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swimming. This is not the kind of thing that matter just spontaneously
does. It doesn't fall into position where it's good at doing anything. So
the fact that living things are demands an explanation, the fact that it's
improbably demands an explanation.
Mount Improbable is a metaphorical mountain. The height of that mountain
stands for that very improbability. So on the top of the mountain, you can
imagine perched the most complicated organ you can think of. It might be
the human eye. And one side of the mountain has a steep cliff, a steep
vertical precipice. And you stand at the foot of the mountain and you gaze
up at this complicated thing at the heights, and you say, that couldn't
have come about by chance, that's too improbable. And that's what is the
meaning of the vertical slope. You could no more get that by sheer chance
than you could leap from the bottom of the cliff to the top of the cliff
in one fell swoop.
But if you go around the other side of the mountain, you find that there's
not a steep cliff at all. There's a slow, gentle gradient, a slow, gentle
slope, and getting from the bottom of the mountain to the top is an easy
walk. You just saunter up it putting one step in front of the other, one
foot in front of the other.
MR. WATTENBERG: Provided you have a billion years to do it.
MR. DAWKINS: You've got to have a long time. That, of course, corresponds
to Darwinian natural selection. There is an element of chance in it, but
it's not mostly chance. There's a whole series of small chance steps. Each
eye along the slope is a little bit better than the one before, but it's
not so much that it's unbelievable that it could have come about by
chance. But at the end of a long period of non-random natural selection,
you've accumulated lots and lots of these steps, and the end product is
far too improbable to have come about in a single step of chance.
MR. WATTENBERG: One of your earlier books, a very well known book, is "The
Selfish Gene." What does that mean? You call human beings "selfish gene
machines." Is that -MR. DAWKINS: Yes. It's a way of trying to explain why individual organisms
like human beings are actually not selfish. So I'm saying that selfishness
resides at the level of the gene. Genes that work for their own short-term
survival, genes that have effects upon the world which lead to their own
short-term survival are the genes that survive, the genes that come
through the generations. The world is full of genes that look after their
own selfish interest.
MR. WATTENBERG: And the prime aspect of that is reproduction?
MR. DAWKINS: Yes.
MR. WATTENBERG: And so that's what drives all organisms, including human
beings, is the drive to reproduce their own genetic makeup?
writers, great
doing now?
you think and
not involve, I
MR. DAWKINS: That's certainly right, and because we are humans, we tend to
be rather obsessed with humans. There are 30 million other species of
animal where that question wouldn't have occurred to you.
MR. WATTENBERG: Yeah, but most of our viewers are humans. Now, how does
that work out for -- are humans different?
MR. DAWKINS: Humans, like any other species of animal, have been
programmed -- have evolved by genetic selection. And we have the bodies
and the brains that are good for passing on our genes. That's step one. So
that's where we get our brains from. That's why they're big.
But once you get a big brain, then the big brain can be used for other
things, in the same sort of way as computers were originally designed as
calculating machines, and then without any change, without any alteration
of that general structure, it turns out that they're good -- they can be
used as word processors as well. So there's something about human brains
which makes them more versatile than they were originally intended for.
Now, you talked about the fact that I'm passionate about what I do and
that I work hard at writing my books and so on. Now, the way I would
interpret that as a Darwinian is to say certainly writing books doesn't
increase your Darwinian fitness. Writing books -- there are no genes for
writing books, and certainly I don't pass on any of my genes as a
consequence of writing a book.
But there are mechanisms, such as persistence, perseverance, setting up
goals which you then work hard to achieve, driving yourself to achieve
those goals by whatever means are available.
MR. WATTENBERG: And you believe that is in our genetic makeup?
MR. DAWKINS: That's what I believe is indicated.
MR. WATTENBERG: Some people have more of it, some people have less of it.
MR. DAWKINS: That's right. Now, in the modern world, which is now so
different from the world in which our ancestors lived, what we actually
strive for, the goals we set up, are very different. The goal-seeking
mechanisms in our brains were originally put there to try to achieve goals
such as finding a herd of bison to hunt. And we would have set out to find
a herd of bison, and we'd have used all sorts of flexible goal-seeking
mechanisms and we'd have persisted and we'd have gone on and on and on for
days and days and days trying to achieve that goal.
Natural selection favored persistence in seeking goals. Nowadays we no
longer hunt bisons. Nowadays we hunt money or a nice new house or we try
to finish a novel or whatever it is that we do.
MR. WATTENBERG: In this town, political victory.
MR. DAWKINS: Yes, right.
MR. WATTENBERG: Why is this so important? I mean, you obviously feel that
this idea of evolution of primary importance. I mean, this is what makes
the world goes round. Is it, in your view at least, the mother science?
MR. DAWKINS: Well, what could be more important than an understanding of
why you're here, why you're the shape you are, why you have the brain that
you do, why your body is the way it is. Not just you, but all the other 30
million species of living thing, each of which carries with it this superb
illusion of having been designed to do something supremely well. A swift
flies supremely well. A mole digs supremely well. A shark or a dolphin
swims supremely well. And a human thinks supremely well.
What could be a more fascinating, tantalizing question than why all that
has come about? And we have the answer. Since the middle of the 19th
century, we have known in principle the answer to that question, and we're
still working out the details.
MR. WATTENBERG: Well, I read that, and a long time ago I read some of
Darwin. Darwin doesn't really answer the question why we are here. He
answers the question of how we are here. I mean, why in a -- when you
normally say, well, why are we here, you expect a theological answer or a
religious answer. Does Darwin really talk about why we are here in that
sense?
MR. DAWKINS: Darwin, if I may say so, had better things to do than talk
about why we are here in that sense. It's not a sensible sense in which to
ask the question. There is no reason why, just because it's possible to
ask the question, it's necessarily a sensible question to ask.
MR. WATTENBERG: But you had mentioned, you said that Darwin after all
these years has told us why we're here.
MR. DAWKINS: I was using "why" in another sense. I was using "why" in the
sense of the explanation, and that's the only sense which I think is
MR. DAWKINS: Like the eye, right. The whole thing collapses if they're not
all there.
Now, Darwin considered that argument for the eye and he dismissed it,
correctly, by showing that actually the eye could have evolved by gradual
stages. Bits of an eye -- half an eye is better than no eye, a quarter of
an eye is better than no eye, half an eye is better than a quarter of an
eye.
MR. WATTENBERG: I mean if it has some sight, but if you just created the
windshield wiper, it doesn't -MR. DAWKINS: Exactly. So I mean, there are things which you could imagine
which are irreducibly complex, but the eye is not one of them.
Now, Beahy is saying, well, maybe the eye isn't one of them, but at the
molecular level, there are certain things which he says are. Now, he takes
certain molecular examples. For example, bacteria have a flagellum, which
is a little kind of whip-like tail by which they swim. And the flagellum
is a remarkable thing because, uniquely in all the living kingdoms, it's a
true wheel. It actually rotates freely in a bearing; it has an axle which
freely rotates. That's a remarkable thing and is well understood and well
known about.
And Beahy asserts: this is irreducibly complex, therefore God made it. Now
-MR. WATTENBERG: Therefore there was a design to it. I don't think -MR. DAWKINS: What's the difference? Okay.
MR. WATTENBERG: Whoa.
MR. DAWKINS: Therefore there was a design to it.
MR. WATTENBERG: Right.
MR. DAWKINS: Now -- (audio gap) -- too complex. The eye is reducibly
complex, therefore God made it. Darwin answered them point by point, piece
by piece. But maybe he shouldn't have bothered. Maybe what he should have
said is, well, maybe you can't think of -- maybe you're too thick to think
of a reason why the eye could have come about by gradual steps, but
perhaps you should go away and think a bit harder.
Now, I've done it for the eye; I've done it for various other things. I
haven't yet done it for the bacterial flagellum. I've only just read
Beahy's book. It's an interesting point. I'd like to think about it.
But I'm not the best person equipped to think about it because I'm not a
biochemist. You've got to have the equivalent biochemical knowledge to the
knowledge that Darwin had about lenses and bits of eyes. Now, I don't have
that biochemical knowledge. Beahy has.
Beahy should stop being lazy and should get up and think for himself about
how the flagellum evolved instead of this cowardly, lazy copping out by
simply saying, oh, I can't think of how it came about, therefore it must
have been designed.
MR. WATTENBERG: You have written that being an atheist allows you to
become intellectually fulfilled.
MR. DAWKINS: No, I haven't quite written that. What I have written is that
before Darwin, it was difficult to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist
and that Darwin made it easy to become an intellectually -- and it's more.
It's more. If you wanted to be an atheist, it would have been hard to be
an atheist before Darwin came along. But once Darwin came along, the
argument from design, which has always been to me the only powerful
argument -- even that isn't a very powerful argument, but I used to think
it was the only powerful argument for the existence of a creator.
Darwin destroyed the argument from design, at least as far as biology is
concerned, which has always been the happiest hunting ground for argument
from design. Thereafter -- whereas before Darwin came along, you could
have been an atheist, but you'd have been a bit worried, after Darwin you
can be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. You can feel, really, now I
understand how living things have acquired the illusion of design, I
understand why they look as though they've been designed, whereas before
Darwin came along, you'd have said, well, I can see that the theory of a
divine creator isn't a good theory, but I'm damned if I can think of a
better one. After Darwin, you can think of a better one.
MR. WATTENBERG: I mean, isn't the standard rebuttal to that that God
created Darwin and He could have created this whole evolutionary illusion
that you are talking about? And I mean, getting back to first causes that
you sort of -MR. DAWKINS: Yes. Yeah. Not that God created Darwin, but you mean God
created the conditions in which evolution happened.
MR. WATTENBERG: And Darwin.
MR. DAWKINS: Well, ultimately Darwin, too.
MR. WATTENBERG: I mean ultimately.
MR. DAWKINS: Yes, it's not a very satisfying explanation. It's a very
unparsimonious, very uneconomical explanation. The beauty of the Darwinian
explanation itself is that it's exceedingly powerful. It's a very simple
principle, and using this one simple principle, you can bootstrap your way
up from essentially nothing to the world of complexity and diversity we
have today. Now, that's a powerful explanation.
MR. WATTENBERG: It's not any simpler. In fact, it's more complex than the
-- than Genesis. I mean, "And God created the heavens and the earth." That
--
decreed that even if humans are the product of evolution, their spiritual
soul is created by God.
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