I got a call from my girlfriend yesterday and she had found out that Richard Dawkins was coming in town to give a lecture to UW students and the community. We found out about it on the day of the lecture and tickets were already out (tickets are free though). Some guy was selling his tickets and I offered $25 for the two, but he wanted $30 and I said no. We got a pretty good spot in the cancellation line so I decided to chance it that 20 people wouldn't show up and use their tickets. We eventually got in and the guy never sold his tickets lol. Richard Dawkins gave a pretty cool lecture on atheism while promoting his The God Delusion book (which is great, btw). It was really cool to see him speak in person. Overall, I was very pleased with the lecture "Religions run in families, Dawkins said. If we had been brought up in ancient Greece, we would all be worshiping Zeus and Apollo. If we had been born Viking, we would be worshipping Thor", he said. Then he showed a map of religions in the world and they were all fairly segragated by georaphic location. He played this video which bashes religious extremists and is pretty funny. Then my girlfriend asked him a question about how to find purpose without God and he gave a pretty solid response. He said humans tend to assign purpose to things that aren't there because purpose is so embedded in people's mind that they just assign it to everything. He also talked a little bit how purpose is evolutionary and good for survival because it really gets things done through motivation. He also somewhat implied or let the doors open for purpose being up to the individual to assign purpose and find meaning in their own lives and (obviously) just rejects that you need to believe. I wish I hadn't read the God Delusion and watched youtube stuff because I had heard about 75% of the lectgre already. If this was the first time I heard any of this, it would have been pretty mind blowing. I recommend trying to hear a lecture of his though.