Literacy, Faith, Philosophy, Science and Teapots
January 9th, 2006
Those who know me need not be told that reading is a difficulty for me. This is not because I am uninterested or illiterate; in fact it is more to do with my eyes. As mentioned a couple of posts ago, asfedia has helped my eyes greatly in reading, however my eyes are and always will be very sensitive.
Being only a humble chimp descendant, focusing on small things for any length of time causes irritability and eventual pounding headaches. This could be a reason why it took me 6 months to arrive half way through “The Selfish Gene” but one day I intend to finish that book. However, if you do not know of this book by Richard Dawkins, please go to your local library and find yourself an edition. Regardless of your country I’m sure you’ll find a version somewhere (it was an internationall bestseller).
The purpose of this article is to tell you about two things I don’t do. Firstly read, secondly watch television. Today, I was tinkering about with my xbox and in doing so I happened upon a television show discussing faith. Gripped by the content of the show I stayed tuned, the perspective of the narrator very much favoured my own views, whilst not totally shutting out the plausability of a God, but narrowing that to a very unlikely state through the means of science. It wasn’t until the documentary finished that I discovered that the protagonist was in fact Richard Dawkins, I had never seen or heard him before so I was surprised.
The television show, has rekindled my desires to finish that book greatly, it also has given me great interest in watching the following documentary episode. For those able to receive Channel4 television: “Can you Believe it?“, I highly recommend it.
celine said:
How weird. Tonight, while getting a coffee from Costa in the basement of Waterstones, between printing and reading university texts, I happened upon MANY books by Richard Dawkins. I’d never heard of him. Whilst I don’t remember the titles of the books, precisely, I noted that they were up there with The Genome Project and other Pop Science books.
Weirder still, is that I made every effort to get home early from my Monday lecture to watch the very programme you mentioned in your blog. “The Root of All Evil? – The Virus of Faith”. Channel 4’s blurb is:
“Professor Richard Dawkins, Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and world-renowned evolutionary biologist, is no stranger to controversy. In this contentious two-part series, Dawkins describes God as the most unpleasant fictional character of all and launches a wholehearted attack on religion as the cause for much of the pain and suffering in the world. ”
Neil, had I not read your page I would not have known it was Dawkins who put together the fascinating and insightful and inciting documentary. I shall make a point too of reading his work.
I shall also stop calling my boyfriend, whose surname is Dawson, ‘Dawkins’ as a play on ‘dork’ when he does something imbecilic.
a-v0id said:
I’m really surprised you actually read my blog.
Thanks Celine.
I love the way he put his point across, he said everything that has been lingering on my mind for so long in just the way you’d want to if you were smart enough to piece the words together right. I however, am not.
😀