by Sargeist on August 6, 2008 at 2:35 am

I still haven't seen the programme, so I am at a disadvantage, but my response to beeline's criticisms would be, at this point, simply: what we do in schools is tell people that certain things are true. We don't agonise about whether we sound like preachers when we tell people Newton's laws of motion; or Kepler's laws; or the Schrodinger equation; or any number of other things.

Natural selection is only different from these examples I used in that it, frankly, *must* work. It cannot "not work" because it is inevitable. It works itself. This is what is so fabulous about it. Just because it implies that there was no first pair of humans, and this makes religion feel uncomfortable is neither here nor there.

(But, I will wait an see the programme now, before making any comments about the actual content.)

edit: typo

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19. Comment #224915 by 8teist on August 6, 2008 at 2:38 am

http://slimeculture.tv/2007/06/14/comics/left-behind-in-school



Check this

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20. Comment #224916 by bluecastle on August 6, 2008 at 2:41 am

Times Online got it right:
"What we still need, however, is a six-part series on evolution that combines wildlife footage with computer animation. Dawkins has produced this work on paper in his beautifully illustrated book The Ancestor's Tale. If Channel 4 can't film it, and the BBC won't, Spielberg will need to step up." [how do I quote???]
I would prefer the BBC version. And although I agree with each word in "The God Delusion" I am sure omitting the contradiction between religion and evolution would make the show much better. I also wouldn't expect mentioning the contradiction to the bible in a program on the solar system.

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21. Comment #224926 by beeline on August 6, 2008 at 3:10 am

what we do in schools is tell people that certain things are true. We don't agonise about whether we sound like preachers when we tell people Newton's laws of motion; or Kepler's laws; or the Schrodinger equation; or any number of other things.

I'm not sure schools do do this anymore, so I'm not sure your characterisation is accurate - or I hope it isn't. To teach science, you have to teach how science works, and if you just dole out 'facts' to children they soon become bored because they often can't grasp any kind of framework within which to place those facts. If you explain HOW theories work, and how to test them and link them to evidence, then they will always get it, and will always be able to understand the slippery idea of what 'truth' is - something that will help them in many other areas of life, like dealing with charlatans of all sorts.

Natural selection is only different from these examples I used in that it, frankly, *must* work. It cannot "not work" because it is inevitable. It works itself.

Yes, it certainly seems that way to me as well - probably all of us here, but (a) remember that this sentence is exactly the one that religious groups use about their 'beliefs', and (b) every theory, by its nature, must appear to be open to attack. Calling something 'true' makes it sound like (to a non-scientific mind) it cannot - and therefore should not - be challenged. Then you get stupid films like Expelled being made.

The only stance that works across the board, and that clearly SEPARATES science from faith and religion is to be honest, and always always say "Yes, these are theories. But that's what science is, and these theories are so completely excellent that they've never been contradicted. Not once".

If scientists 'believe' anything (and IMHO theories aren't something that should be believed or disbelieved, another tripping point in Dawkins's script which he is much more careful about in his books) then they can 'believe' that natural selection will never be proved wrong. Yes, they have my permission. ;-P

And of course, everyone knows that Newtonian mechanics which everyone could 'see' could never be wrong ("Look, when I drop this, it ALWAYS falls to the ground at this rate!") has been knocked about by relativity, so scientists just look inconsistently daft when they say that some theory will never be shown wrong.

I'm always delighted to read about Haldane's Cambrian Rabbit. (I think it was Haldane, anyway):

"All you need to do to show that evolution is wrong is to find a rabbit in some Cambrian rocks. That will blow the theory out of the water for ever".

That's what I love about good theories: they lay themselves naked and wide open to attack, and can be felled forever by a single, one-time-only piece of counter-evidence. And yet they still stand. Now that is awesome - that's how good science is: it's honest and open, and that's the stance that should be adopted to clearly distinguish it from dogma. Using words like 'true' and 'fact' is just going the wrong way.

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22. Comment #224928 by Harko on August 6, 2008 at 3:18 am

How blinkered the view of Deborah Orr's is!

Yet he never stops himself to wonder why....

Doesn't she realise that there is very little about this topic that Richard has not "stopped himself to wonder about"?!

When journalists come up with innane arguments like she does, do they really think that they are so smart, that noone has come up with them before, and that noone else might have made a counter-argument?

Poor.

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23. Comment #224931 by DoctorE on August 6, 2008 at 3:23 am

I loved the program... I just don't like the term Darwinism, I can't help it but that term is suggestive in my mind... suggests "religion" if you will.
Can we please stop using that word, thanks!
IMHO

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24. Comment #224937 by Dr Doctor on August 6, 2008 at 3:38 am

More shrill attempts at dead agenting. Let them play on till their tune bores.

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25. Comment #224941 by Sargeist on August 6, 2008 at 3:42 am

I knew when I was typing it that someone would pick me up on my "we tell people that certain things are true" comment. I should have said that teachers explain what the bases of these "facts" are, but that still, to me, comes under the heading of: these certain things are true.

But I stand by my comment about the difference between natural selection and the other (physics) examples I gave. I like to think of natural selection as sort of an axiomatic thing: If animals reproduce with varying success; and if the success depends on genes and environment; and if the genes can be passed on to their offspring with small changes; Then: natural selection and changes in allele frequency.

But, I acknowledge that I simply cannot see how it cannot work. Which maybe does make me a bit like a religious nutcase. But it's more like logic.

Oh, I don't know. Trying to formulate a coherent comment on here is making my head hurt!

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26. Comment #224951 by Apathy personified on August 6, 2008 at 3:51 am

I'm going to guess that the bulk of these reviews were written before the 'journalists' had watched the show - they just left a few blanks to fill in to cover their tracks.

It amazes me that someone who intelligently tries to explain a scientific fact to people is accused of being evangelical and preaching to people.

I particularly liked the end of the mirror review though

The first being the danger of believing you have all the answers about anything.

The only people who pretend to have all the answers tend to be journalists or old men dressed in what i can only describe as 'frocks'.

Secondly for not realising that creation and evolution aren't mutually exclusive.

It's possible for a thing to be created and then change over time.

That isn't the argument in the series - the argument is the change bit.
Also, the absolute arrogance of these journalists to think that RD hasn't heard that before.

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27. Comment #225003 by aheggie on August 6, 2008 at 4:35 am

The distressed Telegraph reviewer simply could not bear the incontrovertible fact that the superb story of Darwin's great mind and theories makes a mockery of most sacred religious beliefs. I suspect "Journalist James" is possibly a fierce supporter of NOMA and/or is progressively squirming more than ever in a pew on the Sabbath.

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28. Comment #225014 by Lemniscate on August 6, 2008 at 4:50 am

beeline: I think you are missing the point, and you are wrong that everything in our knowledge is a theory.

Richard Dawkins, quite necessarily, pointed out the fact of common ancestry, extinct species and the over 4 billion year old Earth. These are undeniable facts, and they alone are enough to destroy the creation myths of religion. It's an important message that whatever you think of the theory of evolution by natural selection, the facts contradict the holy books.

I think your suggestion to avoid words like fact, truth and belief is worrying. Why shouldn't the people who actually deal with facts and truth be allowed to use the words? Better than the preachers, who only appear to deal in wild beliefs.

The comments on the Telegrath review show that Britain is not as warm to religious bullshit as is commonly believed. Most commenting there understand better than the journalist that it's really not acceptable that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is not as accepted as any other scientific theory with a similar amount of supporting evidence.

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29. Comment #225022 by somersetsimon on August 6, 2008 at 5:00 am

One of the reader's comments on these articles mentioned that artificial selection has only demonstrated microevolution within a single species, but doesn't provide any physical evidence for macroevolution or speciation. I think their actual argument was that "if man can make small changes to a species, then God could also do this". What is the smallest amount of time or number of generations required for speciation (based on the evidence to date)?

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30. Comment #225035 by Vaal on August 6, 2008 at 5:23 am

Here is what I posted on the Telegraph, don't know if it will be published...

"What a poor and sadly predictable article. How did this ever get past the editor of a respected British newspaper?

Instead of concentrating on ad hominem attacks on Professor Dawkins, perhaps James Walton should be more concerned about the insidious dumbing down of youngsters in British schools by absurd Bronze Age religious creation myths.

Do we want to end up a society like America where 40% of the population believe the world was made in 7 days and the Earth is only 6000 years old? Now that is a wake up call, and that is what these journalists should be urgently addressing, instead of scandalous lip service to cultural relativism.

Do we really want to turn our children into religious automatons opting out of the truth in the name of their religion? That is not education, that is indoctrination.

What a tragedy in a country with such a rich heritage of scientists and thinkers such as Newton, Darwin, Dawkins etc etc"

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31. Comment #225044 by beeline on August 6, 2008 at 5:44 am

Beeline, you are dead wrong... Well done Richard for realising this simple fact and actually implementing it in his documentary. Fuck the PC brigade!

This seems to be illustrating my point for me.

Oh, I don't know. Trying to formulate a coherent comment on here is making my head hurt!

That means you're doing it right! :-D

nalfeshnee's link link to that Wikipedia's article is very apposite - thanks. I'd not seen that page before. This is a good case in point where the 'semantic argument' about which words to use makes absolute sense.

Scientists have one definition of the word 'theory' and laypeople have a different one. Therefore there's bound to be confusion and we should take every step necessary to avoid it.

However, I would disagree that gravity and evolution can be thought of in the same way to a layperson. You can watch the effects of gravity at every second of every day - simply drop something. This makes it stick in our minds as a 'fact' because its timescale intersects (necessarily) with that in which we live our lives.

The action of evolution does not impinge on our day-to-day lives in the same way - it only does when learn the theory about it, and then you can see its effects in everything around you. The explanation for those things is still a theory simply because there is no direct personal experience of evolution like there is with gravity.

Lemniscate, I think that everything in our experience we take to be fact (hence the success of conjurors) but that everything we define as knowledge - i.e. the systematisation of that experience - is theory.

When you simply state that evolution and the age of the earth are 'undeniable facts' you're simply re-stating the problem I'm identifying, not arguing against my point, which I think you've missed.

And yes, the theory of evolution contradicts the bible, but that doesn't prove that evolution is right and the bible is wrong. All it does is show that they can't both be right.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as sure as any of us that evolution is by very very far the best theory we have as to why the earth and its life looks the way it does, and that the religious texts are way way way off the mark in just about every respect. But we have to be very careful to use language that makes it absolutely clear how we came to those conclusions via the scientific method, and that it wasn't just a case of (as you have done) sating that 'these facts are undeniable'.

If we show them the way that the theories were developed, and show them the evidence, and get them to decide what's unsubstantiated nonsense, then that's far more powerful than telling them things that their intuition can't (unsurprisingly) grasp.

The things that science has found out are more extraordinary by orders of magnitude than anything dreamed up in scriptures. It's hardly surprising that people reject the 'facts' when presented with them straight out, in such a dogmatic and authoritarian manner.

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32. Comment #225049 by beeline on August 6, 2008 at 5:59 am

After a brief thought, what I'm saying about 'fact' and 'theory' relates far more to natural selection than it does to evolution. However, it's still clear that laypeople do not notice natural directional changes in population densities, and therefore have no experience of evolution 'as a fact'.

That's why evolution has trouble and gravity doesn't. Also, according to the excellent Charlie Brooker article in a recent Guardian, the Bible doesn't mention gravity, so its adherents don't feel that they have to put up a fight.

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33. Comment #225054 by phasmagigas on August 6, 2008 at 6:15 am

beeline

I'm afraid to say that the camerawork was really quite poor and amateurish too, and this detracted quite a lot from the presentation of the piece. Sure, there were some nice shots, but it was very uneven and actually very poorly thought out in a number of places - especially the piano keyboard illustration of the evolutionary timeline, whose scale was lost at each shot.

i noticed that too.

im going to wait until ive seen all the programmes before i make any more comments but it would have been better perhaps to have had one episode dedicated to 'darwins dangerous idea' and only then were the social implications looked at in detail and the attack on darwinism from the religious bodies, including the push for ID in school, with refutations included covering the common fallacies: no transitional fossils, no speciation, only microeveolution etc.

i did find that the first episode was a little hotch potched, it tried to cover too much to quickly (eg evidence could have been presented over a full programme:fossils/biogeography/genome/behaviour even, i feel more animations were needed and perhaps importantly an extended one that showed the basic idea of descent with change, showing perhaps a budded population of one organism on an island. it was covered but it perhaps needed a very distince set piece thats shows that this is the core event that darwin thus exlained.

i hope that subsequesnt programmes explain how evolution has not yet been falsified, ie it needs to be stated quite clearly that there is not one piece of evidence on this planet that shows it not to have happened. it would be nice to see a set piece showing how the ultimate test (after the discovery of DNA) could be used to test the theory, again, this was covered in the first programme but perhaps too quickly, maybe the first programme is a pre summary.

either way im hoping it gets the credit it deserves and perhaps one or two of the tv rewiewers might have actually read a few of the replies critical of them.

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34. Comment #225058 by phasmagigas on August 6, 2008 at 6:27 am

After a brief thought, what I'm saying about 'fact' and 'theory' relates far more to natural selection than it does to evolution. However, it's still clear that laypeople do not notice natural directional changes in population densities, and therefore have no experience of evolution 'as a fact'.

That's why evolution has trouble and gravity doesn't. Also, according to the excellent Charlie Brooker article in a recent Guardian, the Bible doesn't mention gravity, so its adherents don't feel that they have to put up a fight.

its a useful tool to demonstarte inanity with the gravity 'theory'

eg 'ha, you can walk up hill cant you? see, gravity doesnt exist' thats the court jester kirk cameron school of inanity.

then theres the 'gravity exists, its just god that does the pulling' thats the unprovable theistic gravitationist school of inanity.

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35. Comment #225059 by Lemniscate on August 6, 2008 at 6:31 am

beeline, there is no direct experience of many facts which scientific theories explain, and they don't generate the distrust that evolution does (general relativity, for example). Direct experience is also possible. Look at the HIV/homo sapiens evolutionary interplay in this documentary. Also, speciation has been observed, along with Lenski's E. Coli which evolved the ability to digest citrate.

Why should we bang on about evolution by natural selection being a theory? The common understanding of what a theory is is so weak that it would be helping creationism. There's nothing wrong with stating the facts and evidence without a theory. By your definition of a fact, virtually nothing is a fact. Are the fossil record and common ancestry not facts? If they're not facts, what is a fact? These facts directly contradict the literal reading of genesis. This is the first step to getting people to be receptive to one of 'man's theories' instead of 'God's word'. (Here comes the explanation of how we have arrived at and corroborated our theory.)

I guess my approach would be more tough-love than yours, although I appreciate a softer tact may be necessary for some. However, I worry the way you're approaching it may be misconstrued - even to the non-religious - as implying religion has something to say on evolution, or that evolution is a more contentious topic than others within science.

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36. Comment #225062 by phasmagigas on August 6, 2008 at 6:40 am

Once the layperson accepts that a theory is required for something as "obvious" as gravity, it might then be a smaller step to ask them whether they consider the need for a theory to explain animal descent as quite so startling.

i think part of the problem is a general lack of understanding the natural world, people know im interested in invertebrates generally and will ask me questions about insects they find in their garden.

The thing that always amazes me though is simply how incredibly ignorant people are, ok i dont expect everybody to know that a given beetle isnt a tick and that the said beetle isnt actually an arachnid as it has but 6 legs but its this type of question that gets my goat ' weve found this weird looking grub, what is it and what use is it?'

i have to take a step back and i think 'ok, how do i answer this?' interestingly the fact that i can say 'oh, thats the larvae of the local stag beetle' then at least gives the remains of my answer some credibility, i'll say something like 'well, what do you mean by use? to you or me, to nature? ' then i'll tentatively explain that they fulfill a 'role' of sorts, in reducing trees to soil, to feed other animals etc, to feed their parasites evemn, then if they are still listening i'll go on to the idea that they dont have an actual use, they are there because their ancestors survived, i'll push it as far as i can, ive yet had anybody walk away from me, they probably dont see the godless avenue im walking them......they were still managing quite well though without.

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37. Comment #225064 by phasmagigas on August 6, 2008 at 6:47 am

Why should we bang on about evolution by natural selection being a theory?

people are blind to the small stuff, i can take anybody into our back garden and show them natural selection at work, I have the prairie cup plant Silphium perfoliatum growing tall, it is covered in red aphids and at any one time there are parasitic wasps flying round them, the aphids do this sort of synchronised dance to confuse? the wasp, or at least some other specific or non specific predator, there are litearlly 100's of examples of natural selection on display over an hour in a garden, our cherry tree is almost defoliated by the japanese beetle round here, natural selection at work etc, etc. people simply do not see thsi as NS, they think only of lions and zebras (no dig at the programme RD, i was impressed with the scorpion vs solifugid!).

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38. Comment #225065 by Sargeist on August 6, 2008 at 6:47 am

phasmagigas:

The only clip I have seen of the programme so far is the one in the classroom, but your telling of the "what use is it?" story is paralleled rather well with the "why should we learn about evolution?" question in the clip.

I suppose I should just be thankful there wasn't an "innit" at the end of the question.

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39. Comment #225073 by phasmagigas on August 6, 2008 at 6:59 am

sargeist

The only clip I have seen of the programme so far is the one in the classroom, but your telling of the "what use is it?" story is paralleled rather well with the "why should we learn about evolution?" question in the clip.

I suppose I should just be thankful there wasn't an "innit" at the end of the question.

yeah, there could almost have been an innit in that one!

the boy did ask a fair question though, i remember kids asking the maths teacher 'why do we learn algebra?' and of course it deserves an answer and RD gave that. his motive for asking the question though wasnt positive as such but a 14 year old is a young mind and it takes a rare mind to dispel indoctrination at that age. further to my previous point ive heard people ask why are there so many dandelions in total exasperation at the work required to be rid of them, they ask honestly though, as if theres some reasons that kind of includes THEM 'why are there so many dandelions that i should have to pull them out all the time' and they cannot see the simple anwser as a naturalistic explanation gives, higly competetive, parthenogenetic (i think) colonising species, the seem to miss the point that bare soil is all a dandelion wants!!

ah and my other question that drives me nuts is 'is this plant a weed?'

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40. Comment #225083 by Vaal on August 6, 2008 at 7:11 am

38. Comment #225049 by beeline

That's why evolution has trouble and gravity doesn't

Don't be so sure of that. The more idiotically religiously credulous are, in their bizarre fantasy world, even trying to imbue gravity as God "pushing things down"

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

Just when you think they couldn't possibly be more asinine, they surprise you again.

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41. Comment #225089 by phasmagigas on August 6, 2008 at 7:23 am

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42. Comment #225131 by beeline on August 6, 2008 at 8:55 am

I wonder, have you read The Onion before, Vaal? :-D

Quite, but the point is the facts are undeniable to any reasonable person.

What makes you think people are reasonable, especially about things that are beyond their experience, as most of science is? This is the challenge we have: most people don't know how to think about facts in the way that scientists do (or should do).

When you see any phenomenon in the world, the process of interpretation of what you're seeing leaves very little room for knowing what counts as a fact and what is just an interpretation - a hypothesis mired in our own cognitive biases and intuition.

In the most obvious example, it appears to be a 'fact' that, from our point of view, the Sun goes around the Earth. But that turned out to be an interpretation based on our particular viewpoint: standing on the planet. It was just a theory after all. Now it appears to be a 'fact' that the Earth goes around the Sun, which certainly has a lot more evidence going for it, thanks to Galileo and NASA, but must still, in all honesty be treated as a theory.

I would almost go so far as to say that I don't think there are any facts that can be proven to be consistently reliable, because science is not in the business of proving things. It was built, step by step, by disproving things. As Richard Feynman said: "All we know is what doesn't work."

All I'm saying is that 'facts' mean very different things to people with very different perspectives. Understanding science and not understanding science are two such perspectives.

Maybe you don't know too much about evolution yourself, or maybe you're just a pedant. Whichever it is, pandering to the idea that evolution is only the best explanation we currently have, is just plain ridiculous.

Please explain, step by step, as if to a complete idiot, why you think this. You might want to have a look at, and completely understand, this first:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism

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43. Comment #225166 by JAMCAM87 on August 6, 2008 at 10:01 am

Re Telegraph review

Why do people not get it? Dawkins has a purpose -to start a movement, the atheist movement. People keep saying that Dawkins has an obsession with religion. Of coarse he does! We all do, because we bloody well want rid of it! Would the feminists have gotten anywhere if they took the nicely nicely approach? Were they not obsessed with equality of the sexes? Would they have gotten anywhere if they were say, mildly interested in equality?

On another note, there is a great show on at the Edinburgh Festival at the Pleasance (where I work) which is called "how the giraffe got its neck". Putting evolution into entertainment is essential. The author of the telegraph is wrong about evolution being accepted in Britain. Most kids don't have the first clue about how we got here. I didn't know about it until I was 17 years old for christ's sake.

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44. Comment #225347 by Francis Clarke on August 6, 2008 at 1:23 pm

I makes me smile to read some of those replies to the telegraph review. Although there are nitwits that believe nonsense, there are also a lot of rational thinkers and intelligent sceptics in the croud. As we all know, history does tend to repeat itself, and as the saying goes, the truth will out.

Religion will almost certainly die out, (in terms of power and influence, delusional faith doesn't die out, but changes, because there are always flat earthers) and the future will only get better.

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45. Comment #225690 by mikecbraun on August 7, 2008 at 8:06 am

The fourth review is terrible. It's like a short essay turned in a few hours late because the student forgot about the assignment and scribbled down whatever came to his head. Not only is it crap writing and crap format, the content is devoid of substance. The writer takes the, "Make a decision? No thanks," route that mental midgets usually do. You know, the people who can't come up with answers or good hypotheses, so they think nobody should have the right to do so?

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46. Comment #225861 by gyokusai on August 7, 2008 at 12:49 pm

Richard sez:
Depressing as the Telegraph review was, the comments posted after it are mostly very encouraging.

Indeed! Actually, the majority of the commenters take this "critic" and his several igors from the comment section and mop the floor with them rather efficiently. Of course, some of these skilled, rational folks out there might be straight from this 'ere crowd ... or so I figure :-)

Either way, your terrific presentation resonated positively, and loudly. And this was only part I. Change will come. Yes!

Can't wait for the second part to appear.

^_^J.

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47. Comment #226316 by beeline on August 8, 2008 at 1:02 am

Ah, the classic "You're all talking rubbish. Now here are my opinions" school of discussion. Textbook.

Now, perhaps you would care to support some of your criticisms of some of the negative views expressed above, or should I just follow your lead and say that your comments are "strange and unsupportable"?

It's alright to level criticisms, you know, even when you find a programme worthy and important, as we all do this one, I'm sure. If we criticise rationally and specifically, and Richard takes any notice, then we might possibly be helping him get better at it.

And besides, I think he's big enough to know how to sort the wheat from the chaff in his reviews. Although some 'critics' are clearly markedly deficient in their knowledge or understanding of science (and logic), it doesn't necessarily mean that all critics are.

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48. Comment #226613 by beeline on August 8, 2008 at 12:26 pm

Well, that's certainly not the impression I meant to give, and you've taken rather an extreme view to the point of mischaracterisation. And in any case, if we want people to understand the differences between religion and science, and the absolute supremacy of the latter in explaining things, then we have to get down to fundamentals, I'm afraid, because that's where the differences lie. Otherwise, it's just old men shouting at people what they should or should not believe.

I can't believe this is so hard to understand. I'm not a philosopher, and this is hardly a complex idea. Of course we have to teach the 'necessary lie' in order that we can get students to understand the patterns that exist in nature. But the way that we talk about those patterns is very important, and it's being trampled over here, and in Richard's programme (but not, curiously, in his books, which are far more careful, as you will know).

I'm not suggesting, either, that we 'denigrate' anything to a hypothesis, because as we both know, a hypothesis is a theory that has not yet been subjected to any testing, and we both know that evolution and the theory of gravity, and other theory that is in the body of science has been so tested, over and over again. That's how it got to be so bloody good today.

I'm saying that we should make people understand what 'theory' and 'fact' mean SEPARATELY from what people on the street ordinarily think they mean (hence the difficulty with people saying that evolution is 'only' a theory.) You even used the phrase yourself, in suggesting that I would like to teach them that the Earth's orbit "is only a theory". That's putting words into my mouth, and precisely the point against which I'm arguing.

In my experience of teaching science, it is a simple matter to explain a little history about where a particular theory came from. Specifically how it developed and was shown to be inaccurate at various points, and how all these little adjustments that it picked up on the way often leave such a fabulously strong theory that we can use today with confidence: sending men to space-stations, curing genetic diseases, etc.

But in order to understand how science works, you have to remember those steps, and never rule out that there will be more. The moment you do that, you're turning science into dogma, and then you might as well be an evangelist, because that's what they preach: unquestioning adherence.

That's exactly the mistake these reviewers make in mis-characterising Richard, because they see him use words like 'fact' and they think it means the same as a minister when he says it's "a fact that Jesus was God's only son".

We need to be more careful to differentiate between these two meanings of fact, and do it early on so that people get it.

I hope that makes more sense. These simple, but apparently philosophical points, are the cause of virtually all the ignorant reporting of Richard's work that goes on, because they don't understand the difference, and aren't really being helped that much. They need help as much as the school-children.

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49. Comment #226968 by beeline on August 9, 2008 at 3:16 am

Okay, I'm pretty sure I'm talking to myself now, but here's an analogy that came to me this morning concerning pedantry and sophistry, and how to 'fix' things.

When someone's car goes wrong, they can easily get someone knowledgeable to fix it for them. It's usually some sub-assembly that needs replacing, but very occasionally a crucial piece of metal has broken in, say, a piston crank.

The research in materials science that went behind the manufacture of that crank is still on-going after several thousand years of refining metals, and in order to get it right, detail needs to be paid to the most microscopic details of science and mathematics, as well as tireless hours in the labs experimenting and testing everything and looking at the results under microscopes, rejecting those methods that give poor results.

Without this level of detailed care, which is at the fundamental level of what it takes to build a car engine, no engine would ever work.

Now, it would seem ridiculous to call a materials engineer pedantic, just because he understands the way that the foundational disciplines apply to the working of the car, even though you don't (and needn't, in fact). If the material in the crank is sound, then the fuel can deliver its energy to the wheels through the piston assembly, the combustion cycle, the camshaft, the gearbox, etc. But if that tiny, tiny detail in the metallurgy of the crank is not accurate, then there is no chance of the engine working.

In this analogy, the (generally awful) reviewers and mis-characterisers of Richard's work are like the people who have no idea how the car works, and when it goes wrong, they just go for the easiest option: slag off the car company for making shoddy products. That's what everyone does who has no understanding of the way that cars are made. They can't be expected to know materials science: all they see is a broken car, and they rail against it.

But if you are running that car company, and you want to actually fix this problem, you can't just argue back. You have to get 'pedantic' about it, and look at the root cause of the problem: the fine details of materials science.

Likewise, when something goes wrong with our understanding of a subject, we can easily just rant and rave and argue, but to understand the cause of the confusion, and to stand any chance of fixing the problem so that it doesn't recur (and cause more confusion, especially if the fallacies are being published nation-wide, as they are) you have to study the roots of the problem of understanding and science.

You have to study the philosophy of science and try to work out the root causes of the misunderstanding there. That is what I'm doing here, and it's very clear that the mistakes are all being made at this level. Otherwise we're continuously just papering over the cracks and not actually fixing the wall.

People in general - and even many scientists I talk to - are not fully aware of what they really mean when they talk about fact and theory, but this tiny detail - which to some just appears pedantic - causes confusion every time when its effects are apprehended at the 'surface' of the issues: i.e. when someone talking about science appears to be dogmatic and evangelistic, and indistinguishable from those of religious faith.

That is why people (including most of the reviewers) can't tell the difference between science and faith, and they make it sound as if science is 'just another view' or some other nonsensical relativist claptrap.

There is only one way to fix this problem, in my view, and it's to teach science properly and fundamentally (which certainly doesn't involve abandoning the brilliant theories we already have) and have a completely unambiguous way to talk about the facets of scientific knowledge.

Without this understanding, we've all just dropped to the level of the religious proselytes, and are all just shouting into the wind.

Speaking of which...

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50. Comment #226971 by Sue2 on August 9, 2008 at 3:49 am

I watched the first part of this series and enjoyed it but there were a few areas I found curious! Was Richard Dawkins venerating Charles Darwin a bit when he was holding the labelled pigeons with awe??! Interesting theories about essential thinking on Prof Bruce Hood's new blog also comments on this. See www.brucemhood.com for another blog with interesting ideas.

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