JM: What do you think the reversion to something you had begun to be doubtful about? RD: I think it was the argument from design. I think I started to appreciate the glorious complexity And so I think that I did the rather naive thing of assuming that if something looks as though it's designed, it probably is designed, and didn't kind of wake up to the alternative explanation until I was about I mean you have to explain the designer, so, um it's not even a good explanation. But finally I was about 16 when I discovered Darwinism I was taught Darwinism and then realised that there is a JM: Now did it come as a flash of delight or was there in fact a, um, agonising sense of regret an remorse at what you had lost?
RD: I don't remember any regret. I think it was delight. And it was a delighted sense of freedom, perhaps, from a And it was also delight at the positive feeling that one now had a fully satisfactory explanation of the way the world was, and that I had my life before me to try to understand that in detail.
JM: All right now, if I can go back to that period between 9 and Nine when you first started to have doubts because there were so many religions, and 15 when you had the, as it were, the biological road to Damascus and began to read Darwin.
What form did your relatively un-doubting religion take? I mean in the way of observance, in the way of prayer. RD: Oh yes. Between 9 and 15 I was pretty devout. I used to I mean I got comfirmed. I used to pray. I used to, umm And I remember being prepared for Confirmation, which actually even at the time I could sort of see that was a load of rubbish. I sort of forced myself to go on believing in it because here was this vicar in his cassock telling me about it.
But it just didn't hand together. It didn't make any sense. I could follow an argument that said, the world is such a beautiful place it needs a designer, but that wasn't what it was about at all. It was all about original sin and things like that which even then I could sort of see wasn't really coherent.
JM: So in a sense then, it was more tied to morality - and the sense of sinfulness - than it was to the beauty of the creation. RD: I think the preparation for Confirmation probably was, yes. JM: I mean, were you constantly told by, um, the minister that you were in the nature of man, um an inheritor of some sin? RD: I don't remember that. I mean, I do remember odd little Disease in not a result of bacteria or viruses or cancerous tumours Disease is a result of sin.
And I can remember being told that and I mean, they just didn't seem to realise what an extraordinarily JM: So when, at the age of 16, you became acquainted with Darwin, was it because you were taught about Darwin, or you began reading The Origin of Species? RD: No, it was because I was taught. JM: And were you taught by people who, as it were, were aware, or seemed to be aware of the fact that it would have theological consequences? RD: No, I don't think so. I mean JM: How soon in the lessons did you begin to see that it did have theological consequences - that it more or less knocked the idea of design on the head?
RD: I do remember that I understood the principle of Darwinism before I really believed it was big enough to do the job. So I understood the principle of it and realised that yes, that is a candidate explanation for doing this job but I still don't think it's a big enough one JM: In that case, I'm going to ask you this question.
I'm going to ask you for the point of view of the viewers, to um RD: Oh, fine. JM: Of Darwinian theory. RD: First I would make a distinction between the fact of evolution and the actual change from generation to generation that has led from bacterial ancestors to all the creatures we have today by gradual, gradual change such that you wouldn't have noticed it, um, in any particular generation.
That is a matter of fact that can be observed - not directly - but by it's aftermath in the form of fossils and the pattern of living creatures. Then ask, what is the guiding force for it being like that? Natural selection. And the most illuminating way I can think of to explain that is that all living things contain digitally coded representations of themselves, digitally coded instructions for building themselves and for making more like themselves.
The instructions survive or the don't survive depending on how good the bodies are at surviving and at how good the bodies are at reproducing and therefore passing them on. Therefore the world becomes filled with coded instructions for being successful in building bodies that survive and reproduce those very same coded instructions. JM: Mmm. Now the objection that is constantly raised by people who hear this, to me and to you, extremely persuasive argument, they say, "Aha!
But what is the source of these fruitful novelties upon which natural selection exerts it's pressures? People would say, "Well surely the novelties themselves, even if, um, they are then RD: Well the novelties themselves of course, are genetic variations in the gene pool, which ultimately come from mutation and more proximately come from sexual recombination.
There's nothing very inventive or ingenious about those novelties. I mean, they are random. And, um, they mostly are deleterious - most mutations are bad. And so you really need to focus on natural selection as the positive side, and it's only natural selection that produces living things that have the illusion of design. The illusion of design does not come from the novelty, it comes from what happens to the novelty as it is filtered through.
JM: But the argument was constantly levelled about the, um, the imperceptible changes which might in fact, as they were developed and recurred, would have culminated in something as useful as a feather. They constantly emphasise the fact, what was it about that early novelty before it had accumulated to the point where it was recognisably doing an adaptive job It's one that I've talked about quite a lot.
That doesn't work, there's got to be a selection pressure all the way. JM: So there isn't a process as it were going on in the cell saying, "Look, be patient. It's going to be a feather, believe me. RD: Um no. Add to Wish List failed. Remove from wishlist failed. Adding to library failed. Please try again. Follow podcast failed. Unfollow podcast failed. Stream or download thousands of included titles. No default payment method selected.
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