CBC News: Sunday - Richard Dawkins (Full - Highest Quality)

[Music] as we were just discussing in the last block the alleged murder of sixteen-year-old AXA Parvez this past week raised some questions about the role religion might have played in the tragedy but for an Oxford professor named Richard Dawkins there's no questions at all his goal you see is nothing less lofty than to rid the world of religion entirely the time has come for people of Reason to say enough is enough religious faith discourages independent thought its divisive and it's dangerous to some he's the intellectual champion of science the defender of Darwin to others especially at this time of year Richard Dawkins is the Grinch who's trying to steal Christmas and any other religious holiday for that matter his book The God Delusion is a worldwide bestseller and was made into a BBC documentary in the wake of the publicity the atheist movement realized it's found its champion and soon others joined his anti religious crusade and this past week the number one film in North America is the Golden Compass in openly anti religious movie based on Philip Pullman's fantasy book for children a book that some Catholic school board's across Canada have pulled from their shells we decided to sit down with Richard Dawkins to do what many families regardless of their faith will do over the coming holiday get into a good old-fashioned debate we are in the midst of what some call a an atheist movement Christopher Hitchens and there's several books yours and perhaps being the leading book many of them are why religion has not served people well it has been a force for negativity in the world what's your view on that I don't want to say it's been a holy force for negativity I think that it's been I mean many individuals have been motivated powerfully to do good by their religion many individuals have been powerfully motivated to do evil by their religion so I don't want to get into the position of totting up the good deeds and the evil deeds that are done by religion I think it is irrational to allow your life to be governed by faith which is based upon in something other than other than evidence it may be that you do good because you're you have a faith based on something other than evidence but it's still irrational to do so those people who would say Dawkins I believe in Jesus or whatever God they decide and I felt the presence of the Lord I have had that experience in a way that whatever you say with fancy Darwin talk I have felt it the way I felt this chair yeah how do you respond well I mean I'm not impressed by that because there is a similar number of people who are hidden who brought up Hindus as I felt the presence of Lord Krishna and etc I mean that there are there are all sorts of illusions that the human brain is very capable of creating and that's an illusion those people are those people deluded those people that say they have had a religious experience I think they are those people who say that we have experienced a miracle that God is interceding in the world yes most definitely that's a delusion yes was Jesus in your mind a deluded figure no I doubt it I mean we know so little about him because you can't rely upon the Gospels I suspect that Jesus in his own time was a great teacher a great great moralist his his moral values were way ahead of his time I think he was an admiral book I mean I that's why I wrote an article called atheists for Jesus somebody gave me a t-shirt with atheist for Jesus written but the notion that raising Lazarus from the dead of course I mean it's I mean that kind of story happens so easily it happens to this day there are all sorts of people reporting miracles all the time and and we don't you you don't believe them because it does doesn't happen to chime in with the religion in which you were brought up many people have criticized you and when they read The God Delusion you for example you talked about the Jewish God and you say genocide will homophobic racist you use very provocative joy at the Abrahamic God which is the God of the Jews Christians and Muslims yes yeah you you are absolutely provocative on your descriptions are you read Leviticus read Deuteronomy I don't need to do any more than just quote but is that a caricature to take the worst or the most fundamentalist literalist readings of it as opposed to the thousands of years of evolution of all of those religions two things to say about that one is that there are many people in this world who do take the Bible or the Koran lived literally and literally do think that you should stone homosexuals to death or whatever it might be on the and the other that's the first thing to say the second thing to say is that even those people who don't say that those people who have as you say evolved have moved on they have moved on for secular reasons we've now abolished slavery we now give equal rights to women we now give votes to women that's nothing to do with scripture that's nothing to do with a Bible that's come about in spite of the Bible and people have now gone back to the Bible and said oh we'll we'll leave out that we'll leave out that video some would say more some would say the end the abolishment of slavery was very much inspired by the Bible the even though slavery might have been the same you've got to be judge on because because what what you're saying is that you can if you look through the Bible pick a verse you can probably find a verse that you can read us abolishing slavery and then you've got another verse that says you should keep keep slaves say you're picking and choosing that's all I'm saying we don't get our morals from the Bible because we pick and choose on the basis of a modern morality which has evolved quite right to say it's evolved it's evolved for and now with hindsight having evolved our morality for secular reasons we can go back to the Bible and we couldn't as it were rub out the bits that don't fit with our modern secular morality just don't don't read them anymore and that's what people do world would be better in your mind without religion yes I think it probably would I mean I I think it is certainly true that there have been some good things like Martin Luther King was probably inspired by rip by religion for example not probably he was well okay I mean he was just as much inspired by Gandhi who was of a very different religion if any if any at all so I think that it would probably be better to say that the movements like the movement for feminism the movement for black emancipation the movement to abolish slavery the movement to give to abolish cruelty to animals and things these have all been mainly secular cultural evolutionary evolutionary events and church people have been prominent in some of them as it happens the if religion and belief and God has not been helpful as you say as deluded people ithi ISM doesn't exactly have a stellar record I mean societies that have tried to live without oh you're not gonna die you're not gonna bring out Hitler and Stalin again are you I mean you brought out fundamentalism for religion why is that not fair to try to to use examples of societies that have tried to live without you are you seriously bringing up hip Hitler and Stalin how do you how do you argue that the bloodiest century that we've just lived through 20th century was bloody and it also happened to be the one that declared war against religions to a certain it's look this is this is so easy Hitler and Stalin happened to well Stalin was an atheist Hitler wasn't but it doesn't matter that it doesn't matter that Hitler was Catholic and Stalin was an atheist they were deeply evil men they were motivated by quasi religions of their own in Hitler's case invention in Stalin's case inheritance these these men were deeply evil they were motivated by deeply evil quasi religions cultural religion substitutes it was purely incidental it's as incidental if they were atheists as Hitler wasn't welcome let me say this a bit about the 9/11 hijackers who was in sonoda you're not it was not incidental because it was religion that motivated them all the way it was religion that gave them the courage to do it it was religion I mean you know perfectly well what the last words of the of those hijackers were right but Stalin you could say the same thing about Stalin and as Nora great atheism he was motivated by Marxism he was motivated by which is a deluded vision of a paradisiacal future Richard Dawkins is confident that Darwin's theory of evolution explains everything making God irrelevant but how does he answer some of the more philosophical questions that can't be measured in a lab science tells us that when we love our children in fact what's happening is in your brain there is some serotonin uptake or some dopamine some chemical fusion that happens that makes us feel loved however you may explain that the love of your children goes beyond that chemical formula into something beyond science into a window into something ineffable I fully accept that science cannot actually explain love IIIi can't say love is the uptake of this that or the other chemical love is this out of the other other neurons but it is entirely believable this although we cannot explain it we cannot explain the details nevertheless there is nothing beyond that but you've you've done nothing by calling it ineffable and transcendent know that you're just using words you're not getting anywhere by doing that I'm not getting anywhere either but I'm admitting it if we are simply evolved Apes which we are ok so right yeah and our behavior is a determined by this natural selection how do we explain those people who do good things for others for total strangers the charitable urge the philanthropic urge what Darwinian impulse would explain doing good for a total stranger that's a very interesting question on that and I do devote a chapter or two to it it's not that difficult for Darwinism to explain doing good not to total strangers but to particular people particular individuals such as close relatives and other individuals whom you like to to meet again and again throughout life and therefore are in a position to reciprocate that good deed in other words it helps your family as some self benefits alright and that's that that's common throughout the animal kingdom and is well understood the difficulty comes in explaining as you say why we're good to total strangers I think probably the right Darwinian explanation is to say it's a sort of misfiring and a very crude misfiring would be the misfiring towards a cuckoo to being good to a cook who bites foster parent the foster parent is totally unrelated to the cuckoo but it doesn't know that so to speak natural selection has built into the cuckoo foster parent Reed Warbler whatever it is a mechanism which says be nice to small squawking things in your nest and that works don't shake your head it's from tal applause what happens when you say a misfiring yeah so so I am nice to a homeless person on the street and you're suggesting that it's a misfiring of my Darwinian impulse yes but that's not to demean it in any way because what I'm trying to explain is that there definitely is a desire to be good a desire to be nice a feeling of empathy a feeling of sympathy we're not when I see a an unfortunate person somebody who is destitute I want to help them I really do I mean it's a it's a strong desire to as strong as a sexual lust and I think it's the sexual lust is actually not a bad analogy now in our history the lust to be good once worked in Darwinian terms because everybody you met in those days would be likely to be either a close relative or somebody that you were going to meet again who would therefore be able to reciprocate it that's why the lust to be good was built in now we live in big cities the people we meet are total strangers it's as though we they're on the pill it's as though we are no longer able to do good sorry we're just instinctively horny to do good works if you want you're demeaning it by using that that phrase I try to explain to you the by using an analogy of sex the analogy where me are you demeaning the charitable impulse which some would say lies at the heart of religion and the morality are you demeaning that kind of morality by saying it's a misfiring of a Darwinian impulse as an ocean ain't it I'm trying to enlighten by explaining and I'm using sex as an analogy and you have got to admit that we feel sexual lust even though we are using contraception and therefore from a Darwinian point of view the sexual lust death is not working anymore we still feel the last now I'm saying that the parallel to that is that in our Darwinian history we felt a lust to be good in just the same way as we felt alas to be sexy could one argue that to use that analogy if if you're beholden to the Darwinian theory it shows not a consistency of the Darwinian theory but a failure a paucity of the Darwinian theory and its inability to explain good charitable nor inability to explain but an inability to discriminate between situations in which the Darwinian impulse is in a Darwinian sense appropriate and when it isn't appropriate would that suggest that in the future we will evolve away from the Darwinian in all Italy good possibly but that the force of that question is exactly the same as the force of does it suggest that we will completely lose our sexual lust if in the future we go through generations of using contraception I don't think actually that either of those will a puss it's a great pleasure to speak with you all thank you very much thanks so much okay there's a few people who are as fun to debate as Richard Dawkins but what do you think about the debate between atheists and people of faith are atheists becoming more fundamentalist than some religious people can belief in God coexist with a belief in science many scientists believe that we'd like to hear many theologians believe that we'd like to hear your thoughts on all the stories we bring you this story we brought you about the veil here's how to reach us you can write to us at CBC News Sunday box 500 station a Toronto Ontario m5w 1e6 our email address is Sunday at cbc.ca or visit us online anytime at cbc.ca slash Sunday you can also view our stories post our comments that's the kind of debate we usually have Carol it's like what about the Darwinian impulse to slap somebody upside the head [Music]

Channel: Max

Views: 1,200,528

Rating: 4.7525949 out of 5

Keywords: richard, dawkins, delusion, god, science, scepticism, belief, faith, evolution

Id: -NSk_ZeAH_I

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 17 2007

Reddit Comments

[u/ChiXiStigma]

I think he kept his cool very well considering that the host eventually just became rude. The female anchor at the end was so unprofessional. I mean no disrespect to the OP, but this interview was "good" in the same way an episode of Judge Judy is "good."