1. Comment #215342 by ukvillafan on July 21, 2008 at 4:56 pm

So, just to stop those of you who like claiming to be first!

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2. Comment #215345 by Edamus on July 21, 2008 at 5:01 pm

I definately agree with Prof. Dawkins assertion that Evolution by Natural Selection is really not that hard to believe. I look forward to more intellegent 8 year olds then 40 year old anti-Evolution theists...

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3. Comment #215347 by kaiser on July 21, 2008 at 5:05 pm

Nice short interview and a very fair host.

There is also an incredible stupid incaller - unbelievable how many idiotic things this person is able to say in such a short time.

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4. Comment #215349 by Yaffle75 on July 21, 2008 at 5:06 pm

How refreshing to see Dawkins questioned by a TV interviewer who listens to him, asks objective questions in a spirit of true journalism, and has obviously researched The God Delusion beforehand.

It is fascinating to compare the Al-Jazeera coverage (albeit the English Al-Jazeera coverage) with that of many US networks, and recall how most of those US networks claim that Al Jazeera is a pit of seething fundamentalist propaganda. I think this contrast between their respective treatments of Dawkins is very illuminating.

I'm also very impressed by the way Dawkins slightly modifies his tone here, presumably bearing in mind that there is a large muslim audience. His precise wording is a masterclass in reasonability.

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5. Comment #215350 by HourglassMemory on July 21, 2008 at 5:08 pm

How disturbing to hear a caller of a 21st century call-in show, saying "Islam says we come from Adam, peace be upon him, so we can't come from monkeys"
How sad.
A lot of ignorance was shown in this clip, except from the interviewer and Dawkins and the comment "Religion stops progess."

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6. Comment #215352 by Apathy personified on July 21, 2008 at 5:10 pm

1. Comment #215342 by ukvillafan on July 21, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Please make a comment about the interview.

It kinda felt like the interviewer was setting up RD for answers, rather than asking searching questions, though it was a better interview than most.
I just get the feeling that these interviews all deal with the same questions and know exactly what they are gonna get as an answer.

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7. Comment #215353 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 5:11 pm

Think how much better all those creationists would be if they would only consult their pineal gland!

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8. Comment #215354 by ukvillafan on July 21, 2008 at 5:11 pm

I recommend Al Jazeera for a different perspective. I rarely watch tv news but when I do, I find the propagandist nature of much that is transmitted in the UK and the US quite nauseating.

I do think the featured caller was trying to use the old "Hitler's policies were based on Darwinism" argument, so I am surprised the Prof didn't pick up on it.

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9. Comment #215356 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 5:22 pm

Those creationists always suffer from the same aneristic illusion - they always say to Dawkins one more more of the following:

...Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were the greatest mass murderers of all time and they were atheists.

or

...How can you be moral without god? If I didn't have god, I would go around raping, killing, plundering, and being a total bum to my heart's content.

or

...Being an atheist requires just as much faith as being a Christian does.

or

...I just can't understand how I could have evolved from an ape. I mean, look around, why haven't the other monkeys evolved into humans?

etc.

It all becomes quite tedious quite expediently and I can sympathize with Dawkin's cogent if rather bland use of the same examples to excoriate the same inane, moronic cavils every time. Sometimes I wish Richard would talk a bit more about selfish genes when refuting creationist arguments or mix it up a bit, you know?

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10. Comment #215357 by Quine on July 21, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Comment #215354 by ukvillafan

I am sure he did pick it up, but was able to clear the question without having to say "Hitler." A good move on Richard's part.

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11. Comment #215358 by Nova on July 21, 2008 at 5:34 pm

That Muslim Chav was hilarious - "Allah's great i'n'it!".

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12. Comment #215359 by Wosret on July 21, 2008 at 5:36 pm

"You are entitled to your belief in Adam, it is however false."

I cracked up. RD is cool as shit. I just remembered why I love his public appearances so much.

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13. Comment #215360 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 5:40 pm

It's interesting that RD believes that in ten million years or so that the human species will have evolved/become extinct, end of story. I believe that the Singularity will occur quite soon in fact and don't regard it as being too anthropocentric of a belief as there is plentiful evidence that it could very well occur and take over from biological evolution.

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14. Comment #215361 by thewhitepearl on July 21, 2008 at 5:44 pm

I wish there were more programs like this, where emails and calls are sent in for review and rebuttal. But on the other hand I'm sure it get's frustrating answering the same questions and arguments.

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15. Comment #215362 by Spinoza on July 21, 2008 at 5:45 pm

Not bad...

I never know what to say to people who say things like "Islam tells us..." or "The Bible says...", I mean, if I were to aim to try and convince them that they're wrong... It seems like there probably isn't anything one could say... except perhaps what Dawkins did say, which is simply "You're wrong."

But I keep getting this feeling that it's just so futile... :(

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16. Comment #215365 by riki on July 21, 2008 at 5:54 pm

Yes good to avoid mentioning the word "Hitler" of "Nazi's" in any argument or debate. It's just a pointless extreme.

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17. Comment #215368 by Indridcold on July 21, 2008 at 5:59 pm

In appears that Richard has argued these points so much that he's able to get his case across in very clear and patient ways. Very inspiring!

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18. Comment #215370 by tieInterceptor on July 21, 2008 at 6:03 pm

Good interview,

glad to see Dawkins not holding his tongue after that nutter called saying "evolution is false because the particular myth my parents indoctrinated me into, tells me quite explicitly that we come from Adam (peace be upon him), so you are wrong!, hah take that"

... seriously and, peace be upon him?... it really bothers me when they add that line after everything.

I'm happy to see that the choice of verbal diarrhoea is starting to narrow... they do not come with new stuff that's for sure... and it helps that now we have short and water tight logic answers to most of the usual theist crap.

I must suggest thought that mr Dawkins could have added in there the tried and tested "who designed the designer??" it's a simple answer and it exposes the fallacy quite well.

I'm just guessing that quite a large % of the audience is too thick to understand the more winded answer of ... "for it to make any sense, a God, by definition, has to be more complex and more powerful than the universe that he is postulated to create, so it doesn't really solve anything to bring forth a supernatural intelligence as the answer to the big question, because a god just leads to an infinite regress"

;)

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19. Comment #215371 by MorituriMax on July 21, 2008 at 6:04 pm

Was it just me or was the video real choppy and not synced with the audio? Nobody else here commented on it so not sure.

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20. Comment #215374 by Janus on July 21, 2008 at 6:13 pm

It's not just you, but no one cares. :P

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21. Comment #215376 by HappyPrimate on July 21, 2008 at 6:18 pm

Just thought I'd watch the video again and leave a comment on the YouTube site but the video is no longer available there. Wonder why?

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22. Comment #215377 by Wosret on July 21, 2008 at 6:21 pm

13. Comment #215360 by PristinePanda

His belief is quite reasonable. If we consider our species to be a successful species (which is pushing it being that we are only roughly 200 thousand years old) then based on past successful species, we should expect to last about eight million years. Given the precedent set by other successful species.

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23. Comment #215378 by croatcat on July 21, 2008 at 6:23 pm

Abdul from Scotland forgot a "peace be upon him" after an Adam. Will he be suffering some sort of punishment for that? One less virgin perhaps?

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24. Comment #215379 by NineBerry on July 21, 2008 at 6:29 pm

Just thought I'd watch the video again and leave a comment on the YouTube site but the video is no longer available there. Wonder why?
"We are currently performing site maintenance. Be cool - we'll be back 100% in a bit."

;)

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25. Comment #215380 by chuckgoecke on July 21, 2008 at 6:30 pm

I liked it! This was a nice, fair, concise interview, and the questions were reasonable and interesting. The caller questions were also fair and representative of what to be expected from the viewer audience, and they were simple for Richard to respond to. Considering how crappy the quality of interviewing and discourse is on most American talk programs(ie Fox News and others on the New Yorker cover cartoon for example), I'm fairly impressed with this station.

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26. Comment #215382 by onanyes on July 21, 2008 at 6:31 pm

I live in the US, and well, Al Jazeera often gives more in depth news features than most US networks. Of course, that isn't saying much.

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27. Comment #215383 by Donald on July 21, 2008 at 6:34 pm

I am perpetually impressed by Dawkins ability to remain calm in the face of ignorant dogmatic assertions, and his care to stress the positive virtues of evolution knowledge, rather than criticising Islamic beliefs. I was slightly surprised by his answer "no" to the question "do you feel there is a place for religion in society?", but delighted to hear it. Nicely done.

The interviewer was great. Very good questions, and no pro-religious bias applied to Dawkins.

Is this the interview that is one of a pair with Khan interviewing Dinesh D'Souza for the other one? Very short interview if so. Perhaps there is more to come.

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28. Comment #215384 by T4Baxter on July 21, 2008 at 6:39 pm

I'd like for R D to collaborate with his scientist, historian, theologian, psychiatry friends and colleges to strip all the redundancy away, and deliver short information rich responses which rebut each of these 'typical questions'. The evidence is there, they just don't seem to put it all into the rebuttal.
For example Q: Second world war! bleat bleat!
A: Hitler claimed to be Christian, Islam and Christianities history of Jewish relations etc etc.
Thats the trouble, we need factual, common sense, responses that circumvent their faith by appealing directly to their logic, reason. Then they will be left either: feeling like a puppet, defending the faith against their own rational judgment. Or attempting to reconcile the inconsistency in their position.
Give us the answers backed up by the evidence, in easy to digest sound bites, so they become effective memes! well known enough, that they become the first thing that crops to mind for the believers, even before they pose the questions!
They have their bible, We want our memes :)

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29. Comment #215387 by skybri on July 21, 2008 at 6:54 pm

...loved the speculation of "where will we be in a million years?" If you go forward a million, and look back a million, then you can answer the creationist question: "Where are all the half and half versions?" Answer: Go look in the mirror...

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30. Comment #215388 by T4Baxter on July 21, 2008 at 7:02 pm

riki: I love the picci of fizzgigg, awesome movie.

I would suggest that the 'infinite regress' argument is wasted on people for whom God exists outside of time, where before and after are brushed aside as states that don't apply to the all-mighty. The best we can hope for is an argument from observable reality like, if God did make the earth, man and everything, does he not also take responsibility tsunami's, floods etc caused by the nature of his design. You believe in purpose? What do you think the tsunami victims had planned for the following week? Celebrating their personal relationship with God on Sunday Perhaps. Give them a choice between being a morally bankrupt twit in condemning the victims as 'out of favor', or conceding that the God they claim exists is him/herself a morally bankrupt twit. Driving the religious on their holy books moral perspective, where it differs from society at large, makes them look abhorrent in front of their average peer group. It wouldn't take long for young people in this situation to reject their religious views in order to fit in, get the girl etc. Well, you wouldn't think...
Madness,

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31. Comment #215390 by Vinelectric on July 21, 2008 at 7:07 pm

A dream come true!

Welcome Welcome Proff...

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32. Comment #215391 by rod-the-farmer on July 21, 2008 at 7:09 pm

Today there was an article about dinosaur tracks found in Yemen. The locals are very impressed, and hope it drives tourism.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL2024546120080522

There did not seem to be much objection to the proposed age of the tracks, from the locals, who one might assume did not have a really broad science education.

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33. Comment #215396 by PristinePanda on July 21, 2008 at 7:22 pm

Comment #215377 by Mitchell Gilks on July 21, 2008 at 6:21 pm

His belief is quite reasonable. If we consider our species to be a successful species (which is pushing it being that we are only roughly 200 thousand years old) then based on past successful species, we should expect to last about eight million years. Given the precedent set by other successful species.

His belief, although apparently initially reasonable, is not so if you consider the accelerating growth of human technology (which is now just passing the knee of the curve). It's possible that within 40 years a technological singularity will occur which will totally eclipse human intelligence. It is an innate nature of evolutionary processes to accelerate as time progresses: firstly, the introduction of DNA; secondly, the human prefrontal lobes; thirdly, the creation of technology, and fourthly the eclipse of human intelligence via GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics) with an emphasis on robotics.

It is fallacious to assume that technology will continue to evolve in a linear fashion; we are just now reaching the knee of the curve of an exponential phenomena, at which point it will become quite evident to all that technological growth exhibits exponential, and in some cases, double exponential growth.

Natural selection is in the process of being eclipsed by technology and will most likely be entirely irrelevant within the next half a century. When a computer passes the Turing Test - and in all likelihood that will occur by the mid 2020s - Strong AI will inevitably eclipse us.

You might be interested in reading The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil. You should also probably read a short bio of Ray Kurzweil and objectively observe the accuracy of his past predictions. Many people disagree with his future predictions, but quite a few respectable scientists agree with his views as well. I'm sure you'd find it intellectually stimulating, at the very least. :D

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

www.kurzweilai.net

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34. Comment #215397 by T4Baxter on July 21, 2008 at 7:22 pm

LOL I bought it on DVD not all that long ago in a moment of unbridled nostalgia! Jim Henson is quite something isn't he!? All those plants and critters wiggling and hopping about, lends a real sense of credibility to the environments... I never really appreciated it as a kiddly wink but it's quite shocking, in the best possible way! :)

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35. Comment #215398 by thewhitepearl on July 21, 2008 at 7:22 pm

Rad, Bax

Take the movie talk to the appropriate thread if it's going to go any further. This thread isn't damaged yet. :)

Max,

Yeah the video was choppy for me as well. It looked like everything was in slow-mo and it took them about 6 seconds to blink.

Rod,

They didn't happen to find human footprints next to these tracks too did they?

Thanks for the link. That's cool.

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36. Comment #215403 by T4Baxter on July 21, 2008 at 7:52 pm

Sorry pearl, everybody, your quite right :)

My video seemed ok, that caller 'peace be upon him', was brilliant! How can you argue for the veracity of the Koran using evidence sourced from the... Koran... It's like: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is fantasy, Beavers can't speak English!
"Ah, I think you'll find that they can, look! it is written, here in Narnia..."

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37. Comment #215404 by Paine on July 21, 2008 at 7:53 pm

Riz Khan is former CNN. I cant believe how dumb the American media is. I find it amazing that CNN international is a hundred times better than CNN America. Or any other American news network. And then they complain that no one is watching them.
Ridiculous.

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38. Comment #215405 by Wosret on July 21, 2008 at 8:01 pm

Pfft, do they have wolfie and the situation room? I don't think so.

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39. Comment #215407 by T4Baxter on July 21, 2008 at 8:08 pm

Pristine Panda,
I've wondered about this a lot. If we are to survive the death of our sun or any number of other travesties that will no doubt impact our world in the distant future, we will almost certainly have to fall back on our technology to save ourselves. Though I ponder on the possibility of creating storage devices capable of saving our 'mindstates' in such a way that we can say, "yes doctor I definitely feel like me... and I remember my mothers maiden name, but I don't like being part of a keyring!" At that stage we could be completely free of our mortal limitations... Come on tech guys! HD projectors are all very well but where's my '80Tb soulsafe' device?

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40. Comment #215408 by b0ltzm0n on July 21, 2008 at 8:16 pm

I think PristinePanda's subject was summmed up by some famous scientist many year ago:

"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination."

Basically, when machines of our making become smart enough to improve themselves this will start an exponential increase in our understanding of everything, in ways that we aren't capable of predicting. Fun times!

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41. Comment #215423 by Zaphod on July 21, 2008 at 9:16 pm

When confronted with a theist making claims about their holy book (which isn't magic) I respond by quoting passages of any fictional book within reach. I particularly like using The Odyssey or the Iliad for obvious reasons.

@Spinoza. I often feel the same and when I do feel like this I tend to mock them.

:-D

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42. Comment #215429 by Tumara Baap on July 21, 2008 at 10:07 pm

I'd never imagined this is what Al-Jazeera is like. These guys seem far more professional and even handed than Fox news. No wonder... heard a guy on NPR a while back who claimed that Fox is not allowed to re-broadcast from British soil, whereas Al-Jazeera is! Apparently Fox fell foul of British journalistic standards on objective reporting. And this is before Fox pulled that stunt where they doctored images of Times reporters to make them look uglier.

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43. Comment #215430 by Layla Nasreddin on July 21, 2008 at 10:08 pm

A very fair interview that makes the points in a very simple, easy to understand manner. Though I must say I was kind of hoping that Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens would call up and say something like, "Evolution is FALSE because in the Qur'an it says that Allah instructed the angels to bow down before Adam, alayhi salaam (peace be upon him), and angels would never bow down before a monkey, Allah forbid!" (Believe it or not, this is an actual "argument" against evolution found in Yusuf's children's book A is for Allah, which I have.) On the other hand, that's really about the same as what the caller was saying, Abdul (what's the rest of his name? Abdul just means "slave of the..."!) from Scotland.

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44. Comment #215436 by Roy_H on July 21, 2008 at 10:35 pm

Was the video created with Yahoo webcam?

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45. Comment #215437 by debaser71 on July 21, 2008 at 10:36 pm

Great host.

Also at one point I wish Richard Dawkins would have mentioned religion as a natural phenomena instead of just strugging it off.

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46. Comment #215438 by Richard Dawkins on July 21, 2008 at 11:05 pm

Is this the interview that is one of a pair with Khan interviewing Dinesh D'Souza for the other one? Very short interview if so. Perhaps there is more to come.

The program ran half an hour. Riz Khan interviewed D'Souza in the first half, then he interviewed me in the second half, taking audience questions for both of us.

For some reason, whoever posted it on YouTube didn't bother to post D'Souza's half. I wonder why. No doubt the whole thing will be posted eventually. Obviously it wasn't a 'debate' between us, but I doubt if that will stop D'Souza crowing about how he 'won' it.

Richard

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47. Comment #215445 by beanson on July 21, 2008 at 11:31 pm

Does Richard ever tire repeating the same argument time and again. Being confronted by the same ignorance-

he must repeat these lines in his dreams...

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48. Comment #215446 by vesihiisi on July 21, 2008 at 11:34 pm

People should realise, that WWII was started by creationists and lamarckists (Hitler and Stalin)

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49. Comment #215451 by Dr Doctor on July 22, 2008 at 12:22 am

Thank you for that, A.J.P. Taylor.

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50. Comment #215453 by Philip1978 on July 22, 2008 at 12:37 am

Richard

You should be glad you didn't have to debate him, your ears would be suffering from mild tinnitus from all the shrieking!

I thought great interview, in the time slot that Richard had I think the interviewer was calm, collected and fair. The callers were somewhat loopy, I really cannot understand that whole "but it SAYS it in my magic book, look it does, it does, it MUST be my creator, IT MUST! You CANT say its not, I might have a tantrum, look I AM RIGHT! etc etc

Bravo, enjoyed that loads!

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