By JOHN BRUMMETT, THE MORNING NEWS
Added: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:00:00 UTC

Reposted from:
http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2007/04/27/columns/john_brummett/042807brummett.txt

Dr. Richard Dawkins, an Oxford University biology professor, author and intellectual who probably is the world's most famous atheist and evolutionist, gave a lecture Thursday night in Little Rock.

Right there on the Bible Belt's buckle, they had to bring in extra chairs. Dawkins drew more than a thousand people to the Statehouse Convention Center, breaking Madeleine Albright's attendance record for lectures presented by the Clinton School of Public Service.

Everyone seemed friendly, ranging from those giving extended applause to those asking only the most polite of challenging questions.

I'd asked Skip Rutherford, dean of the Clinton School, if he expected trouble -- a shouting demonstration from zealous religious believers, perhaps.

"Could be," he said.

Someone had called him to explain that the state Constitution prohibits atheists from holding office, which, while true, is long superseded by federal rights. But Dawkins was not seeking office, Rutherford replied. But you're advancing atheism, the caller countered. "No, I'm advancing ideas," Rutherford concluded.

Rutherford, a church-going Methodist, said the left got mad at him for bringing in Karl Rove, so it was fair for the right to get mad at him for bringing in Dawkins. Those probably are symmetrical devils.

During the Q-and-A, a young man told Dawkins he chose to believe in a religion-based afterlife so that his departed loved ones would have a place to go where he could hope to see them again. Dawkins was not impolite, but direct, when he explained that what the young man described wasn't belief, but hope.

Little Rock City Attorney Tom Carpenter asked Dawkins how we could be capable of love if we descended from the propagation of the "selfish gene," as Dawkins famously theorized in a best-selling book. Dawkins answered that the ability or even propensity to love could be as much a part of the natural selection process as physical characteristics.

He also argued that nonbelievers' moral conduct comes from a healthy human choice rather than unhealthy fear of supernatural punishment.

Dawkins also got asked about the uncommon preponderance of religious practice in the United States, where we have a far greater church-going population than any other developed and well-educated Western nation. His answer was surprising. He speculated it might have to do with our insistence on separating church and state.

In Britain, the state has an official religion, the Church of England, and children are required to be exposed to it. The result, Dawkins said, is that religion becomes "boring." Look inside a church in England, he said, and you'll see four old ladies -- "cramming for finals," he joked, quoting an Austrialian friend.

To the contrary, he said that the United States, by separating religion from government, bestows the allure of freedom on religion and makes it a matter of "free enterprise, like selling soap flakes. And sell it they do."

Dawkins, who sometimes gets described as militant, opened with a series of broadsides on religion, some humorous. He managed to entertain in a mildly jarring way, since religion doesn't get talked about so disparagingly around here very often, much less before large, approving crowds. Then his remarks turned sufficiently esoteric on matters of biology and physics to make the audience a bit shifty, no doubt ready for the return to fun in the Q-and-A.

It's hard to imagine that he changed anyone's opinion.

"I'm not here to indoctrinate, but to raise consciousness," he said, shortly after saying how proud he was to be in the home state of the greatest president of his lifetime.

The audience seemed so friendly -- every nonreligious person in Arkansas must have been there -- that indoctrination would have been overkill. Surely there were resistant attendees, quietly taking offense on the basis of their religious faith.

Only they can say whether anything raised their consciousness.

Woman: "Look at all these people. It's a miracle."

Man: "Yeah, if you believe in that sort of thing."

Woman: "Which I don't."

-- Back-row conversation

------------

BigTen Talk:
http://info.detnews.com/sports/lettersindex.cfm?username=michigan%20razorback

Thu. 04/26/07 10:20 PM
richard dawkins
Tonight I was part of an overflow audience to hear Oxford professor Richard Dawkins lecture on his book The God Delusion.

Why? you ask. Hey, I'm nothing if not open-minded.

Dawkins is a brilliant, debonair witty man....whom I happen to disagree with on the existence of God.

But he gave a great lecture.

Closing to a standing ovation, he told a story about traveling last week to Brussels. There he spoke to a member of the European Parliament who told him he had recently been negotiating to get President Bush to travel to Brussels to speak.

The man told Dawkins negotiations broke down when Bush demanded a guaranteed standing ovation.

The place broke up.
michigan razorback, little rock, ar

TAGGED: REVIEWS, RICHARD DAWKINS, SPEECHES