How the Universe came from "Nothing", Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss discuss

ladies and gentlemen my name is Ian young and I'm the Vice Chancellor the Australian National University I'd like to begin by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history it is a pleasure to welcome you this evening to the Australian National University and to introduce our esteemed guests Professor Richard Dawkins in conversation with Professor Lawrence Krauss tonight's event is sponsored by the ANU colleges of science and cosmos magazine this evening we have an opportunity to hear from one of the most influential scientists and public intellectuals of our time Professor Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simoni professor of public understanding of science at the University of Oxford he is the author of nine books including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion and his works have been published in more than 30 languages a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of literature richard has honorary doctorates of literature as well as science including an honorary Doctorate from the anu in 2006 he established the Richard Dawkins foundation for reason and science to promote the scientific education critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world tonight Richard Dawkins will talk with professor Lawrence Krauss professor Krauss is foundation professor in the school of Earth and space exploration at Arizona State University he has also authored a number of best-selling books including a universe from nothing he is a visiting fellow at Anu and has been a regular visitor over the past few years and is a great pleasure to welcome him back here to Anu ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming our speakers Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss thank you very much it's a great pleasure for both of us to be here we're actually beginning at an Australian tour here in Canberra we'll be here and in Sydney and we'll be closing off actually at the Sydney Opera House on Monday and in the middle we'll both be attending the global atheist convention in Melbourne the largest convention of atheists in the world I should begin with some housekeeping details first of all the way this is going to work is that Richard and I are going to have a conversation and we'll talk about that in a minute and then after we're finished the floor will be open for questions and there are microphones at either end of the auditorium and also up up in the second level so you don't have to jump down and and we'll go on as long as the questions are interesting and the the format of the conversation is somewhat unusual perhaps but about five years ago Richard and I were asked to speak together at Stanford University of the United States and Richard insisted that we do it without a moderator because as he pointed out moderators always stop things just when they're getting interesting so we've tried to have some conversations without a moderator and that's what we're going to do tonight and we're never quite certain where they're going to go and and and we will see we have some ideas of topics we'd like to discuss but we'll we'll see where they go I actually want to begin Richard speaking of moderators some of you may have watched TV last night did you see QA a few of you yes well it was an interesting well I don't leer interesting as the way to describe it but there was interesting it was a program that I want to spend a little time talking about and I wanna maybe you might want to comment on on some of your concerns about that program well I suppose my first concern arose when I was announced and the audience went and then Cardinal Pell was announced but rraah and I couldn't help feeling that this was not exactly a representative audience of Australia and I don't know how the studio audience is chosen for QA but I had my suspicions at the time which I think had rather been confirmed that there was some fairly smart footwork which I suppose they're rather good at and maybe we're not so good at and maybe we should not a stance or learn how it's done you want to be a bit politically savvy but I think that more importantly going back to your point Lawrence about about moderators I really did think last night the moderator got in the way because we could have had a searching conversation which I would have enjoyed but just as it got going and just as the archbishop had dealt himself enough rope to hang himself the moderator jumped in with moving on to the next question and as it were rescued him in the nick of time and so I thought that that was a fairly good illustration of why we don't want moderators and the same thing happened oddly enough in England a few weeks ago when I had a similar onstage conversation not televised in this case with the Archbishop of Canterbury who dare I say by contrast is a very very nice man and it and once again there was a moderator who kept on getting in the way in in that case it wasn't to get the next question from the audience in that case it was to utter some philosophical profundity which didn't actually help help matters along but I've noticed again and again that chairman get in the way and it's better if you can do it to to have just a plain conversation he certainly he certainly did save on a number of occasions save the Cardinal who was my first experience listening to the man he seemed entirely devoid of intellect I was shocked I was shocked and what what I thought we might do is because of he demonstrated a number of misconceptions about science as well as religion as far as I could see and hadn't thought much money either and I thought we might want to start talking about some fill in some of the gaps that happened last night for example I wish I was amazed with his understanding of evolution or well yes um the channel asked him did he accept that humans were descended from apes yeah that's pretty cool and he said yes from Neanderthals we're not descended from Neanderthals we're cousins of Neanderthals I told him that so he said more or less well how can we be cousins if they're extinct you know I actually got that point you know at that point and I think he then asked you have you ever met in the and earth on I must admit I would have just said I'm talking to one right now but but I think you know that it is one of the biggest misconceptions about evolution in the sense of how it works and the idea of speciation is a very it's a very non-intuitive concept which is one of the reasons that I think many people have problems with with with evolution as a concept because it doesn't happen on a human time timescale and you don't I've testified before school boards in the United States about trying to keep evolution in the schools which which are constantly there's a battle all the time to try and get rid of evolution and I'm always told you know why aren't I seeing Apes turn into humans right now yeah and and it's it's a constant pairing so maybe you want to talk a little bit about that well that is one of the commonest things I'll believe in evolution when I see a monkey turning into a human it's as though they think it happens overnight and it is true that it's very very hard to grasp the sheer immensity of the time scale that's involved we as humans are used to a timescale of years decades centuries we can just about cope with even millennia but then millennia start to feel a bit kind of mysterious and you know lost in the mists of time a million years something we can't really grasp a hundred million years is something completely beyond our comprehension and there have been various attempts to dramatize it things like you know representing the whole of the span of life by a 24-hour clock and you know humans appear dead in what it is you know five minutes before midnight or whatever it is you know another one is when you hold out your hand your your arm and you say the middle of your neck is the origin of life and then it's all bacterial out to about there and then back and then dinosaurs come in about and he fossil humans are recognisably Homo sapiens coming about the tip of your fingernail and the whole of human history the whole of recorded history the the Egyptians the Babylonians the Assyrians the Hebrews the Romans the Greeks all falls in the dust of one stroke of the nail file that's not my own that's that's somebody else's but I think it's it's um it's rather a good one and you can't really get to grips with evolution unless you realize what an enormous amount of time that there is and it's quite clear I think that the that the Cardinal didn't really understand but you know we are actually descended not just from from apes but we're descended from fish we're descended from from bacteria but also there's even the question I thought by the way it was put by the moderator we're descended from apes gives the impression that we are descended from creatures that now exist except to prevent us which of course is not the case that's one of the commonest misconceptions and you know you hear it in the form of well if we understand it from chimpanzees how come there are still chimpanzees we're not descended from chimpanzees even if we were no reason why they shouldn't go on living living with us it doesn't mean they have to go extinct although we seem to do a very good job of making things extinct that are going with us well that's true I mean you could say if if North Americans are descended from Europeans how come there are still Europeans excellent or Australians for that matter well you know as ignorant I personally took affront to something the Cardinal said that you did yeah um because as ignorant as he was of biology he was what what upset me was he was disingenuously ignorant about a and I thought ungracious to you in fact in that context well that's I think I mean there was the question that came from the audience where where somebody said I'm holding nothing in my fist and you can't make something out of nothing I mean which of course was a reference to Lawrence's book something from nothing the whole point about modern physics is that you can't do it by common sense that's why you need physicists if you could do it having a common sense that's really if you could do it by common sense you wouldn't need Lawrence so I think that is a compliment so it is very clear from from reading reviews of your book something for nothing it's well first of all I should say that I was very proud to have written the afterword to this book I was accused last night by Cardinal Pell of not having read the book because he said you read you wrote the foreword and you evidently didn't get to the end if he'd read the book he'd have known that I did not write the foreword and in fact in fact that is the thing that I objected the most I don't I don't mind ignorance so much it's it's it's the illusion of knowledge that upsets me more and in fact I has to be held responsible and I'm happy we're going to Sydney because I planned to hold him responsible for for criticizing the book that he clearly had read and and that was a clear example of it he quoted verbatim from a from a review by a philosopher of my book and and of course totally bungled it totally totally distorted but the first part he said six pages before the end of the book which is how this this review in New York Times began but but the key idea which which really is so difficult and and I guess challenging and perhaps threatening to both some philosophers as well as theologians is this question of something for nothing as it happens in the case as I think we've talked about before in biology I mean how do you get life from non-life that was originally sort of the main theological question how do you get life from non-life and and and even in the original version of Darwin's book he says at the very end God breathed life into the first species because only in the first edition in only in the first edition in second edition he leaves out gone oh no the other other way around so again got it back here in the first edition there's no mention of God he says originally breathed and then in the second edition and subsequent editions he says by that by the Creator but that's a much easier problem in a way because you're starting with chemistry you start from molecules bumbling around in the in the warm little pond as Darwin called primeval Super's people later call it and and then you get the first self-replicating molecule but something from nothing from literally nothing and that's what really gets people that's the one that's really counter to common sense and and they clearly misunderstand what you mean by nothing so and it well exactly and and and I'm off and the problem is I'm often accused of not talking about the nothing that classical philosophers 2,000 years ago or theologians talked about and the answer is I'm already interested in there nothing I'm interested in the real nothing I'm interested in asking the question based on our understanding universe will probably get back to this often science changes what we mean by words and it changes that meaning because we learn about the universe we actually make progress in science unlike theology and that's because we can be wrong and we can learn and we learn from the universe so if we ask the question and I think perhaps the most offensive thing I said it was initially at the beginning is that something and nothing are not theological or philosophical quantities they're physical quantities most people recognize that something is a physical quantity but they refuse to accept the idea that nothing might be a physical quantity some of the absence of something and so what is remarkable and and surprising in some sense how there's been a reaction to it is in this particular book what I tried to do was with sellable was not attack the theological notions but celebrate our changing picture of reality the amazing discoveries that have been made over the last 50 years some by people here by my friend Brian Schmidt here won the Nobel Prize for his discovery that have changed completely our picture of the universe and made it plausible the most remarkable and unexpected thing you can imagine that you could start with absolutely nothing that means unlike the Cardinal said and unlike but some people argue no particles but not even empty space no space whatsoever and maybe even no laws governing that space and we can plausibly understand how you could arrive without any miracles without any need for a creator without any super not trol creation you could produce everything we see and I find that the fact it is plausible remarkable in the same sense that I think people I found it plausible when I first learned about evolution the amazing fact that the diversity of life on Earth which seemed so designed and complex could arise from so simple a beginning these two things are both extraordinarily exciting intriguing enthralling clearly life is clearly the idea that you can start with nothing but chemistry they weren't ordinary laws of chemistry and end up with us and kangaroos and oak trees and and wombats I mean that is the most astonishing fact would you know even more astonishing is that you can get physics you can get matter you can get everything from nothing they are because it seems like you should violate some law that and out of you know as classic philosopher said out of nothing comes nothing but that's the interesting thing is that's based on common sense but as you point out the world doesn't care about our common sense our common sense should be determined by reality by the evidence of reality and in quantum mechanics for example which is an area of physics I am involved in defies common sense everything we think is sensible about the universe at some level is not true part you and I appear to be in one place at one time but electrons can be in many places at one time it seems impossible it seems illogical and you know I have a t-shirt that my dear partner who lives here in Canberra gave me it says two plus two equals five in the limit of extremely large values of two and and the point is two plus two in the in the limit of large numbers common sense goes out the window and what's been just once you add gravity to the mix everything changes and and one of the things that we've discovered about the universe that's so amazing is that the total energy of the universe could plausibly be precisely zero even in spite of the fact that it's full of stuff and once that realization occurs you realize that maybe there's a way to create it from nothing and then we've learned that the nothing of the classical Greeks and the end of the Bible and eternal empty void is certainly not nothing because empty space is a boiling bubbling brew of virtual particles and in fact we discover that nothing can weigh something that's what the in essence the Nobel Prize that was given to Brian and his collaborators we're here for nothing actually weighs something so the whole idea is not much difference between nothing and something and for some reason that offends people the fact that really the answering the question why is there something rather nothing is really akin to saying why are some flowers blue and some flowers red or maybe even the question that used to be important you know Kepler would have asked why are there five planets and he thought they had somebody with platonic solids being and and of course now we know that there are nine planets and there are nine planets Pluto is a planet don't believe it whatever whatever it's my daughter study Pluto a grade four and she's certainly not going to go back I promise but but we realize that's not an interesting question anymore because it's there are many different solar systems and the question is how did not why are there nine planets as if there's some profound purpose of nine planets or eight planets but how did it come about that our solar system has nine planets and other solar systems may have six or other ones may have twelve in fact we've discovered when we discovered planets around other stars that things we never thought were possible in terms of solar systems things we never imagined possible solar systems with planets the size of Jupiter right next to their Sun all these things that we thought were physically impossible are actually possible because the universe continues to surprise us and so it doesn't care what we like it doesn't think we'll care what we think is sensible but I suppose things like planets the size of Jupiter being very close to their Sun I mean that's surprising that it's not surprising in the same way as the idea that there could be literally nothing which then from which something suddenly Springs and it mean it is very hard to grasp it and I certainly can't grasp it the the reason why it's hard to grasp from an evolutionary point of view I suppose is that our brains were made our brains our tools for making sense of the world in which our ancestors had to survive and they had to survive in a world in which things didn't move very fast nowhere near the speeds where relativity starts could becoming relevant and also were large and so quantum mechanics didn't didn't have any have any effect so we live in a very very our ancestors brains were naturally selected in an extremely restricted range of phenomena that had to be understood and so common sense equipped us to be very bad physicists and so you have to emancipate yourself just as I suppose our medieval testers had to emancipate themselves from the idea of a flat earth I mean they would have thought it incredible that here we all are in Australia upside down in that was that would have been very worrying to to a medieval people in in Europe now now it's commonplace do we dare hope that there will come a time when even quantum mechanics is commonplace to every child I'm not convinced that it's it's really understood by every physicist they when it when I ask physicists some of them say well don't even try to understand they just do the mathematics well yeah well in fact I mean I wrote a book before this class when I'm on richard fineman who was one of the piers changed our view of twanda gangs and he said he didn't understand quantum mechanics alright I think at some point as you point out our brains just like in when we talk about the universe space is curved right son discovered with general relativity that space is curved and when I talk about a flat universe or curved interest how can you picture that because we're talking about a curved 3-dimensional universe but but we can't picture a curved 3-dimensional universe because we live in a three to three dimension versus Republican candidates in my country don't live in a few nationals but but the the and so we can't we just they're just some things that our brain is not equipped to intuitively understand and one of the amazing things about science and I think we'll come back to that is that it forces us to realize that our myopic picture of reality is just that that there's far more to the world than we see and we have to recognize that what we think is natural or normal when it comes to culture mores or physics is not that way and I think that for me that's probably the greatest gift of science is that it is that it teaches us that that we we need to go beyond ourselves I think it's something we need to be proud of our species for because our species what every species is designed by natural selection to survive in its in its world and we were never designed by now for selection to understand modern physics and yet our brains amazingly through emergent properties are capable of reaching way way outside the bounds that that our evolution apparently set for us I think it's I'm very proud to be human well it doesn't mean I understand and I'm proud that other members my species it is really amazing and in some sense to me that fact that we have a consciousness people often say that with you give up God you give up human dignity but it's neat to me it's the exact opposite and and Steven Weinberger physicist said that religion is an assault on human dignity because the dignity the remarkable fact that we're conscious that we will ask these questions to me gives meaning to our lives and we don't need imposed meaning from elsewhere I don't know that's right well while I was debating Cardinal Pell you Lawrence were debating a an Islamic scholar they call them don't they but where I come from a scholar as somebody who's read more than one book but anyway how did it go yeah I was right while you were doing the Cardinal I was I was debating here at Anu actually last night it was a very pleasant debate actually some extent well I got a little upset at a few points but but a debate with and on whether God was prohibitive a belief in God was prohibitive or liberating and it was the Muslim debate initiative here that held it and and and they were very respectful I should say of me but but but the interesting thing was and I thought this questions that came up were were remarkably similar and it was and at the same time the unfortunate thing is that we were often talking at cross-purposes in the same way that you were talking to the Cardinal because there are these notions that somehow the base what what amazed me was a statement was made that religion is based on rationality just like sciences that somehow and we and I read it in a piece in The Australian today some economist has said that you know the problem with ACS they don't realize that religion is based on rationality and that and that it should form a key part of public public policy but in what sense is it rational in what sense is it rational to to base to accept that someone says God told me is a woman in in the United States drowns her children in a bathtub and says Jesus told me to drown them but we we don't call her rational but but an illiterate peasant is is who can't write is told by an angel the truth about the universe who then comes down later and tells a in upstate New York eighteenth centuries later tells a conman who claims to have discovered golden tablets she she gets him to translate them from the 19th century to 17th century English and we say oh sure I believe that anything using a magic stone in a hat yeah exactly and then to claim among other things that that that Jesus will come down and rule in Jerusalem and Missouri well and so that rationality and the claim is baseless based on logic but once again it comes down to this question that logic this syllogism and that you probably had this applied to you many times I've taught whenever I paid Christian apologists it's the same as in this case it was the same as a Muslim apologists they said well there's a Tom all humans are mortal tom is a human and therefore tom is mortal but I said to him well what if in this century as might be the case we make people immortal we make cell-lines immortal well Henrietta Lacks is cell line is immortal right now does that mean they won't be human absolutely not because what it means is we change the ground rules because we change our understanding and classical logic just doesn't apply and what may seem sensible and rational were based let's face it were all of the major world religions were based on either oral traditions in the case of Muslim tradition or things that were written hundreds of years after the fact by people who weren't involved before there was video cameras or anything able to record it and it's and and before people even knew the earth orbited the Sun yeah well that's of course is right but let me let me try and and see if I can explore what a sophisticated theologian might say I think it's a bit like I think there's a supposed to get yeah I think I think it's a bit like what social anthropologists do where you go and you go and immerse yourself in the culture of a tribe a Polynesian tribal or something of that sort and everything they believe is actually scientifically false but nevertheless it hangs together in a sort of coherent internal logic it all kind of fits together and make sense within that within that system and I think that's the nearest approach I can get to understanding so-called sophisticated theology that you that within the system you you know God exists you know he loves you know that he has all sorts of aims and things and this is all known and therefore everything you do has to fit in with that with that that system it has has no bearing on on fact at all but it is internally consistent in a sort of anthropological way why anybody wants to bother to do it I don't know well I think you may have alluded to it earlier and I want to ask you about this goes another thing that came up during your talk for your discussion last night you indicated where our brains were selected the way we think has been selected by survival it's our ability to survive it was certainly important I think and maybe led to both signs our religion at the same time for early hominids to be able to at least suggest that there was some some story that that everything wasn't capricious that there was some pattern to things and in fact in many ways they were scientist so you can see early modern humans learned how to fish in very careful ways and in the tip of South Africa but but at the same time I think that in order to survive they had to create stories that would lead to some explanation of what of the phenomena were seeing - - in order to somehow predict some regularity to the universe and those stories must have become religion at some point and muster and as the person questioned you last night about providing solace you know that whether religion provides happiness and makes people live longer but the question is does it work and one of the things that didn't come up last night I want to ask about we were talking about is you admitted that there may be some studies that suggest that if you find solace and God that you might become or happy or whatever but what wasn't talked about was the fact of prayer and I wonder if you want to talk about that a little bit well what what came up last night was the suggestion that that that comfort has it has some kind of psychosomatic effect there maybe actually even a Darwinian benefit in religion because it actually makes you more healthy there is a certain amount of rather equivocal evidence to that effect the important point to make of course is that it has no bearing on whether it's true I mean the the placebo effect is well known to doctors doctors aren't allowed to prescribe placebos anymore only homeopaths are and that's all they prescribe but which is all they prescribe before about 1900 homeopaths did better than real doctors because real doctors mostly caused harm rather than good and homeopaths did absolutely nothing but you are asking about the studies of prayer that there have been studies of wind experimental studies quite well controlled double-blind studies of whether a third party prayer praying for in this case victims of heart disease would get better if their prayed for it's quite difficult to design a double-blind trial to do this because the patients are not allowed to know they're being prayed for and the people who are doing the praying mustn't be allowed to know who they're praying for and so they're not allowed to say that you're praying for John Smith it has to disguise it a bit by saying you're praying for John s and maybe a little bit of ambiguity about which John s you're praying for and things like that but anyway what they did was to was to divide the prayers up into you know there were there were some patients who were being prayed for and others who were not you will not be surprised to learn that that prayer had absolutely no effect whatever on on recovery rate except for one rather curious fact which as they did another tick trial in which the patients were allowed to know that they were being prayed for and then they got worse I think the argument was they got worse because if they knew they were being prayed for they felt they should be getting better yeah they had anxiety yeah uh hurt you yes um and it was funded by the interestingly enough by the Templeton Foundation which of course was trying to prove exactly the opposite yes that's right yeah but now you know let me as long as we're talking a prayer I want to ask you about about something I think we're both confronted with is people say well look science can't replace religion science can't replace spirituality science can't fulfill the needs that are ingrained in humans then you need religion I wonder where you want to think well there are various things you could mean by what you'd buy needing religion I mean you could say what does religion provide well historically it's attempted to provide explanation for the universe in the world and I think it's fairly clear that science was superseded religion their religion also provided or possibly provides comfort and that the possibility of health but comfort in the face of death comfort in the face of bereavement and I suppose it could mean does science substitute for that well I suppose it does in the form of drugs and improved medicine and things like that it does provide a lot of comfort it doesn't provide you with the promise of life after death it's not clear to me that religions view of life after death is necessarily comforting oh yeah I brought that up last night the last thing in the world I would ever want to be is stuck fraternity with mice I mean I mean I think I think what what what maybe frightening about the idea of dying forever is the idea of eternity itself and it's eternity that's frightening whether you're there or not and I think on the whole eternity is so frightening I'd rather be an progenitor aesthetic for eternity which is exactly what's going to happen but else yeah but but the other thing of course is that it some some religions at least promise an eternity in a lake of fire with and every time your skin burns off you grow another skin so as to keep the pain going there's a kind of inverse relationship between the magnitude of the threatened punishment that a religion offers in its particular hell and the plausibility of the threat if the threat of punishment after death were the slightest bit plausible it wouldn't need to be so absolutely horrible in order to carry conviction it's because it's not plausible that it needs to to be so to be so hot so horrifying but anyway that that's cut the possibility of consolation is another thing that religion is supposed to provide religion is supposed to provide morals well I hope to goodness nobody here gets their moral from religion so they are the Old Testament and not the Old Testament or preferably not the New Testament are exactly more the Quran I would say well certainly not yet yes but I perhaps them the main thing that religion might have been thought to provide is what sort of loosely called spirituality and there I think probably science depending exactly on how you define spirituality science probably does have quite a lot to offer I mean I'm looking forward to going to visit the observatory tonight and meets seeing what I hope will be a clearer view of the Milky Way which in the southern hemisphere is a lot more exciting than it is in the northern hemisphere so I'm looking for to that and that will be I can't fit in expect something like a spiritual experience well I think for many people it is whenever I show give a lecture I show pictures from let's say from Hubble Space Telescope a picture of a cluster of galaxies I mean the poetry of it the poet where we both talk about the poetry of science but the spiritual inspiration you get from looking at a picture of a cluster of galaxies located 5 billion light-years away from us where every dot in that picture is a galaxy the light from those stars left those stars before our Sun and Earth formed which means that now many of the stars in that picture don't exist anymore and if there were civilizations around those stars each of those galaxies contains 100 billion stars any civilization that existed around those cars no longer may exist the it just opens your mind to wonder and so I actually feel very strongly that while science per se may not provide the direct consolation it can and it should provide a spiritual nully wonder but it should provide experience elation look when we we talked about this last night we tell our kids fairy tales to console them we tell them to make their life fun we talk about Santa Claus the Easter Bunny but then we decide that you know what it's better for them to know how the world really works and it may be a little less consoling but in fact knowing that they're in control of their lives actually is empowering and many of us if you're a good parent you want to teach your kids how to become empowered and yet so but we religion and an in religion often talk about the flock the children it effectively treats you like a child it says it's better for you to believe a fable then reality and often when I when I'm and a lecture on cosmology I point out the one the two things modern cosmology has taught us is it first you're much more insignificant than you ever thought and two that the future is miserable but that should make you feel good not bad because it it further enhances exactly what you were talking about we are so lucky to be alive today in a doubt with a consciousness where we for whatever fortuitous reasons are on a random star and a random galaxy in the middle of nowhere we were able to evolve a consciousness live on a relatively quiescent planet and so I actually think science can provide a real consolation by saying look once you accept reality it's liberating just like a child is liberated I'm an adult and in fact I want to ask you what a mate the reason I was getting around to here is I know we've talked about your foundation and whether science can provide that consolation and maybe you could relate the story I mean my foundation is called the Richard Dawkins foundation for reason and science and my primary motivation is that a reasoning approach to science is enthralling it's such a privilege to be alive in the 21st century and to look out at the Stars and reflect on exactly the things you've just been saying Lawrence to look down a microscope to look at done an electron microscope to look into a a single cell and see the prodigious stupefying context 'ti of a single cell and then realize that there are trillions of those cells in your bin your body all conspiring together to produce a working machine which can walk and run and eat and have sex and think reflect understand understand why we exist understand where we came from understand where the universe came from understand the Magnificent fact that it could all have come from nothing and built up from nothing interest into galaxies into stars into chemistry into primordial life into genes into primitive bacteria protozoa and then right up the evolutionary progression to become in julienne Huxley's words conscious of itself what a privilege it is for each one of us to have in our heads an organ which is capable of comprehending that of constructing a model of the universe inside our heads it is sad that that model will die when our brain dies but my goodness what a privilege it is before we do die to have been able to construct that model in our heads and to understand why we were ever born in the in the first place and it's it's N and the perhaps the most exciting part for I'm sure for both you and I and I hope for those of you who are students in the audience is that we don't know all the answers and that's the other the fundamental other fundamental difference between science and I would say religion if you want is that religion is you know assumes the answers and ask the questions and we we the great thing about science is not knowing that's what makes it exciting is that their mysteries remain to be discovered we don't understand the mystery of consciousness we can talk about it but but we have no idea how it arises that amazing that you have electrical impulses in your brain which clearly by the way are very different than computers vastly different than computers because you can you can argue from a physics perspective that if you took a built a digital computer that had the storage capability the human brain and the processing power it would require 10 terawatts 10 terawatts that's 10 10 times 10 to the 12th watts the human brain uses about 10 watts so somehow we are a million million ten million million times more efficient than digital computers we don't understand that that's amazing but you know way I wanted to actually hit the point you didn't get to but I found it remarkable when you try to make your foundation for reason and science a tax-deductible Foundation a charitable foundation you had a problem well I I wanted to get it tax deductible and so I applied both in Britain and in America and the primary problem was in Britain where in order to you you have to prove it benefits humanity if you're a church you don't have to prove anything that goes through without without good thrown there on the lawn but I had this foundation for reason and science and I got a letter from the British charity Commission we said kindly explain how scientific education benefits humanity I thought we had to tell that story in public I thought we had to hear that I before we're getting close to the end I went there a few things I thought we might cover one was in fact a big issue in in the United States and to some extent England and I'm not it's an amazing to be visit a country where the Prime Minister is an atheist it's a it's a remarkable in the United States you may not be aware well that won't happen and it has happened yeah well it probably has happened exactly but but it would be easier to be a Muslim and of course many people in United States think we have a Muslim president at this point but but there was a recent cycle uh a study by psychologists in the United States that was terrifying that said it was a study of college students and adults and and the the most distrusted group the most distrusted group was atheists the only group that they were on par with was rapists and it's remarkable because it's you know about both you and I you perhaps more than me are claimed to be strident maybe but what I find is them if you just ask the question is it possible that there's no God you suddenly become terrifying and you were obviously terrifying I felt last night to the to the Cardinal who who was who felt attacked and I was on the defensive and and and it seems to me if you asked questions and and people their defensive there must be a reason we hear stories don't we have children going to Sunday School and being thrown out for having the temerity to ask questions I mean not not to criticize but just to to ask how dare you ask a question and I think that does argue a certain defensiveness and it seems to me that you know we can we should we encourage the funny thing is we encourage our children those of us who try to be good parents or teachers to ask questions that's that's how you learn and so we encourage the last questions unless the questions about religion and then they're viewed as being impudent or rude or inappropriate and it seems to me that that one of the things that that that's so valuable about what you've done and we've we've moderated our views over the years as we've had discussions is if you simply treat religion like any other aspect of human activity which means it should be subject to questioning and ridicule like politicians and politics and and physics and sex and everything else then it then religion if you just ask that religion be put on that same framework it's it raises a consciousness that people are just somehow don't think it should be it should be here and never subject to any of those things that's right it is regarded as having a kind of privileged status whereas you're allowed to criticize your somebody else's politics or their football team or their taste in clothes or something criticizing their religion is regarded as somehow beyond the pale and I think that really has got to stop there's there's really no reason at all why religion should be immune to not not strident in the sense of shouting obscenities but just simply critical clarifying questions I I got into trouble last week I think it was in the United States they had a thing called the reason rally in Washington DC which were both at and which we were both Adam and I spoke poorly I think I I encourage people to ridicule the doctrine the the Roman Catholic doctrine of the transubstantiation the idea that the wafer turns into the body of Jesus not symbolically as an Anglican would say but literally and I encourage the audience of the reason rally if ever they meet a Roman Catholic who claims to believe that to ridicule it I mean it is clearly a ridiculous belief but I was mistakenly thought to be saying what you want to do is ridicule the person I quoted the British journalist Johann Hari who said I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs and I think I now would want to change that a bit and say I respect you too much to believe that you could possibly hold those ridiculous beliefs and I encourage people to when they meet somebody who holds a ridiculous belief like that to really say do you really believe that are you seriously telling me that that's what you what you believe and encourage them either to deny it in which case to deny their the religion to which they claim to belong or to defend it and say no it's not ridiculous for the following reason and talk about Thomas Aquinas and accidents and and the things like that and if they can convince somebody that is not ridiculous then well and good but don't let them hide behind the screen of saying oh that's my religion it's private you can't criticize it because it's my religion it should be criticized and it should be defended if it's defensible and I think that if that were applied to politicians who are present in the United States it's obviously not true in Australia because you actually have an atheist Prime Minister that in the United States there are 535 members of Congress of whom 534 claim to be devout religious believers well that's a statistical nonsense of course they're not how could they be and so what I would think what I tried to encourage Americans to do was to challenge your Congressman a woman and say I don't think you really do believe that come out and actually say so don't hide behind the screen of secrecy that says religion is a private matter not to be not to be questioned and that doesn't go down well in America because there's this deep-seated view that religion is somehow a private matter but when you're trying to decide whether to vote for somebody you want to know his policy on taxation his policy on on foreign policy on end on the Iraq war he wanted his policy on all those sorts of things if you know that quite apart from his policies he holds some utterly nutty belief like that a wafer turns literally into the body of a first-century Jew just because a priest blesses it I mean that is barking mad and do you want to vote for somebody who's capable of holding in his head and nonsensical belief of that sort and you they should not be allowed to get away with saying oh that's private it's religion you couldn't argue about my taxation policy but you can't argue my nut in the leaves well and I think but you know I want a sort of slightly differ with you there I defended you the next day I was in TV and they asked me of this ridicule question and and I pointed that well in principle nothing nothing sacred no idea is sacred and the way and ridicule at least if you turning to satire you know I like to tell jokes and and and as a part of teaching and I think it's a part it's a key part of life from Jonathan Swift on I mean the idea satire is a way of illuminating the the ridiculous inconsistencies of life in a more in a more non-threatening way than confronting people and and if you if you can make fun of something it's a way of really pointing things out so in my country where most people get their news from something called The Daily Show or The Colbert Report because you know the satire there is where is much more informative often than the nightly news and so I think ridicule is in that sense not to be vindictive or mean but to hold the ideas up and and in fact are we're both good friends and we'll both be talking about we're both be attending this Blake global atheist convention and you and I are both giving little talks about our late friend Christopher Hitchens who was a remarkable man and he he used to point out that that was the the key thing is the hardest thing to talk about are the most obvious bits of nonsense a child can ask it it's the emperor's new clothes why is the emperor not wearing clothes in and - and to do that and to subject religion and anything else in life to humor and satire I think is a very important way of exposing his problems the last thing I want to hit before we turn to questions I guess is for me we talked about it one of the most liberating things about science in some sense is forcing your mind to open up so I want to ask you and I'll be happy to answer the same question if you want is what in your scientific career was the hardest thing for you to accept but changed your was the hardest thing to intuitively you know you really had to set aside some some pret deep-seated prejudice in your own mind Oh well if we're talking about a big thing it would be how you can get something from nothing and we talked about that if you want to talk about a specific thing a more de more detailed thing in my own field it would be the demonstration from molecular biology comparative molecular genetics that whales closest cousins are hippopotamuses hippopotamuses are closer cousins to whales then hippopotamuses are two pigs or cows or sheep so in my traditional view as a zoologist hippopotamuses were firmly within the even-toed ungulates the cloven hoofed animals and we were taught as undergraduates that they they were bracketed with pigs so you had hippos and pigs and then you had the rest of the even-toed ungulates causal and cheap and things like that what molecular biology is telling us is that whales spring out in the evolutionary tree from right within the cloven hoofed animals whales are closer to hippos than hippos are to pigs now that that's a strictly phylogenetic are strictly cladistic as we say way of way of talking but it is an amazing I mean it's not that surprising when you when you start reflecting on it because whales by going into the sea emancipated themselves from all the pressures of a land animal so pigs and cows and antelopes and sheep are all land animals constrained to live as land animals which is why they've stayed as cloven-hoofed animals and whales by going into the sea have been able to take off like giant balloons and just into something utterly different but the fact remains that their closest cousins are actually hippos they spring from right within the even-toed hoofed cloven-hoofed animals and that that's something that that molecular genetics has has turned upside down my world the world away of a offers over zoologist educated just at the start of the molecular biology revolution for me it was I mean obviously this is you you get used to a strange world relativity quantum mechanics all these I mean as a student you learned that these basic ideas of space and time that you grew up with her are not the case at all and parent paradoxes are possible but I but but for me it right now it's deeper and it's I wrote about the new book it's this possibility that the laws of physics are an accident because it goes against everything that made me want to become a scientist I became a scientist because I wanted to understand why the universe had to be the way it is and if it's really true that it's just an accident it's really disappointing in a sense because it really means that you know and you know Einstein asked the question he phrased it poorly said did God have any choice in the creation of the universe that's one last questions looking and and what he meant was was but there only one set of laws of nature where if you change any any fundamental constant by a little bit will everything fall apart and of course most of us who grow up to you physicists felt yeah that's probably the case and we won't understand the unifying field theory the the fundamental theory that makes the world be the way it is but everything that we're now learning in physics is suggesting the opposite is more likely that in fact it may just be that the universe is the way it is because there may be many universes and if it were any different we wouldn't be here to ask the question so another answer the question why is there something rather nothing is if there were nothing you wouldn't be around to answer the question or ask it but that possibility is so disgusting if you grew up as a scientist that to me it's surprising but it also reflects to me what I think is the great the greatest aspect of science is that if it turns out to be the case then even though I believed in my heart of hearts that it couldn't be that way I'll throw that belief out like yesterday's newspaper and and the one thing that I hope that happens to every student here I've said this before but I'll say it again because I think it's so important is that at some point in your career as students that you will have some idea something that was central to your being that makes you who you are that is central to everything that you think makes up what's important about the universe shown to be wrong because that's the liberating impact of science that will truly open your mind up to the remarkable universe we live in well thank you for listening to us now and now I'm going to what I'd like to do is open the floor to a half an hour of questions and so if you would come to the microphones they're going to be people Manning Manning the microphones and and we'll be happy to answer your questions try and make sure their questions and if you don't make sure they're questions you can be sure one of us will we'll stop you and then hand the house lights up a bit maybe we could turn the house lights up a bit I don't know if we can and I should say well while you're getting to ask the questions the other bit of housekeeping is after the question period is over we will be signing books out outside so you can you can get them but you can come ask questions quickly if you even if you don't have a book to sign I don't think we either of us will agree however to sign tonight any body parts speak for yourself are we are we ready okay good evening I just recently reread the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and in that book he makes a very strong connection between judeo-christian religions and the idea that the world was put here by full man and not that not that man is of the world and he said unless we change his fundamental attitude that comes out of religion or strongly connected with religion we will never really be able to tackle the environmental issues and to face the changes that we're going to need to make to improve the environment and first of all do you agree with that point of view and do you think that we can truly make progress in changing the way in which humanity uses the resources of the world if we don't first tackle the fundamental problem of that religious belief you want to start a new stuff okay it is it is a huge problem in fact it was explicitly demonstrated again in my country there's a not running for president called Rick Santorum and and he specifically when it comes to climate change which by the way in the United States is is the vast majority of the public believe climate change is a hoax all all polls suggest that now because it then because a tremendous amount of money has been spent on that but using Fox News yeah exactly and but but he's presented that it's a hoax propagated by scientists who who aren't who are who care more about the earth than they do about humans that that humans have been given dominion over the earth and the earth will take care of itself so that is a problem but at the same time to be fair there are movements in indeed evangelical movements in the United States there's a whole wing of different religious groups that are now saying we have to accept the fact that that that that the earth is a dynamic a entity that have that the changes and we're impacting in a negative way so somehow that message is getting but I think you're absolutely right if you don't recognize that the universe doesn't care about us that it's not going to always make it right then you're not well then you're not prepared to address the challenges of the 21st century which is one of the reasons we're getting back to what I said earlier why I think it's a problem to base your public policy on myths it may be more comforting but you'll be comforted all the way to the point where vast parts of the population of the world will lose their land and so the comfort will lead you right over a cliff yes I think I think the most obvious problem is is that that religious one but even if we were to agree on what the best policy was to save the world it's it's a bigger problem to achieve the political unanimity to actually put into practice what what the scientists will tell us we need to do so it is a very very there's a very very big political problem I actually let me ask you a questions as you know with your as pessimistic as I am about this well there I I see no evidence at all that we will we are act all of the challenges of 21st century are now global challenges they're no longer local from energy to the environment to population all of these things that have to be addressed and I see no likelihood that the political systems the world will allow those to be direct addressed instead they'll have to be dip will have to deal with the consequences rather than then-then-then addressing them proactively do you think that's like colleague Martin Rees is even more pessimistic of things that actually we will be lucky to survive the 21st century because with weapons of mass destruction becoming available not just to major scientific powers like they were in the past but available to any nutcase who actually wants to die a martyr's death then it the outlook is even more I don't want you to be depressed about that by the I would I will say I was telling Richard friend of mine McCormack McCarthy was a writer at a very bleak writer is a very cheerful fellow and I asked him how come you're so cheerful he said well I'm a pessimist but that's no reason to be gloomy I'd like to question your religion because it seems to me that you make science a religion in itself in what way well it seems like that's kind of a Richard Dawkins coach Richard organism like science really nothing is certainly in science it works in statistics you can't prove anything to 100 percent so how can you make how can you say that science is better than religion then what you're trying to do is still what aren't people that bring order to the world you can't prove anything to a hundred percent but a hundred percent is a hell of a lot better than zero percent which is what you couldn't prove by religious reasoning and I guess giving up I mean I think it let me try again on on on that the idea that's that science is is a religion when in fact science is interested in evidence and will and is prepared to change its mind if contrary evidence comes in that's very very different from a religion as Lauren said earlier in science we constantly open to the possibility of having to change our minds and science proceeds by progressive refinement and changing minds and there that there are things that I suppose we'll never be disproved things like that the planets orbit the Sun that's never going to change I don't think that the fact of evolution is ever going to be disproved it's always going to be going to be true that we are cousins of chimpanzees and of monkeys and of kangaroos so there are certain things that we that we definitely know to be true the evidence is so overwhelming that to in Steven gules words to object would be perverse but so-called religious truths have absolutely no evidence going for them whatsoever that if I challenged you as Richard Dawkins you probably have a problem with that doesn't mind y'r no no it really seems you know you know you're challenging me now and I'm and I'm accepting the challenge okay fair enough look I'm in Catholic I don't agree with what Josh Pell things but I don't think he's a pedophile either lights no I don't suppose he is you know I don't know I've never asked my point is that you as an eminent scientist if I challenge your scientific doctrine maybe your theories are opening you you disagree with me well I I will I mean when is they disagree I will say where is your evidence here's my counter evidence ah let's sit down together and look at the evidence I mean that's very different from saying that that I'm arguing from Authority in fact let me jump in Authority that's the key point Richard is not an authority I'm not an authority there are no scientific authorities that's a key point there scientific experts Richard knows a lot about zoology I know a lot about physics but there's no one whose views are not subject to question and that's the key point and there's no student that should ever be afraid of saying - professor in a science class you're wrong and here's why exception Germany exactly maybe I think we'd like to see you upset why I'm just when I'm kissing you now like you know isn't that the same thing yeah isn't it like you're one of my professors well I know what I think weird we're out trying to have a discussion but maybe I think the point I made maybe we should move on I mean well you say you're a Roman Catholic and I also I also started physics yes but I mean do you think the wafer turns into the body of Jesus no good I'm delighted you're not really and the other thing that's important about science and and we had this discussion last night in them and the Muslims feel like I might accept like you know people didn't really buy the whole relativity they went up and I on some press came up with it you know though people like you know it was when there's almost like two started dying that was when people started accepting but the differences you know it's that there's a fundamental difference and and you should really appreciate this that I'm surprised in some sense you don't yet but I hope you will is that listen listen to me for a second is that there's a difference between a story and something that makes predictions and the only thing that really makes science really interesting is it works and so last night I when I was debating with this Muslim I challenge him when he said its rationalize it you're joking I have two choices I do the Heimlich maneuver or I pray for you which do you want me to do and I think the real point of science is that it works and if it didn't work none of us would give a damn about it really the things that works in Tucson comes up with a bed a theory right what was that no it works with the khari apps an airplane works the lights in this room were clean are you like utilize until someone came up with a better theory yeah so that's that's what happens that's what make anyway I don't okay yeah I think we shouldn't move on no everyone here has been scared away you may have partially answered my question but I was interested in my questions about truths and it was raised last night but not too soon it's whether you believe that you can arrive at truth other than through direct observation logic rationality and reason in other words other other pathways to truth and a related question is do either of you have any sympathy for the view that in some instances truth is culture bound and what's true for another who Indian may not be true for hard scientists thanks why you start um I once was having an argument with a social anthropologist who said that he was studying a tribe that believed that the moon was only a few feet above the treetops and that he said that that was true for that tribe and he said that that the scientific truth that the moon is a large sphere of rock a quarter of a million miles away whatever it is is only true for Western scientific culture and that his tribal culture their truth is every bit as valid I strongly objected to that on the grounds that Laura just said that the that the truth of science works if you build things using what what science what scientists think is true then they work and you can actually go to the moon if you correctly compute the necessary orbits the necessary escape velocity and so on it works whereas other culturally bound so-called truths don't work and I think that's that's all there is to be said really and I also rather sarcastically said to the anthropologist when you go to an international convention of social anthropologists you get on board a Boeing 747 not a magic carpet exactly and I think you're havin said you're a hypocrite if you think the earth is 6,000 years old and you drive a car because the same laws of chemistry and physics that like the car work tell us the earth is not 6,000 years old but I want I want to sort of add to the point you said a little bit because in fact you got hit on last night for something for reflecting an important aspect of science when you said you can't absolutely prove that there's no God because it's true you can but science does is it the another major misconception about science is its influence of all is involved with the truth science cannot prove something to be absolutely true there are no absolute truths in science that's also how it differs from religion science can prove things to be absolutely false that's how science progresses because think an idea that disagrees with the evidence of experiment is false and it's false today it'll be false tomorrow I can hold a ball up I can predict that it will fall up I check it falls down that idea I throw out the window I could say the earth is flat I go out it isn't flat we don't need constructive criticism classes forever to debate whether the earth is flat around so but what we do in science is we get rid of all the falsehoods and what remains has an element of truth but even if something satisfies the test of every experiment today and in fact that's what this young lady was referring to it doesn't mean that we won't discover we have to modify it being Newtonian gravity to general relativity or classical mechanics the quantum mechanics or whatever we're going to learn at the edge of physics or a biology but so we progress but we never say we know the absolute truth because that is an incredibly that's an eclaim that's Anathem at a science it's just not the way science works in the game science nature identifies two of nihilism or what he calls not listen one of those is the belief in some transcendental meaning how the other is the crude denial of that meaning atheism being defined as sort of the opposite to theology do you think in that respect in some sense it implicitly carries with it some parts of our theology and that way still is within a theological sort of framework no Evie that's a technical term um I well is it I hate I hesitate to enter into a philosophical discussion except I would argue that complete that that the kind of atheism that Richard and I talked about is not a complete denial of anything it's an it's a question of what's likely and Rick that's what Richard was saying last night you know we can I can't prove that there isn't a teapot orbiting Mars but it's not likely and everything we know about the universe at least for Richard and I leaves us the illusion there's no evidence of purpose or of divine intervention but that doesn't mean we argue definitively that we can prove that that can't be the case so we're not denying we're just asserting the evidence of reality and in fact I don't describe myself as an atheist I have learned from my friend again Christopher Hitchens I I describe myself as an anti theist namely I cannot prove that there's no god I just certainly wouldn't want to live in a universe with one I know if you want to add anything I know okay to come claim made by religious people is that you cannot disprove the existence of God do you think science will ever advance to a point where it can disprove the existence of God and if so would religious people become atheists for what they find something else to believe in actually some some religious people have been asked that I mean specifically with respect to Christianity they've been Christians have been asked what if archaeological evidence showed conclusively that Jesus never existed and and many of them said no I would just I would go on believing in him which is hard to credit but I think people want I mean it's the x-files got it right people want to believe and I think that people want to believe in belief and and you point it out I mean the young ly describe yourself a Catholic but what most people who describe themselves a religious don't accept the doctrines literally of their religion they pick and choose the ones they like that they find acceptable and throw out the others and they say and what they really want to believe isn't believing and it's really hard to give up believing there's no doubt about that but but but I would say to answer your question it sign the assertion of existence of God is always not falsifiable and science can only deal with questions that are not falsifiable I cannot prove that we weren't all created here 35 seconds ago with the memory of a remarkable evening and I can't prove that it's another possible question was that Bertrand Russell he was that example and he said complete with holes in our socks yeah exactly and so so at some level you can't fault if it's not falsifiable science can't address it on the other hand what you can do is amass evidence and understanding and and what we now for a small example of that is biology the notion of intelligent design the notion that we're intelligently designed is clearly been shown to be beyond the pale to be so so much counter evidence that it's so high likely as to be thrown out no sensible person talks about it except the the Cardinal and a few other people but well I keep doing this no it's true no sense of person talk to that but so but I think that's as far as you can go is going to be a bit of a change of subject but I'm watching to see what Richard himself and maybe even Lawrence for the similar experience thinks of people on the internet and even to a lesser extent in real life misc waiting or taking what you say face value almost raising what you say or who you are to a godlike status I'm sure there people here who have browsed web sites such as reddit seen things on Facebook for Channel people who just kind of use you or people so just Carl Sagan as Neil deGrasse Tyson people who say important things and who are smart obviously but they just take what they say face value how do you feel about that being used in like an atheistic cotton argument you know people it kind of almost reversing the tables they're almost treating you guys on a god-like service it's kind of I don't know how would you feel about that or have you even observed that in the first place I don't think I have observed it but if I did I would be very disturbed I would be very upset if anybody treated me the way Roman Catholics are taught to treat the Pope which I mean I think it's a it's a truly horrible idea you always make me kiss your ring every time I meet you I think it's a it's a truly horrible idea that that anybody should believe something simply because person X believes it and tells them that that's what they've got to believe it's one of the most disagreeable parts of the Roman Catholic Church that it that it constantly argues from authority and passes the word down especially when the word is frankly made up in the first place in fact you know it I mean I'm happy when people quote us you know if they like what we say but again I found it in the bay yesterday it's really interesting when I read people may say this is the case because so-and-so wrote it because it whether it's you or me or Carl Sagan or whoever or a philosopher and it's like what does it matter what they say that what they say they could be wrong you know and and so it really is important whenever anyone starts quoting something by saying so-and-so said this say it doesn't matter what so-and-so said it really you know they could be wrong what's the evidence for that and so yeah absolutely agree it's it's an awful way of arguing and unfortunately it's a way of arguing in a number of different fields and thirdly theology that there's a famous story that Galileo was once demonstrating something through his telescope to SAP to somebody and the man looked through the through the telescope and said Senor Galileo your demonstration is so convincing were it not that Aristotle positively states the contrary I would believe you I think we have time we'll take one more question here one more question there I'm sorry for the people who were over there and you should have come over here no but anyway yes um I'm assuming you guys invited friends the Bible properly I'm interested in what your favorite story from the Bible is simply because you can't read a book and not find something good about it like I know the Bible is mostly owned sorry but being involved with someone who has actually read the Bible and being forced to listen to it myself I do know that there are some good ideas morals stories whatever you want to call home interesting on what your favorite one is I'm not sure that I have a favorite story I think I mean my my two favorite books of the Bible are the song of songs which it which is not by Solomon by the way it's it's a collection of erotic poems and at least in the in the in the authorized version it's extremely beautiful I suspect it's been completely murdered in in modern versions and the other one is Ecclesiastes that these two books come together in the in any Old Testament and they're both lyrically beautiful and these in the 17th century English and I read both of them frequently I wouldn't call them call them stories neither of rare stories but they are they're hauntingly beautiful yeah in fact well it's not surprising I agree it's a lyricism of certain aspects of the Bible that are beautiful and in fact because if you think about how the Bible was written it was written by taking songs poems the literature of the time and sometimes adapting the most beautiful stories of the time in fact a friend of ours Anthony grayling I was of loss of her remarkably is I wrote a beautiful book which I really recommend called the good book which is he tried to do in a secular way with the Bible that he borrowed the most beautiful poems songs stories of the love right through human history and put it in a way in the form of the Bible without mentioning God but it's a it's a book about the how we've learned to live well based on the most beautiful things that humans have said and I think I suspect that it's that it's that beautiful lyricism of that part of the Bible that that I that I've enjoyed reading the most as well I think I wouldn't take it in the modern translation if you think about the most same lines from Ecclesiastes vanity of vanities set the preacher all is vanity at least one modern translation I've seen says futile futile is all futile mm-hmm it won't do but actually that does relate to something that's often said is that if you if you when you talk about the Bible and one of the things our comments have happened again last night to me is that people say well you know if you don't you don't really understand what the reason you're criticizing is you don't read or Aramaic or or Arabic in the case of the Koran and the answer which again was given by Chris Richards is it's hard to believe that God is a Montague lot I mean that that somehow if you don't read Hebrew that you missed the point anyway one more last but one lesson oh good yeah we didn't get I'm sorry upstairs that's okay um Mike I just want to say I wholeheartedly agree with everything you believe in and I believe in nothing let me get that clear I don't think so I don't believe in anything well yeah okay I'm agnostic maybe an anti-police is not a word I use but a great agree on everything except perhaps your approach and allow me to plot politely disagree here I studied political science and in political science and if you look at history the church the scientific institutions and the state have always been in constant conflict and turmoil it's a struggle of power relations between these three sort of societal constructs and it was it was the case in Darwin's time and Darwin was very hesitant to even broach his subject of the Origin of Species because of you know opposition from the church and and even some of his fellow scientists and those we don't live in that same world today but in politics power comes not just from conflict but power comes from liberation and I guess my only criticism of the atheist approach as I see it is that this idea of conflicting with religious groups of politely ridiculing people with religious beliefs can perhaps have more of negative consequence for furthering the reason and logic as things to as the higher purpose of society then it does good and so I'm going to post two questions to you the first question is what does what does success look like for say the Atheist movement and is success achievable through polite ridiculed people of religious beliefs I think that's a very fair question and one of the things that Edward o Wilson he's gone off the rails in his latest book but in an earlier book he made the point that we have some really really serious problems for Humanity to solve and the time is running out and we need to get people of goodwill whatever their religious beliefs or lack of them to get together and so he wants to compromise for precisely the reasons you're talking about and to get decent reasonable religious people on our side as opposed to the nuts like Santorum and and that I think there is a lot to be said for that and if your goal is say to to make the world a better place then I think that could be something to be said for making a compact with the relatively recent I mean people like the Archbishop of Canterbury decent intelligent religious people if your if your aim however is to understand the universe if your aim is that of a scientist then I cannot help feeling I cannot help regarding all religions as somehow counter to that aim and so I think I agree with you about about the politics of making the world a better place but my ultimate aim would be to to try to understand the world and understand the the universe and there I can't help finding religion the enemy uh you know it's interesting question is it similar to the first question we ever talk with yours net we have somewhat differing views on this although I think again we've we've come together in certain ways but I'm sympathetic to what you're saying in many ways if the question is what are you trying to achieve I think as a scientist absolutely you cannot compromise I agree with Richard and Carly however is an educator which I also have a hat on I firmly believe that my I have no interest in arguing against God or religion it's not of interest to me all I'm interested in is getting people interested in learning how the universe really works because that's so amazing and if there's a consequence they give up a belief in God that's fine because I think inevitably that will happen but that doesn't matter to me what really is more important I think is ultimately getting people to take the blinders off one way or another and if and you're absolutely right the only way to reach people is to seduce them is to is to go to where they are and and get them interested and it's to some extent although the effect has been - sometimes the opposite as a word last night the book I just wrote was to use religion as a seduction tool the question why is there something rather nothing sounds like a religious question but I get to sneak in all of modern cosmology anyway thank you very much Richard Lawrence one of the things you can't do without a moderator easily is to thank yourselves that that's my role here I'm going to be the moderator it gives me a chance to have the last word - very very grateful here one of the things an institution like the ANU is about is about debate and ideas and what we've heard this evening is a very intimate conversation and that's really quite a remarkable thing to do in a place like the wellin Hall but it's a conversation and questions and a debate about things that matter to us from two respected scientists in biology and in physics and it's been interesting and enthralling so once again can you join with me to thank Lawrence and Richard I did say I did say I do want the last word and I was trying think to think hard how to get out of this and so I want to take a quote and it's a quote from an Irishman because of course the Irishmen have the best quotes but it's a quote from the comedian Dave Allen and for those of you old enough like me Dave Allen was a comedian that spent much of his life actually challenging religion the various reasons particularly Catholicism and anger ISM and the way he always used to finish was to say good evening thank you and may your God go with you thank you you

Channel: Tony Sobrado

Views: 654,178

Rating: 4.6712246 out of 5

Keywords: Cosmology, Scientific Realism, Explanation, Naturalism, Materialism, Kalam Cosmological Argument

Id: CXGyesfHzew

Length: 92min 17sec (5537 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 25 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/FissureKing]

I have never seen them used in this way.

[u/Sir_Osis_of_Liver]

The strength of this authoritative argument depends upon two factors:

• The authority is a legitimate expert on the subject.

• There exists consensus among legitimate experts in the subject matter under discussion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

I'm not sure if quoting them really rises to the level of the argument from authority logical fallacy. Getting a political scientist's opinion on breaker trip settings would.

[u/The_Countess]

isn't "argument form authority" saying this is true because this person says it is.

i haven't seen Krauss or Dawkins used in that way. and everything they say they can provide sources for and their arguments make inherent sense, they never say 'it is just true' they say this is true and here is why.

[u/n1ght5talker]

I think this is taken a partially and mildly out of context, the questioner (besides needing to learn to shut up after he asks his question rather then repeat himself over and over) mentioned raising Dawkins up to god-like level and that is very much the extreme of what you see when you get an argument from authority using Dawkins. Most of the time when people are using quotes from Dawkins they are using the quote to substitute their own arguments, where their arguments are grounded in reason and the Dawkins quote is only used as further benefit.

[u/DKN19]

It's the difference between evidence and support. I would have no qualms about quoting various intellectual giants as support, but it's not the same as evidence. If all the smart people agreed towards something without a structured attempt to prove anything, I'd consider that sort of argument either compelling or not compelling. It's wouldn't be a question of proof or no proof.

[u/_galadorn_]

If there's one thing I'm sick of on r/atheist its those pictures of Dawkins/Tyson/Hitchens/Sagan posed against the starts/black background looking all blowy with some generic quote from their writings hovering by their head. I think they all, esp. Hitchens, would hate that

[u/takemehomeimdrunk]

Interesting.

[u/dmdlolz]

It must be true if they say it!

[u/[deleted]]

Please, asker, read this.