1. Comment #92113 by Janus on November 29, 2007 at 10:22 pm

Well done Richard, as always.

You could tell the interviewer read TGD and liked it. :P

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2. Comment #92116 by Cartomancer on November 29, 2007 at 10:30 pm

It is, essentially, an outline of The God Delusion. But good to hear again. Especially since my copy STILL hasn't been returned to me. Or my copy of Hitchens. You know who you are...

Other Comments by Cartomancer

3. Comment #92117 by Diacanu on November 29, 2007 at 10:30 pm

Grr, Quicktime 7.
My computer won't take it.
Could anyone rip it to avi or mpeg?

Other Comments by Diacanu

4. Comment #92125 by gd_edi on November 29, 2007 at 10:48 pm

Brilliant! Seriously outstanding interview!

Other Comments by gd_edi

5. Comment #92142 by jharps on November 30, 2007 at 12:24 am

@Diacanu

Maybe you would find this file conversion utility useful available from www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

The site is a bit painful to navigate but the software (once you figure out how to download it) does a superb job (and will convert MOV files to a vast number of other formats). Oh yeah, it's freeware too :-)

Dunno if it will work but the following link is a direct download. If you're worried about spyware etc then please check it out via google or your favourite resource before downloading. I use it all the time but then I might be an evil spammer/hijacker type of person ;-)

Hope you find it useful.

Direct download link:
http://www.erightsoft.info/GetFile.php?SUPERsetup.exe

Other Comments by jharps

6. Comment #92173 by mejdrich on November 30, 2007 at 2:24 am

lol Question #2 was exquisite. Dawkins eyes got huge, 'are you serious?'

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7. Comment #92199 by Incredulous on November 30, 2007 at 3:35 am

Richard Dawkins is one of the few people I could listen to over and over again when he's talking about his passion, science, or when he's just talking intelligently as in this video.

If ever anyone needed a reason to develop a love of life or lacked that bit of confidence to simply live life to the full in their own inimitable style, without offending others naturally, then just let this guy loose on them.

Great to see an interviewer who asked pertinent questions and let the man speak.

Other Comments by Incredulous

8. Comment #92207 by RickM on November 30, 2007 at 3:57 am

Nice job, Prof. D.

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9. Comment #92222 by albacore on November 30, 2007 at 4:56 am

Excellent interview but I had to wake up Internet Explorer to view it as it wouldn't run in Firefox except in 5-second hiccups. Anyone else find this?

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10. Comment #92234 by schwie on November 30, 2007 at 5:38 am

Works fine for me in both Firefox (2.008 and 2.010) and Safari (3.0.4).

Dawkins' poise and intelligently crafted responses are outstanding. Long live RD!

Other Comments by schwie

11. Comment #92268 by eXcommunicate on November 30, 2007 at 7:03 am

Works fine on my FireFox. Anyways, good interview. Where does Allan Gregg's show air? What network/stations?

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12. Comment #92300 by Pallinn on November 30, 2007 at 8:52 am

Apart from being the genuinely smart guy that he certainly is, I think Richard has something to be thankful for in his voice. He has a bit of that Sean Connery thing going on, that "I'd listen to that guy read the damn phonebook". Not that the accent is similar mind you, just the pleasant way he speaks.

It does take him a few minutes of every interview to really open up though, he always looks a bit less than happy in the beginning. But with that said, I'd give my left pinky for his public speaking ability!

Other Comments by Pallinn

13. Comment #92332 by Socrates on November 30, 2007 at 9:58 am

eXcommunicate- Looks like TVO, based on the graphic (see http://www.tvo.org/).

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14. Comment #92338 by whig on November 30, 2007 at 10:10 am

Towards the end, he made the point of how a precise sperm had to meet the egg and then not split to make an identical twin. That doesn't even nearly show the amount of chance that was required for each one of us to be here. He makes the point better in Unweaving the Rainbow, I think, when he stresses that each of us needs to have come from an unending line of successful ancestors. Think of the number of small chances that could have occurred that our parents hadn't met, that each of their parents hadn't met, and so on to the primordial sludge.

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15. Comment #92373 by SebastianSylvan on November 30, 2007 at 11:18 am

I think a worthwhile thing to point out when people say "You can't prove it, and you can't disprove it" is that the two endeavours (of proving or disproving) are very very different.

Disproving god is, as Dawkins points out, impossible (but a very weak argument as many things are impossible to disprove).

There is, however, absolutely no reason for why proving the existence of god should be said to be impossible! It's perfectly plausible, assuming that the right evidence could be demonstrated. It just so happens that nobody has succeded yet, but that's an issue of practical difficulties, not a problem in principle.

So no, it's not impossible to prove the existence of god, it's just that nobody has succeded yet (the prime practical difficulty being his non-existence, in my opinion).

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16. Comment #92398 by Denevius on November 30, 2007 at 12:32 pm

As always, most of Dawkins answers were great. I do think, however, that further explanation was needed with the question of the evolutionary importance of religion to human survival.

To simplify the survival-of-the-fittest argument, it seems like once upon a time in human development, there were those who were not persuaded by "religious/spiritual" belief, but that those died off, and what we're left with is a world full of people who believe in religion.

Now, it can be argued that, today, this belief needs to die off, and that the best case scenario is that those without such religious inclinations are the ones who'll survive.

But if religion persists in being a part of humankind, and humans, despite the seeming odds, continue to survive and not kill each other off, then there may be more to religion than Dawkins and other atheists wish to admit.

To compare it to a virus doesn't seem appropriate if humans keep surviving, growing, multiplying with this virus.

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17. Comment #92412 by SurfDude on November 30, 2007 at 12:58 pm

Re Comment 16.

All religions, especially the evangelical and fundamentalist varieties, encourage their credulous adherents to breed like rabbits, thereby propagating their particular brand of nonsense. The majority of atheists / humanists etc tend to be educated and enlightened and if they breed at all, it usually results in smaller families.

We will not get rid of religion for a very, very long time because it will out-breed us rationalists. That being said, I plan to give it a damn good kicking wherever I can.

Other Comments by SurfDude

18. Comment #92415 by SurfDude on November 30, 2007 at 1:02 pm

I almost forgot! Excellent interview - calm, thoughtful and respectful. Anyone wavering in their belief will find much comfort in RD's words.

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19. Comment #92449 by Pravda on November 30, 2007 at 2:20 pm

As usual it is a pleasure to listen to Richard Dawkins. He's a model of excellence in every regard, a very rare kind of person. I always feel that during these short interviews it is too difficult to properly explain things such as the virus analogy, and as a result it comes out sounding ruthless and cold. Even if we knew very little about evolution, religion is far too absurd, irrational, and self-contradictory for any intellectually curious, enlightened, educated person to adopt or believe. Richard is just ahead of his time. And one more thing - what an utterly mellifluous voice he has.

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20. Comment #92455 by steve99 on November 30, 2007 at 2:29 pm

All religions, especially the evangelical and fundamentalist varieties, encourage their credulous adherents to breed like rabbits, thereby propagating their particular brand of nonsense.

Not all. There is an interesting exception: The Shakers. This is a christian sect that encourages celibacy for all members. It gains new members only by converts. Not surprisingly, there are only a few members left!

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21. Comment #92463 by PLAYBALL on November 30, 2007 at 2:48 pm

20. Comment #92455 by steve99

Hilarious Steve!!!

Other Comments by PLAYBALL

22. Comment #92465 by PaulJ on November 30, 2007 at 2:54 pm

Excellent interview.

I wonder, however, if RD missed a point that the interviewer raised concerning the evolutionary explanation for religious belief. When discussing the tendency for children to believe what they're told by authority figures - such as parents - the interviewer asked about the notion that 'God loves you and will protect you' (I can't remember his exact words). I thought he was going to press RD for an explanation of how this particular belief, inculcated into children, would tend to increase their survival (when in fact it might lead them to act rashly). But the discussion moved quickly on to another aspect of TGD.

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23. Comment #92495 by Kinobe on November 30, 2007 at 4:08 pm

Re comments 16 and 22

My understanding is that it is not the beliefs themselves that require a Darwinian explanation. Richard's point is that it is the tendency to believe what an authority figure tells you that can be explained via natural selection.

This is different from saying that natural selection favours a tendency to believe an authority figure when they tell you that there is a god (and this is how he plays the game etc).

What a parent (the principal authority figure) will instruct their child is what they themselves believe. The beliefs that tend to get passed on are beliefs that the parent has. Some of these are practically useful for the child's survival (and this would explain why natural selection favours species whose children believe authority figures / their parents) while others are not (such as that homosexuality is wrong, women are not as intelligent as men, or that there is a god up there looking out for you).

If you want an explanation as to why/how the belief in god, in particular, spreads so potently, I would be pointing to something like Dan Dennett's book.

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24. Comment #92509 by TonyA on November 30, 2007 at 4:41 pm

Regarding 16. Comment #92398 by Denevius

But if religion persists in being a part of humankind, and humans, despite the seeming odds, continue to survive and not kill each other off, then there may be more to religion than Dawkins and other atheists wish to admit.

This is faith-based reasoning. Replace "religion" with "the common cold" or "ignorance" to see the folly.

To simplify the survival-of-the-fittest argument, it seems like once upon a time in human development, there were those who were not persuaded by "religious/spiritual" belief, but that those died off, and what we're left with is a world full of people who believe in religion.

You've simplified it until it doesn't mean the same thing. If you did not read the discussion about "misfiring" in The God Delusion, then perhaps you don't understand his point.

Dawkins' point is that non-religious mechanisms which enhance survivability also make it easier for people to be unwitting carriers of religious beliefs. This is because we have a built-in, "trust your parents/leaders/elders" mechanism in our brains. That this mechanism also allows us to be fed superstitions and lies is an unfortunate, but understandable consequence. It is difficult to "breed out" the misfeature because it remains valuable when used for its original purposes.

Instead, we should use our brains to reevaluate these "trusted inputs" and discard the insane and absurd ones.

Other Comments by TonyA

25. Comment #92512 by WSteG on November 30, 2007 at 4:45 pm

– Yes, good interview. The reason why is always the same: not the goodness of the interviewee (we take that as a given here) but the goodness of the interviewer. A bad interviewer can make Jonathan Miller seem dull, a good one George W Bush seem smart.

– The chances against our being here are pretty long. If the amoeba had divided in the primeval sludge a few seconds earlier or later, NONE of us would have made it.

– Finally, I have one major beef with RD and I can see it ain't going to go away. It's that final loss of nerve – I nearly wrote of faith – that is in the book and appears again here, expressed as the existence of god being "very, very improbable indeed". No, sir: not improbable but impossible. Let's keep to it being delusional and not let the supernaturalists see the makings of a wedge called very, very improbable indeed. We really don't need to give them that.

See my blog entry 'Let Miss Gibbons Go or the Bear Gets It' at wstegcommonsense.blogspot.com

Other Comments by WSteG

26. Comment #92520 by Denevius on November 30, 2007 at 5:17 pm

TonyA said: "Dawkins' point is that non-religious mechanisms which enhance survivability also make it easier for people to be unwitting carriers of religious beliefs. This is because we have a built-in, "trust your parents/leaders/elders" mechanism in our brains. That this mechanism also allows us to be fed superstitions and lies is an unfortunate, but understandable consequence. It is difficult to "breed out" the misfeature because it remains valuable when used for its original purposes."

My point, however, is that even if the mechanism is there, why has it allowed religion, in particular, to continue to thrive in human consciousness?

I would assume, and someone can point out otherwise, that there have been other manifestations borne from this mechanism in our brains. Do you agree or disagree with this?

If you agree, how do you explain the fact that the other manifestations are no longer around, but religion persists from generation to generation?

TonyA: "This is faith-based reasoning. Replace "religion" with "the common cold" or "ignorance" to see the folly."

I'm not a scientists, but I thought illness was needed to build up the immune system? Would not the common cold have had evolutionary benefits? Seems like by the fact that it's still around, it had to have been part of the biological combination to keep humans surviving over the generations.

And I don't see how putting "ignorance" in the stead of religion makes a good point at all.

Other Comments by Denevius

27. Comment #92524 by Spinoza on November 30, 2007 at 5:31 pm

Gregg messed up the meaning of 'epistemological'.

He meant 'metaphysical'.

"Why are we here?" is NOT an epistemological question, Mr. Gregg. Go back to PHL101 please.

Other Comments by Spinoza

28. Comment #92525 by Corylus on November 30, 2007 at 5:33 pm

Denevius

....if your are talking from a purely evolutionary understanding of why religion survives you might like to check our Dennett's notion of the 'intentional stance'. This concerns how we tend to assign motivations and feelings to things around us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_stance

If we do not do this when we should we are at greater risk of being eaten/killed or otherwise misused by prey.

If we do this when we should not, then we rarely suffer adverse consequences.

We survive more when we assign agency.

Other Comments by Corylus

29. Comment #92529 by Spinoza on November 30, 2007 at 5:42 pm

What the hell. :|

He did it again.

EPISTEMOLOGY IS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE, NOT ONTOLOGY!!!

... good reasons to keep philosophers around :)

We don't play GAMES with words.

'Words' is serious business.

Other Comments by Spinoza

30. Comment #92531 by Corylus on November 30, 2007 at 5:50 pm

Spinoza

EPISTEMOLOGY IS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE, NOT ONTOLOGY!!!

Doesn't ontology come first though?

Sorry - only playing, but you make me smile when you're wound up :)

Other Comments by Corylus

31. Comment #92534 by Quine on November 30, 2007 at 5:54 pm

Spinoza:

'Words' is serious business.

Yes, that is exactly how con men make their business.

Other Comments by Quine

32. Comment #92539 by Spinoza on November 30, 2007 at 6:15 pm

Quine, yes, but lets be CLEAR. Con men make their business in ambiguity and ignorance (of Sinn and Bedeutung).

Philosophers make their business doing just the opposite, in the Aufklärung and Abklärung of words.

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33. Comment #92542 by robotaholic on November 30, 2007 at 6:16 pm

I seriously love hearing Professor Dawkins speak.

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34. Comment #92557 by TonyA on November 30, 2007 at 7:00 pm

Denevius said

My point, however, is that even if the mechanism is there, why has it allowed religion, in particular, to continue to thrive in human consciousness?

Because the mechanism is not very good at, or perhaps incapable of, distinguishing between truthful wisdom and untruthful wisdom.

I would assume, and someone can point out otherwise, that there have been other manifestations borne from this mechanism in our brains. Do you agree or disagree with this?

I agree with this. If you do as well, then you're close to understanding why people are so susceptible to ideas such as religion, and without attempting to equate these, things such as racial supremacy and ufology.

If you agree, how do you explain the fact that the other manifestations are no longer around, but religion persists from generation to generation?

Because that isn't a fact. There are many, many other manifestations around. They take the form of taboos, pseudosciences, superstitions, etc. I think that many manifestations are even older than monotheism.

There is an apparently innate wonder about where we came from. For many (tens of?) thousands of years, we have wondered where we came from but lacked the necessary skills to arrive at a reasonable answer. In the absence of good answers, most people had little option but to believe improbable fairy tales.

I'll grant to you that religion has been more successful as a mental parasite than most other forms of irrational belief, but I think this is due to a highly developed and sophisticated system of protections and mental tricks that have enabled the survival of the religious belief system.

I understand that there is no evidence to suggest that evolution has acted on us to produce a brain more receptive to religion in particular. I think religion piggy-backs onto a more primitive and useful function.

I'm not a scientists, but I thought illness was needed to build up the immune system? Would not the common cold have had evolutionary benefits? Seems like by the fact that it's still around, it had to have been part of the biological combination to keep humans surviving over the generations.

Just because we have it doesn't mean it has to be good for us. Besides, the cold virus (category) is an invader, it isn't part of what we are. Likewise, I think that religion is an invader, it isn't part of what we are.

And I don't see how putting "ignorance" in the stead of religion makes a good point at all.

Your statement seemed to imply that only beneficial things could persist indefinitely in the face of "survival of the fittest." My understanding is that evolution does not promise that we are the fittest, only that we are sufficiently fit.

The word "ignorance" might have seemed like a snarky choice, but it serves to illustrate that the idea in question is not an inherent biological feature, but rather the way in which we are using (or not using) a biological feature. In other words, evolution gives us a brain with certain abilities, but we can use it for other purposes than that for which it was evolved.

Other Comments by TonyA

35. Comment #92558 by GSP on November 30, 2007 at 7:09 pm

Dawkins: (paraphrased) "We do not have a Darwinian explanation for altruism, but we will find it."

This is most assuredly a form of faith. Perhaps not faith in the sense of "God exists," but faith nonetheless. At the very least it is faith in a process.

It is faith because he may be wrong. It is faith because he is making an assertion about a future prospect with no evidence for it in the present. It is an inference, similar to "the sun will rise tomorrow." I cannot prove it, but given the way things have been, it will probably happen.

As atheists I think we need to clarify "faith" as a concept. For instance, faith such as we mean when speaking of the religious is an assertion of some reality in which that reality relies on faith to exist. Faith in the Dawkins sense is inference and doesn't rely on our faith for it to exist. It is almost a faith in ourselves. A faith that our observations have given us all we know, and that they will continue to do so. It is a faith that is worlds away from the sort of faith the religious mean, but it is a faith in the modern sense of the term.

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36. Comment #92561 by scooternyc on November 30, 2007 at 7:13 pm

Religious invoking altruism is more subjugation of self for sacrifice with its roots in victimization, self-reward and fraud.

The simplicity of life from one's perspective toward a desire to live in a world of reciprocity, kindness, generosity are reasons enough to do good toward humankind.

"Where are your morals without religion?"

"I need no such 'belief' as I merely desire to live in a world where kindness is abundant. People are accountable and responsible for individual choices. These are reasons enough, what more do you need?"

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37. Comment #92572 by Quine on November 30, 2007 at 7:35 pm

Spinoza, I am sure you know I am on your side of this. I did, also, wince twice listening to Gregg. When Prof. Dawkins does these interviews, these days, I suspect he is also careful about the words in the questions he is asked. Clearly, in this case he was comfortable to go ahead and answer the question he suspected Gregg meant without either first correcting Gregg, or working the correction into his answer (although, he did on the first, skip over the erroneous categorization of the specific questions and just answered those questions).

The constant danger of being misquoted in the press has put pressure on Prof. Dawkins, and the others in his position, to have to be vigilant against a situation in which a questioner asks an erroneous question, gets the answer to the question that should have been asked, and then that is taken out of context to the detriment of the interviewee. I was gratified when Prof. Dawkins stopped Gregg and said it depends on what you mean by 'god.' Richard then went into a very nice description of the misquoting of Einstein. It was an excellent pushback against a gathering misquoting of cosmologists we see today.

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38. Comment #92580 by tony the coastie on November 30, 2007 at 7:45 pm

Wonderful summary. I, too, enjoy Professor Dawkins' good and eloquent speech. Bravo, Sir.

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39. Comment #92581 by stptrck75 on November 30, 2007 at 7:46 pm

It just baffles me that anyone still gives any credence to religion.
Amsterdam here I come.

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40. Comment #92582 by Don_Quix on November 30, 2007 at 7:47 pm

Dawkins: (paraphrased) "We do not have a Darwinian explanation for altruism, but we will find it."

This is most assuredly a form of faith. Perhaps not faith in the sense of "God exists," but faith nonetheless. At the very least it is faith in a process.

I interpreted Prof. Dawkins' remark about altruism to mean that he believes it is probable that a scientific explanation for altruism will eventually be found through further scientific study. I think any "faith" or "belief" he has in this really means "confidence", based on his professional experience and the past performance of science....but any "faith" he has is clearly rooted in rationality and evidence.

Having faith (read: confidence) in empirical evidence you have gathered and studied for decades, and drawing conclusions from that evidence, is significantly different than having blind faith in something you read once in some random ancient book.

It's sort of like if I rolled a 6-sided die that had a 0 on five sides and a 1 on one side. I could, with a fair amount of confidence, pronounce my "faith" that the die will land on 0 on the next roll. Except that the odds of scientists finding a scientific/Darwinian solution for altruism are probably (again a variation of probable) quite higher than 5 in 6. :)

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41. Comment #92595 by Spinoza on November 30, 2007 at 9:22 pm

Yes, I was glad to see him make that point about Einstein (one that I make ALL THE TIME, seeing as how Einstein was as big a fan of Spinoza as I am, if not bigger...).

I have recently begun to try and develop a position explaining why Pantheism, at least in the Spinozistic or monistic naturalist sense, is effectively equivalent to atheism, and differs only with respect to the use of that one little 3-letter epithet. The one that makes people think Einstein was a theist.

Careful reading of many seemingly theistic philosophers of the early modern period often reveals a calculated and extremely effective means of undermining the orthodoxy... whilst simultaneously SEEMING to retain non-heterodox language.

That is "Spinoza: The God-intoxicated atheist."

Or Hobbes, who was clearly a materialist, atheist, who mentions God many times over in Leviathan... (for obvious reasons).

I have often thought that a great way to destroy "religion" (as it has been hitherto practiced for the most part) would be to simply usurp and redefine the word "God", as Spinoza's God... and to redefine "pious" in Spinoza's terms... as love of "God" (meaning nature).

In such terms, Prof. Dawkins (as I'm sure he knows) is one of the most pious men alive. (as are all we men of the mind who live by knowledge or rationalism).

... which is why I come down so hard on the apparently anti-intellectual side of the "new atheism" movement...

It does matter WHY people believe what they believe, insofar as rationality requires it of you.

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42. Comment #92675 by TranshumanAtheist on December 1, 2007 at 7:20 am

Re: SurfDude's comment # 17

All religions, especially the evangelical and fundamentalist varieties, encourage their credulous adherents to breed like rabbits, thereby propagating their particular brand of nonsense. The majority of atheists / humanists etc tend to be educated and enlightened and if they breed at all, it usually results in smaller families.

But in a generation Iran (a country much in the news lately) has developed from a fecund, religiously obsessed society to one with European-level birthrates and a strong secularizing trend. If that can happen to one of the strongholds of radical Islam that quickly, then I don't see why it can't happen to other god-poisoned societies as well.

Reference:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20071125_One_Last_Thing___Irans_future.html

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43. Comment #92717 by eXcommunicate on December 1, 2007 at 10:00 am

Dawkins: (paraphrased) "We do not have a Darwinian explanation for altruism, but we will find it."

This is most assuredly a form of faith. Perhaps not faith in the sense of "God exists," but faith nonetheless. At the very least it is faith in a process.

I suspect it's rather more like confidence than "faith."

Other Comments by eXcommunicate

44. Comment #92720 by prettygoodformonkeys on December 1, 2007 at 10:08 am

All very well and good, but is it really necessary for him to be so strident, arrogant, and shrill?

;)

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45. Comment #92750 by Foth on December 1, 2007 at 11:45 am

Richard seems kind of grumpy in this one!

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46. Comment #92888 by tieInterceptor on December 1, 2007 at 4:53 pm

good interview,

I would have added, on the question of morality and the bible, the answer from Hitchens. That obviously before the 10 commandments, the world already knew well enough that killing and stealing was bad. the Greeks for example.

That answer to me is more satisfying.

Other Comments by tieInterceptor

47. Comment #92895 by Wrought on December 1, 2007 at 5:18 pm

It's always good when the thread of the conversation veers toward biology, because it lets the prof riff on the stuff he's best at. Great to hear again.

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48. Comment #92927 by bluebird on December 1, 2007 at 7:14 pm

Per altruism, Professor Dawkins touches on it here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132-7,00.html


Pleasant interview, I enjoyed it.

Other Comments by bluebird

49. Comment #92942 by GSP on December 1, 2007 at 7:44 pm

To both of you (eXcommunicate and Don_Quix) that answered my post with a (paraphrased) "what Dawkins meant was 'confidence:'" Do not the religious have confidence that God exists? Even confidence does not work in this context. Dawkins can be confident in his "faith" and the religious can be confident in theirs.

My point is: what does Dawkins mean when he says he "knows" we will find the Darwinian explanation for altruism? This is faith, no? What kind of faith?

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50. Comment #92962 by Dr Benway on December 1, 2007 at 8:38 pm

what does Dawkins mean when he says he "knows" we will find the Darwinian explanation for altruism? This is faith, no? What kind of faith?

He means that we probably will find a Darwinian explanation for altruism.

Note that a probability estimation is different from the acceptance of a proposition without any corroborative evidence - e.g., faith that Jesus was born of a virgin. These sorts of religious propositions are accepted because people deem it virtuous to do so.

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