Richard Dawkins critiques religion as a "supernatural skydaddy" while debating the Big Bang's timeline and his status as a "cultural Christian." He discusses his book The Genetic Book of the Dead, addressing youth anxiety from technological mismatch and AI fears. Dawkins controversially argues for stripping medals from XY athletes in Paris Olympics boxing, condemns transgender competition as cheating, and laments the decline of open university debate, warning that avoiding opposing views stifles essential intellectual growth. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Physicists and the Origin of Life00:15:00
There has to be a power that is greater than the human brain.
God is just a personification of human desires, a supernatural skydaddy.
Do you ever find yourself almost praying and then stopping yourself?
No.
How often do you admit you're wrong?
I don't have to answer all your questions.
You don't have to, but you're a man who normally answers questions.
The origin of life is a tractable problem.
It may never be solved, but it's not in the same league as the origin of the universe.
Are you an Oasis fan?
I don't think I know who Oasis is.
It's obviously not.
Richard Dawkins is one of the most controversial and fascinating thinkers in the world.
He's that his book, The Genetic Book of the Dead, explores how every creature is a living archive of its ancestors and the history of the planet.
He's also about to embark on what he says is his final ever tour.
And we'll talk about all that and more.
But first, I want to know why.
After my last conversation with the esteemed professor, which I thoroughly enjoyed, he said this.
There was a recent interview you did with Piers Morgan, and you sort of touched on it.
I think it felt like you didn't really believe that he believed that there's this afterlife and God and things like that.
I said that, yes.
Yeah.
Do you think they don't deep down believe it?
I can't speak for them in the abstract.
Something made me think Piers Morgan didn't believe...
I think Piers Morgan's a fool.
So I'm not really much interested in what he believes, actually.
You said something similar off-air, and I didn't think you would repeat it.
Well, he definitely interrupts a lot, doesn't he?
Sure, he can say that again.
Well, Mr. Dawkins joins me exclusively again now to do battle with the fool.
Richard, I thoroughly enjoyed our last conversation.
Why would you turn on me like that afterwards?
I did too.
I did too.
Well, I've already explained that to your people why I did.
I was heard that it was nothing to do with what.
Oh, okay.
Well, in that case, they're remiss in not telling you, but I'll tell you afterwards.
But it was nothing to do with anything you said.
It was a question that you asked me that I thought you shouldn't have asked me.
Ah, okay.
Okay.
Yeah, well, I think there was a subject matter you didn't want to discuss.
There was a very good reason for that.
I explained that to your people.
They should have passed it on to you.
I don't know why they didn't.
Okay, but just to be clear, you don't think I'm a fool.
I do not.
I was irritated by the question, by one question that you asked me, which I think should not have been, and I simply forgot to ask you not to ask it.
I nearly always do ask you not to ask that question.
Okay, well, we can move forward in the spirit of mutual non-foolishness.
Let's move forward.
I do not think you're a fool, no.
Thank you.
Well, I would hope not, because you're back on the program.
It's great to have you, and I love talking to you.
Let's talk about this issue of God, because we had a long chat about this last time.
I do believe for what it's worth.
I do believe in God.
I do believe in an afterlife.
I find it comforting.
I also find, as I said to you last time, I find it explains things which are otherwise completely inexplicable.
And we had a guest on recently, Professor Stephen C. Meyer, who's a prominent believer in intelligent design or what he calls the God hypothesis.
He watched our last interview that you and I had, and this is what he said about it.
Dawkins wants to portray theistic belief as if it's equivalent to belief in fairies.
And he'll concede that, well, it's possible.
But I think there's a stronger argument for the theistic case.
And that is that when scientists and philosophers reason from evidence, they typically use a method of reasoning that has a technical name.
It's called inferring to the best explanation, where the best explanation is one where you're invoking a cause which has the kind of powers that would be required to explain the phenomenon of interest.
And you correctly pointed out in your conversation with him that when you get back to that, what physicists often call the singularity, the point where matter, space, time, and energy begin to exist, the materialist is really up against a huge conundrum because prior to the origin of matter, there is no matter to do the causing.
That's what we mean by the origin of matter, that that's where it starts.
And so if you want to invoke a cause which is sufficient to explain the origin of matter, you can't invoke matter.
It's in principle, materialistic explanations are in principle insufficient.
So you need to invoke something which is external to the material universe and is not bounded by time and space as well.
And that starts to paint a picture of the kind of cause you would need that has the sort of attributes the traditional theists have traditionally associated with God.
Now you see, Richard Law, because this is the nub of, I think, my whole issue with your position on this.
And you can respond, obviously, to what you just heard in a moment.
But given your new book is about the genetic book of the dead, and it effectively takes us from here to in perpetuity on a genetic trail where each part of existence feeds the next and so on.
And I totally subscribe to that.
The genome of every body and every organization and so on creates, as you say, a comprehensive dossier on all the world as it moves forward.
I get it.
But when you go back to the very start, what is there before that?
And that, I think I asked you last time, and Professor Meyer brought that up again as being the flaw in your position, which is what is there before it starts?
What is nothing?
This is a question for a physicist, not a biologist, but what I would answer to Professor Meyer is that we need to explain complexity in terms of simplicity.
And of course, it's true that I cannot say what was there before the Big Bang.
Physicists sometimes tell us that the word before doesn't even mean anything before the Big Bang.
But whatever it was, it wasn't.
But it has to suddenly invoke...
Doesn't it have to?
Well, someone as logical as you are, and I believe you are, you know, you think about this all very logically.
A logical mind surely has to appreciate that before the Big Bang, there has to have been something before then.
Otherwise, what is nothing?
A physicist will tell you that I will tell you.
I'm trying to tell you what a physicist would say first of all.
They would say that you cannot use the word before for the Big Bang.
Time began at the Big Bang.
There was no before before the Big Bang.
I know it's contrary to common sense.
Physicists don't necessarily deal with common sense.
Well, it makes no sense, does it?
And that's what I mean.
You're a logical man.
That cannot make sense to you.
The idea that you're not even allowed to use the word before the Big Bang when everything, every part of both of our brains tells us that that's obviously nonsensical, doesn't that make you think again?
We are not physicists.
I, like you, am completely baffled by what physicists say to me, which is that you cannot use the word before the Big Bang.
Time itself began at the Big Bang.
Now, that is totally counterintuitive.
It's counterintuitive to me.
It's counterintuitive to you.
It's counterintuitive to Stephen Meyer.
But we are not physicists.
And you need to talk to a physicist.
Talk to a physicist about that.
And they will tell you that you cannot use the word before for the Big Bang.
Yeah, but you think that's as preposterous as I am.
I do because I'm not a physicist.
You've just written a book as a biologist called The Genetic Book of the Dead, in which you talk about the body and the genome, comprehensive dossiers, and so on.
So you're prepared to expound a philosophy based on that as a biologist, which I completely respect.
And it makes perfect sense.
The book makes perfect sense the way that you have written it.
But why would you then think that a physicist cannot be contradicted just simply because they're a physicist?
I could contradict what you say as a biologist.
No, no, no, you really aren't getting it.
I'm so sorry.
Modern physics is exceedingly mysterious.
It really is.
I mean, have you tried to read some of the difficult modern physics books?
It really is very difficult to understand.
And intuition doesn't do it.
You cannot use human intuition.
Human intuition was built up by evolution over many millions of years to survive on the African plane hunting and gathering, looking for water holes, looking for mates and so on.
Our brains were not built to understand the profundities of the origin of the universe, the end of the universe, the kind of things that physicists deal with.
I think it's actually amazing that at least some human brains are capable of dealing with this kind of stuff.
My brain isn't, and nor is yours.
No, but that's my point, though.
I wish it were.
Well, yeah, I wish both our brains could.
But the truth is, it's because the human brain can't comprehend this, including, I don't think, any physicist.
Because the moment they say you can't have before the Big Bang, they lose me completely just on a common sense perspective.
It's that reason that I think there has to be a power that is greater than the human brain.
And that gives me succour to my belief in God and why I think people turn to gods of different types, obviously.
They turn to that because it is incomprehensible otherwise.
What has happened here?
There has to be something more difficult to understand than the human brain can understand.
I accept that.
But it doesn't have to be God.
It doesn't have to be the kind of God who, oh, I don't know, forgives sins and listens to prayers and things like that.
There is something very mysterious, and I don't understand it, and you don't understand it, and maybe we never will.
I think it's not clear whether physicists understand it.
Some do, some don't, but it's obviously going to be very mysterious.
But God is not that interesting mystery.
God is just a personification of human desires, a father figure, something like that, somebody who looks after you.
You said at the beginning that it was comforting for you.
God is somebody who listens to prayers, who forgives sins, who takes action for the benefit of humanity or not, as the case may be.
We're not talking about that now.
We're talking about deeply, deeply mysterious, profound things which physics is working on and it's very difficult, very difficult to understand.
And the fact that you don't understand it and I don't understand it is not a good ground, not good grounds for suddenly invoking a supernatural skydaddy.
But if our genomes, if our genetic background has all the information which has led to us being what we are today, and that will obviously extrapolate as we go forward, then it does beg the question, doesn't it?
Where does the original information come from?
Yes, it does.
And as far as a biologist is concerned, we're talking about the original information coming at the origin of life.
That's something which biologists and chemists and physicists can deal with.
But you've gone right back to the origin of the universe to the Big Bang, which is another matter entirely, and which is not really relevant to the biological question of what happens once biology gets started, which is the origin of genetics, actually.
It's the origin of the information which is passed from generation to generation, from living creature to living creature.
That started maybe 3.8, maybe 4 billion years ago, that the universe started more like 13.8 billion years ago, which is a much longer time ago, and which is a totally different question, nothing to do with biology.
But doesn't code have to have a coder?
No, of course it doesn't.
Code arises spontaneously at the origin of life, something very, very simple, probably, at the origin of life, which was not genetic, not DNA at least.
It would have been some kind of genetic, some kind of coding, which would be a self-replicating molecule.
Once you've got a self-replicating molecule, then you have the possibility of mutation, which is mistaken in coding.
But where does that come from?
You were about to say something.
Yeah, where does it come from?
It comes from a random accident in chemistry at some time around 3.8 to 4 billion years ago.
Okay, but I don't want to labor this point, but I'm genuinely fascinated.
Genuinely.
Okay.
So it happened 4 billion years ago.
There was this chemical thing, whatever.
But what was there before the chemical thing?
Oh, well, there was chemistry.
There was plenty going on before then because we've got about 11 billion years, 10 million years to play with there.
And so there was plenty going on.
What happened 4 billion years ago was a spontaneous accidental arising of a molecule which made copies of itself.
That was a very improbable event, admittedly, a very improbable event, but once it happened, then everything about biology was able to take over, able to take over.
You're making a number of, well, informed assumptions based on what you believe happened.
But you do concede that you don't know what happened before all that, because your brain, like mine, cannot compute that.
So do you accept that stuff could have gone on before that, which makes everything you're saying completely wrong?
You're talking about two different kinds of before.
You're talking about the origin of the universe, and now we're talking about the origin of life.
Well, I'm just saying, if you go back generally billions of years, none of us were there, right?
Everyone's got their view about what may or may not have happened.
But do you accept that the way that your brain has computed what is likely to have happened to get us to where we are today, it could be based on a false original pretext?
I accepted that for the origin of the universe, which is another matter.
Believing vs Cultural Christians00:07:55
Now we're talking about the origin of life.
And again, we don't know how that happened, but there's nothing like so mysterious as the origin of the universe.
The origin of life is a tractable problem.
It may never be solved, but it's not in the same league as the origin of the universe.
Now, the origin of life is something which chemists are working on, and they may solve it in a certain sense.
They may find a suitable model, a plausible model, of how a self-replicating molecule came into existence.
There's no mystery about there being chemistry before then.
There was chemistry before then.
There was plenty of organic chemistry going on.
Now, Somewhere around four billion years ago, a molecule arose which had the unusual property, not totally impossible, but unusual property, of making copies of itself.
Now, once that happened, then you have the possibility of Darwinian life getting going.
And that's something which we understand.
And we understand, in principle, the kind of thing that could have given rise to that first self-replicating molecule.
And it's an active field of research, but it's not a field that is necessarily going to yield results because it happened a long time ago under conditions that we can't repeat now.
But that's not a big mystery like the origin of the universe.
But are they not?
Okay, but are they...
I hear what you say, but are they not directly connected?
In a sense, if you don't understand or know how the universe began or what was there before then, then can you really fully understand the origin of life?
I mean, you can have some clues about what may have ignited.
They're nothing.
Not really.
No, they're not really connected because the origin of the universe is a mystery, but we know it did originate.
And so it was going for 10 billion years before life started.
How do we know the origin of the universe did happen the way you think?
How do we know it originated?
We know that it's 13.8 billion years old because of various things which astronomers can tell you.
I mean, Hubble's law and extrapolating back with all sorts of things like that, which are very well known and very well understood, but not the moment of the Big Bang itself.
But once you've got that, then physicists know a lot.
But we're not talking about that.
I'm talking now.
No, I get it.
I get that.
Well, no, I understand there are two different things in your head, but I'm saying that the two can't be completely disconnected because clearly your belief is that the Big Bang happened, the universe was created, and then many billions of years later we have the origin of life.
I get that.
But my point to you is the two must be directly linked.
You can't have origin of life without origin of the universe.
And my problem with all this is I don't think people really...
Well, can you?
Can you have the two things separate?
Of course not.
They're linked by 10 billion years of happenings, and we know what we understand about that.
The galaxies formed, the stars formed, chemistry formed.
Right.
So how can you fully understand the origin of life?
Right, so how do you fully understand the origin of life without fully understanding, because we don't know, the origin of the universe?
Well, you don't understand anything on that argument if you don't understand the origin of the universe.
The origin of the universe is another matter.
Once you've got the origin of the universe, then you've got a whole lot of things that happen, which we know very well.
That's history.
We understand that.
We know that.
That's well worked out.
And then the origin of life is something that happened about 10 billion years after the origin of the universe.
And that's something which is still a mystery, but a rather small mystery compared to the origin of the universe.
And it's something which is being worked on.
And once that happened, we've then got the whole four billion years of life.
And that we understand much better.
And that happens to be my field.
Okay.
I'm curious about your position about religion, because you went on Rachel Johnson's LBC program earlier this year, and you said this.
I do think that we are culturally a Christian country.
I call myself a cultural Christian.
I'm not a believer.
But there's a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian.
And so, you know, I love hymns and Christmas carols.
And I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos.
I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense.
And many people thought that was a very incongruous thing to say because many would argue that your influence has been anti-Christianity in the sense of you don't believe in religion, you don't believe in a God.
You will have deterred people who listen to you and believe you from wanting to follow a God, a Christianity.
Therefore, it's sort of antithetical to have the two positions.
What do you say to that?
I am a cultural Christian who is against Christianity.
That's nothing contradictory about that.
I'm a cultural Christian in the sense that I know the Bible, I know hymns, I know carols, I like churches, I like cathedrals, I like cathedral choirs, I've sung in that kind of choir.
So I am a cultural Christian, but I'm against Christianity, in that I'm against the belief system of Christianity, I'm against many other aspects of Christianity.
There's nothing contradictory about that, nor is there anything new about my saying I'm a cultural Christian.
I've always said I'm a cultural Christian.
Isn't it a bit hypocritical, though, to be, you know, reading the Bible, singing hymns, going along with everything that Christianity represents, but saying you're not a Christian.
You don't believe in anything that actually is the tenet of Christianity.
I'm not going along with it.
I'm just saying that a cathedral is a beautiful building.
The B minor Mass is a beautiful piece of music.
Stay less whispering.
Speaking as a Christian, you like my churches, my cathedrals, the Bible.
You like all this.
And at the same time, you've said on the record, mock them.
Ridicule them, you said at the Reason Rally in Washington.
Ridicule them in public.
I don't ridicule their beliefs.
Yes, I'm going to finish the quote.
You said, don't fall for the convention.
We're all too polite to talk about religion.
Religion's not off the table.
Religion's not off the list.
Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated and need to be challenged.
If necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt.
Now, can you really be a cultural Christian and urge people to mock religions like Christianity at the same time?
Did you say lock?
Mock.
M-O-C-K.
Oh, mock, mock, mock, mock.
Yes, of course you can.
I don't understand your problem.
A cultural Christian is simply somebody who's brought up in a Christian culture and therefore is steeped in the music, the art, the architecture, the literature of Christianity.
That's what I am.
But I'm not sure.
But my point to you is it all comes from the belief.
As a Christian who was raised a Christian, as a Catholic, it's all interwoven.
You know, you can't sing hymns in a church.
It's just for you, but not for me.
Well, okay, but if you sing here, it's a bit like going to a football match and saying that you're a cultural Arsenal fan and you're going to chant all the chants about all the players and about the club, but you don't actually believe in the concept of a football team.
In fact, you hate football.
I am a cultural Christian because I am steeped in the culture of Christianity.
Doesn't mean I'm not against it.
Spending Eternity with Family00:06:15
I mean, plenty of...
But Bertrand Russell, who is one of the most famous atheists who ever lived, was a cultural Christian, who was brought up Christian.
He brought up in Christian schools.
He knew all about Christianity.
It's a very different matter.
You don't have to be in favor of it.
I mean, when you read a novel, you can identify with the characters, but you don't believe they really existed.
You can get emotionally involved in the characters.
I can get emotionally involved in the music, the church music of Bach, even the St. Matthew Passion, which is about the tragic death of Jesus.
I can get emotionally involved in that.
But I don't believe that the teachings of Jesus, I don't believe Jesus was the Son of God.
I don't believe he raised from the dead or was born of a virgin.
But I appreciate the music of Bach.
What's wrong with that?
Do you ever find yourself almost praying and then stopping yourself?
No.
Really?
You never have a moment where you look for something else?
You look for some solace somewhere, maybe in a moment of grief or whatever it may be?
I might desire solace and I would get it from other human beings.
You never think, I wonder if there's something out there that could spiritually help me.
No, I mean, wondering if there's something out there, and that's another matter.
I mean, I think there probably are plenty of mysterious things that we don't understand out there in the universe, but I don't think that they're God.
I don't think that they answer prayers or give me solace of that kind.
I don't think they have any kind of conscious intelligence.
I think that there are deeply mysterious things in the universe which I would like to understand, and scientists are working on understanding, but I don't like to confuse that with religious views of supernaturalism, which I think are nonsense.
You've announced that you're going to be on your last tour, which many people are disappointed by because they love going to your shows and hearing what you have to say.
That would indicate that you are becoming more perhaps aware of your mortality as you get older.
Have you thought about what happens when your life ends?
Well, I'm 83.
Have I thought about what happens?
Yeah.
Of course, I die.
What do you think happens?
I think I get buried or cremated.
And there's nothing after that.
I think it's exactly like...
Of course.
How could it not be?
I mean, you have a brain which decays.
How could there be anything other than that?
There's just nothing.
Just like there was before you were born.
But you were not around when the dinosaurs were.
But do you not wish you were wrong?
I mean, I remember Christopher Hitchens, I think, who was another famous atheist.
And he said, you know, I hope I'm wrong.
Do you hope you're wrong?
Do you hope that actually when it happens, when you die, and suddenly if you discover yourself in an afterlife, would you be...
Would you scream Eureka and thank God I was wrong?
Well, no, I don't think that.
I mean, I could do it, about 200 years maybe, but I don't think much longer than that.
But it isn't going to happen.
I mean, it's obvious.
I think eternity would be genuinely frightening.
I mean, the idea of going on for trillions of years.
Well, it depends what it's there.
It depends what's there.
I mean, if I was to say to you, I remember interviewing Professor Stephen Hawking, and I said, if you knew you had one day left to live, how would you spend it?
And he said, I would drink champagne with my family in the gleaming sunshine listening to Wagner.
So, I don't know, how would you spend your life?
If you knew you had a final day, how would you spend it?
I'm not answering that question.
Why not?
I think it would be because it's a private matter.
I'm a private person.
I don't have to answer all your questions.
You don't have to, but you're a man who normally answers questions.
No, I don't.
I refused to answer a question on your previous interview and you didn't understand why.
Well, no, I didn't.
And I think it was explained to me later why you felt reticent to do it.
I mean, I was thinking in an interview, anyone.
But it was explained to you then.
So you know why.
Afterwards, yeah, yeah.
I thought you said you didn't know why.
Afterwards.
I thought afterwards.
Yes, good.
Yeah.
So I understood why you were concerned, but I still think I should have had the right to ask you that question.
Well, okay.
Well, only because I think any interviewer should be able to ask in an interview any question they see fit.
You as the interviewee are not obliged to answer it, is how I would describe how I see an interview format.
Okay, well, you've asked me what I would do on my last day, and I've said that's a private matter.
Okay, which fair enough, I accept that.
But given, I mean, do you know, without telling me, have you thought now in the last couple of minutes about how you would spend your last day?
You know, you haven't got to tell me, but have you thought through what it...
Okay, so you know.
So if eternity, as you put it, trillions of years in perpetuity, forever and ever, if you could lead that day forever, why wouldn't you do that?
Because eternity is eternity, and it goes on and on and on and on, and that is a very, very frightening concept.
That's all.
I mean, I would spend my last day.
I have the imagination to spend my life.
Well, I would spend...
I'm quite happy to tell you I spend mine.
I'd want to be with family and friends.
I'd want to be watching an Ashes cricket match.
I'd want to be drinking French wine, Burgundy and Bordeaux, and having probably some cigars, Monte Cristo number two.
And I could quite happily do that every single day for eternity and never get bored.
Rather you than me.
The Immortal Gene for Young People00:08:14
Let me ask you about the book.
When you finished your book, The Genetic Book of the Dead, what was your overarching conclusion?
Ah, well, it's a whole book, so it's rather hard to put into a single sentence.
I think that my overarching conclusion to all my books has been how amazing it is that we understand as much as we do, and what a privilege it is to live at a time when we do understand so much.
And I try to put into all my books some small part of that.
And that fills me with a feeling of delight.
Critics of your thesis for the book say it reduces human beings to mere material biological processes, but doesn't really tell us about culture, civilization, consciousness.
No, it's not about that.
If I were to write a book about civilization and consciousness, I would write a different book.
This is a book about evolution.
It's about the past.
And so it's not really about humans at all, except insofar as humans are animals like all other animals.
And we've touched on this earlier, but other critics say that you've got a chapter called The Immortal Gene and how information and the gene could be eternal, which I completely accept.
But they say, well, okay, but where does that information originate from to precipitate all this?
And your answer would be, what, the origin of life that we discussed earlier?
Well, yes, it originates from previous generations.
I mean, each generation gets its information handed on from the previous one.
And that's the process of evolution.
No, I understand that, but the critics say if you have an immortal gene going forward, does it work the other way?
In other words, is it in perpetuity backwards?
Or is there a starting point?
And you would say, what?
The origin of life?
No, it's not even in per...
It's not in perpetuity going forwards either.
Immortal is rather just a poetic phrase.
Well, immortal does mean for us finer.
Yes, it does, but it was done in a spirit of poetic fancy.
It doesn't mean literally.
It means nothing's immortal because the universe is coming to an end.
Certainly the world is coming to an end.
Are you suggesting that I shouldn't take anything you say in this book seriously?
Should all get.
Oh, come on.
You're being so sort of unreasonable.
You know perfectly well that we're not immortal, but the world is not immortal.
I didn't call it the immortal gene.
You've got a whole chapter.
You've got a whole chapter called the immortal gene.
It wasn't my title.
Okay, look.
The thing is, you should read a book by more than its title only.
You should read a chapter by more than its title only.
The gene could not possibly be immortal because the sun is going to swallow the earth up in a few billion years' time.
So you know that, so nothing's immortal, obviously.
Do you regret calling it the immortal gene with Einstein?
Not at all.
Would it be more appropriate to call it the non-immortal gene?
The one that's going to stop when the sun burns us up?
It would not have been an appropriate title for a chapter.
It would be more accurate.
No?
You're just nitpicking.
This is not a constructive conversation.
Let's move to something where I think we have common ground and agreement.
Very interesting about how you've been quite outspoken recently about mental health.
Here's my question.
You're in your 80s, as you said.
I've never known a time in my lifetime, I'm 59, where so many young people seem to have so much anxiety about life and have an inability because of that anxiety to actually deal with normal life.
And yet all the metrics for modern life suggest it's never been a better time to be alive.
We live longer, we live healthier, there are fewer wars than there have been historically, water is cleaner, there's less child poverty, and so on and so on and so on.
If you look at where we are today as a world, it ought to be a cause for celebration.
This is the best time to ever be alive.
Why is it that so many young people, do you think, feel the complete opposite?
They have a sort of doom-laden view.
There's never been a worse time.
I think that's a very good point.
And at least two of Steven Pinker's books make the point that things have been getting better, and this is perhaps indeed the best time to be alive.
I'm not a psychiatrist.
I don't know why.
I mean, I think you would have to investigate, ask the young people concerned.
I don't want to sound patronizing.
I mean, they probably have problems with their lives.
Maybe although it's true that there are many indices that suggest that the world is getting a better place, nevertheless, there are people who feel dissatisfied because they're unemployed or something of that sort.
If you'd have to ask, you should ask them.
Do you feel life's got better?
I mean, do you feel like in your 80s now has been the best time to be alive for you?
In that sense, yes, in the sense that the world I live in is a better world than the world in which I was born, into which I was born.
Yes, I think that's right.
Did previous generations, your generation, maybe the one after, did they have a better toolkit to deal with the travails of life, do you think?
Possibly.
I mean, I think that the way people handle the appalling conditions in the Second World War and in the First World War are something that I personally couldn't possibly cope with.
I'd be completely flattened by them.
And so in some ways, I admire the way people cope with that.
Is technology moving too fast for us to deal with?
Do you think?
Is that one of the reasons young people in particular?
What can I be said for that?
Can I keep up?
Yes, as an evolutionist, that's a very interesting question because clearly our bodies and our brains were built for a very, very different world.
And the world that technology is producing with remarkable speed is outpacing us evolutionarily by many orders of magnitude.
And so the remarkable thing is actually that we can cope at all.
But on the whole, seem to be managing surprisingly well, considering that we were never built to cope with the frenetic pace with which things are changing.
I mean, the other thing Professor Stephen Hawking told me was that when I asked him what's the biggest threat to mankind, and he said, when artificial intelligence learns to self-design, that will be it for humans.
Do you share that fear?
Do you think the speed of AI and the world?
It's a very profound worry, yes.
Yes, that is a profound point, and as you'd expect from him.
And yes, we're just beginning to enter that time now, and it'll be both interesting and frightening to see what happens.
People like Elon Musk think we should be colonizing Mars.
Mars is the most easily colonizable planet that we could do, that we can get to, but we'd have to be very careful how we do it because you'd have to replicate exactly life on Earth.
And that would mean if you even forgot about one vitamin, you could just ruin the whole mission.
I suspect what he actually said was something like the Earth might have a collision with an object like the one that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, but bigger.
Genetics in Women's Boxing00:02:39
That will happen.
And it could happen rather soon.
We know no idea when it will happen, but it will happen.
It's the all eggs in one basket argument.
If the Earth is going to be destroyed, if life on Earth is going to be destroyed, then Elon Musk's argument is let's have our eggs in two baskets.
And the nearest feasible basket is Mars.
And so that's the argument that he makes.
You talk about genetics a lot in the book, obviously.
It's the theme of the book.
What did you make of the fact that we had at the Olympics in Paris two boxers, for example, competing in the women's boxing who tested positive, it's reported for XY chromosomes and this whole issue of genetics when it comes to separating the sexes or otherwise in sport and things.
I think those two boxers should be deprived of their gold medals.
I think they are genetically male.
I think that if they are, I mean, I think they probably sincerely believe that they're female, but they can prove that they're female at any time they like by taking a genetic test.
And it would, I'm almost sure, show that they have Y chromosomes and therefore that they are genetically male.
What matters is that they not only are genetically male, but they have male characteristics with respect to boxing ability, things like reach and strength, power of punching, and so on.
And yes, I think that more generally, I think it's outrageous the way this doesn't apply to those two boxers, by the way, who are not trans.
I mean, they are a different case.
They are genetically male.
But trans people who are genetically male then pretend to be female or say that they're female, identify as female, and then go into female Competitions, races, and swimming races and so on, like that.
And I think that that's just cheating.
I mean, they are making the statement, I feel like a female, I identify as female, and therefore I should be allowed to go into female changing rooms and go into female races and that sort of thing.
And I think that's just plain wrong.
You can respect their personal belief that they have a female personality, they identify as female, they want to dress as female, they want to be addressed by people, addressed by people with female pronouns called she and her and so on.
Respecting Different Beliefs00:04:12
And that's fine, you can go along with that, you can respect that.
But what you cannot respect, I think, is when they force their beliefs on other people and force them to take seriously their beliefs.
And going into changing rooms as a male, going to female changing rooms as a male, is a form of forcing your beliefs on other people.
And that, I think, is beyond the pale.
Yeah, completely agree with you.
You might be startled to hear.
When you have a brain as big as yours.
I'm not startled at all, no.
When you have a brain as big as yours, how do you feed it?
We all have brains that are much the same size.
What do you mean by feet?
Well, in other words, how do you feed it?
Did you say feed it?
Talk me through an average day of information gathering if you're Richard Dawkins.
Oh, I see.
Well, I have a large library of books and I consult them regularly.
I look at the internet a lot.
I look up things on the internet.
I try to learn all the time.
I try to learn subjects that are not my own.
I try to read books that are not in my own field.
I expect you do too.
It's something that makes life worth living.
How often do you admit you're wrong?
As often as I am, as I'm sure I am wrong.
And I am sometimes definitely wrong, yes.
You're not afraid of being wrong?
You're not afraid of being wrong?
Not at all, no.
I mean, scientists are actually quite pleased when they're proved wrong because it gives them something to do.
We're in a very strange era, I think, where people have lost the ability to debate with people who they vehemently disagree with.
I mean, you and I have had a few to and fros and missed conversations.
I agree.
But it wouldn't want me not to interview you again, clearly, because we did last time.
What's happened to our ability to debate in society?
Why have we lost it?
How do we get that back?
I think that's terrible.
And I think, especially in universities, where the whole point of universities is to be made to think and to listen to all sorts of views that contradict your own and the tendency that we see among some universities now to students to object, to say that they feel unsafe.
Unsafe is the word.
They feel unsafe if they're exposed to words, to beliefs, to views that are not their own.
That violates the very spirit of a university, and I think that's shocking.
I completely agree.
We should be debating, we should be discussing.
Yes.
The whole point of university is that you expand your thought processes by having your own ideas challenged by people who don't agree with you, right?
Isn't that the whole point?
Absolutely.
Absolutely, yes.
It is the whole point.
And I tried, my lifetime career as a university teacher has been to instill this idea of discussion and to raise difficult questions, to raise counterfactual questions.
What would in tutorials, what might the world look like if so-and-so were true?
How would you cope with it if so-and-so were true?
How would you handle this counterfactual possibility?
But it seems to be unfashionable at the moment in universities, which is very sad.
The single biggest question right now in Britain and other parts of the world is how to get your hands on a ticket to watch Oasis in their comeback shows.
Are you an Oasis fan?
I don't think I know who Oasis is.
It's obviously not.
So you're not mad for it then?
You won't even know what that means.
Apparently not.
Apparently not, yes.
Richard Dawkins, it's always great to talk to you.
I mean that.
We can have two and fros and argue about stuff and you can find some of the things I say ridiculous.