Richard Dawkins: Who Was the First Human?

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/conference/new_yorker_festival_2011

Biologist and author Richard Dawkins presents a thought experiment to explain human origins. Following each generation backwards across millions of years of evolution, Dawkins shows why no species -- including homo sapiens -- can truly be said to have a "first" ancestor.

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What Is Reality? Richard Dawkins talks with Henry Finder. Presented in collaboration with the New Yorker Festival, on October 1, 2011.

Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and the author of the Times best-selling books The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, and The Greatest Show on Earth. His new book, The Magic of Reality, an illustrated science guide for adults and young people, comes out in October. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature.

Henry Finder is the editorial director of The New Yorker.

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[IulianRemo]

@wcuppett

As always, only retards and religious morons think that Richard Dawkins is religious.

[PSFANBOY07]

Why are religious people on Richard Dawkins videos and commenting I don't type in Jesus and complain about religion by commenting.

[ProtectDavid]

@LessThanCertain There was never a first human. hundreds of thousands of primates evolved into humans roughly at the same time, and just to be clear, humans are STILL evolving; humans 500 years ago were drastically shorter and smaller in size, the backs slowly but surely became straight instead of hunched. I guess the understanding of evolution requires education, which some religious nuts lack :)

[SJGibbons1000]

@LessThanCertain your life is nonsense.

[LessThanCertain]

This is nonsense. You can't compare the passage of time in one individual's life with the gap between parents and children. If there are many humans today and there were 0 at one point, there had to be a first. Thats just how numbers work and has nothing to do with evolution,

[Bobstew68]

@PSFANBOY07 Because science and religion aren't equivalents. Science is the continuous struggle to understand, without prejudice. Anything that can be tested reliably and proved is wanted. Religions are bubbles of faith which suspend parts of the struggle for truth by presenting their idea of absolute truth, because humans have a psychological need for absolute certainty on critical existential questions.

[bruceliem]

Everyone knows that the first human is actually an asian. That's why we're so great. Jeremy Lin has reach asian level of difficulty. Black people are good at sport but asians will eventually rise up and be better at everything than any other humans.

[adnan271]

that what's you came up with>>>>>> Fish

[azmanabdula]

@ParadoxEternal "I stepped out of a supernova"

who on earth have you been hanging out with?

god isnt an answer....

its filling in the blanks...

[azmanabdula]

@Pilaf1984 agreed!

[azmanabdula]

@ParadoxEternal too much acid for you....

the brain is atomic, it obeys atomic laws!