Richard Dawkins: Life is astonishing

The Press

RAPT AUDIENCE: British evolutionist Richard Dawkins is giving a series of talks in New Zealand.

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"The fact of your own existence is the most astonishing fact you'll ever have to confront, don't dare ever see your life as boring, monotonous or joyless."

So went the opening instructions from revolutionary British evolutionist Richard Dawkins at his talk last night at the Michael Fowler Centre. From there, he proceeded to the predictability of evolution, the unpredictability of the inception of life, the importance of enzymes, and the possibility of life on other planets, in between jibes at the religious bloc.

He began by outlining the inevitability of evolution, saying "nothing could be further from the truth" than that evolution was mere chance, given the specific conditions on the Earth.

"If we were not here as a species ... then something else [similar] would be. There's a predicability in evolution which is very different from ... random luck."

By way of example, Dawkins said the importance that certain organisms be able to see led to the evolution, and continued evolution, of eyes. "If we wiped out much of life ... and started again, it's predictable that eyes would evolve."

He cited palaeontologist and intelligent design advocate Simon Conway Morris who argues if humans were wiped from Earth they would be replaced, eventually, by more humans. Dawkins stopped short of this, saying a species very similar to humans would emerge.

"He may have been going too far when he says humans would evolve again, but he's not going much too far ... he is going too far when he says that's attributed to a religious creator, by the way."

A complex breakdown of the role of enzymes in shaping DNA and organisms gave a flavour of more of life's good fortunes. "It's enzymes that make the whole canopy of life possible."

The specific conditions that brought about life were much more unpredictable and difficult to explain, but "once [they] had started, the predictable process got going but until [then] was unpredictable and a matter of luck. This whole predictability spree of repeated good fortune depended on an initial major stroke of good luck."

Just how lucky that "good luck" was was akin to asking "Is there other life in the universe", Dawkins said. "My gut feeling ... is that the truth lies somewhere in between [lots of life and no other life in the universe]".

One thing was clear to Dawkins though: That to explain that the necessary conditions of life were created by God was not satisfactory, as such a God would have to be "at least as complicated and at least as implausible" as such conditions themselves.

"As appalling as that might be ... it doesn't cut the mustard because it assumes what it sets out to explain."

And in between discussing the idiocy of some Christians and the criminality of others, Dawkins came full circle, explaining that the astonishing fortune of a person's very existence generated the feelings that, in part, gave rise to theology.

"When you feel just plain grateful [to be alive] then who are you being grateful to? You have to invent a God or pixies or something to be grateful to."

- © Fairfax NZ News