Wednesday, June 04, 2008 | print version

Richard Dawkins interviewed by Paula Kirby

at Cheltenham Festival

Cheltenham Town Hall, Wednesday 4 June, 8.30-9.30pm
Tickets: 10GBP (8GBP)

In 1859 Charles Darwin shocked the world with a radical theory of evolution by natural selection, a theory that remains controversial. Richard Dawkins has dedicated his life to studying, explaining and defending Darwin's theory. Based on his forthcoming Channel 4 series, he tells the story of Darwin's life and how he came up with perhaps the single most important idea in human history.

Cheltenham Town Hall
Imperial Square
Cheltenham
Gloucestershire
GL50 1QA
Tel: 01242 521621

Cheltenham Town Hall, a beautiful classical style building built at the very beginning the 20th century, is one of our principal venues. The building itself is owned and operated by Cheltenham Borough Council and when not buzzing with the Jazz, Science, Music and Literature festivals it forms the backdrop to a host of other events.

To find out about other Cheltenham Town Hall events and the Folk Festival, visit www.cheltenhamtownhall.org.uk

Date: Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Time: 08:30 PM

Location:
Cheltenham Festival
Cheltenham Town Hall
Cheltenham, UK GL50 1QA

Posted: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 | Permalink

Quotes of Note:

"if you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so."

Richard Dawkins

"I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat. Cranks and fundamentalists are too often victimised as scapegoats for religion in general. It is only quite recently that Christianity reinvented itself in non-fundamentalist guise, and Islam has yet to do so (see Ibn Warraq's excellent book, Why I am not a Muslim). Moonies and scientologists get a bad press, but they just haven't been around as long as the accepted religions. Theology is a respectable discipline when it studies such subjects as moral philosophy, the psychology of religious belief and, above all, biblical history and literature. Like Bertie Wooster, my knowledge of the Bible is above average. I seem to know Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon almost by heart. I think that the Bible as literature should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum - you can't understand English literature and culture without it. But insofar as theology studies the nature of the divine, it will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine. Meanwhile, we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns. "

Richard Dawkins

"Religions do make claims about the universe--the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false."

Richard Dawkins

"Hot on the heels of its magnanimous pardoning of Galileo, the Vatican has now moved with even more lightning speed to recognise the truth of Darwinism."

Richard Dawkins

"Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them."

Peter Ustinov