AAI 2010: Richard Dawkins - Is Religion Good for Nothing? [2/6]

Is Religion Good for Nothing? What does it mean to be good for anything? It is a commonplace that different answers breed confusion, and a related confusion pervades my own field of evolutionary biology where the Good can be given a precise if not very uplifting meaning, alongside a plethora of imprecise if consoling meanings. I shall try to sort out the confusion for the special case of the evolution of religion, and shall deal with all the various ways in which it might be claimed that religion has evolutionary benefits. -- About Richard Dawkins: Richard Dawkins was Oxford's first Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. Before that he taught zoology at the Universities of California and Oxford. His books, which have sold in the millions, are all still in print and have been translated into more than 30 languages, include The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, A Devil's Chaplain, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion and The Greatest Show on Earth. He has presented television documentaries for both BBC and Channel Four, and is a frequent contributor to radio, television and the newspapers. His prizes and awards include the Nakayama Prize and the Cosmos International Prize (Japan), the Kistler Prize and the Lewis Thomas Prize (USA), the Shakespeare Prize (Germany), the Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London and the Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society ...

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YouTube | August 25, 2010

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