Richard Dawkins Comes to Seattle!
Exciting news!
This October, Richard Dawkins will be coming to the University of Washington to discuss his latest book, “The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution.”
When is it? Thursday, October 8th at 7:30PM
Where is it? Bank of America Pavilion (Hec Edmunson) at the University of Washington (map)
Do I need to get tickets or reservations? No, the event is free, and there is no registration required. We’ll have around 5,000 seats available.
Do I have to be a UW student? No, this event is free and open to the public
Can I help? Yes! We need volunteers! If you would like to volunteer, please send an email with your name and phone number to secular(at )u.washington.edu.
I have another question… Any questions regarding the event may be sent to secular(at )u.washington.edu as well.
More details are forthcoming.
Hope to see you there!
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October 5th, 2009 at 4:01 am
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October 9th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Dawkins was his normal lucid self. Great talk.
It turns out, however, that the question-answer format touted to be “ingenious” wasn’t quite so ingenious after all.
The consensus from a lot of people I talked to outside was that this event would’ve been a lot better if the douchebag (we’ll call him Johnny) who introduced Dawkins had spent less time self-promoting and more time talking about the person that 4500 people had come to see.
A few highlights from the comedy of errors:
1. Johnny stays on the stage just a few feet away from Dawkins during the entire talk, busily sorting questions through his own little idiot filter (which I’ll come back to later). It was distracting and poorly thought out. Introduce the man, and then get off the stage. We didn’t come here to see you.
2. Dawkins has repeatedly pointed out that the title of Darwin’s book is emphatically not “The Origin　of the Species.” Its proper abbreviated title should be “On the Origin of Species.” It’s unsurprising when creationists and other laypersons do it (referring subconsciously to “the” species, i.e., humans). It’s devastating when the person introducing Richard Dawkins does it.
3. The arrogance of the self-aggrandizing douche really shone through when, after a more than usually brilliant answer to a question, the audience clapped appreciatively. Unfortunately, Johnny had already started responding and moving on to the next question. Sensing that he hadn’t been heard by all, he petulantly “reminded” the audience to hold all applause to the end of the questions. Umm.. In two words: Hell. No. That’s not how these things work. This couldn’t have been his first event like this, could it have? He must know that when some of us who have waited two years to see Prof. Dawkins finally hear his expounded brilliance, it really is okay to clap. Really. Good god. It’s almost as if anything other than a two-way conversation between Johnny and Prof. Dawkins would’ve been unacceptable.
4. Whose bright idea was it to have a single person filter out all the questions that made it to Professor Dawkins??? “What is your theme song?” Why, Johnny, why.. when you were so concerned about time that you silenced our applause, did you waste OUR time choosing to ask him the question “What is your theme song?” The question about whether or not he likes Christmas and one other that I can’t remember were okaaaaay, but they really did belong in his God Delusion book tour. He stated clearly in the beginning that his purpose in writing the book and coming out to speak to all of us was not to critique theism. It was to explain the evidence for evolution. If, in his expert judgment, Johnny deemed such questions more crowd-friendly, then he misjudged the sophistication of his audience. We know which book tour we came out to see.
Dawkins really did give a superb talk, but the event was marred by the poor planning and execution of Johnny and the rest of the SSU. It was unfortunate.
October 13th, 2009 at 6:54 am
1. Prof. Dawkins requested a student be on stage with him at all times for sake of security.
2. Oops.
3. Prof. Dawkins requested that all applause be held to the end.
4. Prof. Dawkins was quite happy with the selection of questions, with the exception of the theme song question. He gets tired of answering the same questions over and over. In fact, he took down details of the question/answering system so that he could use it for future events.
All in all, Prof. Dawkins was very satisfied with how the event was run. I apologize if you were not, but I hope you enjoyed the rest of the event anyway.
Oh, and all the “self-promoting” was actually for the groups that helped pay for the event, and organized the publicity around it. You got to attend the event for free due to their advertising, efforts, and money.