Wednesday, July 13, 2005

A Time to Laugh.... At Richard Dawkins!

From a BBC article:

Each species, in fact, has a different "reality". They work with different "software" to make them feel comfortable, he suggested.

Because different species live in different models of the world, there was a discomfiting variety of real worlds, he suggested.

[...]

He concluded with the thought that if he could re-engineer his brain in any way he would make himself a genius mathematician.

He would also want to time travel to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.


That, and he'd like a genetically-engineered talking pony too.

I don't believe I've referenced Stephen M. Barr's delightful review of Dawkins' last book. Here's my favorite paragraph:

One encounters in A Devil’s Chaplain at least three Dawkinses: there is Dawkins the Humanist, Dawkins the Reasoner, and Dawkins the Darwinist. Each sits on a different branch, sawing away at the branches on which the others sit. Dawkins the Humanist preaches, inveighs, denounces; he bristles with moral indignation. Dawkins the Darwinist tells him, however, that his humanism is speciesist vanity, his moral standards arbitrary, and his indignation empty. Dawkins the Humanist rebels, proclaiming himself (in human affairs) passionately anti-Darwinian. Dawkins the Reasoner joins the rebellion, declaring that our minds allow us to transcend our genetic inheritance. Dawkins the Darwinist answers with lethal effect that our brains “were only designed to understand the mundane details of how to survive in the stone-age African savannah.”

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