Buddhism and (Science or Secular Humanism)

I just watched a very inisghtful talk of Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is an evangelical atheist, much the same as I used to be, but I found myself agreeing with almost everything he said. For example, although rocks and tables consist mostly of empty space, they look solid because our brains have evolved to see them as solid, which is the most useful way to perceive them in the particular range of speeds and energies that we live in. If we were made of neurtinos, we probably would have evolved to see rocks as being filled with empty space. He makes a number of interesting points along these lines, about how bats probably hear in color for example. At the end of his talk, he went on to say that a human is merely a complicated machine (no evidence given) and that millions of people were subject to the deluded perception of the universe as having human characteristics. (I think he was trying to say that belief in God was tantamount to this perception, although he didn't explicitly say so.) I agree with this. Even if one calls the totality of existence "God," it is still a misconception to give it human characteristics. So, really, the only thing I actually disagree with is the idea that consciousness is explainable in mechanistic terms. Throughout the whole talk, which is about 20 minutes long, I was thinking how Buddhist it seemed, and I was a bit puzzled at the end comments, which didn't seem to follow logically from the beginning. This is probably becuase Dawkins is arguing against the simplistic religious conceptions that are so common in our culture. For example, the idea that evolution and spiritual belief are inconsistent. He's saying, look, the universe is much more complicated and beautiful than you thought! I say "Hear hear!" However, he then draws the specious conclusion, "Therefore religion is evil." I think he means to say, "Therefore ignorance is evil." He has unconsciously identified a subset of religious practicioners with the whole set.