I said this in a movie once:
"Everyone knows the same truth,
and our lives consist of how we choose to distort it."
I am kind of amazed at what
Lawrence and Richard are doing because they are walking
into some pretty prickly
arenas,
and they have no armor, other than
their own mental faculties.
I think what these two men are doing out there,
promoting a scientific world view,
is something of great value
because it is part of what humanity's all about...
To be curious, to understand
what is the real world surrounding us.
And this is what I love about science, is that
it's knowledge, and knowledge is power,
and it empowers you and it frees you,
because then you're not stuck,
you're no longer stuck where you've been or where somebody else has been stuck.
There are no scientific authorities. There are scientific experts.
Richard knows a lot about zoology; I know a lot about physics.
But there's no one whose views
are not subject to question.
Science just seeks the truth without prejudice, for better or worse.
It doesn't say, "should I find this out?" It says, "can I?"
And that's They don't change the facts.
Facts, if you're rational, should change your beliefs.
Throughout history, new discoveries
have challenged existing beliefs.
Religion is no exception.
Religion is just like any other topic
and should not be sacrosanct at all.
You should be able to discuss religion.
Why not?
I think religion should be open to discussion.
I think everything should be. I think
when you make things taboo,
even when feel like you're protecting it,
it's not for the greater good.
We cannot close down a conversation
about a set
of beliefs that lead to actions
which affect all of us.
All this stuff I was taught about evolution
and big bang theory and all that
is lies straight from the pit of hell.
This is the trouble with ethics and morality and the big questions
and the fact that religionists think they own that conversation.
Quite the contrary. They kill that conversation.
And I think we follow people
who have courage, you know, to think about things
that we haven't thought about before,
and in these times,
where intolerance is kind of championed,
I'm pretty impressed
that someone is taking on the quest.
That's what I get from these guys:
The permission to question everything.
Richard, ten years ago, I asked you the question
in the popular writing and speaking that you do, which is,
what's more important in some sense
if you had a choice, which is to explain science or destroy religion?
Oh, I think that they go together,
because "destroy religion" makes it sound negative.
Yeah. To me, it's positive.
Science is wonderful. Science is beautiful.
And religion is not wonderful. It's not beautiful.
It gets in the way. There are all sorts of other things wrong with it,
but I mostly care about truth, the beauty of truth,
the poetry of reality, which is science,
and the fact that religion, as a scientific explanation...
It is a competing scientific explanation...
It's so dull, it's so boring, it's so petty.
It's wrong too. And it's also wrong, yes.
Which I think is a bit more... more important, yeah.
I think the same as you. I want people to understand
how the universe really works.
As an aside, ultimately,
is this other incompatibility between science and religion
that when empirical evidence tells you something, you have to accept it...
When you give up that by saying, "I can believe this myth and fairy tale,"
then it opens you up to lots of other things.
So it's not innocuous. Inevitably, when you have to deal with the real world.
You inevitably make bad decisions.
If we can get people to believe that,
then it's easier...
Or should be easier to convince people that evolution is true
because the evidence is so strong.
Once you tell them the evidence for evolution,
they say, "oh, right, okay. So much for God."
Well, tonight Richard is in Sydney while I'm in canberra,
and he's going to debate on a television program called q and a
the archbishop of Sydney,
and I'm here in canberra debating in a Muslim debate initiative.
We're both sort of launching out
against the forces of evil in different places,
and that poetry was to compelling to resist.
As far as I can see, this event has been advertised
only in the Muslim community.
Except for the few people I've told about it,
no one will know about it except the Muslim community,
so it'll be an interesting audience.
Oh, look over there.
That's fascinating.
That may be our audience right there, by the way.
That could be it.
Hi, how ya doin'?
- Nice to see you. - Morning, Professor.
- How are you? - Hi.
I'm the, uh... uthman. Uthman badar. Oh, okay.
You're the other person that's going to talk. That's right.
It's interesting... I looked online and didn't see any advertising for it.
It'll be interesting to see. We'll see how that goes.
But I have a rule... if there's less than five people, we just go for coffee.
Does that sound good?
I'm gonna sit in the back now and read my Bible,
which is...
I just thought I'd pick it up for inspiration.
Christopher always inspires me.
Cardinal George pell is the
most senior Roman catholic in Australia,
he's the archbishop of Sydney,
and I know rather little else about him, I'm afraid.
And he is sometimes talked about as a possible candidate for pope.
I have always refused to debate religious fundamentalists.
It is my understanding that a cardinal of the Roman catholic church
is not a fundamentalist.
If he is, I've made a mistake.
We're very excited to have these two gentlemen here this evening
for this discussion.
We know them already. Please let us introduce them properly
and make them feel very welcome.
Please help me welcome
the author of the God delusion,
the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
...the archbishop of Sydney, please welcome
cardinal George pell.
Five, four, three...
George pell, do you accept that humans evolved from apes?
Yeah, probably. From neanderthals, yes.
From neanderthals?
Probably. Why from neanderthals?
Who else would you suggest?
Neanderthals were our cousins.
We're not descended from them.
These extant cousins?
Where would I find a neanderthal today if they're my cousins?
They're not extant. They're extinct. That's my point.
Your point is that because they're not...
That because they're extant, they can't be our cousins?
I'm really am not much fussed.
That's very clear.
Ignoring the limitations of science
also leads to sloppy and arbitrary science.
A good example is the field of quantum mechanics.
The evidence of logic derives from the evidence of reality.
Is it logical that I can be in two places at once? No.
But if I am an electron, I certainly can be.
Because while you refer to quantum mechanics, I actually understand it.
Most evolutionary biologists today
don't believe that. Don't believe what?
They don't believe in
this crude fundamentalist version of random selection that you propose.
I do not propose it, and I strongly deny
that evolution is random selection.
This idea that we should challenge our beliefs,
I agree in some areas, and this is the point
I tried to touch upon the difference between science and religion...
Only when you appreciate the difference can you ascertain whether
different propositions apply or not.
Anything about higher truth, morality, for example,
do you want me to challenge my belief every day that murder is wrong?
Well, if any of you stopped believing in God, I would ask you,
would you go out tomorrow and murder your neighbor?
Well, some of you say yes.
Evolution is non-random selection.
Oh, there's a purpose to it, is there?
No.
But...
Could you explain what "non-random" means?
Yes, of course I could. That's my life's work.
No idea should be above ridicule.
Ridicule is a very important tool.
And why should religion not be subject to ridicule?
If politics is subject to ridicule, if science,
if sex, if everything else in the world is subject to ridicule
as a way of illuminating reality, why shouldn't religion?
It's part of being human
to ask why we exist.
The question "why"
is not necessarily a question that deserves to be answered.
There are all sorts of questions that people can ask,
like, "what is the color of jealousy?"
That's a silly question. Exactly.
"Why?" Is a silly question.
You can ask, "what are the factors that led
to something coming into existence?"
That's a sensible question.
But "what is the purpose of the universe?"
Is a silly question. It has no meaning.
And so I hope that every student
who every goes to university at one point
in their life has the opportunity to have something
that is at the heart of their being,
something so central to their being that if they lose it,
they won't feel that they're human anymore, to be proved wrong.
Because that's the liberation that science provides:
The realization that
to assume the truth, to assume the answer
before you ask the questions leads you nowhere.
We do have a scientific understanding of why we're here,
and we therefore have to make up our own meaning to life.
We have to stand up, look the world
in the face, face up to the fact
that we are not going to last forever, we have to make
the most of the short time that we have on this planet,
we have to make this planet as good as we possibly can
and try to leave it a better place than we found it.
And if we live in a world where certain things are not subject to question,
we live in a world where thinking has stopped.
Final results of
With more than 20,00 of you voting, we have 76%
saying "no, religious belief
does not make the world a better place."
Please thank our special guests, Professor Richard Dawkins
and cardinal George pell.
¶ Hey now, little speedy head ¶
¶ the read on the speed meter says ¶
¶ you have to go to task in the city ¶
¶ where people drown and people serve ¶
¶ don't be shy you just deserve ¶
¶ it's only just ¶
¶ light years to go ¶
Well, I got thoroughly fed up with
b.B.C.-Type interviews,
where you have a chairman in the middle,
and you get an interesting conversation going on between two...
There might be five people around the table,
and "a" and "b" are having an interesting conversation,
and so the chairman suddenly says, "and what do you think about this, 'c'?"
Totally breaking the flow, spoiling the conversation,
all in the interest of balance and things like that, and it occurred to me,
"why on earth do we bother with chairmen? They're not necessary."
Certainly, my recent encounter with the archbishop of canterbury
in the sheldonian theatre in Oxford,
that was completely ruined by the chairman, who was a philosopher
and felt it was his role to clarify things,
and of course, that meant obscuring things.
¶ We're closer now ¶
¶ than light years to go ¶
Yeah, I think it's... I think conversations,
and conversations that aren't planned,
are fascinating for people to watch and listen to.
Yes.
I think it works.
We should probably go.
Okay.
So to fill it up... To begin late...
From my experience, if it's really full, it begins a little late.
Usually three or four minutes, yeah.
Would you welcome these two great scientists to the stage?
Please join me... Richard Dawkins and Lawrence krauss.
I think it's appropriate to begin...
Did any of you see q and a?
I was amazed... cardinal pell, who was on the program,
manifestly didn't understand evolution.
Actually, he didn't manifestly understand anything,
as far as I could see.
Why don't you elaborate a little bit about that real problem?
Because I think it's a fascinating issue of,
if speciation occurs, if species change,
was there a first person?
At first sight, it seems obvious
that there has to have been a first person
and there has to have been a first rabbit
and a first rhinoceros and things.
After all, people are people, aren't they?
And their ancestors were not people.
If you go back sufficiently far, your ancestor was a fish.
Mustn't there have been a time where, so to speak,
the last homo erectus parents gave birth to the first homo sapiens' baby?
And the answer is no.
There never was a first person,
there never was a first rabbit or first rhinoceros,
because every organism ever born
belonged to the same species as its parents.
And yet because it was so gradual
and because it was so slow,
not only was our 200 million great grandparent a fish,
but if you go back further still,
they were worms and so on.
And one suggestion that's been made is that people
really have difficulty grasping the idea
that animals turn into other animals so imperceptibly
that you can hardly notice it.
It's not actually that paradoxical.
It all happened very, very gradually.
And you can think of parallels like the fact that
you can't see the hour hand on your watch moving.
At some point, we cease to think of ourselves as middle-aged
and we start to think of ourselves as old.
But nobody ever goes to bed middle-aged and wakes up
and says, "I'm old."
We had a meeting at my institute
where we were trying to get at the origin of life,
and it's fascinating to learn how much closer we're getting.
I don't know if you think we'll get to the beginning in your lifetime or my...
Well, it's an exciting thought, and I'm pretty hopeful that we might.
You'll never be able to prove it for certain, I suspect,
but to come up with a plausible theory
that people say, "of course!
That's so elegant and so simple."
Either it's true or it ought to be true. I mean, it could...
I think the key point is plausibility.
It is amazing and fascinating to me
and worth celebrating that the laws of physics as we now understand them
have given us a plausible story to answer questions.
That's amazing. Which is, how could something arise from nothing?
How could a complex universe arise
from a universe in which there was nothing?
No particles, and maybe not even any space?
And it's amazing to me in cosmology now
that we are beginning to get back and realize
that even something as complex as a whole universe
could plausibly be created.
But that's all we ever claim.
And yet whenever we claim that, we are called strident.
Do you notice that? Yes, I do.
It came up in the q and a debate,
and I tried to
very briefly expound Lawrence's thesis
that you could get something from literally nothing.
The audience just laughed. It was obviously to them absurd.
How could you possibly get something from nothing?
It does violate common sense.
But as I said earlier this evening, you can't go by common sense.
If we could do things by common sense,
we wouldn't need physicists.
Common sense, of course, comes from
what was necessary for our brains to survive
in the pleistocene of Africa.
So they had to know how to catch a buffalo
and how to find a water hole and how to climb a tree
when being pursued by a lion or something.
So our brains were never shaped by natural selection to understand
either quantum mechanics... The theory of the very small...
Or relativity, the theory of the very fast.
And it's actually an astonishing compliment to the human brain
that at least some humans are capable of understanding.
No, it is really remarkable that we've been able to get as far as we can.
But you hit on another point.
Our brains not only didn't evolve to understand
those aspects of the universe that it couldn't experience directly,
but another aspect of the universe it can't experience directly is long time.
Absolutely. And I think that's another reason
why evolution is such a hard concept.
Because we can just see... we have a slice of 100 years or less.
We can do seconds, minutes, hours, days,
years, centuries...
Even millennia we have trouble with.
You cannot grasp the immensity of time
that is 100 million years. Exactly.
Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much.
¶ the walls abandon shape ¶
¶ they got a cheshire cat grin ¶
¶ all blurring into one ¶
¶ this place is on a mission ¶
A lot of people think that just because there's a lot we don't understand
at the edge of science, that everything we know is going to go out the window,
and that's not true. Evolution happened.
The big bang happened.
If I take a ball and drop it, it's going to fall.
There are lots of things we do know.
For me, the only solution I can see
is to try and educate people.
Because if you don't have an informed public,
that's the greatest threat to democracy.
So it's incumbent on scientists to do a much better job,
and then it's up to the public to make the decision.
They can decide that they don't want to do anything about global warming.
But they should at least be presented with the evidence and understand the facts.
Ladies and gentlemen, the dynamic duo of science!
¶ Before you run away from me ¶
¶ before you're lost between the notes ¶
¶ the beat goes round and round ¶
It's such a privilege
to be alive in the 21st century
and to look out at the stars,
to look down a microscope, to look down an electron microscope,
to look into a single cell
and see the prodigious, stupefying complexity
of a single cell and then realize that there are
trillions of those cells in your body,
all conspiring together to produce a working machine
which can walk and run
and eat and have sex and think.
What a privilege it is for each of us to have in our heads
an organ which is capable of
constructing a model of the universe.
It is sad that that model will die when our brain dies,
but my goodness, what a privilege it is before we do die.
¶ Jigsaw's falling into place ¶
¶ there is nothing to explain ¶
¶ you eye each other as you pass ¶
¶ she looks back, you look back ¶
¶ not just once ¶
¶ not just twice ¶
¶ wish away the nightmare ¶
¶ you got a light you can feel it on your back ¶
Welcome back, everybody. My guest tonight,
please welcome Lawrence krauss.
Hey, Dr. krauss. Thank you so much for coming on.
All right, sir.
Why does what you're saying have to be an attack on my God?
It doesn't have to be an attack... but that's all you've done.
You've attacked my God for the last six minutes.
No, you have. All I've said is, you don't need him.
That's an attack. We've changed our minds about the universe.
We've learned that the universe is more remarkable than anything we ever thought before,
and in fact,
changing your mind and in fact being wrong is wonderful.
You should try it sometime. It's really amazing.
Hmm-mm. It means that... it means that...
If there is no God, okay,
if there is no thing called "God,"
if he is nothing, can't something come from him?
Lawrence krauss, thank you so much.
¶ You can feel it on your back ¶
¶ you can feel it on your back ¶
¶ Jigsaw's falling ¶
¶ into place ¶
This makes my day.
Miley Cyrus just tweeted a picture of me
along with my quote about stars where I say,
"forget Jesus. Stars died so you could be born."
And underneath, she put the word, "beautiful."
And she seems to have gotten a lot of hate mail for that.
I actually think they don't understand this too, because,
you know, they think she's saying the quote is beautiful,
but clearly what she's saying is that the picture of me is beautiful.
I think we both agree that what people want to do
is they want to believe, to take that line from the x-files...
They want to believe in believing, and so most people
of faith, I think, in our society,
naturally pick and choose from the doctrine
those things they find absolutely ridiculous
and throw out. Yeah.
And the pope would say that's not palatable.
And I would tend to agree with the pope.
I think if you can't believe some of this stuff
and need to throw it out, just forget the whole thing.
Yeah.
That would be my view,
and I suspect that, um,
well, there are, what, 535 members of the U.S. congress,
and one has said that he doesn't believe in a supreme being?
That's statistically not possible.
I mean,
a fair number of those members of congress presumably have had some sort of education.
There have got to be a very substantial number
of atheistic members of the United States congress,
probably more than a couple of hundred would be my guess.
And yet they cannot admit it,
and so in order to get elected,
you have got to lie about your beliefs.
I think that's right, and I think it's good to call them on it.
I disagree with you slightly, maybe because
I've spent a lot more time in this country.
I would say,
if people don't hold their religion on their sleeve,
then it's not relevant to them,
then it's not in the public domain,
and journalists needn't ask questions about it.
But if they do hold their religion on their sleeve,
then it becomes in the public domain, and it becomes
appropriate for journalists to bring it up.
Because then it's an action. They're saying, "elect me
because I'm a person of faith."
But I'm coming back
to the nub of the question, which is that,
even if they don't take any action based upon it...
I mean, an extreme example,
which I actually published on a blog somewhere,
was a hypothetical doctor who doesn't believe
in the sex theory of reproduction,
believes in the stork theory of...
Of reproduction.
I thought I was pushing to the limit.
I assumed that everybody would agree with me, at least here,
that you would not wish to consult such a doctor.
Not a bit of it. I was kicked around the room.
"The doctor's private beliefs are his private beliefs.
"They're no business of yours. So long as he can
"take your appendix out or whatever he has to do,
"then it doesn't matter that he doesn't believe in sex,
he believes in the stork theory."
That's where we're disagreeing, because...
Because the stork theory is relevant to his career as a doctor...
Make him an eye doctor then.
Then I'd have to say, for a politician,
I think there are rights to privacy.
I mean, I think if someone believes
that it's okay for them to have sex with animals,
I shouldn't ask that question as long as they don't make it a campaign platform.
And-and-and...
And so I happen to think that there some a right to privacy,
in the sense that if you don't wear it on your sleeve.
And these candidates do wear it on their sleeve, including Obama.
And I think once you bring that up,
then it becomes fair game.
Now, let's end with... Because you pointed out
that there's one member of congress...
And I didn't know there were that many...
Who argues that he doesn't believe in a supreme being.
I just wrote an article about a study
that's been done by a group of psychologists
in Canada and the United States...
It's just been published...
That asks what groups people distrust,
and it turns out
the group that is distrusted the most are atheists.
Well, they're not quite the most. They're on par with rapists.
And I wonder if you could comment.
Well, that seems to me to be an adequate explanation
for why so many members of the United States congress
are obviously lying about their private beliefs.
I mean, if you're on a par with rapists...
I suspect that we've already had
in this country quite a number of atheist presidents. I suspect.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Kennedy was an atheist.
It wouldn't surprise me if Clinton was an atheist.
It wouldn't surprise me if Obama's an atheist.
But you cannot admit it or you simply don't get elected.
I would like to start a campaign for
lame-duck presidents and senators and people to say, "okay,
"I'm not standing for election anymore.
I'm an atheist. I've been an atheist all along."
Yes.
Yes, that's right.
And here we've got Darren waiting for you.
Hi, how are you doing? Hi, Lawrence. Darren. How's it going?
Hi, nice to see you.
So if you want to have a seat...
She said it's never been so hard,
never been so challenging. Oh, no.
Okay, we're heading out, eh? Yes, let's go. Yep.
We're set up.
What do you know? It looks like a real place to interview.
And so these mics work? I don't have to wear one?
That's right. That's good.
Ready in three, two...
Lawrence krauss, welcome to one plus one. It's great to be here.
Albert Einstein was once quoted as saying,
"if you can't explain it to a six-year-old,
you don't understand it yourself."
Your latest book, a universe from nothing,
deals with some fairly weighty topics.
How would you explain it to a six-year-old
that the universe came from nothing?
Oh, well, you...
I see what you mean, but it's very unjust.
I mean, telling children they're going to hell
is surely by any standards wicked. I mean, that's just evil.
But I am not
doing anything remotely comparable to that.
What I'm doing is telling children, "think for yourself.
Look for the evidence."
I'm not saying, "this is the way it is. You'd better believe it or else."
Well, it's funny, because six-year-olds
are a lot less biased than adults often,
and the neat thing is, I'd probably tell them that
nothing is not exactly what they thought it was.
It was a little bit different. That the laws of physics
tell you that even empty space is much more interesting than you thought.
Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of stuff
that's popping in and out of existence every second.
And what's more amazing is that we've learned that if you take
just a bit of space and get rid of all the particles
and all the radiation and everything,
that it still weighs something, and we don't understand why.
Lawrence krauss, thanks for joining us on one plus one.
Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.
Excellent. Wonderful.
Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. It was nice doing it.
There's a dot.
What a disgusting idea.
I mean, the idea that the only way to forgive somebody
is to have a scapegoat,
to have your own son tortured and killed
because there's no other way to forgive,
the idea that there can be no forgiveness
without bloodshed, without punishment,
is an ancient idea, and it's a horrible one.
In the particular case of the doctrine of original sin,
the original sin is suppose to have been committed by Adam,
who, as we now know, never existed.
So we now have the preposterous idea that Jesus was sacrificed,
the scapegoat was sacrificed,
for the sin of a nonexistent forbear.
That's the fellow who finally let me in. He was out having a phone call.
Yes, yeah. Hi, I'm Jenny. How are you?
Hi. Good. I'm glad there's someone here to actually do this.
26 to 8:00.
Hop over there, Lawrence. There you go.
It's good to see you again.
It is 26 to 8:00 on 702.
Lawrence krauss is our guest.
His latest book is called a universe from nothing.
You're saying the universe continues to get weirder. Are there moments when
we might break through and things suddenly make more sense for you?
'Cause some of the stuff you do really upsets some people
and really inspires other people to back their own beliefs.
Would you prefer that it was just an esoteric, academic discussion?
No, it's not esoteric. These are wonderful things.
Everyone should be talking about them.
It's some of the most beautiful ideas and discoveries humans have ever made.
And if it upsets people, how can learning about
how the universe really works upset people?
And it is a shame that it does.
Instead of being threatened or having our faith threatened
by the discoveries of science,
we should realize that we should force our beliefs
to conform to the evidence of reality rather than the other way around,
and we should take joy in the fact that we are actually here
in this random moment able to even ask those questions
and get close enough to the answers.
We don't have the ultimate answers. I don't claim in the book
that I have the ultimate answers.
I talk about what's plausible and the fact that we're learning,
we're getting closer and closer to even
potentially answering these ultimate questions
is something that we should all celebrate.
People shouldn't be threatened by science.
Um, no, I think that's fine. Thank you very much.
Well, it's been nice talking to you.
All right. Bye, bye.
Lawrence krauss, as always, a pleasure to speak with you.
Same here. Thanks.
This is the nicest thing I've seen in any library recently.
Can I do that?
Is that pooh over there? I got to go...
Professor Dawkins, what do you see,
or rather hope for the future of atheism
in the public sphere?
My hope for the future of atheism is that it will no longer be necessary.
We don't call ourselves "a-Thor-ists" and a-Zeus-ists"
and "a-leprechaun-ists"
because it's not necessary.
And my hope is that the day will come
when it's simply taken for granted
that everybody doesn't believe in yahweh
any more than they believe in Thor and Jupiter.
I think there's some indication
that the religious lobby is getting increasingly desperate
and is increasing the venom and the vitriol
with which they fight back.
And I think what we may be seeing is the beginning of the death throes.
And when you see a wounded animal in its death throes,
it tends to lash out.
Listen, gentlemen,
can you be quiet for one second?
Nice to see all you fine, strapping
young gentlemen here to protest for your religion.
But like I've been asking, where are all of your women?
Where are all the women? Where are all the women?
Infidels! Infidels!
Infidels! Infidels! Infidels!
¶ Follow me don't follow me ¶
¶ I've got my spine I've got my orange crush ¶
¶ collar me don't collar me ¶
¶ I've got my spine I've got my orange crush ¶
¶ we are agents of the free ¶
¶ I've had my fun, and now it's time to serve ¶
¶ your conscience overseas ¶
¶ coming in fast over me ¶
this is a demonstration...
It's not one that excludes religious people.
It's one that is inclusive of all points of view.
It's definitely exciting.
It's definitely exciting, and it re-enthuses you
to go out and do your thing
and stick to your guns.
We've made so many amazing friends.
Fantastic people here. ¶ orange crush ¶
¶ collar me, don't collar me ¶
oh, I've talked to all sorts of people.
Sit down with someone, and you get up a conversation without any trouble.
A friendlier sort there may never be.
¶ I've had my fun ¶
¶ and now it's time to serve ¶
¶ your conscience overseas ¶
¶ coming in fast over me ¶
There is a similarity... My friend Richard Dawkins,
who is here, was kind enough to write the afterword for the book,
and he made a wonderful comparison, which is that there's some similarity.
Before Darwin, life was a miracle.
You couldn't ask, "where did the diversity of life come from?" It was a miracle.
It was designed. What Darwin showed
were very simple laws of biology.
Natural selection and genetic mutation, essentially,
could produce all the diversity of life,
the complexity we now see, from very simple beginnings
with no miracle.
Now, at the time he did it, did it prove it? No.
But it was plausible. Now there's been 150 years of proof.
Now we take it the next step. Do we know how the first forms of life started?
Absolutely not.
But it's certainly plausible
that, given everything we know about genetics, biochemistry,
that chemistry by natural processes can turn into biology.
Do we know that? No. But it's plausible.
And that's worth celebrating... That you don't need miracles.
And the same is true for the universe.
We've taken from biology to that fundamental question,
which was the last bastion, for many people, of God:
"Why is there something rather than nothing? And said, "you don't need him."
If this is the case, and our universe
just popped into existence and space and time
were created in our universe the moment it came into existence,
along with the laws of physics we measure,
then there's an object, if you want to call it that,
that is greater than our universe.
We call it in physics now the multiverse,
in which case there are many possible universes.
From a philosophical perspective,
people have a problem with a universe that had a beginning.
'Cause they want something eternal
with no cause... First cause,
prime mover... you pick your philosophy or theology.
The point is that the multiverse
now serves the role of the prime mover.
From a philosophical perspective,
it can be eternal.
It could be eternal and certainly beyond our universe.
But the thing I also want to point out... I've debated with Christian apologists often,
and they say, "you invented the multiverse 'cause you don't like God."
Well, it's true I don't like God.
But the multiverse was proposed
because the laws of physics are driving us to it.
I don't even like the multiverse, but if nature tells me that's the case,
and the laws of physics are accidental, I've got to live with it.
So, to conclude,
I've told you today the universe can come from nothing.
More importantly, I've told you
that you were far more insignificant than you ever thought,
and that's what I want you to celebrate here today.
But instead of taking...
People say science takes away spiritual fulfillment
and wonder and awe and happiness.
You should be happier because you're insignificant and the future's miserable
'cause you're here today and you're endowed
by evolution with a conscience and an intelligence
and you can ask these questions.
So instead of being depressed and requiring meaning
in the universe beyond your own existence,
you create your own meaning
and enjoy your brief moment in the sun. Thank you very much.
But the problem is that most people, most of the time,
are desperate to believe ridiculous
and divisive ideas for patently emotional reasons.
And while rarely explicit,
what they're really worried about is death.
When we're arguing about teaching evolution in the schools,
I would argue that we are really arguing about death.
It seems to me the only reason why
any religious person cares about evolution
is because if their holy books are wrong about our origins,
they're very likely wrong about our destiny after death.
Ex-muslims like me
in Europe and in north America
are growing in number.
We give speeches, we publish articles and books,
and we communicate with one another.
"Infidel" was the epithet, an insult
that was thrown at me over and over again
by family and former Muslim friends.
It is a label that I now wear
with pride and joy.
We're in a brand-new age for religions.
For millennia, religions did not have to worry
about the flock
acquiring lots of information
about other religions or about their own religion.
These religions evolved culturally in a world
of easy-to-maintain ignorance.
But the new transparency of information brought about
by technology, cell phones, the Internet and all the rest
is the first really drastic change
in the epistemological environment that religions
have had to face in several millennia.
Thanks for your attention.
To many, he's known as an evolutionary biologist.
He's a champion of science and reason.
He's convinced many around the world that it's more than okay
to come out as an atheist.
Please welcome to the stage
our final speaker of day two
of the global atheists convention, Richard Dawkins.
I want to take back "intelligent design."
I want to take back other hijacked words.
Just as the feminists have rallied around the phrase
"take back the night,"
maybe we should take back "intelligent design"
in the true sense of the word.
Let's take back morality,
let's redesign our morality,
rather than trying to read what's right and wrong
in a 3,000-year-old book.
Religion has hijacked morality for centuries.
Let's take it back and intelligently design it.
Let's intelligently design our lives,
rather than be dictated to by priests and mullahs.
Let's intelligently design our future
using the gift of foresight,
something that never existed before brains...
And for practical purposes, that means human brains... evolved.
The ability to design
is one of the crowning glories of our species.
Bridges, planes, buildings,
all sorts of ingenious contraptions.
The essence of design in this true sense of the word
is deliberate foresight.
Human designers can look into the future
and see the possible mistakes,
see the possible pitfalls,
try things out in imagination...
Above all, look into the future, which is something
natural selection cannot do.
This is one of the major misunderstandings of evolution.
People are so used to the idea
that natural selection produces apparently good design
that they think that natural selection must be capable
of peering into the future, of taking steps
to stop the species going extinct, for example.
Never happens. It cannot happen.
Nature cannot plan for the future;
the human brain can.
We can look at trends in the present
and extrapolate into the future.
We can foresee possible scenarios
that might lead to our species going extinct
and take steps to avoid it.
Thank you very much.
How many people do you have to kill to be a murderer?
Just one. Just one.
How many lies do you have to tell to be a liar? Just one.
You fucking suck!
The Bible says...
The Bible says, "you shall not take the name of the lord in vain."
What I find humorous is you will not curse Allah or Mohammad,
but Jesus is in every one of your conversations.
Science means knowledge?
When you take the name of my savior Jesus Christ in vain,
you do it with an inherent knowledge,
an intuitive knowledge, that it is wrong,
that it is born out of your sinful heart.
My friends, what I'm saying is you're not just atheists,
you're liars.
Whoo!
I guess the best part of communicating
is the excitement.
Science turns us on. Science is fun. Science excites us.
You can't communicate unless you're excited, but on the other hand,
I feel it's so fascinating for me
that I want to tell people about it.
Carl sagan said,
"when you're in love, you want to tell the world."
I'm in love with science, and I have to tell the world.
But we mustn't run away with the idea that science is just fun.
Science is hard. Yeah.
And so it's not fun in the sense that it's just sort of...
Easy, and you can laze around doing it. It is hard.
It's hard work. But it's worth it.
Something I didn't know... I don't know if you knew...
That the royal society St. Andrew.
St. Andrew? Yeah.
Why not doubting Thomas?
He'd be the proper patron Saint of science. That'd be perfect.
Doubting Thomas, because that's what it's all about.
For me, this is the legacy of modern civilization.
This is what it's all about, and this is a legacy
that's worth preserving
and sharing more broadly, and it's under attack.
Yes, I see the history of science, modern science,
as weaning off the wisdom of old books
and onto the wisdom of observation and experiment.
There's a lovely story about
Galileo being visited by somebody,
and Galileo showed this person something through his telescope,
and it contradicted what he thought before,
and eventually he said, "Mr. Galileo, your demonstration
"is so convincing, that were it not
"that Aristotle positively states the contrary,
I would believe you."
He was actually looking through a telescope.
It's surprising in some sense
that we're talked about as being arrogant for somehow saying
we create our own importance,
that our knowledge and our understanding
and the way we live our lives is what makes our importance.
People don't seem to recognize that a universe that's created for us
is a little more arrogant.
Incredibly arrogant, yes.
And for me, that's the most powerful
and enlivening thing is the fact that more
unimportant we become, the more powerful
is the importance of science for pointing out that
the universe exists whether we like it or not.
That cosmic humility is the exact opposite of what we're often accused of.
Science is responsible
for the justified humility of humanity,
which is a new thing.
Richard, I remember vividly
the very first time we had a discussion that we disagreed.
I argued to you that I thought that
if you were trying to convince people of your point,
the first thing you shouldn't say is, "everything you believe is wrong,
and you're really stupid,"
and it's better to try and sort of go where they are.
Yeah, I mean, I think
I myself have been convinced of somebody telling me,
"everything you believe is rubbish."
As a student, I was very persuaded by
that old French theologian, teilhard de chardin,
who wrote a book called the phenomenon of man,
which is...
Pretentious gibberish,
but it fooled me when I was a student.
And then I read Peter medawar's
brilliant review of the book, which is
almost certainly the best negative book review ever written.
And I was completely turned around by that,
even though you might think I'd have pushed back
and said, "wait a minute. You're insulting my intelligence."
Well, yes, maybe you are insulting my intelligence.
I deserve to have my intelligence insulted.
People get... In fact, there's a lot of...
There's a lot of research that says pedagogically,
the only way you can really get people to learn
is by confronting their own misconceptions and using them.
I use it in physics all the time.
Kids learn stuff on...
You write stuff on the blackboard, it goes in one ear and out the other,
but if you confront a belief they have and show them immediately
that they can see for themselves it's crazy, then they remember it.
Yes.
This weekend, the "reason" rally took over the national mall
here in Washington, D.C.
Billed as the largest gathering of the secular movement in world history,
national mall parks service estimated that over 30,000 people were in attendance.
And despite the rain, the participants waited for hours
to see speakers like Lawrence krauss,
Richard Dawkins, Adam savage, so we have to ask
what the largest gathering in history of atheists,
humanists, secularists, free thinkers, skeptics...
What does it really mean?
Hi, I'm David silverman, president of American atheists,
and I would like to welcome you all to this,
the largest atheist gathering in world history.
But I don't believe in God. I have two proofs
for not believing in God... first of all, God, if you're there,
we're here in Washington. Come down now.
If you're there, this is a pretty good time.
I'm sure fox news would love it. Just come down, say hello.
We are the people who believe in this life.
We are the people who believe in morality.
If you are doing something for reward or punishment,
you do not have morality.
Let's make it so they're as embarrassed
to say something bad about atheists
as they are to say something bad about mormons.
Mormon.
¶ Thank you, God, for fixing the cataracts ¶
¶ of Sam's mom ¶
¶ I didn't realize that it was so simple ¶
¶ but you showed a great example of just how it can be done ¶
¶ they only need to pray in a particular spot ¶
¶ to a particular version of a particular God ¶
¶ and if you pull that off without a hitch ¶
¶ he will fix one eye of one middle-class white bitch ¶
they are ruled by fear.
That's not my style, and it's not yours either.
Folks, it's certainly time that we all grew up.
Instead of forging ahead into the 14th century,
we should be embracing the 21st by writing fini
to the belief in the bigoted, capricious, cruel,
deceitful, genocidal, homophobic,
misogynistic, racist,
vindictive and violent bully.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.
Folks, Professor Richard Dawkins.
Richard! Richard! Richard! Richard!
What a magnificent, inspiring sight.
I was expecting great things, even in fine weather.
In the rain, look at this.
This is the most incredible sight I can remember ever seeing.
How is it necessary to have a rally
for reason?
How could anyone rally
against reason?
I am often accused of
expressing contempt and despising religious people.
I don't despise religious people;
I despise what they stand for.
There are too many people in this country
who have been cowed into fear
of coming out as atheists
or secularists or agnostics.
We are far more numerous than anybody realizes.
What I want to suggest you do when you meet somebody
who claims to be religious, ask them,
"do you really believe
"that when a priest blesses a wafer,
"it turns into the body of Christ?
Are you seriously telling me you believe that?"
Don't fall for the convention
that we're all too polite to talk about religion.
Religion is not off the table.
Religion is not off limits.
Religion makes specific claims about the universe
which need to be substantiated
and need to be challenged and, if necessary,
need to be ridiculed with contempt.
Thank you very much.
Lawrence? Yes, yeah?
Do you mind if we get a picture? No problem.
Hi. It is so good to meet you.
Can I get a picture of you real quick? Sure, yeah.
I seen you on the TV. Yeah.
Hey, Dr. krauss. Hi.
Could I shake your hand too? Sure.
Can I shake your hand really quick?
Your universe of nothing speech started my road to atheism.
Hi, how are you.
I'm Kenny hibb from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Oh, okay.
Went back to school for science.
I'm a big fan.
It's not like a pancake. It's like the space...
With the x-y axis, just remain perpendicular.
And light travels in a straight line. Oh, okay.
Hi, everybody out there on the mall.
It's a great honor to be addressing the reason rally.
And when you look at the who's who lists throughout history
of people who were either declared atheists
or who voiced publicly their opinion that religion was bullshit,
you can feel a swell of pride as you stand out there on the mall today.
Let's let everybody know
that they can come out of the closet if they're afraid to,
because we're here to support them and embrace them
because this is an amazing community of people
who are non-believers, and I think it's wrong
that the religious right and various belief systems
have gotten a monopoly on morality and patriotism.
We are Americans, and we're moral and righteous Americans,
and we don't need a God to prove it.
Come on out and join us.
I have concluded, through careful, empirical analysis
and much thought that somebody is looking out for me,
keeping track of what I think about things,
forgiving me when I do less than I ought,
giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I'm capable of.
I believe they know everything that I do and think, and they still love me,
and I've concluded, after careful consideration,
that this person keeping score is me.
Immanuel kant was asked, "what is the enlightenment?"
"Dare to know."
The age of reason, then was an age when humanity
was born again,
not from original sin
but from original ignorance and dependence on authority.
Never again!
Folks, you're in for a treat.
The author of the New York times bestseller
a universe from nothing,
Please welcome physicist Dr. Lawrence krauss!
As was just pointed out, a few years ago,
my friend Richard Dawkins asked me to give a talk at a meeting
called the universe from nothing, so I did.
Today I want to talk about something that's equally plausible
but much more tragic:
How to get nothing from something.
It's happened a number of times in human history.
It happened during the medieval era,
when religious dogma
erased the enlightenment of the greeks.
Measuring the circumference of the earth, all of that, was forgotten.
It happened in the arabic world
in the 11th century, when what was then the center
of culture and mathematics became
an economic and intellectual backwater because of islamic fundamentalism.
And it can happen today.
But the 21st century
is placing challenges on us like we've never had:
Global climate change, overpopulation,
the energy crisis,
the need, finally, to educate
and stop the subjugation of women around the world.
Einstein said 67-odd years ago,
after we exploded the first atomic weapon
that everything has changed, save the way we think.
And unless we change the way we think,
and unless we're willing to revere open-questioning discussion
and a public policy based on reality,
we can take this wonderful world we have now in many ways
and turn something into nothing,
and we all have to make sure that doesn't happen.
Thank you very much.
Dr. Lawrence krauss!
¶ It's almost like I may bend ¶
¶ and break ¶
¶ and it's more than I can take ¶
¶ and it's almost like I may bend ¶
¶ and break ¶
¶ and it's more than I can take ¶
¶ and it's almost like I may bend ¶
¶ and break ¶
¶ and it's more than I can take ¶
¶ and it's almost like I may bend ¶
¶ and break ¶
¶ and it's more than I can take ¶
¶ and it's almost like I may bend ¶
¶ and break ¶
I do see a problem that you can't live a life
based on delusion.
You can't hold out reality all the time
and just exist in a fake world.
You've got to constantly not only be challenging
your own beliefs but be willing to
say that you have been wrong and misinformed
for your whole life and change your views.
Otherwise, you know, it's a mindless existence.
And that's not to say they don't have the right to believe.
I believe everyone has the right to believe anything.
They have the right to believe anything,
but I have the right to find that belief ridiculous.
I've had people on Twitter say things like,
"everyone has the right to their own opinion,
so just keep quiet about your atheism."
Brilliant. There it is.
There, you've summed it up for me. Well done.
I did a courtroom scene on a show,
and I look at the judge, and right above his head
it says, "in God we trust."
I mean, this should've hit me before being on the good wife.
But I just can't believe it.
I just can't believe that in 2012,
that's in our courts system.
These notions aren't shared by everyone in America.
With religion, the stories have been told over centuries,
and science is always telling a new story.
And I think that that's what's hard for people
who hold religion as the truth
to understand that
science is something that's broader.
It doesn't start 6,000 years ago,
it starts four or five billion years ago,
and that is a really...
There's a lot more information in there, in the book.
If we had a book, it'd be a lot thicker.
And of course, we have seen backlash
against scientific understanding of reality.
We have seen it in many religions,
not only in the United States.
So I believe there's a great value
in promoting this kind of work.
People who like science are all drawn to it for the same reason:
It explains the physical world.
"What is this stuff?"
Is it the last word
on what reality is and what the physical world is?
I don't know,
but if it's not the last word,
it's at least the best word.
In our increasingly complex scientific
civilization,
many policy issues require scientific knowledge.
How then can the public exercise Democratic control
if it doesn't understand science?
I think it's very important to advance
the pro-science view in the modern world.
What could be bad about advancing
knowledge and enlightenment?
It can only be a good thing.
If you don't get that there's some objective place
from which we can all start, which we call science,
a place where we get rid of our biases and get back to what we can observe,
if you don't think that's the best place to start
these conversations from,
then where do you start them from?
You have to start from, "well, my evidence shows
"that gay people are just like me and they love each other"
or that women are smart.
The magic book kills discussion.
I went to Israel for the first time the summer before last.
But people always say, "oh, you go to Israel, you're gonna be changed forever.
You're gonna feel so connected."
And I just... I didn't feel that at all.
I went... It just was so...
When I saw the Western wall, especially,
and that this much room was for the men
and this much room was for the women,
and they said, "cover your shins and cover this up
or people will throw rocks at you,"
and I just felt like "You!"
All I felt was "You."
I didn't feel connected to anything
because it wasn't including me as an equal.
It's the rules. It's the arbitrary rules.
He gave you free will.
Well, then, why is he sending me to hell for using it?
He moves in mysterious ways.
I mean, "moves in mysterious ways"...
That is the philosophical equivalent of going... running away.
You know? It's strange, "moves in mysterious ways."
What's the difference between a random God and no God at all?
That's what I'd say.
I think people don't really believe the myths they invent.
I've been to many funerals in which
the priest has spoken of an afterlife,
and even the people who are there
are sobbing profusely.
They don't really think they're gonna meet
their loved one in five years' time.
If, on the other hand, you stood on the quayside
and watched the queen Mary set off for New York,
the people on the quayside are not crying because they know
they're going to see those people again fairly soon.
A funeral is fundamentally different, yet it should be the same.
I think myths are like a drug.
I think a lot of people would rather just
take the myth pill
that makes them feel nice and cozy and warm
and fuzzy and okay with everything
rather than have to look at the reality
of what the world actually is because it's so big.
But then I think what's so great about the world
being so big or the universe being so big
is that it's so big, and that is so cool.
Early christians were called atheists by the romans
'cause they didn't believe in all the gods.
I love that. That's what atheism is, really.
It's the belief in one less God than you.
The whole forward movement of
trying to do this thing, give the people the opportunity
to be educated to a point where they don't have to
lean on stuff that's probably not there
is a worthy cause.
You have to be able to offer someone alternatives
to the way they view the world,
or how can they learn something?
You can't keep teaching someone
something they already know.
If you are so attached to your belief system that you stop listening
out of fear of that being challenged
or shaken,
you're dead.
Most scientists are not up for this game
of taking on these things
and having it become a forum,
but once you start to step up in front of doubters,
it becomes this idea of really,
can you change people's minds from this debate,
or are you just, like, taking rocks
and bashing each other's brains out?