I was born on this date 35 years ago and was very ill as a baby. I have been extremely lucky regarding the family I was born into. I’ve had more ups than downs, and these days things are going better than ever.

My lovely girlfriend has today assembled a “tribute” video for me, displaying video editing skills I didn’t know she had. I will spare the viewing public from it, but I’m deeply touched that anyone would ever do such a thing for me!

My lovely girlfriend playing classical guitar, with a copy of The End of Faith to hand!

Note she is wearing a skirt. Women, remember them?

This evening I attended the British Humanist Association’s Darwin Day Lecture at University College, London, which was on this occasion given by Tim Lewens, a lecturer in Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. You can see some photographs of the occasion here and some short video clips are on my Facebook page.

I will admit that the principal reason for me attending this lecture was to be in the presence of Richard Dawkins. I am delighted to say that I was able to speak to Professor Dawkins and tell him face to face how much I admire his courageous work, and how I am keen to assist further in the cause of fighting irrationality.

It was a great honour for me to meet this man, who I have esteemed for many years, and as the lecture began I felt a strong sense of being in the presence of someone with whom I agree on virtually every issue – a rare sense of kinship, at least from my point of view, which I have only ever otherwise experienced with members of my immediately family and my girlfriend. This feeling subsided after a while and became instead a strange sense of familiarity, although we had never met before and met only very briefly this time. I also felt, however (I hope he won’t mind me saying), a certain sense of protectiveness, and scanned the room for any religious nutters such that I would be able to jump into action to protect Mr Dawkins in the event of any presenting a threat!

I can tell you that in real life Prof. Dawkins comes across as the same highly capable yet humble person that he does in videos and, while direct and to the point, he is always unfailingly polite and devoid of the arrogance sometimes wrongly attributed to him (but sometimes possessed by other senior academic figures to their own disadvantage).

With regard to Tim Lewens’ lecture, Mr Lewens spoke well – it is difficult to speak in front of a room full of people – but did seem, from his style, to be more used to addressing undergraduates, and did insist upon refering to Darwin in the present historical tense (“Darwin thinks”, “Darwin says”). I was pleased that Richard Dawkins picked him up on this at the end, because indeed it does not fully take into account the period in which Darwin was writing and it can sound pretentious.

Regarding the contents of the lecture, I would need to see a transcript to analyse them in detail, but to a large degree Mr Lewens seemed to be “bolting Darwin’s subject onto his own”, because – it seems – Darwin did not actually say very much about philosophy, prefering to to write about science. This left Mr Lewens with not much material, I felt, but the lecture was interesting when he discussed the commonly perceived conflict between acting selfishly and acting altruistically. Here I feel he would have been well advised to have mentioned not only the Peacock theory (mentioned in The Selfish Gene) which I find very convincing, but also Sam Harris’s excellent points made in The End of Faith, where he explains that to act really fully selfishly actually entails acting altruistically as well as we seek psychological fulfilment (there is more to human beings than simply the selfish gene, as Mr Dawkins himself has said - we are unique in this respect) . I would like to expand upon this argument in detail at another time, because a widespread comprehension of it would undoubtedly be the solution to a great many problems in society.

With regard to the evolutionary advantages of being altruistic, these were rightly attributed to the group surviving, as Mr Dawkins pointed out even in The Selfish Gene, and with regard to our sympathy for disabled people, whose genes do not seem to favour natural selection, I believe this too can be shown to actually be compatible with natural selection in the sense that nobility is again beneficial at a group level – however this topic again is derserving of an article in its own right.

Mr Lewens made a number of claims about and interpretations of Darwin which jarred with me and I found rather unlikely, and I was therefore not surprised when Prof. Dawkins picked him up on them in no uncertain terms at the end of the lecture, but the lecture was to some degree informative. When Mr Lewens seemed to disagree with Prof. Dawkins, I (and probably most of the audience) had the distinct feeling he was picking the wrong man with whom to disagree, and it even crossed my mind that he might have been doing so in order to try to make a name for himself rather than through genuine disagreement, though I don’t claim this with certainty.

Following the lecture the floor was opened to the audience, and the kind of questions asked were, for the most part, typical of audience questions at such an event: lacking precision, forethought or relevance, and a little embrrassing for the speakers to have to contend with, but then Mr Dawkins is now a veteran of handling such remarks and it must come as a very pleasant surprise when an intelligent question is asked or valid point made.

All in all I do not want to be too scathing of this lecture because it is all in a very good cause and the BHA needs, and should receive, all the support it can get. Professor Dawkins spoke excellently prior to the lecture and so did a senior member of the BHA (whose name I missed), stating clearly that the organisation will not stop fighting the encroachment of religion in our secular lives and law. Thank goodness, for all of us, that we have many great people in the country doing this, but there is a long way to go yet. Why not sign up and help?

“If little labour, little are our gains;
Man’s fortunes are according to his pains.”

Robert Herrick

In other words, we must work hard to feel fulfilled, and a reward that comes easily is not much of a reward at all. In other words - “no pain, no gain”.

These highly imaginative, intelligent and non-violent children’s programmes were so much better than much of the rubbish put on the TV now.

“Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.”

(Occam’s Razor)

“I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There’s one called brightness, but it doesn’t work.”

Eugene P. Gallagher

I am pleased to report I have just cancelled my TV licence. I’ve done this because:

• Most TV is rubbish.
• The advertising one must tolerate between programmes is even worse.
• If there is anything you wish to watch you can usually do so on the Net instead.
• I use my TV (which is a high quality Bang & Olufsen model) only to watch DVDs (and a virtual fireplace).
• TV watching is passive and saps your time.

This move is going to save me £140.50 per year and bring me the satisfaction of not paying for things I do not watch. And all the time I can still listen to the intelligent speech on BBC Radio 4 (and to any other radio station).

Here are some interesting links regarding this issue:

• Remote Controlled by Aric Sigman
• Pravda article
• More links

I’d like to see the licence fee (and advertising funding) abolished and subscription only services introduced instead, so that you get only what you pay for and pay for only what you get. I hope now the TV Licensing people don’t come pestering me. If they do they will be given short thrift..!