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Really? I'm so pleased.
Mar. 16th, 2010 10:54 pmA couple of weeks ago, I attended Richard Dawkins' lecture in QPAC, which was extraordinary in a number of ways.
First, I would consider him a formative influence on my philosophical outlook. Back in my foolish days as a Young Earth Creationist, it was reading a passage in The Blind Watchmaker on the heritable and naturally selected characteristics of, of all things, mud, which formed the tipping point in my realisation that it was all, oh my god, pardon the pun, true. It was my lightbulb moment about how natural selection needs absolutely no intelligence of any kind; it's not that the finches are trying to influence the shape of their bills to suit the available food, it's simply that the ones that happen to have the more suitable bills end up reproducing ever so slightly more than the ones that don't. So simple. So elegant. So obvious.
( Second, and subsequently... )
First, I would consider him a formative influence on my philosophical outlook. Back in my foolish days as a Young Earth Creationist, it was reading a passage in The Blind Watchmaker on the heritable and naturally selected characteristics of, of all things, mud, which formed the tipping point in my realisation that it was all, oh my god, pardon the pun, true. It was my lightbulb moment about how natural selection needs absolutely no intelligence of any kind; it's not that the finches are trying to influence the shape of their bills to suit the available food, it's simply that the ones that happen to have the more suitable bills end up reproducing ever so slightly more than the ones that don't. So simple. So elegant. So obvious.
( Second, and subsequently... )
