Rise of the New Atheists?

one is an evolutionary biologist the other a theoretical physicist together Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss covering the earth and the cosmos are the subjects of a documentary the unbelievers which debuted at the hotdogs Film Festival in Toronto last night and now we welcome them both into our studio fresh from their film debut good to have you both back here at TV oh it's great to be back well let's just start by finding out how much you two actually knew about each other before you embarked on this project together Richard Dawkins how much did you know about Lawrence Krauss before I first met Lawrence at a conference where I just give him a talk and he stood up and attack me vigorously how'd you like that no but it led to conversations straight afterwards where we are things out a bit and then we wrote a joint piece in the Scientific American I think it was a kind of on paper debaters of continuation of the I mean the debate was sort of about whether we should have a kind of full-on attack on religion or whether we should as Lawrence preferred seduced them and you prefer the Oliver tale and I prefer seduction yeah I sort of feel it works for different people and that's I mean the good cop bad cop joke kind of works a bit and I think that the there both of them work for different of a different target audience certainly was that your first encounter with him that was my first encounter yeah and and at length actually I think we'd met briefly once some no well that actually that was the first encounter but I remember we then we actually spent an evening having a really substance of discussion which I found enlightening and that's when I thought you know this would be an interesting dialogue to actually try and put down but did you ask him as he has characterized it a rather chippy question I thought it was a delightfully charming question but I was exactly it was it was it you know it was the question and I did I must admit and I think my views have evolved as I like to think Richards has a little bit as we've as we've talked over the use but I did at the time I thought it was a strategic question I basically said you know if you're trying to convince people do you think sort of going to where they are rather than pointing out that what they believe is nonsense is a better way to sort of bring them around and it was really strategic and and Richards that answer I think was the same I imagine Sami do now which is at some point you you know you've got to confront silly beliefs by telling them they're silly and I and I respect that and I think it's sorry you don't have to say the person is silly you can say I'm rather fond of a quote from Johann Hari British journalist who said I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs but you to basically end up in the same place so I it the difference is well you both don't believe in God yeah we both don't believe in the Tooth Fairy and there's a lot of other things we we but but what we I think with more important the same place that we're in is we both think that people should that everything should be open to question and that the universe is a remarkable place and those are the things that are more I'm convinced are more important to us than then then not believing in God that's not important at all okay but I guess I guess what I'm getting at here is this first of all saw the movie really enjoyed it it's a really good documentary and you two are terrific in it and you have a great camaraderie and rapport and that all works very well which I found unusual because usually when these kinds of one-on-one documentaries work it's because they disagree violently about everything and the clash is what makes it interesting but as I say you to both end up in the same place so why do you think this works because you guys agree essentially on the main theme here I don't think it's necessary to have a clash in order for it to be illuminating television we know just a little anecdote about that I once had an onstage debate with Steven Pinker they distinguished psychologists and linguist Canadian Canadian indeed and that was before a very large audience in London and it went very well and then the BBC got here a bit and they said would you like to come into the studio and have a brief aversion of this discussion so we said yes and then the producer rang me up and said tell me what's the nature of your disagreement with dr. Pinker and I said well I'm not sure we have much disagreement I think we pretty much agree no disagreement cancelled it sheets off of yours yeah sure let's go media think yeah yeah no I'm but I think the point is first of all we are it's what we agree about many things and on the movie shows there some slight disagreements we have about we have very different approaches we're very different types of people and I think it's I think that that's really important to point out to that that first of all I think that people have this stereotype of scientists as all being exactly the same and I think it's really important that they realize it that it takes all types of Nai at the risk of incurring your wrath here you are the funny and charming one and you are not I'm serious and charming don't be the charming you're serious and sometimes very angry and upset with me I do not know I'm not you you've been duping you believed all the nonsense that's people I watch the documentary that's all what last night I mean the the documentary yeah the unbelievers I've seen it you know is it but as thing as Richard is a very is a very pleasant relax calm fellow but he Betty presume is an equation yeah well I think you know the question it's it's it is you know you're a charming TV host and and it's a it's a it's a property of of the way one one responds I think to the to the medium and I think and that Richards seriousness is probably a Richard can jump in but as a proper as a cultural thing I think of I think given where he lives at Oxford and and and and the kind of discussions that he has culturally it's very different I think for what North America and I think it's fair to say that I have that advantage at least here on this part of the I'm not sure I mean it's not for me to say but but I've got a feeling that sometimes especially in where religion is concerned if you speak clearly it sounds threatening and because I think people are used to a sort of woolly vague indistinct way of talking and so if you if you say something clearly and distinctly and truthfully there are people who will take that as as threatening add to that the effect that everybody is so used to the idea that religion gets a free ride that even a very mild criticism of religion mckisack is actually heard as though it was strong and it's not even it's not I'm going to jump in it's not even whether you want to or not it's it's not even a mild criticism as I've encountered because I've seen now myself called strident and all the words I've I've seen applied to Richard and it's not even a criticism if you just question it that's even amazing if you just ask a question but could it be that this didn't happen again it's thinking isn't it sounds right ok after you you're not questioning whether or not the blue jays are going to win the World Series this year you're questioning the very foundational beliefs of millions of people over thousands of years it's still only a question still many when you know what and I think it's very telling that people react defensively because for example if I questioned you about your taxes you'd act defensively if you would light on them or if you were worried about the truth of them I think people react so defensively about religion for the same reason that they have to go to church every Sunday that be reminded it has to be reinforced because it's so damn silly that that that so let's come at this as the lawyer say without prejudice ok people go to this movie they see this movie what is it that you would like them to take from the movie after having seen it Richard ah I'd like them to be stimulated to think to think critically to go and think about it afterwards to talk about it afterwards to have their beliefs shaken a bit shaken enough that they'll discuss them with each other discuss it with themselves and maybe come to a different conclusion are you concerned that only atheists are going to see this and therefore if I can use this awful metaphor you're preaching to the converted no apps absolutely I mean when we I was involved in in many ways in the preparation of the movie and and I think we designed it hopefully to encourage people in particular to encourage people who may not know who Richard and I are in fact I agree with Richard that the point of this is to stimulate discussion and I like to think that we don't preach in the sense that we're not trying to tell people what to think we're just trying to encourage people to a question and everything should be subject question including religion it's no different than sex or politics or anything else it should be open to question but the second thing is there's a lot of discussion of the beauty and wonder I mean Richard describes it beautifully in the movie in my opinion the beauty and wonder of the universe and what we really want to do I think a hope is encourage people to excited about that and think that that's interesting but part of the the reason that for example there are a lot of movie stars and celebrities at the beginning in the movie and one of the reasons that those people are there is is to is stick well to get people interested partly who why would Cameron Diaz be in a movie about science for example and the and the really exciting thing is she's fascinated by science and I think it's important for people to see that it's not just scientists we're fascinated by these ideas and who are willing to say that they're willing to base their view of reality on the evidence of reality sure and so you get people that you don't expect cultural icons and I'm hoping that that will encourage people to say you know you don't have to be a scientist to get excited by this let me ask in a bit of a different way whether you to end up in the same place for different reasons you are your specialties of the earth if you like your specialty is of the cosmos so did you get to the finish line in a different way than him I think we're sort of complementary in that that sense and I was going to say that earlier that he's a physicist I'm a biologist and so we're both interested in origins we're both interested in in why things are the way they are and historically I suppose biology has been the most fertile ground for those who wish to make a supernatural account because biology in living things are so fantastically complicated and beautiful and elegant and they carry such an enormous weight of apparent design they really look as though they're they're designed so historically biology has been the most fertile ground for theological arguments now that that's also of now Darwin and his successor solved that I think the the spotlight in a way has shifted to physics and to cosmology where we're less out we're less confident I think about say how the how the universe began and in one way more confident because there's a lot of detailed mathematical modeling going on but there are some profound questions remaining to be answered in that field and that's where cosmologists like Lawrence come in so I do think we are complementary it's not filled it I think it's really kind of a very important complementarity to because it was very non-intuitive I mean that what Darwin was such an amazing scientist because he took something that looked like special creation like everything was designed for its environment and realized how this very simple idea could explain everything but it was very and after the fact you said yourself of course okay and and it's what what's wonderful about science what seems weird you come to realize is in some sense obvious after the fact and and there are now very non-intuitive things about the universe for example how can get all the material in the universe if it wasn't there or if someone didn't create it that's very non-intuitive and and modern science as I've tried to write and we and and talked about in the film and other other places is addressing that same question and and and it is in some sense the last bastion of God because the I mean there are fundamentalists of course who said the earth is 6,000 years old who don't believe in evolution but but the rational quote-unquote theologians have moved away from that debate but let me pick up on a word you just use there which is design and there's a part in the film where you talk about this expression intelligent design which many people who believe in God use to explain how we are where we are today and and if I understood you properly you said you want to reclaim that expression away from those people yeah well what do you mean by well I was I was that was a bit of a sort of joke really I mean because intelligent design is so much associated with creationists I wanted to reclaim intelligent design for other for other things like morality I was wanting to say let's intelligently design our society let's intelligently design our ethics our morality so that we live in the kind of society that we want to live in rather than the kind of society that was laid down in a book written 800 BC how about the issue of atheism itself is it in your view a belief system in the way that Christianity Judaism etc etc you know and that's a big mistake that people have I mean I was just doing a debate in with this anomic and in the Islamic group in London where I tried to emphasize that it's not a belief system and that's really important it's its willingness to it it to ask questions and allow your your expectations to to conform to the evidence of reality it's just it's it's it's it's something that that we don't use to define it the really big difference and we were just talking about this for the program we don't define ourselves by what we don't believe in people some people define himself in the movie he said you know yeah and so we don't define ourselves as a thoris as richard says the movie or or a leprechaun s or whatever and and and so i think it's a really and i think it's a really healthy thing defining yourself by a set of axioms written down by Iron Age peasants who didn't know the earth orbited the Sun is is demeaning I think and and on the other end but willing to to constantly change your view of yourself as you learn about the universe is called growing up and learning well let's go through some of the ideas that you present in the film for example I think you were asked at one point was there a first person an atom if you like so yeah well that's a very interesting question it's what I deal with in my most recent book the magic of reality there never was a first person because everybody was born to somebody of the same species as themselves and yet if you go back a sufficient number of generations you come to an ancestor that was pretty much like a monkey and another bit go back further to about 200 million generations and you come to an ancestor that was a fish and yet every one of those intermediate steps on the way belonged to the same species as its parents and its children sounds like a paradox not a paradox no more a paradox than the fact that a child becomes a teenager a teenager becomes an adult a middle-aged man becomes an old man you never actually as I said in that book you don't go to bed as a middle-aged man and wake up and say I seem to be old today and yet if you wait a sufficient number of years you have become old and it's just the same there never was a first person there never was a moment when a Homo erectus mother gazed lovingly on the first Homo sapiens child didn't happen like that you agree with that well of course I agree with it because I mean the thing I think about science is you know a lot of journalists try and suggest that there are two sides to every story and I like to say in science one side is just wrong usually and Richards describing the way life evolves and it's not a matter of my liking it or agreeing with it it's the evidence of reality and so I have no choice but to agree with it you are I presume that both of your lives given your added notoriety now are quite different from what they might have been say 20 years ago before you both became as connected to this issue and as and as nope you guys are on the TV circuit you've got a movie out now etc etc do you ever think about how your life has changed as a result of you are Richard Dawkins Inc now if you like you know what I mean yes I'm less interested in that kind of question and in the scientific questions we've been talking about it you're a cultural phenomenon now it is an interesting thing well you can say that if you like I just did I yeah yeah it doesn't yeah you are no I don't I don't want to comment on that no but yeah you know I think I do reflect on a more than Richard in the sense that I realized first of all I have a lot more opportunities to be able to to interact and they be able have an impact it at the same time I'm Anna I try I'm still and I try to be an active research science and so I'm quite aware of the time issue and and and the demands that it takes away Anna and I like to think that that the things these things I'm doing like we are now are useful and at Anna and and I think I'm very privileged really actually I'm very lucky to be able to communicate to people and to be able to say things that people either choose to listen to or hate seems to me to be a well let me follow up on that have you ever sat down with let's for lack of a better expression a person of faith and made the case and actually convince them of the error of their ways I'm not sure sat down with one I think that mean I've sat down with many people of faith Archbishop's and bishops and people like that I've never convinced them to change their mind what I think I may have done is convince other people who may be listening in on the radio or something like that I think there's probably a large constituency of people who pretty much don't think about it very much but I've sort of always vaguely thought of themselves as Christian or Jewish and then when they hear me arguing the say the Archbishop of Canterbury some of them may actually fall off the fence my side I don't presume to think that you're going to you know convince the Pope that he's wrong but I mean it would be the equivalent of winning the World Cup in your world wouldn't it if you were able to sit down with somebody who was religious and make the case of logic and then have them change their mind I would not aspire really to try to change the mind of the perpetration of Canterbury but as I was saying before there are there could be thousands of people listening in they might they might because they're not so committed in the first place probably haven't thought about it so much I jump in your defence I mean it more explicitly you know it since people know that I rich and I are friends and work together so the take The God Delusion is in some sense sitting down with someone and making the case and I have people who have written to me and say after The God Delusion it change you know my life changed and as you know I like sometimes hopefully they say the same with my books but so I I think you must get lots of email that say that hugely I mean as I was coming into the studio the young woman said that her brother had asked her to tell me that he I'd changed his life I presume he meant from reading The God Delusion and whole in a good way yes yeah in the right way and um and when I do book signings which I tend to sort of specially go to the Bible background there um thousands of people coming through and almost every one of them says words to that batter that are you very very guru are a proselytizer in some respects huh well it proselytizer in the interest of getting people to think ya revoir couture I'd like at least I think of myself as more of a pro Proctor and I actually have had the experience and and you know what is we there's a scene in the movie where you talk about getting people to confront their own misconceptions the only time I can recall people suddenly saying AHA is actually when I went to either a fundamentalist college or the one or two times I was going to say god forbid that I went on fox news in the United States where I actually managed to get in before being yelled at the statement you don't have to be an atheist to believe in evolution because I don't you know there's there's evidence obviously you don't have to be because I know some evolutionary biologists who for whatever reason religious but I've had kids come up to me I remember when I went to a fundamentalist college and I taught said that and the kid said is that true I've been told in church every week since I've been a little kid that you have to be an atheist to believe in evolution and that's why evolution is wrong yeah and I'm not allowed to accept the evidence of reality because I'm told it's gonna it's going to you know make me go to hell you know I rather like that I mean I rather approve of people being told that because it'd be very easy for us to prove that evolutionist is true I had a nice experience of an American student who came to Oxford for for some time and he attended my heap he came from a fundamentalist college and and he was a young earth creationist and he attended my lectures on evolution and then at the end of the last leg he came down to the front and he kind of thumped the table and he had G this evolution it really makes sense the point was he'd never actually been exposed to it before it wasn't that he'd been exposed to it and rejected it he just didn't know about okay how would you characterize the following person he's or she is utterly uninterested in the question of whether God exists but he or she considers himself or herself deeply spiritual how do you characterize that kind of a person well I consider myself deeply spiritual in in one sense in the same the same sense that perhaps Carl Sagan would have done where I feel deeply moved in a poetic way by the site of the Milky Way by a contemplation of the size of the universe by contemplation of the immense span of geological time by looking down a microscope at a single cell and seeing the intricate structure of a single cell and then reflecting that that cell is multiplied up trillions of times in my own body that's not the spirituality I'm thinking of when it's the spirituality I - earthy and it's so and it's a better spirituality I've said this again publicly - I think sorry that one of the big misunderstandings and abuses of the discussion of science is that science takes away the spirituality which is really ah and Wonder in a sense of something bigger than oneself but the stuff that bigger oneself doesn't have to be unreal it can be real and be part of an amazing cosmos as I like to say being completely insignificant is uplifting and can be a spiritual experience and and every time I like Richard every time I look at a Hubble Space Telescope picture it's spiritually uplifting the spirituality of science is better than the spirituality of religion because it's real but I will say that I think that the person you're describing and there's many of them are it's a new breed of people because more and more people are becoming disillusioned by organized religion because of information of realizing how silly it is ultimately but they don't want to lose what they're getting from organized religion so they transfer to this concept of spirituality a oneness with the universe aura and I think that they people like that we're hardwired I think to want that and there are many things that religion provides that we are hard-wired for but so but the key thing for me is sure we recognize that religion provides things consolation community but the key thing is it doesn't have to be religion that provides us did I hear you just say we are hardwired to find spiritual meaning in life I think we're hearts certainly yeah I think we are it there's evolutionary advantages I think so then the quest for God or a belief in God is not illogical at all I mean you just said to me that's not the kind of spirituality I'm interested in what kind of spirituality are you interested well I was thinking not so much the spirit and I appreciate your position I understand the spirituali you just described where your your part in the cosmos you know I was a book about it code on leaving the rainbow I understand I understand but I guess I was thinking about people don't feel a need people may not feel a need to go into a house of worship and yet they somehow still have a connection to the morality that comes out of religion or it is another matter okay you just jumped in you said it wasn't irrational the point is bit just because we're hardwired to want to do something doesn't make it rational we're hardwired to do a lot of things that aren't rational we've had we were hardwired to be xenophobic in some ways you know it's not clear love is rational and and and so there's a lot of aspects of being human that don't relate to being rational and and understanding that is important if we want to if we want to deal with the real world and try and make the world a better place so science can be spiritual you're playing with words I mean I'm using I mean it depends what do you mean if you mean something supernatural no if you mean what blood is called oh and wonder what Carl Sagan would have called or in what wonder yes suddenly and we should have celebrate that yes that's the point I mean people think science takes away I mean we're not the first ones I say this because as as Richard Carl Sagan said it you know Richard Fineman who obviously I'm a huge fan of the famous physicist talked about the fact that understanding how a rainbow works doesn't make it less beautiful it makes it more beautiful but somehow people get the sense that science is cold hard facts and therefore boring and also dehumanizing and I think my goal and I believe Richard's goal is just stick is to disabuse people of that misconception science is wonderful it's fun it's exciting and it's as enjoyable to and pleasing to understand us as listening to a sonnet or or or or listening beautiful people it's these vases will limit okay let's follow up on that describe for me the most recent moment you had in your scientific life where you had boy I almost said it what a religious person would call a come-to-jesus moment where you had a kind of a basically yeah poetic spiritual call it what you will moment that really gave you that yeah chill up your something to to experience is neither of them to do with biology both to do with physics I visited the CERN Atomic Energy establishment in Large Hadron Collider the Large Hadron Collider and went down underground and saw this gigantic piece of cooperative human endeavor designed to understand the very fabric of the universe I was literally moved to tears by that experience also moved to tears on a recent visit to a large telescope on the Island of Hawaii and again see this great staring instrument staring up at the sky and reaching out this is the human species at its finest reaching out to the distant outposts of the universe and gathering information and bringing it back and analyzing it and understanding it again I was moved to tears by that that experience genuinely to tears a lump in the throat what do you think how come because I'm spiritual in Europe in the sense that I mean because I have a poetic sensibility which is aroused by science and by the poetry of reality which is what science is and you know I think that the point at Richards experiences and he just put it beautifully is that you know people think there's a dichotomy a separation between science and the other aspects of our culture we celebrate science in my opinion too much because of technology of course science is responsible the technology that's made this program possible and made our lives but generally better we live longer because the science all of that are those are byproducts of science but the ideas of science in my mind are what are what are so amazing and they are just as remarkable as the best symphonies and Shakespeare plays they and they do the same thing they force us to reassess our place in the cosmos they force us to reassess our views of ourselves is really what you get when you see a wonderful bit of drama you get a new perspective of yourself ok and ya go I'm going to do the ok but he's a much more if and I'm not saying this to be complimentary or or it's the opposite critical of any one of you insaneness you're a more apparently serious guy than you you've got a lot more Mel Brooks in Woody Allen oh yeah going through your veins if you know what I mean yeah yeah much so but when I was earlier my teachers thought I would be good student because I liked to joke a lot yeah so are you capable of experiencing that same kind of moment he just described to the point where you are moved almost to tears by something you see I don't know if I get I probably get moved to laughter more than tears man it's what I'm buddy got but I think I have a just as strong an emotional response but I am I mean it these things happen to me all the time I wouldn't you in some ways you know you couldn't continue to be a scientist as I am without that kind of reinforcement because it as we say in the movie it's hard work and a lot of times you're leading nowhere you're working for a long time on something and getting nowhere and but the reinforcement you get when I look at it to take the example I gave you out the Hubble Space Telescope picture of of distant galaxies and think that they're ten but some of them are 10 billion light years away that meant the light was emitted five billion years before our Sun formed and what since most stars last five to ten billion years that means most of the stars in the picture aren't don't even exist anymore and if there were civilizations around those stars they're long gone and when they get a picture of us if their civilizations just emerging now by the time they see the Milky Way galaxy we'll all be all long gone and them and and those kind of things do amaze me actually and I wrote a book called Adam which is the biography given to an individual atom and to me one of the most poetic things here otome as I like to say the beginning there were no atoms or Eve's but the the fact that every atom in our bodies was once inside a star that exploded and maybe different stars the atoms in your left hand and the ones in your right hand to me is incredible poetry it means your Stardust it means we are intimately connected to the cosmos they've all experienced the most violent explosion in nature every single atom in your body and they couldn't be in your body if the stars didn't explode in the first place because all the elements that are make you up we're made in those sorts God that does move me and I don't know maybe it doesn't move me to tears maybe it moves me to excitement of a different sort we've got a couple of minutes left here and let me finish on this I appreciate that you told us off the top what you hope people would get out of the documentary if they see it the the need to ask questions the need to to look deeper at all of these issues we've been talking about is it your hope or expectation that you can in your words I guess rid this world of religion I'm not sure how soon I mean I think religion is declining Christianity is declining throughout Christendom and I think that's going to continue if you look at the broad sweep of history it's clearly the trend is going in the right direction I'm not so optimistic that'll happen in my lifetime but but it will will happen last minute to you what do you know III would agree in that sense I think when you you're about my age and when we're when I was young William well I mean I don't know whether I want to say on TV so I'm as old as you I'm going to suggest that in the case for both old let me put it that way oh come the UH when I was young in the 60s which will date me I would have thought by now I would I was a man I would have thought by now religion be gone I mean in the 60s it just seemed like was on the way out so I was kind of surprised and disappointed by there in some ways the resurgence of fundamentalism my country but I do think it's obvious that access to information and knowledge is decreasing and it's in every country that you can look at every one of the the developed countries the number of people who define themselves as religious including the United States which is a very religious country is decreasing so I think the trend is indeed clear and inevitably knowledge and and wonder of the real universe will supplant and the access to information is probably the biggest single factor not just Richard and I but the biggest single factor but it can be helped and I think very importantly and this is something I've come to appreciate more with my knowledge of my interaction with Richard it can be helped by pointing out that it's okay to ask questions about religion like anything else here's another immutable truth in our universe interviews end times up Lawrence Krauss Richard Dawkins the unbelievers whether you like them or don't or like religion or don't it's a really good documentary and people should go see it thanks to both of you for coming in to TV Oh tonight thank you thank you support Ontario's public television donate at TV org

Channel: The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Views: 401,966

Rating: 4.8079252 out of 5

Keywords: TVO, TVOntario, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, current affairs, analysis, debate, politics, policy, religion, spirituality, atheism, church

Id: fEClFXjx_fQ

Length: 32min 50sec (1970 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/shabba7]

still no information update about distribution (how the masses can see it) in case people were wondering

http://unbelieversmovie.com/distribution.htm

[u/cbciv]

What a great interview. Oh how I wish something of this quality on this topic could air on US television.

[u/genesai]

When I watched this I started to think about the issue of "spirituality" where I've previously had trouble defining and separating the concept into the part I believe in and the super natural meanings that I find unnecessary. What I finally realised is that maybe spiritual could mean something like emotional but implying a super natural cause? That when we talk about and imagine what it is like being spiritual we're talking about feeling emotional, perhaps because of beauty or awe? Am I making any sense?

[u/AtheistVids]

OP, could you also post this video to /r/AtheistVids?