Thanks Layla!

Since I could find no English-language articles about Dawkins's appearance at the International Literary Festival of Paraty (Flip) on 2 July, I've translated three articles from the Brazilian media.

There have also been a couple of short (6 or 7 minute) Youtube videos posted of the event, but the English language track is on the right side and the Portuguese translation is on the left. For ease of comprehension, I have transcribed these (see below). There were also a couple very brief videos of a press conference earlier in the day (also below).

Layla Nasreddin

http://ultimosegundo.ig.com.br/flip/2009/07/02/richard+dawkins+alerta+para+o+milagre+da+vida+no+palco+da+flip+7086920.html

Último Segundo, 2 July 2009

Richard Dawkins draws attention to the “miracle” of life on stage at Flip

Marco Tomazzoni, Paraty

Paraty – Instead of protests, applause. On the tip of the tongue, stirring remarks like “Make the most of your life, it’s the only one.” This was how, armed with a wide smile and clear arguments, the British biologist won over the audience at the Author’s Tent, at the last lecture on Thursday (2 July), described as an “historic moment” by organizer Flávio Moura. Apart from frequently mentioning the bicentenary of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species, the scientist, as he could not have avoided doing, also took on the name of the discussion, called “The God Delusion” after his best-seller, which seeks to refute the necessity of religion and the suppositions it enforces.

In his crusade against God – the book has already been published in 31 countries – Dawkins swept the world, but, in contrast to what might have been expected, he found, according to him, more supporters than detractors, which, of course, also exist in spades. “I have traveled a lot in the United States supporting the book, including the so-called ‘Bible belt,’ and I found huge, enthusiastic audiences. There are many atheists in the ‘closet,’ who don’t know what to do. In Oklahoma, three thousand people looked around and realized that they weren’t alone.”

Without adopting the virulent tone that eventually permeates the book, Dawkins was never aggressive against religion, opting instead for humor. “Once, when I was on an American radio program, a listener called in saying that if he didn’t fear God, he would murder his neighbor,” he affirmed, calling to mind the supposed moral necessity of divine existence. “Well, I don’t take it seriously. When Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, did people say, ‘Hmm, thou shalt not kill. All right, we thought it was a good idea!”

Responding to questions from the journalist Silio Boccanera, who gave a good performance on stage, the biologist even spoke against the moral wrong of indoctrinating a child. For Dawkins, who wrote an open letter on the subject to his daughter when she was ten, it is necessary that they grow up so that they can decide for themselves and be encouraged to think critically. In the text, the scientist argues that the only good reason to believe in anything is evidence. “There is no such thing as a Muslim child, a Protestant child, a Catholic child, but only a child of Catholic parents, for instance.”

One subject that Dawkins takes especially seriously is creationism, the biblical theory that the world was created in six days six thousand years ago (instead of an estimated 4.6 billion), and which is even taught as true in some schools. “Anthropologists will give you thousands of myths of the creation of the world, filled with poetic beauty much better than that of the Bible. Teaching something like that is monstrously wrong.” Nevertheless, he defended the value of reading the Bible as a way to learn history and the origin of many expressions. “The Bible is good literature, along with the myths of the Greek gods, elements of our cultural history.”

Regarding the influence of Darwin on politics and society, he said that this is a wrong interpretation of the theory of natural selection, according to which the strong win out over the weak, without any pity. For Dawkins, it is necessary to learn Darwinism to avoid applying it in our own lives. “We go against nature, and that makes our species unique. Our brains have become so big that we are capable of rebelling against our genetic heritage,” he maintained.

In a conversation that even discussed the origin of consciousness and the continuing evolution of man, the biologist explained that, in the absence of God, from the scientific point of view is the propagation of DNA. On the other hand, he said that each individual creates their own purposes, whether it be composing music, playing football or taking good care of one’s children. “If you look at the odds, the chances that a particular sperm found a particular egg and the same before that, it is incredible that we are here. That is what makes our lives so valuable. Don’t waste it, it is the only one you’re going to have,” he said emphatically, applauded by the audience.

Asked if he feared death, Dawkins answered saying that he was not looking forward to the process of dying because, in contrast to our pets, he would not have the right to “go to the veterinarian and get a painless injection” to end his suffering. Even so, he said that he would be disappointed to not be able to continue loving life. And if, in the end, he were to meet God on the other side, what would he say to him? “Probably ‘Which god are you?’ and then something along the lines of what Bertrand Russell said: ‘Not enough evidence, God.’”





http://www.estadao.com.br/vidae/not_vid396905,0.htm

Estado.com.br, 2 July 2009

In Paraty, Dawkins attacks religion and praises the Pantanal

“If I didn’t know Darwin, I would say that the Pantanal is God’s work,” says the polemical biologist and writer

Rio de Janeiro – The British biologist Richard Dawkins said today in Brazil, where he is participating in the International Literary Festival of Paraty (Flip) that religion “provides the justification to do terrible things, like killings or suicide bombings.”

Dawkins, who is participating in one of the roundtable discussions at Flip, argued that nevertheless he did not believe that religious people were “evil” and that “many of their actions are motivated by the desire to do good.”

The author of books such as The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene, the scientist said, during a press conference, that lack of information is one of the main reasons why people resort to religious faith.

“I just got back from the Pantanal (the world’s largest wetland in the southwest of Brazil) and I was dazzled by all the beauty,” said Dawkins, adding that “if I hadn’t known Darwin, I would have knelt and said that it was the work of God.”

Firm defender of the theory of evolution and of the book The Origin of Species, written by Charles Darwin and which marks its 150th anniversary this year, he said that this book “is the most important in history, because it manages to solve the greatest mystery of life: why we are what we are.”

“It is a book that was not properly recognized because of ignorance and because religion provided explanations that appealed to naive minds,” added the scientist.

Dawkins, well-known atheist and humanist, recalled his recent participation in a campaign to promote atheism by putting advertisements on London buses that said, “God probably doesn’t exist. Stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

In this vein, he came out as a supporter for a more “friendly” term to refer to atheists and avoid “existing preconceptions.”

Dawkins defended as a possibility the English word “bright,” whose literal translation is “brilliant” or “intelligent,” and which is already being used by some currents of atheism.

The seventh Flip festival started yesterday and will end next Sunday.



http://oglobo.globo.com/blogs/prosa/posts/2009/07/02/a-religiao-de-dawkins-conquista-flip-2009-201408.asp

O Globo, 2 July 2009

Dawkins’s “religion” conquers Flip 2009

By André Miranda and Suzana Velasco, from Paraty

It seemed like a church, where the devotees fixed in a trance, listening to their pastor, thoughtful, dedicated and extremely charismatic, preach. A woman in a shirt saying “God is 10” repeatedly got up and took photographs, enchanted by this 68-year-old English gentleman who spoke for an hour and a half to the audience in the Authors’ Tent. Biologist, Darwinist materialist and writer, Richard Dawkins was the big name yesterday at the International Literary Festival of Paraty (Flip), closing the day’s program of activities with the speech “The God Delusion,” in truth a chat very well conducted by the journalist Silio Boccanera.

Shortly after the start, Boccanera explained what guides Dawkins’s thought: “His name evokes two other well-known names, God and Charles Darwin, but not necessarily in that order of importance. Science and religion do not mix in the world of Dawkins. There are provable facts on one side, faith and superstition on the other.”

The “spiritual” duel that was accordingly established was stirred up by what the biologist had to say. Dawkins recalled cases when he made appearances in famously religious places – like Brazil – but even there he found his belief in the non-existence of God echoed.

“In Oklahoma, in the United States, a very religious state, three thousand people came to hear me speak. At the end, they got up, looked around and realized that there were people who thought like they did. But that is not to say that I haven’t suffered resistance there. A politician tried to block my speech,” Dawkins said. “I think that the most serious criticisms that I get come from people who say they are ‘atheists, but…’ They say that I am rude and intolerant of religion. But it’s nothing like that; I think The God Delusion is a funny book.”

Boccanera then asked about artistic works that were created due to religious inspiration.

“I don’t doubt that religion has inspired fabulous things. The Bible is interesting literature, very valuable for knowing European history. Children should read the Bible for that. Works like the Sistine Chapel or the music of Bach are important and beautiful. But none of that serves to validate religion. Artists went where the money was,” he said.

When the debate was opened to the audience, one attendee wanted to know if Dawkins feared death. The scientist responded that he would not fear being dead since he had already been dead for billions of years before being born. But he would prefer to have the same privilege dogs and horses have, who go to the veterinarian and die from an injection, while human beings are condemned to suffer from disease.

“If I knew that I was going to die shortly, I would be disappointed, because I love life and I want to continue loving life. This is not the same as fear. If I were religious, I would fear what awaited me after.”

At the end, Silio Boccanera wanted to know what Dawkins would do if he met God after death. The biologist said ironically, “First I would ask, ‘Which god are you, Zeus, Apollo, Thor, an Aztec god, an Australian aboriginal god?’ Then I would say to Him what Bertrand Russell said when he was asked about the same thing: “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence.’”

The audience, with an almost religious rapture, rose up and applauded Dawkins enthusiastically.



Youtube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hxUQhRArtY


The God Delusion - FLIP 2009, 2 July (with Brazilian journalist Silio Boccanera)

Richard Dawkins: The world is filled with beautiful origin myths, and anthropologists will give you hundreds, probably thousands, of origin myths, which have great poetic beauty and which are well worth studying as literature, as cultural artifacts. The particular origin myth that we’re most familiar with, which is the Jewish one, which I think has its origins in Babylon, is no more beautiful, no less beautiful than any other. The astonishing thing, and I think it would have astonished Darwin were he alive to see it still today, is that in many parts of the world, that particular origin myth is believed literally, as you say, the world was created in six days six thousand years ago. Now that’s not just slightly wrong, that is gigantically, colossally wrong, and a way to illustrate that is to say since the true age of the world is 4.6 billion years, to believe that the world is only six thousand years old is equivalent to believing that – I’ve calculated it – the width of North America, from New York to San Francisco, is eight meters.

Silio Boccanera: As an evolutionist, a Darwinist, you obviously don’t believe in an afterlife, which is the inspiration for many people as a purpose of life. So, in your concept, what is the purpose of life? Is it life itself?

Dawkins: Well, one kind of purpose of life, the biologist’s one, is the one that is the basis of my first book, The Selfish Gene, and on that scientific level, the purpose of life is the propagation of DNA. And there is poetic inspiration in that, but it probably isn’t going to be very satisfying to individuals. Individuals make their own purpose in life. Each one of us, to a greater or lesser extent, lives by our purposes. It may be to write a great book, a great symphony, it may be to win a football match, it may be to bring up your children in health and happiness. There are all kinds of purposes that individuals can make, every one of us can make. And we’d better make our own purposes, because this is the only life we’re going to get. And so the belief that this is the only life we’re going to get sharpens our view of the world, it makes us value life more, it makes us take life seriously, but it also makes us enjoy life to the full, because this is the only life we’re going to get. And to lead this life in a less than full fashion, because you think you’re going to get another one, is a terrible, terrible waste of the gigantic privilege it is to have a life at all, because we each of us are enormously privileged. If you calculate the odds against each one of us coming into existence…our parents had to meet, not only did they have to meet, they had to have sexual intercourse at a particular time, a particular sperm had to find a particular egg, the same thing had to happen to our grandparents, our great-grandparents, all the way back through the pilgrimage to the origin of life. Not one of us here has any right to expect to exist; we do exist by a fantastic piece of good chance. Don’t waste it, it’s the only life you’re going to get. (Loud, sustained applause.)

Boccanera: How about…There is a more controversial argument when we were discussing the purpose of life and the non-belief in an afterlife. It is when people say that if you don’t believe in an afterlife and in religious principles, you cannot have moral principles. I know you don’t quite accept that.

Dawkins: No, well… (chuckles) Right. The idea that the only reason we are moral is that we believe in an afterlife and therefore we are striving to be rewarded with the carrot of heaven or to avoid the stick of hell, which is what in effect you’ve just said…what an ignoble reason for being good, what a terribly bad reason, what a terribly immoral reason, for being moral…. (applause) I was once on a radio program in the United States and you had one of these phone ins, people phone in with their questions. And one man in Texas phoned in and said that if he didn’t believe in God, if he wasn’t afraid of going to hell, he would murder his neighbor. (Laughter) So I said, you don’t really mean that, you don’t seriously mean that if it wasn’t for the fear of God you would go out and murder your neighbor. He said, absolutely I would! I would go out and rape the next woman I saw. I cannot seriously believe that there are many people who are only held back from doing bad things by the fear of God. Christopher Hitchens, one of my colleagues who’s written another book at much the same time, called God Is Not Great, he puts it like this. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, in the Ten Commandments, and he sarcastically remarks, Do you really mean to say that, when Moses came down from the mountain with the tablets that said, Thou shalt not kill, people said, Oh, thou shalt not kill? Oh, right! Oh, all right, we thought it was rather a good idea! The other…yes, okay, I think I’ve said enough.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIcDbdL6iLo


Dawkins responds to questions from the audience at FLIP

Silio Boccanera: There’s a question here that could be summarized in the way by in essence asking you if we’re still evolving, after four billion years.

Richard Dawkins: Well, evolution tends to go in fits and starts, but even at its fastest, evolution is too slow normally to be seen in one lifetime. There are occasional exceptions to that. In The Ancestor’s Tale, one of the tales is “The Cichlid Fish’s Tale,” which is the story of the cichlid fishes in Lake Victoria in Africa. We know that Lake Victoria is only about 15,000 years old, and yet there are, in Lake Victoria, about 450 separate species of cichlid fish, which appear to have evolved only in Lake Victoria, and within the last fifteen thousand years. So that’s very, very fast evolution going on in Lake Victoria. But 15,000 years is still quite a long time, and so when people ask the question, I’m very often asked that question, are humans still evolving, you have to remember that, if it’s true, it’s unlikely that we would see it. You’d have to come back in maybe three or four million years in order to see anything major. Now three million years ago, our ancestors were…we know from fossils, pretty certain, what they were like, they were like chimpanzees walking on their hind legs. They had the brains, they had the heads of chimpanzees, but they walked on two legs as we do. So in the last three million years, there has been a dramatic swelling of the brain. The skull has blown up like a balloon. If that trend were to continue, and we were to come back in three million years, we would see our descendants with gigantic, bulbous heads. But there is no reason to expect the trend to continue. In order for the trend to continue, it’s necessary that natural selection favors the brainiest individuals, the individuals with the biggest brains, as the generations go by. We know that must have happened in the past, because the fossils tell us the brain has indeed got bigger. But in order for it to go on, it’s necessary that brainier individuals either survive better than smaller-brained individuals, or reproduce better. They certainly must reproduce better, whether as a result of surviving, or perhaps some other reason. Darwin’s other theory was the theory of sexual selection, that pointed out that survival is only a means to the end of reproduction, and if for example being brainy was sexually attractive, if people found, if our ancestors found the cleverest members of the opposite sex the most attractive because they were clever, because they had big brains, perhaps, then this would provide the necessary selection pressure. I don’t think there’s any good evidence that brainier, cleverer, larger-brained…not, by the way, not that larger brains do make you clever, that’s another problem, they must have done in some sense or we couldn’t have had the evolutionary trend that we’ve had, but if you look in the modern population, people with big heads are no cleverer than people with small heads. (Laughter) So, why would there be selection in favor of braininess? No particular reason. Could there be selection in favor of something else? Well, it’s pretty difficult to die young in civilized parts of the world now, so unlike in our evolutionary history, when most individuals never made it to reproductive age, most individuals died before reproducing, and so genes that made you die young didn’t get passed on, that’s ordinary natural selection. Nowadays, that doesn’t happen. Nowadays, at least in parts of the world like this, if you want to reproduce, you can. The difference seems to be in how many children you have, given that you have survived. Suppose that there is a significant proportion of people who are born because their parents were incompetent at using contraception. If there’s any genetic tendency to be incompetent or to fumble at the crucial moment, (laughter), then there would be, by definition, natural selection in favor of incompetence or fumbling (laughter), and so we might see a trend in a few million years towards contraceptive ineptitude. (Laughter) I’m being facetious, but I’m trying to get across what it would take in order for there to be evolution. And note that it’s got to be sustained for a long time; whatever it takes to be incompetent at using today’s contraception is pretty unlikely to be what it will take to be incompetent at using the contraception of a million years’ time, if any, because things will be so different, because technology will be so different, that it’s very, very hard to predict any particular trends in future evolution. If we go into outer space, it might be different. There you might genuinely get divergence into two different species.

Boccanera: Okay, Richard, teasing here from Paula Fadul, she wants to know if you’re afraid of death.

Dawkins: I’m not looking forward to the process of dying, (laughter), mainly because unlike my dog and your horse and your cat, I will not have the privilege of being able to go to the vet and be painlessly put to sleep. I want to die under general anesthetic and because I’m human, I am unique among species in not being allowed to do that. There is a widespread bigotry against euthanasia or assisted suicide, which means that most of us are condemned to suffer when we die, whereas our pets are allowed to die under a general anesthetic. So I am not looking forward to dying. As for being dead, I shan’t miss life… (Laughter, applause)



Press conference videos, earlier on 2 July:


Richard Dawkins Press conference at FLIP 2009, part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWJOFj9J8LU


(The end of an answer to another question)

Mr. Dawkins, do you think a world without religion is part of the evolution of human being, do you think that humanity should live without religion?

Dawkins: Obviously I hope we can be ready to live without religion. I don't think religion does us any good, I think it does us a great deal of harm. That's not to say that every religious person is wicked, of course not, far from it. Very, very many good people are religious and may even be motivated to be good by their religion, but you don't need it. It gets in the way of the true explanation for existence, and it can provide a motivation for doing evil things. There are plenty of bad deeds that are done by people who are fundamentally good people who believe that they are good and righteous, doing what their god wants them to do, and they sincerely believe that their god wants them to fight, to kill, to be suicide bombers, all the terrible things that go on in the name of religion. So I devoutly hope that we will live to see a world without religion. I'm not optimistic that that will happen in my lifetime.



Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j7wnoJBFuY


Dawkins: …a question about a campaign that began in London to put on the buses a statement that said, “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” And this was dreamed up by a young woman in London, and I joined in by contributing some money. What was very impressive was that she needed to raise £5,500…I guess that’s about, what, 2000 reals or 7…no, 15,000 reals, and so she thought it would be difficult to raise £5,500 by subscription. I think within three days she had raised £100,000, all from small subscriptions – £10, £15, £5, £20. I gave a bit more, but I only gave 5,500, so most of that 100,000 was raised by small subscription, which surprised everybody. It shows that there was a great upwelling of enthusiasm for this campaign to promote atheism on London buses. It’s a bit of a joke. I mean, the word “probably,” there’s probably no God, that’s a bit…Some people thought that was a bit too weak, I think it’s rather good, it gets people thinking, it gets people discussing, it gets people talking. I can’t remember what the question was, but um…

Why now?

Dawkins: Why now? I don’t know why now. I mean, this was dreamed up by this young woman. What actually stimulated her to do it was seeing a bus which had a Christian advertisement on it that said something like if you don’t believe in Jesus you’ll go to hell. So she was so enraged by this that she decided to start her own campaign to run on a bus, and it’s now spread all through Europe, it’s in Spain, it’s in Scandinavia, it’s in America, Canada, Germany, Australia.