Look Who's Dawkins

I haven't, when it comes down to it, exactly had a normal teenage life. Everything appeared to be going smoothly, with me becoming typicaly jaded and even managing the odd bout of angst about something stupid like having lost my jacket or the ultimate nature of matter in the universe, until I was about fourteen, when everything fell apart. I'm still not quite sure why. All I know is that after that, the concept of being a teenager seemed as oddly terrifying to me as it would to an eighty year old Mail reader who's just been beaten up by a gang who want his teeth to sell for drugs. It might have something to do with my being an imbicile.

Anyway, the point of all this. While most people my age were discovering music and substances, I was at home looking at trees, but I was still, essentialy, a teenager, and teenagers get obsessed with things. But I didn't get obsessed with what a lot of people do, for better or for worse (and it is a source of at least mild regret to me that while I can hold a conversation about the value of Socrates' teachings in the modern age, a conversation about "music I like" or "How mad drunk I've been" will always be beyond me), and turned to books, like any good citizen who scores "all three" on an "Are you a Dork, Geek or Nerd?" test would. Which all makes it sound like I had a miserable teenagerhood. I didn't. Reading books all the time is great. All you Hedonists missed the boat.

The reason is really just this: It was at least thanks to my teen-phobia I discovered evolution, which is why I'm studying Biology, which is why I'm here at Edinburgh (partialy, althougth the story behind that is an entry to itself) , which is why I'm typing this now, which is why your eyes are glazing over and suicide is beginning to seem like just that little bit more plausible an option. It's amazing, these chains of events. But the fact I'm interested in evolution, and probably the fact I even believe in evolution, is pretty much down to one man. It was his books that threw me a rope that, when followed, led to a giant net of evidence and analogies that made the World make sense in a way nobody, and nothing, else ever has in quite the same way. And I saw him last night, lecturing. And it was amazing.

You need the context, you see. Richard Dawkins, who's who I'm talking about, who's great, buy all his books now, is to me what the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and questionable acid were to the students of the, um, age where all that happened. The man bloody shaped me as an adult, which considering he advocates the eradication of all Religon from the World is kind of a scary thought. But to see him talk- on a facinating subject, convergence in Evolution, where life happens on the same solutions again and again and again, which hints that natural selection, far from creating species randomly, is actualy in a sense even more ordered than we thought- was just amazing, especially considering he lived up to all my expectations and wasn't short, like everyone is supposed to be in real life, or as shockingly ugly as a sack of potatoes covered in piercings, like Ringo Starr. Even more amazing than the way he can explain anything, incredably clearly, to a bunch of people with no idea of what he's talking about in half an hour, was how he answered the questions afterwards- There was a "Don't you think Fascism is great?" question, and he explained why no, it wasn't, on clear and exciting terms. To someone who believes that evolution, properly understood, aids rather than subtracts from any moral sense it was like all my Christmasses colliding with all my Birthdays to create some sort of cake-filled bliss.

And I got to go to Dundee to see him, with the Philosophy Society, and they have something called the "Bonar Hall". It's hard to imagine things getting better than that. Richard Dawkins, then. Wow.