richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

W H Y T H ERE AL.MOS T C E R TAINL.Y IS NO G O D 117
reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a
concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise,
naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of
life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people
talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly,
silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the
awe of ignorance any day. 59
The concept of stunning simplicity that he was talking about was,
of course, nothing to do with me. It was Darwin's theory of
evolution by natural selection - the ultimate scientific consciousnessraiser.
Douglas, I miss you. You are my cleverest, funniest, most
open-minded, wittiest, tallest, and possibly only convert. I hope this
book might have made you laugh - though not as much as you
made me.
That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed
out that evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: 'the
idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I
call that the trickle-down theory of creation. You'll never see a
spear making a spear maker. You'll never see a horse shoe making
a blacksmith. You'll never see a pot making a potter.' 60 Darwin's
discovery of a workable process that does that very counterintuitive
thing is what makes his contribution to human thought so
revolutionary, and so loaded with the power to raise consciousness.
It is surprising how necessary such consciousness-raising is, even
in the minds of excellent scientists in fields other than biology. Fred
Hoyle was a brilliant physicist and cosmologist, but his Boeing 747
misunderstanding, and other mistakes in biology such as his
attempt to dismiss the fossil Archaeopteryx as a hoax, suggest that
he needed to have his consciousness raised by some good exposure
to the world of natural selection. At an intellectual level, I suppose
he understood natural selection. But perhaps you need to be steeped
in natural selection, immersed in it, swim about in it, before you
can truly appreciate its power.
Other sciences raise our consciousness in different ways. Fred
Hoyle's own science of astronomy puts us in our place, metaphorically
as well as literally, scaling down our vanity to fit the tiny
stage on which we play out our lives - our speck of debris from the