Richard Dawkins Answers Questions and Reads His Hatemail

The email reading was one of the best bits of comedy I’ve heard in a long while.

British accents are sexy! So is British humor. Yo go Richard 🙂

ZOMG I LUV HATEMAIL READING!

Does anyone know what he meant by claiming “Why do we have sex?” to be one of the top three unanswered biological questions. Was he being sarcastic or did that one just blow by me?

Rev. Ryan, I could be wrong but I assumed he meant why did we evolve in such a way that sex is necessary to reproduce and also why we have it for pleasure with no intention of reproducing.

Actually, it’s an interesting question. It adds to life certainly but it also can interfere with thinking straight and cause problems.

the hate mail reading is hilarious! 🙂

The hate mail was my favorite, too. Ah, loving Christians. They get a little too happy about the prospect of the eternal torture of others.

“Three words: ‘You are a fool!'” I LMAO’ed.

Seems the only thing christians love more than god is telling people their going to burn in hell.

I think it is a desperate cry of, If I have to follow this bullshit, you should too.

@JSug: he was reading it as spelled.

I, like Greg, have a British accent. It’s a bit West Country mine. But I will read out hate mail as well.

Someone asked if Brits like American accents. I can’t say I’m particularly crazy about them, I prefer other European accents but I like the stereotypical New York accent. There are many Brits I think like the Americans accents, but I think a lot of put off by the politics of America these days.

Richard Dawkins is a fab guy, I only hope the USA can produce an equally upstanding equivalent in the years.

@Arallyn and Muggle – Thanks! I had never made that connection before…will definitely look into it.

@Daniel, I guess for me, it just always made sense that the mixture of two sets of genes is better than asexual reproduction…

But I see the point: How did it jump from asexual to sexual?

But I don’t see a problem with there being pleasure even if we dont intend to reproduce; that makes sense. It’s the same reason Big Mac’s taste good even though we no longer have a reason to store fat.

And as far as the effort needed to pursue a mate: I guess the pleasure is added incentive to reproduce. The species is better off if males pass their genes wherever they can, and females may feel pleasure because its incentive to go through the long, resource-draining process of bearing a child.

But this is new to me…thanks for shedding light.

Also, this is important in religious debates because the first to sexually reproduce provides an apt metaphorical set for adam and eve.

And I just found this, which makes sense at first glance:

“Let’s look at an example of how populations change without sex. Bacteria, as I mentioned before, reproduce asexually- one becomes two, becomes four, becomes, eight, becomes sixteen, etc. The only mechanism for genetic change in bacteria is simple mutation. Mutations occur randomly in a population, and only affect one bacterium at a time, which means that unless some overwhelming environmental pressure is present, that mutation might appear and disappear just as quickly when that bacterium dies. If, however, some change in the environment makes that mutation extremely advantageous, so much so that death is the alternative, then the entire population crashes down to a handful of bacterium which have that mutation. So the life of a bacterial culture is very chaotic- it can be fine an dandy one day, and then the next the entire population is reduced to one or two lucky cells, which just happen to have protective mutations. Now, obviously, this strategy has worked out reasonably well for bacteria- as I mentioned, they’re the most populous type of organism on the planet. But it’s only efficient for them because they’re so small, they don’t need large sources of energy to survive, and they reproduce very, very quickly. In the evolutionary past, organisms which began to expand larger than bacteria found that asexual reproduction wasn’t as efficient or effective anymore.”

First time posting on site and also have to admit to laughing out loud profusely at the hate mail.

Also, having skimmed the site the past couple days and old posts, have to admit (though w/o my name for obvious reasons) that I am that ‘double whammy’ of being an atheist and bisexual in the military. I get away with bumper stickers from FFRF on my car (in Georgia no less), but can’t really mention the other for awhile. I bring it up since the post that mentioned it said they have yet to meet one so good to show that we exist. =)

I have never understood the seemingly near-universal appeal of British accents in the USA.
The irony is that many Brits hate other British accents – I happen to be a brummie (someone from the Midlands city of Birmingham) and our accent is supposedly the most hated in Britain. Again – no real idea as to why (although I have a hypothesis that because northerners hate southerners and vice versa, we get both since we are in the middle).

Great vid – the hatemail was hilarious.

@Chris Hughes,

Silly Brit. The book of 3 Nephi of the Book of Mormon clearly says that after His resurrection and ascension Jesus came down from heaven and visited America and established an enlightened peaceful society. Although it was not explicitly stated in the book, I think it can be assumed that Jesus taught these people English and then it is probable that some of these people eventually sailed over to the Islands currently known as Great Britain and likewise taught them English. Get your history right. It’s all in the tablets. What lies has your socialistic school system been teaching you?

For the yankees out there having trouble telling the accents apart

Michael Caine = Cockney

Sean Connery = Scottish

Spud from Trainspotting = Glaswegian (a sub-dialect of scottish)

Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings = West Country

Jimmy Nail (or anyone from Auf Weidensen pet) = Geordie

Almost everyone from 51st State (Samuel L Jackson Movie) = Scouse

Accents you don’t tend to hear much = Brummies (people from Birmingham), Yorkshire and woolback (people from Lancashire), Geordies, Cornish, Norfolk, etc

England has tremendous variety of dialects and accents given how tiny our nation is compared to the US.

Personally I’m from Sussex on the south coast which means i speak pretty much the Queens English (i.e. I sound posh to everyone one else), My fiance is a scouser. Our battles over the correct pronounciation of words such as bath and castle are seemingly endless