Chapter 1 Why Are People?

In which Richard Dawkins lives up to my expectations.

This book begins with what can be expected from Dawkins in my humble experience, an arrogant assumption.

"If superior creatures from space ever visit Earth, the first
question they will ask, in order to asses our civilization is,
"Have they discovered evolution?"

I took a minute and stopped here. I went into this book expecting to fight my own bias against Dawkins. I've personally been shocked at his arrogant assumptions and short sighted judgments on religion and the level of hypocrisy he can exhibit and remain blissfully unaware so it is humorous, in a way, this was the first sentence. Let's just look at the assumptions;

1. There is a clear measure for the superiority of creatures
2. Visitors from space are interested in assessing civilization, especially that of humans.
3. Aliens would be first and foremost interested in learning whether or not we've discovered evolution. This is by shear coincidence the field of Richard Dawkin's study. Aliens don't want to know if we've grasped physics, or language, or any number of things. Nope, just evolution.
   

Now, normally, I would totally write this off as an attempt to create a hook for his book but I've heard Dawkins theorize that aliens seeded life on Earth, stating it was entirely possible, and then immediately claim it was completely impossible that a God might have done it. Because Aliens are far more realistic then God.
I was determined not to let this ruin the book however. Dawkins is obviously a complete ass but that had little relevance to the ideas he was presenting. So I charged on! And immediately hit another one of these arrogant assumptions. Dawkins claimed that living organisms have existed on Earth never knowing why until the truth dawned on Darwin, the genius who first put together a reasonable account of why we exist. I'm sorry? Maybe I have a vast misunderstanding of the eminent Charles Darwin's work (I'll admit I've never read it) but I'm fairly sure his book was entitled Origin of Species and not Origin of Life. As far as I am aware no one has ever been able to explain the origin of life. Darwin has a wonderful theory for how single celled life became the vast array of species we now have on Earth but I can't recall anyone ever proving where the first cell came from or how the breath of life was given to the inanimate.
Dawkins outlined his theory that any successful gene's predominant quality will be selfishness and that the unit of selection evolution is not the group, as many theorize or even the individual, but the gene.