Episode Highlights
Episode 1 - Life, Darwin & Everything
Highlights
• The prevailing religious teachings of Darwin’s time conceived of a stable, divinely ordered natural world. Darwin, however, saw a violent, brutally dynamic system in which species constantly struggled for survival.
• Based on extensive observation and research, Darwin posited a continually escalating natural arms race in which slight variations such as faster legs, sharper teeth, or a keener sense of smell gave some life forms a competitive edge in survival and reproduction.
• Darwin didn’t know precisely how species passed on physical variations to their offspring. The answer arose with 20th-century research into DNA and genetics.
Questions to Consider
- Clearly, Darwin had mixed emotions about his idea of evolution, delaying publication of his treatise and calling it “a vile rat of a theory.” Why did he feel so conflicted?
- How would explain natural selection to your children?
- Dawkins says that Darwin’s theory “eliminated the necessity of believing in anything supernatural.” Do you agree or disagree?
Episode 2 - The Fifth Ape
Highlights
• According to Dawkins, evolution by natural selection discards the notion of a grand scheme in the natural world. Nature has no morality and no purpose or goal, other than survival and reproduction. All beings work for their own benefit and often exploit others in the process.
• Darwinism emphatically does not justify eugenics, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or neglecting the poor because those notions substitute human judgment for natural selection.
• Dawkins argues that kinship (behavior in family units) and reciprocity (you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours) can explain the development of altruism as a survival trait.
• Kindness, empathy, and other so-called selfless behaviors, says Dawkins, allow human beings to extract themselves from the brutal, unforgiving forces that created them.
Questions to Consider
- Do you agree that nature has no overarching purpose or goal other than the successful transmission of genes from one generation to the next?
- Why does Dawkins say, “Hitler was not a Darwinist”?
- To what extent does capitalism exhibit the characteristics of Darwinian natural selection? How is it different?
- How would you explain humans’ altruistic impulses, such as kindness to total strangers?
Episode 3 - God Strikes Back
Highlights
• When confronted with the godlessness that Dawkins sees as implicit in Darwinism, some Christian fundamentalists deny or attack the idea of evolution; others try to assimilate it into their own dogma.
• Scientists see complex organs (such as the eye) and compromised functions and vestigial physical features (such as nearsightedness, wisdom teeth, and the appendix) as convincing evidence of evolution, not of intelligent design.
• In his view of a godless universe, Dawkins finds joy in the exuberance of life processes and satisfaction in humans’ ability to understand them.
Questions to Consider
- In arguing for atheism, Dawkins confronts Christians exclusively. Why do you think some Christians in particular have such difficulty with Darwin’s ideas? In your experience, how do people from non- Christian faith traditions such as Jews, Buddhists, or Muslims react to evolution through natural selection?
- How is evolution taught in your local school district? How should it be taught?
- Do you share Dawkins’s profound consolation in knowing that “every one of your ancestors successfully copulated”? Why or why not?
- In your opinion, is it possible to reconcile evolution through natural selection with a religious tradition? Or does accepting Darwinism inevitably lead to atheism?
