Mostly Richard Dawkins has helped science by being an excellent
scientist, and by writing the best and clearest popular accounts of how
evolution works. Dawkins’ books are crystal clear and frequently beautiful. Climbing Mount Improbable and The Ancestors’ Tale are two of the most aesthetically inspiring texts I’ve read about anything, not just science. Dawkins does best by building up the case for evolution, rather than just tearing down religion. His awe and reverence for nature in its actual physical workings are ultimately the most persuasive tools he has.

I have a family member who was a devout Christian for many years, and Dawkins’ books sowed doubts in his mind for the first time about the validity of the Bible as an explanation of where we come from. That came about not through Dawkins’ attacks on his faith, but by Dawkins’ laying out the evidence for evolution and appealing to reason. That method is slower and probably less emotionally satisfying than calling religious people stupid, but it works.

Original question on Quora

Daniel Dennett has a nice phrase describing evolution in his book Darwin’s dangerous idea: threads of actuality in design space. The space in question is the set of all possible physical manifestations of life, and the threads of actuality are the bodies that have actually appeared. Dennett thinks that human artifacts and culture are a continuous branch of the same design space that includes our teeth, hair and fingers. I see a smooth continuity between the bagworm moth caterpillar’s use of sticks and the neanderthal’s.

The materials might be different, but I don’t see any fundamental conceptual difference between this drawing and any organism replicating itself:

All living things generate waste. Our problem is that we’re cranking out waste faster than the rest of our ecosystem can process it. Making a single cell phone motherboard generates two hundred twenty pounds of waste. America exports most of its nastiest e-waste, but as the planet shrinks, we won’t be able to avoid the byproducts of our lifestyle forever.

It would be easy at this point to get judgmental and say that our consumption-oriented ways are evil, and that if environmental catastrophe befalls us it’ll be just what we deserve. I don’t think those kinds of judgments are constructive. Nobody wants to destroy the earth. But we feel genuine competitive pressures within and among our social groups, and showing off our tools has been part of our sexual selection since the stone age. How do we balance our need to compete with each other with a more abstract but equally pressing need to restrain ourselves? I don’t have a good single answer, but I think that more reflection on the consequences of our actions is a necessary start.