Dialogue with Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams and Anthony Kenny

as a Chancellor of the University I'd like to welcome you all to this a dialogue event it's exactly the sort of debate which a great University should promote as you know we're going to listen to a discussion about the nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin and the fact that there are so many people crowding the Sheldonian the fact that there are two other theaters in Oxford which are packed and the fact that the proceedings are being streamed live on the web to all parts of the world does underline the importance of this event I'm told that they're listening we're going to listen to you in the middle of the night in Australia we listen to cricket in the middle of the night they listen to these more important matters which Justin shares the difference between Australian culture and British culture obviously the fact that there are so many of you are here this afternoon is largely because of the eminence of our debaters dr. Williams professor Dawkins and Sir Anthony Kenny not only one of Oxford's great philosophers but perhaps even more important a former master of Belial it is wonderful that both dr. Williams and professor Dawkins who of course have been associated with the University as as teachers and scholars over the years have come to Oxford this afternoon have come to the Sheldonian for this debate so we're tremendously grateful to you now there are many charming things about this theater as some of you who don't know already will discover they don't include the seating but if you think you're uncomfortable you should try that throne up there which is complete nightmare but one of the charms is of course the recently renovated ceiling which shows which has a depiction allegorically of the descent of truth on the arts and sciences which is of course what we're going to experience during the course of the next hour or more so without any further remarks I'd like to ask Sir Anthony Kenny to chair and I'm sure take part in the discussion thank you both both thank you all very much kind words I'd like to make a few housekeeping remarks initially the discussion will last until 5:30 but it will end quite promptly we are all agreed that we would prefer there to be no applause please until if you feel like it at the very end a number of you have been kind enough to submit questions in advance questions have been circulated to the three others and what will happen is that if at a suitable point in the debate it appears to one or other of us that a question is particularly epicyte we will then read it from the cards which have been provided I'm sure we all have cards in our own hands but it's nice to have these trumps which have been supplied we're each going to make a brief introductory statement of our position and then the discussion will we hope flow freely the topic is the nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origins and we're going to take this pretty substantial question in four stages first of all the nature of individual human beings now of all of us secondly the origin of the human species as a whole thirdly the origin of life on Earth and finally the origin of the universe I think that should keep us going probably we will be as it were tracing our ancestry backwards neither of my fellow symposia need any introduction for me but I'd like very briefly to introduce myself and say why I am sitting between these two protagonists I'm myself a philosopher and I'm an agnostic about the existence of God I don't know whether there's a God or not I'm open to persuasion either way I'm flanked by two people who claim to know the answer to the question I don't know the answer to so I sit here as a representative of ignorance Archbishop may I ask you to introduce yourself as well as being Archbishop of Canterbury I've over my career taught theology and some philosophy in universities particularly in this university and in Cambridge I have a long-standing interest in the history of theology in the history of what we rather unhelpfully call spirituality that is how Christians pray and understand their praying and also a long-standing interest in the arts in general and literature drama and poetry in particular so some of that will probably creep into what I say later do I say anymore at this stage about the subject matter perhaps yes well let me them um to kick things off venture a sort of definition human beings it seems are the only bit of the universe we know about that talks about the universe the only bit of the universe we know about that seeks to represent the universe and makes claims about truth-telling and because of that we as part of that universe are able to affect the ongoing life of the universe in certain ways some of which we understand clearly and some of which we don't understand at all clearly there is in our understanding and our knowing an element of what might call feedback into the life of the universe and I guess that one of the things we might want to talk about is what kind of difference it is that human beings make the nature of the freedom we exercise or independence within that universal order but within that I would say human beings as language users have a particularly powerful central role and that's a question to our understanding why and how do we use language relation of language and consciousness this making a difference to the environment we share it's not a matter of absolute discontinuity with the animal world around us far from it but if we are looking for distinctives this seems to be the area where we look and just to conclude a very brief position placement it does seem that we live in a universe which while we would all have difficulties I suspect with calling it anthropocentric is anthropogenic it's the kind of universe that has produced conscious language using subjects that is us and part of what we're looking at today is exactly how we understand that whether there is a question we can answer about the origins of such subjects in the universe so I think I leave it there thank you well first I'd like to say what a privilege it is to be discussing with Archbishop Williams I was very interested in in the way you've began and it reminded me of two things which Julian Huxley said one was evolution has become conscious of itself and he meant inhumanity and the other is a poem that he wrote which I can't remember all of it but it begins the world of things entered your infant mind to populate that crystal cabinet and I think that resonates with what you were saying Archbishop about the the uniqueness as far as we know of humanity as being capable of as I would put it getting a model of the universe inside our heads and no doubt we'll come back to this to this idea I think is extremely interesting I was singing to myself in the shower this morning and I thought I realized that it was him I'm I'm a cultural Anglican I'm not going to sing it now I would have just done so I will just say um it it's a hymn that we probably all know it is a thing most wonderful almost too wonderful to be I'm afraid that hymn goes off the rails rather after that point but um I think that it is a thing most wonderful almost too wonderful to be that at least on this planet and possibly on billions of other planets but certainly on this one the laws of physics have conspired to make the collisions of atoms get together to produce nothing that any physicist would have dreamed of but to produce things like us to produce plants please kangaroos insects and us to produce collections of matter collections of atoms that don't just obey Newton's laws in a passive way they don't obviously disobey them but not in a passive way but which move and jump and spring and hunt and flee and mate and think at least in our case which is a quite astonishing thing to have happened and we know since 1859 how it happened and it's almost too wonderful to believe but we have to believe it because we now know it's true is almost too wonderful to put to believe that the laws of physics working through this very remarkable process that Darwin called natural selection has produced these gigantic collections of apparently purposeful beings which look overwhelmingly as though they had been designed they carrier a terrific illusion of design which fooled humanity until the middle of the 19th century now I think that Darwin's achievement that was not only a magnificent achievement in itself but it was a triumph of science which can be generalized to science generally because once Darwin had solved the problem of how you can get big complicated purposeful and apparently designed things out of very simple beginnings once Darwin had solved that problem it then gives courage to the rest of science that the same thing can be done in general and that we shall end up understanding literally everything as springing from almost nothing or according to some modern physicists even literally nothing and I think that that is a truly wonderful thought when I say almost too wonderful to be it's a thought that is extremely hard to comprehend and believe and many people have great difficulty in believing it and resort to what in my view is is an unsatisfactory resolution to the problem which is to say an intelligence did it that seems to me to be an evasion of the question and evasions the scientific responsibility to understand how things come about how complicated things come about in terms of simple things so I'll stop there for thank you you began by agreeing quite a bit with each other then tended you particularly Richard to some disagreement before I stoke that disagreement I'd like to make sure we do agree on three very simple things that is that the three of us all believe in truth namely that there is such a thing as objective truth and it's not just an ideological construct to keep the lower classes down or see secondly that we all believe in logic that is that we think that if two statements flatly contradict each other they can't both be true and thirdly that we all believe in science that we think it is one of the greatest of human achievements and that we all owe the scientists many generations a great debt of gratitude for the way in which they have improved the world is there any dissent to that or qualification no no II can I suggest a line of disagreement or ask for clarification of what you said you said that the laws of physics where of course never disobeyed by atoms and I'm sure that's true you also said the laws of physics have created us now it seems to me that there are two different things there there's nobody is going to say that the laws of physics are being regularly broken but that doesn't say that laws of physics alone determine what happens in a game of chess nobody breaks the rules but the rules of chess do not dictate the game that of course is absolutely true and the equivalent of the of the rules of chess would be natural selection the process of random variation random change in the genetic codes followed by non-random natural selection and is the non-random process of natural selection filtering the random input from mutation which ultimately creates living things so the laws of physics are being a bate all the time at the at the lowest level and the complexity is the same sort of complexities when you play chess when a computer plays chess when a computer does anything for that matter and then that computers are only machines in which electrons are whizzing around paying the laws of physics but the layers of complexity on top of that the layers of software complexity produce the ability to play chess or do a spreadsheet or or whatever it is and that's where one of my questions comes in you spoke about how Darwinian selection offers a complete explanation of how we are here and why we're here Darwin doesn't seem to need to have very much to say that helps with the problem of consciousness which both philosophically and scientifically remains an enormous area which I don't see very much advanced in in the scientific explanation of and one of the things which makes me wary is simply saying we have recourse to the laws of physics in that it is the question of consciousness what is it that runs the first-person perspective which we are currently sharing it's this discussion I agree that that is deeply mysterious as a materialist I suppose I'm committed to the view that consciousness is something that emerges from brains within within brains and nobody understands how and I regard that as one of the problems for the future and I think it will be solved it eventually by a combination of neuroscience and computer science probably what I would say is that it when one identifies a problem that science has such such as consciousness and says we don't yet understand X and it happens to be consciousness in this case then we should remain agnostic as Sir Anthony has said what we shouldn't do is immediately jump to I don't understand it therefore it must have some to do with God and I'm not suggesting that we we buy in God to get as I achieve get out of jail card and consciousness but what I am interested in is what it means to say that this is the kind of universe in which consciousness will happen given these these coordinates because it seems to me that the question is not is there some point of which God interferes to say let there be consciousness question is does an entire universal system the physical law which produces something not obviously physical does that require some context of intelligence that is not simply the intelligence of one finite I think that's the question we're going to be discussing in our fourth step I charge in the you know I'll back off your favorite something without leaping straight on but can I ask about the soul and consciousness is something we share with animals a lot of the higher animals are conscious too so if we're talking about something special to human beings I think it isn't consciousness but many people have thought that human beings have special souls so which are different from any animal psychic organ and snows which are immortal can I ask if you think that is correct I don't go in between those two poles of consciousness as an obvious fact about animal life and something called the soul and ask about self consciousness about the capacity of human beings to tell stories about themselves we are beings who tell ourselves about ourselves ask questions about ourselves st. Augustine saying I have become a question to myself at the definition of the life of human spirit we tell jokes we fantasize we empathize we even pray all of that is an activity of self reflexive consciousness in a way which doesn't seem to fit at the animal level and that seems to me to have something to do with the fact that some of us believe we are capable of a relationship with that unconditional creative energy that we call God and all of those things about our self-awareness about our self questioning have their home in the context of material beings who are nonetheless capable of that sort of relation so I'm wary of talking about a soul as if it were as in the cartoons you know rather ghostly form of the body that sort of flies away into middle distance and I'm happier with tradition you'll be very familiar with talking about the soul of the form of the body this is this is how this particular kind of material being has meaning as communicative and self communicative capacity and if this capacity for self-consciousness the Aristotelian type of soul is that created by God in each individual or is it inherited from the individual's parents I don't believe it's created directly by God as it as if there is a list in heaven the God takes off sending people down in in the strict succession it's something which as several of the early Christian theologians say he emerges in the material life of people subject by subject it's to me very interesting that in the 4th century you have a theologian like gregory of nyssa saying some quite evolutionary sounding things and saying well the soul doesn't come in separate the soul is what gathers all this together when the material processes of development complete it's not that extra thing which has to be injected you'll be live in a sermon I think I think that consciousness that phrase gathering gathering together is is possibly quite insightful about what actually happens about about consciousness in the development of a bit of a baby and and I think that it's quite there's been quite good suggestions that that a baby is a sort of mixture of an assortment of different semi individuals who gradually fuse themselves together to become what we think of as our individuality as our as our conscious self and I think there are some philosophers who feel that consciousness should be seen as a kind of illusion to bring together all the different aspects of our of our mind but I thought Archbishop you didn't really answer what's around he was asking because he wanted to know whether you believe the soul survives death and under drugs we asked me that but I've got ever to come up with I thought you did at the very beginning but you're quite right I didn't in the last night but please aren't the short answer is yes the law answer would take quite a while so bear with me a moment um what it is that we developed in self-consciousness in relationship to others under God is for myself as a Christian something which does not simply cease on material death what it means that it doesn't cease what it is for that relationship with God to advance blossom come home I have no idea I have a number of images but no idea and the confidence that i as a Christian have about that is not the belief that there's something in me that will survive it's a belief in the kind of God who does not terminate the relationship initiated from God's side as I develop them grow but could I just come back very big gun on one of them one of your phrases about some consciousness is an illusion yeah I've come across this sort of language and I have to say it baffles me rather yes because if consciousness is an illusion what isn't I'm the concept of an illusion presupposes the theory yeah that's that's that around fear well that's fair sieving yeah and I find that there's a lot of that slippage going on in some of the writing in this area consciousness is a mistake but to talk about mistakes we have to have a framework in which it makes sense to distinguish within mistake and a correct observation consciousness is an illusion but we need therefore a distinction between illusion and correct perception or even well I think our maturity you see the point and to say that consciousness is something emerging to resolve the problems if you're ripe of a discrete et perception it's not quite the same things and illusion or to say with general Dennett that there is no evidence for consciousness I scratch my head profoundly I have a colleague who when one gets into this argument and they come to the point where one says well we don't actually have any evidence of any of the rest of us account maybe I'm the only one only one who is and so on and he finishes the conversation by saying I'm not conscious the thing was you - nobody the thing that really baffles me about consciousness is that I can kind of see that one could program a computer to behave exactly as though it were conscious to pass the Turing test and actually fool people into thinking that it was conscious but I still have trouble believing it actually wouldn't we and yet I think I have to be committed to the view that it that it would be well I think it's not that you're a committed here but I think it's rather sad that you're committed to that view well computers are human tools they they can't even add two and two together they are tools that are used by human beings by human programs they can't even tell the time and they wouldn't know what to do it if they did what it's put in another way if I may computers are under a scientifically literate yet computers on binary systems essentially aren't they that's right well at bottom they are yes but that may not be a very helpful way to note it but if if they are fundamentally by the resistance does that mean that the way the human mind operates is invariably and always reduce ibly binary or other other oh no its gesture is just a technical convenience that they're that they're binary mean what matters is the software which it which builds upon the the binary events that are going on at the base but then the question isn't it whether the binary based system of a computer can given its dependence on input given its dependence on certain fixed processes whether it could move towards a state that was not like our our minds able to operate in well no no I think I think it's a red herring what the binary I mean you could you could have a quaternary computer oror or an octal computer minute it is just accidental that it happens to be an engineering convenience that computers a binary once you get into the realm of software you can forget about there being binary perhaps I could follow up around point by asking whether you think a computer has free will and whether you think human beings have free will well I think free will is it is a difficult question and I don't think computers have have free will in the sense that I that I do think that that everything that happens in a computer is predetermined by events in in the in the in the world and mostly inside the computer itself so in that sense computers don't have free well but in that sense we probably don't either I'm interested you say that because a lot of people misunderstood your first book The Selfish Gene to say that you believed in gene determinism that everything was determined for us by our genes and therefore we didn't have free will in your second book the extended phenotype you took great pains to explain that you were not a gene determinist yes well usually not being a determinist includes believing in free will no no um the emphasis should be on the word gene I'm not a genetic determinist in the sense that some people thought that I was saying that it's genes that make us what we are well all I was saying is that it's genes that are the fundamental unit of natural selection it's a very different matter you can be a determinist without being a genetic determinist you can be a determinist who believes that that events in the in the world events in the universe come together to produce everything that happens afterwards including us including what we do but that's very different in genetic determinism is a much more specific and less philosophical problem does it does it mean that in principle every decision is predictable well that that's what that's what a determinist four would say yes what do you think I hesitate a little bit because of quantum indeterminacy see um but I I don't think that you can get away from determinism by postulating a ghost inside which which takes decisions which are somehow independent of physical reality oh I don't think the leading freewill commits you to a ghost taking decisions independent of physical reality but if I'd like to come back to this if the distinction between absolutely inert stuff and mind is not quite where it's frequently being thought to lie if the universe doesn't just break down into sort of ghostly stuff and hard stuff then a decision is not something which some independent homunculus inside me makes nevermind what happens it is something that emerges from a set of physical conditions not wholly determined but innovating and what I from making a difference I mean they not they could be wholly determined but you would have the illusion of freedom I mean there are there are how do you tell the difference well there are neurological um experiments where people have measured brains yes yes well I just finished it was at other people may not chose I'm sorry there are neurological experiments in which people make decisions like just reaching out for a glass or third somewhat moment you have to reach out and they think that I think that I take the decision now but what the experimental results show is that actually the decision was taken some seconds before because you can tell from the brain states that is going to happen well I'm not sure what that means but I think it it probably means or might well mean that when I think I've taken the decision when the when the illusory ghost in me which I think of myself as much as me takes the decision it has already been taken what one of the things which makes that experiment to my mind a bit less than clinching is of course that it relates to fairly small scale short-term rather uninteresting decisions I'd be interested seriously interested to find if you could if you could map that onto deciding who to marry who to vote for well what we usually mean by the suitors agree suppose it's your other difficult to do experiments on that kind of exactly yes and so but perforce yet just as you know geneticists have to work on peas because it's easier to work on I mean III think you you have to reduce the problem down to something that's experimental iya tractable come benign back to our commitment to logic yes if I can just press this one because again I it's an interesting conundrum to me there's a whole sort of chestnut a philosophical argument which effectively says if you were to tell me that it is for ordained that I will pick up the glass of water in the next five seconds I can actually refuse to do so now my refusal may be predetermined but you see that there's a sort of yeah regressive intelligibility other words a true statement I am determined it is determined that I pick up this glass of water is in communicable it can't be spoken without making a difference to my possible that's yes I think that's right and that's kind of thing philosophers like can I also say there that most philosophers don't like the naive picture of free will that that experiment presuppose right I mean it was a an idea made popular initially by Descartes and by David Hume and a long tradition of empiricists and rationalist philosophers that there was a sort of soul inside that in which mental events occurred which were the causes of the bodily events and it's that picture which thatx presupposes but since at least the time of Whitman Stein ruin and I both admire and Gilbert Ryle who was my teacher here many years ago it's commonly thought that there are very sound philosophical reasons for denying that that is the way things work it's very much it's surprising that you should admire because it is very much the ghost in the machine picture and you're saying ah the machine works before the ghost does whereas I think most philosophers nowadays would think the whole idea of constructing body and mind like that is black wrong but why doesn't it destroy the idea of determent of of free or free will because it only shows the order of events in an act that is undetermined may not be what you would have expected if you had the false philosophical idea well I'm not a philosopher that'll be obvious and perhaps you should have invited a philosopher to be a perhaps we should move from our question one about human beings but could I just round it off with taking up something that I said right you said when you were talking about possible immortality that as a Christian you thought this and that so do I take it that that means that you think the immortality of the soul or survival of any kind is a matter of faith and not something that can be proved by me as many philosophers in the past thought it good broadly that's right and I can't think of any strictly philosophical arguments and although it's interesting when people talk about near-death experiences things that apparently suggest consciousness operating from a point of view outside the body I don't think that settles a theological point I would embed talking about my hopes for eternal life in the specific Christian discourse revelation that I that I accept so I wouldn't be looking for a not done argument of him about immortality that well may we move on to stage two the origin of the human species and I like to start it off by reading one of the questions which was sent here by dr. Robert Gilbert fellow and tutor in biochemistry Moreland College and he says do you think that human scientific knowledge can be wholly explained by biological evolution would you like to start I don't even understand what that means I mean presumably he means the existence of people like you who have I mean if it said if he if he said do I think that humans can be wholly explained by or the existence of humans can be sold I would say yes but scientific knowledge well scientific knowledge is something that humans have in their brains so I suppose the answer is yes I can't think what else you need to explain humans or indeed any other animal than biological evolution and I presume we all accept biological evolution yeah I'd guess that the question might be about some of what we've just been talking about consciousness and so forth II but yeah a city of a materially based mental system to represent accurately or adequately in some sometimes the structure of the universe is that something which biological evolution in strict sense can well I think it's very plausible that that biological evolution would indeed give rise to brains which are good at analyzing things good at synthesize it and taking and good at packing knowledge away but it's undeniable that humans that the human brain does things which were which are far beyond what you would expect of a creature that merely has to survive in the Pleistocene of Africa and hunt wildebeest and find water holes and things so that there are strong emergent properties in the human mind which arise presumably because in order to build a brain that is good at surviving in a certain way in a in a mundane world it's rather hard to build that brain which is not automatically capable of doing more advanced things for such as mathematics and philosophy rather the same way as computers were originally designed as calculating machines and then without any modification it turned out that they're also very good at playing chess and drawing pictures and and doing all the other things that they do I find that very interesting because the other you're suggesting though that the brain in order to do the job in the evolutionary niche that it has to do has to have a capacity in excess of the memory functional problem-solving yes yes haste yes or if not has to at least a way of life that was discovered by our species in which it did you know other species do it differently of course but later you asked if we all believed in biological evolution and I take it we all do that we might differ at the explanation of it or the extent of it and I like to put you around the question whether you accept that the first human beings had non-human ancestors yes I do and do you think that there was any divine intervention at the point when the first humans evolved from the nonhuman well I think there's from where I start there has to be a point in the story at which the proto-human becomes conscious of what I'll call in shorthand a call from God or an address from God again I'm weary of saying God somehow bends down tinkers with the machinery but that there is a point if you like implicit in the whole process from the beginning a point at which it will be possible for that proto-human to be conscious in another way including the consciousness of the divine and that out says is the beginning of what I regard as humanity in the image of God I I have a problem with a very idea of the first human I think there never was a first unit in fact I mean because it's all it's all a gradual change and I mean what perhaps I could ask Archbishop and me do you think there was a moment when as it were the last homo-erectus parents looked down fondly at their baby which was the first Homo sapiens I mean I suspect the potent probably does think that because he actually thinks that God did intervene and and inject a soul I'll ask him sometime yes I think you're right that saying that there is a first human being simple census is problematic on all sorts of levels but the point at which I would want to begin to call such a being recognizably human but if the other way around if you like is the point at which I would see that evidence of a self-awareness and God awareness now I haven't access to that I don't know what what was going on in the mind of the Homo erectus Homo sapiens crossover period but that's what I would have to say don't you think that that self-awareness it might itself have been a gradual sort of emerging thing rather than a sudden I mean picking like people do peeps parents on chimpanzees which they call self-awareness experiments where they put lipstick on on the on the cheek or something and see whether the chimpanzee when it looks in a mirror says are that must be me and started with it well that's one attempt that experimental psychologists have made to to investigate self-awareness I should have thought there is self-awareness way way way before you would even start to call it human hmm I thought I did sorry right it was good to ask about this blurring between the two does that mean that that there is not a point when a new species emerges I think so yes I mean there may in some in some special cases be a macro mutational step where this happens in plants especially where where a new species just suddenly comes into existence and is instantly incapable of interbreeding with the old one but in in animals I think generally it's not the case that there is a sudden moment when a new species comes into existence so there's I'm going to be happy interbreeding between not quite human well let's just say lost who suppose we did a thought experiment in which we could go in a time machine back to anywhere we like in hid in history in evolutionary history then you would only you would gradually have a fading out of the ability to interbreed as you go further and further back so if you had if you did the thought experiment of hopping backwards in say hundred thousand years steps in a time machine and at each time you land and you take onboard one passenger and you caught that passenger back another hundred thousand years and then you see whether you can interbreed with the chaps that you meet um when you when you when it went when you when you get there I was suggesting that maybe two hundred thousand is too too long maybe ten thousand years that every ten thousand years stop the most recent additions to the passenger list will always be capable of interbreeding with the next lot and probably the next but one but that there comes a point when the next but but ten for example can't interbreed and it's a gradual fading out of ability to interpret and the interbreeding by the way of course is the standard criterion for member of members the same species uh you don't have any problem with language emerging by natural selection well that's very interesting because language true-true syntactic language as opposed to the many communication systems that know yes everything has a recursive self-interest that seems to be uniquely human and guy had always sorry my recursive syntactic structures you mean having words in it like if not that's right yes the adjective noun or the adjective land which adverb Lee verb din the verb with around and rounded all that sort of which which no other species could do now there is some very interesting evidence that I think there are two or three genes I've forgotten what they're called which have mutated so that they're different in in us from chimpanzees there are lots of other genes that are these particular ones are of great interest because when humans mutated humans mutant humans who have reverted back to the chimpanzee State can't talk and so the suggestion is that what was required for language to evolve in in humans was that at some point this could have been a rather sudden moment when a particular mutation occurred which enabled humans to to use recursive syntax and if that were true it would be a remarkable example of a sort of major step in I mean that really could have been a moment when the child could talk and the parents couldn't it's a problem who the child talked to of course but that seems to me an enormous ly important question who the child gets to like because in ordinary physical evolution there's no difficulty in thinking that a mutation can produce an animal with a longer leg than other members be obvious I mean you can measure the leg but the idea that just one member had a language given that language is a social community yes I find there you can't really imagine that it would have had a language it would have been I mean that there in other suggestions that the ability to do hierarchical embedment if we can call it starting before language and was used in in controlling he's presumably the child would just have shouted at his parents until they shouted back yeah I mean if you're if you listen to those those chimpanzees who have been taught various versions of human language like like sign language claims are made that they are doing it properly but it but I think the consensus is probably that when washoe the chimpanzee says please give me a banana what she's really saying is me me me banana banana banana gimme-gimme-gimme um which i think that the mutated humans can do too it's just that they what they what they can't do is that this is the house that subtler the Jack built so it's actually rather like what he was saying about the brain that there's a point at which the sort of step change in capacity which is not predictable simply in terms of the niche that it fits in that's right and it could be an exception to my general prejudice that evolution is always gradual it could be a rather unique exception Thanks so even if there wasn't a first human being there was the first that's right that's right there you could be yeah thank you before we leave the question of the origin of the human species I'd like to read out one more question from the floor from Isabelle Richards it goes like this human beings are immensely imperfect with so many of our potentialities unrealized all these failures of evolution or are they failures of design I made them the first alternative is a question to you well there are numerous imperfections in not just the human body but in many animal bodies and they are extremely revealing because they are I mean that they won't surprise anybody on this platform but but to an American fundamentalist creationist they're quite worrying because they're things that no designer could possibly have perpetrated I mean things like the the recurrent laryngeal nerve which is one of the correctors branch of the cranial nerve and it goes to the larynx but instead of going straight to them to the larynx it goes way way down into the chest and then loops round one of the main arteries in the chest and then goes back up again which in a giraffe is a detour about 15 feet and so this is this has been often often quoted as it as an example of imperfection no designer would ever dream of doing something as silly as that but of course if you understand it in terms of evolutionary history it makes perfect sense because in our fish ancestors the most direct route between the the start of the nerve and his end organ was indeed south of the artery they shouldn't that it's that it still isn't as evolution progressed as the neck got longer the fish don't have necks as the neck got longer in their descendants the marginal cost of another millimeter of detour was less than the marginal cost of the immense embryological upheaval taken to have jumped it over the so if you if you look at it in terms of history then it makes perfect sense and we're full of examples like that and rather serious one sometimes like the imperfections of our the way we so many people have back pages because we're walking upright when when our ancestors walked on on all fours and I don't know if that's what the questioner means because she says there's so many of our potentialities unrealized and I died obviously I had nothing that I've said has anything any bearing on that I think there are two kinds of question going on here at least um imperfection and in conclusion and unrealized potentiality is about incompletion as it is it's about the fact that there are things we might as individuals or even as a species conceivably do but we can't hold out um and I don't see that that's a matter of failure because in any system where we grow through time and develop through time whether as individuals or as species that's just part of what it is to be temporarily conditioned to live in time one thing after another failure is I think another kind of question isn't it and it's yes the apparent come mmm what inefficiency or irrationality in a rather loose sense that you've just described in terms of deliberative I almost wonder whether she means something like the Christian I don't know we're all imperfect cause of original sin or something like that I mean that it is part of Christian theology isn't it that that humans are all born in sin and sinful until redeemed and could she mean that I think it's about Richards is probably here but perhaps she could tell us what to eat hi and well I think the context of the question when posed was when we think about on potentiality I mean potentialities that are unfulfilled and the context originally thought this question was you know when a mother had a child in the child for example dies without being able to fulfill what could be its full life and and there are these tragic moments in in people's lives and you as humans want to try and explain or to try and come to terms with what those things mean and I think the question is based around do do we need a sort of explanation for the fact that those things are unfulfilled is that something that evolution will eventually for example get rid of is there some sort of endgame or is there always on the other hand I think though if you've made clear the question and I think it is much more a question to the archbishop what mutton my answer would just be it's tough stuff happens so so ever can we let the archbishop answer please I think I might feel obliged to say a little bit important stuff happen in this ago um because you're asking of course the most fundamental question about if you like the the emotional guitar in songs to religious belief how it's compatible with the fact that lives are cut short in terrible circumstances I haven't got a mega theory that will sort this out I have a kind of bottom line of understanding that in a world where change and chance are from the point of view of any individual uncontrollable tragic accidents happen that there is no way perhaps that's just an elegant version of stuff happens I'm quite mad but that is one of the things that happens in a world where we are not in control of our circumstances in it it's of course inherent in the very idea of natural selection that that distress happens it far from evolution getting rid of the problems that you're talking about it's the very essence of natural selection that that unfortunate things happen death non-random death before reproduction is what natural selection is all about and it's tragic and the the if one looks around the world and sees the sheer amount of suffering that there is in the animal kingdom as well as in the in the human it it is exactly as you would expect it to be if it were just the blind forces of nature acting if there were no overarching purpose in the in the world as one of the strongest points one can make and Darwin himself said it that I find it impossible to believe in something like believe that the namana D that's the family of wasps who torture their victims in horrible ways could be created by a beneficent deity some something like it like that it's it's utterly foreign to the scientific way of thinking to say oh is it isn't the world terrible shouldn't shouldn't evolution do something about it's because it's terrible that evolution produces the results that it does so this really is much more of a problem for you isn't it and it is and also also the the point that Richard made about as we're design faults I mean our eyes having been put in backwards and that company they make but perhaps you don't believe that the universe was actually designed all we've got to go on when we use a word like design is what it's like for us to design things and that's a fairly short term exercise with controllable material I don't know for obvious reasons what it might be like to create a universe I avoid the word design man that there should be a universe which is intelligible that it hangs together that in various ways it's processes converge to certain ends yes that's part of what I mean by believing that God created the universe that our God is an intelligent God that that involves God in what I call the micromanagement of the process so that there are again rapid excursions to adjust the mechanisms when they're not doing well that I I find very difficult because it runs straight into the worst I'm morally the worst kind of case that you're talking about if God can do that why doesn't he do it more and we move now on to our third topic the origin of life how did life originate on earth and it it seems clear that life the origin of life can't be simply explained in Darwinian terms because Darwinian explanation assumes true breeding population yes so this seems to me rather more visited for you then it is yes that's of course true natural selection explains an enormous amount once it gets started but it can't start until you've got genetics and so there has to be a kind of proto genetics before there's before there's life meaning that there has to be self-replicating molecules is probably the best way to put it and so the whole enterprise to understand the origin of life is an enterprise to imagine what it was like in the sea probably in the sea anyway in the in the world before there was life when they were molecules bumbling around and self-replicating molecules that made copies of themselves came into existence by sheer luck this is an event that only had to happen once unlike all the subsequent things that happened in in evolution which where there's a repetition billions and billions of times of the same kinds of things going on the origin of life would have been I'm not saying it was a unique event but it but it doesn't have to be any more than a unique event and once that happened and the whole process took off nobody knows how it happened there have been various theories about it and the currently most fashionable theory is the so called RNA world theory where the idea is that the original genetic molecule probably wasn't dead it almost certainly wasn't DNA DNA is too complicated but it could have been RNA or or something like RNA which has the property of being a good catalyst a good enzyme as well as being a good replication and those are the two properties that you need DNA is a very good replicator but a terrible catalyst and protein is a good catalyst very terrible replicator RNA is reasonably good at both and so it's possible that it all started off with RNA and then the twin functions diverged and DNA as it were user to the replication function while while protein usurped the and the enzymatic function that's the most fashionable theory now I would like to a little bit more about about how improbable it might have been I said it required sheer luck and that there is an argument which I've put before that it could have been an absolutely stupendous story of lark and this is quite an interesting argument it uses the anthropic principle since we know that there are probably about 10 to the 22 planets at least in the universe the number of opportunities for life to evolve staggers the imagination it is conceivable that we are alone in the universe and actually quite a lot of people think we are and would want to believe we are if we are alone in the universe then it follows that the origin of life on this planet was a quite stupefyingly rare and improbable event and that would be a very odd consequence because what it would mean is that when we when chemists look for a theory like the RNA world fairy when they look for a theory they're not looking for a plausible theory at all they're looking for a highly implausible theory because if it were plausible that life could originate on a planet then the universe would be crawling with life and my view is that it probably is crawling with life but and therefore that it's not all that improbable but by crawling with life I might mean only a billion independent life-forms have evolved and a billion is such a tiny number compared to the number of planets that there are in the universe that these islands of of life in the universe could be so spread out that they never have any chance of meeting each other or even knowing each other at the sort of celestial Polynesia with without any clues to yes written in in several of your books you've shown enormous ingenuity in proving that things which seem astronomically improbable or not astronomically improbable but it seems to be a big step to move from saying that something was not astronomically impossible so it actually happened I mean it's not astronomically impossible that the roof of the Sheldonian should fall on you in a moment's time but I don't think that means it's going to happen no but remember that it only has to happen once in history and it only has to happen on one planet in the universe and that this is where the anthropic principle comes in could you explain to people what the earth rocket is if it did if it's such an improbable event that it happened in only one planet in the in the universe then that planet has to be this planet because here we are and that's that's the anthropic principle when you sorry when you say had to be this planet what kind of necessity are you talking about I mean philosophers distinguished between metaphysical necessity and epistemic necessity epistemic necessity is the opposite of epistemic possibility something is epistemic epistemic ly possible if for all we know it might be true but that doesn't mean that something is epistemic ly necessarily therefore means that we know it is true but that doesn't mean that it was necessary in advance I think you somewhere given example the yourself of somebody who's put before a firing squad of ten marksmen and they all miss and people say well there must be some explanation for that and he said no no it had to be that way because I'm still here yes that's the example of John Leslie isn't it yes no the way I was using it I don't I don't know the words epistemic and so on I'm not gonna use that but but there are so many planets in in the universe that we are allowed to postulate a theory of the origin of life which has only a very very very low probability of happening and the reason we're allowed to do that is that we are here on a planet where it manifestly happened because we're here we're thinking about it we're talking about it so if it's true I don't believe for a moment it's true that there's life on only one planet in the of us but if anybody here wants to say there's life that this this planet is unique in in in having life then they are entitled to do so because we know it happened here we're sitting here talking about it therefore if this planet had to be with hindsight it's not a necessity in advance it's with hindsight had to be the one where it it did happen I think John Leslie's our our argument is a little bit different I don't think that applies to to live to this Ken I think we will be coming back to the anthropic principle when we're talking about the origin of the universe but if what we do that like he does come come back on on one interesting question about the what I call the pro so genetics or yes genetics um is that as much as to say that even before we have a genetic scheme we have the transfer of information yes yes crudely and that um if you're not turning back your own point about the origins of humanity there's no point in the universal story where we can say there is no information I think um that one that might be one of the places where you would want to suggest that there was a sudden moment when something happened um information in this context would mean that there are self-replicating entities but there is more than one kind of them so it's not enough just to have a self-replicating entity which makes infinite numbers of copies of itself because then you don't get competition you don't get them get variety and so it has to be something like DNA probably nothing like as complex as DNA but something like DNA where information means that there are there's there's heterogeneity in the in the types of entity that there are and each type gives gives rise to its own type with an occasional possibility of a mistake which then increases the number of different types that there are which therefore allows for the possibility of between them where competition means very precisely competition to become more numerous in the population of such entities as as compared with with others and I think that that had to be the first step nobody knows and it's a very very difficult problem how something like the triplet code of DNA arose it's a it's some it's some often described as possibly a frozen accident that that once the cryptic code had arisen then it couldn't be changed because any any change would be completely immediately disastrous it catastrophic ly disastrous but how the cryptic code arose I think is a is a is a mystery waiting to be solved I mean just as I think I said at the beginning we would have to say this is an anthropogenic Universal sense that it's you know to throw a bus is there then a sense in which we have to say that the universe is necessary and information generating system I think it's a very interesting point suggests the universe is an information generator I mean I wouldn't bring us into it I mean big throws out kangaroos as well but yes I think I think it would be fair to say that that natural selection generates information yeah something a bit lower back there which I know a quarry well maybe that's the next major thing we're just about to move on to the origin of the universe I think but there's a bridging question here from Barry Billingsley says surely if the truth is that the universe is billions of years old and life is all it would have been better when the Bible was written to say nothing about how humans began did the writers essentially get it wrong probably one for me I can't imagine that the biblical writers were like faced with a set of options including telling the truth that the universe is billions of years old and saying oh that's too difficult the writers of the Bible inspired as I believe they were when unless not inspired to do 21st century physics they were inspired to pass on to their readers what God wanted them to know forgive the naked theology here but I might as well come clean and that means reading the first book of the Bible what I look for is the basic information as much a different sense from what we were talking about listener the universe depends on God and God's freedom humanity has a very distinctive role in that universe and from the first measurable moment humanity has made a rather conspicuous mess of that role that's where the Bible begins that's that's what I need to know is that a speak and I don't think that it makes very much sense to talk about the writers of Scripture getting it wrong in the sense that there was lots of information available and they happen to get on the wrong bits of it I wonder what when you say humans got it wrong I mean presumably original sin yes why um but I I'm baffled by the way sophisticated theologians who know perfectly well Adam and Eve never existed still carry on talking about it as though it had some profound wisdom to impart to us in an allegorical sense or horse I mean that I presume is what do what you mean return objects again something which isn't just a 21st century invention but some it's a way people original very early on but I don't understand why you really bother because when you think back to who wrote Genesis they were not there's no reason to think that they possessed any particular wisdom or knowledge why would you want to waste your time reinterpreting Genesis to make sense of it in the 21st century why not just stick to 21st century science if I want to want to answer 21st century scientific question than I stick to 21st century science I want to understand my moral and spiritual position in the universe I reserve the right to go back to Genesis yes but but why don't you then why don't you then talk about moral and spiritual problems as you wish to talk about them what how does it help to go back to the to the just what somebody wrote in whatever it was 800 BC in well presumably Rouen thinks that in a circle sense they were written by God not by these humans I mean and sinfully since he has been sporting enough to bring God into the discussion and you I think rich would believe you have a disproof of God's existence I don't that you were wrong when you said that and I constructed in The God Delusion the seven-point scale of which one was I'm I know God exists seven was I know God doesn't exist and I called myself as six why don't you call yourself and I cannot speak then I do um but if but i but I think it's a I think you are described as the world's most famous atheist not by me can I ask you to politics for you now you're bowing but you you have your Boeing 747 yes to show I mean I really am problem I believe that when you talk about agnosticism it's very important to make a distinction between I don't know whether X is true or not therefore it's 5050 likely or unlikely and that's the kind of agnostic which I which I don't which I'm definitely not I think one can place estimates of probability on these things and I think the probability of any supernatural creator existing is very very low so let's say I was six point nine but that still doesn't mean the time that I'm absolutely confident that I absolutely know because I don't that I were asking for your reasons for the high probability okay the reason for the high probability are that complicated things things that appear to be designed don't just happen they as Darwin showed us and this what I meant right at the beginning when I said that that Darwin's achievement gives us confidence and the confidence that he that he gives us is because he showed how you couldn't go this wonderful thing almost too wonderful to be true this wonderful thing that you can go from extreme simplicity where there is no design where there is no complexity and after four billion years you end up with us and that's an explicable process it's an understandable process we understand it it works now that's an astonishing thing to have happened if you then go back and say oh yes but I expect there was a God at the beginning anyway I mean that that completely undermines the whole rationale for doing it why bother to do it if you're going to having devoted having explained how it took four billion years to develop complexity and the illusion of design its betrayal of everything that science stands for to suddenly go back and say oh yes but there was a god at the beginning anyway who started it all off or something of that that's consciousness is part of it intelligence design complexity the elegance of life all these things come late in the universe they come after a long period of billions of years of evolution they've come took four billion years on this planet we don't know how long it took on other planets if there are but it's not something that just happens that's the Boeing 747 argument but you I thought you were Boeing 747 argument was that complexity can only be produced by that a god could only produce the whole evolutionary story if it was more complex than the whole evolutionary well I didn't it might be more complex but it certainly couldn't be simple anyway it would have to be would have to be mean if if we're asking God to be capable of designing the laws of physics minimally designing the laws of physics let's say setting the twiddling the knobs to get the universes fundamental constants right in order to produce a universe perhaps dealing with the the chemical events of the origin of life he's got to be at least as complicate complicated enough to do that and he's got to forgive your sins and listen to your prayers and oh and all that kind of thing don't don't no he has not a simple creature don't be he said we have to distinguish between two senses of complexity yes and listen listen seriously there is complexity of structure and complexity of function now traditionally theologians have said that God was simple that is to say he had no structure he was not spread out in space and time but of course in saying that he was omnipotent they said that he had an enormous number of Pollard's an infinite number of powers but there is a distinction between complexity of structure and complexity of function take my electric razor it is a much more complicated machine than a cutthroat if the cutthroat razor is simple in structure but it has more complex powers than the electric razor because the electric razor could only be used to shave a beard whereas the cutthroat razor could be used to cut a throat indeed you needn't even have a cutthroat raising just find a stone of literature and I really don't see what just what you're saying I mean it you cannot you cannot be serious two senses of simplicity okay come on can I have a go yes yes yes you three are you best nothing not that I know much about razors that's right but he can't he can't be a simple creature well in a sense obviously not we're not talking about a creature we're not talking about a single structure or a cinder element within the system we're talking about whatever it is that sustains the entire system that I think what Eternia is reminding us of is that long philosophical tradition sorry about philosophy again which says God is simple in the sense that God is not the result of any process it's not things that have to be put together God is such that within that unconditioned actuality that is God all sorts of things are possible in what he subsequently does engages with and that's the sense of simplicity I think theologians of colossal have been looking for I was very struck by your discussion of complexity and simplicity and in the grand illusion and had to sit down and think a bit about why I didn't think it was quite on the ball here but I don't think the language of simplicity as justified is is nonsense if you're talking about something which does not come to be able to the sense in which you might say that the David Bohm calls the implicate order of the universe is simple that it's not the result of a process it is what it is with all the complexity and it's not something has been put together or interview I have to say that I think that optimum divide simplicity is a flat contradiction to most of the other attributes that theologians attribute to God but I just want to put in a note of dissent yes well I mean what I can't understand is why you don't see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that we can explain the world the universe life we can explain it from well physicists in out alias telling us starting from literally nothing I mean that is such a staggeringly elegant and beautiful thing why would you want to clutter up your worldview with something so messy as a God because it's a single stem from the reasoning is interesting so baffling interesting is a clutter because I entirely agree about the elegance and beauty of what we're talking about um I was if I may say sir I was happy to quote you in a Christmas sermon a couple of years ago probably the subject had because if I guess is it you write wonderfully about exactly that elegance in that beauty and it's a delight to read and I find I'm you know inspired by that I don't see clutter coming into it at all for the simple reason but as I say I'm not thinking of God has an extra that has to be shoehorn somehow into this which is exactly how I see it I mean yes well that's where we disagree good I just ask one final question before handing over to Pepe book you it should seem to be attracted by the idea that there may be multiple universes other many other universes and this is at one point something offers an explanation of the very striking fact of the cosmological constants being so fine-tuned that we are able to live in a universe governed by them now it seems to me that intelligent design on the one hand and multiple universes on the other exactly on a level they are both metaphysical hypotheses because these other universes cannot be amenable to scientific investigation otherwise they'd be our universe and I'm not against metaphysics I'm a meta physician myself but it does seem to me that if one or not to teach intelligent or even mention intelligent design in science classes one or not to teach or even mention multiverses well there are no doubt physicists here who will give us the it's not just that multiverses are invented for the purpose of explaining why the physical constants appear to be finely tuned there are other reasons for postulating multiverses it's a kind of analogous situation i mean i can deal with the anthropic principle at a planetary level which is what we were talking about in the four where we said that there are so many billion planets and therefore we can make inferences about the improbability that we are allowed to to entertain in talking about the origin of life it's a parallel argument that's used with with them with the multiverse where the universe that we're in appears to be finely tuned according to some views not all views might have and not all physicists accept that and therefore in a rather analogous way to how I use planets there are some physicists who postulate many universes in which each universe has its own versions of the physical laws and constants and then by the anthropic principle again we have to be in the kind of universe which is capable of giving rise to us and therefore it's no surprise that the way that we are that's only one way in which physicists deal with that with that question there are other ways that other physicists do I think we're about to have to wind up I just ask your own if you would like a final word before we ask I guess a prophetess um I'd love to talk more about the universe and multiverse question but if I could just go back for a moment to the clutter question um because I do think you put your finger on one of the things that does seriously divide us for me the elegance and the beauty you talk about is an elegance which is if you like simply framed by the sense of a God who is from action let's let's call in the combination of love and mathematics feast purposes producing this sort of elegance eternally unconditionally and I feel for that vision of the universe in the hand of God very much as you feel for what you've been talking about in terms of the elegance and beauty of the scientific explanation that is for me at least as much worth contemplating enjoying not just investigating it enjoying as scientific virtue you've sketched thank you very much thank you what should I think as a book is going to say few words she clears the session Chancellor guests colleagues ladies and gentlemen as joint convener of Oxford Sophia Europa group I'm honored to propose this brief vote of thanks to our distinguished speakers they surely met our highest expectations for serious dialogue on a subject that in the blogs here so often attracts the angry and the opinionated Charles Darwin declined to discuss humankind in his Origin of Species declaring it a subject to riven with prejudice in a culture that now contemplates the prospects for post humanism and transhumanism prejudices still about how free how refreshing them to witness an engagement of the quality we've experienced this afternoon and how appropriate that it should have taken place in a university with which each speaker has been intimately associated and where the proper study of humanity requires the insights of many disciplines as a historian of science I might perhaps be permitted a moment's reflection on how high-profile events of this kind leave their mark as with the debate between the Bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce and thomas henry huxley such events produce delicious anecdotes and later mythologies that shape public opinion long afterwards when a former Archbishop of York dr. John Hapgood once engaged with Professor Dawkins a newspaper headline the following day famously read apes have souls - says primate in in such debates there can be no easy victories of that contra torn between Wilberforce and Huxley it was reported at the time that each had found a phone worthy of their steel and made their charges and counter-charges very much to their own satisfaction and the delight of their respective friends this afternoon we've been privileged to hear three interlocutors even more worthy of their steel their contributions will surely have pleased their friends but they've done far more than that in enriching our understanding and in probing those fissures between theism atheism and agnosticism even if all three were voted 6.9 we should thank all in the university who have planned this event and made it realization possible and please show your special appreciation of our generous speakers you

Channel: The Archbishop of Canterbury

Views: 362,907

Rating: 4.8097529 out of 5

Keywords: Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, Richard Dawkins, Anthony Kenny, Rowan Williams Richard Dawkins, Dr Rowan Williams, Rowan, Williams, Richard, Dawkins, Anthony, Kenny, Oxford University, sophia europa, Sheldonian theatre, sophia, europa, sheldonian, Archbishop Rowan, Archbishop Rowan Williams, theology, atheism, oxford, Richard Dawkins Rowan Williams

Id: bow4nnh1Wv0

Length: 88min 16sec (5296 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Vinsky]

Deeply fascinating. Such calmness and structural integrity debating such volatile subjects can only be achieved by two very wise men!