Richard Dawkins: The Genius of Charles Darwin

The Genius of Charles Darwin is a three-part television documentary, written and presented by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

Here you go:


Part 1: Life, Darwin & Everything

In the first episode Richard Dawkins explains the basic mechanisms of natural selection, and tells the story of how Charles Darwin developed his theory.

He teaches a year 11 science class about evolution, which many of the students are reluctant to accept. He then takes them to the Jurassic Coast in Dorset to search for fossils, hoping that the students can see some of the evidence for themselves.

Dawkins visits Nairobi, where he interviews a prostitute who seems to have a genetic immunity to HIV, and talks to microbiologist Larry Gelmon. He goes on to predict that genetic immunity to HIV is a trait that will become more prevalent in the community over time.

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Part 2: The Fifth Ape

In the second episode Richard Dawkins deals with some of the philosophical and social ramifications of the theory of evolution.

Dawkins starts out in Kenya, speaking with palaeontologist Richard Leakey. He then visits Christ is the Answer Ministries, Kenya's largest Pentecostal church, to interview Bishop Bonifes Adoyo. Adoyo has led the movement to press Kenya's national museum to sideline its collection of hominid bones pointing to man's evolution from ape to human. The collection includes the Turkana Boy discovered by Kamoya Kimeu, a member of a team led by Richard Leakey in 1984.

Dawkins discusses social darwinism and eugenics, explaining how these are not versions of natural selection, and that "Darwin has been wrongly tainted".

He then meets with evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker to discuss how morals can be compatible with natural selection. He goes on to explaining sexual selection, with peafowls as an example. To find out whether sexual selection plays a role for altruism and kindness among humans, he visits women who are looking for sperm donors, as well as a sperm bank manager. Dawkins also explains kin selection and selfish genes.

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Part 3: God Strikes Back

In the third and final episode, Dawkins explains why Darwin's theory is one of history's most controversial ideas.

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And Richard Dawkins cowers before Vox's (of Vox Daily fame) "The Irrational Atheist".

reply to post by sir_chancealot


Cowers before? I dont understand what you mean. Can you explain plz

reply to post by Daniem


he's refering to this guy

voxday.blogspot.com...

why on earth would anyone cower to this guy? the best thing he can manage are weak ad-hominims

And everyone is observably irrational a significant portion of the time, so attempting to build a society on science and reason is not only a tried, tested, and failed concept

umm when was it we tried exactly? for it to fail

People believe or don't believe in the existence of God for a wide variety of reasons, but anyone who has read much of Richard Dawkins's work will recognize that Dawkins doesn't believe there is almost certainly no God due to either science or reason.

had he read any of dawkins work besides god delusion he would know its pretty much all about evolution, and as it shows there doesnt neccesarily need to be a divine anything and so far no proof of a divine anything has turned up then yes his work does help support his lack of belief

the guy thinks general ignorance and ad-hominims are a suitable replacment for research or actually knowling what the hell he is talking about

i hope his newspaper columns are better then his blog ...

[edit on 20/1/09 by noobfun]

I am currently watching this show about turkana boy,and how homo erectus left Africa much sooner and using tools and how the loss of body hair gave us advantages over the predators at that time.
I will go into this later.
Simply amazing.

Turkana Boy, also occasionally, Nariokotome Boy is the common name of fossil KNM-WT 15000,[1] a nearly complete skeleton of a hominid who died in the early Pleistocene. This specimen is the most complete early human skeleton ever found. It is 1.5 million years old.[2] Turkana Boy is classified as either Homo erectus or Homo ergaster. His age has been estimated from as old as 15 years to as young as 7 years six months. The most recent scientific review suggests 8 years of age.[3] It was initially suggested that he would have grown into 1.85 m tall adult but the most recent analysis argues for the much shorter stature of 1.63 m.[3] The reason for this shift has been research showing that his growth maturation differed from that of modern humans in that he would have had a shorter and smaller adolescent growth spurt.[3] The skeleton was discovered in 1984 by Kamoya Kimeu, a member of a team led by Richard Leakey, at Nariokotome near Lake Turkana in Kenya.[4

en.wikipedia.org...

From this show,becoming human.
www.ket.org...

Evolution says that within a generation the most well adapted to the environment will survive and reproduce. History shows adaptations seem to be common. Within the reptiles are reptiles of the water, ground and air. Among the mammals are those in the water, on the ground and in the air. Birds have adapted to the water, ground and air. Insects have adapted to the water, ground and air. Fish are basically water creatures, however there are some fish with wings and others with legs, at least for a little while they can fly and walk.

I think evolution clearly works. However, I don't see why it needs to be assumed to have started by lightning hitting chemical pools and then single cell organisms bonding into multi cellular organisms. Evolution could start with a relatively small amount of animals, then if you came back millions of years later they would've evolved into all the same variety we see now.

I'm not saying it happened that way. I'm wondering, is there anything about evolution that says it must've started with single cell and went bigger? Maybe it started with high complexity and got smaller, the way moles lose their eyesight, use it or lose it style.

reply to post by JeSterR117

I'm wondering, is there anything about evolution that says it must've started with single cell and went bigger?

Nope, not a thing. If you'll pardon me anthropomorphizing a scientific theory, evolution doesn't really care how life got here -- it's only concerned with what life does once present.