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December 10, 2006
Richard Dawkins gets into a Donnybrook
Richard Dawkins was a guest on the Late Late show the other day with a co-guest. This co-guest was a philiosopher from Trinity College apparently - I didnt catch his name.
Pat started the porceedings by asking the audience who believed in God. Well over half the audience raised their hand. Oh dear.
Prof. Dawkins got to kick off the ball being asked a good leading question by the surprisingly able Pat. He explained quite clearly the reasons he thought that believers in God were deluding themselves based on their own reasons for their belief. He pointed out that your religion is a matter of your accident of birth - catholic in Ireland (mostly), muslim in Iraq (mostly) and so on. He alson pointed out that all catholics know what it is not to believe in Zeus or Apollo.
The response was typically emotional and varying from the sublime to the ridiculous. There were two scientists one of whom was a creationist (oops, intelligent designist) and the other a biologist. The creationist spouted the usual crap about the complexity of life demanding a creator - Richard answered him succinctly by pointing out who created the creator? The biologist was a little verbose, telling of his college days spent debating the merits of the points raised by Richards earlier books. He was a little strange in trying to claim that faith was part of everyday life - faith in the love you receive form others, faith that scientific experiments are reproducable etc. How odd!
Prof. Dawkins pointed out that you needed no faith in the love of others as you had proof in body language, a look in the eyes and while not scientific it is evidence. The biologist actually tried to rake Dawkins over the coals for not responding in a scientific way to such a question. The science of human love? The level of philisophical and scientific discourse in Ireland is sorely lacking I'm afraid.
One of the other guests was a young woman who had recovered from some illness claiming that it was her faith that pulled her through and that it was a miracel. No praise for the doctors, nurses, surgeons, friends and REAL, tangible acts that lead to her recovery then.
The worst udience member was a young man who lashed in to an attack on Richard with the old line that the depth of Richards conviction and devotion to atheism and essentially the spread of humanim was fundamentalism. He went on and on about it at high volume.
For a start Richard Dawkins is not promoting atheism or humnism per se. He is promoting the opening of minds, the use of the intellect that we were given (either by evolution or God depending on your point of view). Dawkins points out again and again that religion narrows peoples minds and leads ultimately to unhappiness, oppression, division.
Neither is he a fundamentalist. Time and again he has told people that he would accept proof of the existence of God and admit he was wrong. The young man of course jumped on this, dismissing Prof. Dawkins openess by saying that his definition of proof was too narrow!
Narrow definition? Of course its a narrow definition. It is the scientific method, it's logic, it's rigourous, it's not just opinion! The young man claimed that God was beyond the physical and coulnt be proven to exist or not by scientific methods.
One humanist in the audience managed to make the point that after 40 years without religion she was still living a good, moral life. Well done. It fell a little flat in the face of the indigntion from the god-botherers which is a pity. It strikes me that the biggest problem that aheists and humanists have is that there isnt the drive to indignation that the religious feel because there is very little that threatens a 'non-believers' placidity. They have usually accepted that shit happens and its best to get on with things causing the least amount of fuss.
Richard made the point that not too long ago people believed that the Earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the Earth and other such nonsense that was part of religious dogma. These nonsense opinions have been overthrown and replaced by rigourously tested and confirmed theories. The notion of God has been chased from being omnipresent and almost tangible to being something beyond pace, time and human understanding! Its a cop-out and if god botherers could muter up the intellectual courage they would realise that too.
The parting shot was given to our own home-grown intellectual, the philosopher from Trinity. He claimed throughout the interview/debate that he was an ex-atheist which should have sent warning bells ringing. To be fair he agreed in principle with many of the aspects of Richard's opinion regarding morality in the absence of religion etc. However, he let himslef down badly by quoting at RichardDawkins from his own book. I'm paraphrasing here as I havent recieved my copy of the 'God Delusion' yet but the phrase was something like 'I find it very probable that extra-terrestrial, super-hiuman lifeforms exist that might very well appear to us as god-like...' it went on a little longer but the 'philosopher' was indulging in some underhanded tactics.
he sought to discredit Prof. Dawkins by making it seem that the phrase 'very probable' meant that Richard was a believer in little green men - I'm sure he meant to create a link in the mind of the public between Prof. Dawkins and UFO conspiracy theorists.
Unfortunately Dawkins never got to properly answer this as time ran out. He did get to point out that statistically there almost certainly was life on other planets and that 'very probably' was a perfectly acceptable supposition based on the fcts of the situation. Which it is. Will the public think so?
Prof. Dawkins, on behalf of people in Ireland I thank you for appearing in holy Ireland and rattling the snakes pit so that we can remind ourselves by their hisses that we are still walking a tightrope and the division of state and church is not as clear as it should be.
This bodes ill for the future as we have a highly multi-cultural population now that the typical Irish attitude of 'sure it'll be grand' just won;t work with.
Comments
Emmet Savage
Mark
This was a very interesting and stimulating summary of the Dawkin’s interview. Thanks for talking the time.
E
Posted by dottie at December 10, 2006 3:05 PM
Comments
Mark
This was a very interesting and stimulating summary of the Dawkin’s interview. Thanks for talking the time.
E
Posted by: Emmet Savage at December 22, 2006 12:59 PM