Within Reason - #51 Richard Dawkins - Religion is (Still) Appalling

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and author of books including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Professor Richard Dawkins, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Ian Herssey Ali, recently, despite you being perhaps the world's most famous atheist, described you as one of the most Christian people that she knows. Why did she say that? I adore Ayan. I'm a great fan of hers. I have talked to her about this.

I think the respect in which we differ is that for me, what really matters is the truth claims of Christian. Christianity. And for her, what really matters is the morality, the politics, actually. I think for her, Christianity is a bastion against something worse. As Hiller Belloc said, always keep a hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse. And for her, I think she wants a faith which will help people to stand up against worse faiths. And she singles out. Islam, she singles out, China, I think, and Putin and wokeism. And I'm with her on all those. And to the extent that I think that a religion might be valuable for political reasons, I would go along with her. But I think it's the wrong way to approach religion. I think that what really matters about a religion is whether it's true. And to adopt a religion for almost as though one is,

saying, well, I don't believe this nonsense, but it's very good idea if other people do, and there's something patronizing about that. She doesn't do that. She says, I believe in it. I am a Christian. And therefore, it's not patronizing. But I think the fundamental motivation is a political and a moral one. I presume as both an atheist and as a person with an understanding of not just biological, but also memetic evolution, having coined the term meme, you'll have to think of religion as essentially something which serves some kind of social function, that must be why it exists, that's why it evolved. Given that that's the case, is it really so inappropriate to think about religion in terms of how it serves us socially?

If that, from our shared worldview, must be what religion really is. From an academic point of view, I think it's a very interesting question, what religion is all about? What does it serve a social function? Does it even have an evolutionary benefit? And that interests me as an academic. To me, though, it's a huge step to go from even saying it's a good thing, even saying that I wish there were more Christianity in the world, even to say that, is nothing to do with believing it's truth claims. I mean, truth claims like there is a divine creator who made the universe and made the laws of physics. They're a divine creator who made the world, who listens to our prayers, who forgives our sins, who sent Jesus to be born

of a virgin and then had him crucified. I mean, those are all truth claims. Of course, none of that matters as long as it helps us fight Putin as far as... Well, that's the difference between me and IAN. I suspect that she doesn't really believe any of that. And presumably many Christians, and I've seen many Christians reacting to this story of Ion's conversion, issuing a similar skepticism, as many atheists have been, saying, well, we care about Christianity as a set of truth claims. We care about it, saying something real about the world. If somebody can become a Christian just by preferring it as a more comfortable worldview, what does that say about Christianity? I mean, I said a moment ago that, well, for us, religion just is a social tool, essentially.

And I think that the ability to adopt Christianity just because of its social function is evidence in favor of our case, that that's all religion is. Yeah. I think we agree about that. I think where we perhaps don't agree, no, I wouldn't say we disagree. I would say that our fundamental motivation is a bit different because I think that for you, well, if I ask you what do you think the worst thing? about Christianity is I suspect you say something, something moral, something about the problem of evil, something about the horrific ideas of Paul and the early Christian fathers, that we're all born in sin and we needed the death of Jesus to save us. That's the kind of thing that I suspect

drives your atheism, whereas for me, that's irrelevant. I mean, for me, I talk about it. But But for me, what really drives it is the scientific question is, is there a creator underneath the universe? Because if there is, then it's a profoundly different kind of universe from a scientific point of view. If there isn't, to me that's the big question. The problem of evil, to me, shouldn't be a real problem because you just say, well, there could be an evil god.

So that's a lesser question for me. Yes. I think I actually do broadly agree with you. And when I explain why I don't believe in God, I do make reference to things like the problem of evil. But it's difficult for me to frame those as moralistic objections. It's more that when considering a particular worldview like Christianity, I think what would I expect the world to look like? And especially considering how suffering is built into the evolutionary system, it makes it very difficult for me to believe that this is being supervised. But like you say, this could just be an evil God. I'm really interested in your characterization of the existence of God and the beginning of the universe as a scientific question. And I wanted to probe this a little bit. Yes, please. I had a thought that was inspired by something that C.S. Lewis had said on the relationship between science and religion. And I have this image in my head of people who are really optimistic about the progress

of science and the scientific method. And they say something like, look, you know, years ago we used to say so much was down to God. We used to not know why the planets orbited the sun. and we said it was because angels was pushing them. We used to not know why there was so much complexity in biological life, and we said that God did it. But look how we're discovering these laws.

We're discovering the law of natural selection. We're discovering the laws of gravity, you know. And there seems to be this trajectory such that when we say, well, where did it all come from in the first place? One day we'll get there. I don't know if you agree with that as an optimistic trajectory for the scientific method.

Clearly there's a trajectory. And I would put it that... The big problem of design, as William Paley put it, was life. He said something like the physical world is not the best place in which to demonstrate the existence of the creator because it's too simple. And I think it was right. And he was also right when he said that the really big problem for religion is life. And his whole book is based upon the...

at design in the living world. Darwin solved that. So Darwin solved the big one. And we have some remaining problems. The arc is still, hasn't really reached its end. We still have some problems with the origin of the laws of physics, the origin of the universe. But I think that the fact that Darwin solved the big one should give us confidence. That was the really difficult one. the amazing, apparent design in the living world. I mean, that is such a staggeringly overwhelming impression of design. There's no question about that. And that was the one that Darwin solved.

Darwin solves the problem of complexity within living organisms. But I think it might be a step too far to say he solved the problem of life. Because, of course, one of the questions that we have to throw into that bundle of things yet to explain, the origin of physics. The origin of life. Well, that's not part of Darwinism, of course. That's a separate question, and Darwin acknowledged that. And that is an unsolved problem. It may never be solved in the sense that we may never actually know what the answer is.

I think the best we can probably hope for is a model which is so elegant that we may say, well, that's so elegant, it's got to be true. But that's a bit different from having direct evidence. At present, we don't really have that. We have various possible ideas, some of them more plausible than others. And I think we know the kind of question we're trying to answer. We're trying to answer, how did the first self-replicating entity come into existence? And that's a big question.

It only had to happen once, unlike the rest of evolution, where it happened over and over again, the same thing happened over and over again, all over the world, different continents, different species, different kinds of animal plants, so on. The origin of life could have been a very, very improbable event because it only had to happen once. And therefore, we are potentially allowed to postulate something very unlikely, something very implausible. I find that quite an interesting point, actually, that if you take it to an extreme, suppose we are the only planet in the universe which has life, which is we can't rule that out. I think it's highly unlikely, but we can't rule it out.

If that's true, then that means that the origin. of life on this planet was a stupendously improbable event. And therefore, when chemists try to postulate a possible scenario for the origin of life, they're not looking for a plausible argument. They're looking for a very implausible argument. That's fascinating, yeah. I don't believe that because I think that probably it was not that improbable an event. And therefore, the likelihood is that there's lots of life all over.

the universe, but even to say a million different life forms all over the universe, since the number of possible places where there could be life is so large, a million is actually a very small number. That's fascinating. I mean, there are many things in the universe that have a tiny, tiny chance of happening but could. Like I've heard physicists say that because atoms are just vibrating and they're all sort of vibrating against each other and hence we get stillness.

There's a very small, unimaginably small possibility, but a real one that this glass could just sort of spontaneously move across the table of all of the atoms, you know, happened to vibrate in that direction. Now, the universe, like you say, I mean, everybody talked about the universe being vast. I read, I think, this morning that if the sun were the size of a white blood cell, then the Milky Way would be the size of the continental United States. Now, we might need to fact affect that exact example, but it's on, and that's just the Milky Way.

you consider that, okay, oh, are you saying that, you know, in a materialistic universe, life can just sort of pop into existence? Well, I understand the suspicion that that might be something unimaginably unlikely, but we're in an unimaginable universe. So that's a wonderful way of thinking about. I wouldn't want to resort to that. I think we don't need to. By the way, the possibility of the glass moving across the table, it's there.

But I once asked a physicist what the probability is. And he said if you started writing zeros at the origin of the universe, you'd still be writing zeros at this. Right. So we probably don't have to go that far in our, we can have a sort of spectrum of improbabilities. And I can already see, you know, a theist cutting this up and saying atheists admit that their world's view is unimaginably unlikely. We don't want to go there. I mean, my gut feelings. Carl Sagan said, but I try not to think with my gut, but if I'm forced, my gut feeling

would be that there is lots of life around the universe, but still it could be so rare that we don't have much chance of ever meeting any of these other lives. Sure. That's fascinating, but let's push the question even further back still, because I wanted to ask you, you mentioned about the origin of the laws of physics, for example. Yes. Now, the story that we tell is something like we discover all of these laws. And so this gives us an idea that science is moving in a direction and that eventually

we may well discover the origin of the laws themselves. But that seems to me like a separate question. And the way I want to explain this is by sort of borrowing and adapting, as I say, something C.S. Lewis said. Lewis talks about the relationship between Hamlet and Shakespeare a fair bit, or the character in a book and his author. I mean, I can ask, you know, why did Sherlock Holmes move into Baker Street? And you can either say, well, it's because, you know, he was looking for a roommate or something like that, or you could say because Arthur Conan Doyle wanted him to. And both of those seem to be true in a different resolution of thought. Now, what I'm imagining here is us discovering Hamlet by Shakespeare on the table in front of us. And immediately, crudely, you look at it and say, well, that must have been designed. That must have an author. And I don't just do the William Paley thing. You know, it's complex. What I say is,

Well, look, Professor Dawkins, I've done some research onto this little book, and I've discovered that it obeys certain laws. Yeah, I've noticed that at the end of certain sentences, there are these little dots, and if there's a big dot, it usually means that it's the end of a sentence, and there are two different kinds of each letter. There's a big A and a little A, and if it's the beginning of a sentence, it's a new one. Also, we've discovered this thing called iambic pentameter. You know, it seems that the way these sentences are constructed seem to follow this law,

this law of literacy and I said to you now where did this book come from and you say I still think there was an author of this book I still think someone created it and I said but look at all the progress that we've made just by describing it in terms of these things that we're calling laws of literature

I've discovered all of these laws of literature iambic pantameter and sentence construction and grammar and all of this stuff surely one day these laws of literacy will go on to explain the origin of the laws of the literacy or the origin of the text itself surely that would

surely that would be where this is going But of course, I'm making a category error if I do that. And is there not a fear that we're doing that when we say that science will one day explain the origin of the very thing that science is about? I take confidence from, as I said before, from Darwin's success, because everything that you said about full stops and capital letter at the beginning of the sentence, and I had it pentanitis and things, you could have said that about life. And people did say that about life. and we notice that living things are remarkably well designed, that birds are beautifully designed to fly and fish are beautifully designed to swim and so on. And the complexity is all there.

The detail of the design is incredibly impressive and it would have seemed absolutely. I suspect this is why it took so long for a Darwin to come on the scene, actually, because it just seemed so obvious that it had an author. sure but behind it darwin solved that there isn't an author i mean it's it's natural selection does the trick so where is the where is the analogy with hamlet or sherlock homes left i suppose the analogy would be that um what darwin did was was close the question on the

complexity of life but he didn't close the question on where life came from as we've already No, that's right. And I suppose what I'm putting forward is that maybe laws of physics, laws of biology, laws of science are not the kind of thing that can explain the origin of the laws of physics, the origin of the laws of biology, that kind of stuff, where maybe it's sort of opering on a... Well, it could be. We haven't got there yet, but all I said was that Darwin's success should give us confidence. And that there will come a time when we understand the laws of physics, I think they're not far off. I'm not really, I mean, the physicists aren't far off that now, in fact. Richard Dawkins is about to tell us his views on Jordan Peterson.

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That's drinkag1.com forward slash within reason, and try it for yourself. Now back to the show. Now, we were talking about Ian Horsi Ali, and it's an interesting detour, but I did want to ask you about this vision of religion for two reasons. This idea that religion, we don't really care about the question of whether it's true that Jesus was born of a virgin or whether he actually died on the cross. In fact, maybe I'm just going to refuse to answer it all together and say that this is a cultural thing. It's a way of life. It's a motivating reason behind your behaviours. I think that this has got a lot to do with its popularization through people

like Jordan Peterson. Ian Hershey-Ali seems to have been spending some time with Jordan Peterson and getting on with him, at least in this regard. And I want to ask you about it for two reasons. Firstly, I want to know, I mean, you had a conversation with Jordan Peterson for about an hour and a half where you talked about some culture stuff, but he's very well known at the moment. He's writing a book at the moment for talking about religion. And he comes at it from this completely different perspective

to, I imagine the perspective that most of your previous Christian, opponents, not that Jordan Peterson is strictly a Christian, have come at it from, and I wonder what you make of him and his approach. I enormously respect his courage in standing up to the Canadian laws about free speech. I want to get that out of the way. First, I hugely respect that and value him for that reason. When he talks about religion, I think it's bullshit. I think that he doesn't make any sense at all. I think he's impressing people by using language they don't understand, rather like Deepak Chopra,

where people think, oh, it must be terribly profound because I can't understand it, which is not something I can respect. Michael Shermer told me that he tried to pin him down and said, do you actually believe that Jesus was born of a virgin? And Jordan Peter says, it would take me at least two days to answer that. So Michael said, more or less, well, how about one sentence or one word, no. And that's how I feel about that. All the stuff about Jungian archetypes, and not that I would be skeptical about that,

but constantly dragging them in. I mean, I think the most egregious example of that is where he looks at works of primitive art, works of tribal art where he shows things like two snakes coiling around each other and says, well, they must have had some primitive, primeval knowledge of DNA. Perhaps they looked into their own cells in some sense and saw the DNA. Perhaps his DNA is the double helix is a Jungian architect. And that is sheer bullshit, and I told him so. Do you think that you can have a productive conversation with him about religion,

if this is the approach he's taking? Do you think there's any room for progress here talking to someone like Peterson? Well, I'd hesitate to say no about that to anybody, but so far I'm not given any confidence. And I want to once again say how much I respect his courage in standing up to the woke nonsense. Yes, we sandwich the bullshit in between the respect. Peterson's approach here seems to have unlocked a new interest in particularly the Bible, And as he calls it the biblical corpus, my friend Chris Williamson asked him recently on a podcast because he kept talking about the biblical corpus. He said, when you say the biblical corpus, do you mean the Bible?

He says yes. And I'm thinking, well, you know, why not just call it the Bible then? But he has inspired this renewed interest in the biblical corpus because of that. Because now when you see people debating religion, it tends to be less does God exist. and more about the utility of religion and the Jungian archetypes and stuff. The God delusion, which was the atheist book, do you think it still survives as a sufficient treatment of God and religion in modern culture? If you were to write it again, would you be taking the same approach of talking about it as a scientific issue,

or would you feel the need to change the way that you're talking about the subject people together? I would certainly still talk about it as a scientific issue because I think that's the most important thing. I probably might add a chapter on the idea of, well, what Dan Dennett calls belief in belief. The idea that whether you believe it or not, it's a good idea that some people do. And I think that's patronizing. I think that's condescending. It's sort of saying, well, we intellectuals don't need this crutch, but other people may do. And if they do, then it's a good thing because it helps in the background.

against Putin's, not the Putin themselves. I think Voltaire said, I don't believe in God, but I hope that my maid does. Well, that's a great good. I didn't know that quote. It's a very good example. And that is so patronizing. Yes. And indeed, it also, you know, when you're debating the moral argument with people, when

they say, without God, there could be no morality? And sometimes an atheist says, well, how dare you say that I can't be moral without God? And they say, I'm not saying you can't be moral without God. I'm just saying you can't ground your morality. And yet, on the other hand, they say, but we need you to believe in God, otherwise society falls apart. Maybe you are actually saying that people can't be moral without God, more than just their ability to ground it if you're saying that without this religious belief, society will fall apart. Well, I wouldn't say that, but I recognize that some people may think that. I mean, I think that to ground your morality in, certainly in the Bible would be an appalling thing to do.

If you actually look at the Bible, actually look at any of the moral, almost any of the moral nessence you can take from it. Some of the things Jesus said are very nice, but you have to pick and choose your way through. And setting aside Jesus's emphasis on loving your neighbor, which is very nice, the sermon on the Mount is very nice. The fundamental doctrine of, well, the Old Testament, of course, is appalling. Yeah, putting the Old Testament aside. Yeah, in the New Testament. Even the New Testament. The idea that we're born in sin is a hideous idea. The idea that the only way to be saved from sin and the wages of sin is Jesus' death is a hideous idea. And I don't think it's one that Jesus himself ever put forward. Is it? I think he probably would be rather shocked at that thought. Well, I imagine that Jesus would have to be aware of himself as the salvation and if that's the case he'll need to be aware of what he's saving people from which can only be something like slavery to sin i wonder whether you're reading something in there

i mean salvation um i mean he said things like if you've seen me you've seen the father he said that kind of thing but but did did he actually say that he was salvation well i suppose i am the way the truth and the life no one comes into the father except three days i am i am a guide for a good life, something like that. It doesn't mean that Mr. Him surely never said that my death is necessary in order for you to be saved from sin. Quite possibly. I mean, I think about the idea of the Eucharist and the Last Supper

and literally breaking up my body for you. It does seem to be some indication that Jesus knew what he was doing if the Christians are correct about his mission on earth. a moment ago you said it's an appalling idea that we're all born in sin and I understand this intuition but do you not think there's some wisdom in this idea or some sort of necessary humility in recognizing that you know we all do seem to fall short of the standards that we set for ourselves that is we're not going to make sense of a concept like sin because we don't believe in God you know we're atheists sin doesn't make sense but even just in terms of our own

moral standards, whatever standards we set for ourselves, we seem to fall short of these every single day. And is it not just that idea that's being captured when somebody says, look, even by your own standards, you're falling short of where you should be? And maybe that's what... Even a newborn baby? Born in sin? Well, I would probably respond by saying that not all Christians will say that a newborn baby is born in sin in the sense that they're responsible for it, more like born with a propensity towards sinning, which I imagine you would even agree with. with, that newborn babies, although they haven't, you know, committed immoral acts yet, they're born with this sort of human nature, which has a predisposition towards doing things that

fall short of our moral standards, maybe. I'm sorry for you having to do a degree in this kind of thing. It's not a real subject, is it? You know, we talked about this before on our previous podcast, and I think it's something that you wanted to ask me about today, isn't it? Well, yes. It's obviously something that still interests you. Oh, certainly.

Talking about, you know, sin and things like that. I cannot imagine spending three years. How do you stand it? I'll answer it in two ways. The first is to say that the theology faculty was actually theology and religion. So I was able to study religion as anthropology, religion as history. You know, you can do papers and science and religion, this kind of thing. And I imagine you would be, you'd be very interested in that kind of thing.

Theology itself, I found useful for a few reasons. One of them, you know, of course, there's like a crude sense in which by studying theology, it helps me to debate it. It helps me to argue with people. I get that, definitely. But it's also an interesting window into human psychology. For example, you know, clearly the question does interest you. why is it that people can can believe so strongly and so easily in this idea that everybody's born in sin? Isn't that easy?

Isn't that horrible? That's a psychological question. If you, I don't know what sort of essays you had to write, but if you were allowed to write an essay on that, that would have been interesting. If you were allowed to ask a question, how can anyone believe this stuff? but I imagine you had to actually write a serious essay on the concept of sin itself and the idea of redemption and the idea of atonement. Well, suppose you wanted to write that essay which you just said was an interesting question, why would anybody believe this? Well, in order to answer that, you have to get to grips with the reasons people have believing it. Yes.

And I suppose that's what I'm doing here with you in saying, because you bring up the point when you look at the New Testament. You bring up this exegesis, this interpretation. This is an evil text because it tells people that they're born in sin. And I suppose the question implicitly in what you're saying there is, how can you believe this? And I'm doing that devil's advocate thing again of trying to, I suppose, explain why it is that somebody might believe this and say that even an atheist might recognize that there's a sense in which that's at least poetically true. We're all born in a state where we are unable to fulfill the standard that we want to fulfill. You know what I mean?

Poetically, yes, I suppose you could see it at a poetic level. Interestingly, I don't know if I've told you this before, but when the selfish gene was published, both the chaplains of my college came up to me and said they'd read it and they thought it had echoes of original sin. And it was a poetic, it was a poetic resonance with original sin. And I suppose, I mean, that's quite interesting. Why would the selfish gene have a resonance with original sin? Well, they were thinking of it in terms of the selfish gene having a sort of primitive rationale for selfishness. So that's not what the book was really intended to be about, but that's how they interpreted it.

And so that that resonated with their idea of original. And what do you make of the criticism in the opposite direction? Somebody says, you know, I've spent my life studying Thomistic metaphysics. I'm a classical theologian. I've got a PhD and I looked in the God delusion and I wanted to see what Richard Dawkins had to say about Thomas Aquinas's five proofs for the existence, his five ways to establish the existence of God. And they find two pages. And this this sort of pinnacle of religious philosophy as they see it has a treatment in two pages and when they question you and say

well what about all of the important theological nuances you respond to them well why would I do theology theology is uninteresting I think I would say to that why privilege Christian theology when there are thousands of gods all around the world they all have their own theology

and these Thomas theologians are equally ignorant of Aboriginal theology and Bantu theology and Papua New Guinea theology. That's true. And they think that their theology is somehow high-flown and intellectually important, but it has no greater status than any of those. The thing about science is that it's universal. It is not local.

It's not tied to any particular tribe or group of people or... time in history, it's, what you discover in science is universal and timeless. I think that's fair enough. But then I also think that if one of these to mystic metaphysicians wrote a book called the Aborigine Delusion, or they try to sort of write a chapter where they said, I'm going to debunk this idea, and then they spent two pages on it. The delusion that I'm interested in is the very existence of a supernatural creator. It's not particularly Christian Christianity.

In so far as I talked about Christianity, that's because I'm brought up in a Christian culture. But what really interests me is the existence of a divine creator at all. And I suppose you're allowed to say that in a different way, where you say, well, I'm talking about Christianity because I was brought up in that culture. And people will say, fair enough, that's what you chose to write in. Whereas a Christian, if they say, well, I focus on Christianity because I was brought up in a Christian culture, that seems to slightly undermine their position. I mean, but if they use that as a reason for why they believe, then they're by using it as the reason why I chose to talk about it as an example. Do you still do debates? Well, I don't like the sort of debate format where you have 10 minutes for the proposition, 10 minutes for the opposition, things like that, because I don't think that's the way we decide things.

I mean, the debate I attended at the Oxford Union a few weeks ago that you were in. I think your side lost. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, they don't make that bit obvious on the YouTube video, but I suppose everybody knows now. Yes, yeah, we lost. And it's in a way, I'm sure it was for all the wrong reasons. Well, I read recently an account of the famous This House Will Not Vote for King and Country debate in the 1930s in Oxford. And that caused a great scandal because of it.

of the way the debate went at the time. And it seems to be, what I gather from the history is that the reason the debate was carried was the amusing wit and eloquence of one of the speakers. And that's not the way we win arguments by wit and eloquence. It shouldn't be. Do you attribute some of the success of the new atheist movement, which anybody would struggle to say that the new atheists were not sort of going on these. marathons of winning debates.

How much of that do you think just had to do with the fact that you had Christopher Hitchens in your arsenal who could recite some poetry on stage and make people laugh? I asked for that, I suppose, right when I mentioned the CM-Jode thing. Well, he was, of course, superbly witty and erudite and could pull a quotation whenever he needed it. And I would like to think that such a success as we had was due to having good arguments rather than to the eloquence of any one particular individual. I'd be sorry if people change their minds on the basis of, well, so we say the wrong reasons, not really taking the argument seriously, but the, because one of the speakers gave them a good laugh

or something. Do you quite like doing debates? Sometimes, yes. It kind of, it depends. My understanding of debates is that a lot of the time they are just theatre. And I think that as long as you recognise that's what you're doing, there's no strict problem with doing that. It's a good way to get people to get excited about a subject.

It's a good way to introduce them to some of the arguments that they might want to go and study at home. But the idea that it's a place for exhaustive, you know, presentation of a world view, while you're doing it in front of a person whose entire job is to make you essentially, or at least your arguments, look bad and look flawed. And an audience with a proneness to, you know, fidgeting and getting bored and preferring to be a bit entertained or to laugh, you know, that's the arena that you're walking into. That's something, in other words, that I've learned about doing debates. As I've done them in the past, I've gone in thinking, I'm not even going to really research the person that I'm about to debate because I want to sort of really engage on the spot. And I had this idea that I'm going in with a real desire to get to the truth,

whereas as time goes on, you begin to realize that actually it's something of a performance in many ways. Yes. I think the Oxford Union has especially descended into a time when there's a lot what wasn't quite so bad at the debate that you were in a few weeks ago but I've seen it in the past where people are constantly popping up with so-called points of information yes or points of order then they are never either points of information or very very seldom points of information they're points of opinion and I think it's probably right the points of information is right. On a point of information, Mr. President, the speaker's got his figures

wrong. The number of people, you know, killed in the Holocaust for so-and-so and so-and-so rather than what he said. That's a point of information. Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, people might not be aware in these formal debates. It's in the rulebook, you're allowed to interrupt a speaker. If you're ever watching a debate speech at the Oxford Union and someone from the audience just sort of stands up and starts talking, it's because you're allowed to do that and you say point of information. And as you say, the idea is that it's supposed to be exactly that, a point of information, but somebody ends up just sort of giving a mini speech themselves. Yes, well, the president, no doubt when it was first started, the president would have,

would have been on to that. But the customer's grown up, the points of information are just ways of interrupting somebody's speech. Yes, with your own speech. And now that, you know, you can get away with it, like, that's what people do. And why not do that if everybody's just getting away with it? Yes, yes. I think I, I, I, POI to the Cardinal at one point because he was talking about Cardinal Turkson, a man who I'm told is in the running to become the next Pope, was giving a speech and was talking about the Vatican's contribution to science and how they set up the first scientific academy with members including Galileo. And my point of information was to simply ask, what then happened to that

Galileo? And it was funny because it seemed like he didn't understand that I was trying to sort of make a point because he just answered it just completely flatly, just said, oh, well, he was not a member anymore afterwards, and then he became a member again, just answered it very straight up. And I feel like the point might have been lost. But that's what the point of information is supposed to be for. And these debates, they leave too much room for rhetoric. They leave too much room for, you're so aware that you're on display that, I know, it's not very conducive to an open conversation of the kind that we're having now. I used to attend the union every week when I was an undergraduate and really, and I enjoyed it very much.

I'm saying, I enjoyed the rhetoric and I enjoy the sort of things that I'm not so keen on. And I suppose I'm actually a life member, but I'm not, I think I've lost my card. I'm not sure they let me in. I'm sure they'll let you in. Yes. I wonder if you were invited. I mean, there are some wonderful classic debates that you've done with people like John Lennox. I wonder if you were invited to do something like that today.

Is it something you'd still be interested in doing? I'm talking about the formal debate, audience, 10-minute opening statement, cross-examination, does God exist? Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I would like to have a discussion with, as I have with the Archbishop of Canterbury, for example. And I find, I've had actually, I think, two or three discussions with him, and they've been very civilized. and enjoyable and I think an honest attempt at dialogue. I don't think I'd like to do it in the debate format. I did agree to do a debate in the Cambridge Union in which the Arch –

Rowan Williams was one of the speakers. And that was sort of not too bad. but no, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't be falling over myself to have a debate on that subject. Who's the most formidable debate opponent that you have had in your career that you can think of now on this question of God's existence? I don't think there are any. Not that I'm formidable myself, but I don't think there are any very, good arguments. No point in a debate

where you're sat there getting ready to get up and give your 10 minute rebuttal while they're speaking, writing your notes and thinking oh gosh, what am I going to say to that? That's a fair point.

I don't think so. I mean, I don't want to sound arrogant. It's not that I've got great, great points. It's just that I don't think there are any good points to be made. And maybe it's something about the debate format as well. You know, everybody's so prepared that, you know, you're rarely caught off guard.

Yes. I mean, there's sort of professional debaters on behalf of religion, people like William Craig, I have no time for him. I mean, he's got this sort of loud, rather pompous voice. and we say that's a premise one, deduction two and things like that, and the audience, I suppose, is supposed to be impressed. I've had William Lane Craig twice on my podcast, and I always had a good experience with him,

having said that I didn't debate him. I don't know what that would be like. Something you're not interested in doing, debating William Lane Craig, or having a conversation, perhaps, with William Lane Craig? done, I've vowed not to, I feel such contempt for him because of his, I know whether you've seen his, what he says about the, if the lights slaughtering the Midianites, instead of saying what any decent theologian would say, well, it never happened, and this is just Old Testament story. He says, well, the Midianites had it coming because they were so sinful.

And then if you worry about the Midianite children who had their brains beaten out of them, that's okay because they went straight to heaven. And that finishing him off as far as I was concerned for me. I actually wrote a piece in The Guardian saying why I will never have anything to do with him. I can see why you might sort of look at something like that and say that's an evil thing to think. That's an evil thing to say, I don't want to debate this person. A few moments ago, you told me that the idea of the New Testament in general about being born in sin and needing salvation is an evil idea. Yes. And yet, that's an idea that many of the opponents that you have spoken to will have believed.

They believe evil things too. So why particularly with William Lane Craig do you have? It's a fair point. I think the thing is that the Christian theologians who take this seriously is our... honestly well-meaning. I mean, they believe in the God of love. They believe in Jesus as the son of God of love and so on. I think the sheer, well, they would never have defended the slaughter of the Midianites and the Jebusites and things in the Book of Joshua. justified because the Midianites were sinful. I think there's an order of magnitude worse there. Perhaps you would disagree with that. Maybe. I mean, I think there's a sense in which a Christian who believes in the historicity of the Old Testament, I mean, the Midianites

might be, I'm sometimes told it's complicated by the fact that it's Moses who instructs the slaughter of the Midianites, but it seems clear to me that this is sanctioned by God. I think that a Christian who believes in the historicist of the Old Testament just has to believe that whatever happened there was somehow okay with God, was somehow moral. Now, I agree that that, that to me, is a criticism I make all the time. How could this be moral? But I also say, how could it be moral that God allows children to get cancer? How could it be moral that, you know, and I suppose the thing that I would say is that if,

if you pressed a Christian, well, if there's a good God, why do children get cancer? They just have to say something like there must be some reason for this. There must be some explanation. Yes, I suppose that if they really do have to believe, if they really do believe the literal word of the Bible, but then that brings us back to fundamentalist creationists. I mean, well, even just in terms of why God would allow evil at all. What I'm imagining in other words is suppose we had this other Christian philosopher debater and somebody had said to them, well, why do children get cancer if there's a good God? And they said, look, if I believe in a good God, I have to believe that the children who die of cancer are going to heaven.

I have to believe that there's some reason for the suffering that they're undergoing. Now, you could say, this person said that kids who have cancer, oh, they should be great. because they're going straight to heaven and are there some reason to give children cancer? That's despicable. I want nothing to do with this person. I'll never debate them. However, I would suppose that basically everybody that you've debated on the topic of Christianity would say something like that about cancer and children.

And so I wonder why with William Lay Craig is a particular problem. You make a good point. I suppose none of these sophisticated theologians take the literal word of the Old Testament seriously. I mean, they don't believe in Adam and Eve, for example. They don't believe in the, therefore, why would you believe that the story of the Midianites is history? Why not just sort of say, well, this is some kind of tribal myth, and all sorts of tribes have these horrible? Well, I can keep up this God's advocate, if you like. I would say, in other words, I would answer that question with a Christian hat on by saying that the Bible is a collection of books rather than a book.

And that that book contains different genres. And that the genre of Genesis is something like poetry. Exactly. The genre of numbers seems much more to be, at least intended to be history, in a way that the genre of Paul is letters, it's epistles. Whether or not you think he actually even existed, you know, I mean, I think Paul existed just to be clear. But, yeah, it doesn't really matter.

It's still clear that if you think that it's true, the kind of thing that Paul's doing is writing letters, the kind of thing that acts is doing is essentially, you know, biography or history, it's attempting to do that. It seems to me that where numbers is very obviously trying to just recount historical events, Genesis seems a lot more allegorical to me. And so it doesn't seem inconsistent for me to say, well, of course I don't believe in Adam and Eve. I believe in the seven-day creation. But I do believe that there was a real slaughter of the Midianites by Moses and his armies.

Well, yes. And then, I mean, you, I don't think you should then go ahead to justify it, but by saying that they were the sinful. I mean, I should have thought that the right and proper thing for a Christian to say is slaughter of the Midianites is no more factual history than the story of Jupiter or Apollo, I mean, Thor, with his hammer and things. These are tribal myths which we could study as mythology. But why go out of your way to make it sound much more evil than it really is? by saying, well, the Midianites were sinful and their children were going to heaven. Anyway, it's somehow, I just find it more appalling. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I find it sort of appalling that you take it so seriously, that you actually, well, you take the belief in the historicity of it so seriously, that you even defend it rather than just say, as any decent bishop would say,

and say, well, that's never happened. I think that as particularly at the height of the new atheism and religion debates that were happening in the, in the sort of late 2000s, I think a lot of people were disappointed that the forerunner of the atheist side, Richard Dawkins, and arguably the forerunner of the Christian side, William Lane Craig, never came together to have that debate because even if you do think that what he believes there is particularly, and specifically evil, I suppose everything you've just said to me, people would probably just like to see you say that to William Lane Craig. I wrote an article in The Guardian saying it, and I did in fact have a debate with him in Mexico, I forget when. With the boxing ring. Yeah. Yes. And I just no desire to, I don't respect him.

I find his man a pompous, and I just don't want to be in the same room as him, really. Well, in the interest of diplomacy, I will offer no further comment, except that that's certainly not my experience with the man, but I imagine that we've had very different interactions with him in the past. Let's put it that way. Well, on this topic of debate and arguments for God's existence anyway, I suppose what I wanted to do was ask you about two arguments that I've been thinking about. related to God's existence, but specifically related to evolution and naturalism as well. Right. Because I think that these are questions, which I'm sure you've commented on before somewhere, but I guess I'd like to probe again.

Yeah. One of these is Lewis's argument from desire, which sounds like a very silly argument on the face of it. He essentially says something along the lines of, look, everybody seems to have an innate desire for something a bit beyond the natural, something a bit supernatural, something, you know, beauty, purpose, this kind of intangible stuff. And he said, I actually wrote down the way he puts it in mere Christianity. He says most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want and want acutely something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to them, that offer to give

it to you, but never quite keep their promise. And then later, if I find in myself a desire, which no experience in this world can satisfy, The most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. And like I say, on the face of it, that sounds maybe a little bit silly. But there is a serious question in here that most of the time when we evolve a desire for something, you know, we evolve a desire for food, for warmth, this kind of thing. The reason for that is because this desire gives us reason to seek out those things in the real world.

If there were no food and digestion, if there were no temperature, it would make no sense for us to evolve a desire for food, for temperature, for warmth. That wouldn't make any sense. Why would that even evolve in the first place if it doesn't actually latch on to anything in the real world? And although I'm not sure if Lewis was aware of this, we know anthropologically that almost everywhere we look in the world, we find people with religious sensibilities. They have some kind of either desire or apprehension of something beyond themselves, something

divine. And I suppose the question Lewis asks is from an evolution. perspective, why would it be that we would universally evolve that desire if that desire doesn't actually latch on to anything in reality? I find it a very odd argument. Because we have a desire to survive and live, which makes perfect evolutionary sense, it's a natural projection of that desire that we might desire to go on living after we die, a desire for eternal life. You know, you could easily see that as just an extension of the perfectly Darwinian desire to go on living.

I think it's just another example of that. That particular part of it is, I suppose, What else did he say the desire for something beyond? He says, want acutely something that cannot be had in this world. I mean, he says a lot more about it in mere Christianity, but he says if I find it myself in a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. Yes, I mean, the idea that because you want something, therefore it must be true,

I find that a most extraordinary idea. Yeah. It does seem strange to want something that doesn't exist. Why? Because if we're trying to give an account of where this desire comes from, it seems to have to latch onto something. And it seems like what you're suggesting is that what it's latching onto is just the general desire to stay alive as long as possible. Well, that, I was thinking specifically if it's a desire for eternal life. Sure. But I think you can do a kind of version of that for whatever else, yes, Lewis was saying. some people may have a sexual desire for a film star that they're never going to meet and wouldn't look at them if they did. And that doesn't mean that there's anything realistic about it. It's a natural extension of sexual desire. Of course, the film star exists.

Well, it doesn't exist in any realistic sense as far as this wretched person is concerned. Sure. I mean, you could talk about a desire for 72 virgins in Islamic heaven. That doesn't exist, but it's easy to see it as a projection of an ordinary biological desire. Yeah, I mean, I tend to agree with you, maybe if not in the detail with the suggestion that the desire can be for something real and that, the image of God or afterlife or eternality are just sort of warped

or extended versions of a real thing. That is, you know, the afterlife is an extension of the desire to be alive. A physicist might desire a solution to the theory of everything and the unification of gravity and quantum theory.

Yeah, that's what CS Lewis says. They desire God. You desire a solution to a physical problem which may be insoluble. I'm pulling your leg. It may be out of this world in the sense that it's beyond

beyond solution. Sears Lewis better come up with a better argument than that. Well, C.S. Lewis has another argument for you, which is the argument from reason. And I actually want to give you a version of it that is more modern, that I'm sure you'll have talked about before, which is Alvin Planting as evolutionary argument against

naturalism. I want to know what you think about this, because, you know, I I'm sat with one of the most preeminent evolutionary biologists in living memory, and I would love to know what you think about this. Now, Plantinger points out that if we're a materialist, if we don't believe in the existence of a mind governing all of this, and everything evolves according to natural selection, well, what does natural selection select for? Survivability. Therefore, everything which evolves evolves evolves because it helps us to survive, including our minds, including our rationality. And so, why is it that we believe that evolution occurred by natural selection? Because we look at the evidence, and we use our rationality to come to the conclusion

that natural selection is the best explanation. But what we're doing in assenting to the truth of natural selection is saying that the mechanism we use to believe in natural selection doesn't actually select for truth. It selects for survivability. we can't know that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is true or if it's just that believing 2 plus 2 equals 4 is beneficial for our survival if the latter is the case

then we run into a lot of trouble and it seems that when we say evolution is true therefore our brain evolved for survivability we've just undermined the truth aptness of the very process that we've used to believe in evolution I've never what do you think why people have told persuaded by the this. If we went through, if we, any animal, went through life, particularly humans, went

through life believing the equivalent of two plus two doesn't equal four, we would survive. I mean, if you base your life upon evidence, if you base your life upon rationality, you're more likely to survive than if you base your life upon nonsense. And it just seems to me to be so easy to say that rationality and the search for truth, the search for evidence, is a good way to live, even from a mundane Darwinian point of view. When you say a moment ago, if we were to live as if two plus two didn't equal four, I suppose what I'm saying is we have no way to ascertain whether it's actually true. I mean, you can, you can, are you saying something like, if the thing that we thought was true was not actually true, we just wouldn't be able to survive, or something like that?

Yes. Is it not conceivable that there could be things that we believe that are not true, but by believing them to be true actually make us more likely? Oh, yes. That's what that, I mean, there is some evidence for that. There's some evidence that having a somewhat inflated belief in your own ability. is beneficial. Right. And so there is evidence that people in general think they're better looking than they are,

think they're cleverer than they are, think they're better drivers than they are, etc. And that could be a certain one at least could make an interesting case that self-deception of this kind. Robert Trivers, one of the great figures in my field, even wrote a book called The Folly of Fools. about self-deception and the Darwinian advantage of self-deception. I think it's got to be pretty limited. I mean, it would be a little bit of an icing, a little bit of a gloss on top of fundamentally rational. I think that's the point that someone like Plantinga might wish to push back on, which is

to say, how can we know that in some instances, sure, believing something that's actually false is beneficial for our survival? And so we've evolved like a mechanism to just naturally think that it's true. But that definitely doesn't happen when we do math. So that definitely doesn't happen when we're sort of doing empirical observation about, you know, the shape and size of things. We know that that doesn't happen. Well, how do we know that? Well, we know that science works.

I mean, we know that if you follow scientific principles, you can hit, you can get to Pluto. And it works over and over and over again. You kill smallpox, you slingshot rockets around Venus and Earth and get to Jupiter. All this works, and scientific predictions come out right. You can predict when eclipses will occur. It works. I suppose the analogy there would be somebody would ask, well, then how do you know that 2 plus 2 equals 4?

in the abstract mathematical realm is just true rather than it being the case that thinking or acting as if 2 plus 2 equals 4 helps us get to the moon. I think 2 plus 2 equals 4 is a different matter

from getting to the moon. I mean, that's just logic. Well, I suppose, you know, mathematical truth and logic in general, I'm using 2 plus 2 as a representative of that. Yes.

I don't see the problem with that. Well, maybe there is one. Maybe there is. I just wanted to get your thoughts, and I suppose I'll be interested to see what people make if you'll reply. One of the biggest reasons why people are religious, arguably, at least from a sort of cynical atheist perspective, is to escape the fear of death. Sigmund Freud said that there will be religion as long as we're afraid of death. Are you afraid of death? I'm afraid of dying. I don't look forward to, I don't know, getting cancer or something of that sort.

I suppose I'm afraid of eternity. It is a daunting thought that the universe goes on and on and on and on for billions, for trillions of years. And so, I've said this often enough before, that the escape from eternity would be, the escape from any kind of pain would be a general anesthetic. and which I think is what death is. So it's a nothingness, just like a general anesthetic.

I like life and I like to go on living. I enjoy life and I'm curious to know how the future will unfold. So I would like to go on. So I wouldn't mind living for 200 years. but I wouldn't like to live for eternity. No. What consolation might you offer to, so somebody's read the God delusion

and they've become convinced that God doesn't exist and there is no afterlife? And they feel pretty fine about that except for this one thing that they've now had to give up the idea that they're going to be able to escape death. And they say, well, I'm really happy for you, Professor Dawkins, that you're not afraid of death,

but I still am. I'm afraid of the unknown. What advice would you give to them? It's very hard to say. I'm under no obligation to give any consolation, of course. But that's true. And I certainly think that the fact that a belief gives you consolation is no reason to think it's true. And what I care about is what's true.

I, if they're not consoled by what I've just said about general anesthetics, I'd have to scratch my head and try to think of something else. But I find it a hard job to do that. I think that enjoy your life to the full while you've got it. You won't regret it when you're dead because you won't be there. So don't spoil your life by fretting about the fact that it's got to come to an end. Fill it with not not selfish pleasures, but fill it with pleasure and pleasure for other people as well. And perhaps its eternity would actually diminish its value in the sense that having a bit of

billion dollars in the bank account makes one dollar not worth very much. But if you've only got ten, then a dollar sort of becomes everything to you. Yes. Yes. Well, Professor Richard Dawkins, thank you for your time.