Richard Dawkins, the outspoken proponent of natural selection as the sole machinery of biological development, last week launched his latest attempt to persuade the world that no religious explanation is needed for life at a packed Times/Dillons lecture on his new book Climbing Mount Improbable, writes Martin Ince.
He likened the ability of evolution by natural selection to produce fantastically complex structures such as the eye to climbing a daunting mountain by a series of short steps rather than by scaling its precipitous cliffs.