Richard Dawkins on "coward liberals", Brexit and religion - BQ #12

decent liberal people who I regard as my own people I've always been among among those people who I regard as cowards because they they cave in and they do not observe their principles of feminism of gay rights all the things that decent liberal people believe suddenly they forget about them when it comes to Islam to get this is Steven Eddington for the Sun and today I'm interviewing Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins is one of the world's leading atheists he's written several books on religion and science including The God Delusion which was a best-seller we're going to be talking all about atheism religion ideologies and brexit so Richard Dawkins thank you very much for joining us thank you where does religion come from well I think it partly it comes from well history obviously if you ask why it comes where it comes from in an individual it comes from childhood and indoctrination and education where does it come from historically well I suspect originally from primitive animistic beliefs son God's far Gods River God's flood God's storm gods etc people have a natural tendency to wonder what causes things and people have a natural tendency which I suspect comes from their evolutionary background to ascribe agency to things like if there's a bad thunderstorm that must be the gods getting angry there's there's a tendency to want to think there's an agent behind everything that happens as a rain god that winds the rain there's a Sun God travels across the the sky and so on it's a very natural impulse and I think you can even give it a kind of evolutionary explanation our ancestors obviously were in danger all the time from predators and so they were constantly as they were looking over their shoulder looking wondering whether that could be a could be a leopard could be alone so something that isn't a lon but is just as rustling in the trees or leopard up in the trees it might be a leopard and so the safest thing is to assume that it is even though actually most of the time the trees rustle it's it's not it's just just the wind so animism arises from that from the tendency to ascribe agency to everything that happens and then it developed by cultural evolution over time into a more sophisticated kind of animism where you believe there's one God who does everything and creates the world and so on do you think overall throughout history we've seen religion do more bad than good yes although I don't think that's the most important question to ask as a scientist I think whether it's true is the most important question to ask I think it's done more bad than good I suppose it's done we can see some good that it does more recently I suppose because religion does I suspect tend to make people nicer to each other in some respects not very many respects but no on the whole I think it's more it done much more bad than good so your pursuit throughout your whole life and I've read lots of your work and I've watched lots of your interviews is all about that word truth-finding yes it is that's true for any scientist in any scientist thinks there is such a thing as truth and that it's out there for us to discover and it's a business of science to discover it and it's a wonderful challenge it's it's it's a beautiful thing that we are equipped with our brains and our sense organs to discover what the truth about the world is so we've seen thousands of years of history of religion and then it wasn't until very recent relative in relative terms that the growth of atheism happened where did where was a theism born I mean where it what the sort of historical precedents of that you know I think it would have been very difficult to be an atheist before Darwin because we are surrounded by a world of incredible complex and beauty actually and everything about the living world screams design if you look at the way a body works look at the way up any volume any animal or any plant works it's clearly designed you might think you took an ax man act of immense ice encourages the right word for a Darwin to come along and say no it doesn't have to be designed there is a mechanistic explanation it can be explained in exactly the same way as any other physical process can be explained that was a big big surprise and I think it's not all that surprising that it took until the mid 19th century before anybody took that leap of courage and the consequences for those people who did take that leap was pretty drastic correct I mean what can you talk about the kind of the the history of atheism and the consequences of becoming an atheist and coming out as it were as an atheist in society and up until today well in the 19th century it wasn't that bad I mean you couldn't get killed for it in in the Western world anyway not even get killed for it in the Islamic world which is another matter but no when when Darwin and Wallace came along the the worst they got was was a bit of pillory in in the papers and they render reviews and things earlier on I suppose and I mean you could get killed for being the wrong kind of Christian little and being an atheist I want to talk about where your atheism comes from so obviously you were brought up and so I think you're a seven in colonial Africa you believed in God you believed in well I I was sent to Anglican schools and as you know and it's not like it's you're not it's not exactly thrust down your throat in in a very harsh way but nevertheless you go to Chapel every every suddenly and you have prayers every day and so yes so naturally I believed it along with all my school fillers and well until I was about 15 or 16 and the main reason that you changed your mind was what silence because by the time I reached the age of about 14 or 15 the main reason why I retained a religious belief was science but the wrong science I mean I was impressed by the beauty of the living world I was doing I was studying biology right as I said before everything about the living world screams design and so I I believe that and so when I finally understood Darwinism that immediately pulled the rug from under my religious belief because my religious belief at that stage had had become only one of the so called argument from design one thing that sort of stumped me about this argument about design and evolution of the evolution I think it's pretty much almost 99% except around the world that evolution is is real or not around the world but it would in science with the scientific community that's what I meant yes yeah but there's that question about where life began and where we came from something extremely simple sort of elements and molecules and the amino acids to something extremely complex that is DNA I mean the difference is is huge so that question the religious people might ask is well how can we go from something so basic to something so completely in infinitely complex to the human much more complex than computers for example how can we go from that without it being designed yeah that's an extremely good question the once you've got DNA then everything else follows and we understand how that how that happened and that that was the big one really that that what I mean because the the complexity of a horse or an elephant or a human or an oak tree is is simply gigantic and so getting to there from the origin of life something simpler than a bacterium is the big one and Darwin solved that but we still have another fairly big one which is how do you get from pure chemistry to the first self-replicating molecule it wouldn't have been DNA because DNA as you rightly say is too complex it would have to be something else a precursor of DNA which by presumably some precursor of natural selection built up gradually to be as complex as DNA so what we're looking for is a molecule which has the singular property of self replication making copies of itself in the way that DNA does it can't have be in DNA because DNA requires for its replication its own product which is the sequencing of proteins so it had to be something simpler than DNA and something that could work on its own without the catch-22 that DNA suffers from the catch-22 of DNA is that DNA requires protein in order to replicate and protein requires DNA in order to get to get sequenced well the currently most fashionable theory for that is the so called RNA world theory RNA as you know is rather like DNA it's it's it also has the same kind of sequence of similar bases and it is now a mediator between DNA and protein the vital mediator the reason why DNA needs protein is that protein is an enzyme is a catalyst and the beauty about RNA is that it has both the property of being a catalyst like protein an enzyme and it has the property of being a replicator like DNA it's not a good replicator like DNA and is not a good enzyme like protein but it's fairly good at doing both and so if RNA had sprung into existence in a world of primitive chemistry then it had the capacity to to buck to get overt the catch-22 problem and that's as I said the current most fashionable idea it's not fleshed-out it's it's in a very rough state but at least RNA has the capacity to to bypass this catch-22 it's interesting because you've come up with a fantastically interesting scientific explanation for that question that I've just asked and religious people would say well actually you know science can't or have it hasn't come up with a serious answer to that question yet therefore it must have been a god or never it must be one basic lack of lack of logic I mean science of course has gaps in in it and those gaps are waiting to be solved but to say because science has a gap therefore religion can can fill that gap is utter nonsense I mean religion has not the faintest idea how to fill the gap and at least science is working on the problem you cannot say we have here two possible ideas a and B a is got an enormous amount of success under its belt but has got one or two little gaps that are still remaining to be filled B has absolutely nothing going for it but because there's a gap in AIDS understanding therefore B must fill it uh turley illogical I want to talk about logic because you've come up with a very interesting you know phrase there that the religion has no evidence for it whatsoever yet it has survived for thousands of years almost all throughout all of human history we can look back on and we can see kind of elements of religion in various and almost every society I suppose in every society in every society so how can something with no evidence as you say survive for so long even to today with modern science yes well I suppose you have to say too that unfortunately people don't necessarily realize how important their evidence is I think the the key to it is quite largely childhood indoctrination if you are told at a sensitive age early on in your life that so-and-so is the case then it's quite hard to shake with that off and we see this really rather dramatically in thing like people they've been brought up as Roman Catholics cradle Catholics as their as they're called and they grow up and they become highly educated highly intelligent people and they saved us something like this if I often met this you they say things like well rationally I can see that it's complete nonsense but I can't shake it off it's something about what I was taught in childhood and it's you know I'm still terrified or going to hell and the power of indoctrination at an early sensitive age is remarkably strong that's a pretty strong word indoctrination - it kind of implies or are you implying that it's coming from a sort of negative place in that you know the people's purposes are a negative one I mean I think so we believe it themselves yes yeah of course they believe it themselves and why wouldn't they mean they were indoctrinated by their parents on own schools and they were indoctrinate goes back through the generations and until until somebody breaks it until somebody manages to overcome that childhood indoctrination and and and refrains were indoctrinated their own children it's going to go on let's talk about breaking that what you call indoctrination which has been your life crusade it's probably a rather different word to use in your context but you spent you know your whole or almost your whole life fighting against religion basically trying to make sure that atheism is is heard in the case for atheism isn't heard which is fantastic do you feel that you're winning that battle well first of all I don't think I spent my life doing I mean most of my books have written about 14 books now and all but two of them have been about science I mean insofar as the science that I've been writing about implies atheism that's up to the reader I think I've only written two books that are actually about atheism and I would like to think that science is enough I would like to think that if you really understand the scientific worldview how powerful it is how remarkably successful it's been and how as it as time goes by as the centuries go by as the decades go by there's less and less room for Supernatural superstition that people who read science books will draw the obvious conclusion and give up supernatural superstition are you winning that that fight against the supernatural superstition or beget against religion well if you look at the statistics in Western Europe we were in Europe and in even in North America yes we are winning at the as the decades go by the number of people who profess a religion is steadily going down even in the United States it's now about 25% are saying that they have no religion and that the number is higher for young people and of course it's much higher in Europe so we are winning it's not the case in the Islamic world and that may take a very much longer time I want to I want to separate truth from in which is going to be hard for you and talk about sort of outcomes of of that of the decline in religion in Western societies do you think that has had positive outcomes and if it has can you point to the ones which you know can you point to them and show us that this is what's happened now religion is declining is fantastic well I'm not a historian I don't I don't know about that and of course the the decline of religion probably does have blips in the wrong direction it's it's probably not a uniform I mean for example in in Russia atheism was imposed by the communist regime and now it's religion is coming back and that's not that surprising a sort of rebound effect so it's not a uniform effect I think if you look at the broad sweep of history the long sweep of history people like Steven Pinker have looked at this and concluded that as the centuries have gone by we're really starting linear ago things are getting better and that coincides with the decline of religion over the released over recent centuries but again with with tremendous flips in the wrong direction I mean in the 20th century we've had two horrible rific world wars which clearly bucked the trend that Pinker discerned in in Indian history and he deals with that and those two wars had nothing to do with religion either way they were they were about nationalism and the pernicious effects of patriotic jingoistic nationalism in the case of the first world war and the second world war was a consequence of the first world war abetted by a lunatic theory of race rationalism so the the two world war ii ii of the 20th century era are a hideous reversal of the of the overall trend as i say they had nothing to do with religion either way but i think you have to take a very long view of history in order to discern long-term trends do you think that religion fills a gap in people's headspace what i mean by that is religion may give people purpose it may give people reason for living it may be give people kind of moral guidance kind of set of rules to live by and once that that goes that gap and vacuum is filled with other things I mean it has to be and we've seen and you've mentioned the two world wars there the rise of let's say nationalism on the one hand and sort of race race politics on the other hand and that's filled those back potentially filled those gaps and led to absolute destruction and disaster do you do you think that's a bad thing yes religion does of course fill headspace as you say and when it goes some people feel a kind of vacuum and the vacuum can be as a sort of ordinary if you like as sort of needing a place to go on a Sunday to sort of meet your friends and have coffee and things and that can surely be filled the vacuum and sense of purpose well that I think is very easily filled by it by both science and by a personal sense of purpose the the global sense of purpose which religion used to fill the purpose of the universe the of life that is filled by science we understand what the purpose of life is the universe has no purpose and why should it have a purpose but of course individuals need to have purposes the purpose of by getting up in the morning the purpose of my life for this year for the next 5 years I hope to achieve and so on that's of course very important and we all of us fill that gap with lots of different things we all of us have our own purposes it's entirely understandable from an evolutionary point of view that we should have individual striving for purpose the global purpose of life in evolutionary terms is the propagation of DNA it's a sort of ordinary as mundane as that as sort of lowdown as that but animals natural selection builds into animals more short-term purposes and sub purposes and sub purposes so the sort of purposes that an animal has are to to feed itself to feed its family to find a home to live in to avoid being eaten that kind of thing in ourselves we have rather more grand purposes like we want to compose a symphony or we want to write a book we want to win a football match these are parts of the mechanism that the brain sets up to achieve the global purpose of survival and DNA propagation and it needs to do that so when a hyena is a pack of hyenas going hunting um they they have a a goal which is to go out and and hunt a particular kind of antelope say and and we know that because researchers on Tainos actually can tell what they're going after by the way they behave so they have a purpose and then there are sub purposes like when you see a prey I don't know how hiding to do it maybe crouched down to stalk it or something of that sort I'm in the case of a cat like a like a cheetah it is stalking Soviet achieve maybe have the F the goal of filling its stomach sub goal of catching a particular gazelle and then the next sub girl is searching for the gazelle the next sub girl is when you've seen it crouch down so it doesn't see you and then next sub girl is um get as close as possible before you do your final sprint and the next sub goal is when you do your final sprint to catch it so all those sub girls are in the service of a global goal which is DNA propagation and then and survival reproduction and feeding your cubs and so on so the the hierarchy of girls and sub girls and sub sub girls and sub sub girls and things is deep within our brains in the brains of all all our animals and nowadays we fill those girls and sub girls with things that don't have anything anything directly to do with survival and reproduction things like writing a book as I say so writing a book doesn't actually improve your reproductive success but the the mechanism in the brain to set up goals and sub goals is still there and is still working away even though we now live in cities surrounded by books and buses and cars and computers and things so that survival is actually not one of our major problems not one of the problem that we are solving in our everyday life we don't wake up in the morning and say what can I do to ensure my survival today we say what can I do to finish the chapter on writing but the the mechanism is still that the brain mechanism that used to be in the service of survival is now in in others has been commandeered into other services it's fascinating because we've talked a bit about how religion may have may have had some part in evolution you talk there about purpose being it's sort of ingrained in all our brains and perhaps I mean my hypothesis is religion was obviously I think one of those purposes or helped or help people guide their purposes and I died in a direction and if we see the decline of religion we see as a vacuum form and then you've you're trying to replace that the kind of religion with your sort of scientific atheistic views all the things that you've mentioned there is that one of the hardest things when arguing against religion is that one of the hardest things to argue against because it in essence your argument is against human nature because we've seen religion as we said for thousands of years survived because of its so vital almost or clearly it's vital to us living in societies and now well as you say now we don't have that urge to survive now we don't have that need to survive fortunately we've got all those purposes which might be lacking because of the core nobility and so perhaps it's that one of the hardest things to fight well I think even when people did have religion the the purpose is that they followed in any particular day's work would only have a certain amount they might have had a sort of purpose of doing doing God's will or something of that sort but actually they they still had purposes like writing a book it might mean book about God but I miss it still was was the same kind of purpose I'm not sure that all that much has changed um what worries me rather more when you talk about vacuums is remembering a quote from GK Chesterton who said I think something like when people give up religion they don't believe in nothing they believe in anything and the anything can be other kinds of supernatural nonsense it couldn't be things like homeopathy and telepathy and ley lines and and that kind of thing so with wizards and witches and angels and and and to a certain extent that that does happen it is true that a sort of New Age spaced-out nonsense does tend to fill the vacuum when people give up religion but it doesn't have to be that way and I don't think it's true of many people but I think the thing that's innate in in in humans is not so much religion itself but but various tendencies to to various psychological predispositions which can manifest themselves as as religion so it would be something like if you ask the question why do all societies have have religion it's something like what they really have is a psychological predisposition like the belief in agency the tendency to obey authority after all one of the main reasons why people like children believe in religion is that is the priesthood which indoctrinates them so there are there are priests there are bishops and archbishops and grand high whistles and things who who indoctrinate and and kind of in many cases run society well all you need is for a an innate predisposition to to want to obey Authority and they're a very good reason to want to obey Authority very good evolutionary reasons why you might have bail especially as a child authority tends to know what's good for you when you're a child you tend not to know what's good for you or you're new to the world the world of our ancestors was dangerous and so listening to your elders listening to your parents listening to the elders of the tribe the priests the shaman's the witch doctors that was probably a wise thing to do because much of the advice that they gave probably was good advice for how to survive and for the child brain programmed to believe what you're told because it's good for you he's not easy to distinguish that which is good for you from that which isn't which that which is just just nonsense so the tendency to believe your elders is a good thing and still is a good thing and but it's just that in primitive societies that tended to lead to religion it doesn't have to lead to to religion but you're asking me what's the most difficult thing I don't think that's the most difficult thing I think childhood indoctrination is that is the most difficult thing people believe but what they believe because they've been told by their parents it's extremely hard to shake that and you couldn't you couldn't talk rationalism you can't talk science you can't talk evidence till you're blue in the face but if somebody at the age of four five six has been told something out of a holy book say then it's sometimes very hard to shake that do you think that emotion comes into it as well because it's it's a very it's very much to do feelings religion it's not something you can see it's something that you feel the cold realities of life versus the kind of more comfortable emotive side yeah that must be difficult - yes well then it is true that feelings can rule and sometimes people people value their feelings more than evidence and among those feelings is comfort I think it's in the case of religion it's rather a spurious comfort it's a comfortable belief that there's a father figure who rescue you and you when you're in trouble and look after you and you when you're in trouble and so on well I suppose that could be comforting but if it's false do you really want to gain comfort from a falsehood so it's a philosophy less awful question that it's a hard one well it's it's one that for example doctors face when they when they went when a doctor diagnoses a faith a fatal cancer the doctor has the dilemma of whether to tell the patient in our days they normally do but the dilemma has been what is it better for the patient to remain comforted by the belief that it's not cancer I mean I suppose the doctor could actually lie and say you're finest and nothing wrong with you and that would no doubt give comfort but well as you say it's a philosophical question that is much debated and nowadays doctors tend to tell the truth I think there's there's I forget which philosopher it is but I think they come up this scenario you've found out that your best friend is being cheated on detail the more not and most people would say well yes I'd rather than I'd rather know that rot then rather than live a happy life that was a fake life anyway you mentioned earlier talking about the purpose purpose in life and you said there's no purpose of the universe but there you can each people can have their own individual purposes and you've mentioned some of the things that might involve do you feel that that's a big hurdle again for when when trying to persuade people to come over to your side who think well actually there is a big purpose of universes a reason that we're all here and that is that one of the biggest yes well in a way that's an aspect of comfort it's it's rather uncommon in a way some people think to live in a universe without any purpose to feel that it's completely devoid of purpose it's sort of bleak and cold and harsh I think it's rather exciting actually I mean I rather like the idea that that it that nothing fundamentally has a purpose of course in biology things do have a kind of pseudo purpose which which is due to natural selection I mean a bird's wing clearly has the purpose of flying it's designed for flying was designed by natural selection not by any designer so there was never a purpose in anybody's mind it's a purpose that we can discern with hindsight as a consequence of natural selection that those ancestral birds that flew at just a little bit better because they had been wings that were just a little bit better were the ones who survived and passed on the genes for making wings that were a little bit better and that process accumulated over many generations gives rise to the most beautifully designed wings like those albatrosses and Swift's and seagulls and so in life in BA in biology it's impossible to resist the language of purpose but the purpose is not a ultimate designed purpose by a conscious individual it's a purpose that arises cumulatively by the blind forces of natural selection one of the hardest questions or one of the one of the questions that religious people ask that you might find difficult but I'm sure you've been asked at a billion times now but I'm going to ask you it to you again it's about the beginning of the universe how can something come from nothing because the sort of scientific principle of cause and effect surely is trumped by that question surely there was there's there's things outside of science outside of the laws of science that perhaps made the universe such as a god yes the word surely is a red rag word of course it's difficult and I'm not a physicist I'm a biologist but I've written what the physicists say um first thing to say I suppose is that it's another of these gaps where even if science can't answer it it doesn't mean religion can and and there's absolutely no reason to think that because science can't answer a particular question therefore religion can I mean maybe science will answer it maybe it won't but if it were then certainly religion can't answer it physicists are faced with problems like where did the you know how did the universe begin where do the laws of physics come from where did the physical constants of fundamental physical constants come from and some physicists say is it's not a question that they can answer some some physicists say that quantum theory gives them an answer and I recommend the book by Lawrence Krauss a universe from nothing in which he makes the point and I and I I'm not a physicist so I can't substantiate this but what he says is that matter and antimatter annihilate when they meet and produce nothing and thus the process can happen in Reverse that from nothing a random quantum event can produce matter and antimatter so if there is a reversal of the annihilation effect and so he and many other physicists think that the universe began from a random quantum event and that's the answer to the question how can something come from nothing is disputed what you mean by nothing but what physicists mean by nothing is not quite what the rest of us mean by nothing it's a kind of boiling soup of something around I'm not sure what and many physicists including Lawrence Krauss and many others think that they will solve that problem as I said before even if they don't it doesn't mean religion can while earth would one suppose that the speculations of some Bronze Age camel herders were what I would be able to solve a problem that modern physicists can't suppose those those speculations have survived thousands of years there maybe there's something maybe the story that they're telling at least is a powerful narrative you have to admit that of course I admit that but doesn't mean it's true I mean all sorts of nonsense is passed on there is a further point which is an interesting one which is that the the laws of physics and the fundamental constants of physics as things like the gravitational constant which have a value which physicists can measure but they can't actually explain why they have that value it has been calculated that if those constants had ever so slightly different values then the universe as we know it wouldn't exist and so there's a kind of temptation to think oh well each one of those fundamental constants can be thought of as a sort of knob that you twiddle like a rheostat on a radio set and all this all say half a dozen of these knobs they're all tuned to exactly the right the right value and how come once again it's no good saying God did it because you still haven't explained where God came from that's that's that's a non-starter as an explanation physicists some of them have proposed with good reason the multiverse theory and there are good reasons independent reason to propose the multiverse theory which is that the universe in which we live is one of billions of universes which are each Beach of which has a different set of fundamental physical constants as to say in each one the knobs are twiddled into a different into a different position and of those billions of different universes only the ones that have the knobs set to exactly the right value to produce us to produce gravity of the right strength etc to produce galaxies to produce stars to produce chemistry to be used to produce life evolution of life and so on and finally beings capable of appreciating their own existence those favorable quantities were present the only inward twiddled in in only the few universes only a minority of the multiverse the University and we have to be in one of that minority of universes because here we are that's called the anthropic principle it's quite interesting it's an extravagant idea but it it has considerable support from other branches of physics and it does explain why we perceive the physical constants to be adjusted to exactly the right values because if they weren't we wouldn't be here and we are here and so we have to be in one of the minority of universes which has the knobs twiddled to exactly the right values you certainly do not Annie doesn't helped to postulate a divine knob twiddle ER because you've stole it to explain where he came from is there ever any evidence for that theory that we can see that we can do yes there is as I mean it if it follows from other branches of physics which I'm not qualified to to expound but I mean for example physicists couldn't go out and say well look there's the other universe there's another one we're conduction it's not a sea is that but no it's not as simple as that but the multiverse is predicted by other branches of physics a religious person might say well I mean you you've come up with that phrase other branches of physics I don't know if that quite counts as there being hardcore evidence for it religious well no it does in this in the sense that it simply that I'm not a physicist so I can't I can't I can't expand it but but I perhaps I should have said other branches of physics there are reasons within physics to predict a multiverse prediction is one of the things scientists do so the models that that work in other ways which predict a multiverse so it's not a case of just saying we need a multiverse to explain why we're here it's that there are other reason to predict a multiverse and then given that you predicted the multiverse it then explains why we're here so those models come up with the positions which then come up come up with a motive versus explanation for example right religious people would say well actually there isn't only evidence for it we can't see it you may think there's models for it you may think there's it's able to be predicted you may think there's good explanation but there's no you can't go actually physically see and this is your this is your test for whether there's a god because you don't ever get in a spaceship and go to one of the other of the lists but all you're not making that same leap of faith that those sorry those religious people make when they say well actually you can't see God but is there no because as I said physicists have reason to predict the multiverse and you'll have to interview a physicist to find out what the reasons are let's talk about the effect of modern technology on people's beliefs I'm absolutely fascinated you've been talking about this for decades talking about the issues that we've raised in this interview for a long time and over that period of time we've seen there were a lot the rise of the Internet we've seen the rise of media communications how people consume media and information how do you think that that has affected people's views on religion atheism and science generally it is an astonishing fact as you say that during my lifetime we've seen the entire growth of the Internet and it's totally revolutionized the world we live in we live in the most remarkable world now here we are surrounded by books and people being surrounded by books for a long time but now we're surrounded by men in your smartphone we carries around in our pocket we have an encyclopedia of everything that is known everything that the human species known is accessible to you and me simply by typing a few words into into into a phone which we carry around with us now this is an incredible revolution in the way we live and it's affected everything and it's affected of course religion as well because people have access to ideas of religion and ideas of not religion in much more full ways much more accessible ways than we've ever had before and so one of my great hopes is out and I said before that the that the improvement the the decline of religion in the Western world is not mirrored in the Islamic world I think the great hope is that as computers on the Internet become more and more available over the world people will become exposed to science people exposed to free thinking rationality and will realize that the childhood indoctrination that they imbibed with their mother's milk is not doesn't stand up and of course they will invite from the internet religious nonsense as well and we can't help that that's going to happen but I'm more to hope is that people increasingly will exercise discrimination and discernment and we know out the false from the true you mentioned Islam they're now essentially you you generally make a distinction between Islam Islam and Christianity in its effect on the modern world today so you've called Islam for example one of the greatest evils affecting the world today do you seduce do you still believe that well that use not to be the case I mean in medieval times Christianity was possibly the world the most evil effect in the world most evil force in the world well what's happened is that is that Christianity has kind of been tamed only partially but largely tamed and we are now left with Islam as the major religion which actually does things which Christianity used to do like burning heretics burning and killing Christianity to burn heretics in Islam you you you behead Apple States and so so yes today Islam has assumed the unpleasant mantle that Christianity had in the Middle Ages why is it so controversial for you to say that because I know that people have called you in in to use Islamophobic or use words like that to describe your you're sort of I understand Islam if I mean what what I am is I'm phobic about killing apostates I'm foaming I'm phobic about hurling gay people off tall buildings I'm phobic about forbidding music and dancing and fun generally I mean all those sorts of things which are sometimes even legally enforced in Islamic theocracies like Iran Afghanistan well not Afghanistan but certainly regimes within I mean four elements within Afghanistan and Iraq and Saudi Arabia where Islam actually does have a major impact on people's lives for the worse why do people find those comments so controversial do you think because it is controversial you have to admit that I mean it is huge backlash nothing's alive and everything of course it's controversial I mean because you know that there are there are people who think that when you criticize a belief you're criticizing in the individual to hold it of course I'm not doing that I think that Muslims are the impressive are the principal victims of those evil things that I've mentioned such as the killing of gay people and apostates the oppression of women the hideous oppression of women I mean women are are the the main victims of the evils of Islamism should we blame Islam for that or should we blame those individuals for example who may just have those terrible moral beliefs for it you know we've seen atheism as you mentioned before I mean cut in Russia in communist societies where we've had equally brutal and in Nazi Germany equally brutal yes very much luck whether you should blame individuals or the beliefs that they held I mean you couldn't sort of get all philosophical and say well maybe people aren't responsible for their for their beliefs and so on that's a matter for philosophers too to argue about but when you have a pernicious belief like Nazism like Stalinism or like Islamism then people you could say that people are the unwitting instruments of this pernicious belief we could say that the people are to blame and that's a philosophical argument about who is to blame but what you can say is that the victims the victims of Stalinism victims of Nazis and the victims of Islam are the individuals who suffer under those those regimes if Islam is a pernicious belief why just so many mislead why so many Muslims good find ordinary fantastic course they are I mean the vast majority of people in any religion and a decent nice even and of course the vast majority of Muslims are very good very nice people and many of them are victims of Islam as I said let's talk about the Islam itself as a religion now I find it fascinating you watched I watched an interview with you and Mehdi Hasan talking about this this is that issue and he was talking about and you kept asking this one question he said do you seriously believe that a flying horse went up to heaven and he wouldn't answer the question he wouldn't say yes he wouldn't say no for a very long time eventually and he gave in he said yes I literally believe that that is the case how can a man of the 21st century a man and modern science a man with who has a mobile phone you can look these things up and and and see sort of rationality how can someone beliefs such a believer he's a crazy well I I don't understand how he couldn't believe it and that's why I kept on persisting with the question and what he said was that he believes in miracles because he believes that Allah can do can do miracles and therefore he believes you can do anything Christians will say the same if you ask Christian do you believe in virgin birth you believe Jesus turned water into wine and many will say no they don't but many would say yes I do and the reason is however implausible they believe in miracles they believe that God can do anything they but often they say they believe in the resurrection and the resurrection is the one undeniable thing for them and once you believe in the resurrection you can believe anything so they believe well if God's capable of resurrecting Jesus then he can do anything so why wouldn't he why shouldn't he turn water into wine and I think that was what meeting Hassan was was kind of saying he was saying that the tea that he believes that Allah is capable of anything and so why not have a flying horse go go from Mecca to Jerusalem whatever it was Islam itself I mean it's a huge huge religion it's not on the decline it's on the up and yet we've seen with Western in Western societies Christianity generally has been on the decline what what's the distinction well when people say Islam is on the app what they usually mean is that there are lots of babies a number of people who believe it yeah well and babies Britain is that vector that contains the hidden not so hidden pretty obvious assumption that babies inherit the beliefs of their parents which unfortunately they do and that's the point I was making earlier childhood indoctrination if you assume that every baby born will inherit the beliefs of their parents then you've only got to do some simple demographic calculations to show which religion is increasing which is decreasing what are what one has to hope is that it is no longer the case or work will no longer be the case that every baby born automatically inherits the religion of their parents now you're not a raging right-wing nationalist not by any any case yet there are still people on the Left who would accuse you of being of being that I mean because of your views on Islam of they were call you Islamophobic they might even call you racist I know that lots of people in line might say that because of the simple things that you've been saying in this very interview is it possible to have a sensible discussion on Islam it's very difficult and I don't know why you're harping on Islam so much actually it's not I think it's interesting it's something that you've talked about before a lot I know and you've made that distinction between any of my blogs but it is is a social commentary that has been happening over the last let's say ten years and you have been involved in that you've you've mentioned it you've talked about in interviews that's why I'm asking about it yes well so what do you ask the question the question was is it possible to have a sensible conversation about Islam well it's it is difficult and many of the people who quote me who think I'm right-wing are decent liberal people who I regard as my own people I've always been among among those people who I regard as cowards because they they cave in and they do not observe their principles of feminism of gay rights all the things that decent liberal people believe suddenly they forget about them when it comes to Islam and I think I know why I think it's because they mistakenly think Islam is a race which it isn't it's a religion as I've said before if you couldn't convert to it or Appice apostatize out of it it's not a race and because they're as decent liberals again extremely against racism as of course I am they as it were the the fear of being for racist Trump's the fear of being thought misogynist or homophobic and so they overlook the homophobia and them and that the rampant misogyny and the rampant homophobia of extreme Islamism so they as it were betray their decent liberal principles in that one case and so if what if if a liberal like me does not betray those principles and does condemn the misogyny and the homophobia of Islamic theocracies they will turn on us and call us right-wing Islamophobes etcetera because they have betrayed their liberal principles I want to pick up on that you wrote a tweets saying on that very point you've just made you wrote a tweet saying national pride has evil consequences prefer pride in humanity German pride gave us Hitler American pride gave us Trump British pride gave us brexit if you must have pride be proud that Homo sapiens could produce a Darwin Shakespeare Mandela Einstein Beethoven do you think that pride in Germany which Linda Hitler is equivalent to people waiting for Donald Trump exam poor people voting for brexit all those those issues separately yes I do I mean I think I think that that national pride is something we need to grow out of I can't help being proud of some of the things that Britain has achieved and I think I mentioned Darwin Newton and Tim berners-lee actually and many many many many others I mean that there are their reasons for being proud of of Britain and other countries have many reasons of being proud in those countries but let's keep it in proportion let's not let's not forget all jingoistic about it as the british were and the germans were in the first world war where we you know people were taught that it was at the ten of us oh sorry ten of them is worth one of us and so on and and it large was that kind of jingoistic patriotism which fueled the first world war not the historical origins of it but the but the impulse to go to war the reason why young men volunteered in their thousands patriotism and it it is pernicious it has been throughout throughout the ages we do need to grow out of it and start thinking ourselves as one human species and think of ourselves less as belonging to this nation rather than that nation let's take brexit for example brexit was a vote to leave a political institution the European Union that Britain's been in for forty-five years now it wasn't to do with nationally miss nationalism it wasn't to do with Hitler it wasn't to do with World War one seventeen point four million people fifty percent of the country voted for something to leave a political organization that's all it was you talk about keeping things in proportion surely you're going way way way too far by comparing someone like Hitler who murdered six million Jews nonsense there was I think an element of xenophobia as an element of Britain for the for the British in the way people voted what I do think about about brexit is it was wrong to determine the future of our country and of Europe for the long term four decades maybe even longer on the basis of one vote on one day in June 2016 when people change their minds when you look at the opinion polls they fluctuate up and down all the time if you if you take a vote on one day it's all very well I mean we do that in general elections but we know that in the most five years we can have another go we can change our minds again this was an incredibly irresponsible decision by David Cameron I'm not talking about whether brexit itself is right or wrong but the decision to allow a referendum on such a momentous thing such a long-term thing on one day to be decided by the entire electorate rather than in representative democracy bye bye bye Parliament was an irresponsible decision which he took because he thought he'd win he thought that remain would win he was confident that it would win and he was simply trying to see off the sort of you cape wing of his own party it was a very very irresponsible thing for Cameron to do and we're going to live with the consequences for decades do you think the votes in 1975 was legitimate following that line of logic to join the European Union I can't remember in I mean I don't know enough about that to answer that that question and possibly not I mean if if it was a isn't that the nature of democracy is what I'm trying to say well if we hate it I think we have a democracy we have a parliamentary democracy where every five years or often less we choose our parliamentary representatives who are paid to spend a lot of time deciding discussing studying bills studying the details studying the economic details and then coming to a decision now I am not equipped to do that I could be I mean I could spend a lot of time reading up for the economics and so on but I don't think that I or you or anybody else should have been asked to do it on mass because we don't know why what's the main reason all these stupid is that the reason no we're not stupid but we aren't we are simply not we don't spend enough time these are complicated economic issues which parliamentarians are paid to discuss to debate at great length to examine all the angles and they spend hours and hours debating reading papers and everything we didn't do that we just went into the pulmonary I think I feel like voting YES or feel like voting no um it's not the way that's not the way democracy should work the pollen for example the polymer we've just based in in 2019 Boris Johnson's big majority that he just got surely even without referendum I mean most of those people in Parliament now would vote to leave so I'm not under that logic we're at the end I'd surely forests of where they worked I mean there's Johnson won the election cause because jeremy corbyn was leader of the officers opposition so he didn't win because of the pledge to get breakfast done nothing to do that you seriously think he did absolutely not my job in the election was to go around the country speaking to people why they're voting for various people in seats all around the country it was always about breakfast I mean a lot of it was about Korbin in Italy it was always about breakfast about upholding that vote that they had in 2016 if you look at polls you'll find that Corbin had I have a lot to do with it and and I think brexit did as well I think it's be compared to say do you think that most prexy voters are that a phobic no I think there are all sorts of different different reasons I think I think a lot of the a lot of it was in the in second I mean that originally I think it was sort of rather idle women it was you know a lot of people thought it was it wouldn't go through they might sort vote have a have a protest vote I know one person who said always nice to have a change is there evidence to back that up I mean do you have any opponent said I'm just saying that that people in 2016 probably had very different reason to vote than treatin people in 2019 in 2019 an awful lot of it was well we had it in we had the vote in 2016 and we must uphold that a lot of people said that a lot of people said that because we had the vote in 2016 we shouldn't change and we shouldn't change it now we should on we should honor that vote I never believed that but that's a lot of what a lot of people did believe a lot of people didn't like Jeremy Corbyn a lot a lot of people had all sorts of different reasons I want to talk about a slightly separate issue it's another tweet of yours you said under a underage people can't vote wherever our criteria for thinking them unqualified eg insufficiently developed reasoning powers or knowledge there must be some adults less qualified than some underage people is age the only practical threshold or could others be Devon interested in what do you mean by that I'm interested in that we do obviously for practical reasons impose an age threshold and in some countries it's 21 in most countries it's 18 in some countries it's 16 from time to time there's pressure to reduce the voting age to 60 I think it was reduced in Scotland for the Scottish referendum and so that there's you can argue about exactly where to place the age threshold and I think I would like to see would be something like this that for once you're once you're 18 then you get the vote and and that's that's it but but when you're 60 and I could imagine having a sort of driving test sort of similar to the test which would be immigrants to this country have to take it's quite a stiff test I've had a look at it myself and quite interesting get questions about British life and things but you could have questions about democracy and about the issues of the day and economics and politics and history and things and if a 16 passes that test then they get the vote and if they don't then they have to wait till they're 18 and I think that might be rather a good way of as it were weaning young people into political in an era of into their into their age of political responsibility so that they they could wait till they're 18 and then just vote in anyway or they could if they're interested they could take a sort of driving test and I'd rather like to see that I think would be a a good way of allowing those young people who really do know a lot and have the sort of responsibility to be allowed to vote that they should be allowed to vote it and that's a rather good way of doing it it's interesting I do want to there's one other thing from that I just want to understand you said that there must be some adults less qualified than some underage people and obviously is required in sufficiently developed reasoning powers of knowledge or knowledge which adults are you talking about there which adults do you think aren't qualified necessarily to vote by that logic there must you say there must be some I'm sure I mean do you seriously think they're armed I mean would you do you think that there are some 16 year-olds were better qualified than some 40s issues what's better qualified I know how to choose I'm just saying there will not only be I'm not wanting to choose I'm saying let's give sixteen-year-olds an exam to see whether they should be allowed to as it were qualify to vote I think that we have a very good thing so nothing to do with excluding some adults from voting because there perhaps otherwise like every party over everybody over over 18 should but they should vote Richard Dawkins thank you very much for joining us thank you very much you

Channel: The Sun

Views: 416,796

Rating: 4.3584328 out of 5

Keywords: The Sun, news, breaking news, Richard Dawkins, atheism, religion, debate, atheist, evolution, darwin, science, the god delusion, creationism, christianity, richard dawkins debate, dawkins, islamism, theist, islam, richard dawkins religion, richard dawkins islam, liberal, conservative, politics, libertarian, trump, election, islamophobia, brexit, boris johnson, eu, brexit news, uk, nigel farage, boris, united kingdom, bill maher, liberal debate, god

Id: cBcGjiJ3ptk

Length: 62min 22sec (3742 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Glagaire]

Fuck Dawkins. He's one of the most narrow-minded, arrogant and petulant supposedly 'intellectual' people you can find (up there with deGrasse Tyson).

He's a rabid anti-Trumper, fundamentalist climate change believer, shits on religion and the religious every chance he can (despite the huge evidence for positive social and personal impacts of such belief systems - yes, they can have very negative impacts as well, as does politics) and he's got the 'old man fear' of Covid that pushes obedience to draconian government regulations over our personal liberties.

"You can argue over whether masks, hand-washing, banning groups etc are effective. What you can NOT argue is that you are personally entitled to take the risk as a matter of individual liberty. You risk other lives as well as your own. It’s just elementary epidemiology."

He's both intellectually weak and morally cowardly.