click pic to original flickr page by jurvetson
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richard dawkins was in good spirits for the RDF dinner last night, with his new book vaulting to #14 on amazon. christopher hitchens added to the camaraderie. the mc opened with a poetic prayer to the fsm. “give… ‘til it feels good.” ramen.some dawkins’ quotes from last night:
"you could give aristotle a tutorial – and you could thrill him to the core of his being. aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect, yet not only can you know more than him about the world, you also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. science is cumulative. and that is deeply aesthetically satisfying.”
“when we applied for non-profit status in the u.k., and faced delays greater than for a new religion, the charitable commission wrote back to us, and i quote: ‘kindly explain how scientific education benefits humanity.’”
“a 2008 gallup poll reveals that over 40% of americans deny evolution and believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old – not a trivial error... we have an obligation to engage the other 40%.”
“the power of any scientific theory is the ratio of all that it explains divided by all that it needs to assume. by that measure, darwin’s theory is perhaps the greatest theory in all of science. it is so simple, and explains so much.”
“we should teach children how to think rather than what to think. it is child abuse to teach a child that you belong to a faith.”
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