One of the most influential atheists in the world and the best-selling author of ‘The Selfish Gene’ and ‘The God Delusion’, Richard Dawkins joins Russell to debate the role of religion, science and power. They talk consciousness, reality, existence of extraterrestrial life and love.Find out more about Richard Dawkins: https://richarddawkins.com/ For a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here: https://russellbrand.locals.com/Come to my festival COMMUNITY - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
It's Friday and of course every Friday, as you by surely are now aware, I have an in-depth conversation with intellectuals, visionaries, radical thinkers and spiritual leaders.
Joining me today is one of the most influential philosophers, evolutionary biologists, social influencers, inventor of the term meme.
He's the best-selling author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion and I'm very excited to be communicating with Professor Richard Dawkins.
Dickie Dawkins, Richard Dawkins, the foremost atheist in the land, talking to me, one of the world's most religiousist folks.
Science is interesting, and if you don't agree, you can f*** off.
I mean, how's it gonna go down?
Do you feel that society's in trouble?
Maybe I do.
Yeah?
Yes, yes.
Right.
So what?
What do you think the answer is?
Well, not religion.
Well, I do!
I think religion is relatively too small to deal with big problems.
There's this assumption that science and religion are at odds with one another.
I agree that there's a lot we don't know we may never know.
And I want to know.
I want to work on knowing.
How come you're doing this?
I don't know.
That's not very interesting.
These are some of the things I've always wanted to ask you about.
Okay, we can certainly disagree on that.
I mean, of course we can.
We can, I'm not arguing with you.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you.
I've been looking forward to speaking to you for a very long while because, well, quite a lot of things as a matter of fact.
I wonder, mostly, where you feel the conversation about deism and theism If there is anything that you would amend around your evolving discourse from the point where it became in a sense one of the key components of the cultural conversation around faith and atheism in I guess it was maybe the late 90s when the selfish genes certainly came to my attention.
I wonder if your views have altered and What, if anything, do you see as being valuable in a spiritual perspective?
Most of my books have been about evolution and starting in 1976 with The Selfish Gene and then I suppose the main book on atheism is The God Delusion which was I believe 2006.
But mostly I'm a scientist.
I regard religion as scientifically interesting in the sense that if religious belief is true If there is a creator of the universe, then it's a very, very different kind of universe from if there isn't.
And so it's a very profoundly important scientific question whether there is a creator of the universe, an intelligent being who lurks behind the laws of physics, the laws of science, or whether there's not.
Because if there is, then it's an utterly different scientific enterprise that we're engaged upon.
We would be engaged upon trying to work out how his mind works.
Whereas if there isn't one, as I believe, then it's an entirely different kind of enterprise.
So I do think it's a very important question.
C.S.
Lewis said that there's a sort of, obviously he was famously an atheist who became a Christian at some point in his life, said, used the phrase, the idea that nature is haunted.
He used the idea of the nuministic and numinism as one of the coordinates around which a discussion in favor of a omnipotent, omniscient being might center.
I wonder if within your studies of evolutionary biology, and of course it's perhaps the most obvious question anyone could ask you, if even within the patterns that you observe there is a sense of intelligence or even teleology?
No there isn't but there's a very very strong illusion of it and this is one of the main things that Darwin faced The living world especially has an amazingly strong appearance of design.
You've only got to look at any animal.
Look at your dog, look at a tree, look at an insect that beautifully mimics a leaf or a stick or something of that sort.
It looks as though it's got design written all over it.
And it was the genius of Darwin to see that that didn't have to mean there really was a designer.
Um, although that.
I don't know that Darwin explicitly said that there wasn't a designer, like the theory of natural selection prohibits the idea that there is an intelligence or a God or a creative force or creative component behind the processes of evolution.
And what do you think about Alfred Russel Wallace's contribution to those theories and how they aligned with some of these interests, for example, in sort of mysticism?
Wallace and Darwin definitely independently arrived at the same idea.
So Wallace does deserve great credit.
Darwin had it first but he didn't publish and so it was, as you know, it was Wallace's paper that he sent to Darwin in 1858 which spurred Darwin on to write The Origin of Species.
So Wallace and Darwin independently discovered it.
Wallace actually described himself as more Darwinian than Darwin at one point.
He even thought that Darwin was a bit too mystical.
Surprisingly, that obviously surprises you.
And so it should, because later on in his life, as you know, Wallace did become quite mystical.
Wallace became a spiritualist.
He became interested in communicating with the dead.
And so there was a bit of a box and cox relationship between them over sexual selection, which, as you know, is the idea that Not just survival, but attraction to the opposite sex, or ability to fight for the opposite sex, was an important aspect of natural selection.
Darwin called it sexual selection.
And with respect to attraction of the opposite sex, things like the peacock's tail, Darwin was content to say that peahens just like beautiful, magnificent, embroidered tails.
Wallace hated that.
Wallace thought that was too mystical and Wallace wanted there to be a fully rational explanation for sexual selection and so that's one of the main disagreements between Wallace and Darwin.
Darwin was thought to be on the more mystical side rather than Wallace but then later on in life Wallace, as I say, became a spiritualist and was interested in communicating.
Wallace thought that we survived our death and Wallace wanted to communicate with the dead.
So, as I said, it was an interesting kind of reversal of roles.
Also, him saying that Darwin's not Darwinian enough, the nerve!
You know you say it's an important scientific question and I can appreciate why it would be, but I'd love you to unpack that further over the course of our conversation, but also it's an important social... there's an important social implication I feel one, I guess the reason that I, when I speak with atheists, I usually end up becoming quite passionate.
I believe in God, myself, and these are some of the things I've always wanted to ask you about.
We see that distinction that Wallace seems to draw between the rational and the spiritual, identifying that there are certain categories where rational discourse is necessary and ought be pursued to its zenith or nadir, certainly pursued to the point of exhaustion, and yet there is territory that remains.
I feel consistently, Professor, But there are limitations to what a human might know.
There is a limit to our understanding.
But knowledge itself is unlimited.
Unlimited.
The potential for knowledge is unlimited.
As with the range, the limitations with what we can decipher through the senses, the amount of the electromagnetic light spectrum that we can witness, the amount of olfactory and audible information that we have access to.
And if there is limitation even within the sensory realms that we can identify because we have the instruments there is observable limitation.
Is it reasonable to suggest that there might be entire dimensions and realms of data to which we do not have access and the assumption that because we cannot measure them they are not there.
Is such a sort of a limiting premise and whilst I understand what the science is and science is about what can be measured and what can be observed, is this not an important time to once again mark the bifurcation that Wallace appears to note that the rational has its realm and the mystery has its realm also?
Well this is this is very interesting.
As a matter of fact the last chapter of my book The God Delusion does use that very analogy of The electromagnetic spectrum, we can only see a tiny, tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum and it extends hugely in either direction from the visual.
And so I have every sympathy with the idea that there's a lot that we don't understand, that's certainly true.
And there may be a lot that we cannot understand.
I think there may be physicists I think are open-minded about whether there are questions that physicists will never be able to understand because of the limitations of the human mind.
And I would look at this as not at all surprising because our brain, for me as a Darwinian, our brain was fashioned by natural selection.
on the darwinian on the african plains and it's a device to help us to survive and reproduce in africa at that time and in a way the astonishing thing is that we have advanced so far beyond that i mean who could have foreseen einstein who would have foreseen um quantum theory the fact that the human brain that was built to survive as a hunter-gatherer can actually do relativity, can actually do advanced physics, can actually do poetry, can do philosophy, can do mathematics.
So already we've advanced far beyond what a utilitarian might think that we ought to.
And the question is, is there a limit?
Are there some important truths that the human brain can never master?
Are there beings in the universe, extraterrestrial beings perhaps, who already understand things that we cannot understand?
I love the science fiction book The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle.
The Black Cloud is a superhuman intelligence and it approaches Earth and gets in touch with humans and they ask him to teach them its advanced knowledge and two of them volunteer to be taught.
the physics that this creature knows.
In both cases, their brains just burn out.
They just, they die of an overheated brain because the human brain is not capable of understanding.
And this may well be the case.
It may well be that there are profundities which we can never understand.
On the other hand, maybe we can understand them.
And I'm open-minded about it.
I would like to I'd like to live another 500 years to see how far the human brain can advance in understanding these things and as I say I don't know.
No, this is true isn't it?
With your reference to the black cloud I felt the eerie and uncanny shadow of AI appear.
Yes.
This potential for limitless intelligence if not consciousness itself in there and as you say the potential for advanced beings is you know sort of impossible to rule out also you know sort of difficult to prove although it's curious that there are the conversation around UFOs is radically ordered literally in the last couple of years we have someone on here Jeremy Corbell who's Forever releasing CIA and military files, observation of artifacts and then just over the weekend non-human craft and they seem to be sort of more credible than these reports have ever been before.
When I spoke to the science entertainment speaker Neil deGrasse Tyson, he used the I'm sure famous example of the two percent difference in DNA between us and chimps represents all architecture and art and the litany of wonderments that you outlined and to imagine a creature 2% more advanced of us
suggests I suppose perhaps literally unimaginable realms. You reference to of
course quantum theory and Einstein and on the precipice of each of
these epochs there was this hubristic assumption that we were at the summit of
all human understanding. In fact it appears when looking back at
history that part of our condition has always been to imagine that the contemporary
height of our knowledge and understanding represents the absolute height.
When we get into quantum theory and you strike me as a man who might be
somewhat irked by the mystification and woo-woo-ification of quantum theory so I'm
not going to agitate you through any of that but it does appear that
sort of that that in In that sub-particular realm, Newtonian and indeed Einsteinian physics appear to sort of fall away at the fundament, as it were.
And I want to again turn our attention to something that you alluded to, that it's an important scientific question.
If there is a God, an intelligent creator, behind the universe, haunting nature, as C.S.
Lewis says, this is a very different proposition than if it's a set of random events, or selective events actually, the opposite of random.
From a social and cultural perspective, the presence of, uh...
Theism, and I know that this is something that you've spoken about in depth, that you've outlined incredibly articulately of course, the damage that can be done and has been done by religion, the ridiculousness of saying this baby is a Christian, or it kind of made me laugh, like let's say it's a Tottenham fan or something of a baby, and all of this I appreciate.
But now that we live in a somewhat, I want to say, simultaneously nihilistic, peculiarly puritanical, oddly free of redemption and salvation, a sort of a materialistic, hollow, listless, joyless society, I wonder if this extraction of the mystery isn't a little costly.
I don't feel that human beings, in order to flourish, thrive and communicate lovingly, require a retrospective tumbling into idiocy and superstition.
But the humility that comes along with the acceptance that is found at our current frontiers,
i.e. the famous hard problem of consciousness, the potential therefore that consciousness
precedes matter, the odd combination as observed by Huxley that exists between the acknowledgement
of the nuministic and a credo and set of morals and traditions that are somehow connected
to this nuministic experience.
there is an awesome creature on the, not creature, a creator, at the end of the tendrils of the uncanny, and that somehow this bestows upon us a set of duties and obligations.
But there are Aspects of spiritual life that are aligned to morality that are valuable.
And I wonder what you think of the terrains, the sort of psychic terrains that are found through psychedelic experience, through shamanic experience, through the utilization of non-sensory stimulation, which by its nature is difficult to corral into data sets and to lean into empiricism.
I wonder if you feel as I do that there is a cargo there that we are feeling the lack of in our current decline.
You covered a whole lot of ground there.
I know, but I thought it was you.
Shifting around.
I know, but you can do all of it, can't you?
I remember with Jordan Peterson you wouldn't have that.
You wouldn't have a diffuse question.
You took issue.
Let me go back first of all to your talking about the puritanical joylessness.
Yes.
Because that I agree with it, but I feel strongly about that and I think that this is one of the faults of extreme Islam that it is joyless and hating of music, hating of dancing, hating of everything that makes life fun.
And so I find that there's a difference between Evangelical Christianity, for example, and Islam.
Evangelical Christianity has this, you know, love of music and... But there are also aspects of Islam that are abundant and voluptuous, Sufism for example.
There have been, there have been, that's true.
But some of the militant Islam at present actually squashes any attempt at enjoyment and fun.
So that's that point.
And also the austerity that's in our culture, in our sort of very economically-led, materialistic, rationalistic culture, like the sort of the joylessness of contemporary cancel culture, for want of a better word, the piety, the puritanism, the moral certainty.
Yeah, I agree about that.
And I think that's a more significant cultural influence at present than militant Islam, which post-Covid, everyone seems to have gone off it.
Yes, no, I agree.
And that puritanism is horrible.
But then you came on to mysticism and the capacity to feel awe, the capacity to respond aesthetically to the universe.
And you would be wrong, I think, if you thought that a scientific worldview led down that path.
I think that a scientific worldview, well you had Neil deGrasse Tyson on and he's an eloquent spokesman for an aesthetic, a poetic response to the universe and I subscribe to that.
So I think you can get much of what you associate with the mystics that you admire without actually
being supernatural about it.
You could stay within the realm of the natural, the materialistic, and yet have all the aesthetic
response that you do have to the universe and to life.
But also the other thing we touched upon there, Richard, was the nature of consciousness and
our inability to explain it entirely is a byproduct of neurological networks, some inadvertent
consequence of the patterning and evolving out of Africa there.
Also, Wallace's latter life, spiritualism, and I know one anecdotal example of, albeit a brilliant and significant scientific figure, leaning towards spiritualism doesn't mean that that's necessarily a progression because of course we discussed earlier or touched upon the idea that you would regard it as a deterioration but what are the other so there's two areas that we from my admittedly grooming and diffuse question that you didn't cover and one is the the emergence of consciousness for there is nothing in biological processes that can indicate from whence consciousness emerges that you called it the hard problem it is the hard problem and all
Philosophers and scientists admit that it's a hard problem.
It's an unsolved problem, but unsolved problems are there to be solved.
It doesn't mean because it's so far unsolved that it's never going to be solved.
And I am materialist enough to be convinced that it has to have a solution.
Consciousness must be a manifestation of brain stuff, the materialistic brain stuff.
I don't understand how that came about but science has a history of not understanding and then later understanding.
So I wouldn't write off just because we don't understand something yet we're not never going to.
Often though, these pivotal points represent significant shifts, and I wonder what may lie ahead of us.
Each of these points that I referred to previously as sort of hubristic plateaus that endured under the assumption that they were summits, That the idea that when we get into the quantum like that how do you what do you think is the relationship between consciousness and the double slit experiment and do because I guess that the woo-woo mystical approach that I promised I wasn't going to use on you but sort of now want to a little bit is that is it an indication that consciousness itself could be the prima materia
Of, inverted commas, reality or perhaps even the universe?
I don't think so.
Why not?
I'm familiar with the idea and I'm familiar with the idea that consciousness resides in every particle in the universe, that kind of thing.
Consciousness, whatever else it is, I think it's a manifestation of complexity and so it'll be the complexity of brains, Complexity of computers in the future perhaps, a complexity of whatever passes for brains in extraterrestrial life, but complexity means massive organization of different units connected together in complicated ways.
Particles, electrons, atoms are much too simple to have anything remotely approaching consciousness.
Perhaps they're a gradient of consciousness and in fact beyond particles having consciousness or being... I suppose what I'm suggesting is not sort of panpsychism but that the quality of consciousness is within material.
But rather that material emerges from consciousness, that consciousness is a precondition for being and it's only at advanced states of evolution where consciousness becomes accessible, that as intelligence becomes more complex, as the mechanics of the mind become more complex, there's also an And I know that sounds sort of slightly hocus-pocus but perhaps only in the same way that radio signals and the potential for electricity always existed but until the mechanics were developed to access them they were redundant and irrelevant and I think that if you know with the hard problem of consciousness there with the what Terence McKenna memorably and beautifully described as the free miracle of the Big Bang, give us one free miracle and we'll describe the rest,
It seems to me that within that which is unknown, one idea recurs to me, and this is of unity, that separateness, that material, ought not be the defining lens through which we understand
reality but the potential of a oneness and for me like your interest you're a scientist and you're
an eminent and well-respected scientist and I'm embarrassed even to put before you theories dreamt
up in crack houses and bedsits in the years between 1994 and 2001 but what I am I suppose
saying is that the impact that it has on your discipline to consider whether or not there's an
omnipotent force or some sort of cohesive deity or an author of the universe or however you
want to regard it um You know that it's so significant and important and it changes everything.
I feel like it changes everything in the way that we organize cultures, observably so.
It feels to me that since the enlightenment, since we've had an A rational, individualistic, materialistic, egocentric culture.
It seems to me that what the mechanics that emerge from that are indeed rather selfish.
And that the metaphors that we use are somehow creating a culture that is antithetical to a what might be a favorable outcome were we to use a
different image system.
And again, I'm not asking scientists to start glibly accepting, "Oh yeah, no, there probably
is a god." But what I am, I suppose, asking is, is it possible to say that in the material realm, as
Alfred Russel Wallace appears to have accepted, there is a necessity for critique and rigor and
analysis and there can't be any sort of woo-woo acceptance that female, that peahens just like
the look of those tail feathers, honey. But when, but...
Elsewhere there is an unknowable mystery.
We know awe when we feel it.
We know, as C.S.
Lewis contests, when we have done wrong.
What are these sets of visceral codes?
What is this awe?
And whilst in botany and biology it's possible to emerge that which looks like intelligent design is a kind of, I believe, a kind of teleology, an intention spilling into the world and adapting in harmony with its environment from which it cannot be separated, that When it comes to organizing a society, the ideas that might be derived from the acceptance of, gosh what am I trying to say, that unity and love underscore reality, that the meaning can be derived from it, that a sort of an open-heartedness to it rather than a sort of a foreclosing cynicism,
These are emotional words and words like love to me are things that emerge from nervous systems, especially human ones.
And to regard something like love, something emotive like that as lurking in the material world doesn't sound at all convincing to me.
And I think you've got the cart before the horse.
Things like love emerge late in evolution as a consequence of the evolution of complicated highly complicated nervous systems and they don't come first.
Now you also earlier on used words like egocentric and selfish and things again.
I don't think That kind of language belongs in, when you're talking about science, materialism, again, selfishness is something that emerges from living things.
And I've written a book about that, Selfish Gene, which is actually about selfish gene rather than selfish individual.
It's not the right level of language to use for pre-living entities like pure physics.
So you would say then that there are discrete categories.
There is the domain of science where the lexicon and nomenclature of science are appropriate.
Then there is the domain of morality and the domain of social engineering.
I think I would say that.
And those latitude domains are appropriate where you have life and especially where you have human life.
Do you feel, Professor, that there, and this is not something that I would attribute to you or certainly make you culpable for, but that's not an authority that I would claim to have, but that almost, in fact, since you've risen to prominence, that the language of science has entered into the realm of politics, society, that there's no question that, in fact, isn't it somewhat disingenuous to claim that these two worlds aren't fused?
Galileo, right? I suppose that there's this assumption that science and religion are
at odds with one another, which I would say is, you know, who's that dude Bruno, the guy
that imagined the countless, and was burned at the stake?
Yeah, yeah, that guy. But, you know, in a sense that the true religion, true religion
and open-mindedness, and open-mindedness to unity, to non-judgment, to beauty, to service,
to kindness, to quite simple values, is not at odds with scientific inquiry, but acknowledges
that there is a different type of language required.
I think since the advent of You know, whenever rationalism, materialism, say post-enlightenment thinking becomes the sort of dominant purview, that we do use scientific discourse and scientific language.
And my God, look at the last couple of years as science, some of which has subsequently been proven to be somewhat shaky, shall we say, is used to underwrite political action, is used to underwrite social policy.
What are you thinking of that?
A couple of examples.
Very broadly, the idea of social Darwinism, the idea that it's sort of acceptable, like the utilisation of Darwinian ideas to legitimise... Oh well, that's appalling.
I mean that should never happen.
You should never use scientific ideas, inject them into ideology in that way.
And that was a terrible thing that happened in the late 90s, early 20th century.
And then I was going to say like during the pandemic that some of the use of data and the way that that data was conveyed and I would again say that my argument would be that science or particularly pharmacology is a subset of an economic system it's not its own separate silo only the the clinical trials that are taking place are the clinical trials that are profitable Where do these places get their grants from?
Who is funding that?
What is the intention behind it?
There is no... Of course, I understand double-blind experiments.
I understand what a clinical trial ought to be.
I understand what peer-reviewed papers are.
But I also understand how economics works and I understand how Pfizer operates, for example.
Yeah, you're probably right about that.
I'm not here to defend the The economic influx into the way science is done.
It's probably true to say that to a certain extent money talks when it comes to which science is done.
But that's not something you can blame science itself for.
Science is a dispassionate search for truth.
Yes.
That's the sort of science I care about.
Me too, me too.
And then, closer to home, even your analysis of Islam is the deployment of scientific critiques to a realm where, like, I'm not Muslim, But I hold the faith of Islam in high regard and I would say that the problem, the critiques one could level at Islam, one could equally level at secularism.
You could say, oh look these atrocities were carried out in the name of Islam, These atrocities were carried out in the name of Christendom.
These atrocities were carried out in the name of late capitalist imperialism.
The atrocities are what's significant and how people undergird them whether it's through science or capitalism or Islam or Christianity is not as relevant and I feel it's just a sort of a it's just a particular moment in time where religion was used to undergird violence and now People will use different ideas.
Christianity had its bad moments in the Middle Ages and Islam is having its bad moments now.
Perhaps you could say that.
And there's been sort of a collision of cultures in both cases that for me reduce the significance of the doctrine or dogma or however you regard those faiths.
For me, my analysis would be this is the pursuit of power that's significant here.
But I suppose what I want to come back to is that It seems to me there is the domain where it's absolutely necessary that we do our best to understand the natural, physical and chemical world and use those findings to better understand the world and to, I would say, help one another.
Increasingly it looks like that is hijacked by economic interests, certainly in some of the ways that we just sketched out just then.
But what but what but do you acknowledge that given that we've said there's a limitation to that to human understanding currently and there is a sort of a requirement it seems to me for understanding and conversation beyond the current remit and in my view ream it full stop of what can be understood, measured,
weighed, you know, and using consciousness and what precedes the big bang as just two sort of off-the-cuff
examples. I wonder what is the place of faith in forming a culture? What is the place of
trust? Like ideas that are unscientific, definitely. Because we don't understand something, the
appropriate response to that is to work on it, to try to understand it.
The appropriate response is not to say, because science doesn't understand X, therefore religion does, therefore what some mystic has said or some religious person has said must be the truth because science hasn't got the answer.
The fact that science hasn't got the answer doesn't mean that anything else has got the answer.
And when we talked about those deep profound problems, the deep mysteries, when I was talking about the black cloud, There may be things that science will never understand, but if science doesn't understand them, nothing else will.
That's where I would stick my toes in.
Ben, what of perennialism, what of the consistent emergence, not only of myths and archetypes throughout culture, but also of ideals and hierarchies of behaviours that somewhat consistently emerge?
Well, ideals, moral ideals are another matter.
I wasn't talking about morals, I'm talking about truth, I'm talking about understanding of the universe, understanding of the deep.
Deep mysteries.
Things like consciousness.
I mean, that is a deep mystery.
And if science doesn't understand consciousness, which it doesn't yet,
if science will never understand consciousness, then nothing will.
But perhaps what you...
Is it not possible that there are truths that are beyond the current purview of science?
Definitely, and I've just said that.
And what are they again?
Moral truths?
Oh, well, moral truths are another matter, and we can talk about moral truths, but that's not what I'm actually mainly concerned about.
What are the ones that are beyond science?
Truths about the universe, dark matter, dark energy, consciousness, the origin of the laws of physics.
These are profoundly difficult problems which science doesn't yet know the answer to.
All I'm saying is that if science doesn't know the answer to it, nor does religion.
Uh and that it would that you don't think sort of a kind of a poetic or intuitive or mystical understanding with and when you uh inventory them in that manner I'm inclined to agree that a scientific understanding an empirical demonstrable understanding would be valuable um but what I feel that we're um the um what do I want to say the interface that we're operating at is that I'm saying that say if you want to sling together sort of post-enlightenment
values with a little bit of Nietzsche, "God is dead and we can't get the
blood off our hands" or "we have killed him we can't get the blood off our hands"
is that what it where we find ourselves now is that in our culture if you look at
the sort of the morality that was formed during the pandemic period lent
into scientific understanding for its authority for its moral authority for
example you know it is immoral if you don't undertake these these medical
procedures it's immoral if you don't remain within your home well it turned out that
that morality was incorrect and one might argue that different interests were
being served by that being presented as a moral decision when in fact it
wasn't just to be less cryptic for example the Pfizer never clinically trialed
their vaccines for transmission and yet the way that the vaccines were
presented to the public was as a remedy against transmission
Right so I know this is not your field of expertise but this is but one example of how in the way that the church once would have been used as the sort of storehouse of a collective morality the institution of science is currently being used and I would say it's equally fallible and similarly being utilized to undergird the interests of the powerful that all the while that people were being burned at the stake and martyred and slung off cliffs that really they were not like this is You happy with this, God?
But really, we're interested in power and in the same way.
Well, we can show you the data.
This is, you know, it's being used in the same way.
And it's about power.
It's about something that's abstracted.
And from that, you can deduce that science is neither good or bad.
It's a bouts with cold hard facts.
And religion...
is neither good or bad.
It's an attempt to deal with the unknowable and to derive from the unknowable a sense of meaning and purpose.
And if you want to apply empiricism to this, Professor, what are the results of a successful religion?
People behave as if there is a God.
You need to stop and let me get a word in.
The advice about vaccine and whether it prevents transmission.
As I understand it, what appears to be moral advice was kind of more what they thought to be common sense and which might not have been actually, based upon what you could call the measles model, where a disease like measles Where it is actually a public good, it's actually a social good to get vaccinated.
Because the more people who are vaccinated, the less chance the epidemic has to get going.
And so if you refuse to be vaccinated, you are in a sense, a problem, a social problem.
And I think the advice that was given over COVID was taking off from the measles model.
And that could have been wrong.
I know epidemiologists were saying at the time that in those instances you do not do that during a pandemic you wait till after the pandemic people were trying to and those people curiously another weird coincidence were being censored almost as if yes there were an agenda conscious or otherwise to create conditions remember that there was an urgent need for hurry there was nobody quite knew it was it was brand new this was unknown territory and so Possibly what was going on was that the measles model was the best that the advisors could come up with.
And if they were wrong, then people can be wrong and they need to climb down and say they were wrong.
I don't know whether they were or not.
As you said, it's not my field.
But I don't think you can be too censorious about this.
I think you have to say that The pandemic came upon us so suddenly, it wasn't clear what had to be done and
An honest attempt was made to give the best advice.
Maybe it was the wrong advice.
I don't know about that.
But there was a good precedent for it.
We also don't know that it was honest.
We don't know that it was honest.
I'm not suggesting that it was deliberately duplicitous, but the set of assumptions when corralled together do not look favourable, i.e.
They censored credible sources that offered contradictory information.
Many of them were credible.
I'm not sure about that.
That's actually true and sort of publicly acknowledged.
We don't need to get down to that of course.
Because in a sense, Professor, I'm really merely using it to say that the presence of power is what is significant in both the cases of science and religion.
Neither of those... I think that's unfair.
I think that's unfair.
Is that the good point you said that was approaching us?
We didn't get to that.
What I'm calling the measles model was possibly the best they had to go on at the time.
And if that was wrong, then that's a pity.
But it was the best advice they had available at the time.
It was assumed.
They didn't communicate it like that.
I mean I'm only continuing because you're continuing.
They communicated it with a good degree of certainty and this erroneous assumption that they made was very profitable for some of those powerful interests in the world and allowed governments to govern and regulate in ways that are increasingly becoming difficult.
I wouldn't wish to make the economic accusation at that point.
I think it was a fair point that Epidemiological wisdom at the time, and still is, that vaccination is a public good and if there's some disease where it's not the case that vaccination is a public good because vaccination does not actually guard against transmission,
Then that that's something we need to take account of in the future.
But I don't think I would wish to point fingers and say there was economic interests which which were overriding this case.
I think it was if there was a I'm not even saying there was a mistake, but if there was a mistake and I think it was an honest mistake.
We've got some incredible information on this which to outline now would take us such a
long while but there's some quite credible sources that make it appear like the institutions
of the media, the government, the pharmaceutical industry, unelected global bodies like the
WEF, WHO, philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who
had previously run pandemic, had gamed out what might happen in a pandemic situation,
conveniently aligned to generate a scenario where the outcomes were favorable to governments
whose general tendency, one might argue, based on their name, is to govern and regulate and
legislate and to corporate interests whose, broadly speaking, exist in order to generate
profit and that might sound unduly cynical but I'll just take as just one sort of simple example
at the beginning of the pandemic Albert Baller, CEO of Pfizer, said it would be unconscionable
to profit from this pandemic and that they would ensure that that didn't happen and yet by the end
of the pandemic, curiously, Pfizer had profited by $108 billion. If I remain silent, if I remain silent.
If I remain silent, it's not because I accept what you're saying, it's because I just don't know enough.
Absolutely.
And also, to tell you the truth, it's something we cover in such detail elsewhere, citing credible sources all the time, and it's not something I claim to be an expert in either.
But what I'm interested in is the utilization of science as the sort of godhead, forgive the phrase, of a new sort of moral authority in order to bypass Ordinary discernment and a way that it's become, in that instance for example, I would say undemocratic.
I wouldn't call it moral, I'd say it was more that science has to give the best advice available and it's not a case of moral advice, it's a case of just expedient advice.
It should never be fused with morality, it should always be this is expedient, this is what we know right now and morality is not our domain, we do not have the tools for morality.
Yes, fair enough.
So, Professor though, I guess where I would like to sort of advance this conversation, and is there anything, how come you're doing this?
Well, last year's book was Flights of Fancy, about flight, but I'm also starting a podcast of my own, I think that's probably why I'm doing it.
Yes, go on then, what's that?
Well, it's called Poetry of Reality, and science is the poetry of reality, and I haven't really started it yet, but I want to advise, ask your advice about how to run a podcast.
I think it's, to tell you the truth, the advice I'd give you seem to me to be areas where you would not struggle, remain rigorously truthful to what you believe in, speak to people that you are interested in, be entirely willing to have conversations with people with whom you thoroughly disagree, and enter those conversations In good faith.
Sounds like Exodus advice, yes.
That's sort of how I do it.
And whenever I'm not doing that...
I get really bored really really quickly and I do loathe to be bored.
So I've got lots more questions.
So my belief in God, I'll listen to your podcast, what's it called?
The Poetry of Reality?
Yes.
Who's coming on or are you doing it all on your own?
Well we don't know yet.
I'm pretty fascinated by Alfred Russel Wallace.
I'll tell you why.
Alfred Russel Wallace?
Yes.
Because I'm from Grey's in Essex, right?
Yes.
I went back there recently on some sort of pilgrimage because actually I'm like deeply religious.
I'm obsessed with religion.
I'm obsessed with the unknowable.
I'm obsessed with the mystery.
I'm obsessed with the unknowable, but that's the scientific unknowable.
Yeah.
Anyway, go on.
And you similarly seem to be trying to derive from it some ethos, some ethic, some way that we might live.
I know that I'm so, what do I want to say, incredibly grateful to you for your rigour, for your work, for your fortitude, for your willingness to endure, I imagine, many difficult and challenging conversations and it must have been incredibly difficult to create the body of work that you've created.
But where I am, it seems sometimes it does seem to me that you are I'm almost determined to arrive at a materialistic outcome with the kind of zeal that one might attribute typically to someone of a particular religious persuasion in the same manner that I am determined to believe in God in the same way that I lean into Joseph Campbell's observation when watching a vine wind its way across a trellis that it appears to be moving to the warmth
That there is, and as you say, these patterns only appear to be like intelligence, but I feel that that is, that is a matter of perspective, and like an argument that you must have batted off a thousand times, the strawberriness of a strawberry can never be understood, and indeed that is the poetry, the poetry that science can never approach.
The reason that poetry is required, the reason that scripture is required, is when it comes to the most important matters in our life, death, Grief.
Joy.
Loss.
Love.
Heartbreak.
What use is it, Professor, to turn to this is the endocrinal outcome, and this is what we imagine has happened neurologically?
I mean, I love it, and I'm fascinated by it, and it's beautiful, and I'm grateful for it, but I feel like it exists here, in this territory, and over here we have this, we have access to something that might never be measured, or might
be measured. Perhaps one day we will have the tools.
Perhaps one day we will have the tools, but I can imagine that they will be so refined and so glorious, and I have
this faith that they are going to lead us to unity and love. And
if I can, because I saw that you got a bit irritated when I used that word 'love',
I wonder this, tell me what you think, this is just a personal theory,
I'm glad I've got the opportunity to run it by you. I wonder if love is the sort of felt
understanding of unity, a kind of sense that I have a duty to a child, or a sense that I have an affinity with another,
that love implies duty, that it implies connection, that each
The idea that separateness, the idea that I am this separate biological entity is temporal and spatial and an animalistic interpretation of a narrow strata of reality which can never really be measured because we don't have the instruments, we don't have the instruments, we don't have the bandwidth but we can intuit it, that we sense it, that this is the job of the shaman, the job of the priest, the job of the mystic, the realm of of the psychoactive and psychedelic experience, that these are not just fluctuations and the flatulence of a busy mind, that there is something here that is vital.
And I wonder how you approach those questions in yourself and where it leaves you with regard to the joy and the grief and the stuff I said an hour and a half ago at the beginning of the question.
I never had a psychoactive experience, in which case I'm obviously deficient.
Um, I, um, I, um, understand what's meant by words like love and empathy and, uh, they are, they mean a lot to me, uh, on a personal point of view, personal level.
Um, I don't get mystical about it.
Why?
Because I'm a materialist, because I think science will or can explain everything.
And if it can't, nothing else can.
I said that before.
But that doesn't demean it, that doesn't reduce, that doesn't in any way minify the importance of love.
Love is deeply important to me, but I don't get mystical about it.
You don't sense yourself being at the edge of what it's possible to understand?
Oh, I think I sense that, yes.
But then I feel the urge to try to understand it at a scientific level.
There's much of physics I don't understand.
When I talk to physicists, I feel awed and wish I understood better.
So there are plenty of things I don't understand.
I feel I'm on the edge of understanding things.
Yes, I feel that.
I wonder then if awe might have a, I mean of course it must, a biochemical component that one might with the right instrument be able to measure and observe the impact of the numinous But there will always be an ulterior imperture in the same manner that we've dealt at once with atoms and then electrons and then bosons, quarks and whatever the hell that was.
But then it appears that we can never reliably say, ah, this is the genesis.
And I... What am I trying to say to you?
I'm trying to say that I don't know what I'm trying to say.
I think I said some quite good things there.
You keep using the word numinous and I'm curious what you mean by it.
Well, I like C.S.
Lewis's description of it.
He goes He goes, if I told you that there was a tiger in the next room, you would feel you would feel afraid.
And if I told you there was a ghost in the next room and you believed it, you would also feel afraid, but not afraid in the same way that you would be afraid of a tiger.
Oh no, what's this ghost going to do?
No one cares what a ghost is going to do, like in Scooby Doo.
But you are aware that your understanding of reality is glitching and twitching and being challenged.
He then said, imagine if I were to say there is a mighty spirit in the room next to you.
You might feel that you might feel yourself on the edge of something and as Shakespeare said, and here my genius is rebuked.
That the knowledge that there is a great power and I don't feel that we're at odds by Perceiving it in nature or fetishizing its particular understanding over what it somehow suggests at its root.
I feel that in a sense we're talking about the same thing but I suppose what I'm trying to draw from it or extract from it is the possibility that there is something in religious thought that is valuable culturally.
and necessary in fact and that if we allow science to encroach continually
upon that territory what will happen is that this materialism - there's a word that's come up several times - that
materialism will lead, that does lead to, because it has led to and this is where we are, a
kind of, what do I want to say, a grimly metastasized capitalism where all that
matters is that which can be measured.
And in science, all that matters is that which can be measured.
Of course, that makes perfect sense.
No other science would be of any value.
Of course, conjecture will exist there.
But in the establishment of a society, in the establishment of a culture, in the establishment of a family, If all that matters is that which can be measured, you will get individualistic, materialistic, ultimately nihilistic, pious, moralising but oddly unforgiving cultures with no real values.
We are seeing it.
And I think, and my faith is, my belief is, that we need to reintroduce the mystery.
And I don't want it to be just like some sort of mad dogma or some stupid thing that's used to make people feel bad about the way they are or who they have sex with or something.
I want it to be something that I know what a tiger is.
I have no idea what a great spirit is.
And so I would not be impressed if you said there was a great spirit in the room next door.
I would want to know what it was.
is, I have no idea what a great spirit is. And so I would not be impressed if you said
there was a great spirit in the room next door. I would want to know what it was. When
you come on to equating a scientific materialistic worldview with materialism in the other sense,
in the sense of a cheap sort of economically only caring about money and selfishness and
things.
I don't own that.
I don't approve of that.
I don't feel that that should be laid at science's door.
Science is bigger than that, more important than that.
And I think it's disingenuous to suggest that the only escape from materialism in the demeaning sense, in the economic sense, is religion.
I think religion is relatively unequipped, too small to deal with these big problems that we're dealing with.
Beyond the coincidence of the shared semantic term, I feel that there is a corollary between materialism in the two senses, because I feel that there...
Beat about the bush here.
Secularism is predicated on the idea that the abiding and dominant idea now is that the state is the ultimate authority.
Nothing to do with it.
What's got to do with the state?
What's got to do with the state?
Why would you equate materialism with the state having authority?
Secularism.
And I'm saying that secularism... Secularism, yes.
Secularism, we have to separate church and state, we have to get religion out the bloody way and let the business of the state be the business of the state.
But somehow man worships, even, and I'm sure for you this might be somewhat hackneyed, but you're pretty evangelical and zealous and pretty devout and those things, regardless of the object, they're interesting qualities to have as a person.
Anyway, my point is this.
That materialism can lead to secularism.
All that matters is that's what we can measure and what's rational.
Let's get this hocus-pocus crap out of the way.
Yeah, let's.
And build a lovely state.
Right, now let's get on with putting poor people in jail.
No, come on!
It is Richard, that's what's happening.
Well, it may be happening but it's nothing to do with it.
I mean, it's nothing to do with secularism.
Okay, we can certainly disagree on that.
I mean, of course we can.
We can, I'm not arguing with you.
I'm saying, what I'm saying is, is that perhaps a way of challenging, like I feel that, do you feel that society's in trouble?
Maybe I do.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
Right.
So what do you think the answer is?
Well not religion!
Well I do!
So we're gonna have to somehow get along because for the next six months we're going to be in a caravan together touring the British Isles you preaching materialism and me wandering around with like um burning sage and I'm only wearing a blanket and stuff and I'm like Richard I'll pray for you Richard I've bought you a crystal yeah yeah I've prayed for it like that and given you like you believe in crystal healing by the way I believe that fundamental to the human experience, obviously, is consciousness.
That consciousness is a thread that we are all strung upon.
That if we have emerged from consciousness, that we are its avatars and its angels.
Now, when you start to codify something that's that mystical into this particular trinket as an attribute, I acknowledge that it's absurd.
I adore all that I can understand about science.
I adore it.
I adore it when people can explain to me, this is how this has evolved, and look we can prove, look the monkey, the capuchin monkey on this side is like this, and on that side of the mountain like that.
I mean, oh my god, you geniuses, it's so magical.
And yet for me there is something more.
There is something more.
And I think you've inferred that That society is in trouble.
I think that it's due to our belief systems and the way that those belief systems are playing out.
And when I say religion, actually, Richard, I don't mean let's all dress up a particular way or worship a particular thing.
I mean, let us acknowledge together that we do not know and that we may never know, but individually... I agree with that 100%.
Okay, but that doesn't mean religion.
I agree that there's something, as lot we don't know, we may never know.
And I want to know.
I want to work on knowing.
But we may not ever know.
Yes.
And I feel that what that we may endeavour to do is create the conditions where we have a sense that we are pursuing something together that we are respecting individual and community freedom we are acknowledging the observable fact that we are all here together potentially in limitless space potentially the only example of conscious life in the universe and that this ought be revered and honored and that there
The earliest forms of religion say, because it seems like what you don't like at institutional religions where it's sort of like people at some point or another get a gun or a candelabra and say that our religion is about this.
But what about totemism?
What about the earliest forms of religion where people revered their food source and acknowledged that they needed to have an intuitive relationship with that food source that was somehow sacralized and ritualized?
I don't really, I don't revere that.
I mean you have a relationship with your food source, you work out how to grow it, you work out how to fertilise it, manure it, water it.
But where do people get all this spirit from if they, to do all of this stuff?
You're very unusual.
Have you had any diagnosis for particular neurological conditions and neurological diversity?
Have you?
No.
Well, everyone, because I think people might not be willing to start farms and go hunting for stags if they don't believe that there is some intuition.
That there is the sensory realm, there is that which is observable, and there is that which might be observable by some advanced Oh, I accept that that's historically how it happened.
I mean, of course, that's the relationship that people had with their animals they hunted and the crops that they grew and so on.
I mean, that's historically what happened.
It wasn't the best way to do it, but that's the way it was done.
Yes and do you feel that there is something do you feel there is nothing in it you see it just as cold and full of edges and that where the edge ends there is nothing there is nothing between the edges of things but it's not alive with possibility.
I don't know what you're saying there.
That between us, in the space between us, and within you, the experience of you being Professor Richard Dawkins, and the experience of me being Russell Brand, that there might be some commonality, and that evidence of that commonality might be found in the ability for us to share this linguistic experience.
course yeah the ability for us to interpret the vibrations in the air like
this over the I feel that somehow your ability to understand mechanics micro
mechanics evolutionary biology has somehow stripped if I may offer you is
it not insulting stripped away the sort of somehow wonder and awe
And I know you say, oh, I do feel wonder at a mountain or some discovery of Isaac Newton or whatever, I'm sure, or indeed Darwin, your great hero, like, but I think it's... I feel that there was a relationship between what I'm saying and love, a kind of intuitive... You talked about what's passing between us, which is words, and it's waves of pressure, sound pressure waves, and it goes in the ear and it's interpreted in an amazingly complicated way.
A mathematical analysis of the waveform, Fourier analysis.
It's astonishing.
And that's what passes between us.
And do you feel that this happened as a result of single cellular entities evolving as a result of their relationship with their environment, the precise conditions for which were afforded to them, and ended up in this mathematically impossible miracle of our current communication?
And beyond this you think that there is nothing to revere or marvel at?
There's plenty to reveal and marvel at, but it's not supernatural.
It's natural, and it's beautiful because it's natural, and maybe one day it will succumb to understanding.
We understand a lot more than we used to.
We understand what sound waves are now.
We understand, in principle, how they're analysed by the brain.
That's wonderful.
It's interesting that you use the word succumb.
Because of course so much of our history has been about the subjugation of nature, the management of nature.
And you get the semantics around natural and supernatural.
This for me is like, for me, the God in nature, the idea that nature is somehow haunted through arithmetic and geometry and through a thousand patterns that appear poetic and indeed have inspired the title of your forthcoming podcast.
Good bit of promo there.
For me, I would not extract the possibility of theism being evident and stitched throughout all of that.
And I put it to you, Professor Richard Dawkins, that your problem has always been about the dogma derived from this evident and observable mystery, rather than the mystery itself.
And that that mystery could just as easily be utilised to create more harmony and to create more hope.
And I don't think it's possible to create that harmony and hope if you foreclose it all the time going, we'll understand this in a couple of weeks, this is codswallop.
And giving people a wallop with a microscope every time they try to write a poem.
Are they?
I was just saying it's a joke, you know, like that's what you're like.
Like everyone at times goes, isn't it beautiful, man?
I was standing on the edge of a cliff and I saw a sunset and you'd go, oh, that's just ridiculous.
It's just a refraction of the light.
That is treacherously what I would say.
And I'd go, look at that rainbow.
That's the exact opposite of what I would say.
I'd go, look at that rainbow.
And you'd go, it's just from the vapours.
And you'd hit me around the head with a glove.
It's just vapour.
You're being ridiculous.
I would respond in a poetic way just as much as you would.
Go on then.
What would you say?
We're seeing a rainbow.
It's you and me.
We're observing it.
I would say it's a beautiful thing and it's even more beautiful because we understand what put it together.
Thanks to Newton.
And in spite of our apparent separateness, here we are sharing in this rainbow together.
Yes.
And then you go, I'm off to study, and I go, I'm going to use it to start a system of government.
Well, how are you going to use it for government?
I don't know, Richard.
Who's going to start a system of government?
Me, I'm using that.
You're just off back to the lab.
Yeah, okay.
To write a book, to take all the fun out of it.
Maybe write a poem.
And I'm darting off to use it!
So, all right, I think we've got quite a lot out of this.
Obviously, you can read more of Professor Richard Dawkins' work on his new Substack and on the Professor's YouTube channel at The Poetry of Reality.
We'll post a link in the description there.
Sorry I didn't do enough of your questions, or indeed any of your questions.
I was really caught up in my own line of inquiry there.
I didn't do anyone else's questions.
Can I do someone else's questions?
I don't know what these questions are.
Tell me, I'll ask them, there's other people, and if you're interested in them you can answer them, if you feel... People have sent them in.
That's right, and if you feel the lure of Oxford, simply dismiss them with a wave of the hand, as if it was me, sort of trying to say that a spider's web's an example of Jesus.
Camilla says, I've been so excited for this conversation.
I used to read Richard's books growing up.
Since then, my views have shifted and evolved.
Richard, have your views shifted over time?
If so, how and why?
I sort of asked that, didn't I?
Yeah, I think so, yes.
I covered that, Camilla.
You're wasting our time.
Jimmy Greenwood said, why not acknowledge... Oh, he's going to hate this.
Why not acknowledge that a soul or spirit exists?
Otherwise one can miss out on so much you're going to really piss him off with this question.
Denying religions is fine, but atheism is not dissimilar to other religions, a belief system, and creates division in much the same way as churches.
God is simply a handy three-letter word to describe soul connection.
What's your thought?
I think we've had covered that.
You've had enough of that.
You've annoyed him.
Rich asks, if God is not part of the observable universe but rather the transcendent cause of the universe, is it possible for us to confirm or deny this idea of God as humans without some kind of revelation from God?
I don't think, well that begins with an if.
It's a conditional.
Yeah.
And I think the answer is he isn't.
Well done.
Christine Hart, did you ever believe in God and if so what put you off?
That's from Christine Hart.
I certainly did.
When you were little.
As St.
Paul said, yes, when I was a child, I speak as a child, I thought of it as a child, I understood as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
If it's St.
Paul saying that, and I think that you're strawmanning Christianity there.
But we'll talk about this off-air when we go, when we do our caravan show.
Join us next week when I'll be joined by Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi talking about the censorship industrial complex and looking ahead to our live show in London on June the 22nd.
You can buy tickets now if you want to come and see me, Matt and Shelley Schellenberger in London.
Join us next time.
Thank you.
It's been so rigorous, I've felt tearful a couple of times.
Join us next time, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
