Richard Dawkins has nearly infinite patience

Richard Dawkins has a DVD titled The Genius of Charles Darwin which includes interviews with various people about evolution. Today, in a post on Pharyngula, PZ Myers told folks from the Secular Student Alliance that, if they’re engaged in conversation during their visit tomorrow at the Creation Museum in Kentucky, they can probably expect the type of exchange in the following interview from the DVD.

It’s in seven parts and the seventh video drops partway through the dialogue (which evidently it does on the DVD, too), but seven parts is more than enough. I watched all seven, but really, after the first video, there wasn’t much point in continuing. It was somewhat like the old “watching the train wreck” scenario, though, that kept me going. The interviewee, Wendy Wright from the Concerned Women for America, really didn’t listen to the questions… or answer them… or acknowledge what Dawkins was saying… or make much sense. It almost seemed (!!!) as if she were a talking head who mechanically distributed creationist talking points… and who could really do nothing else.

Dawkins tried his best and was incredibly tolerant and polite, though you could tell he was frustrated during many of the exchanges because Wright wouldn’t acknowledge what he was saying. She repeated, ad nauseum, the claim that there is no evidence for evolution, and refused to acknowledge his examples of evidence… even to disagree with them! It was as if Dawkins wasn’t even speaking. She even made claims that DNA evidence which supports evolution really supported special creation. Dawkins was tossing out pieces of evidence but it was like throwing ping pong balls at a brick wall. There were so many times that she implied that the evidence was irrelevant to what she believed.

Watching the full video was painful, but educational. Wright is actually the president of the CWA, who’s website bills her as a “Policy Expert and Activist” and a “United Nations Lobbyist.” This is not a “fringe” representative of a fringe organization, but someone who engages the media on a regular basis, evidently. It’s painful to hear someone like Wright, who is so willfully ignorant of facts (and reality), try to influence public policy.

Watch the video if you can stomach it. I’d love to hear comments.