Interview with Richard Dawkins

Sky News Sunday Agenda program, 7th March 2010

Helen Dalley: Richard Dawkins joins me in the studio. Thanks very much for coming in.
Now if sensible people, including theologians alongside scientists, accept that evolution
is a fact and explains how humankind got here, why the need to write a book setting out
the evidence for evolution?

Richard Dawkins: You’re quite right that sensible people do and that includes sensible
theologians, bishops, clergymen and so on. Unfortunately there are a very large number
of non-sensible people, more than 40% in the United States, who not only don’t accept
evolution but actually think that the world is less than 10,000 years old. I mean that is an
astonishingly unsensible, ignorant belief. But I’m afraid it is a very, very prevalent one.

Helen Dalley: But did you feel it was so strong that belief that you felt you had to counter
it?

Richard Dawkins: You can’t argue with 40%. I mean that’s a very high percentage of
people as measured by Gallup Polls.

Helen Dalley: It’s quite extraordinary. How much of a threat do you think is the truth
about evolution against creationism?

Richard Dawkins: A threat to what?

Helen Dalley: Maybe I should ask the other way. How much of a threat is this thinking
about creationism a threat to people actually accepting that evolution is truth?

Richard Dawkins: Yes, as long as people just think of course there’s no threat at all.
The problem is that they have influence, they have political influence, they wield
influence over local school boards, they wield influence over publishers of text books
and subvert indeed the publication of textbooks about science. So they are politically
powerful. They’re as politically powerful as they are ignorant.

Helen Dalley: But is it being taught in schools?

Richard Dawkins: Not in state schools, not in America. But a lot of people are
homeschooling their children. I don’t want to over-emphasise it, this book is a response
to a threat. It’s much more a positive attempt to illuminate and express the immense
power of the theory of evolution and the thrill of understanding why you came into
existence the way you have. I mean that is a very exciting thing to understand.

Helen Dalley: Before we get to that side, which is the exciting thing and it’s most of the
book really, you really only set out the 40% in perhaps the first chapter, intelligent design
– in a sense is that a watered down version of creationism?

Richard Dawkins: It’s hardly even watered down. It’s creationism rebranded with
another more politically acceptable name.

Helen Dalley: But they don’t sort of seem to mention God as the hand that might have
created man in seven days?

Sunday Agenda 7th March 2010 Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins: That’s right, it’s politically expedient not to, because the United States
law being what it is, there’s this wall of separation between church and state, so they
have to sneak it in by the back door, by talking about intelligent design, and never
actually mentioning who the designer is. But nobody’s in any doubt of what they think.

Helen Dalley: What is the strongest evidence do you think now? Because of course
we’ve got DNA evidence as well. But is it the fossils that have been found of our
ancestors, you know going over so many years? Is it carbon dating? What is the
strongest evidence?

Richard Dawkins: Well, carbon dating doesn’t go back very far, so you need other kinds
of similar sorts of dating that do go back all the way to the origin of the solar system, 4.6
billion years ago. Molecular evidence you’ve mentioned . . .

Helen Dalley: . . . Even that’s hard to get your head around, isn’t it?

Richard Dawkins: What do you mean ‘even’? I mean it’s very, very hard. Nobody can
really get their head around that. And that is quite a problem. What’s the strongest
evidence? Well, I think you’re probably right to mention molecular DNA evidence. That
is very, very strong, because what it means is that you’ve got digital coded information in
every cell of your body, and every creature that we know of has the same kind of digital
information using DNA or RNA which is very similar. So you can literally compare letter
by letter, you can actually count to the nearest one, you can actually count the number of
differences in any particular gene between any animal you like, between a platypus and
wombat, between a lion and a human. You can lay out these differences and they form
a perfect hierarchical tree. What could that be but a family tree?

Helen Dalley: So where is the case then that says that God did it all in a small amount
of time? How does that possibly even measure up to the way Charles Darwin figured
this out, what, 150 years ago?

Richard Dawkins: 150 years ago. Where is the case? Well it’s in a book called
Genesis, which was written about 800 years BC and written by nobody who knew
anything at all. That is the case. That’s it. Or there may be similar things in other
books. There is no case.

Helen Dalley: Has the scientific evidence moved on a lot more from what Charles
Darwin presented in On the Origin of Species?

Richard Dawkins: Yes, it has.

Helen Dalley: Apart from the DNA that we were just talking about.

Richard Dawkins: Well since On the Origin of Species was published, the most dramatic
increase of evidence I suppose is the DNA evidence. But fossil evidence has been
enormously reinforced since then. There were fossils in Darwin’s time. There were no
human fossils and now we have lots and lots of human fossils, so the sort of plaintive cry
‘show us the missing link!’, there are lots and lots of links, they are no longer missing.
And not just humans, but so many other fossils. So fossil evidence is very, very much
stronger. Geographical evidence that Darwin used has become much stronger and has
been enforced and illuminated by the idea of plate tectonics, the idea that the continents
really do drift around on these massive plates which the earth is made of, that has

Sunday Agenda 7th March 2010 Richard Dawkins

changed the way we see the geographical distribution. But it’s still the case, as Darwin
noticed, that the geographical distribution of animals and plants over the islands and
continents of the world is exactly what you’d expect if they’d evolved.

Helen Dalley: And evolved by natural selection?

Richard Dawkins: Yes, by natural selection is certainly the way that shall we say
adaptive evolution has occurred, yes.

Helen Dalley: You mentioned fossils. What is the oldest fossil of man that we have
now? Where are we up to in thinking about how old is humankind?

Richard Dawkins: Well it depends what you mean by man. Molecular evidence shows
that the common ancestor where we branched off from chimpanzees is about six million
years ago.

Helen Dalley: Six million years ago!

Richard Dawkins: And we don’t have any very good fossils of there. The nearest one
would be the Sahelanthropus fossil in Chad. These are all African fossils by the way.
But that’s a rather weird fossil. Australopithecus, the genus that preceded Homo, is well
represented in Africa, both in East Africa, in Ethiopia, in Kenya, and in South Africa.
There are fossils before that, Ardipithecus for example, so it’s hard to know exactly when
you start saying this is human. Australopithecus for example was upright walking,
walked on its hind legs, but had a brain the size of a chimp. So would you call that
human or not? On the evolutionary view, it would never be obvious, there never would
be a definite dividing line between pre-human and human. It’s going to be a gradual
process.

Helen Dalley: You talk about evolution in nature and a lot of the book is about the
beauty in nature, and you started out by saying that in this interview. Presenting that
evolution through natural selection presents things of exquisite beauty like the wings of a
butterfly being so beautiful, or a kangaroo hopping and how does that happen. What I
actually wanted to know, as well as those things of beauty, does it also make things of
ugliness? Or things that don’t work?

Richard Dawkins: Yes. I mean ugly, there’s a lovely Monty Python spoof of All Things
Bright and Beautiful – All Things Dull and Ugly!

Helen Dalley: So evolution gets it wrong too?

Richard Dawkins: Yes, evolution explains both. It doesn’t get it wrong, it’s exactly what
you’d expect. I mean you would expect since everything is ruthless competing,
ruthlessly working for its own survival, you’re going to get things that sting and bite
things, that parasitise, things that make you very ill. That’s all explained of course by
evolution very easily.

Helen Dalley: Because they need to be predators and do away with the competition?

Richard Dawkins: Because what it’s all about is DNA fighting for its own survival, and
the root that it uses to fight for its own survival is self-interested. And so you’re going to
get tapeworms and ringworms – ringworm I should say, it’s not a worm.

Sunday Agenda 7th March 2010 Richard Dawkins

Helen Dalley: Yes, and malaria bearing mosquitoes.

Richard Dawkins: Yes. So that’s all explained on evolution just as easily as the bright
and beautiful things are explained.

Helen Dalley: But does it ever end up in things that are completely useless? Or does
everything really have a place?

Richard Dawkins: Well useless is difficult to say. Probably not useless in the strict
sense, although it may be hard for us to find a use for the particular way we’re looking at
it, because sometimes what you’re looking at is a by-product of something else, and the
usefulness is the other thing that you’re not looking at. And remember by the way that
useful always means useful to the DNA, it doesn’t mean useful to us or useful to the
organism.

Helen Dalley: Yes. And does evolution explain species killing themselves off in a
sense, or dying off like dinosaurs and things like that?

Richard Dawkins: Well, dinosaurs went extinct because a large object hit the earth, and
so that was unforeseeable and nothing could have been done about that. It’s arguable
that species sometimes drive themselves extinct by so to speak getting too good at
doing one thing, and then that turns out not to be the right way to survive under changed
conditions. That would be one which possibly might waive interpreting what you’ve just
said.

Helen Dalley: Well it’s an extraordinary book. You’re speaking at the Sydney Opera
House this afternoon, is that right?

Richard Dawkins: That’s correct.

Helen Dalley: Do we expect a very controversial talk?

Richard Dawkins: It depends where you’re coming from. Not controversial to people
who know about science. I hope it’ll be enthralling to people who know about science. It
might be controversial to people who believe everything they read in a Bronze Age text.

Helen Dalley: Professor Dawkins, we’re very pleased to speak to you this morning.
Thanks for coming in.

Richard Dawkins: Thank you very much.

Sunday Agenda 7th March 2010 Richard Dawkins