Our next Holland Lecture will feature educator and award-winning author Richard Dawkins. The famed evolutionary biologist and well-known critic of religious tenets is the 9th, and perhaps most controversial, Holland Lecture speaker.
The talk, entitled "The Purpose of Purpose", will explore human's obsessions with purpose and our need answer the question "What is it all for?".
Although the lecture is free, reservations and tickets are needed for admission. This event is sold out. No additional tickets are available. The talk will be presented at the Holland Performing Arts Center, 13th and Douglas Streets.
Professor Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist with a strong interest in science education. His career spans four decades, first teaching at the University of California at Berkeley to his latest post as the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.
In between, he has written nine books, some of them best sellers. His first, The Selfish Gene (1976), reached a wide, popular audience. In it, Dawkins ties genetics and DNA to natural selection, a scientific theory first proposed by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book The Origin of Species. Darwinian evolution by way of natural selection works through genes that guide biological processes to create complex beings, like humans.
Dawkins is passionate about evolution as a way of explaining life on Earth and presents it as not a cold mechanism but as a "beautiful orchestration of DNA." He believes there is no grand plan, no overall design by a master, and therefore, is an outspoken critic of intelligent design and its teaching, especially in schools.
His latest book, The God Delusion (2006), addresses atheism, religious dogma and the idea of intelligent design. This book, and Dawkins' subsequent lectures, on these topic have been controversial especially within some religious communities, including Unitarian Universalists.
The Holland Lecture Series seeks to bring timely and important views and ideas to the community. The views represented are the sole responsibility of the guest speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of the First Unitarian Church of Omaha.
For more information about:
Richard Dawkins and his work
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science
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First Unitarian Church has a long history of encouraging free and open discussion of controversial topics. For 10 years, between 1954 and 1964, the church was the home of the Frank R. Hoagland Lectures. As a young man, Dick Holland attended many of those lectures and discussed new ideas and ways of thinking that shaped his world perspective. His current desire to resurrect a speaker series and bring distinguished speakers to Omaha is rooted in his memories of attending those earlier presentations. Dick and Mary Holland believed that the Hoagland Lectures, which also brought well-known national figures to speak in Omaha, was an appropriate model for the new Holland Lecture Series that they established. In June 2006,
First
Unitarian
Church
and the Omaha
community
lost a very good friend with the passing of Mary Holland.
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always provocative, ideas that might not otherwise be given voice in Nebraska. In the end, the lecture series aspires to challenge and broaden the listeners' understanding of ethics, philosophy, religion, and science as they relate to current national and world concerns.