Meeting Richard DawkinsFiled Under: Atheism, Life, Religion

The minute I found out on RichardDawkins.net, that Professor Dawkins was on a tour through the US, and more importantly stopping in NYC for a small book signing at Barnes and Nobles, I made plans to meet the “worlds most famous atheist.” Just in case you have no clue who Mr. Dawkins is, don’t worry, I’ll provide a short introduction for him.

Richard Dawkins is a world renowned evolutionary biologist from England. He has attended and taught at both, UC Berkeley, and Oxford University (where he currently holds the position of “The public Understanding of Science.” Dawkins has authored 9 books, the latest of which being, The God Delusion. Each book he has authored gives the reader a better understanding of evolution by means of natural selection, focusing on the gene centered prospective. He has sold millions of books worldwide and has been translated into 32 other languages. He cares passionately for the truth, and his entire life work can be considered a struggle for knowledge. Dawkins is truly an admirable, intelligent, witty and eloquent contemporary intellectual who should be recognized as the most important individual in evolution besides Charles Darwin himself.

I arrived at the Barnes and Nobles around an hour before the event had started, anticipating the large crowd that would show up to meet the Professor. I was certainly correct in arriving there early, as the place already was filling up, but luckily I found a good seat only a couple rows back of Dawkins. The evening started with a 30-35 minute introduction that I was familiar with, as it was quite similar to a few on YouTube. Following the introduction by Dawkins, they started a rather brief Q&A period. The Q&A period consisted largely of the usual questions, stuff about human consciousness, differing views with regards to evolution (form theory and gene theory), a couple about how to react to certain situations, and also the common bullshit question that goes like “weren’t hitler and stalin atheists, doesn’t that make you on equal standing with them?”After that, it was the period I had been looking forward to the entire night, my chance to shake hands with Mr. Dawkins and get a couple books signed. They released the crowd row by row, and so I was up there in no time. Once I got up there, I thanked Dawkins for his “Converts Corner” section of his website (which I have contributed to) and RichardDawkins.net in general, as it is a great service for us non-believers and generally free thinkers. He signed my paperback and hardback versions of “The God Delusion” and made a comment about my TShirt, which is a picture of Jesus handgliding and it poses the question, “What Wouldn’t Jesus Do.” I am actually not sure of exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of “spot on” or “right on” and he got a chuckle out of it. It was a great night and I hope I get to visit more of his events in the future. Here is a picture of the signed version of The God Delusion.

Tags: Atheism, richarddawkins, thegoddelusion