Champaign for New Years

Enjoyed spending New Years Eve with Frank, Chris, and some red wine (well, we were at least near Champaign during the countdown). Outside of watching Carson Daley bore away the last minutes of 2006 in Times Square (tape-delayed an hour for us CST folk), we spent the evening watching a CSPAN-2 Book-TV Author Q&A with Richard Dawkins on his most recent book, The God Delusion.

I like Dawkins a lot. He is quite witty and as Frank pointed out, automatically sounds intelligent with a British accent. While he doesn't contribute any new conclusions, he very logically presents evidence supporting Darwinism over any type of theological deity in simple, ordered arguments that are hard to refute. Most importantly, he helps bring more publicity to Atheism (recently via a featured article in WIRED magazine), and encourages non-believers "come out of the closet" to help break the stereotype that all Atheists are Godless, immoral, heathens. In reality, we're just plain Godless.

If you have some time, I highly recommend watching part 1 and part 2 of the book talk.