Richard Dawkins on Scientific Truth, Outgrowing God, and Life Beyond Earth

Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Krishnan Guru-Murthy and this is the podcast in which we talk to remarkable people about their big ideas and the events in their lives that have helped shape them. My guest today is a man with lots of big ideas and he's also a man who changes the world with them. Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist based in Oxford, but he's perhaps most famous as the world's biggest atheist. His writing, his lectures, argue the case for why God is a delusion, the name of one of his most famous books. And he's got a new one out at the moment which is sort of a children's book based on the same ideas and it's called Outgrowing God, a Beginner's Guide to Atheism. I normally end this podcast with a question which is if you could change the world, how would you change it? I think in your case we should probably start with that, because I'm assuming you'd want to change the world by ridding us of religion altogether. Well I would, but I think I generalise that to anything that's not evidence-based where factual knowledge is concerned. So I would also like to rid the world of superstition of all kinds and I mean things like astrology and water divining and homeopathy and all sorts of things which are based on emotion and tradition, revelation, authority, rather than on evidence. I mean a lot of people would say you want to get rid of anything that's based on feelings. Well I'm very fond of feelings where art is concerned and music and poetry is concerned. I'm deeply moved by great art, great poetry, great music. And that's fine, that's feelings, but that's not about what's factually true. So things that might or might not be factually true, there we need evidence and evidence only. Why do you think that would make the world a better place? Well for one thing because facts are so wonderful and scientific facts are so beautiful and elegant and such a treat for everyone, children especially perhaps, to understand. So to deprive children of the great knowledge that science has provided, especially in the 21st century now, is a great tragedy for them. But also of course because if you base your beliefs upon anything other than evidence then it's very hard to change your mind. And so people who have been brought up to believe that it's the righteous and good thing to do, to you know kill apostates, bomb buildings and things, it's very hard to sway them because they've been taught from childhood this is right, this is just, this is what your God wants you to do. And so if they're not trained, if they don't subscribe to the view that evidence is what matters, then how are you going to change their mind? But are children really deprived of science? I mean don't these two things go hand in hand to a large degree? Well maybe in this country largely but certainly in America they don't. Certainly in America education is being subverted by fundamentalist religion. My own field is evolutionary biology and that particularly is subverted in American education by religious interests where they actually try to stop children learning about evolution. And so in terms of the way we behave with each other, why do you think the world would be better without these things? Because I mean, you say you know our actions should be evidence-based, I mean aren't a lot of your explanations for why we, you know why religion is such a big thing in the world based on the idea that we don't always take the rational choice, we don't always do what is evidence-based, we often do things based on a sense of feeling. Well that's right and that's what's so bad. But that's not come from religion has it? I mean it's a sort of a bit chicken and egg. Oh well yes if you mean that somehow the human brain is somehow susceptible to emotion rather than to evidence, that's probably, that could well be true and I would like to change that and I would like to enhance our natural tendency to go for religion and to reduce our natural tendency to go for emotion where factual evidence, I keep stressing that because emotion is very, very important where things like art are concerned. So it's not why you do what you do, I mean are you an evangelist if you like? Well I suppose I'm an evangelist for truth, for scientific truth. Most of my books, I think only one of my books previously has been about religion, most of my books have been about science and I have a real passion for science, I have a real passion for science not just because it's useful, though of course it is, but because it's beautiful. And do you think all religion is equally bad? No, no of course not. I think all religion is probably equally misguided but some religions are worse than others where their effect upon human behaviour is concerned. Is that why you said that you thought Islam was the greatest evil today, a few years ago? Yes, I think that that's true, only today mind you, I mean in medieval times Christianity was, but Christianity has rather sort of grown out of that. And do you still think Islam is the greatest evil today? Well I'm not sure about that, I think that nationalism, patriotism really, where you say my country right or wrong, America first, these are also great evils which we would be better off without. Because, and we'll come back to that of course, but I mean in a way we are, aren't we living in a world in which we are less and less evidence-based, less and less truth-based? I hope not. And more emotionally driven, more emotionally swayed, whether it's in politics or? That's possibly true, I would hope it's a temporary trend, I think it might be true and I think the internet might partly be responsible for that, I haven't really thought that through, perhaps you have views on that. It could be said, yes, that there is a temporary blip in the more general trend towards being more evidence-based. You were brought up as an Anglican, I mean you were born abroad weren't you? Yes, but in a very British environment and so yes I was brought up, well I was sent to Anglican schools. So what was your childhood like? It was a happy childhood, it was in Africa, colonial Africa, so it was a very cushy existence in many ways, we had servants and things like that, you know, otherwise it wasn't cushy, we didn't have water closets, we had earth closets, things like that, we had no electric light, but so it was rather a throwback perhaps to Victorian England in a way. And who introduced the idea of God to you? School. Rather than parents? Probably my parents sort of mentioned it in the same sort of breath as Little Red Riding Hood and things like that. And do you remember believing? Oh yes, at school I was confirmed into the Church of England. And you meant it? Oh yes, at the age of about 12 or 13. And how do you think that happened? I mean had you been indoctrinated or I mean what was it? Indoctrinated is a strong word but it had been a central part of my education at school, yes. I mean what I mean is have you come to understand how you had come to believe in something? Yes, when you're told something by an authority figure, by a teacher, by a vicar, yes. You just accept it? Yes, it's not difficult to understand why that is. In a way it is, isn't it? I mean to really believe is to really accept an idea in your mind, isn't it? Well yes. Not just to repeat what you're being told. No, I mean I really believe you and I think people do and I think that's one of the insidious aspects of it, that the child mind is receptive, perhaps too receptive, but you can see why it would be a good thing for the child mind to be receptive to whatever the child mind is told by an authoritative adult speaking very seriously. And it's easy to see why all over the world people inherit, not in a genetic sense, in a mimetic sense, inherit the religion of their parents, their grandparents, their school teachers, their and so on. They really, really do believe it and that's important to understand. When we castigate terrorists for doing suicide bombings and things like that, you have to understand they really, really believe it. They really believe, as Sam Harris says, they really believe what they say they believe and it's not surprising that they do, considering that they were taught it, it rammed down their throats in early childhood. I mean you have, you know, very controversially before said that, you know, believers are victims of their religion. Yes. I mean are you, are you extending that then to terrorists? Of course. They are, they are victims. Yes, yes, they really believe it. They, they honestly, they're sincere, they believe that they're doing the righteous good thing and they've been taught that. They are victims, yes. And so whose fault is that? What are they victims of? Well I suppose, I mean it's, it's tempting to say they're victims of their teachers and priests but that's probably unfair too because the teachers and priests themselves were victims in their own childhood. It's a self-repeating process. That's the whole point of memetics. It just goes on from generation to generation. So perhaps we shouldn't use the word fault. I mean it's, it's just something that, that happens just like genes get passed on. We can break the cycle by counter-education and that's what I'm trying to do in my life. Why did you stop believing then as a child? Oh I stopped believing for various reasons. I mean first of all because I realised, I think my mother woke me up to this, that there are lots of different religions and they can't, and they're all incompatible, they can't all be right. So why would you assume that the one you happen to have been brought up in is right? That was when I was about nine. But then I kind of reverted and got confirmed and then I finally gave it up the age of about 15 or 16 when I understood about Darwin because I was, I was left with a kind of residual deism where I believed not in the particular Christian God but in some kind of supernatural creator, some kind of creative intelligence and I gave that up when I understood Darwin. But why does Darwin extinguish in your mind the idea of an original creator? Because the original creator was persuasive to me because I was very inspired and impressed by the living world and so when I saw a moth that looked exactly like the bark it's sitting on, when I saw a panther that's such an exquisitely designed hunter, when I saw an antelope that was exquisitely designed to escape from predators, everywhere you look in the living world as I was doing, studying biology, it has apparent design written all over it and it was only when I understood that Darwin had an alternative explanation, a much better explanation for apparent design. It isn't design at all, it's produced by the non-random process called Darwinian natural selection. Once I understood that there was no longer any need for God, God became positively superfluous, unnecessary and superfluous. I mean that's what Outgrowing God does, it takes you through all of these notions that we have or are brought up with or are taught in one way or another about what the reasons for our beliefs might be and tries to cross them out if you like. But if you take your own experience which was that Darwinism drew you away from believing in God, why didn't you end up in a situation where you started it all off and then Darwinism took over? Yes that's a good question. The reason for that is that Darwin solved the big problem. The apparent design of living creatures is the really big problem and that was really compelling. Before Darwin came along it was very difficult to be an atheist. The origin of everything, the idea that God just started it off, the idea that God sort so to speak began the process of evolution and then sat back and did nothing, that's very unpersuasive because having got rid of God for the big problem which is the apparent design and diversity of living things, why would you smuggle him in for just a little problem right at the very beginning? Is it a little problem though, the beginning of everything? Well I think it's comparative and this is controversial and some people would say it's not a little problem. I think it's comparatively little. The thing about Darwinian evolution is that it starts from simplicity and builds up to this prodigious complexity that we see in the living world. Now before that the start of evolution everything was simple and it's much much easier to say that simple things just happen than to say that complex things just happen. Complex more or less by definition cannot just happen, it has to have an explanation. Darwin provided that explanation. The origin in simplicity requires sort of an explanation but nothing like such a big explanation and physicists are now working towards understanding the explanation of the origin of the cosmos and the origin of everything. Are they? I mean yes. Do you think we'll work it out in our lifetimes where it all began? I don't know about in our lifetime, I mean I think it's in a hundred years the history of science gives us every encouragement and it one by one the various problems have fallen to science. I mean that's a matter of faith isn't it? I mean that that you're sort of... You could call it faith if you like but I think it's a matter of historical precedent, it's a matter of the experience of science. If you think about what we now know compared to what our ancestors knew a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, it's a magnificent progress towards understanding everything. Maybe we won't ever understand everything but the record shows that we're on the right path. Do you think we would behave better without religion? Doesn't religion give us codes, rules by which to live? Yes and they're pretty awful aren't they? If you think about the codes that are given us by the bible, especially the old testament obviously, I mean anybody who lived their life according to the morality of the old testament would be an appalling person you would not wish to know. I mean stoning people to death for breaking the sabbath, stoning witches, persecuting homosexuals and so on and so forth. The new testament's a bit better. I mean Jesus was obviously a very nice person if he lived. I mean either Jesus was a nice person or whoever wrote his lines was a very nice person. Quite rude Well yes but that, you know, can perhaps overlook that. I mean the sermon on the mount is classically regarded as a very very wonderful set of rules for living and indeed it is. But taken as a whole the bible is a terrible set of rules for living and given that there are a few nice bits you have then to have a criterion for which bits you decide are the nice bits like the sermon on the mount and the criterion by which we decide that has to be non-biblical. Otherwise it's a circular argument so we can look through the bible and cherry-pick the bits that we regard as good and we do that. But then why bother with the bible at all if we've got a criterion for cherry-picking? Let's just use that criterion and live our lives by moral standards which we are given by moral philosophers and by the general progress in morality which we see as we look from century to century, decade to decade actually. It's that quick. But do you think people would live well if there was no sense of any ultimate sanction? No fear of hell? No fear of divine retribution? Possibly not and that's a rather pessimistic conclusion because what that means is that the only reason people are being good is that they're frightened of hell. They're frightened of being found out. They're frightened of the great surveillance camera in the sky that's watching your every move. Perhaps not the only reason but perhaps an ultimate reason. Well that's a people are not good enough to just be good. They need to believe that there's a spy camera watching them. There's a divine policeman watching their every move. Well that's an evidence-based argument isn't it? I'm sorry to say it is. And Steve Pinker has an anecdote, a rather pessimistic anecdote that in Toronto when he was a boy he had the great sort of liberal ideals and then there was a police strike in Toronto and immediately lots of people went around smashing shop windows and pinching things and so on which suggests you're right that evidence-based it is the pessimistic conclusion that people actually do need to be policed. But I don't find that a good reason to propagate a falsehood as I believe it is. If you say well you and I are too intelligent to believe in God but other people need it. What a patronizing condescending attitude. Other people need it in order to be good. Why don't we try to foster goodness without the divine policeman? Why do you think religion came about then? Oh well that's another question and you can answer that at a psychological level. You can say that in our that our wild ancestors were faced with terror, they were faced with ignorance, they didn't understand why things happened, they didn't understand why the crops failed, why there were plagues, why there were terrible diseases, why there were droughts and famines and so it was natural for them to attribute those things to some kind of agency and that's a psychological explanation. Another one would be they're terrified of dying or terrified of not seeing their loved ones again after they've died and so it's a good idea. Wishful thinking in other words. So that that would be a psychological explanation of how religion came about. I think there might be other explanations as well. I mean aren't all of these explanations still the case in a lot of places for a lot of people? Oh yes I mean the fact that we can provide an explanation for why religion exists does not mean it's true and I care about what's true. Well I'm asking you whether it's a good or a bad thing as well you know whether the world would be a better you know you you want to change the world by ridding us of all you know non-evidence based thinking as you see it. I'm asking you why you think that would make the world a better place. Let me pause that a bit. What you're kind of suggesting by asking that question is that even if religion is false even if there is no such thing as a god or gods then it might be a good thing if people believe in that falsehood and I don't go along with that. I mean I can see that it might be a politically expedient thing to say it's good for people to believe in falsehood because it makes them behave better or something of that sort. Maybe the world would be a better place politically socially if people believe this falsehood. I think that is patronising and condescending as I say. I think it's patronising to suggest that although it's false people need to believe in the falsehood in order to be moral in order that the world should be a better place. I would rather stick to the truth. I mean I suppose the reason I'm putting that is because I mean you say although it is false very definitely the truth is we don't know 100% whether it's true or false. But there's a kind of premise that even if it is false you're suggesting it might be a good thing. I'm suggesting on my assumption that it's false it wouldn't be a good thing. If it's true that's another matter. I mean if some evidence could be found that it's true then I would completely change my mind. I mean I suppose what I'm getting at is in this world that doesn't have religion that doesn't have fear of a creator that doesn't have written rules by a god you know how do we find a better way to live? There are plenty of people who don't believe in that who are actually very moral people. So but they've grown up in a world which was governed by codes that were created by religion. You could say that and I'm not sure how I'm not sure how much I buy that. That is a point that is often made and it could be true but there is the academic study of moral philosophy which is very fruitful study and people philosophers down the ages have come up with moral principles which are not based upon supernatural beliefs which are based upon sort of extensions of the golden rule do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you and things like that. And there are other more sophisticated examples of moral philosophy. Then there's it's perfectly clear that our moral and ethical criteria are changing anyway. We now know no longer believe in slavery 200 years ago it was taken for granted. These things change as the decades go by. There's what I call the shifting moral zeitgeist and that's clearly a phenomenon that clearly happens. It's much more difficult to explain why it happens and I've tried in Outgrowing God to give some explanation for why it happens but it's a combination of moral philosophy of parliamentary decisions of legal decisions of just plain conversations just plain discussions of journalism broadcasting all these things are conspiring together to change the moral outlook such that the moral outlook of a 21st century person is quite different from that of a moral outlook of from the moral outlook of somebody of 100 years ago or 200 years ago or 300 years ago. These things change all the time and even if there's some kind of foundation coming from religion there's also a foundation coming from evolutionary biology but these things change very rapidly so that it's no longer recognizable as a religious code or indeed as a Darwinian code it's something that changes rapidly dramatically actually as the centuries and decades go by. Do you believe in the you know that the progress always happens is constant in the way we think? It's controversial whether that happens in biology and I'm on this I'm on the sort of wing of those people who think that it does not all the time but there's a general tendency for it to happen and then there's historical evidence which you'll find in Steven Pinker's wonderful book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Michael Shermer's book The Moral Arc, to show that historically over the long time over centuries over even millennia yes we're getting better. We don't do slavery anymore we don't do torture anymore most of us we don't do we don't enjoy spectator sport of public executions in some places in the world they still go on but in general these things are all changing in the right direction in a progressive direction it's getting better. Do you think you personally have always articulated this in the best way? I mean you you know you annoy people yes I think I annoy people more than they deserve to be annoyed I don't I don't think they should be annoyed quite as much as they are. You don't mean to? No I mean to speak the truth and I mean to be frank and open and honest but some of the people who are annoyed are annoyed because it upsets their deepest convictions which are religious and so I think they sometimes actually hear what is not a provocative way of putting things it's just a straightforward way of putting things they sometimes hear it as more aggressive and annoying than it really is. Because I mean I was just looking I mean in your twitter biography you say you're a good-humoured ridicule you do good-humoured ridicule of religions. Yes. Do you think it's always good-humoured? Yes I don't believe in ridiculing people I believe in ridiculing their ridiculous beliefs I'm fond of quoting Johan Hari's statement something like I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs. What I wonder is are you good-humoured towards Anglicanism and perhaps Hinduism and Judaism but not very good-humoured towards Islam? You know you seem to hate Islam is that putting it too strongly? Let me put it this way I hate female genital mutilation I hate executing apostates I hate cutting people's hands off I hate throwing homosexuals off high buildings those are all things that I hate. I'm sure there are lots of things that have hated been that have been done within Christianity that you would hate. Of course I have but that was in the middle ages not not anymore I mean Christianity is responsible for the most appalling things centuries ago but as I said earlier Christianity is largely not entirely grown out of that. So so for you is it is it all about what those religions represent now right today as we speak in our world? As I said rather than over the course of history I mean would you say that Islam is worse than Christianity over the course of history or are they equally bad? Probably equally bad if you if you integrate over the course of history but now is what matters and now Islam is worse yes. Just explain why? Oh come on I've just I've just told you throwing homosexuals off buildings. But these are all sort of extreme minority things that you're describing they're not normal lived Islam for one and a half billion people are they? Well no they don't one and a half billion people don't do it. No. But nevertheless they get Quranic and and um hadithic if that's a word um authority for it. But you're taking surely you know the behavior of a tiny minority in the extreme and projecting that across a people in a religion? It is a tiny minority and I certainly do not wish to suggest for one moment that a majority of Muslims do that kind of thing of course they don't but the doctrine to which they subscribe which is Islam sanctions that kind of thing. And didn't Christianity? Yes but it. So so that's what I'm saying when you say Islam is worse that's what I'm struggling with I mean the religions have been used by people through the ages to do terrible things. Have you looked at the polls? Why do you think there's a hierarchy? Have you looked at the polls of what what individual Muslims think when they're actually asked do you agree that apostates should be executed? Well we can argue about those polls I know that a lot of those polls are quite controversial in terms of the questions they're asking and the poll size and all that. I suppose what I'm getting at is the way you communicate and you're one of the most famous scientific communicators do you fear that you've clouded your you know your your your message at all but with those kinds of those kinds of statements? Possibly but I'm not a politician I'm a scientist and I care about what's true and so what I want to know what I want to all all my books are about scientific truth including the god delusion actually um and including outgoing god um so what I care about is is what's true I'm not a politician who's trying to get elected I'm not I'm not trying to be popular. So does it bother you that you're regarded as a Islamophobe by many people? I mean I know that's a word you don't really recognize. Well I hope you don't either I mean it's a ridiculous word um I've said countless times that Muslims individual Muslims are the primary victims of Islam. Which is also a very controversial thing to say I mean yeah maybe controversial it's undeniable. Well it's undeniable that you're you're you're a victim of white middle class colonial society in the same way you know I mean we're all victims of our upbringings and our cultural norms. Yes but I'm not persecuted. Because there are bad bad well arguably you are it depends on your perspective doesn't it? I suppose but but um I'm not I'm not threatened I don't I don't fear for my life because of the society in which I'm in which I'm brought up whereas there are bloggers in Bangladesh for example who actually do fear for their life because they have done really really quite innocent things like say that they they they question some aspect of whether God exists something of that sort. Yes I mean I suppose they are victims of Islam. Yes I mean I I mean things like you know your your tweet about the the niceness of the bells of a cathedral compared to the unpleasantness in your words. Well let me say something about that um Allahu Akbar can sound beautiful and aesthetically wonderful when it's sung from a minaret um by a beautiful voice. As it generally is. And I've heard that and it is it is wonderful what I meant by that and Twitter is too short two tweets are too short to say that is that Allahu Akbar is the last thing you hear before the bomb goes off that's what I meant by saying that that it has an aggressive ring to it. I mean again that isn't that a silly comparison though? No I mean it's literally true. It's only literally true for a tiny tiny number of people. It's true for all the people who've been blown up by terrorist bombs. Yes but but but again you're you're talking about you're comparing church bells which is your cultural norm to your imagined experience of somebody being blown up um you know which is a tiny tiny number of people within that. Nobody has ever died as a consequence of hearing church bells except for somebody somebody from Lord Peter. Yeah I know but what I mean it was a silly comparison wasn't it because I mean there were crusades there are lots of people who've been killed in the name of other religions uh and they would have equally heard I'm sure religious phrases. Of course they did but that was 500 years ago that's the point. What's the point that it doesn't happen today? Yes church bells are at worst church bells are a nuisance to people who are trying to concentrate on their book they're reading. But you did ask whether it gave away your own cultural prejudice. Yes. Do you now see that it did? Well from an aesthetic point of view I suppose that's right but I could have added that aesthetically I find the call to prayer very beautiful. I've heard it sung very very beautifully in Morocco for example it was a beautiful deep rather like Paul Robeson voice and that that was wonderful. I was woken up by it at dawn and it was beautiful um so I can I can cope with that with that aesthetic as well but but the main point I was trying to make was as I said before it's the last thing you hear when the bomb goes off. I mean the point you make is right at the beginning of the book is that uh with all of these uh the Greek gods and Roman gods and uh you know the the sun god and all of these things that's now normal to dismiss all of that and say well of course those gods don't exist. But but god god you know the Christian god the Jewish god well there's there's got to be something there maybe it's all just one god and we all we all share it out between different religions but there must be something there. Why do you think we're able to make that distinction between these archaic gods and the the notion of god that we have now? Because because we when you say we you I mean one society society is brought up to believe in the in the god of the Jews and not in the god of the Greeks and the Vikings. It's indoctrination. Yes I mean if we if if if Constantine the emperor Constantine hadn't adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire children in Europe today were probably all worshipping um Jupiter and Hera and and Neptune. What do you think happens when we die? Well either we're cremated or we're buried or we leave our body to science. Do you fear it at all? I fear the process of dying depending on how it happens and I and I think that unlike non-human animals who have the privilege of going to the vet and being put to sleep we don't have that privilege and so if the likelihood is that our process of dying is not going to be very pleasant. People often become more religious or more superstitious as they get older though don't they because they fear they fear the creator or either being judged or that there's nothing. I believe that they just they just well be true an Australian friend of mine said why are there so many old people in church cramming for the final? And you but you you've never found yourself wondering have you ever had doubts that you may be wrong? Not not since I became an atheist no I mean I may have doubts about lots of other things but not about the what not about my my individuality surviving the death of my brain of course not that would be absurd. And it's never it's never sort of um occurred to you that there may be a dimension a way of thinking that you're just not capable of that exists? I believe that's true probably and I think that for example if ever we get into contact with extraterrestrial aliens they are going to they will be a lot more advanced than we are probably because otherwise they couldn't get here they couldn't um so and and we'll have a lot to learn from them and so that we there will be some things that will simply blow our minds. So you think it is likely that there are other living creatures out there somewhere? Yes I do. Just on the balance of probability? Yes statistical grounds I mean the sheer number of stars and therefore we now we now know that most stars have planets and um uh so I think the probability suggests that there are probably um lots of other civilizations um and um of course it's arguable that they won't get much more advanced than we are because there's a tendency for civilizations to destroy themselves and so there may be all over the universe there may be little pockets of civilization winking into existence and then extinguishing themselves that that's a speculation of science fiction speculation um it is possible that we are unique and I have considered that at the end of the Blind Watchmaker one of my books um it's not totally obvious that there have to be other living creatures around um but if we are unique then what that means is that there's something very very very very special about the origin of life on this planet. If we are the only one that's developed life then the origin of life would then have to be a quite stupendously improbable event so much so that we're wasting our time trying to understand it but I don't believe that as a matter of fact I believe that there is probably quite a lot of life around the universe um even if there's only only say as few as a billion other life forms and I stress that word few because a billion is a tiny tiny number compared to 10 to the 22. If that were the case then the different life forms might be so widely spaced out that none of them ever encounters any of the others. Other eminent scientists Stephen Hawking Einstein I suppose have had this notion that sort of you know God might just be that bit of science that we haven't quite oh well that's just a matter of terminology Einstein and Hawking both used God language but what they meant by that was that which we don't know that which we don't understand and and they had a reverence Einstein especially had a deep reverence for that which we don't understand he unfortunately chose to couch it in God language which has given a lot of people the mistaken impression that he was a believer in some kind of personal God and he was very adamant actually that he was not he did not believe in a personal God. So you think that's a mistake to sort of just go along with that notion give it that God-like language I mean Hawking's done the same hasn't he? Well yes I mean he he ended up famously the last words of a brief history of time and then we should know the mind of God but Hawking was definitely an atheist so was Einstein. They um Einstein used God language much more often he said things like but he does not play dice meaning but God does not play dice and he he said um what I really want to know is did God have a choice in designing the universe what he meant was is there more than one way for a universe to be uh and that's an interesting question could there be more than one kind of universe or is there only one possible way um and but he chose to put that in God language a sort of poetic language really which has been widely misunderstood by people eager to misunderstand I might add. So if we were to actually sort of follow you suppose the government said okay let's let's do what Richard Dawkins wants what would it involve? It would not involve dictatorial indoctrination in atheism it would involve instead education in um skeptical ways ways of thinking in evidence-based um thinking um teaching people how to think not teaching people what to think to coin that rather hackneyed phrase um. What does that mean I mean well what it is what is it that we're learning wrong or how is it how are we well we we're learning wrong insofar as we tell children this is your religion this is what you believe this is what you should believe you should believe in Yahweh you should believe in Apollo you should believe in Thor um which which throughout the ages children have been taught that's not what you should teach but most state schools today don't do that uh that's true they don't do that but there are quite a number of faith-based schools faith schools so-called um which um do that. So you'd get rid of all those? I wouldn't get rid of the schools I would get rid of the of the of the teaching children a particular faith I think it's very important to teach children that religion exists um you need to teach children about different religions you can't understand European history indeed world history unless you understand about religion because so many of the world's wars have been fought on the basis of religious but should it be should it be taught as something that's wrong it should be taught as something that that happens something that is historically there the bible should be taught as literature because so much of English literature contains allusions to the bible and you can't get away from that there are in the god delusion I think I've got about three pages of phrases which are part of English language part of proverbial language which come directly from the bible you can't understand Shakespeare you can't understand so much of literature unless you're steeped in the bible and no doubt um you can't understand Arabic literature unless you're steeped in the Quran um no you can't understand Indian literature unless you're you're steeped in the Bhagavad Gita and so on um so yes we need to study religious books as literature and um as history whether it is or not in terms of the yes yes yeah um but but not a science and and that's that not not a science and not and not as labeling children with the religion of their parents not saying you are a Christian child you are a Muslim child it would make a hell of a difference in the Islamic world and in America actually um where religion does still have a very powerful hold on people's minds because it has a powerful hold on child minds and it's particularly odd in America isn't it because nobody really thinks Trump for example is a religious man no and yet he's moving as much more in a faith-based direction certainly on something like abortion that's right well well abortion is such a tremendous hot button issue in America to the large section of the community and so anybody who says he's against abortion only then has to pretend to be religious in order in order to get away with it religion does have an anomalously high hold on the American mind it does stand out like a sore thumb when you compare it with other countries of similar economic status um that when there's a there's a known relationship between religiosity and poverty and lack of social welfare those countries and those states within America that have a have more of a of a social safety net um health schemes and that kind of thing um they are the least religious religion tends to flourish in those countries where people feel insecure either because of poverty or because of lack of social welfare provision and America does stand out as being an anomaly on that graph and what do you think this is very difficult to say um there have been various theories advanced um one is that in western Europe um where there is an established religion as in Britain and Scandinavia religion becomes sort of boring it becomes you encounter it when you get married and when you die but otherwise it's sort of not taken seriously whereas in America religion is big business you get these gigantic mega churches with evangelists using the slick Madison Avenue type techniques to sell their particular church as opposed to rival churches so it's exciting and you have these people waving their arms around and dancing in the aisles and things and and religion is a form of entertainment um and that that's one theory another theory is that religion is that America being an immigrant society um just about everybody um is descended from immigrant parents and not that long ago immigrant parents all except for Native Americans and one of the things that happens when you go across the Atlantic to a strange country is that you feel lonely you feel isolated you've left your roots behind you've left your family behind and so religion gives you a church gives you a feeling of security gives you a kind of substitute family that's another theory that's been advanced when you think about what's going on in America in parts of the Muslim world when you look at the rise of Hindu nationalism in in India I mean do you think you're losing this argument your side only temporarily I mean I think that there's a temporary reversal as I said before I mean we're losing the argument in America because of Trump let's hope he doesn't get re-elected um and um Hindu nationalism you're right I mean um Gandhi would be turning in their graves is what's going on in India um the rise of militant Islam as a form of pride really as a form of it's a kind of nationalism which I think is another another great evil I mean the the great wars of the 20th century the first and second world wars were were nationalistic wars um and um so that's another ideology which is not evidence-based and and and has evil consequences but is it because secularism has failed these people you know rational thought hasn't got them anywhere I doubt that um as I say I think it's a temporary thing um you know there's no doubt we're in a bad patch just at the moment do you think we will get to a point where the idea of God will just be a sort of a curiosity we're moving in that direction over the long term um but we've got a long way to go and I wouldn't like to hazard a guess as to when that will happen so do you think we will outgrow God it might take centuries but yes so how do you think we will look back on religion if we do ever outgrow God the same kind of way we look back on uh when when we believe that witches should be burned that sort of thing we'll look back on it as a dark period Richard Dawkins thank you very much indeed thank you for sharing your ways to change the world