[Seth-Trips] [Fwd: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- RICHARD DAWKINS, "IS SCIENCE A RELIGION?" APRIL 9]

[Seth David Schoen]

Thanks, Sumana.

Richard Dawkins is an incredibly polemical evolutionary biologist who
may be best known for having coined the term "meme" and then having
applied it to a comprehensive critique of Western religions.

If you want to hear an old-school atheist lecture, here's an
opportunity.

It turns out that some other atheist evolutionary biologists think
Dawkins's work in evolutionary biology is bogus -- particularly the
"selfish gene", which is an incredibly powerful organizing concept in
Dawkins's adaptation of E. O. Wilson's sociobiology (a kind of
reductionist biology of social behavior).  _Too_ powerful, say some
scientists.

You can find out a lot more about Dawkins at

http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/

Many of his lectures are on-line, including an interesting one where
he compares religious faith and Tertullian (and Thomas Browne, if I
remember correctly) to peacocks.  He also had a lecture where he
fretted over the observation that most people's religious beliefs
don't diverge much from their parents; one commentator called that
concern "as old as Spinoza", and it's repeated by a religious
character in E. L. Doctorow's _City of God_, which I read last week
and which is an incredibly excellent novel.

In another lecture, which is no longer on-line, Dawkins made this
concern more explicit, and asked why babies are referred to as
"Christian", "Jewish", or "Muslim" before they can talk, when nobody
would dream of referring to them as "syndicalist", "trade unionist",
"social democrat", etc.

In an earlier version of this upcoming lecture, Dawkins made the
extreme claim that

	Although it has many of religion's virtues, [science] has none
	of its vices.

Wow!

----- Begin forwarded message -----

Students for A Nonreligious Ethos wrote:
> 
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE; PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL INTERESTED PARTIES:
> 
> Students for A Nonreligious Ethos (SANE) of UC Berkeley is proud to present:
> 
> FREE TO THE PUBLIC
> 
>  Location: 2050 Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
>  Date: Monday, April 9
>  Time: 8:30 PM
> 
>      PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS
> 
> Author of "The Selfish Gene," "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence for
> Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design," and "Unweaving the
> Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder."
> 
> Monday, April 9, 2001:
> 
>      "IS SCIENCE A RELIGION?"
> 
>      Dawkins is Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the
> University of Oxford. He is considered to be one of the leading figures in
> modern evolutionary biology and has written extensively about evolution and
> science.
> 
>         Dawkins' first book "The Selfish Gene" (1976) was an immediate bestseller.
> In 1987, he won both the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Los
> Angeles Times Literary Prize for "The Blind Watchmaker" (1986) (the
> television film of the book won the Sci-Tech Prize for Best Science
> Programme). His numerous writings include studies of evolution, creationism,
> and genetics. In his most recent book "Unweaving the Rainbow: Science,
> Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder" (1998), Dawkins examines the
> connections among science, mysticism, and human nature, and claims that
> "science, at its best, should leave room for poetry."
> 
>         In addition to receiving the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Los
> Angeles Times Literary Prize, Dawkins's awards and accomplishments include
> the 1989 Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London and the 1990 Royal
> Society Michael Faraday Award for the furtherance of the public
> understanding of science. In 1998, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal
> Society of Literature.
> 
>         Dawkins was born in 1941 in Nairobi. His family returned to England in
> 1949. Dawkins completed his undergraduate and graduate work at Oxford under
> the instruction of Nobel Prize-winning biologist Niko Tinbergen. After a
> two-year stint between 1967 and 1969, as Assistant Professor of Zoology at
> UC Berkeley, he returned to Oxford where he became a fellow at New College,
> where he still teaches.
> 
>         Professor Dawkins will be giving a lecture entitled "Is Science a
> Religion?" for SANE, which will no doubt be filled with insightful and
> controversial philosophy of science, followed by a questions and discussion.
> 
> SPONSORED BY Students for A Nonreligious Ethos
> http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sane
> 
> FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sane OR EMAIL
> sane at ocf.berkeley.edu
> 
> Alex Wellerstein
> Students for A Nonreligious Ethos
> http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sane
> sane at ocf.berkeley.edu
> 
> Students for A Nonreligious Ethos (SANE) is a registered student
> organization at the University of California at Berkeley. SANE is the only
> specifically nonreligious student organization at UC Berkeley, where there
> are over 30 religious groups established. SANE strives to promote
> skepticism, logical reasoning, and religious tolerance.

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>  | And do not say, I will study when I
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/  | have leisure; for perhaps you will
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF)  | not have leisure.  -- Pirke Avot 2:5