The Four Horsemen HD: Hour 1 of 2 - Discussions with Richard Dawkins, Ep 1

one of the things we've all met is the accusation that we are strident or arrogant or vitriolic or shrill what do we think about that yeah well I have amused by it because I went out of my way in my book to address reasonable religious people and I test flew the draft with with groups of students who were deeply religious and indeed the first draft incurred some real anguish and so I made adjustments and made adjustments and it didn't do any good in the end because I still got hammered for for being for being rude and aggressive and I came to realize that it's a no-win situation it's it's a it's a mug's game the religions have have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being without being really oh you know that they they sort of play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity and you you're faced with the choice of well am I going to be rude or am I going to articulate this criticism I mean am I going to articulate it or am I am I just going to button my lip and write well that's what it is to trespass a taboo I think we're all ignoring the fact that that religion is is held off the table of rational criticism in some kind of formal way even by we're discovering our fellow secularists our fellow atheists you know just leave people to their own superstition even if it's abject and causing harm I don't look too closely at it now that that was of course the the point of the title of my book is there is this spell and we got to break it but if the charge of them offensiveness in general is to be allowed in public discourse then without self-pity I think we should say that we too can be offended and insulted I mean I I'm not just in disagreement when someone like Tariq Ramadan accepted now that the high tables of Oxford University is a spokesman says the most he'll demand when it comes to the stoning of women is a moratorium on it I find that profoundly much more than annoying right in soldier in soldier not any sergeant but actually threatening but you're not a phenol this is a you don't take any I don't see you taking things personally you're alarmed by the the liabilities of certain ways of thinking as in John's case but he would say oh people like him would say that if I doubt the historicity of the Prophet Mohammed I've injured them in their deepest feelings right well I'm I am in fact I think all people ought to be offended at least in their deepest integrity by say the religious proposition that without a supernatural celestial dictatorship we wouldn't know right from wrong that we only you know we only live by it are you really doesn't just seem right now I say only time that if if the offensiveness charge is to be allowed in general and arbitrated by the media then I think we're entitled to claim that much without being self-pitying or representing ourselves as the press minority which i think is another an opposite danger with it I don't advise right also that from that I agree with Daniel that there's no way in which the charge against us can be completely avoided because what we say does defend the core the very core very serious religious persons very right we we deny the divinity of Jesus for example but maybe it will be terrifically shocked and possibly hurt it's just too bad I'm fascinated by the contrast between the amount of offense that's taken by religion and the amount of offense that people take against nearly anything else like artistic taste your taste in music your taste in art your politics you would be not exactly as rude as you like we're going to be far far more rude about such things and I'd like to try to quantify that directly research of actually you test people with with statements about their favorite football team or their very favorite piece of music or something and see how far you can go before they take offense compared to is there anything else apart from say how ugly your face is yeah give sash or your husband's will wife so go yeah yeah yes well as that interesting you say that I regularly debate with the terrible man called John Doe two of the Catholic Defense League and he actually is righteously upset by certain trends in modern art which tent draught entered himself by blasphemy for example psoriasis goes first or he elephant died on the virgin and so and indeed I think I think it's quite important that we share with Sophocles and other pre monotheists a revulsion to desecration or profanity that we we don't want to see churches desecrated religious icons trashcan so for the week we share an admiration for at least some of the aesthetic achievements of religion right I think this this whole notion of per I think our criticism is is actually more barbed than that in the sense that we're not we are offending people but we're also telling them that they're wrong to be offended I mean this is big yeah physicists don't know aren't offended when they're when their view of physics is disproved or challenged I mean this is not the way rational minds operate when they're really trying to get at what's true in the world and religions purport to be representing reality and yet there's this peevish and and tribal and ultimately dangerous reflexive response to having these ideas challenged I think we're pointing to the the total liability of that well and - there's no polite way to say to somebody you've wasted your life do you realize you wasted your life do you realize that you've just devoted all your your efforts and all your goods to the glorification of something which is just a myth or have you ever considered them even if you say have you even considered the possibility that maybe you've wasted your life on this there's no there's no inoffensive way of saying it but we do have to say it because they should jolly well consider it same as we do about our own lives oh absolutely yes and Barker's making a collection of clergymen who've lost their faith but don't dare say so because it's their only living it's the only thing they know what to do I've heard from one of them at least have you yes I used to have this when I was younger than all that's with the members of the Communist Party they sort of knew that it was all up with the Soviet Union many of them had suffered a lot and sacrificed a great deal and struggled manfully to keep what they thought was the great idea alive their mainspring had broken but they couldn't they couldn't give it up because it would involve a similar concession right but not certainly if everyone said to me how could you say that to know by the Soviet Union didn't you know you're going to really make them crying out their feelings I said to be ridiculous don't be absurd but it's it's I find it medicates is almost an exactly analogous argument when when people tell me I'm being rude and and vicious and terribly aggressive in a way that I try to if I were saying these things about the pharmaceutical industry or the oil interests would it be rude would it be off-limits no of course it wouldn't well I want religion to be treated just the way we treat the pharmaceuticals oh and the oil industry I'm not against pharmaceutical companies I'm against some of the things they do but I just want to put religions on the same page with the including denying them tax exemption yeah yes and all in the English case state subsidy I'm curious how religion acquired this charm status that it has compared to any of these other things and somehow we've all bought into it whether we're religious or not and that's some historical processes led to this immunization of religion against well this is hot this this hyper of offense taking that religion is allowed to take and what's particularly amusing to me finally at first it infuriated me but now I'm amused is they've managed to enlist legions of non-religious people who take offense on their behalf and how in fact yes the most vicious reviews of my book have been by people who thought themselves religious but they're terribly afraid of hurting the feelings of the people that are religious and they they chastise me worse than anybody that might just happen last night I think so one of you pointed out how condescending that view is yes it's as though it is it's like the idea of penitentiaries I mean there other people need them you know they must yes these people safely in their myths yes why I think there's one answer to that question which which may illuminate a difference that the really the difference that I have with with I think maybe all three of you I there's something about and I still use words like spiritual and mystical without furrowing my brow too much and I am into the consternation of many atheists I think there is a range of experience that is rare and that is only talked about without obvious qualms in religious discourse and and because it's only talked about in religious discourse it is it is just riddled with superstition and and it's used to cash out various metaphysical schemes which it can't reasonably do but clearly people have extraordinary experiences whether they have them on LSD or they have them because they were alone in a cave for a year or they have them because they just happen to have the neurology that is that is particularly labile that allows for it but people have self-transcending experiences and people have the best day of their life where everything seemed you know they seemed that one with nature and for and for that it because religion is seems to be the only game in town in talking about those experiences and dignifying them everyone that's one reason why I think it seems to be taboo to criticize it because you're talking about the most important moments in people's lives and trashing them at least from their view well I don't have to agree with you some in order to say that you're it's a very good thing you're saying that sort of thing because it shows that as you say religion is not the only game in town when it comes to being spiritual it's like it's a good idea to have somebody from from the political right who isn't who is an atheist because otherwise there's a confusion of values which which doesn't help us and it's much better to to have this diversity in in other areas and I think I sort of do agree with you but even if I didn't I think it was valuable to have that right if one could make one change and only one mine would be to distinguish the numinous from the supernatural yes right you had a marvelous quotation from Francis Collins the genome pioneer who said you while mountaineering one day he was overcome by the landscape and then went down on his knees and accepted Jesus Christ our complete non sequitur yes never even been suggested that Jesus Christ created that landscape right a frozen waterfall in 3 3 3 down which I mean five of the Trinity well yeah absolutely we're all try UHN in one way or another we're programmed for that that's very clear the wouldn't it wouldn't ever have been a four-headed god right you know that from experience but that would be an enormous distinction to make and I think it would clear up a lot of people's confusion that this that what we have in our emotions are the surplus value of our personalities the bits that aren't particularly useful for our evolution or that we can't prove are but that do belong to us all the same don't don't belong to the supernatural and are not to be conscripted or next by any priesthood yes it's it's it's a sad fact that people in a sense won't trust their own valuing of their numinous experiences they think it isn't really as good as it seems unless it's unless it's from God unless it's in some kind of a proof of validity no it's it's just as wonderful as it seems it's just as important it is the best moment in your life and it's the moment when you you forget yourself and become better than you ever thought you could be in some way and see in all humbleness the wonderfulness of that of nature that's that's it and that's wonderful but it doesn't add anything to say golly that has to have been given to me by somebody even more wonderful we really jacked hasn't it also it's also my friend it's I think it's a I think it's a deformity or shortcoming in in human personality frankly because the religion keeps stressing how humble it is and how meek it is and how accepting and almost to the point it's over that makes extraordinarily arrogant claims it says I suddenly realized that the universe was all about me yeah I felt terrific be humble about it come on you know we have we can love people out of that I believe right oh yes indeedy because I am so tired of the if only professor Dennett had the humility to blah blah blah humility humidity and this from people of breathtaking arrogance you know I think I showed what aside say because it just didn't mind me I'm on an errand for God yeah well this is how I this is that yes the point I think we should return to this notion of the arrogance of science okay there's no discourse which enforces humility more rigorously scientists in my experience are the first people to say they don't know I mean you get if you get a scientist to start talking off his area of specialization he immediately starts he or she immediately starts hedging his bet saying you know I'm not sure there's someone in the room who knows more about this than me and and of course so you know all the data is not a means it's this this is the the mode of discourse in which we are most candid about the the scope of our ignorance let see a lot of academics come up with that kind of false modesty but I do know yes it is many as the story says no I yield I was just so omit any academic should do that any special thing about religious people is that they recite the Nicene Creed every week which says precisely what they they believe there are three gods not one the Virgin Mary Jesus died went to the waters is down for three days and then came up again linger in precise detail and yet they have the gall to accuse us of being content overconfident and of under not knowing how and what it is to be out and I don't think many of them ever let themselves contemplate the question which I think scientists ask themselves all the time what if I'm wrong what if I'm wrong I mean it's just not part of their repertoire II that's it would you mind if I disagree with you about that I mean a lot of the talk that makes religious people hard to not hard to beat but hard to argue with is precisely that they'll say they're in permanent crisis of faith there is indeed a prayer lord I believe help thou my unbelief Graham Greene says the great thing about being a Catholic was that it was a challenge to his unbelief a lot of people live by keeping two sets of books in fact it's my minutes there is that my impression is my patient that the people I know who call themselves believers or people of faith do that all the time I wouldn't say with schizophrenia that would be that would be rude but they they're quite aware of the implausibility of what they say they they Joe Jack's on it when they go to the doctor or when they travel or anything real kind but in some sense they couldn't be without you but they're they're quite respectful of the idea of doubt in fact they make a they try and build it in when they can well that's interesting then and so when they are reciting the Creed with its with its total sort of apparent conviction is this look at this kind of mantra which is forcing themselves to overcome doubt by saying is I do believe I do believe I do believe because really I don't yeah and and of course like the others like the the secular counterparts they're glad other people believe it it's enough it's an affirmation they wouldn't want other people not to be making well also there's this is this curious bootstrapping move which I tried to point out in this in this recent on faith piece this this idea that you start with the premise that belief without evidence is especially noble and this is the doctrine of faith this is the parable of doubting Thomas and so you start with that and then you add this notion which has come to me through various debates that that D the fact that people can believe without evidence is itself a subtle form of evidence I mean we're kind of wired actually Francis Collins you mentioned he brings us up in his book we're the fact that we have this intuition of God is itself some subtle form of evidence and this is kind of kindling phenomenon where once you say it's good to start without evidence the fact that you can is a subtle form of evidence and then the demand for any more evidence is itself a kind of corruption of the intellect or a temptation or something to be guarded against and you get a kind of perpetual motion machine of self-deception where you can you can get this thing up and running but they like the idea that it can't be demonstrated then to be nothing to be faithful about right as everyone day if everyone had seen in the resurrection and we all knew that we've been saved by it so well then we would be living in an unalterable system of belief and it wouldn't have to be policed right well and it would actually be those of us who don't believe in it are very glad it's not true because we think it would be horrible those who do believe it don't want it to be absolutely proven so there can't be any doubt about it looks then there's no there's no rest some patients there are no dark nights of the soul it was a review of one of one of our books I can remember which it but it was exactly that point that just what a crass expectation on the part of a theist that that there should be total evidence for this I mean they would there be much less magic you know if everyone if everyone was compelled to believe by too much evidence actually this is Francis Collins I'm sorry this is where my a friend of mine that canon Fenton the folks actually said that if they if they if the church validated the Holy Shroud of Turin he personally would leave hahaha thanks because if they were doing things like that he didn't want any part of it right the - I didn't expect when I started off my book tour to be as lucky as I was I meant Jerry Falwell died and my first week on the road that was amazing yes that wasn't like I didn't expect Mother Teresa to come out as an atheist yeah that's a fact but reading the letters which I now have it's rather interesting she writes it I can't bring myself to believe any of this she tells all her confessors order superior I can't hear a voice I can't feel the presence even in the mass even the sacraments and there's more thing they write back to her saying that's good that's great you're suffering it gives you a share in there's a fiction it makes you part of Calvary you can't beat than argument like that right the less you believe it the more your illustration where it you prove it's true yes and then the struggle the dark night of the soul is the proof in itself so we just have to realize that these really are non-overlapping magisteria we can't we can't hope to argue with a mentality of this kind well we can do just what you're doing now and that is we can say look at this interesting bag of tricks to be vault notice that they are they're circular that they're self-sustaining that they don't have any that they could be about anything and and then you don't argue with them you simply point out that these are not these are not valid ways of of thinking about anything because you can write you could use the very same tricks to sustain something which was manifestly fraudulent and in fact what fascinates me is that a lot of the tricks are they have their counterparts with con artists they they use the very same forms of non argument the very same non sequiturs and they make for instance they make a virtue out of trust and and as soon as you start exhibiting any suspicions of the of the con man who's about he gets all hurt on you and and and the plays that hurt feelings card and reminds you how wonderful taking it on faith is and how yes i mean there aren't any they aren't any new tricks they're these tricks have evolved over and you want to look good at the production of bogus special effects as well just yeah yeah one of the things that completely convicts religion of being fraudulently right the belief in the miraculous the same people will say well einstein felt a spiritual force in the universe when he said the whole point about it is there are no miracles there are no changes in them natural order that's the miraculous thing they've been completely cynical about claiming him well the other thing where the same thing was the same breath is that these every religious person stand feels the same criticism of other people's faith that we do as atheist and if they reject the pseudo miracles and the pseudo claims the certainty of others and they see the confidence tricks in other people's faith they see it rather readily you know every Christian knows the Quran can't be the perfect word of the creator the universe and anyone who thinks it is hasn't read it closely enough and it's just in this hermetically sealed discourse that isn't really being self-critical and I think we were on very strong we have make a very strong case when we point that out and point out also that whatever people are experiencing in church or in prayer no matter how positive the fact that Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and Christians are all experiencing it proves that it can't be a matter of the divinity of Jesus or the unique sanctity of the Quran or a because because there's are several different ways of January yeah by the way on that a Chinese poet it's not a hypnotic aggression it's it's useful bearing that in mind to when you get as I did this morning on ABC News the question well wouldn't you say religion did some good in the world and they're good people you never don't get that by the way there's no reason why one shouldn't say well yes I have indeed heard it said that Hamas provides social services in Gaza and I've even heard it said that louis farrakhan's group gets young black men in prison off drugs i don't know if it's true I'm willing to accept it might be right it doesn't alter the fact that the one is a militarized terrorist organization with a fanatical anti-semitic ideology and the second is a racist crackpot cult yeah and the other I have no doubt the Scientology gets people off drugs - but my insistence always with these people is if you will claim it for what you must accept it for them all and abilities can make there's a huge areas flat-out dishonest you can invent a an ideology which by your mere invention in that moment is obviously untrue which would be quite useful if propagated to billions an a.1 enzyme you could say this is my new religion teach people to demand that your children study science and math and economics and all of our terrestrial disciplines to the best of their abilities and if they don't persist in those efforts they'll be tortured after death by 17 demons this would be extremely useful and we'd be far more useful than Islam propagated to billions and yet what are the chances that the 17 billion seventeen demons exist zero there's a slipperiness - isn't there about one way of speaking to sophisticated intellectuals and theologians and another way of speaking to congregations and above all children I think we've all of us been accused of going after the easy targets of the Jerry of Orwell's of this world and ignoring the sophisticated professors of theology and I mean I don't know what you feel about that but one of the things I feel is that the sophisticated professors of theology will say one thing to each other and two intellectuals generally but will say something totally different to the congregation they'll talk about miracles they'll talk about well they won't talk to a congregation well oh yeah three sacks well yes we're sophisticated theologians try to talk to the preachers the preachers won't have any well that's that's good I mean you got to realize it sophisticated theology is like stamp collecting it's a very specialized thing and only a few people do it and then they can you believe they take in their own laundry and and they get all excited about some very arcane details and their own religions pay almost no attention to what they're saying a little bit of it does of course filter in but it always gets beefed up again for general consumption because what they say in their writings at least from my experience is i glazing mind twisting very subtle things which have no particular bearing on life oh no I must insist I must I must say a good word here for professors to McGrath who is attack on on Richard said it's not true as we've always been told and most people most Christians believe that tattooin said cradle absurd am i queer absurdum i believe it because it's ridiculous no it turns out I've checked this now though but I don't know this in McGrath that in fact Italian said the impossibility of it is the thing that makes it the most believable that's a well worth well distinction ethic are very useful the training one very useful the training was minded the fine person it's the likelihood in other words that could have been made up right is diminished by the incredibility of it who would try and invent something there was a boy we're actually whose direction is that I think a debate perfectly well worth having what I save these people is this you're sending your your email or letter to the wrong address everyone says let's not judge religion works fundamentalists all right take the Church of England too of whose senior leaders recently said that the floods in North Yorkshire with a result of homosexual behavior not in North Yorkshire presumable probably in London I think but guy name is a little while of these fish of colour I was apparently bad for the next Archbishop of Canterbury now this is extraordinary this is supposed to be the mild and reflective and thoughtful and rather you know trouble church making fanatical pronouncements well I want to hear what our estimate graph is going to write to the Bishop of Carlisle not to me it's so good it's my lord bishop do you not realize what a complete idiot you've you're making of yourself in a white shirt did he do this if you did it in private I'm not I'm not impressed he sure has to say it in public the business man effect I will judge the church by spitting statements of its bishops I think I don't allowed to yeah but the other thing is that don't mind about the the academic theologians bishops and because who will attack us for taking scriptures or accusing people of taking scriptures literally in the course of course we don't believe the book of Genesis literally and yet they do preach about what Adam and Eve did and as though they were as though they did exist as though they're somehow it's a sort of license to talk about things which they know and anybody of any sophistication knows is fiction and yet they will treat their congregations their sheep as though they did exist as though they were factual and a huge number of those congregations actually think they did exist can you imagine any one of these preachers saying as such a topic has introduced um this is a sort of theoretical fiction it's not true but it but it's a very fine metaphor no then they kind of light of the fact imply that that's what they they expect you to know yes but that what they would never announcement well there's another point there is that they never admit how they have come to to stop taking it literally because they you have all these people criticizing us for our crass literalism whereas whereas fundamentalist as the fundamentalist and yet these moderates don't admit how they have come to be moderate what does moderation consists of it consists of having lost faith in all of these propositions or half of them because of there's the hammer blows of science and and secular politics the crash literalism of the critics yeah it's a religion has lost its mandate on a thousand questions and moderates tend to argue that this is somehow a triumph of faith that faith is somehow self enlightening whereas it's been enlightened from the outside it has been you know we've had a it has been intruded upon on that point that I was wanting to raise myself about that our own so-called fundamentalism there's a Carrick and southwark the first person I saw attacking you and I in print as being just as fundamentalist as those who blew up the London Underground do you know his name I did him everything you I had sorry I mean he's a very senior anglican cleric in the Diocese of Southwark I went on the BBC with him just don't repair on chairs I'll say when I've said how can how can you call your congregation of flock doesn't that say everything about your religion do you think they're sheep he said watch I used to be a pastor in New Guinea well there are five sheep well course a lot of places within our sheep Gospels quite hard to teach as a result we found out what the most important animal to locals was and I remember very well my local them Bishop rising to us the divine one to behold the swine has become his new congregation but he this is the man who deliberately does a thing like that there's a cynical as you could wish and as adaptive as the day is long and he says that we who doubt it are as fundamentalist as people who blow up their fellow-citizens and it's it's unconscionable thus I don't really mind being accused of ridiculing or treating with contempt people like that I just frankly have no choice I have the Faculty of humor and some of it has an edge to it I'm not going to repress that for the sake of politeness would you take that it would be good to make a distinction between the professionals and the amateurs I share your impatience with the officials of the churches the the people who this is their professional life it seems to me they know better right the congregation's don't know better because the that's maintained that they should not know better the car I do get very anxious about ridiculing the beliefs of the flock because of the way in which they have ceded to their leaders they've delegated authority to their leaders and they presume their leaders are going to do it right so I think in this you know who takes who stands up and says the buck stops here well it seems to me it's it's it's the preachers themselves it's the priests it's the bishops and and we really should hold their feet to the fire for instance but just take take the issue of creationism if somebody in a fundamentalist church thinks that creationism is makes sense because their pastor told them well I can I can understand that and excuse that we all we all get a lot of what we take to be true from people that we respect and when we view as authorities we don't check everything but where the pastor get this idea and I don't care where yeah he's he or she is responsible because they're their job is to know what they're talking about in a way that the congregation have to be a little bit careful not to sound condescending when we say that and in a way it's reflecting the condescension of the of the preacher yes I'll take things that you and Richard say on human natural sciences not without wanting to chair but and often unable to but knowing that you are the sort of gentleman who would have checked if you say the bishop told me it so I believe it you make a fool of yourself it seems to me and one is entitled to say sir just as one is entitled when dealing with an ordinary racist to say that his opinions are revolting he may be he may know no better but that's not going to save him from my condemnation and nor should it and I think exactly it's condescending not not to confront people as it were one by one or all masse so he doesn't publish opinion Israel is often wrong mob opinion is almost always wrong let's lay notice opinion is wrong religious opinion is wrong by definition we can't we can't avoid this cough I wanted to intrude the name HL Mencken at this point now very injustice celebrated American writer not particularly to my taste much too much of an itch Ian and and what really was once meant by social Darwinists right at one stage really why did he win the tremendous respect of so many people in this country in the twenties and thirties because he said the people who believe what the Methodists tell them and what William Jennings Bryan tells them are fools they're not being fooled they are fools they should Jam or never believe in it yes that Sunday they make themselves undignified and ignorant and no mincing of words you had a great herb mixture of wish and evidence and reasoning it absolutely works the most successful actual religious polemic that's probably ever been in the modern world any trainee essentially I think we just touched upon an issue that we should really highlight this notion of authority because religious people often argue that science is just a a tissue of uncashed checks you know we're all relying on authority how do you know that that the cosmological constant is whatever it is you know so how I think you two are well-placed to do this differentiate the kind of faith placing in authority that we practice without fear in science and rationality generally and the kind of faith placing in the preacher or the theologian that we we criticize what we actually do when when we who are not physicists take on transport physicists say is we we have some evidence to suggest that physicists have looked into the matter that they've done experiments that they've peer-reviewed their their papers that they've criticized each other that they've been subjected to massive criticism from their peers in seminars and in in lectures and things there's they come through and and and remember the structure that's there too it's not just that there's peer review but it's very important that it's competitive for instance when a fair math last theorem was proved by underlie or Andrew Wiles the reason that those of us who forget it I'm never going to understand that proof but the reason that we can be confident that it really is a proof is that nobody wanted to get every other mathematician who was competent in the world this was very well motivated to study that yeah and and believe me if they if they begrudge him that this is a proof it's a proof and there's nothing like that in nothing like that no because we're the antithesis no religion no religious person was ever able to say they would Einstein so if I'm right the following solar event will occur off the west coast of Africa in I forget how many years a monster known it did within very Chinese degree of variation has never been a prophecy that's been vindicated yeah like that well or anyone willing you know to place their reputation you know there as it were their life on the idea that it would be I was once asked at a public meeting don't you think that the mysteriousness of quantum theory is just the same as the mysteriousness of the Trinity or the transubstantiation and the answer of course is is can be answered in two quotes from Richard Feynman one Richard Feynman said if you think you understand quantum theory you don't understand quantum theory he was admitting that it's highly mysterious the other thing is that the predictions of quantum theory experimentally are verified to the equivalent of predicting the width of North America to the width of one human hair and so quantum theory is massively not supported by accurate predictions even if you don't understand the mystery of the Copenhagen interpretation whatever it is where is this mystery of the Trinity doesn't even try to make a prediction let alone an accurate one you know I don't like it doesn't isn't a mystery either I don't I don't like the use of the word mystery here I think I think ooh this has been there's been a lot of consciousness raising in philosophy about this term where we have so-called mysterious the new mysterious these are people who like the term mystery Noam Chomsky is famously quoted to say this there's two kinds of questions whose puzzles and mysteries puzzles or soluble mysteries aren't and first of all I I just don't buy that but I buy that I buy the distinction and say there's nothing about mystery in science there's there's puzzles there's deep puzzles there's things we don't know there's things we'll never know but they aren't systematically incomprehensible to human beings the the glorification of the idea that these things are are systematically incomprehensible is I think has no place in in science which is why I think we should be quite happy to revive traditional terms in our discourse such as obscurantism and obfuscation is what the reader and and to point out that these things can make intelligent people act stupidly john Cornwell has just written another another attack on yourself Richard and who is an old friend of mine the very brilliant guy wrote one of the best studies of the Catholic Church and fascism that there's been published he's in his review he says Mr dog professor Dawkins should just look at the shelves of books there are on the Trinity the library is full of attempts to solve this problem before he certain but none of the books in those bridges libraries solve it either the whole point is that it remains insoluble and is used to keep people feeling baffled and inferior but I want to come back to think about mystery in in in physics because it isn't it possible that our evolved brains because we we evolved in what I call middle world where where we never have to cope with the either the very small or the cosmologically very large we may never actually have an intuitive feel for what's going on in quantum mechanics but we can still test its predictions you can still actually do the mathematics and do the physics to actually test the predictions because anybody can read the dials on a button I think I think what what we can see is that what scientists have constructed over the over the centuries is a series of tools mind tools thinking tools mathematical tools and so forth which enable us to some degree to overcome the limitations of our evolved brains our Stone Age if you like brains and overcoming those limitations is not always direct sometimes you have to give up something yes you'll just never be able to as you say to be able to think intuitively about this but you can know that even though you can't think is good about it use this there's this laborious process by which you can you can make progress and you do have to cede a certain authority to the process but you can test that and it can carry you from A to B in the same way if you're you know if you're a quadriplegic an artificial device can carry you from A to B doesn't mean you can walk from a to make sure that you can get from it right and the boulder physicists will say what who cares about intuition I mean look at the math yeah that's right they are they are comfortable there with living living with their yet a prosthesis well the perfect example of that is is just dimensions beyond three because we can't visualize a fourth dimension or if it but it's trivial to represent it mathematically so we can move and know and now we teach our undergraduates how to manipulate n dimensional spaces and to think about vector vectors vectors in n dimensional spaces and they get used to the fact they can't quite a mat what you do is you imagine three of them and say you wave your hand a little bit say more the same yeah and you you bet you check your intuition by running the maths and it works but it is easy to do some say or psychologist looking at personality and you say there are there are fifteen dimensions of personality and you could think of them as being fifteen dimensions in its in space and anybody can see that that you can you can imagine moving along any one of those dimensions with respect to the to the others and you don't actually have to visualize fifteen dimensional space no that's and you give up that demand yes yes I can live without that it would be nice if I could do that but hey I can't see bacteria with the naked eye either I can live without that but I think there's one guy was challenging I was challenged on the radio the other day by someone can't sleep here to be fairly quote new said he that I believe in atoms on their evidence was I've never seen one not since George Galloway said to me that he'd never seen a barrel of oil right ask you yeah it is but it you realize the people at this point they're wearing so the right times they're oppositely they're desperate when they have to say no the reason I said is because I think could I didn't want us to make our lives easier but it makes the argument little most simple we are quite willing to say there are many things we don't know or holding I think what's in the universe is not just queerer than we understand what's cooler than we can understand we look we know they'll be great new discoveries we know we'll live to see great things but we know there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty that's the whole distinction the the believer to say not just that there is a God the DEA's position that there may be a mind at work in the universe a proposition we can't disprove but they know that mind exactly and can interpret it they're on good terms with it they've have they get occasional revelations they have a book that if they get verbatim briefings from creative yet now that this any decent argument any decent letter has to begin by excluding people who claim to know more than they can possibly know just start off by saying well that's wrong to begin with now can we get on with it yeah so Thea's um's gone in the first round okay yeah it's off the island exactly it's out of the show that's a footnote I wanted to add to what Dan was saying even if mystery was somehow something we had to just a bitter pill we have to swallow in the end we we are cognitively closed to the to truth at some level that still doesn't give any scope to theism actually no because and because it's such as close to them as it is to and they know so we claim perfect transparency of revelation and also they can't they can't be allowed to forget what they used to say when they was strong enough to get away with exactly which is this is really true right in every detail and if you don't believe it will kill ya will kill you and it may take some days to kill you but we will we will get your job done yes no we that they wouldn't have the power they have now if they hadn't had the power they had then and you know this what you just said Christopher actually I think strikes terror strikes anxiety in a lot of religious hearts because it just hasn't been brought home to them that this move of theirs is just off limits it's just not it's not the game it's not it doesn't you can't do that and they've been taught all their lives that they you can do that this is this is a legitimate way of conducting a discussion and here suddenly we're just telling them I'm sorry that is not a move in this game in fact it is a disqualifying move right and their side you can't be respected yeah yes the just adeb rate the move for me a bit if you would for us um perhaps only for me some say what you think that somebody somebody plays the faith card yes they say look I I am a Christian and we Christians we just have to believe this and it's you know that's it at which point the I guess the polite way of saying is well okay if that's true you'll just have to excuse yourself from the discussion because you've declared yourself incompetence okay to proceed with an open right now that's what I really that's what I don't you really can't if you really can't defend your view then sorry you can't put it forward we're not going to let you play the faith card now if you want to defend what your holy book says in terms that we can appreciate fine but because it says it in the holy book that just doesn't cut any ice at all and if you think it does you're clearly that is first of all that's just arrogant it is it is it is a bullying move and we're just not going to accept it and it's a move that they don't accept when exactly done in the name of another faith exactly but now in what case could I ask you something all three of you two who was an eye on this matter what do we think of Victor stainless book that says that we can now sign if if you disprove the existence of God do you have a village card I haven't read the book which grant we got any study any kind any either creating one or supervising one and certainly an intervening one I'm I think I think that's very exhaustive right my view had always been that since we have to live with uncertainty only those who are certain leave the room before the discussion can become adult leave the same seems to think now we've got to the stage where we can say with reasonable confidence there's it's disproved not as not vindicated or a better explanation proposed just I just thought it'd be interesting proposition because it matters a lot to me that our opinions are congruent with uncertainty right well I think the one doing all those wood jobs yeah I was a big fan of his book and actually blurbed it but I think the weakest link is the this foundational claim on the texts this idea that the we know that the Bible is the perfect word of an omniscient deity because that that is a that is an especially weak claim and it really is the claim there's really the gold in there their epistemological gold standard I mean it all rests on on that that if the Bible is not a magic book Christianity in this case evaporates if the Quran is not a magic book Islam evaporates and when you look at the books and ask yourself is there the slightest shred of evidence that this is the product of omniscience is there a single sentence in here that could not have been uttered by a person for whom a wheelbarrow would have been you know emergent technology you have to say no I mean it's just there's not if the Bible had an account of DNA and electricity and other things that would astonish us then okay our jaws drop suitably and we have to to have a sensible conversation about the source of this you know janeshia Caesar makes this cave in his new book he's going to be by the way one of them were much more literate and well-read and educated over antagonists I'm going to be debating soon he says that in Genesis when which people used to mock I said let there be light and then only a few staves later you get the Sun in the moon in the stars right how could that be well that's actually going to the big bang that would be right yeah but that's a bang the seeds of the galaxies yeah believe me I do but right well I try to demonstrate this this this cast of mind in I think a very long end note in the end of faith where I say any text can be read well with the eyes of faith you can make magical oppressions out of any text so I literally walk into a bookstore it the cookbook I love a bookstore randomly opened a cookbook found a recipe for walk he was walks Shir seared shrimp with ogo relish or something and then came up with a mystical interpretation of the recipe and you can do it I mean you can play connect the dots with any crazy text well Michael show no estimate Michael Jean we did it with the Bible code right I haven't seen a messages in the in the Bible yeah very very good you can absolutely even write us this headline in there anytime you like yeah I have a question for the three of you is there any argument for faith any challenge to your atheism that has given you pause that has sent you back on your heels where you felt here you didn't have a ready answer etc I to the isin can't think of any I mean I think the closest is it is the idea that the fundamental constants of the universe are too good to be true and that that does seem to me to need some kind of explanation if it's true I think I mean Victor Stenger doesn't think it is true but but many physicists do I don't think I mean it certainly doesn't in any way suggest to me creative intelligence because you've still left with the problem of explaining where that came from right and a creative intelligence who is sufficiently creative and intelligent enough to fine-tune the constants of the universe to give rise to us has got to be a lot more fine-tuned himself and you know what why create all the other planets in our solar system dead well that's a separate question yes say what is that good oh yes no Bishop Mars Fury was very good at this as it was a friend of mine say you have to marvel at the conditions of life and the knife-edge on which they are so it is a knife-edge yes our planet is a lot of it too hot or too cold right sort of claret red I look the arrow found it so it's completely to horological to support that's just one server system the only one we know about weather is that not much of a designer and of course you can't get out of the infinite regress but I know I've not come across a single persuasive argument of that kind but I wouldn't have expected to because as I realized when I thought one evening they never come up with everything new well why would they their arguments are very old by definition and they were all involved when we knew very very little about the natural order the only argument that I find at all attractive and this is for faith you arts well-spoken ISM is what I guess suppose I call the apotropaic the when people say all praise belongs to God for this he is to be thanked for all this it is that is actually a form of modesty it's a superstitious one that's why I say apotropaic but yes it is it's a avoiding hubris it's also for that reason obviously pre monotheistic but religion does Oh can help people to avoid her morally it's literally enough that that might be a lesson argument that is true over heaven say no no no that no there aren't there are and cannot be any such argument sighs well maybe actually broaden well no wait a minute and I think uh before you answer that I can give you several several of discoveries which would shape my faith tonight right no no but let me just broaden the question of not only Rebbetzin the Precambrian no no the not only an argument for the plausibility of religious belief but an argument that suggests that what we're up to criticizing faith is a bad thing oh that's much easily shouldn't be do so by all means no it shouldn't be doing what we're doing that that's much easier what it's easier to think of it no I mean it somebody could come up with an argument that says that the world is a better place everybody who leaves a falsehood and and is there any context though in your work or in dialogue with your critics where you feel that that argument has has given you pause oh yes oh yes uh not too much in breaking the spell but when I was working on my book on free will uh freedom evolves I kept running into critics who who were basically expressing something very close to a religious view namely look free will is such an important idea if we gave up the idea of free will we would have people would lose a sense of responsibility and we would have chaos and you really don't want to look too closely just avert your eyes do not look too closely at this issue of free will and determinism and I thought about that in explicitly in the environmental impact category okay could I imagine that my irrepressible curiosity could lead me to articulate something true or false dangers which would have such devastating effects on the world that I that I should just shut up and change the subject I think that's a good question that we all should ask yeah absolutely and I spent a lot of time thinking hard about that and I wouldn't have I wouldn't have published either those two books if I hadn't come to the conclusion that it was it was not only as it were environmentally safe to proceed this way but obligatory but a better I think you should ask that question I do right before publishing a book but not before deciding for yourself do I think that this is true or not you one should never do what some politically-motivated often critics do which is to say this is so politically obnoxious but it cannot be true oh no which is a different a different thing entirely no no no we like discovering that you thought that the bell curve yeah on white and black intelligence was a correct interpretation of it yes and you could well suppressing education societies now I've looked at all this stuff again I'm absolutely so you could say now what am I going to do fortunately these questions judging fat present themselves in that way I'll tell you one place where it's it's presented itself to me this I think it was an op-ed in the LA Times I could be mistaken but someone argued that the reason why the Muslim population in the u.s. is not radicalized the way it is in in Western Europe is largely the result of the fact that we honor faith so much in our discourse that they have not become the community has not become as insular and as and as grievance ridden as in Western Western Europe now I don't know it's true but if it were true that gave me a moment's pause that would be of interest in James Wolfensohn of the later the World Bank recently the negotiator on Gaza says that he firmly believes that he had tremendous influence for good with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas because he was an Orthodox Jew if so I think it would be disgusting right and he shouldn't have either job in the first place because the we know one absolute thing for certain about that which is it it's been made infinitely worse by the Montoya yeah yeah if it were only a national and territorial dispute it would have been solved by now so but his self-satisfaction in saying so even if it were true would turn even more against him

Channel: Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science

Views: 1,165,392

Rating: 4.8849449 out of 5

Keywords: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Religion, Atheism, Science, Evolution, Biology, Physics, Quantum Physics, The God Delusion, God is Not Great, Breaking the Spell, The End of Faith

Id: 9DKhc1pcDFM

Length: 58min 5sec (3485 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 22 2009

Reddit Comments

[u/SecretAgentX9]

I miss Hitch.

[u/one_among_the_fence]

A 10 minute youtube browse suddenly turned into a fantastic two hour timesuck. TIME WELL SPENT.

[u/keystonemike]

Those look like tasty drinks... Nevertheless, quite interesting in the contrast of which man proposes/answers certain questions.

[u/thesorrow312]

I've watched this 5 times or so now, and still get something great out of it each time.

If only all the discourse on television was as intelligent and interesting as these 4 genius' chatting with each other.

Watch this, then turn on Fox News, and you won't even believe it is the same species in both videos.