Richard Dawkins: God Delusion

it's writes about the effects of hormone therapy on the aging process in number seven ageless premiering at number 8 is thunderstruck Eric Larson author of devil in the white city tells the story of how an inventor and a murderer's lives collided in the late 19th century in his memoir the life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid Bill Bryson describes growing up in Des Moines Iowa in the 1950s it premieres on the list this week at number nine rounding out the top ten is Barefoot Contessa at home the Food Network's Ina Garten shares recipes and suggestions for welcoming guests for more information visit the Publishers Weekly website at Publishers Weekly dot-com last week's Time magazine cover featured atheist biologist Richard Dawkins and debate over God and science next the science professor and best-selling author argues that there's no rational or moral reason to believe in God in his new book The God Delusion this is just over an hour good evening my name is Douglas shed I'm a professor of biology at round-off make a woman's college and I would like to welcome to the college and to this year's Philip there Memorial Lecture this lectureship was established by the colleagues and friends of Philip Thayer the late Theodore Jack professor of history at randolph-macon Woman's College in recognition of his long service to the College the lectureship seeps seeks to bring to the college distinguished lecturers in a wide range of academic fields who will continue professor stairs professor there's-- own tradition of edifying and challenging lectures I was fortunate to have known professor Thayer he was a wonderful larger-than-life free thinker and he would have been delighted by the person who will deliver the Thayer memorial lecture this evening this person is of course Richard Dawkins the Charles Somani professor in the public understanding of science at Oxford University professor Dawkins was born in Nairobi Kenya and moved with his family to England when he was seven he studied zoology at Oxford where he was tutored by Nobel prize-winning Niko Tinbergen and earned his doctorate at Oxford between 1967 and 1969 professor Dawkins was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of california-berkeley in 1970 he was appointed a lecturer and then in 1990 a reader in zoology at the University of Oxford before becoming the university's first charles somali professor in the public understanding of science in 1995 professor Dawkins has been a fellow of New College Oxford since 1970 this year marks the 30th anniversary of Professor Dawkins's landmark book The Selfish Gene in this book in this book professor Dawkins explained to a popular audience many important new ideas of evolutionary biology and did so in a way so insightful that the book influenced how a generation of scientists think about evolution the book is truly a classic and modern scientific literature professor Dawkins followed The Selfish Gene with a remarkable series of books including the extended phenotype the blind watchmaker my personal favorite the river out of the river out of eat climbing Mount improbable unweaving the rainbow a devil's chaplain the ancestors tale and most recently The God Delusion The Wall Street Journal said Professor Dawkins passion is supported by an awe-inspiring literary craftsmanship and the New York Times Book Review has hailed him as a writer who understands the issues so clearly that he forces his readers to understand them too professor dog professor Dawkins awards include the silver medal of the Zoological Society of London the Royal Society's Michael Faraday award the Nakayama prize for achievement in human science the international cosmos pride and the Kistler surprise he has an honorary he has honorary doctorates in both literature and science and as a fellow of the Royal Society professor Dawkins is an outspoken commentator on science politics and religion and among the world's best-known public intellectuals we are delighted to have him here this evening to discuss his new book The God Delusion professor Dawkins thank you very much is this microphone working I hope and expect that the high spot of the evening will be when you get to talk in the question and answer session but before that you have to listen to me for a bit while I read just a few passages from my latest book The God Delusion to set the scene for the questions I'm going to begin with the opening of the book from chapter 1 a deeply religious non believer the boy lay prone in the grass his chin resting on his hands he suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a heightened awareness of the tangled stems and roots a forest in microcosm a transfigured world of ants and beetles and even though he wouldn't have known the details at the time of soil bacteria by the billions silently and invisibly shoring up the economy of the micro world suddenly the micro forests of the turf seemed to swell and become one with the universe and with a rapt mind of the boy contemplating it he interpreted the experience in religious terms and it led him eventually to the priesthood he was ordained an Anglican priest and became a chaplain at my school a teacher of whom I was fond in another time and place that boy could have been me under the stars dazzled by Orion Cassiopeia and Ursa Major tearful with the unheard music of the Milky Way heady with the night sense of frangipani and trumpet flowers in an African garden why the same emotion should have led my chaplain in one direction and me in the other is not an easy question to answer a quasi a mystical response to nature and the universe is common among scientists and rationalists it has no connection with supernatural belief I often hear myself described as a deeply religious man an American student wrote that she had asked her professor whether he had a view about me sure he replied his positive science is incompatible with religion but he waxes he waxes ecstatic about nature and the universe to me that is religion but his religion the right word I don't think so much unfortunate confusion is caused by failure to distinguish what can be called Einsteinian religion from Supernatural religion Einstein sometimes invoked the name of God and he's not the only atheistic scientists to do so inviting misunderstanding by supernaturalists eager to misunderstand and claim so illustrious a thinker as their own the dramatic or what a mischievous ending of Stephen Hawking's a brief history of time for then we should know the mind of God is notoriously misconstrued it has led people to believe mistakenly of course that Hawking is a religious man great scientists of our time who sound religious usually turn out not to be so when you examine their beliefs more deeply this is certainly true of Einstein and Hawking one of Einstein's most eagerly quoted remarks is science without religion is lame religion without science is blind but Einstein also said it was of course a lie what you read about my religious convictions a lie which is being systematically repeated I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly if something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it does it seem that Einstein contradicted himself but his words can be cherry-picked for quotes to support both sides of an argument know by religion Einstein meant something entirely different from what is conventionally meant as I continue to clarify the distinction between Supernatural religion on the one hand and Einstein Ian's religion on the other bear in mind that I'm calling only supernatural gods delusional that's the end of the extract from Chapter one now an extract from Chapter two the god hypothesis the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction jealous and proud of it a petty unjust unforgiving control-freak a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser a misogynistic homophobic racist infanticidal genocidal Phylis idol pestilential megalomaniacal sadomasochistic capriciously malevolent bully those of us stole from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror a naive blessed with a perspective of innocence has a clearer perception Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of Scripture until evil in war and a brother officer in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fortnight unhappily it has not had the result we hoped he has never read any of it before and is hideously excited keeps reading quotations aloud I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible war merely slapping his side and chortling God isn't God a Thomas Jefferson better read was of a similar opinion the Christian God is a being of terrific character cruel vindictive capricious and unjust it is unfair to attack such an easy target the god hypothesis should not stand or fall with its most unlovely instantiation Yahweh nor his insipidly opposite Christian faiths gentle Jesus meek and mild to be fair this milksop persona owes more to his victorian followers than to Jesus himself could anything be more more Koosh Li nauseating than mrs. C F Alexander's Christian children all must be mild obedient good as he I am NOT attacking the particular qualities of Yahweh or Jesus or Allah or any other specific God such as Bale Zeus or Wharton instead I shall define the god hypothesis more defensively there exists a superhuman supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it including us this book will advocate an alternative view any creative intelligence of sufficient complexity to design anything comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution creative intelligence is being evolved necessarily arrived late in the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it God in the sense defined is a delusion and as later chapters will show a pernicious delusion not surprisingly since it is founded on local traditions of private revelation rather than evidence the god hypothesis comes in many versions historians of religion recognize a progression from primitive tribal animism x' through polytheism such as those of the Greeks Romans and Norseman to monotheism's such as Judaism and his derivatives christianity and islam christianity claims to be a monotheistic religion you have to wonder sometimes rivers of medieval ink not to mention blood have been squandered over the mystery of the Trinity and in suppressing deviations such as the Arian heresy arias of Alexandria in Alexandria in the fourth century AD denied that Jesus was consubstantial ie of the same substance or essence with God what on earth could this possibly mean you're probably asking substance what substance what exactly do you mean by essence very little seems the only reasonable reply yet the controversy split Christendom down the middle for a century and the Emperor Constantine ordered that all copies of Ares his book should be burned splitting Christendom by splitting hairs such has ever been the way of theology do we have one God in three parts or three gods in one the Catholic Encyclopedia clears up the matter for us in a masterpiece of theological close reasoning in the unity of the Godhead there are three persons the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit these three persons being truly distinct one from another thus in the words of the Athanasius God the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God and yet there are not three gods but one God as if that were not clear enough the encyclopedia quotes the third century theologian cent Gregory the miracle worker there is therefore nothing created nothing subject to another in the Trinity nor is there anything that has been added as though it once had not existed but had entered afterwards therefore the Sun has never been without the father nor the son without the spirit and the same Trinity is immutable and unalterable forever whatever miracles may have earned some Gregory his nickname they were not miracles of honest lucidity his words convey the characteristically obscurantist flavor of theology which unlike science or most other branches of human scholarship has not moved on in 18th centuries Thomas Jefferson as so often got it right when he said ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them and no man ever had a distinct idea of the Trinity it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus Jefferson heat ridicule on the doctrine that as he put it there are three God's in his critique of Calvinism but it is especially the Roman Catholic branch of Christianity that pushes it's recurrent flirtation with polytheism towards runaway inflation the Trinity is are joined by Mary Queen of Heaven a goddess in all but name who surely runs God himself a close second as a target of prayers the pantheon is furthest world and by an army of Saints whose intercessory power makes them if not demigods well worth approaching on their own specialist subjects the Catholic community forum helpfully lists 5120 Saints together with their areas of expertise which include abdominal pains abuse victims anorexia arms dealers blacksmiths broken bones bomb technicians and bowel disorders to venture no further than the bees pope john paul ii created more saints than all his predecessors of the past several centuries put together and he had a special affinity with the Virgin Mary his polytheistic hankerings were dramatically demonstrated in 1981 when he suffered an assassination attempt in Rome and attributed his survival to intervention by Our Lady of Fatima a maternal hand guided the bullet one cannot help wondering why she didn't guide it to miss him altogether others might think the team of surgeons who operated on him for six hours deserved at least a share of the credit but perhaps their hands too were maternally guided the relevant point is that it wasn't just our lady who in the Pope's opinion guided the bullet but specifically Our Lady of Fatima presumably our Lady of Lourdes Our Lady of Guadalupe Our Lady of measure Gauri Our Lady of Akita Our Lady of Zeitoun Our Lady of Garib and El and Our Lady of knock were busy on other errands at the time well chapter three debunks the arguments for the existence of God leaving that on one side chapter 4 why they're almost certainly is no God is hard to compress into a brief reading and I'll have to leave that as well chapter 5 is about the interesting question of why people are religious because actually most people are chapter 6 and why are most people moral to the extent that people are chapter 7 the good book and the changing moral zeitgeist I shall read a little bit from that I'm keeping a tally of the people walking out I think it's about three or four so far there are two ways in which scripture might be a source of morals or rules for living one is by direct instruction for example through the 10 commandments which are the subject of such bitter contention in the culture wars of America's boondocks the other is by example God or some other biblical character might serve as to use the contemporary jargon a role-model both scriptural roots if follow through religiously encourage a system of morals which any civilized modern person whether religious or not would find I can put it no more gently obnoxious Abraham was the founding father of all three great monotheistic religions his patriarchal status renders him only somewhat less likely than God to be taken as a role model but what modern moralist would wish to follow him God ordered Abraham to make a burnt offering of his longed for son Abraham built an altar put firewood upon it and trust Isaac up on top of the wood his murdering life was already in his hand when an angel dramatically intervened with the news of a last-minute change of plan God was only joking after all tempting Abraham and testing his faith a modern moralist cannot help but wonder how a child could ever recover from such psychological trauma by the standards of modern morality this disgraceful story is an example simultaneously of child abuse bullying into asymmetrical power relationships and the first recorded use of the Nuremberg defense I was only obeying orders yet the legend is one of the great foundational myths of all three monotheistic religions modern theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac should not be taken as literal fact and the appropriate response is twofold first many many people even to this day do take the whole of their scripture to be literal fact and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us especially in the United States and in the Islamic world second if not as literal fact how should we take the story as an allegory that an allegory for what surely nothing praiseworthy as a moral lesson but what kind of morals could one derive from this appalling story remember all I'm trying to establish for the moment is that we do not as a matter of fact derive our morals from Scripture or if we do we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty but then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits a criterion which wherever it comes from cannot come from Scripture itself and it's presumably available to all of us whether we are religious or not apologists even seek to salvage some decency for the god character in this deplorable tale wasn't it good of God to spare Isaac's life at the last minute in the unlikely event that any of my readers are persuaded by this obscene piece of special pleading I refer them to another story of human sacrifice which ended more unhappily in judges chapter 11 the military leader Jeff thir made a bargain with God that if God would guarantee just as victory over the ammonites gesture would without fail sacrifice as a burnt offering whatsoever cometh for for the doors of my house to meet me when I return Jephthah did indeed defeat the ammonites with a very great slaughter as his par for the course in the book of Judges and he returned home victorious not surprisingly his daughter his only child came out of the house to greet him with timbrels and dances and alas she was the first living thing to do so understandably jest for rent his clothes but there was nothing he could do about it God was obviously looking forward to the promised burnt offering and in the circumstances the daughter very decently agreed to be sacrificed she asked only that she should be allowed to go into the mountains for two months to bewail her virginity at the end of this time she neatly returned and Jeff had cooked her God did not see fit to intervene on this occasion God's monumental rage whenever his chosen people flirted with a rival God resembled nothing so much as sexual jealousy of the worst kind and again it should strike a modern moralist as far from good role model material the temptation to sexual infidelity is readily understandable even to those who do not succumb and it's a staple of fiction and drama from Shakespeare to bedroom farce but the apparently irresistible temptation to [ __ ] with foreign gods is something we moderns find harder to empathize with to my naive eyes thou shalt have no other gods but me would seem an easy enough commandment to keep a doddle one might think compared with thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife or her ass or her ox yet throughout the Old Testament with the same predictable regularity as in bedroom farce God had only to turn his back for a moment and the children of Israel would be off and at it with Bale or some trollop of a graven image or on some on one calamitous occasion a golden calf there then follows a section on Moses which I'm going to cut go on to the end of the Moses section the ethnic cleansing begun in the time of Moses is brought to bloody fruition in the book of Joshua a text remarkable for the bloodthirsty massacres it records and the xenophobic relish with which it does so as the charming old song exultant Lee has it Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho and the walls came a tumbling down there's none like good old Joshua at the Battle of Jericho good old Joshua didn't rest until they utterly destroyed all that was in the city both man and woman young and old and ox and sheep and ass with the edge of the sword Joshua 6:21 yet again theologians will protest it didn't happen well no the story has it that the walls came tumbling down at the mere sound of men shouting and blowing horns so indeed it didn't happen but that is not the point the point is that whether true or not the Bible is held up to us as the source of our morality and the Bible story of Joshua's destruction of the Layton's realm of Jericho and the invasion of the promised land in general is morally indistinguishable from Hitler's invasion of Poland or Saddam Hussein's massacres of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs the Bible may be an arresting and poetic work of fiction but it is not the sort of book you should give your children to form their morals as it happens the story of Joshua in Jericho is the subject of an interesting experiment in child morality by the Israeli psychologist George Cameron Tamaran presented to more than a thousand Israeli school children aged between eight and fourteen the book of Joshua's account of the Battle of Jericho he then asked the children a simple moral question do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not they had to choose between a total approval be partial approval and C total disapproval the results were polarized 66 percent gave total approval and 26% total disapproval with rather fewer eight percent in the middle with partial approval here are three typical answers from the total approval a group in my opinion Joshua and the sons of Israel acted well and here are the reasons God promised them this land and gave them permission to conquer if they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone then there would be the danger that the sons of Israel would have assimilated among the [ __ ] in my opinion Joshua was right when he did it one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth the justification for the genocide or massacre by Joshua is religious in every case even those in category C who gave total disapproval did so in some cases for backhanded religious reasons one girl for example disapproved of Joshua's conquering Jericho because in order to do so he had to enter it I think it is bad since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse tamarin ran a fascinating control group in his experiment a different group of 168 Israeli children were given the same text from the book of Joshua but the Joshua's own name replaced by General Lin and Israel replaced by a Chinese Kingdom 3,000 years ago now the experiment gave opposite results only seven percent approved of general Lin's behavior and seventy-five percent disapproved in other words when their loyalty to Judaism was removed from the calculation the majority of the children agreed with the moral judgments that most modern humans would share Joshua's action was a deed of barbaric genocide but it all looks different from a religious point of view and the difference starts early in life it was religion that made the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it the following offense is merit the death penalty according to Leviticus 20 cursing your parents committing adultery making love to your stepmother or your daughter-in-law homosexuality marrying a woman and her daughter best eality and to that injury to insult the unfortunate beast is to be killed too you also get executed of course for working on the Sabbath the point is made again and again throughout the Old Testament in numbers 15 the children of Israel found a man in the wilderness gathering sticks on the forbidden day they arrested him and then asked God what to do with him as it turned out God was in no mood for half-measures that day and the Lord said unto Moses the man shall surely be put to death all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp and all the congregation brought him without the camp and stoned him with stones and he died did this harmless gatherer of firewood have a wife and children to grieve for him did he whimper with fear of the first stones flew and scream with pain as the fusillade crashed into his head what shocks me today about such stories is not that they really happened they probably didn't what makes my jaw drop is that people today should base their lives on such an appalling role model as Yahweh and even worse that they should ba Sallee try to force the same evil monster with a fact or fiction on the rest of us I'm going to skip the remaining chapters now to the last chapter at the very last section of the last chapter the mother of all workers one of the unhappiest spectacles to be seen on our streets today is the image of a woman swathe in shapeless black from head to toe peering out at the world through a tiny slit I should say that the streets that I normally walk are the streets of England it probably isn't the case here the burqa is not just an instrument of oppression of women and classical repression of their liberty and their beauty not just a token of egregious male cruelty and tragically cowed female submission I want to use the narrow slit in the veil as a symbol of something else our eyes see the world through a narrow slit in the electromagnetic spectrum visible light is a [ __ ] of brightness in the vast dark spectrum from radio waves at the long end to gamma rays at the short end quite how narrow is hard to appreciate and a challenge to convey imagine a giant black burqa with a vision slit of approximately the standard width say about one inch if the length of black cloth above the slit represents the shortwave end of the invisible spectrum and if the length of black cloth below the slit represents the long-wave portion of the invisible spectrum how long would the burqa have to be in order to accommodate a one inch slit to the same scale it's hard to represent it sensibly without invoking logarithmic scales so huge are the lengths were dealing with the last chapter of a book like this is no place to start tossing logarithms around but you can take it from me that it would be the mother of all burkas the one-inch window of visible light is derisive really tiny compared with the miles and miles of black cloth representing the invisible part of the spectrum from radio waves of the hem of the skirt to gamma rays at the top of the head what science does for us is to widen the window it opens up so wide that the imprisoning black garment drops away almost completely exposing our senses to airy and exhilarating freedom optical telescopes use glass lenses and mirrors to scan the heavens and what they see as stars that happen to be radiating in the narrow band of wavelengths that we call visible light but other telescopes see in the x-ray or radio wavelengths and present to us a cornucopia of alternative night skies on a smaller scale cameras with appropriate filters can see in the ultraviolet and take photographs of flowers that show an alien range of stripes and spots that are visible - and seemingly designed for insect eyes but which our unaided eyes can't see at all insect eyes have a spectral window of similar width to ours but slightly shifted up the burka they are blind to read and they see further into the ultraviolet than we do into the ultraviolet garden the metaphor of the narrow window of light broadening out into a spectacularly wide spectrum serves us in other areas of science we live near the center of a cavernous Museum of magnitudes viewing the world with sense organs and nervous systems that are equipped to perceive and understand only a small middle range of sizes moving at a middle range of speeds we are at home with objects ranging in size from a few kilometers the view from a mountaintop to about a tenth of a millimeter the point of a pin outside this range even our imagination is handicapped which fortunately we could and we need sorry outside this range even our imagination is handicapped and we need the help of instruments and mathematics which fortunately we can learn to deploy the range of sizes distances or speeds with which our imaginations are comfortable is a tiny band set in the midst of a gigantic range of the possible from the scale of quantum strangeness of the smaller end to the scale of einsteinium cosmology at the larger our imaginations are forlornly under equipped to cope with distances outside the narrow middle range of the ancestrally familiar we try to visualize an electron as a tiny ball in orbit around a larger cluster of balls representing probe and neutrons that isn't what it is like at all electrons are not like little balls they are not like anything we recognize it isn't clear that like even means anything when we try to fly too close to realities further horizons our imaginations are not yet tooled up to penetrate the neighborhood of the quantum nothing at that scale behaves in the way matter as we are evolved to think ought to behave nor can we cope with the behavior of objects that move at some appreciable fraction of the speed of light common sense lets us down because common sense evolved in a world where nothing moves very fast and nothing is very small or very large the mundane world of the familiar which i have dubbed middle world at the end of a famous essay on possible worlds the great biologist JBS Haldane wrote now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose but queerer than we can suppose I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of or can be dreamed of in any philosophy how should we interpret Hall Danes queerer than we can suppose queerer than can in principle be supposed or just queerer than we can suppose given the limitation of our brains evolutionary apprenticeship in middle world could we by training and practice emancipate ourselves from middle world tear off our black burqa and achieve some sort of intuitive as well as just mathematical understanding of the very small the very large and the very fast I genuinely don't know the answer but I am thrilled to be alive at a time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding even better we may eventually discover that there are no limits thank you very much professor professor Dawkins we'll take questions we'll ask you to line up at the two microphones introduce yourself and concisely ask your question it possible to have the house lights up a bit so I can see people are asking questions hello is this microphone on I'm dr. Howell it's good to have heard your talk I really appreciated hearing this I should like to hear more of you because the more you talk the more you convinced me that there is a God and you crystallized our need for him as a scientist I'm a bit disturbed that you would go on a tirade for 40 minutes against God so clearly I can't sure as a scientist I'm a bit upset by the fact that you would go on a 40-minute tirade against God and then began talking of science as if to put the authority of science into what you said but I do have a question about your long discussion about morality and it coming from a Bible and that you accuse people I suppose Christians of saying that we get our morality from the Scriptures but clear this cannot be the case because humanity from every civilization throughout time has a sense of morality and clearly most of them have had not have not had access to the Bible so I'm curious then what you think is the origin of this morality if someone comes in here with a gun and began shooting all of us we would call that bad why why is that bad um I think we probably agree that people don't as a matter of fact get their morality from the scriptures and that's what I was actually saying people get their morality from somewhere quite other than than the scriptures and to the extent that they do get their morality from the Scriptures as I was saying they pick and choose now if you're asking me where we get our morality from I think that's an extremely complicated question and one that I'm very interested in I've got a whole chapter on it in the book which I didn't have time to read from I think that a sort of bedrock of it probably comes from our Darwinian heritage as a kind of misfiring byproduct of our Darwinian past where we lived in small villages or small roving bands which meant that we were surrounded by close kin and that as you no doubt know is one good prerequisite for the evolution of altruism under Darwinian rules and also in those small villages or roving bands we would have been surrounded by people whom we are likely to meet again and again throughout our life which provides the basis for the other main Darwinian reason to be moral or altruistic that I think is the Darwinian origin and I suspect that although we no longer live in small bands the same rule of thumb rules of thumb which were honed in our Darwinian past are playing themselves out under the alien conditions of modern urban society the rule of thumb used to be be nice to everyone you meet because everyone you meet is likely to be either a cousin and/or somebody you're going to meet again and again and therefore in a position to reciprocate Darwinism doesn't forecast doesn't suggest that we should be all wise and do what is actually going to be best for our selfish genes instead it says that it builds into our brains rules of thumb which worked in our ancestral past that rule of thumb be nice to everybody is still in our brains it is a lust which is rather similar to a sexual lust which is still in our brains even though we may use contraception and therefore are not actually using copulation to reproduce the same rule of thumb persists and that is also true of the lust to be good the lust to be nice but I think is the Darwinian origin but I think that it's become modified and refined through culture through civilization until it shows itself in the much more sophisticated and actually a much more pleasant rules for being nice that we see today wherever else it comes from it certainly doesn't come from Scripture and that was the only point I was trying to make from that particular reading oh hello there Oh what welcome to welcome to America i-i've been reading your book I've been reading your book and I think you're a terrific writer and I got to say listening to you in person in that accident everything man I just think you're brilliant but I thought that'd be about yes I know I well it's it's Lynchburg well I am I am a theist you'll be disappointed to know but he might you know how Bertrand Russell you know said that if he faced God he'd ask you know where you know he didn't give enough evidence where was the oven I'm selling it a couple of pieces of evidence that I would just kind of be interested to hear hear what you think about pertaining to this issue of ethics I read this chapter on ethics in your book and I found it interesting I mean you were dealing with the origin of our moral sense more so then I think the origin of morality itself you'd probably agree right so you know you still wonder what is it about the world that makes some things you know right and something's wrong something's good something's bad and you know you want to retain the language of some things are evil and you give a lot of religious examples and I'm in agreement with you Simona but if we're going to retain these categories these very strong you know moral categories it seems to me that naturalism is going to be very hard pressed to kind of provide an account for where real good and evil would would be I mean I'm not sure how how entirely we can simply assert the existence of value without providing a deeper account for it and one other moral freedom as well it seems to me that if you the naturalist is kind of shackled you know I mean a naturalistic world it would seem as if we're just bound and determined to behave just the way that we do morality is all about art and aught applies can how can we ever do anything other than exactly what it is that we do so I'd be real interested in your responses to those things well I think it's a problem for all of us I mean not just for naturalist I think it is actually a fairly baffling where our morality comes from and why were if we're in fact as nice as we are in the professionals in this field are moral philosophers and moral philosophers that the majority of them are are not theologically inclined I mean they tend to develop ideas the simplest of all the one the one we all know about is that is the Golden Rule it behaved to others as you would wish they should behave to you and moral philosophers have developed other such principles always offers suffering always behave as if you didn't know whether you were going to be at the top of the pecking order or the bottom these are all moral precepts which moral philosophers have developed now it's a genuinely difficult question why any individual should wish to follow such moral precepts if I ask myself I'm actually a very moral person I think I'm sure most of you are too if I ask myself why I don't steal why I pay my taxes why I do that all the things that keep society going I suppose it's slightly irrational feeling that I wouldn't wish to live in the kind of society where people behaved in the sort of ways that I wouldn't wish them to bit to behave in and therefore I shouldn't behave in those ways either but that isn't entirely rational because if I behave in an antisocial way then that doesn't actually stop anybody else doing the nice things to me that maybe it does and that that could could be the problem but it is a genuinely difficult problem why we are moral all that I wish to assert today is that is that religion certainly doesn't help or if it does I mean if anybody here who thinks that their moral purely because they're frightened of what God might do if they're not I mean that's a pretty contemptible reason to be moral and and I don't think we probably have much respect for people who only behave well because of the great surveillance camera in the sky so I think that that I'm sure all all of us here are moral from for better reasons than than that although I quite agree with the questioner it's genuinely difficult to decide why why we are thank goodness we are good evening professor Dawkins my name is Thomas litt Kowski I come from Thomas Jefferson's University here to ask you a question Richard atheists have a PR problem they are among the most distrusted minorities in the u.s. many many people equate atheism with immorality and pessimism they ask what good has atheism done atheism is so cold I don't find any comfort from those who do not believe in God some have attempted to answer these criticisms with new life stances such as humanism or the Church of reality they assert there will be there will not be widespread apostasy until there is a replacement for religion sam harris says we must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not require the abject embrace of the preposterous further he says we must learn to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity birth marriage death without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality so my question is do you what is your view of that assertion that there will not be widespread apostasy until we find a replacement for religion yes thank you that's an extremely interesting question a very important one if it is the case that people find consolation and comfort in religion then I'm not in the least surprised but note that that doesn't in any way imply that religious beliefs are true what is comforting and what is true are two entirely different things important to get that out of the way first because there are people I'm sorry to say who can't tell the difference between that which is comforting and that which is true if you don't see the point imagine a doctor telling you you're absolutely fine when actually you've got terminal cancer there are people who would wish their doctor to lie to them but that those people who would not wish their doctor to lie to them should not be sympathetic to the idea that the that religion has value simply because it is comforting more consoling now the question of quotes sam harris as by the way I strongly recommend his books the end of faith and letter to a Christian nation both utterly brilliant books Sam Harris says we need to replace the various roles of religion comfort might be one of them ritual might be another rites of passage marriages funerals and so on might be another to the extent that humans do need ritual and do need public meetings to signal things like births marriages and deaths I don't see any reason why we shouldn't put on secular equivalents of the religious ceremonies that mostly dominate life at the moment I have myself organized one secular funeral for a very dearly loved colleague and being too many others and what what we did and what is normally done is too obvious dispense with all prayers but you retain music you retain poetry you can have readings from the deceased person's favorite books eulogies by people who knew and loved the deceased person this is not difficult to arrange it has the smack of sincerity about it in a way that prayers which are for the same prayers for everybody regardless of who they are the smack of sincerity comes from the fact that they are individually tailored to the individual who's died whenever I've been to religious funerals which have an element of the non-religious about the religious funerals which include images which include the deceased favorite poetry etc I don't know about you but my experience is that the prayers for absolutely flat whereas the eulogies and the poems are intensely moving my wife even says thank goodness for the prayers they are the one thing that stops her from crying and keeps her amused almost rather than rather than being sad about the loss of the much-loved dead person the questioner is absolutely right in his preamble when he says that at least in American society atheists are the least loved least respected major group that's something that's got to change because atheists are far far more numerous than most people realize and that's mostly because they won't come out of the closet it's obvious that in an intelligent educated audience such as this University I stress this University who was it so who was it saw fit to give them accreditation I'd like to know in a place like this I have not the slightest doubt but there are a very large number of atheists and agnostics what is wrong with everybody in that position throughout the country standing up recognizing each other joining together and forming I won't say a lobby because somebody suggested that organizing atheist is rather like herding cats they are on the whole too intelligent and independent minded to lend themselves to being herded but if a if an atheist Lobby could be got together which showed a small fraction of its numerical strength it would outnumber for example the Jewish lobby which is formatively and notoriously powerful in this country there are more secularists agnostics and atheists in this country than there are Jews but do they have a voice in politics is it possible for an atheist to get elected to high office in this country no the Congress of this country is presumably at least partly derived from the intelligent educated wing of the country that being so it is statistically almost inconceivable that a substantial number of members of Congress are not atheists obviously many of them must be and yet not single one of them will admit it they are forced to dissemble even to lie about their religious convictions because that's the only way they can get elected well isn't that something that the American electorate ought to be doing something about so I accept the question as the premise and suggest that it's up to I'm not an American citizen so it's unfortunately not up to me but up to all of you to do something about it and to change the status of atheists in this country and to change the electability of atheists in this country good evening my name is Amy LeMay ham and I'm a first year student at our MWC and sorry I didn't hear that my name is Amy LeMay Hammond I'm a first year student at our MWC thank you and firstly I'd like to thank you for recognizing that there are probably many atheists in this room and that we are not morally dangerous or have no morals my question is in the case of sort of mock religions such as the invisible pink unicorn and such which I'm sure you're familiar with do those help the Atheist cause or do they actually hurt it by creating sort of hilarity about religion okay they do they do one good thing they do they answer one question and it's a very important question because it's a very ubiquitous one it's the following question you cannot disprove the existence of God now amazingly there are a lot of people who think that's a powerful argument you cannot disprove the existence of God which somehow seems to suggest to them oh well therefore the existence of God must be about equally likely to the to the non-existent existence and non-existence must be approximately equally likely and the point about the invisible pink unicorn on the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the celestial teapot and all those examples is simply to demonstrate that it's just not the case that because you cannot disprove something therefore that makes it the slightest bit likely and so that that's that that's the sole purpose of them it is a very important purpose thank you Hawkins um my name is Zack Smith I happen to be from Liberty University and I just want to applaud your uh your atheist wit because I have never at the same time been so insulted but amused at the same time so I just want to say does uh good one but might I have to forego my original question with the pr state of the AC of atheists that you've you know implied that there's some kind of social justice issue and at stake here by saying that it's you know wrong or that that ought to be and that kind of language just kind of implies that there is some kind of moral standard i'm wondering if if you know from from your perspective what kind of moral standard could be a basis for that kind of social justice if if indeed there's no higher power I just oh well um first I don't understand why you should feel insulted I didn't insult you I insulted God and that's a very different but but then the question of social justice in the in the in their in the rights of atheists to be considered citizens and to be considered electable I don't think the issue is is quite that they should be elected because they are atheist that wasn't the point the point is that being an atheist should not debar you any more than being black to go back in history to being black or Jewish or Catholic or a woman or any of the other things which historically have tended to make somebody unelectable and no longer do I'm delighted to say that the atheists and indeed homosexuals which of which of which are the next one made most difficult lot to get elected but atheists other other sort of the last major group to be embraced in this charmed circle of the electable I'm not saying they should be elected because they're atheists I'm saying that that that they should be free to openly say what their religious conviction or lack of conviction is and not thereby instantly be unelectable that that's all right that's all I meant I didn't mean anything more than that thank you I just would like to say at the outside a thank you for for coming and putting yourself in a sense on the firing line insofar as you've taken on God do you have always the opportunity that God might win so I would like just to call your attention to something that in my hearing of your your talk you mentioned in a sense of ridicule about the Trinity and it's affront to reason very difficult to understand even make sense of and what you know why would a person even try for that matter but you interestingly enough you finished your lecture with quantum strangeness which in fact is the same problem for scientists as the Trinity is for believing Christians who have a need to understand just making that comment and and I'm recalled I spent most of my life being an atheist or non-believer in that sense and I've seen the world through that lens and I understand the logic of it and and so on when I became a believer I also noticed that the same world out there was being viewed through a different metaphysical lens and I would suggest to you that there's a burqa as well for metaphysical reality you can shift up and look through faith or you can shift down and look through human intelligence or human understanding call it reason or intuition or whatever but I would call to your attention that there is a whole new reality that comes it's not supernatural in the sense but it's a shift and understanding yes I think that's a very interesting point and I I can answer it with reference to how you began which was the comparison between quantum theory which is deeply mysterious and the mystery of the Trinity and you implied that there's a sort of comparability between those that they are both deeply mysterious and why should one prefer one over the other the answer to that is actually very simple quantum theory yields experimental predictions which have been verified to an accuracy number of decimal places so accurate that the great theoretical physicist Richard Fineman compared it to the accuracy of predicting the width of North America to the accuracy of the width of one human hair that is why quantum theory has to be taken seriously and it doesn't matter well it does matter but it's some one can taking one stride because of the brilliance of the experimental verification it doesn't matter that quantum theory is so mysterious that as Fineman himself once said if you think you understand quantum theory you don't understand quantum theory it is true that the human mind and I believe the reason is that the human mind evolved in middle world where the strangeness of quantum theory never impinged upon human life it is true that the human mind cannot grasp cannot visualize cannot imagine the assumptions that quantum theory need needs to make but human physicists doing experiments can verify the predictions of quantum theory to an accuracy which is utterly stupefying and which leaves one in no doubt that in some sense quantum theory must be right nothing remotely like that could ever be claimed for the doctrine of the Trinity nor by the way is the doctrine of the Trinity anything like so interesting in mysterious as quantum theory hello thank you for coming to Lynchburg My name is Matthew Warner I'm a grad student at Liberty University I have one one question going back to ethics and morality you essentially said that the Darwinian reason we have morality is that back in the day you had cousins and people knew one beat them to reciprocate in order to act like that you would have to make decisions decisions would have to be based on critical thinking I was wondering if you have a Darwinian response or explanation for how critical thinking relates to Darwin Nina's right I think I understand you your your the question is not really about morality that the question is about is there a similar Darwinian account of critical thinking which is at the basis of your explanation for morality in my mind and my explanation for everything else but you will be as well not just morality well I mean quick critical thinking is is something which isn't universally an attribute of the human mind I I don't think it's very very hard to imagine that I imagine ways in which critical thinking could have benefited the survival of our ancestors I mean I I think that taking a a rational view of evidence would probably have helped our ancestors to survive in a world of the saber-tooth Tigers and ice ages and drying up water holes and all the other things which all the other hazards which threatened life I would have thought rather than reverse that the problem that faces us is how do we explain uncritical lack of thinking why is there such a lot of that about and I I mean I do have a chapter explaining that but I should have thought that was that was a rather harder problem than than the one about about critical thinking hi my name is Carl Swenson and I'm gonna tip my hand right off to start like the other brave questioners and say that if if theories and ideas around things like intelligent design creationism are scientifically all but dead they just haven't fallen over yet then I see something else waiting in the wings scientifically that needs that would could be a problem for science and that's until I ask your opinion about this things like you've used the word mind a lot we think of mind as some dimensionless thing in the middle of our head which tells us what to do and is separate from the brain which is similar to the soul another popular notion so what is science or philosophy at this point have to say about this about about the mind about yeah about the existence of it or the soul or the popular notion well I mean my view would be a materialistic one not everybody's would and and my view would be that mind and soul and consciousness and all those sorts of words are they describe something which is a manifestation of the material brain and doesn't have any existence outside material brains where material brain is could at some future date perhaps include silicon brains not not just neuronal brains but there has to be some sort of physical medium doubtless highly complicated highly interconnected a network of of complicated wiring diagram which by some means which neurophysiologists are now working on results in the phenomena which psychologists study and which we colloquially give names like mind and evil soul too so I don't think that the mind is an immaterial thing that has any existence outside the material world I'm mark Schneider I'm a sophomore at randolph-macon Woman's College majoring in biology and environmental science Mike my question is in no way controversial it's not intended to be so and it basically Springs out of what the point you made in your hypothesis about God do you imply that we made evolve to become God or do we share a common ancestry with God well I don't think it's very helpful to suggest that we are likely to evolve to become gods I do think that there may very well be somewhere in the universe being evolved beings which are so far advanced compared to us that we would if we saw them we might very well be tempted to call them gods and it is also possible by the same token that if a species goes on evolving either genetically and/or culturally for a sufficient number of millenia our descendants might become so advanced that we would be tempted to call them gods however I don't think I would wish to call them gods because however advanced they are however ingenious however intelligent however their technology would strike us with all they would still be evolved beings they would be beings that had evolved by a process of slow gradual incremental evolution and that to me is the diagnostic feature of a God and God doesn't evolve and God just happens and God is just there and so I think my answer to your question is it's an interesting thought but in but but actually I don't think it would be a helpful use of the word God any more than if a Stone Age hunter were to suddenly be transported into the 21st century and would of course be awestruck by computers and mobile phones and Boeing 747s and helicopters and rockets to the moon that Stone Age hunter might be tempted to call us gods but I think it's a temptation that he should resist and so should we doctors I am a professor at Liberty University of a non subject religion right but according to your book and I've been reading your book and it's helped me to understand atheists mine and I appreciate that I have a whole group of my students here tonight they've been in the back there and because I wanted them to hear what you have to say and we want to be careful not to set up straw men about atheists which you know are done and and I want them to avoid very much okay so but I wanted to read from your book you'd be reading from your book and I find it interesting this footnote on page 82 we might be seeing something similar today in the over publicised forgive ization of the philosopher anthony flue who announced in his old age that he had been converted to believe in some sort of deity now I wanted to read that footnote before I like question right you would consider yourself a de facto atheist leaning toward a strong atheist category six leaning towards seven apparently because you would say the evidence demands your being an atheist not the theists for you the evidence makes the existence of God highly improbable so my question is what evidence would you need to conclude that God's existence at least was as probable as that of extraterrestrials and why did you relegate Anthony flu to a footnote with with him being such an eminent philosopher and finding design in the DNA an indication yes um Anthony flu is a is a British philosopher who has long been a champion of atheism and he has as the questioner remarks announced in his old age that he has been converted to a form of deism not out-and-out theism a form of years of where he thinks there probably is some kind of mysterious intelligence at the root of the universe many great people have thought the same what disappointed me about Anthony flus reasons for that is that he publicly admitted publicly announced that what had convinced him was the idea of intelligent design and specifically the book of Michael Behe well that doesn't argue for the surviving powers that Antony flew once had as an intellectual no serious thinker could possibly be positively impressed by the arguments of the so called intelligent design creationists there may be good reasons for believing in a god and if there are any I would expect them to come from possibly modern physics from cosmology from the observation that some people claim the laws and constants of the universe are too finely tuned to to be an accident that would not be a wholly disreputable reason for believing in a some form of supernatural deity I think there's a very good argument against it and I've developed much of my chapter 4-2 as I think refuting that argument if a Tinley fluid said that then I think we could have a serious argument with him but what he actually said was that he was convinced by intelligent design in biology and anybody who knows anything about biology will immediately see that that is ridiculous I'm sorry to be so I'm sorry to be so harsh but when I last saw Antony flu he he didn't endear himself to me because he actually went about promulgating the legend that Darwin himself had a deathbed conversion and that really is a ridiculous story which was long long ago disposed of by the Darwin family and it led me to somewhat discount other things that Antony flew is now saying he once was a great philosopher it's very sad good evening my name is Ryan Thomas I'm a biology major at Liberty University and I kind of have a - I kind of have it I'm sorry I I'm having a hard time hearing oh I'm sorry I my name is Ryan yes I'm a biology major at University at Liberty University right now and I have a two-part question for if you don't mind my first question would be do you draw a distinction in between blind faith and reasonable faith okay is there a distinction do I draw a distinction between blind faith and reasonable faith no it's it's it's interesting that you say that because just through my own studies through my my investigation into this matter I have come to the conclusion there is no such thing as proof right that there is reasonable faith and there is blind faith when I when I drop a ball you know to the ground on earth it's reasonable for me to believe that the ball will fall the very next time that I drop it but I can't prove it just as I can't prove that you exist yeah I believe that you exist based on a reasonable faith because I can see you because I can hear you but our senses can sometimes deceive us people on cocaine feel bugs in their skin but that doesn't make it real if people that are taking pollution agend see things but it doesn't make it real okay so I think it's interesting that you deny the the line between reasonable fears I mean I think we agree I think we're just using words in a different way I think it's a it's a semantic thing something like when you when you drop a ball it falls I mean you drop another ball it falls and when you drop another ball it falls and I don't think I would wish to use the word faith for your belief that the next time you drop it it will fall I don't think that's what I would use the word faith for I think that's that's and that's normal science I mean that's based upon Newton's laws it's based upon a tremendous body of theory it's based upon scientific evidence and so I would not use the word reasonable faith the way you're using it is seems to be you're using a reasonable face for basing beliefs upon upon evidence so if if you're using a reasonable faith to mean belief based upon evidence then there's no disagreement we're just using words in a different way I define faith as as belief that's not based upon evidence okay and that's why I answered your first question in the way that I that I did I don't think we actually disagree and I'm sure we disagree at other things but only we disagree about this you know in that in in an other than semantic way okay then my second question I'm sorry I didn't expect you to answer no actually to the first one but yeah surprises every day my second question is considering them that we must believe what's based on reason and and reason of course is based on experience correct you know reason is is based on the fact that when I do when I drop the ball at it falls every time so it's reasonable to believe next time I drop the ball it's gonna fall why then is it reasonable considering our experience concerning the law of cause and effect concerning the fact that we our experience tells us that everything which has an effect has a cause how is it that it's more reasonable to believe that the universe created itself because when confined to the natural laws because nature is bound by its own limits which which are the natural laws and if nature is bound by the laws which say that matter can't create itself then how do you get around this issue that there must have been something outside outside the system it is it is very difficult it is of course a very difficult question to ask how things began at the very beginning of the universe it's very difficult to even know what the word beginning even means with respect to the universe that any physicist any biologist any scientist any reasonable person would accept however when you ask what's the alternative if the alternative that's being offered to what physicists now talk about a big a big bang a spontaneous singularity which gave rise to the origin of the universe if the alternative to that is a divine intelligence a creator which would have to have been complicated statistically improbable the very kind of thing which scientific theories such as Darwin's exists to explain then immediately we see that however difficult and apparently inadequate the theory of the physicists is the theory of the theologians that the first cause was a complicated intelligence is even more to accept they're both difficult but the theory of the cosmic intelligence is even worse what Darwinism does is to raise our consciousness to the power of science to explain the existence of complex things and intelligences and creative intelligences are above all complex things they're statistically improbable Darwinism raises our consciousness to the power of science to explain how such entities of the human brain is one how such entities can come into existence from simple beginnings however difficult those simple beginnings may be to accept they are a whole lot easier to accept than complicated beginnings complicated things come into the universe late as a consequence of slow gradual incremental steps God if he exists would have to be a very very very complicated thing indeed so to postulate a God as the beginning of the universe as the answer to the riddle of the first cause is to shoot yourself in the conceptual foot because you are immediately postulating something far far more complicated than that which you are trying to explain now physicists cope with this problem in various ways which may seem to you they even seem to me somewhat unconvincing for example they suggest that our universe is but one bubble in a foam of universes the multiverse and each bubble in the foam has a different set of laws and constants and by the anthropic principle we have to be since we're here talking about it we have to be in the kind of bubble with the kind of laws and constants which are capable of giving rise to the evolutionary process and therefore to creatures like us that is one current physicist explanation for how we exist in the kind of universe that we that we it doesn't sound so shatteringly convincing as said Darwin's own theory which is self-evidently very convincing nevertheless however unconvincing that may sound it is many many many orders of magnitude more convincing than any theory that says complex intelligence was there right from the outset if you if you have problems seeing how matter could just come into existence try thinking about how complex intelligent matter or complex intelligent entities of any kind could suddenly spring into existence it's many many orders of magnitude harder to understand sorry you've had three already hi my name is Amber Morin from Liberty University as well I have two questions for you how can you believe in extraterrestrials as a higher being and not believe in a god could you just say that again how can you how can you believe as extra extraterrestrials as a higher being and not believe in a god how can I believe that an extraterrestrial is a higher being and not believe in them as an advanced higher being yeah I understand the words of your questions an extraterrestrial higher being if one exists comes into existence as the end product of a long slow gradual incremental process of evolution just like the one that gave rise to us that's the explanation for why the extra-terrestrial if it is indeed an advanced being is an advanced being it's a very sensible easy to understand explanation it's a gradual explanation you start from simple beginnings and you work up God isn't like that God is a being that is not supposed to evolved God is a being that has always existed and therefore does not have the benefit of that kind of sensible rational gradual istic explanation that is an absolutely crucial difference I suspect that on other planets there probably are beings as I said before which are so far advanced relative to us that they might as well be gods except for this one absolutely crucial respect but they came into the universe by slow gradual degrees they didn't just happen nothing as complicated as that just happens they didn't just happen and therefore they or it or he or she could not be responsible for designing the universe it's probably gonna be the most simplest one for you to answer but what if you're wrong well what if I'm wrong I mean anybody could be wrong we could all be wrong about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot you happen to have been brought up I would presume in the Christian faith you know what it's like not to believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim you're not a Hindu why aren't you a Hindu because you happen to be brought up in America not in India if you bid washerman Hindu in India you'd be a Hindu if you were brought up in in Denmark in the time of the Vikings you'd be believing in what Han and Thor if you brought up in in classical Greece you'd be believing in in zoos if you brought up in central Africa you be believing in the great juju of the mountain I mean there's no particular reason to pick on the judeo-christian God in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up and asked me the question what if I'm wrong what if you're wrong about the great juju at the bottom of the sea in continuation of the last fellow's questions the problem is that you're applying natural laws to God whereas he claims to exist outside of them therefore he does not necessarily other hand which which necessitates the beginning well isn't that just too easy I mean you talk your way out of having to provide a rational argument by just decreeing by fears that God but that God simply declares himself outside matter and therefore doesn't need the same kind of argument as as anything else I mean if you're convinced by that kind of thing you're welcome my name is Kay Goodman and I'd like to hear your thoughts on whether or not there is a god or gods what effect has it upon humankind upon the orders of the world upon men and women that we rather consistently refer to God as a male well that's a perfectly fair point and I I mean to me to me there there is no difference between a non-existent male and a non-existent to the extent that to the extent that god or gods has sociological psychological political significance then I could easily imagine that if one could somehow begin account of a female God it might well have a very improving of effect upon human society I'm nervous amber Dawn's student here at randolph-macon thank you for that previous answer I'll give you a bit of a preview in any way shape or form and I only wrote this down because I knew I'd forget what I want to as someone coming from a religious family especially in an area with such a dominant religion and a particular figurehead how does someone find their own way when leaving is not quite an option I didn't quite the last century yes how does one find their own way when leaving just yet is not quite an option okay first and I have a small I think this is a very serious question because I've had I've had letters from really quite a lot of people in especially in America and they say things like I I'm actually an atheist but I don't admit it I'm frightened of my family I'm frightened of my parents I'm frightened of my minister I read an article the other day about a boy in a small town in Texas who didn't want to be confirmed and the priest said well that's okay you don't have to be confirmed but you have to write down your reasons for not being confirmed why did the boy have to write down his reasons for not being confirmed into that particular church you didn't have to write down his reasons for not being bar-mitzvah and as a Jew it just so happened that he was born into a Christian family and therefore the presumption was made that he'd better have a good reason for not being confirmed into the religion of his parents or else and that's one of the main problems we have is the assumption that our society makes regardless of whether we are religious or not we all buy into the convention that children belong to the religion of their parents you will see newspaper article thing about Christian children and Muslim children and Jewish children children who may be as young as 3 or 4 years old and who are therefore obviously much too young to know what their beliefs are about the cosmos and humanity and religion there is no such thing as a Christian child there is only a child of Christian parents whenever you hear the phrase Christian child or Muslim child or Protestant child or Catholic child the phrase should great like fingernails on a blackboard just as the feminists have raised our consciousness to phrases like one-man one-vote you can't hear that phrase now without sort of at least wincing slightly because you realize it should be one-person one-vote at present we haven't had our consciousness raised about the labeling of children with the religion of their parents that's just one aspect and it shows itself to return to the questioner it shows itself in a great deal of difficulty that any young person has in any person of any age has in departing from the religion of their parents there are social groups their grandparents their uncles and aunts and so on it might be a bit like getting divorced I mean it's sort of something that raises real social problems there's a magnificent one-woman show by the comic actress Julia Sweeney called letting go of God in which she describes her own journey from Catholic upbringing to the mature and balanced atheist that she is today and she describes the difficulty of admitting to her family that that she had become an atheist it actually was reported in in a newspaper and her mother read it and screamed down the telephone and dualists we needs very witty a very funny performance she does she says but her mother was absolutely horrified not believing in God was one thing but an atheist I don't know what the answer is the I mean the the precedent of of gay people is one that one can vaguely bear in mind I mean homosexuality is now much much more accepted in our society than it was when I was young when I mean homosexuality was actually illegal in Britain up until I think the 1960s believe it or not and the great British mathematician one of the two fathers of the modern computer Alan Turing who arguably because of his brilliance in solving the German Enigma codes in the Second World War did more to win the second world war than either Churchill or Eisenhower Alan Turing was arrested for homosexual behavior in the 1950s and was essentially driven to suicide that has now changed and now people can be openly gay the word gay has become a word used with pride rather than with shame I think that we do have to have a shift in social attitudes to atheism which will mirror that towards homosexuality it is after all just a view about the cosmos and about various other things about humanity about morality is really quite extraordinary but somebody's view about such an academic matter as whether there exists as supreme intelligence should reflect upon their the way they're looked at in a society the way their family and their friends look at them it is quite remarkable that that shouldn't be the case once again it's something we've all got to do something about last question very simple is anger a common symptom of a person who is going through the deconditioning process of their parents religion I didn't I think go too close to the microphone I said is anger a common symptom of a person who is going through the deconditioning process of their parents religion his anger a common symptom of a person who's going through the deconditioning process from their parents religion I don't know I had never occurred to me does anybody else have personal I think sort of fear is is probably more common I mean fear fear of of what their parents are going to think rather than anger but that I could be wrong and I'm interested in that if that's that's question is based on personal experience I'd be interested to hear more is that a common experience Wow and anger on the part of the person who is undergoing the deconversion themselves anger against whom or what right well thank you that's extremely interesting I've learned something this evening thank you hi I'm Ron I'm Ron Fineman I love physics too too quick two questions if I may at Liberty University they have on display some fossils that they say are I might be off by a factor or by a thousand years or so but they say these fossils of dinosaurs are three thousand years old maybe four thousand maybe five thousand my my question the first question to you is what what could they do to really prove to a scientist that those fossils are indeed that old only that's number one and then number two would you be willing to elucidate a little bit further your arguments against creation by design and maybe give us some better sense of cosmological time just how long it really is right the the belief that dinosaurs are only three thousand years old and that the universe is only six thousand years old how to give an idea of the real time span of the world when what one way to put it which I've recently been think thinking about is that if somebody believes that the world is only six thousand years old or of the order of a few thousand years old when the true age of the earth is of the order of a few billion years old that means they are out by a factor of a million which is not a trivial error it's I mean I am not very good at arithmetic and I calculated that it's equivalent to believing that the distance from New York to San Francisco is seven hundred yards but I received a letter from a mathematician who done is done the sum again and he said I got it wrong it's actually equivalent to believing that the distance from New York to San Francisco is 28 feet either way it gives you an idea of the scale of the error the questioner asked what would the people of Liberty University have to do in order to demonstrate that these dinosaur fossils really were three thousand years old what they would have to do is to find igneous rocks which were found in proximity to or sandwiching the the fossils and date these by radioactive dating several different half a dozen at least different forms of radioactive dating all of which give independent estimates of the date of these fossils and all those different methods of doing it should point to an age of 3000 years in fact of course what they those methods of dating all show is that dinosaur fossils are hundreds of millions no less than 65 million years old not just one method of radioactive dating lots and lots of different methods of radioactive dating different clocks clocks working on completely different principles that all point to the same order of magnitude of age of these dinosaur fossils if it's really true that the museum at Liberty University has dinosaur fossils which are labeled as being three thousand years old then that is an educational disgrace it is divulging the whole idea of a university and I would strongly encourage any members of Liberty University who may be here to leave and go to a proper University with your with elucidating on chance versus natural selection versus intelligent design and give us a sense of rajma logical time chance and natural selection and intelligent design one of the biggest fallacies in popular understanding of Darwinian evolution by natural selection is that it is a theory of random chance it is not it's the it's the very opposite and this is one of the most important things to understand about it there is a certain chance element in it the mutation is is a process of random charges random with respect to improvement things don't tend to get better as a result of mutation the important step in the Darwinian theory of evolution is natural selection natural selection is a non-random process natural selection is the non-random survival of randomly varying genetic codes and the reason why some genetic codes survive better than others is their phenotypic effects via the processes of embryogenesis on phenotypes on bodies which make them survive or not survive reproduce or not survive and the ones that do survive and reproduce pass on the genetic coded instructions that built them and equipped them and made them good at surviving and reproducing that's the idea that is the explanation for the apparent adaptive design if that the illusion of design which all living things show it is a non-random process it does not involve design of any sort it produces an illusion of design it is hard for people to grasp for various reasons and one reason the questioner has pinpointed is the sheer length of time involved geological time is larger than most human minds are capable of grasping one their various metaphors have been used to convey the sheer magnitude of geological time one that I like which I didn't invent is you hold out your hand to represent the the length of geological time to say the middle of my tie is the origin of life and the tip of my finger is the present then the dinosaurs which went extinct 65 million years ago lived about there most of this is bacteria you have you have multicellular life evolving about here dinosaurs about there humans at my fingernail and the whole of recorded human history everything from the Egyptians biblical times the Romans the Assyrians the Greeks all of human history disappears in the dust from one stroke of a nail file that's the the scale of human history is the dust from one stroke of a nail file on the same scale as the time that's available that has been available for evolution that is one of the reasons why people find it so hard to understand there are many reasons I've written about 8 books on the subject which preceded the God Delusion and it's a little hard to condense it into a few minutes thank you very much I'm sorry I don't know when we're supposed to stop and I'm we weren't a professor Dawkins is going to sign books for us after this down and ribbo lounge which is downstairs so give him a few minutes to get there but I think we probably better stop here here for this evening okay thank you very much

Channel: TheEthanwashere

Views: 10,928

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Keywords: 192709, MP4, STD, 01, mp4, richard, dawkins, god, delusion, Richard Dawkins (TV Actor)

Id: uuMB5e91BGo

Length: 108min 17sec (6497 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 18 2013