David Berlinski—Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson be sure to join us on facebook at facebook.com forward slash UNC knowledge facebook.com forward slash hunk knowledge put up questions suggestions for guests comments dr. David Berlinski is the author of many books including most recently one two three absolutely elementary mathematics one two three is about the peak of my own mathematical form but the prose is so irresistible I channel even if you're as much of a math of phobe as I am you will not be able to put it down an earlier book in the book will spend most of our time discussing today is the devil's delusion atheism and its scientific pretensions we should establish your professional background is your polymath but it's mathematics you're a mathematician if you have to be one thing we'd call you a mathematician isn't that right I certainly a few feel free to call me mathematician but I would so much prefer being called a writer because that's what I do with my time as it happens I write a lot about mathematics all right okay I'm happy to do that I can confirm that you're a writer I couldn't possibly produce a testimony that your mathematician we're better off that way or better off fine segment one scientific pretensions from the devil's delusion quote a great many men and women have a dull hurt angry sense of being oppressed by the sciences they're frustrated by endless scientific boasting they suspect that the scientific community holds them in contempt they are right to feel this way close quote explain that it seems to me that anyone living in the United States or even in Europe um this isn't purely an American phenomena has this feeling that there a group of experts a band of happy experts and as experts will do they derive enormous pleasure from telling the rest of us how to think what to think what doctrines to a pole what positions to defend and this conspiracy among experts if it is delivered in small manageable doses for it alone a doctor's office one is generally happy to receive a doctor's note with your Pokemon yeah I take an injection that's fine but as a cultural as a social as an ideological phenomenon it gets on everyone's nerves after a while and what headline in any newspaper is more apt to provoke a sense of aggression and disbelief than scientists say no you know what's coming afterwards it's not the scientist saying anything it's political political relations Department of the of the scientific community their publicity apparatus they're telling the scientists what the scientists think they should say to the public and within 24 hours what serious scientists say has changed overnight look at the history of Medicine over the last 50 years one triumphant imbecility after another revealed to be a fraud so there's a deep and I think my words were well chosen deep hurt perplexed sense of being oppressed by the scientific community that many respects doesn't know what it's talking about not all obviously not all but in many respects the boastfulness is with so irritating and in this book the particular form the boastfulness takes that you wish to refute his scientists saying uh-uh yeah yeah we've discovered we know there is no God no and we know there's no God because we are scientists exactly and you know art from the devil's delusion again David in many respects the word naturalism comes closest to conveying what scientists regard is the spirit of science the source of its superiority to religious thought but what reason is there to conclude that everything is to quote philosopher Alexander Bern an aspect of the universe revealed by the Natural Sciences there is no reason at all close quote now you need to unpack that for us but my layman's stab at it is the science is properly construed have access only to the material world what we can what we can perceive there are five senses and there's no reason to suppose that that encompasses all the world are all realities that the right wing I think that's a good way it's a partial way certainly I would reject the idea that the sciences have exclusive access to the material world there are other ways of dealing with the material world the Yankees don't train their pitchers in terms of material science and the development of the human body really is a part of the of the material world but it's not necessarily the focus of a of a group of science when we talk about performance in the arts so there are other access other ways of accessing the material world but the the important thing is that these dominating terms for example natural naturalism when you try to look at them more clearly they turn out to be inordinately spongy there's really nothing under the term itself I mean we all know that to be natural is somehow to be good it's like a Swedish nudist documentary all natural and see any number of Swedes prancing on a beach that's natural all right it's natural but what does the word mean what does the word mean and why should we pay such serious attention to scientific propagandists who wish to insist that only this kind of inquiry makes sense makes sense scientifically or make sense intellectually after all mathematics is a paradigmatic case of a science that has nothing to do with natural anything so so what I'm again I'm trying to reduce this to a layman's term that what you're saying there is don't be overawed by someone saying hey I'm a scientist and BM and atheist don't suppose that statement B derives any particular theory that's what you're saying right the comparable claim would be a I'm a scientist beyond an expert on contract law right oh you expert on contract law because you study particle physics give me a break right expert on the existence of God because you started the study particle physics I request the same break the same suspension of belief the same absence of commitment to whatever it is you're saying and these guys are because shameless just shameless a David two quotations are atheist author Sam Harris quotation burr one religious faith is on the wrong side of an escalating war of ideas science must destroy religion close quote quotation number two from become Pentium of the catechism of the Catholic Church quote there can never be a contradiction between faith and science because both originate in God it is God Himself who gives us both the light of reason and of faith close quote which statement strikes you as the most pretentious well the first certainly engenders a single reaction yeah yeah that sound ha okay the sort of thing some of my college sophomores would say when they had read a little bit of HL Mencken yeah yeah okay let's go onto the next subject the position of the Catholic Church is much more balanced nuanced subtle and suggestive I don't think it's pretentious at all I think there's an enormous body of serious discussion behind it I won't go so as so far as to say I endorse it wholeheartedly but it's a reasonable statement it comes much closer than anything sam harris is saying to capturing where we happen to be in the early part of the 21st century segment to Darwin good old boy good old boy the devil's delusion quote quote this is quite a quotation it's only a few words but it's packs a punch yes it does two of them I think suspicions about Darwin's theory arise for two reasons the first the theory makes little sense the second it is supported by little evidence close quote all right let's take those one at a time evolution makes little sense evolution is in the air it's so widely accepted it's in the air of the New York Times that's for sure and it's in the mouth of every evolutionary biologist but that doesn't exhaust the cosmos let me ask you a question if those two propositions you were to exceed or completely true would it change your mind that that other two quotations that evolution makes little the theory makes little sense in and of itself and it's supported by little evidence David it wouldn't change my mind because I'm so completely on your side oh well I mean if you were on the others if I were on the other side yes but I would do everything I could to they mean that sort of sort of like the vampire but style change no one's mind and that really really about the discussion do you think would change richard balkan spine mmm well sir why do you say that the theory in itself makes a little sense what's it say whatever survives survives now I knew that before because I didn't have to study Darwin it's taught a large it's empty it's empty it's empty it doesn't tell us anything else survived spark I'll believe that but that's not a theory that's just a string of what sponges on a clothesline that doesn't tell us anything deep about biological structure no yeah a lot of variations children don't look exactly like their parents thank goodness and their children will be slightly different too but does that tell us why startling complex structures arise in the history of life well it doesn't have anything to do with this is it is supported by little evidence now that I have to say did startled me to hear you say that evolution is supported by little evidence what is the evidence that's forever being introduced well then I can tell you little boy father took me to the Museum of Natural History in New York there it is around on the west side of Manhattan Europe and all the plaques say that said then what they say now which is this dinosaur came at such-and-such and is it such and such a pretty now there are charts on the wall saying somehow or other how we got from those dinosaurs to creatures that are alive today I'm not a dad and there are arrows connecting the creatures indeed there are where would the arrows discovered that the museum won't tell you there is such a load of inferential adjustment made even the most plausible of evolutionary secrets I mean take reptile to map that's a beautiful evolutionary sequence it looks like one organism is being slaughtered right after the other and tremendously interesting changes where bones in the jaw migrate to become the three bones in the year the structure of the mouth changes completely that's the best or the whale sequence you know some sort of terrestrial animal becomes a whale over roughly nine million years but that doesn't amount to an elaboration of anything more than the discovery of fossils that could be slotted in an ever illusionary way could be but what we lack is the analytic refinement to tell us whether they are or have been slotted in this way it is simply an exercise and conditional plausibility yeah it could have happened that way no one in my side of the table is saying no it's impossible it happened that way what we're saying is that the evidence is remarkably remarkably constrained meager insufficient inadequate and lacking all forms of analytic sufficiency well so I'm on your side but your strengths a bit overwhelming I'm sorry I sort of know I feel the impulse to be on your side I hadn't thought it through in anything like this so how is it that evolution that Darwin comes along and within what seems like 27 seconds he's carried the field that is to say intellectually in the Academy he's just carried the field by the turn of the 20th century Darwin is the dominant way of looking at the evolution of speed the development of species how did that happen I mean I can see that it's taxonomically useful that you it gives you a way of putting the final bones in order you can now you have a filing cabinet you understand what could lead to another but but actually doesn't happen that Marxism swept its fields swept it's so thoroughly and completely that a hundred million people had to die before someone realized you know that's not such such a swell theory at all that theory may have certain problems now the same gravamen doesn't stand against Darwin's theory but let's face it academics throughout the Western world form a native conspiracy class and they are very akin to a criminal class they'll believe anything and once they believe something the conspiracy is held tenaciously what were very good reasons Darwinian theory was accepted in the academic world way before it entered public relations world the world of the media world of those papers or television that was accepted because it was a form of power it was an advantageous acquisition to be able to say well you guys out there the Bible Belt don't understand a thing but we understand life and knowledge is power in the academic world and that was a devastating acquisition the more so since it allowed academics to participate in a cultural war against religion a rival center of power Richard Dawkins one of the most prominent a theist of the day quote although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist what do you make of that it depends what they're filled was doesn't know but they put the most charitable what did what what is he getting at people respond talk into the books sell that quotation you just type in Richard Dawkins plus in this quotation comes up ten thousand times on google it gets its beauty why do people respond to this Darwinism provides a mythological framework for a scientific theory it provides an account of human origins of provides an account of biological origins provides an account of change and that account at every point is the substitute for a biblical account that is the the accounts that we had all been led to believe say before 1859 or essentially biblical they began in the beginning God created the heavens in there mm-hmm to be an atheist before Darwin Richard Dawkins is arguing would be to leave unexplained the very point that the Bible or the Christian Jewish tradition does explain the origins of life in terms of that tradition the origins of life occur because God breathed upon inert inactive matter and created life for the first time Darwin seemed to provide a framework in which that wasn't necessary or more precisely it wasn't necessary in as far as an alternative miracle was available that is the miracle is currently being promoted for the origins of life it is a creation myth without a creator that's right all right segment three Big Bang the devil's delusion again scientists the Big Bang and the anthropic principle by the way to cover both if we if we may draw the devil the devil's delusion scientist the physicist Paul Davies is observed are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth the universe looks suspiciously like a fix the issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves close quote explain that if you would well Paul Davies is one of a number of physicists certainly not the only one Fred Hoyle who was a very serious 20th century astrophysicist came to the same conclusion he said the universe looks like it's been monkeyed with by a super intellect things are so precisely coordinated numerical values for certain parameters is so finely adjusted and if they were perturbed in any way things would collapse or the universe would become chaotic or living systems couldn't arise that we cannot conclude that this was all the result of any kind of accidental process its inherent in the design but when we look at the laws of nature nothing in the laws of nature suggest it must be this way the design is inherent in the numerical parameters and certain properties we see in the universe but we have no good account for this the laws of nature are silent they are what they are they can work with any numerical within any numerical evaluation or range so all of these guys and it's Fred Hoyle that's Paul Davies Stephen Hawking once was talking about this any thoughtful physicist will say why is the universe the way it is why is the universe the way it is precisely the way it is when what we might expect rationally is a generic universe generic is a term of mathematics meaning what you would ordinarily expect the most likely kind of case and we're very far from generousity in the universe we're highly unlikely kind of structure we inhabit and the question is why is that now one answer to Fred Hoyle is that the universe looks as if it were monkeyed bias monkeyed with by a super intellect is it was monkeyed with by a super intellect things were set up just so another answer is we really don't know it's one of the enigmas of modern science a third answer is there are many many many thousands millions of other universes and what is unlikely and this one may be likely when we consider all of them so how much I'm trying to the anthropic principle the suggestion is your suggestion is that it's reasonable to suppose that it was set up that is to say the laws of the universe are consistent with the notion of the judeo-christian idea of a creator who set it up i think john paul ii said that man is the only creature that God willed for his own sake so that if if the belief is that this is all set up to produce human beings that's consistent with what we see in the incomplete okay but you're not saying you're saying only that it's consistent you're not taking it a step further to argue that it is evidence or even suggestive that there may be a creator because after all again the crude layman's attempt to grasp the argument here you spin the roulette wheel and the ball falls on number seven and you could spend the rest of your life saying with all those possible slots why did it fall on number seven why should that have been well it was because it was it was the ax right so so you can't really get very far you can't construct much of a proof of the existence of an operator of it you can't no you can't but you can construct an argument something short of a proof all right I agree if the ball drops in the slot Mach number seven just once you can say well and you get a big payoff it's interesting drop once if it drops in number seven again and again and again at some point you would be entitled to scratch your head and say you know the game must be fixed or I must be inordinately favored to be winning it like this but I'm not going to say I'm lucky that doesn't seem to me a perfectly appropriate answer at some point luck runs out as we all know alright now we move to the Big Bang again I quote the devil's delusion the best data we have concerning the Big Bang the Nobel laureate Arno Penzias remarked are exactly what I would have predicted and I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses the Psalms the Bible as a whole close quote that's a wonderful wonderful quotation now this is one of one of them the two people who discovered the microwave background radiation for which he got a Nobel Prize this is a serious guy yeah he's a serious guy and he didn't know what he was discovering he who was very lucky he struck pure gold he thought he was examining pigeon droppings on his antenna and he finally found a nose the signal from the microwave background radiation but he like many other physicists initially confronting the facts of the Big Bang which you'd better summarize for us the Big Bang means that apparently in the universe exploded into in existence from nothingness around 14 or 15 million years ago billion years ago it's an occurrence for which we have no causal explanation now the plenty of theories about it there plenty of attempts to go back behind the Big Bang and see what was going on behind it but right now one of the obdurate facts one of the irremovable facts of cosmology is that 14 to 15 billion years ago there was a universe small tensely hot tensely compact tensely curved and before that there was nothing not even space and time before that and the point is that fiat Luc's yeah let there be light is as consistent with the data as any other is precisely consistent with the data it is a prediction although not a quantitative prediction that astonished the community of physicists in the 1960s astonished Einstein in the 1920s when he realized the field equations of general relativity particularly expanding universe and Einstein understood right away of its expanding expanding from something and he rejected it he didn't like the idea he wanted a steady state universe lasting from all eternity from one attorney to another eternity but the Hubble data persuaded him he was wrong okay so again we with the anthropic principle it's not a proof no but sure is suggestive that's your argument and the Big Bang it's not a proof it could be simply because it could be but it is I guess what I'm trying to do is to get you to distinguish between your judgment in these matters between saying it's merely consistent with the judeo-christian view of a creator who brought it all into being or you'd like to suggest that it points in that direction there's something positively suggestive about it it's certainly moving and disturbing that in the 20th century cosmology should have rejected a ancient view of the universe as moving from the of elastic to the everlasting with no origin and embraced a completely different view but one that is no way new it's part of the religious tradition I think I would like to to rest my commitment by saying this is strange unexpected moving and very curious certainly certainly someone who objects is indignantly as I do to claims of having discovered a proof made by the likes of Dawkins or Sam Harris or the other scientists arguing in this realm with respect to the existence of God I'm not about to say I've discovered a proof to the contrary the language of proofs is appropriate to mathematics not to a discussion like this what is appropriate to a discussion like this is philosophical argumentation and we cannot close the day by saying one side is definitively the possession of an argument so fine so thick and so powerful that it ends all discussion they want in the discussions won't in but a little a bit of balance would be welcome segment for where do a theists get their morality on this program in 2007 and exchange Peter Robinson saying to the guest quoting myself here if Christopher Hitchens does not believe in God then where does he get a sense of right and wrong to which Christopher replied I think it's degrading to state that absent a celestial dictatorship we wouldn't know right from wrong I think our knowledge of right and wrong is innate in us we know we can't get along if we permit permit perjury theft murder rape all societies at all times ever bidden such behavior how does David Berlinski respond I'm not sure I mean I've heard Krista patron say the same thing I'm not sure that so far as these particular as separations go there is any real point of dispute I mean I think it's true that we know right from wrong at least most people do most of the time that's hardly the question is it knowledge of right and wrong doesn't take us very far why should we be right when we could as easily be wrong well what do you make of is that Christopher's answer there redefines the common understanding of right and wrong what he's really saying is useful and not useful socially useful and not socially is look at the history of the 20th century and try to account them for the history of the 20th century in terms of agreeable usefulness it is an intellectual category of splendid irrelevance splendid irrelevance I mean not the execution of swabbing out the death cells from their loads of blood or communist saws sending people in as tyrants sending people to Siberia to the to the Arctic death camps they had no use for usefulness they had nothing constraining their behavior in terms of the traditional apparatus of a celestial dictatorship I think that word is fine although there is some appropriate attach to it but that's exactly what Ewan beings have always said we need someone cracking the whip over us so I take your discussion of morality and the 20th century in the devil's delusion to be another form of the argument that you make with the anthropic principle and the big bang that is to say religious people would say there is natural there is an objective right and wrong there is a law of God and if you don't obey it terrible consequences will follow and you make the point that terrible consequences have fun would follow yes right so again that's not a proof for the existence of God but it sure is suggestive that's what you're saying or we could put it in the fashion of Christopher Hitchens it's not a proof of the existence of God it's certainly a suggestion about his usefulness okay so all the laws of heaven and earth dr. Johnson remarked are unable to prevent man from its crimes surely relaxing the laws of heaven and earth shall not dispose men to better behavior that seems to be self-evident all right now David we it's impossible to discuss the horrors of the 20th century without mentioning the Holocaust and you have a very moving dedication here in The Devil's delusion to your mother's father your grandfather and you write the dedication in German and it concludes in Auschwitz Berlin missing in Auschwitz but much more to the point disappeared disappear in Auschwitz disappeared in Auschwitz better translation so how do you handle the datum of the Holocaust in some ways it's an utterly elementary question you may find it as a question or interesting but it's not easy to answer if there were a God how could such a thing happen it's a terribly difficult question but but look if we take the period from 1939 to 1945 look at 1945 the Jewish people yet live Hitler's target the Third Reich that lies smashed to smithereens under the tank treads of Russian tanks or blown to bits by American and British airplanes and everyone who survived the third rush must survive drowned in morning or consumed with grief that doesn't strike me as a whole lot less than a biblical adjudication of those war years not pleasant but no one reading the Old Testament comes away convinced that the god of Wrath is a Leigha Rotarian he is a god of Wrath if he chose to kill nine million people to make a point and then destroy their persecutors remember Lincoln's second inaugural address the conclusion he reaches we must still say as was said long ago righteous and just of the decisions of the Lord he was talking about a terrible war - in the devil's delusion David you construct a kind of syllogistic progression to show that this is another way you show that religious questions can be perfectly reasonable let me quote it to you if the universe is contingent there is no saying whether it existed forever maybe maybe not that's point one point two if anything might not exist then it is reasonable to ask why it does exist point two and point three well why does it exist I mean really yeah how does David Berlinski answer the question I don't think there is an answer in terms of the traditional body of knowledge we associate with physics I don't think physics is now in a position to answer that question and my suspicion is it will never be in a position to answer that question but it is a very good question and it is a question that while it cannot be answered from the physical tradition can certainly be asked from the physical condition tradition and that's something very interesting the existence of a class of questions that can be asked within a physical theory but not answered within a physical theory and I think when you look at those kinds of questions about what is the universe exists what are the causal conditions that make a universe possible what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for bringing our universe into existence then you have the beginning of a sense of intellectual humility you're pretty sure that Richard Dawkins and sam Harris and even my friend Christopher Hitchens can't answer those questions yeah segment five of our final segment alas taking science on faith in the devil's delusion you're right and I quote Western science is saturated by faith what do you mean you run an experiment you put your hands your on laboratory equipment you go away for a cup of coffee you're taken up you come back you expect the experiment that we can continued that when you put your hands in the laboratory equipment will be the same things are continuous from one moment to another the universe doesn't shake itself and out in and out of existence things are stable things are predictable things are satisfactorily amenable to investigation these are all items of faith how do you know any of these you project backwards from the modern era to say what could have happened in imperial times Roman Imperial times how do you know this same universe was there a thousand years ago you're going to leave this table about 30 seconds how do you know what Kasim isn't going to open at your feet Peter you don't know that you take it on faith and their thousands of remarks these these are these are remarks within the philosophical tradition pointing out the extraordinary extent to which in order to advance scientifically there's an enormous body of assumptions that have to be in place and those assumptions can't be defended no science Aristotle said ever defends its own first principles and we can't even it's just a logical point all right another quotation from the devil's delusion members of the National Academy of Sciences are by and large persuaded that there is no God men and women in their millions that there is why should that be so is a tremendous advantage in belonging to the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences is an institutional source of authority and power if these guys were going to defer to the Vatican or to a council of rabbis or to a group of Muslim clerics much of their power and influence would be discredited but that is to take a cynical view the less cynical view is that a certain amount of education a certain amount of immersion into a physical Theory not the same thing is true emergent legal theory tends to displace any other kind of ideological affiliation and that is transmitted or transmuted into a form of denial there is only one truth that happens to be the truth of plasma physics that's what a plasma physicist and why not 50 years studying plasma physics that's the only truth you can see so you're suggesting that atheism as it expresses itself among scientists is a kind of de formación profession and of course of course you find the same thing in people who are completely committed to wrapping cuban cigars that's how they think of the universe universe can only be illuminated in terms of a large cigar being wrapped on a source of surprise the world of matter again from the devil's delusion revealed by the physical sciences does not serve to endow materialism with a familiar face there are black holes and various infernal singularities popping out of quantum fields the elementary particles appear as bosons or fermions reality is remarkably baroque and it is promiscuously catholic small c ÿà Catholic so here throughout this book David at one place you stated explicitly you state I do not take as the burden of my argument to prove the existence of God right I take it only to demonstrate that the scientists cannot yea disprove the existence of God fine and that that's but but the way this book operates that's a kind of baseline you get that on every page but there are other pages where if you were graphing the readers reaction intellectual reaction there would be little spikes here and there in which it seems that you're saying more than that it seems that you well right here you say that science physical science properly understood a true understanding of the physical the material world around us not only does it not mute or displace a religious sensibility it excites a sense of wonder and mystery I agree with that no intention of concealing that I know not seems my lord no I agree completely that is a position in the book that I do want to die it certainly does to the responsive mind excite a sense of religious possibility the passage about material objects that you quote is one intended to show the vacuous nough some aterial as a category even within the heart of physics there is no sense of a material object that covers the sort of inquiry that physicists are doing black hole is not a physical or material object look you smack your hand on the table and then you smack your hand on the table again how many times have you smack your hand on the table - where is that number - is that a physical object no of course not and that pervades the sciences the idea that the world of matter is the world that matters is simply not true or if it is true and there's a wonderful remark by the logician current girdle in talking about materialism girdle was of course a great genius and he had no patience for the physical sciences and he said the only way materialism ever ever survives is that all of the properties that we would want from a non material world from a psychological or biological or religious perspective I just slapped on top of a material object and we described it as material that's no answer I mean even the most primitive parts of physics force is force a material something we have a very limited understanding of the Newton what is force what is force we don't know what is energy at a material it's hard to say final question alas let me give you one one more time let me give you two quotations and just ask you to respond quotation number one requires a little bit of a setup the late philosopher Sidney Hook remarkable man Oh friend oh is that so all right I didn't know that I never had the chance to meet him in a year or two before I even came here to the Hoover Institution well but Sidney hook was an avowed atheist not agnostic but atheist and a friend of his this was the story told to me by that friend said to Sidney hook Sidney if when you die you discover to your surprise that there is a God after all how will you explain yourself and Sidney Hooke replied quote I tell God that he had provided insufficient evidence close quote that's number one here's number two Psalm 8 when I consider the heavens the work of thy fingers the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained what is man that thou art mindful of him close quote which quotation which world view do you find to use Richard Dawkins phrase more intellectually fulfilling well I've heard Sidney Hawk say the same thing oh is that an old - yes alright why are you talking about David I know God out there no this is just just a lot of hooey I'll have a tuna sandwich no there's very little substance in that quotation and of course there is a point of presumption in that particular argument Bertrand Russel also used the point of presumption is that human beings constructed as human beings are constructed could so interact with God as to be persuaded by the countenance of the deity when they were left unpersuaded but the evidence of his handiwork that's a remarkable presumption much more reasonable it seems to me as those who cannot see the handiwork will not be able to see the countenance either there is a limitation a kind of aspect blindness at work not everyone appreciates motor on it's just a fact the second quotation I think is uh is it is a beautiful quotation but there's a fine line from Gerard Manley Hopkins the world is charged with the grandeur of God it will flame out like shining from shuch foil it gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed why do men then now not wreak his raw generations have trod have trod have trod I think that captures that captain's very elegantly the spirit of the psalm but also something of Sidney hook something of zin 'i'm wide amend and now not Rekha's rod that's something I always acid knee we always talk that we did talk about that he thought it was a New York imperative to be very tough all the time but what he thought is heart of hearts that he kept to himself actually I want to ask this is going to be the final question so we know that this program is watched disproportionately by kids based college kids so you have somebody in college who's going to I don't know if you went through this when you were an undergraduate you're so you being you you probably went through it at the age of seven which is the sort of thing that I went through when I was an undergraduate college and you look around and you realize that a lot of very bright people are atheists and since most people just numerically speaking come from these millions and millions who do believe to assume the existence of a God there can be a really quite disorienting moment and given your gift given the various proclivities the time the course interests of the student the student may wish to investigate this in his rigorous away as an 18 or 19 year old can what advice would you give to such a student to investigate the question yeah yeah I would suggest to any student entering college now 2011 do what I'm sure he hasn't done go read the Old Testament that should be your first challenge now I always ask my students mafia you read there have you read the Bible oh yeah yeah I was about short however when I interrogate the students it turns up reading the Bible means they have a Bible on their bookshelf I said if you opened it yeah we've opened it but opening it doesn't mean reading it the Old Testament is the greatest repository of human knowledge and wisdom in the history of civilization any culture any time any place and that really should be the first point of discussion because every attitude current today in the discussion from Richard Dawkins to me Christopher Hitchens two lonely pastors in the Bible Belt on Sunday morning ranting from a particular text is discussed in the Bible and there's a character in the Bible who expresses that point of view and there's sympathy expressed for that point of view and their reservation is expressed by the sympathy there's enormous ly complex rich maduk piece of work that's the first alright david Berlinski author of the devil's delusion atheism and its scientific pretensions thank you very much oh my pleasure thank you for having me I'm Peter Robinson for uncommon knowledge thanks for joining us

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 721,344

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Keywords: HooverInstitutionUK, Berlinski, mathematics, writer, The Devil's Delusion, science, god, religion, atheist, Christian, evolution, beliefs, morals, values, philosophy, naturalism, Darwin, Big Bang

Id: FyxUwaq00Rc

Length: 42min 11sec (2531 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/eaalundin]

That man is a loon. Watched him in "Expelled - No intelligence allowed". Even in that parade of conspiracy theorists he stands out as exceptionally out of touch with reality.