Richard Dawkins ~ Genius Of Darwin
TV Review: The Genius of Charles Darwin, C4, Monday 4 August, 8pm
By John Beresford
I wonder who Richard Dawkins thought he was addressing in last night's opener to his three-part series, ostensibly about the genius of Charles Darwin? Since he scripted the show himself, as well as presenting it, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that, by my reckoning, it took him about 45 seconds to divert the programme from a discussion of Darwin's genius to a vehicle for the wider dissemination of Dawkins' own much-publicised and already well-known anti-religious polemicism."Evolution offers a far richer and more spectacular view of life than any religious story," Dawkins intoned in - ironically - quasi-religious tones, spitting out the words "religious story" with undisguised contempt. "It's one reason I don't believe in God," he added, just in case there was anyone watching who didn't already know.
His chosen "studio" audience for this first brief canter through the basics of evolution was a little more obvious, by virtue of standing in front of him. A group of surprisingly religious school-age young people, who Dawkins insisted rather patronisingly on referring to as "children" despite most of them appearing to be in their mid teens. Once again it appeared they were there merely to serve as a foil to Dawkins rantings. "Evolution is a fact!" he expounded, and continued to pepper his "debate" with them with phrases like "no reasonable person could possibly dispute..."
Dawkins can't countenance the statistics that 4 out of 10 people in the UK still believe in a form of creationism. Actually I found this a surprisingly high figure, but if Dawkins wants an even bigger challenge he should take his message to America, which has levels of creationist belief that would make him positively apoplectic. But he was content to poke fun at the young people in the classroom and point out the inconsistency of each believing something that contradicted what some of the others believed. Like shooting fish in a barrel really, for someone of Dawkins supposed intellect.
In an effort to prove evolution to the youngsters, he took them off on a fossil hunt. "Do you know what your ancestors looked like 200 million years ago?" he asked. A slightly disingenuous question given that his audience, presumably, believe the Earth to be nowhere near that old. "They would have been like shrews, little whiskery, twitchy things," he enthused, although quite how this was intended to persuade them of the majesty of evolution was lost on me. He then proceeded to shout out the order of the evolution of species at them. "Fish! Amphibians! Reptiles! Birds! Mammals!" he yelled, as if the message would become plainer if it were delivered at elevated volume. The students looked bemused and wandered off across the beach to look for ammonites.
Finally, the patience of those of us waiting for anything about Darwin was rewarded with a hasty description of how he compared the skeletons of various mammals and found striking similarities which led to his theory that all life had a single root, from which each species branched by making small changes, and that these changes were driven by environmental imperatives because they conferred some survival advantage, even if only slight compared with their peers. I'm sure you're familiar with the idea, and if you're not there are far more illuminating works describing it with much greater clarity than this strange mish-mash of cant and awe, which seemed at one point to be a little confused as to whether the 20 years following Darwin's journeys on the Beagle were filled with continuous effort to work out the fine detail of the theory of evolution, or whether Darwin already had the whole thing down pat and was simply too afraid of the religious implications to publish until he discovered he was about to be scooped.
The hour was padded with a short diversionary glance at the cruelty of nature that drives evolution. The race between predator and prey, each trying to gain the advantage through infinitesimal changes was explored, but again Dawkins couldn't resist a subtle poke at religion with his subtext of "see? What God would allow such cruelty?" It's a pity Dawkins doesn't aspire to the same sense of balance and propriety as his idol. Given free rein for an hour of prime-time television, he can't resist writing his atheist agenda large across a programme supposedly about one of the world's greatest minds, with just as much religious fervour as those he purports to criticise. Ironic, really.
Evolution had the last laugh though. Dawkins travelled to Nigeria to talk with a middle-aged prostitute who, it turns out, has a natural resistance to HIV. HIV is such a virulent and effective virus that in the natural course of things it's not hard to imagine a world where everyone without such resistance would become infected and die, and all that would be left are the descendants of those such as Salome who were resistant. A population entirely descended from prostitutes. How Biblical is that?
At the end of the hour we were treated to a brief word from the young fossil-hunters, most of whom were cleverly hedging their bets by saying they understood a lot more about Darwin now, but would still be saying their prayers. I bet that set Dawkins off on another rant, but maybe we'll have to tune in again next week to hear it.
The Beatles
Everybodys Got Something to Hide 'Cept for Me & My Monkey
SPLEEN SEARCH: DAWKINS
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