Richard Dawkins | Outgrowing God | On Atheism, Ethics, and Theology

this episode of the cosmic skeptic podcast is brought to you by you to support the podcast please visit patreon.com forward slash cosmic skeptic [Music] [Applause] [Music] so welcome back everybody to the cosmic skeptic podcast today I'm joined in his own very lovely home by Professor Richard Dawkins of course the evolutionary biologist and fellow of New College Oxford University turned face of new atheism and author of a number of highly popular works including The Selfish Gene the blind watchmaker The God Delusion and most recently his new book outgrowing God which is available to purchase right now if you're watching on YouTube a link will be available in the description thanks for being it so I suppose the best place to begin with this is given not only your own previous work but also the work of other new atheist writers why do you think we need another book about atheism well it's about 10 years or more since I wrote The God Delusion and I've always wanted to write a book for young people The God Delusion is written in a a style for sort of um shall we say university graduates although not necessarily in a particular subject and rather to my surprise various people have said that they would like a kind of easier version that's not quite what our growing God is because it doesn't actually move the chapter don't cover the same ground but it is written in a style for 14-year olds are up to 19 year olds I suppose so it's sort of started off as being aimed at younger people right I see because you know I I myself read The God Delusion when I was a teenager and although some of it was kind of over my head undoubtedly it was still very lucid and convincing but I'm glad to hear that oh no I should have thought it was I muscles I've been slightly surprised there had a reaction from from some people but um I I wouldn't like to say that they are that I'm growing God is dumbed down it's not that at all but I suppose the vocabulary is a little bit less extensive than that's all my other books I see because I think you're well known for writing in quite a quite an eloquent manner what was it quite challenging to try and write in a more I guess simplistic is the word I wanted so not so much simplistic I think I just avoided driving the reader to the dictionary quite so often perhaps is not a way to produce me you find yourself doing that and your other works keep on it well the magic of reality was a book that was explicitly for children so certainly with that yes I suppose that's really example really yeah no I remember you you tweeted in 2018 about writing this book and you said I'm actively working on two new books outgrowing God is atheism for teenagers second one is atheism for children and still needs a title and then you said both will be seen as son by blasphemous and as hate speech simply for telling the truth I mean reading reading out wearing God it didn't come across particularly hateful of course not me in and then of course not um but there are many people for whom religion is such a sort of sacred thing obviously that any criticism of religion however mild comes across as hate speech it's a sort of it's a point about the way people perceive things rather than the way the book actually is sure given that this book is an attempt to I imagine reach out to younger readers who haven't really thought about this stuff before maybe optically it might make more sense to be a little less harsh in the criticism if you're if you're trying to reach that kind of audience is that something that you yes try to do it really harsh that's better than one or two little bits a little bit harsh I mean it's a slightly satirical bit about God telling Jesus he's got to go down right and that's about the only harsh but I can think of anymore well I was just thinking would you I mean would you cater for an audience like that would you when writing a book like this be willing to kind of say something you believe and then think well that might not come across particularly well so I'll change it or are you saying no this is what I believe this is what it's a very good question I mean I suppose I I go a little bit more towards that this is what I believes I'm gonna say it anyway that some of my colleagues do there's a sort of continuum between people who really want to seduce really want to reach out right and and persuade in a sort of mild way and some of my colleagues who in America particularly who are interested in putting across the importance of evolution in education and want to get religious people on their side yeah don't applaud the way I go about things because they want to say it's okay you can keep God and have evolution and I don't hold that view and so I suppose that for them I are a little bit too much on the side of being in your face Iren one little anecdote I was talking to one of the lawyers in the Pennsylvania case a few years ago about teaching evolution in schools and our side won but when the lawyer heard me talk I was just talking about it at him he said well I'm very glad we didn't have you as an expert witness because I would have written the case for ya for teaching evolution the case for the full compatibility of evolution with God I see so did you find yourself doing because I think people are gonna disagree that that's your style of writing and speaking but did you find yourself doing that less for outgrowing God specifically because it's aimed at teenagers hmm I wouldn't say so read not we're not really no sure but so is this book just for teenagers or do you expect no well it's been read by one ten-year-old who liked it very much and I'm really hoping it'll be read by adults as well sure so when it comes to adults these will these will be people who were around when The God Delusion came out and may well have read it is there is there more to offer in this book to people who've already ingested The God Delusion and well it is different it doesn't really cover exactly the same ground I was conscious of not wanting to just simply have a over overlap it's not it's not God Delusion light so anybody who's read The God Delusion I would like to think that they would enjoy reading outgoing God yes how do you think that the the religion in society and the difficulties of being an atheist have changed since you first published The God Delusion in 2006 which was part of this this new emergence of the popularity of atheism which may have made things easy but yes I'm not a sociologist or a psychologist I haven't thought of done the research on it there are indications that religiosity is declining certainly in this country and also in America actually as well I mean the figures are going in the right direction I'm not really very well equipped to judge how much things have changed in the last ten years I just sort of battle on and try to tell the truth but I mean have the reactions that you've got been been a little easier or less frequent outgrowing or of course isn't out yet so well sorry I'm oh well I mean it is by the time this is but it is about at the time we're speaking so I haven't had any reaction to speak of to outgrowing God I said it's authorized if it wasn't if it wasn't received a little more nicely I think the way that I see it I think that since that books come out over a decade ago it seems to have gotten a bit easier to be an atheist because at least people are culturally aware that that's the thing that people that people are now that could well be true yes I think that could well be true and I think what I'm hoping is that there will be a sort of tipping point like there with like I was with the gay community who were not that long ago sort of ostracized and now our fully mainstream sure I mean what do you think it is that that did that I think it's a fascinating question I mean it's happened very suddenly quickly I mean it in in my lifetime um homosexual acts in private were actually illegally good a prison um and now really quite the contrary I mean so it happened really very very quickly and ice and I think that probably was a tipping point when suddenly it became okay and I think the same is going to happen with atheism as well when you say a tipping point you mean kind of in in the number of people who were sort of sudden crossing of a bridge and yes it was you're over that bridge then then it starts a rush I guess that is that kind of what you were trying to do with the out campaign all that all those years ago yes yes it is exactly right and the out campaign was then somewhat superseded by a by a similar campaign called openly secular in America right but they're both waving at the same thing yes aiming towards that tipping point I guess perhaps it's more needed and in America I'm interested in with it because not only do you think religion is untrue we also spend a lot of time talking about why religion is is harmful if there's a kind of two separate they're two separate things and for me as a scientist the untrue part is the one I'm most interested in sure some of my colleagues I suppose the late Christopher Hitchens was more interested in the harmful aspect of it I'm interested in both and I like to give sort of equal attention to both I said well maybe slightly more today it's me to the truth times but what do you make of the approach of people like Hitchens who would just far more rhetorical and yes well he was he was very eloquent and one of the most eloquent people I've ever met I think and he made excellent points and and strongly recommend his his books what you think it is that many people like him sorry what do you think it is that made people like him well beautifully written it not only his writings but also his speeches and it's superb speak public speaker immediately immensely resourceful with with words when he needs them and historical references literal references and I should speak like he was writing poetry or something yeah something I think we can all envy and I think I'm better at writing and speaking oh I thought you're going to say better at writing than he was no no no I am interested because we're talking about the the rise of atheism we mentioned it a moment ago there was something I wanted to ask you about from from the book because I'm interested in your definition of atheism to start with yes this is a confusing thing people do get very confused for me it doesn't mean that I know that there is no smell supernatural being that but I there is no evidence for it and I think it's very unlikely so the divide between agnosticism and atheism often confuses people and for some people an agnostic is somebody who says well we don't know we can't know and therefore it's not worth talking about and it's equally likely there is a God and that all the gods and that there isn't I don't think that I mean I think it's highly unlikely but it's not absolutely definite so you can't prove it do you see them as on the same plane agnosticism and atheism because a lot of my atheist colleagues see the the agnostic label as a claim to knowledge saying I don't know and therefore I don't believe and it's atheism that describes the belief component rather than the knowledge component they don't actually exist I'm agnostic of course literally means don't precisely and so that that's fair enough I just want to go a little bit further than that and say don't know and I think it's highly unlikely you could say don't know and think it'd rather look rather likely yeah because that's the thing if if a theist says well of course I'm not a hundred percent sure that God exists as I think Bill O'Reilly said to you in fact once you could just as easily turn around or say well that technically makes you an agnostic you could yes and so I think that there is a continuum there in one's level of confidence as a matter of of probability yeah do you think it's an unhelpful term I know that Hitchens since we mentioned him really didn't like the term agnostic and described it as quite an unfortunate term I don't like it very much I must say it's not even clear to me what th Huxley thought I mean yeah I've read his yeah but I suspect that he was what I would call an atheist yes well you you define at one point at the very least and I can quote that atheism is simply a lack of belief of a belief in anything supernatural does that mean that you don't have to believe in God to be a theist and you can be but because to me if you're somebody who doesn't believe in God that's literally the meaning of atheism Athey oh yes but you could still perhaps be there have some kind of New Age spirituality believing some farmer or or something like yes I mean perhaps was an unfortunate way to put it anything supernatural because of course that could include but in a telepathy or personally yeah leprechauns offset something so I when you when you talk about spirituality and sort of people like Einstein who would not have called himself an atheist although in my terms he was an atheist he was very adamant that he didn't believe in anything any supernatural being but he had a sort of pantheistic reverence for the unknown yeah and I have that too of course I'm not so like Carl Sagan like Einstein they both I think wanted to acknowledge a kind of spiritual feeling when contemplating the deep problems of the universe in existence your life and I I share that yeah and and that can be hard to describe so they would often invoke religious language and I'm well concerned yes that's right I mean Carl Sagan didn't Einstein you did and I know he's very unfortunate actually I'm Stein used the word god yes just as a kind of tag for that which we don't yet understand so he said when he said things like but God doesn't play dice with the universe or what I really want to know is did God have a choice in creating the universe what he meant by that was well the last one was is there more than one way for a universe to be but he put it in God language it's a poetic way of putting go is a way of putting an unfortunate one because people out there are only too eager yes to seize on the word God and assume that Einstein therefore believed in God which he didn't yeah I guess it's similar to the way that people might speak of genes choosing to do a certain thing or something like that that's right I do that as well and in the case of genes I would have hoped it wouldn't give rise to confusion yeah actually it hasn't Yeah right but I guess that's but that's partly because you're so clear about how you're using the term where as long as you read the book itself and not just the title the way exactly yeah I think that the the the reason that I'm asking you about the definition of of atheism is because there's something that you said and I know you're quite famous for having observed this you write that one of your pet peeves is the habit of labeling young children with the religion of that oh yes this is something I think that a lot of atheists share and and how it makes no sense to talk of a Catholic child what you really mean is the child of Catholic parents but you then say at the end of the paragraph on page 11 it's right at the beginning you say I don't think we should talk about atheist children either why not well for the same reason because I don't want to be accused of indoctrinating children obviously I mean clearly a newborn baby doesn't believe anything and so in that sense little assume of babies is an atheist but that's a I think that's a rather pedantic thing to call a child an atheist child is rather like calling a child a Catholic child because it it puts a label on the child um I was very shocked once at an atheist conference where it was a nice conference in America and there were a lot of children about there were children of people at the conference and they had play groups and pressures and things and then at the end a woman on the stage said all you atheist children come up on the stage and I hit the roof you know I was furious at that because that's exactly what we're trying not to do I see but then the reason why I perhaps wouldn't have such a hostility towards that is because I don't want people to be confused with the definition of atheism one of the things that I spend most of my a lot of my time doing is telling people no I don't believe there is no God I just don't believe that there is one yes and if we are defining atheism as simply a lack of belief in God then consistently I think we we are committed to saying that a child at the moment of being born is an atheist because if we don't then people are going to question is that really what you have the nexium point and and and but you're speaking as a sophisticated educated philosopher and and most people won't get that they'll think oh there you are trying to drive atheism in into children you're trying to take our children and make them into atheists or say that they are atheists but it's no you are essentially saying that's what you're saying you're saying sir damn I mean you're talking minute or else we're talking philosophically yes you're perfectly right but I'm so keen on the idea of not labeling children yeah that I would prefer on this occasion to restrain myself from talking about a child as being a theist so this is precisely an example of what we were talking about earlier about believing something but perhaps tailoring your words in what one quite helpful thing I think is to change the way you pronounce the word if you say atheist it sounds like a rather sinister thing if you say atheist yes yeah actually it's the same thing but it it's the meaning across well that's the confusion it's not it's not a the-- ism it's a fierce beer so we're quite nice to change the pronunciation but that's hard yeah that's not an easy thing to do especially in in writing I just I what in writing it was definitely sick - in I suppose yes that's true I just take up doing that but then I think you might the anger that you get from from a lot of philosophers for trying to redefine her my redefined terms that are in use or aria reintroduced the way that they're being used might be even more fervent than religious responses as I've as I found talking about ethics for instance ethics is something that you talk about in in the book you talk about the the origins of morality there's a chapter in out growing god called how do we decide what is good essentially I suppose a response to the claim that you need religion to be good and you're saying no we don't here's a way to do it and in the chapter you you offer a compelling history of moral progress but what in a nutshell is is your answer to the question of how we define what's good not not about like how we have changed but what is the justification for the changes that we've made I think that's actually genuinely difficult question it's sam harris goes rather far in in his book I think that's called the moral landscape he says nobody actually can define what's right and wrong was good and bad and suffering is bad yes for him um and I I think it certainly is a common-sense level I would like to go along with that I mean it's possible for some philosopher to come along oh no I think suffering is good I mean that you know and you can't totally argue against them I just think it's a horrible thing to say and I think most people would agree that it's a horrible thing to say but then I don't that that I must say that that slightly rings of when people say like yes you could come along and say there's no God but I think that's a fairly horrible thing to say yes well I think I suppose just it's an aesthetic thing I don't think it's a horrible thing to say but no I mean I don't actually have a come back to some sadist who comes along and says I think suffering is wonderful I see um I said what if what if it were the case that somebody is using some kind of sadistic bent that they have in order to in order to justify some religious morality how are you going to communicate to that person that what they're doing is wrong I think that such a person would be quite rare I'm not sure I'd I'm I think I'd run rather devote my attention to I see decent people because you you speak of when you open the chapter about morality you talk about oh so for instance you're talking about the the evolution of other characteristics we have so you say for instance it's it's obvious why we have a desire for the opposite sex it's obvious why that's evolved and yet there are homosexuals which you can see is kind of an evolutionary anomaly but they're not wrong for being for the sake that they're an anomaly but if you're going to say that moral values have evolved as well in in the sense that we've evolved a desire for the opposite sex and we've it has evolved a desire for pleasure and for well-being then if somebody is similarly anomalous and just happens to believe that no suffering is good pain is good then how can we say that that is that is wrong or bad if the if an anomaly and sexual preference is not wrong or bad I think you can't actually say it's it's it's wrong I think you just have to say I don't want I want to live in a society where that sort of person doesn't doesn't have insurance and that's just and the reason that you want that is because of your evolutionary heritage well I'm not sure about that um if we come back to suffering again homosexual behavior doesn't do any harm it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't hurt anybody mmm it doesn't cause any suffering whereas if somebody has a philosophical belief that inflicting pain is good then I come back to my little rather fundamentals sam harris type um axiom or almost suffering suffering is bad it's bad but the reason that suffering is bad or that it's experience is bad is because we've evolved to feel swearing in a sense that I mean it's it's a sort of biologically interesting point that you could actually breed by artificial selection yes animals that like to be that that like what we would think of as suffering I've never been done but but when you think of what pain is about it's a it's a mechanism in the brain to teach the animal not to repeat some actions cause it causes pain yeah well and there's obviously a very good reason for that theoretically I suppose as a Darwinian I would have to say you could breed animals that like paying well I suppose a vocalist topically that's the thing it wouldn't be wouldn't be paid it wouldn't wouldn't be pay yes yeah we say would that look that like being having pins stuck in there yes or something of that sort so from a Darwinian point of view I suppose your your right to keep coming back to torture to that but then because obviously evolution is a process it's not a it's not a totally random process it's it caters to its environment but there is a level of arbitrariness to it in the sense that we could have had six fingers instead of five that wouldn't have been an unimaginable consequence that's fairly arbitrary I think you'd probably agree yes with reservations I think it's it's a bit easy easy to say something like that I think you're right in that case but it is possible the six fingers would have been worse or four fingers would have been one yes but it's also it's also possibly possibly not organ like yeah meat to be a historical contingent taxes so I'm interested in in asking about if if morality is something that's evolved within us and was and was susceptible to similar arbitrariness is the fact that rape is wrong as arbitrary as the fact that we have five fingers instead of six mmm I don't think so because because I think once again rape causes suffering but then the the fact that we experience suffering and the fact that we call that suffering is something that's evolved you're being too philosophical if we could call something else yeah no I mean in six figures versus four fingers or five fingers is not a question where suffering arises I see I mean it so I'm just interested biologically speaking is there a is there a good reason that we should have evolved to experience suffering in the way that we experience it well I've just said the reason for suffering is to teach the animal not to do again what is just done and that's the only answer I have to that okay well I suppose we can allow our listeners to make it that what they will you talk about moral evolution in most of the chapter you you give examples of where we've where we've progressed as a society how can we determine order to distinguish parts of our ethics that are that come from our evolutionary history and parts of our ethics that come from society how can we distinguish and identify which parts of our ethical conduct come from our biology in which come from society well that's a good question what do you see them as kind of the same thing like it will part of the process of evolution whether biological also I wouldn't say there was the same thing they resemble each other the the sort of cultural progress which Steve Pinker identifies in the better angels of our nature looks like evolution in a way and it is gradual and it happens progressively from saturated century the the evolutionary foundation of it is possibly somewhat deeply buried in the cultural overlay mm-hm I think the cultural overlay probably is more important and do you see the seeds of moral progress happening now can you see where in the sense that you talk about how a hundred years ago things were vastly different to how they are now what are the certain water things that you think might change 100 years from now well that's a very nice question and I mean my feeling is probably a widening of what Peter Singer calls the expanding circle so if we go back a few centuries people of different races or regarded as inferior not even human and were treated accordingly appallingly and so I suppose the obvious extrapolation of that is the widening of the of the expanding circle to non-human species singer talks about how you can make an evolutionary case about why it makes sense to care about fellow creatures when a lot of people would intuitively say that if evolution serves the self which of course it serves the gene but people see it as serving the self how can there be altruistic behavior and he offers an explanation to say that you know when you help your fellow creature you're helping those who share your genes it makes evolutionary sense to develop the care for your fellow your fellow creature do you feel the same logic would extend to non-human animals I mean III don't think that logic works even as far as Peter Singer takes it I see so how would that circle expand to non-human oh by non by non-genetic means right I think that um the that he is actually he's actually right to to want to expand the circle morally but I think he's wrong to think that it really is the same process of evolution that the expanding circle really does represent something evolutionary it doesn't the as far as evolution is concerned kin groups kin and potential reciprocate as are as far as it goes the expansion is done by what I would call a mistake a very blessed mistake a very very good mistake but when we are altruistic towards non relatives whom were never ever going to meet again yes that is a a by-product in a mistaken but I hasten to stress again a very good mistake yes I mean you can see why I think as a singer points out in the expanding circle the way that human beings were living at the time that these these characteristics evolved it made sense to treat any human being a need as though they were a relative because they likely were but the same can't be said for non-human animals nor nor can it be said for non related humans we we've already we've already expanded that far yeah and that was not it that was a purely cultural process and that was a process and so expanding it to to nonhumans is it's nothing to do with with chimpanzees being more closely related to us than kangaroos I see um the question is as generally Bentham said have they suffered yes and I mean what do you think it will take that I'm interested because when you talk about moral progress you give the example of the founding fathers in America having owned slaves I mean the the pinnacles of Liberty in liberal theory are also Anathem attend the fact that they abused that in the most cynical way possible and you say when talking of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington particularly you say we can at least hope that they didn't know the conditions on the slave ships coming from Africa implying that because we think so morally highly of people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and things are so rational that if they'd have known how what the conditions were really like then they would have then they perhaps would have changed their their point but like in today's society we do know the conditions of the of the equipment we do know their conditions of animals in factory farms and that doesn't seem to be doing it okay what do you think it will tell you guys like a good point um I mean in the case of Jefferson and Washington I don't know much about it but I presume that although they had slaves they're probably quite kind to them whereas the treatment of slaves on the ships was utterly utterly ghastly I mean appalling and I very much hope they didn't know but you make the point about you know Wiis when we see Laureus transporting sheep or cows just they remind me of you know yes lowly trucks going to be going to bail see and I think there is a tendency to turn a blind eye and that probably was in the 18th century towards towards the waves were treated and there there is now towards them as you say factory farms and slaughterhouses yes maybe maybe Sally Hemings would have something to say about Thomas Jefferson treating his his slaves well but I mean what what can we do as as people who are espousing the ideas that we're talking about in outgrowing God the idea that you don't need religion to be moral morality can come from art from our evolutionary heritage when someone says well what if it is the case that I just don't care I mean with the religious at least they can say that if you don't care you have to care someone might turn to your account of morality and say well if you're saying that morality has come from from our revolution then if I've evolved not to care about non-human animals then there's no reason we're coming back to that the evolution I think we've we've moved on so much from that now and we most of what we do is only so we say loosely governed by our evolutionary past it's so much governed by our cultural heritage and that I think is what we need to change and this change it does it does change I like the phrase consciousness-raising which feminists have made popular and I think it it's it's a gradual process I think that in the going back to the point about labeling children I think that's a matter of consciousness raising yes and when when you point out that you wouldn't dream of talking about an existentialist child or a logical positivist child people get the point you raise their consciousness and in the case of slaughterhouses we need to raise consciousness mmm and and it's happening I mean there's a you know that clearly there are political movements see all the same mechanisms that I identified and talked about things like you know dinner party conversations in journalism and yes judges decisions and parliamentary decisions and things all this is moving in the same direction yeah and you throw the right directory throw moral philosophy it's just one of those that's one of those mechanisms yes implying that moral philosophy as you see it isn't trying to kind of get to what's true deontological II it's just a mode of progression I doubt if there is a fundamental truth you couldn't get to I think as you say it's a motor progression yes I suppose that was probably one of the one of the issues of philosophy in general trying to trying to get there you consistently talk in the trucks about morality about ethics being in the air what do you mean by that phrase well I said that it's clearly isn't literally in India I meant just what I've just been saying I meant the atmosphere of discourse in the society in which we live newspapers radio television conversations that's what changes as the not just centuries as the decades go by that that that is changing progressively by which I mean in a consistent direction it doesn't have to mean a good direction I think it is a good direction but just in a consistent yeah so that's the thing I'm interested in because we're talking about moving away from evolution you're talking about how things have changed culturally but what is it if it's not an expansion of the evolutionary logic what is it that's that's driven it in isolation right like that question I mean I mean it clearly seems to be like evolution in the sense that it's going consistently in one direction yeah and yet it's not just one it's not like natural selection which is one force which is one one agency pushing in one direction it's a whole lot of things it's a bit like Moore's Law for the expansion of computer power which seems to be very lawful and it's a straight line on a on a log scale and yet it's not due to any one force like natural selection it's due to a whole combination of different things so I think that the what I call the shifting moral zeitgeist the changing in the air it's not in the air but it's a it's a combination of lots of different things which are all conspiring to get not conspiring all adding together to push society in in the same direction Shawn so given that you admittedly don't really know why it's going in that particular direction in outgrowing God on the chapter on morality are you trying to offer an account of where morality does come from or how to justify moral claims without religion I think it's much easier to show that there is a progressive change than it is to to justify them either to justified or to explain it but isn't that the interesting question that the religious are interested in it's like well I don't I don't really care if you can explain how things have changed without reference to God I'm interested in in why they should have changed and that's what my religion gives me well it may be what their religion gives them but if it's based on a falsehood I'm not interested I see speaking of people talking about falsehood you have a lot say about theology as a discipline if it can even be called that the way that the way that you paint it here's a quote to give to give you a taste of the kind of thing I'm talking about you say this is utterly typical of the way theologians think ignore what is actually being said and pretend it was all intended to be a symbol or metaphor do you think there's any legitimate form of theology of course I mean I think if you actually go to a department of theology and talk to a professors of theology you'll find they're doing wonderful things I mean they're translating the Dead Sea Scrolls there they're looking at biblical history they're looking at a form of anthropology really that's fine or is not fine is having is logic chopping about the fundamental meaning of the transubstantiation or the Trinity or something of that sort that's the kind of theology that I think is not a subject the kind of theology that is a subject is historical scholarship literary scholarship that kind of thing do you think would you say the same thing about the kind of philosophy that deals with absolute truths if if a moment ago you said that perhaps there you don't think there is a basis to the truth in ethics if law says you try to do that like Sam Harris are essentially doing the same thing that they're trying to find that they're engaging in an area that you don't think even exists is that analogous to theology there's plenty of room to argue about what truth is in in in the real world it's in in science I think that in the case of of morals it's much harder to it to use the word truth mmm I would prefer not to use the word truth where morals are concerned do you think the kind of theology that you spoke of a second ago when it comes into investigating the nature of certain religious claims do you think that is useful well I think as I said as a form of anthropology I mean an anthropologist who studies what we could call the theology of a tribe of right of people in Africa or somewhere I mean that's actually anthropologically interesting talking about what what the people believe and how their how their cultural beliefs have developed and what they what it means to them that I think is and so if the if the theologians who study the beliefs of Roman Catholics are doing it as a through Paula gist I guess that's that's a perfectly legitimate well I mean the reason I ask is is outside of the anthropological investigations the kind that you were just dismissing is as useless if an atheist engages with that kind of thing and studies theology in that manner do you not think that in that it can be useful in the sense that understanding those controversies can help people to to debug find yes yes again and I mean the way that you talk about theology might put someone off trying to do that could be yes yes and yeah that that's that's a fair point I guess I'm sure you've come across the criticism when you're talking to a religious scholar and you're arguing about and you say you know why would God send himself to be tortured couldn't you think of a better way and they're they're thinking but there's so much literature on this like how can you say that when you when you have an engaged with the theological literature and then you say well you know theology is a bit useless it's like if you'd have engaged with theological literature then perhaps they would give you the time of day and say well at least you've you've done the reading and making it yeah based on well okay but I mean that you why would I bother to read Christian theology in any more than Australian Aboriginal theology or I suppose the same reason that you would talk about Christian theology more than you talk about the alternative because it's it's what you're doing is what you're engaging with I've got better things to do i I do i do i do science i see and and so you see you're you're a theist activism campaigning whatever you want to call it as an out stretch of your scientific education I'm much more interested in science and what's actually true yes yes but then you do find your said you find yourself kind of almost forced into the debates about the usefulness of religion and the sort I mean I just get it irritated when I when I heard people talking about you know did does that does that does the the son proceeded from the father or is he part of the father that I received from the father and the son whatever that means but it's like this even if the son is the same as the father yeah I understand that so I mean an atheist can be a theologian they are I mean there are there are some who Hara so as a student of theology myself which I didn't want to reveal until I'd um until I'd understood your views or heard them honestly I feel as an atheist I'm engaging with theology but I wouldn't call myself a theologian you're somebody who saying that you're you're atheist your interest in atheism is stemming from your interest in science when you talk about atheism you are essentially engaging with philosophy even if so in the way that I engage with the theology but don't call myself a theologian I'm interested you engage with the philosophy that's undoubtable but do you call yourself will consider yourself a philosopher well I don't want to disavow that in that title but I am NOT well-read in the history of philosophy and so I wouldn't wish to claim to be a philosopher in that sense dan Dennett who is well-read in velocity has written an afterword to one of my books the extended phenotype in which he devotes most of it to the question his Dawkins a philosopher and concludes the yes he is but but I mean I'm not well-read in Locke and Berkeley and what was what does he say that you are a philosopher well you have to read it yourself I mean it's an interesting read I'll I'll leave a link to that in the description as well but I think that's that's a good place to end leave that up in the air and see I suppose it's up to the to listener to decide I feel like if whether or not someone's a philosopher is usually a label at someone else puts on someone it's very rarely that someone can call themselves a philosopher these days without sounding a little bit presumptuous perhaps so maybe that's up to the philosophers who professors often lost professors of philosophy but I think it's a little harder to do and it isn't isn't your your profession yes um but I don't have a look at Dandan it's after work to the extended phenotype yes yes you know to those watching to those watching on YouTube I'll leave a link to that in the description listeners can easily find that too but yes I think I think this has been good like I say outgrowing God is essentially just the conversations that we've been having the things that we've been talking about here put in a form that hopefully can be read by by all ages as Professor Dawkins says I think it'd be nice to end I picked up on something you said on page 131 if listeners are interested in and it was when you were talking about moral progress and you said we learn from each other we hear stories about people we admire and vow to imitate them we read novels or opinion pieces in newspapers listen to podcasts or speeches on YouTube and change our minds and I think that a book like our growing God is just a further can contribution to the process of changing minds and moral and scientific education and and evolution so I hope that people who've listened to this podcast feel the same way and if you do then a link to the book is in the description and I hope that you will purchase it and it's available to purchase right now but with that said I have been as always Alex O'Connor with the cosmic skeptic podcast and today I've been in conversation with Professor Richard Dawkins thank you very much [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: CosmicSkeptic

Views: 378,130

Rating: 4.8569131 out of 5

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism, Richard Dawkins, Outgrowing God, religion, The God Delusion, podcast, 10, interview, conversation, Christopher Hitchens, Four Horsemen, Ethics, Selfish Gene, Peter Singer, Morality, Evolution, Biology

Id: tsLEf1Uwb5o

Length: 44min 38sec (2678 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/UndercoverKrompir]

He actually got Richard Dawkins on his podcast! Having followed Alex for years, I'm so proud of him and so glad he's gaining more and more success.

[u/ChocomelC]

They're so English

[u/window-sil]

Nice. I don't listen to CS very often but I always enjoy it when I do.

<3 Richard Dawkins <3

[u/Tsegen]

Familiar topics, familiar guest. Harris directly comes up around 20 minutes in. They get into the moral landscape and the issue of normative claims and whether they hold for anomalous psychologies which came up during the Very Bad Wizards episode with Sam.

[u/[deleted]]

Maybe I'm just getting old, but the entire god debate is boring now. I dont even waste my time arguing with people who are extremely religious nor do I watch people who talk in depth about the subject from either side. Theres so much more cool shit to explore besides atheism v religion.

[u/michaelnoir]

On the discussion surrounding suffering. It's not that some religions hold suffering to be "good" in itself, but merely that they recognise, as Buddhism does, that it is inevitable, and therefore needs to be dealt with. Some people do in fact say that suffering is good, in such phrases as "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", which implies a role for suffering which is a net positive, given that when a thing is inevitable, it can be endured better when one sees it as in some sense positive, if only as a learning experience, or a toughener.

[u/LilyDust142617]

That’s awesome! Alex is amazing!!!