On Saturday I had the good fortune to be able to attend a conference entitled "Darwin, Humanism and Science", held at London's Conway Hall. For those not able to attend here is a short roundup of what happened:

Richard Dawkins starts us off

The conference kicked off with a quick introduction from BHA President Polly Toynbee, after which Professor Dawkins took to the stage. His lecture revolved around the concluding paragraph of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which can be read online for free here (the relevant passage starts "Thus, from the war of nature ..."). Dawkins analysed each segment of the text in turn, giving us his insights into its meaning and slipping in some fascinating information about our modern-day understanding of evolution, such as how we know that all species in the world today must be descended from a single progenitor.

The professor left some time for questions at the end of his lecture. He had commented on the lamentable state of the public's understanding of science, proffering the alarming statistic that some 18% of the British population believes that the Earth orbits the Sun once a month (presumably we go around faster in February), which lead me to ask him what we can do to combat this. His answer was to "get out more".