By GARRY MADDOX - THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Added: Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 UTC

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THE scientist, author and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins started his talk to a packed Opera House audience yesterday with a challenge – don't dare take your life for granted.

The extraordinary odds of human evolution over time – leading to one particular sperm finding one particular egg – meant that every individual was special by just being alive.

Dawkins ranged through his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, citing the special place of Australia's marsupials among the compelling evidence for evolution through natural selection over creationism.

His rationale for having to devote a new book to the subject more than 150 years after Darwin's On the Origin of Species? A recent survey showed that more than 40 per cent of the US population, including even presidential candidates as well as religious leaders, accept the Bible is literally true. In other words, Darwin got it wrong.

Dawkins took on the creationist's belief in Noah's Ark.

“Think what the geographical distribution of animals should look like if they'd all dispersed from Noah's Ark,” he said. “Shouldn't there be some sort of law of decreasing species diversity as we move away from an epicentre – perhaps Mount Ararat? I don't need to tell you that this is not what we see.”
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TAGGED: RICHARD DAWKINS, SPEECHES