Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss: Something from Nothing

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ian Young, and I'm the Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University. I'd like to begin by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet, and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history. It is a pleasure to welcome you this evening to the Australian National University, and to introduce our esteemed guests-- Professor Richard Dawkins in conversation with Professor Lawrence Krauss. Tonight's event is sponsored by the ANU Colleges of Science, and Cosmos magazine. This evening we have an opportunity to hear from one of the most influential scientists and public intellectuals of our time. Professor Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. He is the author of nine books, including The Selfish Gene, and The God Delusion, and his works have been published in more than 30 languages. A fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of literature, Richard has honorary doctorates of literature, as well as science, including an honorary doctorate from the ANU. In 2006, he established the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science to provide the scientific education, critical thinking, and evidence-based understanding of the natural world. Tonight Richard Dawkins will talk with Professor Lawrence Krauss. Professor Krauss is foundation professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. He's also authored a number of bestselling books, including A Universe from Nothing. He is a visiting fellow at ANU, and has been a regular visitor over the past few years. And it is a great pleasure to welcome him back here to ANU. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our speakers, Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss. [APPLAUSE] Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure for both of us to be here. We're actually beginning an Australian tour here in Canberra. We'll be here and in Sydney. And we'll be closing off, actually, at the Sydney Opera House on Monday. And in the middle, we'll both be attending the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, the largest convention of atheists in the world. I should begin with some housekeeping details. First of all, the way this is going to work is that Richard and I are going to have a conversation. And we'll talk about that in a minute. And then after we're finished, the floor will be open for questions. And there are microphones at either end of the auditorium, and also up in the second level. So you don't have to jump down. And we'll go on as long as the questions are interesting. [LAUGHTER] And the format of the conversation is somewhat unusual, perhaps. But about five years ago, Richard and I were asked to speak together at Stanford University in the United States. And Richard insisted that we do it without a moderator. Because, as he pointed out, moderators always stop things just when they're getting interesting. So we've tried to have some conversations without a moderator. And that's what we're going to do tonight. And we're never quite certain where they're going to go. And we will see. We have some ideas of topics we'd like to discuss. But we'll see where they go. I actually want to begin, Richard, speaking of moderators, some of you may have watched TV last night. [LAUGHTER] Did you see Q&A, a few of you? Yes. Well, it was an interesting-- well, I don't know if "interesting" is the way to describe it. But it was a program that I want to spend a little time talking about. And maybe you might want to comment on some of your concerns about that program. Well, I suppose my first concern arose when I was announced, and the audience went [TEPID APPLAUSE] And then Cardinal Pell was announced, and they went, "Rah! Rah! Rah!" And I couldn't help feeling that this was not exactly a representative audience of Australia. And I don't know how the studio audience is chosen for Q&A. But I had my suspicions at the time, which I think have rather been confirmed, that there was some fairly smart footwork, which I suppose they're rather good at, and maybe we're not so good at. And maybe we should-- --learn how to stack the audience. Or learn how it's done. You've got to be a bit politically savvy. But I think that more importantly, going back to your point, Lawrence, about moderators. I really did think last night the moderator got in the way. Because we could have had a searching conversation, which I would have enjoyed. But just as it got going, and just as the Archbishop had dealt himself enough rope to hang himself, the moderator jumped in with moving on to the next question, and, as it were, rescued him in the nick of time. And so I thought that that was a fairly good illustration of why we don't want moderators. And the same thing happened, oddly enough, in England a few weeks ago, when I had a similar onstage conversation-- not televised, in this case-- with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who dare I say, by contrast, is a very, very nice man. And once again there was a moderator who kept on getting in the way. In that case, it wasn't to get the next question from the audience. In that case it was to utter some philosophical profundity, which didn't actually help matters along. But I've noticed again and again that chairmen get in the way. And it's better, if you can do it, to have just a plain conversation. He certainly did save, on a number of occasions, save the cardinal, who it was my first experience listening to the man. He seemed totally devoid of intellect. [APPLAUSE] It's true. I was shocked. I was shocked. And what I thought we might do is because of he demonstrated a number of misconceptions about science, as well as religion as far as I could see. And hadn't thought much about it either. And I thought we might want to fill in some of the gaps that happened last night. For example, I was amazed with his understanding of evolution. Or-- Well, yes. The chairman asked him, did he accept that humans were descended from apes, I think. Yeah. That's the way he put it. And he said, yes, from Neanderthals. We're not descended from Neanderthals. We're cousins of Neanderthals. I told him that. So he said, more or less, well, how can we be cousins if they're extinct? I actually, at that point, and I think he then asked you, have you ever met a Neanderthal? And I must admit I would have just said I'm talking to one right now. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] But you know, that's-- But I think is one of the biggest misconceptions about evolution, in the sense of how it works. And the idea of speciation, it's a very non-intuitive concept, which is one of the reasons that I think many people have problems with evolution as a concept. Because it doesn't happen on a human time scale. And I've testified before school boards in the United States about trying to keep evolution in the schools, which are constantly there's a battle all the time to try and get rid of evolution. And I'm always told, why aren't I seeing apes turn into humans right now? Yeah. And it's a constant harangue. So maybe you want to talk a little bit about that. Well, that is one of the commonest things. "I'll believe in evolution when I see a monkey turning into a human." It's as though they think it happens overnight. And it is true that it's very, very hard to grasp the sheer immensity of the time scale that's involved. We as humans are used to a time scale of years, decades. Centuries we can just about cope with. Even millennia. But then millennia start to feel a bit kind of mysterious, and lost in the mists of time. A million years is something we can't really grasp. 100 million years is something completely beyond our comprehension. And there have been various attempts to dramatize it, things like representing the whole of the span of life by 24 hour clock, and humans appear-- don't know what it is-- five minutes before midnight, or whatever it is. And another one is when you hold out your arm, and you say the middle of your neck is the origin of life, and then it's all bacteria out to about there. And then dinosaurs come in about there. And fossil humans that are recognizably Homo sapiens come in about the tip of your fingernail. And the whole of human history, the whole of recorded history-- the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Hebrews, the Romans, the Greeks, all falls in the dust of one stroke of the nail file. That's not my own. That's somebody else's. But I think it's rather a good one. And you can't really get to grips with evolution unless you realize what an enormous amount of time that there is. And it's quite clear, I think, that the cardinal didn't really understand, that we are actually descended not just from apes, but we're descended from fish. We're descended from bacteria. But also even the question, I thought, by the way it was put by the moderator, "we're descended from apes," gives the impression that we are descended from creatures that now exist contemporaneously, which, of course, is not the case. That's one of the commonest misconceptions. And you hear it in the form of, "Well, if we're descended from chimpanzees, how come there are still chimpanzees?" We're not descended from chimpanzees. Even if we were, there's no reason why they shouldn't go on living with us. It doesn't mean they have to go extinct. Although we seem to do a very good job of making things extinct that are going with us. Well, that's true. I mean you could say if North Americans have descended from Europeans, how come there are still Europeans? Excellent. Or Australians, for that matter. Well, I personally took affront to something the cardinal said. I bet you did. Yeah. Because as ignorant as he was of biology, what upset me was he was disingenuously ignorant about-- and, I thought, ungracious to you, in fact, in that context. I mean, there was the question that came from the audience where somebody said, I'm holding nothing in my fist, and you can't make something out of nothing. I mean, which of course was a reference to Lawrence's book, Something from Nothing. The whole point about modern physics is that you can't do it by common sense. And that's why you need physicists. If you could do it by-- Because we have no common sense. That's really it. Yeah, if you could do it by common sense, you wouldn't need Lawrence. I'll take that as a compliment, Richard. So it is very clear from reading reviews of your book Something from Nothing, well, first of all, I should say that I was very proud to have written the afterword to this book. I was accused last night by Cardinal Pell of not having read the book, because he said, "You wrote the foreword, and you evidently didn't get to the end." If he had read the book, he'd have known that I did not write the foreword. And in fact that's the thing that I objected the most. I don't mind ignorance so much. It's the illusion of knowledge that upsets me more. And in fact, he has to be held responsible. And I'm happy we're going to Sydney, because I plan to hold him responsible, for criticizing a book that he clearly hadn't read. And that was a clear example of it. He quoted verbatim from a review by a philosopher of my book, and of course totally bungled it-- totally distorted it. But the first part, he said six pages before the end of the book, which was how this review in the New York Times began. But the key idea, which really is so difficult, and I guess challenging and perhaps threatening to both some philosophers, as well as theologians, is this question of something from nothing. It happens in the case, as I think we've talked about before, in biology. I mean, how do you get life from non-life? That was originally sort of the main theological question. How do you get life from non-life? And even in the original version of Darwin's book, he says at the very end, God breathed life into the first species, because-- Only in the first edition. Only in the first edition. In the second edition he leaves out God. Oh, no. Other way around. Yeah, he put it back in [INAUDIBLE].. In the first edition there's no mention of God. He says "originally breathed," and then in the second edition, and subsequent editions, he says "by the creator." But that's a much easier problem, in a way, because you're starting with chemistry. You start from molecules bumbling around in the warm little pond, as Darwin called it-- the primeval soup, as people later called it. And then you get the first self-replicating molecule. But something from nothing, from literally nothing. And that's what really gets people. That's the one that's really counter to common sense. And they clearly misunderstand what you mean by "nothing." Well, exactly. And the problem is I'm often accused of not talking about the nothing that classical philosophers 2,000 years ago, or theologians talked about. And the answer is, I'm not really interested in their nothing. I'm interested in the real nothing. I'm interested in asking the question, based on our understanding of the universe-- we'll probably get back to this often-- science changes what we mean by words. And it changes that meaning because we learn about the universe. We actually make progress in science, unlike theology. And that's because we can be wrong, and we can learn. And we learn from the universe. And I think perhaps the most offensive thing I said, and it was initially at the beginning, is that something and nothing are not theological or philosophical quantities. They're physical quantities. Most people recognize that something is a physical quantity, but they refuse to accept the idea that nothing might be a physical quantity-- somehow the absence of something. And so what is remarkable, and surprising in some sense, how there's been a reaction to it, is in this particular book, what I tried to do was not attack theological notions, but celebrate our changing picture of reality, the amazing discoveries that have been made over the last 50 years-- some by people here, by my friend Brian Schmidt here, who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery-- that has changed completely our picture of the universe, and made it plausible, the most remarkable and unexpected thing you can imagine, that you could start with absolutely nothing-- that means, unlike the cardinal said, and unlike some people argue, no particles, but not even empty space. No space whatsoever. And maybe even no laws governing that space. And we can plausibly understand how you could arrive-- without any miracles, without any need for a creator, without any supernatural creation-- you could produce everything we see. And I find that the fact that it's plausible remarkable in the same sense that I think I found it plausible when I first learned about evolution. The amazing fact that the diversity of life on Earth, which seems so designed and complex, could arise from so simple a beginning. These two things are both extraordinarily exciting, intriguing, enthralling. Clearly life is. Clearly the idea that you can start with nothing but chemistry, the ordinary laws of chemistry, and end up with us, and kangaroos, and oak trees, and wombats, I mean, that is the most astonishing fact. But you know, even more astonishing is that you can get physics. You can get matter. You can get everything from nothing. Because it seems like you should violate some law, that as a classical philosopher said, out of nothing comes nothing. The interesting thing is that's based on common sense. But as you point out, the world doesn't care about our common sense. Our common sense should be determined by reality, by the evidence of reality. And in the quantum mechanics, for example, which is an area of physics I am involved in, defies common sense. Everything we think is sensible about the universe at some level is not true. You and I appear to be in one place at one time, but electrons can be in many places at one time. It seems impossible. It seems illogical. And I have a t-shirt that my dear partner, who lives here in Canberra, gave me, that says 2 plus 2 equals 5 in the limit of extremely large values of 2. And the point is 2 plus 2 in the limit of large numbers, common sense goes out the window. And once you add gravity to the mix, everything changes. And one of the things that we've discovered about the universe that's so amazing is that the total energy of the universe could plausibly be precisely zero, even in spite of the fact that it's full of stuff. And once that realization occurs, you realize that maybe there's a way to create it from nothing. And then we've learned that "nothing" of the classical Greeks, and of the Bible, an eternal empty void, is certainly not nothing. Because empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles. And, in fact, we've discovered that nothing can weigh something. That's what the, in essence, the Nobel Prize that was given to Brian and his collaborators were here for. Nothing actually weighs something. So the whole idea, there's not much difference between nothing and something. And for some reason that offends people, the fact that really answering the question why is there something rather than nothing is really akin to saying, why are some flowers blue and some flowers red? Or maybe even the question that used to be important-- Kepler would have asked why are there five planets? And he thought they had something to do with platonic solids. And of course, now we know that there are nine planets. And there are nine planets. Pluto is a planet. Don't believe it, whatever anyone says. My daughter studied Pluto in grade 4, and she's certainly not going to go back, I promise. But we realize that's not an interesting question anymore, because there are many different solar systems. And the question is not why are there nine planets, as if there's some profound purpose of nine planets, or eight planets, but how did it come about that our solar system has nine planets, and other solar systems may have six, or other ones may have 12. In fact, we've discovered when we discovered planets around other stars that things we never thought were possible in terms of solar systems, things we never imagined possible-- solar systems with planets the size of Jupiter right next to their sun-- all these things that we thought were physically impossible are actually possible, because the universe continues to surprise us. And so it doesn't care what we like. It doesn't care what we think is sensible. But I suppose things like planets the size of Jupiter being very close to their sun, I mean that's surprising. But it's not surprising in the same way as the idea that there could be literally nothing from which something suddenly springs. And it is very hard to grasp. And I certainly can't grasp it. The reason why it's hard to grasp from an evolutionary point of view, I suppose, is that our brains are tools for making sense of the world in which our ancestors had to survive. And they had to survive in a world in which things didn't move very fast-- nowhere near the speeds where relativity starts becoming relevant; and also were large-- and so quantum mechanics didn't have any effect. So our ancestors' brains were naturally selected in an extremely restricted range of phenomena that had to be understood. And so common sense equipped us to be very bad physicists. And so you have to emancipate yourself, just as I suppose our medieval ancestors had to emancipate themselves from the idea of a flat Earth. I mean, they would have thought it incredible that here we all are in Australia, upside-down. That would have been very worrying to medieval people in Europe. Now it's commonplace. Do we dare hope that there will come a time when even quantum mechanics is commonplace to every child? I'm not convinced that it's really understood by every physicist. When I ask physicists, some of them say, well, don't even try to understand it. Just do the mathematics. Well, in fact, I mean, I wrote a book before this about about Richard Feynman, who was one of the people who changed our view of quantum mechanics. And he said he didn't understand quantum mechanics. I think at some point, as you point out, our brains, just like when we talk about the universe, space is curved. Einstein discovered with general relativity that space is curved. And when I talk about a flat universe or a curved universe, how can you picture that? Because we're talking about a curved three-dimensional universe. But we can't picture our curved three-dimensional universe, because most of us live in a three-dimensional-- the Republican candidates in my country don't live in a three-dimensional universe. But-- [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] And so there are just some things that our brain is not equipped to intuitively understand. And one of the amazing things about science that I think we'll come back to that is that it forces us to realize that our myopic picture of reality is just that, that there's far more to the world than we see, and we have to recognize that what we think is natural or normal when it comes to culture, mores, or physics is not that way. And I think that, for me, that's probably the greatest gift of science is that it teaches us that we need to go beyond ourself. I think it's something we need to be proud of our species for, because our species, I mean, every species is designed by natural selection to survive in its world. And we were never designed by natural selection to understand modern physics. And yet our brains, in amazingly, through emergent properties, are capable of reaching way, way outside the bounds that our evolution apparently set for us. I'm very proud to be human. It doesn't mean I understand it. But I'm proud that other members of my species do. It is really amazing. And in some sense to me that fact that we have a consciousness, people often say that when you give up God you give up human dignity. But it's, to me, it's the exact opposite. And Steven Weinberg a physicist, said that religion is an assault on human dignity. Because the dignity-- the remarkable fact that we're conscious, that we're able to ask these questions, to me gives meaning to our lives. And we don't need imposed meaning from elsewhere. Yeah, that's right. Well, while I was debating Cardinal Pell, you Lawrence, were debating an Islamic scholar they call them, don't they? Where I come from, a scholar is somebody who's read more than one book. But anyway, how did it go? Yeah, I was. Right while you were doing the cardinal, I was debating here today at ANU actually last night. It was a very pleasant debate actually, to some extent. Well, I got a little upset at a few points. But a debate on whether a belief in God was prohibitive or liberating. And it was the Muslim debate initiative here that held it. And they were very respectful, I should say, of me. But the interesting thing was that I thought the questions that came up were remarkably similar. And at the same time, the unfortunate thing is that we were often talking at cross purposes in the same way that you were talking to the cardinal, because there are these notions that somehow-- what amazed me was a statement was made that religion is based on rationality, just like science is. And I read it in a piece in The Australian today. Some economist said that the problem with atheists is they don't realize that religion is based on rationality, and that it should form a part of public policy. But in what sense is it rational? In what sense is it rational to accept that someone says, "God told me this"? A woman in the United States drowns her children in a bathtub, and says Jesus told me to drown them. But we don't call her rational. But an illiterate peasant who can't write is, as told by an angel, the truth about the universe, who then comes down later, and tells, in upstate New York, 18 centuries later, tells a known con man who claims to have discovered golden tablets. She gets him to translate them from the 19th century to 17th-century English. And we say, oh, sure. I believe that. Using a magic stone and a hat? Exactly. And then to claim, among other things, that Jesus will come down and rule in Jerusalem and Missouri. And so that rationality. And the claim is based that it's based on logic. But once again, it comes down to this question that logic-- this syllogism that you probably had this applied to you many times. Whenever I debate Christian apologists, in this case it was the same as a Muslim apologist. They said, well, there's a syllogism. All humans are mortal. Tom is a human. And therefore Tom is mortal. But I said to him, well, what if in this century, as might be the case, we make people immortal? We make cell lines immortal. Well Henrietta Lacks's cell line is immortal right now. Does that mean they won't be human? Absolutely not. Because what it means is we change the ground rules. Because we change our understanding. And classical logic just doesn't apply. And what may seem sensible and rational were based, let's face it, all of the major world religions were based on either oral traditions, in the case of Muslim tradition, or things that were written hundreds of years after the fact by people who weren't involved before there was video cameras or anything able to record it-- and before people even knew the earth orbits the sun. Yeah, well, that, of course, is right. But let me try and see if I can explore what a sophisticated theologian might say. I think it's a bit like-- [LONE CLAPPING] There's a sophisticated theologian. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a bit like what social anthropologists do, where you go, and you go immerse yourself in the culture of a tribe-- a Polynesian tribe, or something of that sort. And everything they believe is actually scientifically false. But nevertheless, it hangs together in a sort of coherent, internal logic. It all kind of fits together, and makes sense within that system. And I think that's the nearest approach I can get to understanding so-called sophisticated theology, that within the system, you know God exists. You know He loves. You know that He has all sorts of aims and things. And this is all known. And therefore everything you do has to fit in with that system. It has no bearing on fact at all. But it is internally consistent, in a sort of anthropological way. Why anybody wants to bother to do it, I don't know. Well, I think you may have alluded to it earlier. And I wanted to ask you about this, because another thing that came up during your talk, or your discussion last night, you indicated that our brains were selected. The way we think has been selected by survival. So that's by ability to survive. It was certainly important, I think, and maybe lead to both science and religion at the same time, for early hominids to be able to at least suggest that there was some story, that everything wasn't capricious, that there was some pattern to things. And in fact, in many ways, they were scientists. So you can see early modern humans learned how to fish in very careful ways in the tip of South Africa. But at the same time, I think that in order to survive they had to create stories that would lead to some explanation of the phenomena they were seeing, in order to somehow predict some regularity to the universe. And those stories must have become religion at some point. And as the person questioned you last night about providing solace, that whether religion provides happiness, and makes people live longer. But the question is, does it work? And one of the things that didn't come up last night I wanted to ask you about, we were talking about, is you admitted that there may be some studies that suggests that if you find solace in God that you might be calmer, happier, or whatever. But what wasn't talked about was the fact of prayer. And I wonder if you want to talk about that a little bit. Well, what came up last night was the suggestion that comfort has some kind of psychosomatic effect. That may be actually even a Darwinian benefit in religion, because it actually makes you more healthy. There is a certain amount of rather equivocal evidence to that effect. The important point to make, of course, is that it has no bearing on whether it's true. I mean the placebo effect is well-known to doctors. Doctors aren't allowed to prescribe placebos anymore. Only homeopaths are. That's all they prescribe. Which is all they prescribe. Before about 1900, homeopaths did better than real doctors, because real doctors mostly caused harm rather than good, and hermeopaths did absolutely nothing. But you were asking about studies of prayer. There have been studies, experimental studies, quite well controlled, double-blind studies, of whether third-party prayer-- praying for, in this case, victims of heart disease, would get better if they're prayed for. It's quite difficult to design a double-blind trial to do this, because the patients are not allowed to know they're being prayed for. And the people who are doing the praying mustn't be allowed to know who they're praying for. And so they're not allowed to say that you're praying for John Smith. You have to disguise it a bit by saying you're praying for John S. And maybe a little bit of ambiguity about which John S you're praying for, and things like that. But anyway, what they did was to divide the prayers up. There were some patients who were being prayed for, and others who were not. You will not be surprised to learn that prayer had absolutely no effect whatever on recovery rate, except for one rather curious fact, which is they did another trial in which the patients were allowed to know that they were being prayed for. And then they got worse. I think the argument was they got worse, because if they knew they were being prayed for, they felt they should be getting better. And the anxiety hurt them. Yes. And it was funded by, interestingly enough, by the Templeton Foundation, which, of course, is trying to prove exactly the opposite. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Now, you know, as long as we're talking about prayer, I wanted to ask you about something I think we're both confronted with, is people say, well, look. Science can't replace religion. Science can't replace spirituality. Science can't fulfill the needs that are ingrained in humans. And you need religion. I wonder whether you want to take that. Well, there are various things you could mean by needing religion. I mean, you could say, what does religion provide? Well, historically it attempted to provide explanation for the universe and the world. And I think it's fairly clear that science has superseded religion there. Religion also provided-- or possibly provides-- comfort. And that the possibility of health. But comfort in the face of death. Comfort in the face of bereavement. And I mean, does science substitute for that? Well, I suppose it does in the form of drugs and improved medicine and things like that. It does provide a lot of comfort. It doesn't provide you with the promise of life after death. It's not clear to me that religion's view of life after death is necessarily comforting. Oh, yeah. I brought that up last night. The last thing in the world I would ever want to be is stuck for eternity with my in-laws. Yes, I mean, I think what may be frightening about the idea of dying forever is the idea of eternity itself. And it's eternity that's frightening, whether you're there or not. And I think, on the whole, eternity is so frightening, I'd rather be under a general anesthetic for eternity, which is exactly what's going to happen. At best, yeah. But the other thing, of course, is that some religions, at least, promise an eternity in a lake of fire. And every time your skin burns off you grow another skin, so as to keep the pain going. There's a kind of inverse relationship between the magnitude of the threatened punishment that a religion offers in its particular hell, and the plausibility of the threat. If the threat of punishment after death were the slightest bit plausible, it wouldn't need to be so absolutely horrible in order to carry conviction. It's because it's not plausible that it needs to be so horrifying. But anyway the possibility of consolation is another thing that religion is supposed to provide. Religion is supposed to provide morals. Well, I hope to goodness nobody here gets their morals from religion. Certainly not the Old Testament. Certainly not the Old Testament. And preferably not the New Testament, either. Yeah, exactly. Or the Quran, I would say. Well, certainly not. Yes. But perhaps the main thing that religion might have been thought to provide is what's sort of loosely called spirituality. And there, I think probably science, depending exactly on how you define spirituality, science probably does have quite a lot to offer. I mean, I'm looking forward to going to visit the observatory tonight, and seeing what I hope will be a clear view of the Milky Way, which in the Southern Hemisphere is a lot more exciting than it is in the Northern Hemisphere. So I'm looking forward to that. And that will be, I confidently expect, something like a spiritual experience. Well, I think for many people it is. Whenever I give a lecture, I show pictures from, let's say, from the Hubble Space Telescope-- a picture of a cluster of galaxies. I mean, the poetry of it-- well, we've both talked about the poetry sides. But the spiritual inspiration you get from looking at a picture of a cluster of galaxies located 5 billion light years away from us, where every dot in that picture is a galaxy, the light from those stars left those stars before our sun and earth formed. Which means that now many of the stars in that picture don't exist anymore. And if there were civilizations around those stars, each of those galaxies contains 100 billion stars. Any civilization that existed around those stars no longer may exist. It just opens your mind to wonder. And so I actually feel very strongly that while science, per se, may not provide the direct consolation, it can-- and it should-- provide a spiritual not only wonder, but it should provide a consolation. Look, we talked about this last night. We tell our kids fairy tales to console them. We tell it to make their life fun. We talk about Santa Claus, the Easter bunny. But then we decide that, you know what? It's better for them to know how the world really works. And it may be a little less consoling. But in fact, knowing that they're in control of their lives actually is empowering. And many of us, if you're a good parent, you want to teach your kids how to become empowered. And in religion, they often talk about the flock, the children, it effectively treats you like a child. It says it's better for you to believe a fable than reality. And often when I'm in a lecture on cosmology, I point out that the two things modern cosmology's taught us is that first, you're much more insignificant than you ever thought, and two, that the future is miserable. But that should make you feel good, not bad, because it further enhances exactly what you were talking about. We are so lucky to be alive today, and endowed with a consciousness where we, for whatever fortuitous reasons, are on a random star in a random galaxy in the middle of nowhere, we were able to evolve a consciousness, live on a relatively quiescent planet. And so I actually think science can provide a real consolation by saying, look, once you accept reality, it's liberating, just like a child is liberated from an adult. And in fact I want to ask you, the reason I was getting around here, is I know we've talked about your foundation, and whether of science can provide that consolation. And maybe you can relate the story to it. Well, I mean, my foundation is called the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. And my primary motivation is that a reasoning approach to science is enthralling. It's such a privilege to be alive in the 21st century, and to look out at the stars, and reflect on exactly the things you've just been saying, Lawrence. To look down a microscope, to look down an electron microscope, to look into a single cell and see the prodigious, stupefying complexity of a single cell, and then realize that there are trillions of those cells in your brain, your body, all conspiring together to produce a working machine which can walk, and run, and eat, and have sex, and think, reflect, understand-- understand why we exist, understand where we came from, understand where the universe came from, understand the magnificent fact that it could all have come from nothing, and built up from nothing into galaxies, into stars, into chemistry, into primordial life, into genes, into primitive bacteria, protozoa, and then right up the evolutionary progression to become, in Julian Huxley's words, conscious of itself. What a privilege it is for each one of us to have in our heads an organ which is capable of comprehending that, of constructing a model of the universe inside our heads. It is sad that that model will die when our brain dies. But my goodness, what a privilege it is before we do die to have been able to construct that model in our heads, and to understand why we were ever born in the first place. And perhaps the most exciting part for, I'm sure, for both you and I, and I hope for those of you who are students in the audience, is that we don't know all the answers. The other fundamental difference between science, and I would say religion, if you want, is that religion assumes the answers and asks the questions. And the great thing about science is not knowing. That's what makes it exciting, is that there are mysteries remaining to be discovered. We don't understand the mystery of consciousness. We can talk about it. But we have no idea how it arises, that you would have electrical impulses in your brain, which clearly, by the way, are very different than computers-- vastly different than computers. Because you can argue from a physics perspective that if you built a digital computer that had the storage capability of the human brain, and the processing power, it would require 10 terawatts-- 10 terawatts. That's 10 times 10 to the 12th watts. The human brain uses about 10 watts. So somehow we are a million million-- 10 million million times more efficient than digital computers. We don't understand that. That's amazing. But you know, I wanted to actually hit the point that you didn't get to, but which I found remarkable. When you tried to make your Foundation for Reason and Science a tax-deductible foundation, a charitable foundation, you had a problem. Well, I wanted to get it tax deductible. And so I applied both in Britain and in America. And the primary problem was in Britain. You have to prove it benefits humanity. If you're a church, you don't have to prove anything. That goes through without-- go through on that on the nod. But I had this Foundation for Reason and Science. And I got a letter from the British Charity Commission which said, kindly explain how scientific education benefits humanity. [LAUGHTER] We had to tell that story in public, I thought. We had to hear that. We're getting close to the end. There are a few things that I thought we might cover. One was, in fact, a big issue in the United States, and to some extent England. It's amazing to visit a country where the prime minister is an atheist. It's remarkable. In the United States, you may not be aware, well, that won't happen. I think it has happened. Yeah, well, it probably has happened. Exactly. But it would be easier to be a Muslim. And of course, many people in the United States think we have a Muslim president at this point. But there was a recent study by psychologists in the United States that was terrifying. It was a study of college students and adults. And the most distrusted group-- the most distrusted group was atheists. The only group that they were on par with was rapists. And it's remarkable. Because both you and I-- you perhaps more than me-- are claiming to be strident, maybe. But what I find is that if you just ask the question, "Is it possible that there's no god?" you suddenly become terrifying. And you were obviously terrifying, I felt, last night, to the cardinal, who felt attacked, and was on the defensive. And it seems to me if you ask questions, and people are defensive, there must be a reason. We hear stories, don't we, of children going to Sunday school, and being thrown out for having the temerity to ask questions. I mean not to criticize, but just to ask. How dare you ask a question? And I think that does argue a certain defensiveness. And it seems to me that the funny thing is we courage our children-- those of us who try to be good parents or teachers-- to ask questions. That's how you learn. And so we encourage people to ask questions-- unless the question's about religion. And then they're viewed as being impudent, or rude, or inappropriate. And it seems to me that one of the things that's so valuable about what you've done, and we've moderated our views over the years as we've had discussions, is if you simply treat religion like any other aspect of human activity, which means it should be subject to questioning, and ridicule, like politicians and politics, and physics, and sex, and everything else, then if you just ask that religion be put on that same framework, it raises a consciousness that people just somehow don't think it should be. It should be here, and never subject to any of those things. That's right. It is regarded as having a kind of privileged status. Whereas you are allowed to criticize somebody else's politics, or their football team, or their taste in clothes or something, criticizing their religion is regarded as somehow beyond the pale. And I think that really has got to stop. There's really no reason at all why religion should be immune to-- not "strident" in the sense of shouting obscenities, but just simply critical, clarifying questions. I got into trouble last week. I think it was in the United States. They had a thing called the Reason Rally in Washington, DC. Which we were both at. And which we were both at. And I spoke poorly, I think. I encouraged people to ridicule the Roman Catholic doctrine of the transubstantiation, the idea that the wafer turns into the body of Jesus-- not symbolically, as an Anglican would say, but literally. And I encouraged the audience at the Reason Rally if ever they meet a Roman Catholic who claims to believe that, to ridicule it. I mean, it is clearly a ridiculous belief. But I was mistakenly thought to be saying what you want to do is ridicule the person. I quoted the British journalist Johann Hari, who said, I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs. And I think I now would want to change that a bit, and say, I respect you too much to believe that you could possibly hold those ridiculous beliefs. And I encourage people to, when they meet somebody who holds a ridiculous belief like that, to really say, do you really believe that? Are you seriously telling me that that's what you believe? And encourage them either to deny it, in which case to deny the religion to which they claim to belong, or to defend it, and say, no, it's not really ridiculous for the following reason. And talk about Thomas Aquinas, and accidents, and things like that. And if they can convince somebody that it's not ridiculous, then well and good. But don't let them hide behind the screen of saying, oh, that's my religion. It's private. You can't criticize it because it's my religion. It should be criticized. And it should be defended if it's defensible. And I think that if that were applied to politicians, who at present in the United States, and it's obviously not true in Australia, because you actually have an atheist prime minister, that in the United States there are 535 members of Congress, of whom 534 claim to be devout religious believers. Well, that's just statistical nonsense. Of course they're not. How could they be? And so what I tried to encourage Americans to do was to challenge your congressman or woman, and say I don't think you really do believe that. Come out and actually say so. Don't hide behind the screen of secrecy that says religion is a private matter not to be questioned. And that doesn't go down well in America, because there's this deep-seated view that religion is somehow a private matter. But when you're trying to decide whether to vote for somebody, you want to know his policy on taxation, his policy on foreign policy, on the Iraq war-- you want to know his policy on all those sorts of things. If you know that quite apart from his policies he holds some utterly nutty belief, like that a wafer turns literally into the body of a 1st-century Jew, just because a priest blesses it, I mean, that is barking mad. And do you want to vote for somebody who is capable of holding in his head a nonsensical belief of that sort? And they should not be allowed to get away with saying, oh, that's private. It's religion. You can argue about my taxation policy, but you can't argue about my nutty beliefs. Well, I want to sort of slightly differ with you there. Although I defended you the next day I was on TV, and they asked me of this ridicule question. And I pointed that, well, in principle nothing's sacred. No idea is sacred. And ridicule, as least if you turn it into satire-- you know I like to tell jokes, and as a part of teaching. And I think it's a key part of life, from Jonathan Swift on. I mean, the idea, satire is a way of illuminating the ridiculous inconsistencies of life in a more non-threatening way than confronting people. And if you can make fun of something, it's a way of really pointing things out. So in my country, where most people get their news from something called The Daily Show, or The Colbert Report, because the satire there is much more informative often than the nightly news. And so I think ridicule is, in that sense, not to be vindictive or mean, but to hold the ideas up. And in fact, we are both good friends, and we'll both be talking about-- we'll both be attending this global atheist convention. And you and I are both giving little talks about our late friend Christopher Hitchens, who was a remarkable man. And he used to point out that that was the key thing is the hardest thing to talk about are the most obvious bits of nonsense. A child can ask it. It's the "Emperor's New Clothes." Why is the emperor not wearing clothes? And to do that, and to subject religion and anything else in life to humor and satire I think is a very important way of exposing its problems. The last thing I want to hit before we turn to questions, I guess, is for me, we talked about it. One of the most liberating things about science in some sense is forcing your mind to open up. So I wanted to ask you-- and I'll be happy to answer the same question if you want-- is what in your scientific career, was the hardest thing for you to accept? Was the hardest thing to intuitively you really had to set aside some deep-seated prejudice in your own mind? Oh. Well, if we're talking about a big thing, it would be how you can get something from nothing. And we've talked about that. If you want to talk about a specific thing, a more detailed thing in my own field, it would be the demonstration from molecular biology-- comparative molecular genetics-- that whales' closest cousins are hippopotamuses. Hippopotamuses are closer cousins to whales than hippopotamuses are to pigs or cows or sheep. So in my traditional view as a zoologist, hippopotamuses were firmly within the even-toed ungulates-- the cloven-hoofed animals. And we were taught as undergraduates that they were bracketed with pigs. So you had hippos and pigs, and then you had the rest of the even-toed ungulates-- cows and sheep and things like that. What molecular biology is telling us is that whales spring out in the evolutionary tree from right within the cloven-hoofed animals. Whales are closer to hippos than hippos are to pigs. Now that's a strictly phylogenetic, a strictly cladistic, as we say, way of talking. But it is an amazing. I mean, it's not that surprising when you start reflecting on it. Because whales by going into the sea emancipated themselves from all the pressures of a land animal. So pigs and cows and antelopes and sheep are all land animals constrained to live as land animals, which is why they've stayed as cloven-hoofed animals. And whales, by going into the sea, have been able to take off like giant balloons, and just turn into something utterly different. But the fact remains that their closest cousins are actually hippos. They spring from right within the even-toed hoofed, cloven-hooved animals. And that's something that molecular genetics has turned upside down, my world, the world of a zoologist educated just at the start of the molecular biology revolution. For me it was-- I mean, obviously as a physicist you get used to a strange world-- relativity, quantum mechanics, all these. I mean, as a student you learn that these basic ideas of space and time that you grew up with are not the case at all. And apparent paradoxes are possible. But for me, right now, it's deeper. And I wrote about it in the new book. It's this possibility that the laws of physics are an accident. Because it goes against everything that made me want to become a scientist. I became a scientist because I wanted to understand why the universe had to be the way it is. And if it's really true that it's just an accident, it's really disappointing in a sense. And Einstein asked the question. He phrased it poorly. He said, did God have any choice in the creation of universe? That's one of the last questions in the book. And what he meant was are there only one set of laws of nature, where if you change any fundamental constant by a little bit, will everything fall apart? And of course most of us who grew up to be physicists felt, yeah, that's probably the case, that we want to understand the unifying field theory, the fundamental theory that makes the world be the way it is. But everything that we're now learning in physics is suggesting the opposite is more likely. That in fact, it may just be that the universe is the way it is because there may be many universes. And if it were any different, we wouldn't be here to ask the question. So another answer to the question, why is there something rather than nothing, is if there were nothing, you wouldn't be around to answer the question, or ask it. But that possibility is so disgusting if you grew up as a scientist, that to me it's surprising. But it also reflects to me what I think is the greatest aspect of science, is that if it turns out to be the case, then even though I believed in my heart of hearts that it couldn't be that way, I'll throw that belief out like yesterday's newspaper. And the one thing that I hope that happens to every student here-- I've said this before, but I'll say it again, because I think it's so important, is that at some point in your career as students that you will have some idea, something that was central to your being that makes you who you are, that is central to everything that you think makes up what's important about the universe, shown to be wrong. Because that's the liberating impact of science that will truly open your mind up to the remarkable universe we live in. Well, thank you for listening to us now. And now what I'd like to do is open the floor to half an hour of questions. And so if you would come to the microphones, there are going to be people manning the microphones. And we'll be happy to answer your questions. Try to make sure they're questions. And if you don't make sure they're questions, you can be sure one of us will stop you. Is it comfortable to have the house lights up a bit more? Maybe we could turn the house lights up a bit. I don't know if we can. And I should say while you're getting to ask the questions, the other bit of housekeeping is after the question period is over we will be signing books out outside. So you can get them. But you can come ask questions quickly, even if you don't have a book to sign. I don't think either of us will agree, however, to sign tonight any body parts. [LAUGHTER] Speak for yourself. OK. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] Are we ready? OK. Good evening. I've just recently re-read the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. And in that book he makes a very strong connection between Judeo-Christian religions, and the idea that the world was put here for man, and not that man is of the world. And he said unless we change this fundamental attitude that comes out of religion, or is strongly connected with religion, we will never really be able to tackle the environmental issues, and to face the changes that we're going to need to make to improve the environment. And first of all, do you agree with that point of view? And do you think that we can truly make progress in changing the way in which humanity uses the resources of the world if we don't first tackle the fundamental problem of that religious belief? You want to start, or--? No, you start. OK. It is a huge problem. In fact, it was explicitly demonstrated, again, in my country, there's a nut running for president called Rick Santorum. And he specifically, when it comes to climate change, which by the way, in the United States, the vast majority of the public believe climate change is a hoax. All polls suggest that now, because a tremendous amount of money has been spent on that. But using Fox News. Yeah, exactly. Rupert Murdoch. But he said that that's a hoax propagated by scientists who care more about the Earth than they do about humans, that humans have been given dominion over the Earth, and the Earth will take care of itself. So that is a problem. But at the same time, to be fair, there are movements-- indeed, evangelical movements in the United States. There's a whole wing of different religious groups that are now saying we have to accept the fact that the Earth is a dynamic entity that changes. And we're impacting it in a negative way. So somehow that message is getting through. But I think you're absolutely right. If you don't recognize that the universe doesn't care about us, that it's not going to always make it right, then you're not prepared to address the challenges of the 21st century. Which is one of the reasons, getting back to what I said earlier, why I think it's a problem to base your public policy on myths. It may be more comforting, but you'll be comforted all the way to the point where vast parts of the population of the world will lose their land. And so the comfort will lead you right over a cliff. Yes, I think the most obvious problem is that religious one. But even if we were to agree on what the best policy was to save the world, it's a bigger problem to achieve the political unanimity to actually put into practice what the scientists will tell us that we need to do. So there's a very, very big political problem. I, actually, let me ask you a question, whether you're as pessimistic as I am about this. All of the challenges of the 21st century are now global challenges. They're no longer local-- from energy to the environment to population. All of these things that have to be addressed. And I see no likelihood that the political systems in the world will allow those to be addressed. Instead, we'll have to deal with the consequences rather than addressing them proactively. Do you think that's likely? Our colleague Martin Rees is even more pessimistic, and thinks that actually we will be lucky to survive the 21st century. Because with weapons of mass destruction becoming available not just to major scientific powers, like they were in the past, but available to any nutcase who actually wants to die a martyr's death, then the outlook is even more-- I don't want you to be depressed about that, by the way. I will say, I was, Richard, a friend of mine, Cormac McCarthy, who is a writer-- and a very bleak writer-- is a very cheerful fellow. And I asked him, how come you're so cheerful? He said, well, I'm a pessimist, but that's no reason to be gloomy. [LAUGHTER] I'd like to question your religion, because it seems to me that you make science a religion in itself. In what way? Well, it seems like there's kind of a Richard Dawkins cult. Richard Dawkinsism-like. Science really, nothing is certain in science. It works in statistics. You can't prove anything to 100%. So how can you say that science is better than religion, than what you're trying to do is still [INAUDIBLE] people that bring order to the world. Well, you can't prove anything to 100%. But 100% is a hell of a lot better than 0%, which is what you can prove by religious reasoning. [APPLAUSE] I guess we'd be giving up. I mean I think-- let me try again on that. The idea that science is a religion, when in fact, science is interested in evidence, and is prepared to change its mind if contrary evidence comes in, that's very, very different from a religion. As Lawrence said earlier, in science we're constantly open to the possibility of having to change our minds. And science proceeds by progressive refinement, and changing minds. And that there are things that I suppose will never be disproved, things like that the planets orbit the sun. That's never going to change. I don't think that the fact of evolution is ever going to be disproved. It's always going to be true that we are cousins of chimpanzees and of monkeys and of kangaroos. So there are certain things that we definitely know to be true. The evidence is so overwhelming, that to, in Stephen Gould's words, to object would be perverse. But so-called religious truths have absolutely no evidence going for them whatsoever. [INAUDIBLE] If I challenged you as Richard Dawkins, you'd probably have a problem that. Does it matter who I am? No. No. We're listening to you now. You're challenging me now. And I'm accepting the challenge. Fair enough. Look. I'm a Catholic. I don't agree with what [INAUDIBLE].. But I don't think he's a pedophile either. Like-- No, I don't suppose he is. Just, you know-- I don't know. I've never asked-- My point is that you as an eminent scientist, if I challenge your scientific doctrine, maybe your theories, or opinion, you disagree with me. Well, I will, I mean, when you say disagree, I will say, where is your evidence? Here's my counter evidence. And I'll ask for yours. Let's sit down together and look at the evidence. I mean, that's very different from saying that I'm arguing from authority. In fact, let me jump in. Authority-- that's the key point. Richard is not an authority. I'm not an authority. There are no scientific authorities. That's a key point. There are scientific experts. Richard knows a lot about zoology. I know a lot about physics. But there's no one whose views are not subject to question. And that's the key point. And there's no student that should ever be afraid of saying to a professor in a science class, you're wrong and here's why. Except in Germany. Anyway, maybe I think-- [INAUDIBLE] now? Like isn't that the same thing? Isn't that like you're one of my professors? No, what? We're trying to have a discussion. But maybe I think the point is maybe we should move on. I mean, well, you say you're a Roman Catholic. And-- I also study physics. Yes. But I mean, do you think the wafer turns into the body of Jesus? No. Good. I'm delighted to hear it. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] And the other thing that's important about science-- and we had this discussion last night in the Muslim forum-- I mean, I might, to give an example, people didn't really buy the whole relativity thing when Albert Einstein first came up with it. It was when those former scientists started dying, that was when people started accepting relativity. But the difference is, that there's a fundamental difference. And you should really appreciate this. And I'm surprised in some sense that you don't yet. But I hope you will. Well, tell me. Is that listen, listen to me for a second, is that there's a difference between a story and something that makes predictions. And the only thing that really makes science really interesting is it works. And so last night, when I was debating with this Muslim, I challenged him when he says it's rational. You're choking. I have two choices. I do the Heimlich maneuver, or I pray for you. Which do you want me to do? And I think the real point of science is that it works. And if it didn't work, none of us would give a damn about it. Really. The point is it works until someone comes up with a better theory? Right? What was that? No, it works. A car works. An airplane works. The lights in this room work. Well, [INAUDIBLE] until someone came up with a better theory. Yeah. So? That's what happens. Anyway. OK. I think we should move on. No, everyone here has been scared away. You, may have partially answered my question. My question is about truth. And it was raised last night, but not pursued. It's whether you believe that you can arrive at truth other than through direct observation, logic, rationality, and reason. In other words, are there other pathways to truth? And a related question is, do either of you have any sympathy for the view that in some instances truth is culture bound? And what's true for a Navajo Indian may not be true for a Harvard scientist? Thanks. Why don't you start? I once was having an argument with a social anthropologist who said that he was studying a tribe that believed that the moon was only a few feet above the treetops. And that he said that that was true for that tribe. And he said that the scientific truth, that the moon is a large sphere of rock a quarter of a million miles away, whatever it is, is only true for Western scientific culture, and that his tribal culture, their truth is every bit as valid. I strongly objected to that on the grounds that Lawrence has just said, that the truth of science works. If you build things using what scientists think is true, then they work, and you can actually go to the moon. If you correctly compute the necessary orbits, the necessary escape velocity, and so on, it works. Whereas other culturally-bound so-called truths don't work. And I think that's all there is to be said, really. And I rather sarcastically said to the anthropologist, when you go to an international convention of social anthropologists, you get on board a Boeing 747, not a magic carpet. Exactly. And I think you're a hypocrite if you think the Earth is 6,000 years old and you drive a car. Because the same laws of chemistry and physics that make the car work tell us the Earth is not 6,000 years old. But I want to sort of add to the point you said a little bit. Because, in fact, you got hit on last night for reflecting an important aspect of science when you said you can't absolutely prove that there's no God, because it's true. You can't. But another major misconception about science is that science is involved with the truth. Science cannot prove something to be absolutely true. There are no absolute truths in science. That's also how it differs from religion. Science can prove things to be absolutely false. That's how science progresses. Because an idea that disagrees with the evidence of experiment is false. And it's false today, and it'll be false tomorrow. I can hold a ball up. I can predict that it will fall up. I check. It falls down. That idea I threw out the window. I could say the earth is flat. I go out. It isn't flat. We don't need constructive criticism classes forever to debate whether the Earth is flat or round. But what we do in science is we get rid of all the falsehoods. And what remains has an element of truth. But even if something satisfies the test of every experiment today-- in fact, that's what this young lady was referring to-- it doesn't mean that we won't discover we have to modify it, be it Newtonian gravity to general relativity or classical mechanics to quantum mechanics, or whatever we're going to learn at the edge of physics or biology. So we progressed. But we never say we know the absolute truth. Because that's a claim that's anathema to science. It's just not the way science works. In the [INAUDIBLE] science, nature identifies two forms of nihilism, or what he calls nihilism. One of those is the belief in some transcendent meaning, and the other is the crude denial of that meaning-- atheist being defined as sort of the opposite to theology. Do you think in that respect in some sense it implicitly carries with it some parts that are theology, and in that way still is within a theological sort of framework? Oy vey. That's a technical term. Well, I hesitate to enter into a philosophical discussion, except I would argue that the kind of atheism that Richard and I talk about is not a complete denial of anything. It's a question of what's likely. And that's what Richard was saying last night. I can't prove that there isn't a teapot orbiting Mars. But it's not likely. And everything we know about the universe, at least for Richard and I, leads us to the conclusion there's no evidence of purpose, or of divine intervention. But that doesn't mean, we argue definitively that we can prove that that can't be the case. So we're not denying. We're just asserting the evidence of reality. And in fact, I don't describe myself as an atheist. I have learned from my friend, again, Christopher Hitchens, I describe myself as an anti-theist. Namely, I cannot prove that there is no God. I just certainly wouldn't want to live in a universe with one. I don't know if you want to add anything. Uh, no. [LAUGHTER] A common claim made by religious people is that you cannot disprove the existence of God. Do you think science will advance to a point where it can disprove the existence of God, and if so, would religious people become atheists, or they would find something else to believe? Actually, some religious people have been asked that. I mean, specifically with respect to Christianity. There've been Christians have been asked, what if archaeological evidence showed conclusively that Jesus never existed? And many of them said, no, I would go on believing in him. Which is hard to credit. But the X-Files got it right. People want to believe. And I think that people want to believe in belief. And you pointed it out. I mean, the young lady described herself as a Catholic, but most people who describe themselves as religious don't accept the doctrines literally of their religion. They pick and choose the ones they like that they find acceptable, and throw out the others. And what they really want to believe is in believing. And it's really hard to give up believing. There's no doubt about that. But I would say to answer your question, the assertion of a existence of God is always not falsifiable. And science can only deal with questions that are falsifiable. I cannot prove that we weren't all created here 35 seconds ago with the memory of a remarkable evening. And I can't prove that. It's not a falsifiable question. Bertrand Russell used that example. And he said, "complete with holes in our socks." Yeah, exactly. And so at some level, if it's not falsifiable, science can't address it. On the other hand, what you can do is amass evidence and understanding. And what we now, for a small example of that, is biology, the notion of intelligent design. The notion that we're intelligently designed has clearly been shown to be beyond the pale, to be so much counter-evidence that it is so highly unlikely as to be thrown out. No sensible person talks about it, except the cardinal and a few other people. But [INTERPOSING VOICES] It's true. No sensible person talks about it. But I think that's as far as you can go. Hello. This is going to be a little bit of change of subject. But I wanted to see what Richard himself, and maybe even Lawrence, if you had a similar experience, thinks of people on the internet, and even to a lesser extent in real life, misquoting or taking what you say at face value, almost raising what you say, or who you are, to a God-like status. I'm sure there are people here who have browsed websites such as Reddit, seen things on Facebook, 4chan, of people who just kind of use you, or people such as Carl Sagan, as Neil deGrasse Tyson, people who say important things, and who are smart, obviously. But they just take what they say at face value. How do you feel about that being used in like an atheistic kind of argument? People kind of reversing the tables. They're almost treating you guys on like a god-like status. I don't know how. How would you feel about that? Or have you even observed that in the first place? I don't think I have observed it. But if I did, I would be very disturbed. I would be very upset if anybody treated me the way Roman Catholics are taught to treat the Pope. I mean, I think it's a truly horrible idea. You always make me kiss your ring every time I meet you. What are you talking about? [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] I think it's a truly horrible idea that anybody should believe something simply because person X believes it, and tells them that that's what they've got to believe. It's one of the most disagreeable parts of the Roman Catholic Church, that it constantly argues from authority, and passes the word down, especially when the word is, frankly, made up in the first place. In fact, you know, I mean, I'm happy when people quote us, if they like what we say. But again, I found it in the debate yesterday, it's really interesting when I read people, and they say this is the case because so-and-so wrote it, because whether it's you, or me, or Carl Sagan, or whoever, or a philosopher. And it's like, what does it matter what they say? What they say, they can be wrong. And so it really is important. Whenever anyone starts quoting something by saying so-and-so said this, say it doesn't matter what so-and-so said. Really, they could be wrong. What's the evidence for that? And so, yeah, I absolutely agree. It's an awful way of arguing. And unfortunately it's a way of arguing in a number of different fields, and certainly theology is one of them. There's a famous story that Galileo was once demonstrating something through his telescope to somebody. And the man looked through the telescope and said, Signor Galileo, your demonstration is so convincing, were it not that Aristotle positively states the contrary, I would believe you. Yeah, that's right. I think we have time. We'll take one more question here, and one more question there. I'm sorry for the people who were over there. And you should come over here. No, but anyway. Yes. Hi. I'm assuming you guys have both read the Bible properly. I'm interested in what your favorite story from the Bible is, simply because you can't read a book and not find something good about it. Like I know the Bible is mostly a load of crap, sorry, people. But being involved with someone who has actually read the Bible, and being forced to listen to it myself, I do know that there are some good ideas, moral stories, whatever you want to call it. I'm interested in what your favorite one is. I'm not sure that I have a favorite story. I think, I mean, my two favorite books of the Bible are the Song of Songs, which is not by Solomon, by the way. It's a collection of erotic poems. And at least in the authorized version it's extremely beautiful. I suspect it's been completely murdered in modern versions. And the other one is Ecclesiastes, that these two books come together in the Old Testament. And they're both lyrically beautiful in the 17th century English. And I read both of them frequently. I wouldn't call them call them stories. Neither of them are really stories. But they are hauntingly beautiful. Yeah, in fact, well, it's not surprising that I agree. It's the lyricism of certain aspects of the Bible that are beautiful. And in fact, because if you think about how the Bible was written, it was written by taking songs, poems, the literature of the time, and sometimes adapting the most beautiful stories of the time. And in fact, a friend of ours, Anthony Grayling, who is a philosopher, remarkably, wrote a beautiful book, which I highly recommend, called The Good Book, which is he tried to do in a secular way what the Bible did. He borrowed the most beautiful poems, songs, stories right through human history, and put it in a way in the form of the Bible without mentioning God. But it's a book about how we've learned to live well based on the most beautiful things that humans have said. And I think I suspect that it's that beautiful lyricism of that part of the Bible that I've enjoyed reading the most as well, I think. But I wouldn't take it in the modern translation. If you think about the most famous lines from Ecclesiastes, "Vanity of vanities, sayeth the preacher, all is vanity," at least one modern translation I've seen says, "Futile, futile. It's all futile." It won't do. But actually that does relate to something that's often said, is that when you talk about the Bible. And one of the things, our comments that happened again last night to me, is that people say, well if you don't really understand-- the reason you're criticizing is you don't read Aramaic, or Arabic in the case of the Quran. And the answer, which again, was given by Christopher Hitchens, is it's hard to believe that God is a monoglot. I mean, that somehow if you don't read Hebrew that you miss the point. Anyway. One more. One last question. Upstairs. Upstairs. Oh, good. We didn't get-- I'm sorry. Upstairs. That's OK. I just want to say, I wholeheartedly agree with everything you believe in, and-- I believe in nothing. Let me make that clear. I don't believe in anything. Well, yeah, I'm an agnostic. Maybe an anti-theist. "Belief" is not a word I use. But I agree with you everything, except perhaps your approach. And allow me to politely disagree here. I study political science. And in political science, if you look at history, the church, the scientific institutions, and the state have always been in constant conflict and turmoil. It's a struggle of power relations between these three sort of societal constructs. And it was the case in Darwin's time. And Darwin was very hesitant to even broach his subject of The Origin of Species, because of opposition from the church, and even some of his fellow scientists. We don't live in that same world today. But in politics, power comes not just from conflict. Power comes from collaboration. And I guess my only criticism of the atheist approach, as I see it, is that this idea of conflicting with religious groups, of politely ridiculing people with religious beliefs can perhaps have more of negative consequence for furthering the reason and logic as the higher purpose of society than it does good. And so I'm going to pose two questions to you. The first question is, what does success look like for, say, the atheist movement? And is success achievable through polite ridicule of people of religious beliefs? I think that's a very fair question. And one of the things that Edward O Wilson-- he's gone off the rails in his latest book. But in an earlier book he made the point that we have some really, really serious problems for humanity to solve. And the time is running out. And we need to get people of goodwill, whatever their religious beliefs or lack of them, to get together. And so he wants to compromise for precisely the reasons you're talking about, and to get decent, reasonable, religious people on our side, as opposed to the nuts like Santorum. And I think there is a lot to be said for that. And if your goal is, say, to make the world a better place, then I think there could be something to be said for making a compact with the relatively recent-- I mean, people like the Archbishop of Canterbury-- decent, intelligent, religious people. If your aim however, is to understand the universe; if your aim is that of a scientist, I cannot help regarding all religions as somehow counter to that aim. And so I think I agree with you about the politics of making the world a better place. But my ultimate aim would be to try to understand the world, and understand the universe. And there, I can't help finding religion the enemy. It's an interesting question. It's similar to the first question we ever talked when we first met. We have somewhat differing views on this, although I think, again, we've come together in certain ways. But I'm sympathetic to what you're saying in many ways. The question is, what are you trying to achieve? I think as a scientist, absolutely, you cannot compromise. I agree with Richard entirely. However, as an educator, which I also have a hat on, I firmly believe that I have no interest in arguing against God or religion. It's not of interest to me. All I'm interested in is getting people interested in learning how the universe really works. Because that's so amazing. And if, as a consequence, they give up a belief in God, that's fine. Because I think inevitably that will happen, personally. But that doesn't matter to me. What really is more important, I think, is ultimately getting people to take the blinders off one way or another. And you're absolutely right. The only way to reach people is to seduce them, is to go to where they are and get them interested. And it's, to some extent, although the effect has been sometimes the opposite, as it was last night. The book I just wrote was to use religion as a seduction tool. The question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" sounds like a religious question. But I get to sneak in all of modern cosmology. Anyway, thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] Richard, Lawrence. One of the things you can't do without a moderator easily is to thank yourselves. That's my role here. I'm going to be the moderator. It gives me a chance to have the last word, too. Very, very grateful here. One of the things an institution like the ANU is about is about debate and ideas. And what we've heard this evening is a very intimate conversation. And that's really quite a remarkable thing to do in a place like Llewellyn Hall. But it's a conversation and questions and a debate about things that matter to us from two respected scientists in biology and in physics. And it's been interesting and enthralling. So once again, can you join with me to thank Lawrence and Richard? [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] [INAUDIBLE] I did say I do want the last word. And I was trying to think hard how to get out of this. And so I want to take a quote. And it's a quote from an Irishman, because of course the Irishmen have the best quotes. But it's a quote from the comedian Dave Allen. And for those who feel old enough, like me, Dave Allen was a comedian that spent much of his life actually challenging religion for various reasons-- particularly Catholicism and Anglicanism. And the way he always used to finish was to say, "Good evening, thank you, and may your God go with you." Thank you. [APPLAUSE]

Channel: ANU TV

Views: 1,311,063

Rating: 4.4737172 out of 5

Keywords: Richard Dawkins, lawrence krauss, physics, biology, god, religion, debate, darwin, cosmology, The Selfish Gene, Something from Nothing, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, A Devil's Chaplain, The God Delusion, Creationism, science, astrophysics, Lawrence M. Krauss (Academic), Philosophy (Field Of Study)

Id: q0mljE9K-gY

Length: 92min 16sec (5536 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 18 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Three38]

At about 1:18:13, Reddit is mentioned in regards to people like Dawkins, Sagan, and NDGT being "pope-ified" by some atheists. Good response from them.

[u/ModerSvea]

Too bad she didn't comprehend one iota of what he was telling her. She obviously had no realistic grasp of how science works whatsoever. Sad.

[u/ShadoutRex]

She seemed to be trying to say that science is not open to other ideas. She quotes Einsteins theories as meeting opposition, but what was not pointed out is that despite the early opposition from some quarters of the science community, it came to accept his papers as various tests proved them to work. The very fact that they were tested at all means that he was taken seriously enough to see if he was right. She was actually quoting a very good example of how science is not as dogmatic as religion.

[u/[deleted]]

i'm a non native speaker and watched 5 mins or so but had to stop. i didn't get it. what did she want, what was the question? i perfectly understood the two men's answers of course, they were pretty clear. but to me, what she said sounded like "blah blah theory blah blah". i really didn't get it.

[u/AdAsterio]

Given the chance that I sound dumb. But does anybody know what Dawkins means by "Or in Germany"? He says, that in every sience class students should challenge their teachers, except maybe in Germany. I just don't get it.

[u/JackRawlinson]

What the hell is wrong with her brain? She struggled to articulate any sort of coherent point and then seemed entirely incapable of grasping the very clear points made by Dawkins and Krauss. Must be some kind of mental deficiency going on there.

[u/kleinerDAX]

Wow... that... wow... I think the point she was TRYING to make was that religion is going to be proved to be the better theory...? lol

[u/Ninamgrey]

When the audience starts laughing, that should serve as a clue that you're making a complete ass of yourself and your opponent is calling you out on it.

He should've dumbed everything down for her. She doesn't even understand a simple 4-letter word like cult.

[u/[deleted]]

It's a shame in our day and age we still have to debate religious nutjobs as long as they are multiple. If I went in and lied and said I was a follower of Norse Mythology, I would be laughed out. But apparently saying she is a Roman Catholic demands some sort of respect? Laugh her in the face.