Richard Dawkins and Herb Silverman in Charleston, SC

I'm Sean Faircloth I'm the director of strategy and policy with the Richard Dawkins foundation and we did notice coming from the foundation from Washington DC that you seem to have a lot of churches here in South Carolina but I want you to know that we have some houses of worship in Washington DC as well welcome Betty climb on up some of you may be familiar with some of our houses of worship for instance some of you might know the name of Mark Sanford who participated in C Street have a seat over yes C Street is was alleged to be a house of worship really it was a rooming house a rooming house for politicians who got low-cost housings who claimed that they were very very religious but then it became more notoriously known because they got a tax deduction for having religious services at this so-called Church but then it became known as the pray boy mansion because Mark said for another they were enjoying services alright and they may have even shouted Oh God but these were not the type of services for which you normally get a tax deduction so I encourage all of you tonight in honor of Mark Sanford by the way to get some cardiovascular health and get out tonight and hike the Appalachian Trail in his honor you know there really is no state like your state as a ten year politician I have to tell you that in the pantheon of politicians there are no politicians like South Carolina politicians yeah cast your mind back a little ways to Lee Atwater who expressly joined evangelicalism with right-wing politics John Calhoun who considered himself a religious man and was the leading proponent of slavery in the United States in the 1800s congressman Preston Brooks for some of you who have your memory of history who considered himself a devout Christian and who nearly beat to death an abolitionist senator with a cane on the floor of the United States Senate Strom Thurmond the man who bolted the Democratic Party adamantly opposing the mixing of the races some of you may recall the irony in that one and Jim DeMint I'm not making this up Jim DeMint who said that women should not be able to communicate with their doctors over the internet about their reproductive choices had yeah as to paraphrase Joe Wilson no lie and culminating culminating with Tim Scott Tim Scott who said and I quote him the greatest minority under assault today are Christians he said this while of course opposing women rights and equality for gay people and he said and I'm quoting you can look no further than the Word of God for a moral compass and in fact you can look there in 1850 in this city a prominent clergyman a theologian James Thornwell declared and I quote that those who have sought to abolish slavery were quote atheists and socialists and that in Contra yes and that in contrast slaveholders were and I quote the friend of order and regulated freedom and he concluded quoting the world is the battleground Christianity and atheism the combatants and the progress of humanity is at stake well I couldn't agree with that last statement more and but the future that was the past you in this room are the future people like Amy Manske the president of the secular humanist Ilocos where's Amy where's Amy didn't have applause now Amy and all of you are willing to take on a challenge and I think you are doing a fantastic job and we want to thank the secular humanists a Lowcountry for sponsoring this talk tonight we also want to thank the College of Charleston the hosting includes the biology department the philosophy department the Religious Studies department and the secular student groups a big round of applause for all of them now now I want to turn my attention to South Carolina's own herb Silverman herb Silverman is distinguished professor emeritus at the College of Charleston recipient of the distinguished research award founder and president emeritus of the secular Coalition for America founder of the secular humanists of the Lowcountry you should read his blog at the Washington Post on faith where he regularly comments on issues and herb has appeared in numerous debates throughout the entire world including one at the Oxford Union in Oxford England his book which is entitled candidate without a prayer an autobiography of a Jewish atheist in the Bible Belt is a book I highly recommend and he has long been closely associated with Richard Dawkins now Richard Dawkins and I checked with another scientist to make sure I had this right and they said I could say this Richard Dawkins is the most cited scientist alive as many of you know because I see you holding them he is the author of many best-selling books including his upcoming autobiography do this fall childhood boyhood truth now you might think the most cited scientist alive many best-selling books but he goes even further instead of resting on his laurels and I have to say that I've been humbled to be direct witness to this as opening speaker for three of his book tours I have seen time and again people come up to Richard Dawkins and say you have changed my life over and over I hear people say this and so I have to say I have to say that of the names of men born before 1945 who have such huge appeal to people born after 1975 those names are apparently Dylan McCartney Jagger and Dawkins and this this is where the lives of these two very important men in history intertwine herb Silverman south carolina's herb Silverman had a great vision for uniting secular groups to a common cause and herb and I are passionate and share this desire to organize with all of you to have secularism have a greater influence in society and Richard Dawkins is the astoundingly effective voice and catalyst to a huge and growing social movement a cause to which I will devote my life and I'm hoping that each and every one of you in this room will devote devote a part of your life to the cause of freeing the world of dogma freeing the world of the harm that Springs from fundamentalism which is a prominent part of the mission of the Richard Dawkins foundation for reason and science let's all work together and without further ado herb Silverman and Richard Dawkins thank you well herb is this microphone on no does this work mine is hello yeah herb I know you never wear t-shirts and so I thought I'd try to reform you by presenting you with this new product of our website religion together we can find the cure thank you very much Richard you've converted me into wearing t-shirts from now on you know I'm not used to walking out on the stage and getting a standing ovation and I really enjoy it even though I know it's not for me but you know Richard I'd like to start by saying as a distinguished evolutionary biologist you did two things that very few academics or scientists ever even attempt first he wrote expository books like The Selfish Gene to explain science to non scientists but then you also became the most famous atheist in the known universe now was it your interest in promoting science to the general public that motivated you to engage with religion I love truth and I think that the truth about the world the truth about the universe is utterly exciting its enthralling it's exhilarating and it knocks into a cocked hat the sort of parochial petty medieval pre medieval Dark Age view of the world which is the religious view and therefore going against religion is for me an integral part of being an expository writer about science I couldn't imagine doing one without the other Thank You and speaking of religion and science you know we have here an annual Darwin Week at the College of Charleston I'm delighted to hear that that's wonderful well there there might be one concern you have that it's organized by an evolutionary biologist who's also a committed Christian and he and others believe that evolution and science are compatible and that if people had to choose one or the other as actually here in the Bible Belt most would wind up rejecting evolution do you think religion and science are compatible they're clearly compatible in the strict sense that there are many religious scientists and Francis Collins is one name that's always mentioned John Polkinghorne and other when you when you meet a religious scientist you ask exactly what do you believe in the case of Francis Collins in the case of John Polkinghorne you will get standard Christianity in many cases you won't get that in many cases what you'll get is a kind of einsteinium pantheism you'll get people who say oh I believe there's something mysterious in the universe there's something there's a deep mystery and I feel almost mystical but I look up at the stars and of course we all do if we've got any imagination that's what we do that's what Carl Sagan did that's what Einstein did Einstein was fond of using religious imagery Einstein said what I really want to know is did he meaning did God have any choice in creating the universe that didn't mean that Einstein believed in God what it meant was that Einstein was was a poetic way of saying he's there more than one way for a universe to be or is there only is there only one way when Einstein said but he does not play dice mimic again he meaning God does not play dice he was expressing his skepticism of Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle many times scientists who sound religious are actually only religious in the Einsteinian sense but still there are plenty of them who are genuinely religious who are devout Christians no doubt your colleague is one of them any self-respecting bishop or Archbishop or Cardinal or indeed Pope does believe in evolution that comes as something of a surprise I think to some fundamentalist it's fun fundamentalist Christians I personally do find an income incompatibility but that seems to be just me because there are as I say plenty of plenty of religious scientists yeah and and I I'm not sure if it's just that a lot of them were raised religious and feel that they need to keep in the religion of their birth because of their family or whether they really believe and I enjoy saying ok you believe in God what's your God like and just to see if it's some supernatural being watching over you or is it some kind of theistic God that then created the universe and retired as deity emeritus or even less or or even less though I mean a deist God who retired it seems to me to be every bit as improbable or not quite nearly as him as improbable as as a as a theistic God but I thought you were starting to say that many people who are observant members of a religious tradition yeah I mean I'm not an observant Christian but I consider myself a cultural Christian in the sense that I I mean I know a lot about the Bible I'd go to church on Christmas and cats and carols and things I think this applies to Jews probably even more I mean there's a sort of more of a loyalty toward to a to an ancient tradition which many Jews who are atheists nevertheless respect and actually perform Jewish ceremonies I don't think you do that but but but you probably have atheist friends who do I've hugely enjoyed your autobiography which Shaun mentioned at the beginning I need I think I wrote the foreword to it yeah I I hugely enjoyed the foreword my autobiography and I wanted to quote from right right at the beginning a rabbi delivered a moving sermon telling how we are nothing in this vast universe and that we must let God know we are appropriately humble after the sermon the assistant rabbi ran to the front of the congregation and yelled I am nothing next the rabbi's wife ran up and shouted I am nothing the president of the congregation did the same then a newcomer ran up yelling I am nothing that an old congregant poked the man sitting next to Ben complain so look who thinks he's nothing and herb used this as an example for the the difficulty which anybody faces when writing an autobiography he says although anyone who writes about himself must have a bit of an ego mine isn't so big that I think everything about me is noteworthy but the Suttons I think at lunchtime today herb you did add but myself is the only thing that I'm the world authority on and you also wrote writing your life story is more like being a suicide bomber you only get to do it once so after reading about my life perhaps you'll be inspired to write about yours well it's funny you should say that because I have in fact just completed Volume one of my autobiography well I'm glad that I inspired you and it's too late to ask for your advice on how to write vol 1 because it's unfortunately just finished but volume 2 hasn't even started yet and so I would like to discuss with you the problems of how to write an autobiography being humble and yet at the same time acknowledging that because you be persuaded by publishers to do it because even if somebody's interested in reading it I mean how are we going to do what you've done it already how do we do this well frankly Richard it's a lot easier for me to be humble than it is for you because you know publishers didn't run begging me to write my autobiography I wanted to do it in large part because you know I had come out as an atheist and I decided after that let me just come out with my life so I have essentially no secrets left much to my wife Sharon's dismay it's a sort of thing that I really wanted to write an honest account and I have another advantage over you here I'm a Jewish atheist living in the Bible Belt so that automatically gave me a lot of funny stories to write about so tell us some of them to submit well a lot of them are in the book but you know just running for governor and the reason I ran for governor is because I found out here in South Carolina atheists were not allowed to become governor so of course that made me want to run and it took and it took about eight years first as candidate for governor and the judge ruled that he would only rule in the emeriti won the election well you know to the surprise of no one I lost but then I found out I was ineligible for any public office and the only one that I had a chance of winning not even dogcatcher would be notary public so I applied for notary public and eventually with the South Carolina Supreme Court acknowledged that yes we should follow the US Constitution so I was granted my notary public after eight years and that's a large part of my autobiography but I also wrote about my family life I grew up as an Orthodox Jew where I thought like Reform Jews were almost as bad as Gentiles that's what we learned and you know eventually starting to be logical reaching the age of reason I started I decided I'll keep the parts of my religion that makes sense to me and discard those at them and it wasn't very long till God went also yeah well I love the bit up when you were running for governor to show the sincerity of your real motive I think a reporter asked you what would be your first act if you were to be elected and I think you said resign or demand a recount that's that's one before they even asked me what would it take to make you believe in God and I say maybe if I won the election but it would take that kind of a miracle but you know aside from having their religious beliefs punctured some people are skeptical about evolution because that in their mind takes too long to see any results what do you think is the simplest evidence for evolution to convince the unscientifically minded okay well on the point about it taking too long to get results that of course is true and that's inevitably true and if you don't understand that you can't even begin to understand I mean if you expect as some people do you know I'll believe in evolution when I see a monkey give birth to a human that Cup so you do have to appreciate that it is it does take a very very long time and you have to appreciate that there is a very very long time available and you know there are various analogies that have been developed to to express this and one of them as I like it's not my own so I can I can plug it is to stretch your arm out and say the origin of life is where my bow tie would be if I had one as beautiful as you the origin of life is there and the present is the tip of my longest finger and then you ask what what have we got as we walk along my arm well it's all bacteria out to about there we're talking about four billion years it's all bacteria out to about there dinosaurs come in about they're humans come in or hominid like creatures human-like creatures come in at about my near the tip of my fingernail and the whole of human history the whole of recorded history the Egyptians the Babylonians the Sumerians the ancient Greeks the Hebrews the Romans the whole of human history falls as the dust from one stroke of the nail file that's how insignificant historical time human historical time is compared to geological time in this geological time that we're dealing with when we talk about evolution so that's one thing to get across is the sheer magnitude of the time that's available it doesn't actually need all that much time evolution is actually faster than it needs to be there's more time than its than is required in order for in order for it to in order for it to work but you ask me what's the single most convincing evidence for it surprisingly it's not fossils I think fossils are very convincing and contrary to creationist myths there are lots and lots of them and they do show a very beautiful evolutionary progression creationists often say where are your intermediates where of course there are plenty of intermediates there are some gaps in the case of the turbo Larian flatworms there's one big gap because there aren't any fossils at all this is a very large diverse beautiful elegant group of animals which simply doesn't have any fossils so either they were all born yesterday okay you get you get the point not all animals do fossil eyes but what what is really telling is that there's not a single fossil in the wrong place the repledge of places where it would be nice to have a fossil and there isn't one but as JBS Haldane said we'd asked what would disprove evolution he said fossil rabbits in the Precambrian there aren't any and there's nothing remotely like that there are no fossils in the wrong place but fossils even so convincing as that is are not the most convincing evidence I think the most convincing evidence is probably molecular as something that wasn't available to Darwin Darwin was very convinced and convincing about comparative evidence he looked at the comparative skeletons for example of mammals and showed that the human hand has all the same parts down to extreme detail as a bat swing or a whales flipper or a rat's paw or a horse's hoof toes missing nowadays we can do that with milk with molecules and its many orders of magnitude more convincing because with DNA or with the protein that is directly produced by DNA coding you've got enormous quantities of digital literary text in every one of your cells and in every one of the cells of every living creature that's ever been looked at and you can directly compare these literary texts exactly as a biblical scholar might compare different versions of the Book of Isaiah or something like that and you could look for changes letter-by-letter changes and show that there is overwhelming evidence that living things fall on a family tree or at least a tree and there's no other explanation for having a tree like that of such detailed branching shape as a family tree you can do it for this molecule and that molecule and the other molecule and you get essentially the same tree to me that is the most convincing evidence almost equally convincing as the evidence from geographical distribution the distribution of animals and plants on the islands and continents of the world is exactly the way it should be if evolution has taken place and exactly the way it should not be if they had all dispersed from a ship marooned on the top of Mount Ararat yeah speaking of which you know yeah there are people who say well I believe in micro evolution but not macro evolution because humans are special that God just created humans and the way you describe it I could see why a lot of people might reject evolution because if we're special and the way we have bacteria and everything else over millions of years if there were a god we would seem humans would seem to be an afterthought yes I mean it I don't simply don't understand how anyone can think that all the rest of the animal kingdom has evolved but we haven't I mean we are so incredibly similar to chimpanzees I mean far more similar to chimpanzees than than chimpanzees are to monkeys for example so that that that simply doesn't make any sense macro evolution and micro evolution these are words that professional biologists do use but they're but there are particularly favorite words of creative creationists macro evolution is what you get when micro evolution goes on for a very long time that's all there is to it it's a bit like um the the transition from from baby to adult you might say is macro development and it happens gradually nobody ever well from adult to mitzi middle-aged to old it's not something that suddenly happened that you don't go to bed middle-aged and wake up next morning and say I seem to be old this morning it all happens gradually and that's the same thing with micro evolution it happens gradually and when enough of it has happened over in a sufficient number of millions of years what you've got is a change big enough to be called macro that's all there is to it because I even wondered about this humans have souls but other animals don't but for those who accept evolution what about the first human who came from nonhumans so yeah you know the sole problem seems to be quite problematic since this is standard this is now current Roman Catholic doctrine that yes yes we are involved yes yes we are cousins of chimpanzees but at some point God stepped in with his divine hypodermic and injected injected the soul so as you say there that that seems to suggest that there was a moment when a pair of hominids of some sort maybe they were archaic Homo sapiens maybe they were Homo erectus and they looked down in to their grass cradle somewhere in the African plains and said we seem to have given birth to the first since old Homo sapiens yeah and I think your wonderful book and your latest one the magic of reality talks about why there couldn't have been a first human like that and I think the book is very pro science but not necessarily anti religion you simply give different creation myths along with the biblical one and then you follow it by verifiable scientific explanations for what really happened now such an awesome scientific history is to me the greatest story ever told and I'm wondering if you called the story magic as in the magic of reality because that was awesome kind of magic well and what do you mean by magic yes I mean I think you could mean three different things by by magic what one of them is magic spells as in fairy tales where princes turn into frogs or is it wrong to turn into princes that that kind of thing that's macro-evolution yes yeah and the next is stage magic conjuring tricks which can be so incredible that new sort of you almost forced to believe they're supernatural but then if the conjurer is honest he'll tell you no it's not its it really is only a trick there are some countries who are fakes and charlatans would actually make a good living pretending that what they have or what they call super a paranormal powers there's one who I won't mention because he's the most litigious person on the planet he I once got a letter from a lawyer from his lawyer because I had referred to a spoon bending charlatan it seemed he recognized himself we're getting ringing could we stop it thank you hello okay so that's the second kind of magic oh and by the way this is this same spoon bending charlatan has I believe been paid large sums by oil companies if you please to use his psychic powers to divine where to dig for oil that's the second kind of magic the third kind of magic is the magic of reality the magic that you feel in your soul even when as I said earlier you look up at the stars when you look up at the Milky Way when you contemplate the expanding universe when you look into a microscope we look into an electron microscope and see the astonishing complexity and elegance of living things when you look at the Grand Canyon and you see the geological strata laid out before you this is all magical reality is magical and we've all been anesthetized by familiarity with reality because we experience reality every day since we were born and so we forget how utterly astounding it is to be given the privilege of living in this universe and science gives you the privilege of understanding it the privilege of understanding why you're here what it is how big it is old it is how did it start how it's going to end how did life start what was the history of life this is granted to you as a citizen of the 21st century it was not granted to a citizen of the 17th century or the 18th century it was about half granted to a citizen of the 19th century and so it is an astonishing privilege and it's magical to enjoy that privilege of living in reality and and understanding it that was to me a very moving explanation with one exception and that was when you say I felt deep in my soul what I worry is that there are going to be people out there says even Richard Dawkins believes in souls yeah you have to watch your language yeah that's what you were talking about Albert Einstein and others who can misinterpret me right heaven and I should have been more careful we knew what you meant if anybody in here who would who would misunderstand that but but it is going to go out is being filmed and it's going to go out let me tell you a cautionary tale about that can I sure um I was having a debate in Oxford with a actually a mathematician and I knew because I'd had a previous debate with him that he literally believes that Jesus was born of a virgin and literally believes that Jesus turned water into wine and this astonished me because I was accustomed to the idea of being being told I mean I'd been either were bullied for going after easy targets going after fundamentalist nut jobs when what I should have been doing is going after sophisticated theologians here was a sophisticated theologian who believed that Jesus turned water into wine and I was sort of staggered by this anyway I met him a couple of years later in another debate in Oxford and I wanted to make the point that here was a sophisticated theologian who believe these astonishingly naive things now I used a technique which I've called the Eddington concession Eddington was a famous astronomer who wanted to make the point that the second law of thermodynamics has something very very special about it something the second law of thermodynamics is a is a scientific law like no other was what the point he wanted to make and he made it like this he used a rhetorical trick he said you may your theory may disagree with Maxwell's equations well so much the worse for Maxwell's equations your theory may disagree with observed facts well so much what the worse for the observed facts these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes but if your theory disagrees with the second law of thermodynamics I can offer you no hope there is nothing for it but but to I think he said dissolving in deepest humiliation now you see what Eddington was doing he wasn't for one moment saying that he disagreed with Maxwell's equations he wasn't for one moment saying these experimental physicists really do bungle things all the time he was using the rhetorical trick of going out of his way bending over backwards to make concessions in order to emphasize that this rarely rarely special point about the second law and I call that the Eddington concession I used the Eddington concession on this Oxford mathematician I said to him I could just about believe that there's a d-stick God who created the universe and created the laws of physics and sexual going and set up conditions such that galaxies would form and stars would form and chemistry and elements would would condense chemistry would form life would start evolution and so on I could just about believe in a deer stick god I don't actually believe in it but that at least would be a respectable idea we could have an argument about that but my opponent on this platform believes that Jesus turned water into wine okay you see what I was doing I was using the Eddington concession in order to emphasize the absurdity of his believing that Jesus turned water into wine and he muttered and fumbled and couldn't really handle it two days later he went up to Scotland and gave a speech I wasn't there but a colleague of mine was she was sitting in the audience she took notes detailed notes and what he said to that Scottish or it's was two days ago I was in Oxford and Dawkins agreed that there is a deer stick god he didn't quite say that he said Dawkins moved a long way to accepting that there is a deer stick god this is real progress now that is dishonest yeah that is flagrantly dishonest he must have known that I was using I didn't call it the Eddington concession but he must have understood the rhetorical trick I was I was using he he clearly didn't didn't really believe that I had made a concession this was this was sheer dishonesty this is what we call lying for Jesus and you're right herb to pull me up on that was rather a long digression but but you're right to pull me up on having used the word soul because what is vulnerable to somebody wantonly and mendacious ly saying that I believe in the soul in a sense of say something immortal that goes on after we're dead you know in terms of evolution there's some people who don't necessarily attack the science of evolution but its consequences like it leads to social Darwinism Darwinism the survival of the fittest and then of course the Holocaust you know what I really liked about your book is that the magic of reality is to me I got the opposite impression for instance one of the things I like the best and I think children would also especially appreciate it is the picture you had of ancestors over different generations who barely resembled you but eventually stopped resembling you and then you went to a your hundred and eighty fifth million great-great-grandfather and you turn the page and it shows a picture of a fish now that's such a visual puts into perspective I think these fights that we have today about our differences on race ethnicity gender sexual orientation when we think you know we have we came or came from this fish we all came from this fish but we all humans are extremely close cousins we are actually a very uniform species it's hard to to realize that because we see apparently great differences and maybe that our senses and particularly geared to see greatest differences or it may be that the differences are all superficial things like um things like skin colour but actually if you look at it genetically the human species is far more uniform than many other species including chimpanzees it's been said that to chimpanzees in the same forest are genetically more different from each other than any two human beings anywhere in the world so humans are a very very unique uniquely uniform uniform species we are very very close cousins it's it's it's a salutary political lesson to say how closely related related we are the accusation that that Darwinism leads to leads to social Darwinism leads to leads to ultimately turn to Nazism he ism is a vile calumny it's frequently used even if it were true it wouldn't make Darwinism false right I mean what scientifically true is scientifically true whether or not it has ever been used to to inspire horrible political doctrines actually if you search the pages of buying camp you will find not a single mention of Darwin not a single mention of evolution plenty of mentions have got God and Providence so Hitler himself although he said to have been inspired by by Darwin that doesn't seem to have been in any very obvious way but even if he was that would have absolutely no bearing whatever on whether Darwinian evolution is the correct explanation for the four life which it is and I do want to give thanks here to my great-great-great 185th great-grandfather and just to not be sexist also to my 185th great-grandmother even though they weren't married now Richard you've said that raising children as religious fundamentalists is a form of child abuse not quite I said that telling children about Hell is a form of child abuse and I've said that labeling children I think I think few people would dispute the telling children about Hell as a form of child abuse but labeling children is slightly harder to get and you get it as soon as you imagine that thought experiment of labeling a child what should we say a postmodernist child a secular humanist child a Marxist child a liberal socialist child you don't do that nobody talks about a gram skin Marxist child but plenty of people talk about a Catholic child or a Muslim child or a Protestant child it seems to be that religion has got a free pass in our society even among those of us who are not religious a free pass to be allowed to call children by the religion of their parents even four-year-old children three-year-old children I cited in support of this a charming photograph which was published in the independent newspaper in London one Christmas and it was a trying to get the Christmas spirit it was trying to evoke the spirit of ecumenical ISM and it had a picture of three little children three little four-year-old children in a nativity play and it gave their names shad breat a Muslim somebody else's Sikh somebody else a Christian and they were playing the three as men in the nativity play a four year old seek a four year old Muslim and a four year old Christian what on earth are you doing labeling children Christian Muslim and Sikh when these children haven't the faintest idea what that means would you ever call a child a Hayekian child or a keynesian child of course you wouldn't and as soon as you get that as soon as you hear me say keynesian child you immediately realize that you're never ever going to let anybody get away with calling a child a Catholic child or a Jewish child or a Muslim child or a Protestant child again now now Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg said with or without religion there will be good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things but for good people to do bad things that takes religion now now I wondered if you agreed with that or do you think as many do that fear of God keeps some morally challenged people from committing atrocities well herb I think it was you who said in your book somewhere that if you ask somebody why are you good and he says I'm good because God well if I didn't if I didn't believe in God I'd go out and rape and murder then you're gonna edge away from from him well what people have said to me well as an atheist I suppose you feel free to go out and rape and murder and do whatever you think you can get away with and I usually would respond well with an attitude like that I hope you continue to believe in a good because I really don't think they do and in debates with fundamentalist I've asked like how would you behave differently if you stopped believing in a god and some of them have a lot of trouble explaining that one fundamentalist minister said that you know I've often been tempted by other women but I didn't act on that because of my love for Jesus what hurt Jesus yeah because I know it would hurt Jesus yes so that gave me such an easy opening I was tempted to but I don't because of my love for my wife sharing because I know how it hurts Sharon and even the minister's wife seems to like my head it is it is actually it's an astonishing idea that the only reason you're good is that you're frightened of the great spy camera in the sky I mean what a terribly ignoble reason to be good you're only good because you're frightened of being found out well maybe people are but that's a very cynical view of humanity and it's not what I would come morale they're not morality no and or frightened of going to hell the the other reason people may give for being good if they're religious is that they think they get it from Scripture and they often cite the Ten Commandments and what happens when that happens is you you have to ask them do you actually know what the Ten Commandments say and they don't they won't they only know they know one or possibly two they don't know the first commandment thou shalt have no other gods before me they don't know the second commandment what is it bad thou shalt said what is it again that thou shalt Mittler thou shalt make unto thee any graven image thou shall keep the Sabbath holy and so on and so and then they come to thou shalt not kill well everybody knows thou shalt not kill and I love Christopher Hitchens is response to that which which I actually like to to think of in the voice of John Cleese Moses comes down from the mountain bearing the tablets and all the children of Israel gather around and look at it and they say thou shalt not kill thou shalt not kill oh how silly of me you see we thought that killing was a terrific idea Oh silly me you don't need tablets of stone to say thou shalt not kill and you don't need tablets of stone to say thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image thou shalt have no other gods before me these people want to stick the ting Ten Commandments up in courtrooms and school houses they don't know what's on the Ten Commandments and thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife or ox or any other of his property shall I make my joke about that of course thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife or her ass switching over to a more dignified just for a moment Richard I know that you're the out campaign is very serious and important to you but what advice would you give for people in places like South Carolina and I heard a lot of this who just fear the hostile reactions from friends or in the workplace for coming out as an atheist well the out campaign is in a way modeled on the gay campaign at I'm coming out it's it's not a campaign to make people come out and nor should it be in the gay case either man we're not in the business of yeah of outing people but to to show that atheists are nice people decent people ordinary people loving people people such as you would meet all the time in any profession to be an example is probably the best thing we can do I know that it's very difficult for many people especially in this country to come out because they fear the the reaction of their family perhaps I've heard numerous stories of young people in America who have completely lost their religious faith and they call themselves atheists privately but they don't want to come out and say so because they are afraid of upsetting their parents in some cases more than upsetting their Paris they actually get thrown out this is an extraordinary reaction for what's merely a difference of opinion about the cosmos and the way society should be run on things like that it's an astonishing violation of the normal parental love or grand parental or or whatever it is so it is difficult but when people discover that that ordinary nice Pleasant decent law-abiding tax-paying people are atheists it must make a huge difference I think you you said sometimes somebody said to you you're the only atheist I've ever met and you said yeah who says so yeah because you know for every person they know is an atheist especially here there are hundreds of people who just don't acknowledge being an atheist yeah well I've been enormous ly encouraged especially in the so-called Bible Belt in America we tend to concentrate my lecture tours in the Bible Belt and what seemed enormous ly encouraging is that time after time in the book signing queue afterwards when people coming off had the book signed they will say thank you thank you thank you you've inspired me to come out you've inspired me I mean I'm a Nathan may say I don't dare say I'm an atheist but I am and so it's it's a it's a real it's a real thing we can do to to encourage people in actually frankly in places like South Carolina I suppose to to encourage people to to stand up for their mm-hmm for their convictions I'm also encouraged by the number of people in all walks of life waiters in restaurants taxi drivers bus drivers who astonishing astonished me by saying they've read my books and and agree and agree with them and it's a very very moving thing for me to have that to have that experience and they're not all academics okay Richard you've heard the expression to be more Catholic than the Pope meaning ultra Catholic well you inadvertently created a meme of being more atheist than Richard Dawkins and that's because of something you said in The God Delusion where you rate God belief on a seven-point scale with one absolute certainty in God's existence and 7 absolute certainty in his non-existence and you call yours a six many atheists myself included put ourselves closer to say six point eight or six point nine why are you only a six now I please explain yourself Richard I I think I think I haven't invented I mean six point nine is it is what you I mean I I'm an I'm I'm a seven in in the same sense as I would be a seven about fairies and leprechauns there is you cannot actually disprove leprechauns but but and gods are the same I mean I'm an atheist about Yahweh in the same way as I'm an atheist about Bale and Mithras and Osiris and and Jupiter and Apollo and okay well I think we have the same God belief spin I would love to continue this for a few hours but it seems like other people would like to ask questions too so why don't we open it up to the audience for questions and don't don't look at me now we have the person who has the toughest job here and that's John Huddleston from from the Religious Studies department thank you so yes we're gonna open up with some questions a lot of people here you think it's the rapture this evening with the room remain intact or so questions please keep your questions short and to the point the mic so that we can get as many questions as possible and we have people with microphones on this side also where's the other individual with the microphone sure yeah so we'll start go ahead in regards knowing his big boat I ever see you talking about population bottleneck in DNA as the evidence as it for it never has happened well I never hear you talk about population bottleneck well you haven't listened very hard then it looks very much as though humans went through a population bottleneck what a population bottleneck is it's my microphone working what a population bottleneck is is well it's not obvious really the population of a species is reduced almost to extinction to just maybe a few thousand individuals and for some reason it didn't quite go extinct and then it expanded again and there's you can get evidence for that from from looking at the gin at the genetics of a modern population it appears that the cheetah that ultra-fast African cat has been through a population bottleneck within the last few tens of thousands of years but the cheetah gene pool is very very restricted compared to other big cats so they've been through a bottleneck and we have - I mentioned earlier that humans I mentioned earlier that human genetic variation is very low compared to many other species including including chimpanzees what I didn't mention is that the probable reason for that is that humans went through a bottleneck some 75,000 years ago or thereabouts I didn't quite understand what that had to do with with Orton a pashtun and his great boat which he was encouraged to build by one of the gods when great rain was threatened you'll be aware of course that the legend of Noah is inherited from the Sumerians a much older elder legend yes can you write over here yes to feel optimistic to people who are related to us like our siblings if pack behavior is somehow correlated to a lack of genetic diversity in this species so maybe that bottleneck would make humans more altruistic and if we see that in other animals that's an ingenious suggestion but it doesn't work because the you I don't know whether everybody is aware of the underlying theory that the questioner has in mind which is the theory of kin selection natural selection favors altruism towards close kin and the reason is that close kin are more likely to share the genes for altruism now that has to be interpreted rather more subtly than that close kin has to be defined against a background of the general population and so natural selection will favor altruism towards kidnet a closer than the population at large if the population at large happens to be very closely related because of a genetic bottleneck then that is the genetic background against which relatedness is compared and so this you're still going to get extra altruism towards close relatives towards brothers sisters nephews and nieces and so on you're not going to get out towards everybody that you meet simply because everybody that you meet is by chimpanzee standards a cousin you have to consider you have to the theory explicitly takes account of the relative degree of relationship compared to the background population and if the background population are all the equivalent of say fourth cousins then that's the background against which crew relatedness is measured so ingenious but as they say no cigar let me stand up I'm gonna send a penny to you with dr. corn well is it if I mangled your name that's an Indian Head Penny it's uh of the style that was last made here in the United States that are godless so my question is actually kind of to you are there any English currencies that regardless or have you been cursed with the deity on your currency yes forever well I'm aware that the the that American dollar bills and other bills have In God We Trust written on them I'm also whether that's an astonishingly recent ancient tradition it goes back I think it goes back to nineteen fifty fifty four during the McCarthy era to protect us from godless communism yes well since the faith-based initiative of 9/11 perhaps we should take it off yeah but what what's rather eight rather annoying is that many Americans think that it goes back to the to the founding fathers which it does right you asked about English currency I'm happy to say that the Inglot the British know the English I suppose ten pound note has a very large portrait of Charles Darwin as an educator um I find it hard to in the age of testing allow students to think critically and explore how do you suggest that in individual educators shape the generations of the future well I yeah I think critical thinking is certainly essential in all areas I know as a mathematician I don't talk about God or atheism but I do tell people don't just rely on what a previous teacher said like I'd often say things like why can't you divide by zero and they said well I learned that in high school but what's the reason always go for the reason or for the evidence rather than let people just memorize stuff and that's how I think educators should be teaching in in her book he said while mathematicians are less likely than the overall population to believe in deities they are more likely to believe than scientists a possible reason for this phenomenon might be that some theoretical branches of mathematics including the one in which I do research have nothing to do with the real world and in fact growing up in Orthodox Judaism a lot of it made sense from a mathematical standpoint you start with certain axioms and you build from those axioms and have a logical framework the reason you get nonsense out of it is because the axioms are bed so you can be logical but start with bad assumptions so just keep in mind what's logical versus what there's evidence for as well as you said in your book mathematicians like theologians are free to make assumptions and construct their own imaginary little worlds based on these assumptions so mathematicians understand that that's what we're doing yes yeah over here in the beginning you said that it's you were opposed to religious fundamentalism and I think on your website you were talking about that was some of the things that you were combating how would you define religious fundamentalism and does that also include Islam and other oriental religions as well or is it specifically Christianity I think it would be a mistake to lump Islam in as an oriental religion is Islam is an Abrahamic religion derived directly from Judaism and therefore has to be lumped in with them rather than with oriental religions like Hinduism and Buddhism fundamentalism it really comes back to the previous question of this young lady here fundamentalism is a religion that's based upon a holy book on Holy Scripture on Holy Tradition rather than on a critical examination of the evidence whereas a a critical thinker will say I will examine the evidence and I'll change my mind if the evidence leads me to change my mind a fundamentalist says it's written in my holy book and that's that nothing will ever change my mind and they really do do that there are I was told by the professor of astronomy at Oxford of a colleague of his who is a a professor of astronomy in an American University who writes learning papers in astronomy in astronomical journals mathematical papers and his mathematical papers all assume that the universe is 13.7 billion years old but he privately believes it 6,000 years old so somehow he holds in his head a fundamentalist belief which is based upon Scripture and utter misunderstanding of Scripture but that's fundamentalism you base your beliefs upon upon a book upon a tradition upon what a priest tells you you do not base your beliefs on evidence and critical evaluation of evidence hi my name is a Nikki Oregon Nicholas um I was wondering what do you think about um I know that Charles Darwin his wife had different views when I assume I think she was a Christian from what from what I understood you know I could be more specific well what do you think about maybe like relationships now people who have relationships and their partner does not believe as them like you know an atheist - a - well a Muslim or or something like that how do you what are your thoughts on that you're right that that Emma Darwin misses Darwin was a devout Christian and there is some evidence that she felt some grief at Charles's science and worried a bit that he might be not going to heaven where she was hoping to go and Charles Darwin himself worried about upsetting her this is one of the theories for why he delayed for such a long time after writing a really rather full account of his ideas delayed some 15 years before he finally published them and it could have been because he was afraid of upsetting his wife I have heard I get me almost always from America of stories of couples who have broken up because one couple lost his or her faith and the other one retained it these are very very sad stories I've even been asked advice you know what should I do I love my girlfriend but but she's she can't tolerate the fact that I'd become an atheist and it's very hard to know what to advise I mean I mean I mean clients they talk some sense into her not that's easy you have to catch the attention of the microphone professor Dawkins um every time I teach evolution I'm just amazed at how easy it is to boil it down to principles and how easy it is to understand and I'm more amazed at how little it's understood in the general populace and the objections never seem to have anything to do with the principles of evolution and it seems that you have to deal with that on a regular basis so yes it isn't really that difficult to understand I mean we're not talking about quantum theory or relativity or even rocket science this is something which is actually quite easy to understand it you have to get your mind around great spans of time of course and I'm more and more I'm realizing that the problem is quite simply ignorance it's it's in a few cases that it's a fundamentalist unwillingness to even listen but in many cases there's a perfectly good willingness to listen but it's just plain ignorance I was rather moved some years ago there was a young man who came to Oxford from an American Bible College and he was a fundamentalist young earth creationist not quite sure how he got in but anyway there he was and he he diligently came to my course of lectures and at the end of the term at the end of the terms lectures he came down to the front of the lecture hall and pounded the desk and he said gee this evolution it really makes sense and I realized then that he had been a creationist not because he had out of conviction he was the creation is because he just didn't know nobody told him he went to a university where he wasn't taught it and so I've been asking around especially on this tour of just come from a week as a visiting professor at the University of Miami and I met a number of educators and they told me that in order to be a schoolteacher in this country you need to have a advanced qualification in pedagogy you're taught how to teach but you don't have to have any qualification in the subject you're supposed to be teaching so you have history teachers who know no history biology teachers who know no biology and in the case of evolution because they know no biology they're frightened of teaching the controversial aspects of it because they're frightened of being bullied by bigoted parents because they don't have the backup which they would have if instead of learning pedagogy they'd learn biology because then they would know how to handle it I was told a very very disturbing story in Miami a biology teacher in one of the schools in in one of the high schools in Miami began to teach evolution as was as she should have done one child objected on religious grounds and complained to her parents the parents complained to the school the head teacher of the school discipline this teacher made her apologize and told her she was not allowed to teach evolution because one child of bigoted parents ignorant parents had complained all the other children in the in the class therefore had their education suffer because of this one child fortunately this teacher was has had both courage and and ingenuity and she invited a professor from the University of Miami to come in as a guest teacher who was not an employee of the school and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the head teacher I just wanted to clarify Richard when you mentioned that evolution is controversial you meant with religious people and politicians yeah biology oh no it's not controversial in among biologists at all I mean details of it of course are yeah but the fact that we are cousins of chimpanzees and cousins of octopuses is it's a fact and it's not controversial there's a question for Frank thank you for coming mr. Dawkins um I want to know why you think it's so hard for African Americans to let go of Jesus and Mohammed and other religions I don't have any personal knowledge any personal insight or much knowledge of American history I am kind of aware that in the extraordinary conditions of suffering which the slaves went through during the time during the time of slavery until until the Civil War religion was in many respects the only hope that they had and I suspect that they were cynically manipulated by religious interests to try to to keep them under control as has been done so often throughout the centuries with people who are suffering and political oppression religion is wheeled out as a tool of oppression don't complain don't agitate don't revolt in this life just hang in there and when you die it will all be alright so it's possibly something to do with that but it would be presumptuous of me being white and not am NOT American really to just to say anymore well I'll be half presumptuous because I'm at least an American I think there might have even been a positive side when African Americans could not speak out for lemos places one place they could speak out freely and organized civil rights marches was in churches so that was a positive feature of church life and masa knew the king would be good then a lot of the negativity and forced belief came along with that for some people even though there was some good coming out of churches in the civil rights marches our foundation the Richard Dawkins foundation did organize a conference at Howard University as a deliberate attempt to to speak out to reach out to to an african-american you know an American University that's dominated by African Americans and we got a very enthusiastic reception from those who came but unfortunately the numbers who came were a very small number compared to the number of people who are here tonight and we suspected that there was organized opposition and the people were actually persuaded not to come but I'm not sure how accurate that that is but of those who did come it was a highly successful successful meeting and we had at that meeting that we launched another t-shirt not this one um another t-shirt which who slogan was we are all Africans which of course we are I think it was the youtuber he said you could disprove the Bible in three words basically snakes don't talk is what his argument was um I was wondering do you have a condensed version that you could give the people who maybe doubt evolution an easy way of presenting it to them I don't think that many churchmen would accept snakes don't talk as as a valid disproof because respectable theologians don't take the book of Genesis literally anyway I think you could probably come up with another I mean I think something like the the New Testament doctrine of atonement the New Testament doctrine of the Divine scapegoat that Jesus came and died for our sins as though God the creator of the universe the divine mathematician the celestial physicist couldn't think of a better way of forgiving our sins than to have his son hideously tortured and murdered that's not exactly three words but it seems to me to be a pretty damning indictment of the of the central theology of Christianity now as for a brief summary of evolution to convince people have asked me that and and I to get to give it I said the evidence from molecular come comparative molecular data and geographical distribution and and for an fossils and you can't put it into three words but you can put it in to a reasonably slim volume you know what I think difficulty is in evolution say compared to astronomy where astronomy can accurately predict that there will be an eclipse on a solar eclipse on I think May 10th and those who used to think that oh I couldn't eclipse that's a sign of the Gods being angry at us no longer can think that way yeah so evolution accurately describes the past but not so much the future but you you can't predict exactly what's going to happen in in the future but in a way you can say it's a prediction of what will happen if you dig in the ground at a certain point at rocks of a certain age if you if you dig in the ground and find a rock which is dated by by radiometric by radiometric dating to the Cambrian era then the sorts of animals you will find are these animals and these animals and these animals you will not find any mammals or reptiles and if you do the whole thing is instantly disproved the Kinston makes the claim that religious people and expressing their belief are not making direct epistemic claims but rather expressing a certain way of life he's as the example of the difference between saying there's an airplane above me and I believe in the Last Judgement so a religious person and the atheist are not playing the same kind of language games because the religious belief is a way of life so they're not exactly usually comprehensible okay what do you what's your response to this line of thinking religious people think differently than evidence-based people so is there any way to deal with that I could be wrong but that's what it sounded like to me well I think it's true I think it's true that they think differently and they shouldn't I mean how are you going to how are you going to have an argument with with somebody if you say here is the evidence and he says I don't care about evidence I just know what's true right but I think a lot of them have different evidence like Jesus came into my heart that's my oh yes well hallucinations of course stuff yeah I mean I suppose the answer to that is that people think they're Napoleon that asylums are full of people who think they're Napoleon or indeed think they're God which is another another one you cannot expect to convince somebody by saying well Jesus came into my heart and only I know about it there are people who believe that there are people who believe that that some famous film star is in love with them and and their religion and I'd love to see you collaborate with one of their professors there I'll read you a short quote from one of his books throughout history warriors must be convinced they are engaged in a sacred and grateful activity it makes killing not only permissible but an honorable act the myth must be considered one of the most important narratives in world history it is essential for all empires to link church and state I'm not aware of the University of Chicago what was the key for I missed the key phrase at the beginning of me throughout history warriors well our lawyers are killing themselves right now they obviously we don't believe anymore the gun is not on our side perhaps yeah and religion is got a sinister aspect that has gone on a long time that the school traces the evolution of the indo-european language and it's probably started in southern Russia it's gone to parts of China India all the way to Ireland there God told them that all the cattle in the Werther's yes and anybody who had cattle nearby must have stolen them yes you say everybody should know or not to kill they as a sacred duty well of course it is true that that the injunction thou shalt not kill in any case only meant thou shalt not kill members of thine own tribe it didn't mean um and one of the one of the things that that we progressed over in history is a generalization from thine own tribe to the whole of humanity and maybe it'll progress to other species as well in the future recommend by the way Steven Pinker's great book the better angels of our nature which he takes a long historical view of what he sees as the improvement in human ethics from early pre-human times up to the present up to the present day but of course you're right and it is an aspect of fundamentalism that people will believe what they read in their holy book and if the holy book tells them this land is ours given us by God for example then they won't listen to any alternative view that somebody else might have some claim to whatever it is under dispute worse in the real estate business and he promised the same part of land to three different religions religion may be a self-fulfilling prophecy about Apocalypse yeah apocalyptic prophecies which lead people to say we don't need to conserve the world because Jesus is coming within the next twenty years that kind of thing yeah I had a question just as a young atheist I've been very vocal and very sure and assured of my beliefs for what will feel like a very long time now I went through my own series of understanding and believing and came out an atheist through research and real devotion to knowing what the truth was it's hard for a lot of people to believe that simply because of my age but once I did come to that leave I make sure that it's known I fight for my cause I advocate for it and I the idea of spreading it is so much more important to me than simply believing it so in that train of action I've under I've I've got a lot of negative speech of course and more often than not uncalled in extremists or a militant atheist because I decide to stand up and voice my opinions so how would you say to not only young or say maybe burgeoning atheists but to atheists of all ages how to fight being addressed or belittled in the way of being called militant or extreme simply because they voice their opinions well first I applaud what you're doing and I have great regard for what you're doing thank you when people call you you could think about it like this if somebody calls you militant or extreme it may be because they haven't got any good arguments against you and so that's all they've got is to is to call you militant and extreme that's that would be one point another point would be that you can say relatively mild things against religion and people will hear it as extreme because they're so unused to it our society has been lulled into treating religion with kid gloves it's a very understandable strategy on on the part of religion to to make that happen and the result of this is that if you use really quite soft and mild language people literally hear it as militant and extreme if you were to compare the the mild language which we most of us atheists use with a sort of language that's used by theater critics or restaurant critics or sports commentators they may on and politicians indeed they use far more extreme language or if you even listen to preachers who will denounce from the pulpit people like you and me and say were destined the Hellfire in the most extreme militant language aggressive language yet society is used to that accepts it that's what preachers do so they're not called militant they're not called extreme whereas if you say something quite mild it's sounds extreme to people and I think you have to recognize that it's they're not necessarily being dishonest some of them perhaps are but they may it's almost as though their ears have been have been distorted they literally hear it as extreme because if you say it mildly it because it's religion it's it sounds extreme and I also think there's an evolutionary process that fifty years ago in South Carolina it probably wouldn't hear any criticism of religion and now that people are starting to criticize that suddenly sounds militant but the more people that do criticize and come out as atheist it'll become accepted and it'll no longer be militant yes professor Dawkins I'm here because I read a book called why does the world exist by Jim Holt and in that book he talks about you a lot first of all have you read the book I haven't you haven't no okay because I'm here because he attributed a lot of use to you that intrigued me and then I went and saw your your TED Talks and the question he posits is why is there something rather than nothing and he interviews a lot of physicists cosmologists philosophers mathematicians he doesn't interview you but some of your colleagues at Oxford and so I wonder how would you answer that question um why is there well I think the first it's obviously a very profound and difficult question it's a question not for a biologist but for a physicist let me recommend my colleague Lawrence Krauss his book I think his book is called something from nothing and he is one of those physicists who thinks that the that that something sprang into existence from nothing using quantum theory as the rationale for that I obviously as a biologist not a physicist cannot elucidate that for you I recommend his book what I can do is to say either Krauss and his colleagues are right and the universe sprang into existence from nothing or they're almost right and the universe sprang into existence from something very simple now something very simple is by definition easier to understand than something complicated we now live in a world which is extremely complicated each one of us has inside our skulls what may be the most complicated in the universe it probably isn't but it's certainly very very very complicated and this we understand how we got to this level of complexity from a level of simplicity which is which was the level of chemistry not the level of nothing but the level of chemistry Darwinian evolution has shown us how you can get how we have got from the simplicity of chemistry the comparative simplicity of chemistry to the stupefying complexity of modern biology now that should be a cautionary tale don't ever say because I don't understand something therefore God did it now sorry no sorry that's we haven't anything like finished because I was I was asked about why is there something rather than nothing now the point about biology is that it's a parable biology tells you that you can get from simplicity to complexity now chemistry is not ultimate simplicity the origin of the universe is either ultimate simplicity or something very close to it and even if it's not literally nothing it's got to be a hell of a lot simpler than any designer creator God could possibly be and so to postulate a designer or creator as the answer to the riddle of why is there something rather than nothing is a simple evasion of intellectual responsibility it doesn't answer anything it erect sab igger problem than it solves not just a bigger problem than it solves but a hugely bigger problem than it solves is just a non-starter literally we have time for just a few more questions go ahead hi do you think that humans would have created the social concepts of good and evil and the absence of religion or would you agree that religion was essential to the social evolution of humans I think that's what you heard oh well you know I tend to think that well I I think of my book more for you in terms of evolution because I think there might have been species that did go out and kill each other didn't have any kind of moral sense and those genes died out and we've eventually evolved to learn how better to live with each other and then sometimes they might have put religious context to it to bring people into a line by saying maybe God told us to do it as opposed to it's just the right thing to do yeah I think that this partly came up earlier when we were talking about religion doesn't provide any very moral reasons to be to be moral and we had the thing about the great spy camera in the sky the point you're making is slightly more subtle than that which is that maybe historically we needed to go through a phase of being religious before the great moral philosophers I mean moral philosophy is a very respectable branch of philosophy which in which at least doesn't have to it's all religion and the best moral philosophers are not religious and so they come up with theories of morality which are often based on ancient and widespread principles like the golden rule and and other and other such principles I don't know whether historically religion was important in leading us to a state where proper moral philosophy could get going but needless to say even if even if religion was necessary for that to happen that doesn't for one millisecond suggest that there's any truth in religion hello professor Dawkins I was wondering at the end of The Selfish Gene you brought up the notion of memes and mimetic transmission being part of our culture another another part of ourselves that isn't shared with our animals when you were talking about kin selection you're saying one of the limitations of that idea is that it can only really be applied to close family members tribe members that have a similar genotype I was wondering what you thought of the notion that perhaps those cognitive structures have been redirected towards our mimetic our MIMO type if you will and if that was a useful idea to think about how to spread our memes enlightenment memes in competition with religious memes so you're suggesting a kind of memetic equivalent to kin selection yes so a memetic kin and your mimetic kin presumably would be other individuals who share similar ideas whether or not they share your genes and they might be indeed religions I mean it people who belong to the same religious sect you could call them pneumatic kid I think it's an interesting way to think about it and I shall do so the last question is from a geology student at the College of Charleston hi my name is Lindsay this is a completely off topic from what we've been discussing I have an actual evolutionary biology question for you yes actually it's I'm trying to get you to help me with my homework have you in your studies of evolutionary biology come across any evidence that hybridization leads to advancements in progress in evolution well hybrid vigor is a well-known phenomenon such that it's the kind of the opposite of the inbreeding depression which you get when when close relatives mate with each other so I mean inbreeding depression results from things like lethal recessives meeting their opposite number and so that's that's why it's best not to make with your brother or sister or your first cousin and and hybrid vigor has been suggested as being the sort of opposite of that that it that there being various there's indeed some experimental evidence by Patrick Bateson that I think he worked on quail that they that they prefer to mate with individuals who are not too close to related to them and not too distantly related to them and his suggestion was that that there was a certain amount of hybrid vigor which was being which was favored by by natural selection agriculturalists breeders of animals and plants know the phenomenon of of hybrid hybrid vigor yes mention we're in the largest auditorium on campus we have standing room only as well as sitting room and there are two other large rooms that are also completely filled now three others now Charleston old-timers might might remember in 1998 when the College of Charleston beat the University of North Carolina in basketball and our former College of Charleston President Alex Anders called it the greatest day in the history of the college I think most of us here tonight would say that having Richard Dawkins at the College of Charleston even better you

Channel: Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science

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Keywords: #charleston #richarddawkins #herbsilverman #atheism

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Length: 98min 15sec (5895 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2013