Richard Dawkins - Late Late Show Part 1 of 3

welcome back my next guest says religion has been given a free ride for way too long he describes it as lethally dangerous nonsense his book describes the God of the Bible as petty and vindictive racist a genocidal bully and a control freak in fact he says if you believe in God you are deluded will you welcome please Richard Dawkins and joining him UCD philosopher dr. Jerry Casey who I can tell you completely disagrees you're both very welcome to the program I like you then I just asked our audience a question first of all and if you'd raise your hands how many of you believe in God okay a forest of hounds so Richard Dawkins these people are deluded all every single one of them well I fear that's right yes I would say it's rather like the phenomenon of the imaginary friend that children have and that comfort them and console them but there's actually not the slightest shred of evidence that any kind of supernatural being exists so I'm sorry to say deluded yes deluded em how can so many people be wrong well there was a time when everybody believed that the world was flat there was a time when everybody believed that the Sun whizzed round the earth people are very very frequently deluded and by the way of course there was a time when people believed in Zeus and Apollo and in other parts of the world they believed in Thor and Wotan people have believed in fairies and leprechauns everybody in this room I would guess knows what it's like not to believe in the God of some other religion you know that if you happen to be born in the Middle East you'll probably be Muslim and people who are born in the Middle East believe equally fervently in their God they can't both be right there are so many different gods that people have believed in throughout history so what they believe is really an accident of geography exactly right yes and it would be fair enough if you said look this is stuff and nonsense believe it if you wish and carry on you're not doing any anyone any harm but you believe the country that religious is actively harmful oh I mean I do i do say carry on I don't I don't say I that it's actively harmful in most cases I think in the great majority of cases it's completely harmless and one could say the same thing of of astrology and belief in telepathy and belief in water divining all all these things for which there's no evidence there is a minority of people for whom it actually is harmful the extremists and a good case can be made that the the decent moderate people just about everybody in the in this room are in a sense paving the way making the world safe for the extremists because decent moderate sensible middle-of-the-road religious people teach children the faith is a virtue that means believing something without evidence and there's a minority of people who will take that really really seriously and they'll say my holy book tells me that I've got to go out and kill infidels kill Apple States I've got to go and make a suicide bomber of myself I've got to go and fly planes into skyscrapers in New York it's only a minority but if it wasn't for faith being given a free ride but it wasn't for faith being touted as a virtue just about everybody in our civilization is taught that faith that means belief without evidence is a good thing it's a virtue indeed the less evidence there is the more virtuous you are in believing it you also claim that a lot of stuff has been made up as say in the case of the Roman Catholic Church they made the stuff up as they went along stuff that is not even in the Holy Scriptures for example the virgin birth the virgin birth is in the scriptures but it's a misprint it's a it's a mistake it's a mistranslation from Isaiah that was translated into Matthew and believed by people and so what was the proper translation in gum Oh young woman a young woman shall shall conceive and bear and bear a child was mistranslated from the Hebrew of a young woman into the Greek for virgin and the whole virgin birth story started from that one mistranslation that's a most astonishing the astonishing piece of constructive error and cherkasy listening to what Richard is saying how do you rebut what he's saying because in order to rebut you've got to prove that there is a God and no one so far has really come up with the definitive proof that there is well the trouble first of all you know this is a this is a sort of thrilling read in many ways and as an ex a theist because there's natives for 13 years you know I found many parts of it interesting and I can agree and sympathize with much of what Richard is saying in many respects so there are lunatics out there and they and they often use their belief systems and so on so forth but but to take those that somehow the norm is a bit like saying if you visited South Chicago or West Side New York and took that to be you know the the norm for the rest of the United States it's not now there are many religions okay and there are many many Creed's and that cannot be denied and it cannot all be true that is that's a logical point okay and you'd have to agree with that it doesn't mean that not one of them is true by the way but it doesn't mean that they can't all be true but the key question here and and Richard again is correct for this finger on it which is this question of evidence now in many cases we we believe things because we have ever think they're obviously evident right but many but but even leaving aside God for example we believe things say about our friends are less than full evidence I mean their faithfulness and their friendliness towards and their good intentions and indeed we would continue to believe if they are really our friends in the face of countervailing evidence no not completely right so what the sort of religious phenomenon to the extent that it depends and not as it around evidence isn't something completely unusual but I want to turn to the question of God because God is the key thing here right and the fundamental question is not something about this particular religion excuse me or that one is about whether or not they're there the universe as a whole requires some fundamental explanation that is in some way outside or beyond beneath or this is the divine architect what I mean you see the question here one of the problems I have with Richards book is that while many power to forego the third chapter to me is frankly is unscientific in the sense that it doesn't it doesn't look at the data it doesn't analyze it properly and and it doesn't really look at what other people have said I mean that there's been an argument in the discussion going on for over 3,000 years and not just among religious people I mean it was started by the philosophers and the question is really the basic question and Richard is we're very well aware of this because there's Diaz with this to some extent in the book is why is there something rather than nothing right that's the key question so you're either going to have to say but if there was nothing we wouldn't be talking about exact wouldn't be here don't have the question right so there is something but that doesn't that doesn't answer the question question is why is there something rather than okay Richard why is there something why shouldn't there be something as you say if the if there wasn't then we wouldn't be here but the question why is there something rather than nothing the the origin of the something the origin of the cut of the cosmos was I suspect an extremely simple event and simple events are very simple to understand and explain once upon a time not that long ago a couple of centuries ago the question would not have been why is there something rather than nothing the question would have been why is there all this magnificent life why are there trees why is their grass why are there birds why they're humans Darwin answered that question and blew out of the water the theistic answer to that question theists are now driven back to this much much more simple question why is there something rather than nothing everything else is either explained or well on the way to being explained well if there's just one little tiny smidgen of a gap in which God is alleged to be to be hiding but even if you invoke a supernatural creator to explain why is there something rather than nothing you still explained absolutely nothing because you're left without an explanation for that God himself he doesn't quite work by that I mean I can see the point here if I were to say what's the explanation of say the spoken you said well but Richard because he wrote it right and then I would say what's the expose the explanation of Richard and say Richards parents and so on of course you can keep on going back right and no one of these things will do the trick but the whole point is you either have to you have to answer the question of following the way either the universe as a whole is self-explanatory in other words it contains its explanation in and of itself and I don't think it does but now there can be argument on that by the way I mean I'm not asserting that I've always kind of when we're having these conversation I'm sure have the same conversation with Richard before if you go back to the Big Bang and then you say well what was before too big that's a good question and then if you find something else

Channel: Francis Dignam

Views: 840,073

Rating: 4.7799687 out of 5

Keywords: Religion, Science, Richard Dawkins, God, Athiest, Delusions.

Id: eBDUPAgy5zk

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2010

Reddit Comments

[u/geekfanboy]

And he started with "As an ex-atheist". Is this the religious version of "Many of my friends are black therefore I cannot possibly be racist"?

[u/Vermea]

I think Dr. Jared Casey (sp?) was being way too petty and close-minded on the wording of the passage he read from the book stating that it's very probable that there is life on other planets that we would consider god-like. He was a very intelligent sounding man, overall well-spoken, and quick with his retorts. But to hone in on that one phrase 'very probable' seemed like a desperate move from a man losing a debate. He should realize that it's a statistical improbability that there is no life greater than our own on other planets. He apparently isn't familiar with Drake's Equation.

[u/mathmexican4234]

That guy just bashed Dawkins for like 30 seconds straight. He didn't even have a question.

[u/enthos]

People are so retarded. Honestly, his opponent seemed reasonable, but the damn audience just doesn't get it.

[u/nickram81]

I am always impressed out how quickly Richard Dawkins can formulate and communicate a very valid, solid and reasonable explanation for peoples questions. Yet I am afraid his explanation fell upon deaf ears.

[u/pSKY11]

What is with everyone giving their life stories? Ask a question and stfu.

[u/pSKY11]

How appropriate is it that they finish with a question about a cartoon.

[u/DougieFFC]

The saddest thing about this video are the text-in comments rolling along the screen. They are massive evidence for the retarding effect of religious belief.

[u/dregofdeath]

fuxking hate the late late show its not so bad now a days , Im irish i think irish people need to abandon the fallacy of god