Comments | tongodeon: Questions for Dawkins

tongodeon

Questions for Dawkins

Oct 07, 2009 07:37

This evening I'm going to see Richard Dawkins speak at Berkeley City Arts & Lectures. He's doing a book tour for "The Greatest Show On Earth", and I like him. I've been trying to think of a good question to ask him during the Q&A ( Read more... )

richard dawkins, social event

Comments 11

scothen_krau October 7 2009, 17:46:50 UTC

Damnit, why did this not pop up on my calendar? So, how was it?

Also, I'm totally using that turkey line.

tongodeon October 7 2009, 17:51:17 UTC

It's this evening. I haven't gone yet. If you're on Facebook you can join the Bay Area Skeptics and be notified of such things.

lexica510 October 7 2009, 18:11:03 UTC

If I may make a suggestion regarding phrasing, in my experience the phrase "with all due respect" is often used to mean "I don't respect you much/at all, but I'm throwing in this conversational formula because it's expected".

IMO, "with respect" conveys the intended meaning, without carrying the "hey, did he actually mean fuck you by that or did he mean I do respect you?" subtext.

tongodeon October 7 2009, 18:13:05 UTC

Good point. Jon Stewart has a bit about people from Jersey adding "...no disrespect" to clearly disrespectful comments.

buckminster October 7 2009, 18:32:57 UTC

You could ask him why, if evolution is real, there are still anti-evolutionists.

buckminster October 7 2009, 18:34:45 UTC

all about delivery- this joke may need work.

ctd October 7 2009, 18:59:03 UTC

The answers to those questions are kind of a closed set. If you have a chance to ask an interesting thinker something, why not ask an open-ended question, or one which reveals what ideas he's holding in his head when considering a new scientific question? (your answer to this question is kind of a closed set, too - but I'm intending it as a suggestion).

tongodeon October 7 2009, 19:02:27 UTC

If you have a chance to ask an interesting thinker something, why not ask an open-ended question, or one which reveals what ideas he's holding in his head when considering a new scientific question?

That's exactly what I am fishing for by posting this message here. If you can think of such a question feel free to suggest it here.

ctd October 7 2009, 19:47:42 UTC

I've only read a little of his work, so here are a couple glib ones:
-Has air travel, and the ensuing massive increase in critters being put into new environments (intentionally or not) had an impact on your field?
-Are there any pet theories you have which are languishing for lack of data?
-How do you know when an area of research is likely to be a blind alley?

occlupanid October 7 2009, 19:51:51 UTC

these are awesome questions, and ones i'd love to have a scientist or science writer expound about, rather than coming back to "was i nice enough on page 315."

mmcirvin October 8 2009, 04:58:20 UTC

Shortly after the September 11th attacks, Dawkins used them to argue that belief in an afterlife is inherently dangerous, since it allowed al Qaeda to turn people into suicide terrorists. This might make sense as far as it goes but it strikes me as unnecessarily reductive; after all, the vast majority of afterlife-believers don't do any such things, and there are lots of things that correlate more strongly with being a suicide terrorist, mostly having to do with geopolitical situations. I'm not sure we want to go there, anyway: It's a lot like blaming atheism for Stalin's body count, which is actually a favorite pastime on the other side of the fence ( ... )