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( Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages in this long yet thought-provoking interview. Though you might say some of his views may be extreme he makes a lot of great points in a non-aggressive way. Read on for the entire interview. This interview was reenacted at the local Unitarian Fellowship and forwarded to me by my grandmother and I am glad to have had a chance to read it ) 9/11 2001; London England bombings in the subway system; ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflicts; gas attacks in the Japanese transportation system . . . what do all of these have in common? RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS ARE CAUSING MAYHEM AROUND THE WORLD. And, now, in the light of the most recent London tragedy a few short weeks ago, Canadian authorities are suggesting that Canada is not immune to such attacks. Is it just a matter of time before the blood of innocent Canadian children will be spilled in the name of religious extremism? * * * Interviewer: Good morning Professor Dawkins and welcome. It is a pleasure and a privilege to have you with us this morning. Richard Dawkins: Thank you. It is my pleasure and privilege to be here with you today. I hope my ideas will give you something to think about. Int.: I am sure they will. So, let me begin by quoting from your most recent book in which you state, "God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages". Professor Dawkins, that statement has made you the religious right's Public Enemy No.1 so I must ask you why did you say that? R.D.: I made that statement for a number of reasons but let me concentrate on just one right now. I can not think of any better way to describe what is going on in America's education system at this time than to say that under the influence of the religious right it is paving the way into another Dark Ages. And that is because of the recent movement and growing trend in educational politics which is seeking to have "Creationism" replace "Evolution" in the Science Curricula of the American schools. What will be next - a return to the "flat earth" belief? Int.: Yes, that is a puzzling fact. One has to wonder why so many people resist believing in evolution. Can you tell us where does the resistance come from? R.D.: It comes, I'm sorry to say, from religion. And from bad religion. You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Britain, but in the United States. My American friends tell me that they are slipping towards a theocratic Dark Age. Which is very disagreeable for the very large number of educated, intelligent and right-thinking people in America. Unfortunately, at present, they are slightly outnumbered by the ignorant, uneducated people who voted for Mr. Bush. Int.: Professor Dawkins, that would seem to suggest that we need to get rid of such religion. At least, that would be my first response. But then what does that leave - agnosticism or atheism? Can you talk about that and clarify the difference between agnosticism and atheism if there is any. R.D.: You make an interesting observation. Let me try to clarify. It's said that the only rational stance is agnosticism because you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the supernatural creator. I find that a weak position. It is true that you can't disprove anything but you can put a probability value on it. There's an infinite number of things that you can't disprove: unicorns, werewolves, and teapots in orbit around Mars. But we don't pay any heed to them unless there is some positive reason to think that they do exist. Int.: Are you saying that believing in God is like believing in a teapot orbiting Mars? R.D.: Yes. And you will understand the reason I can say that only if you understand the difference between an "ultimate explanation" and a "proximate explanation". Let me illustrate - for a long time it seemed clear to just about everybody that the beauty and elegance of the world seemed to be prima facie evidence for a divine creator. But the philosopher David Hume already realized three centuries ago that this was a bad argument. Why was it a bad argument? Because it leads to an infinite regression. You can't statistically explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have been designed because you're still left to explain the designer, who must be, if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing. Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. Let me give you another example - a plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection. The plane designer is the proximate explanation for the existence of the plane but natural selection is the ultimate explanation. Those who embrace "intelligent design" -- the idea that living cells are too complex to have been created by nature alone -- say evolution isn't incompatible with the existence of God. But I contend that there is just no evidence for the existence of God. Evolution by natural selection is a process that works up from simple beginnings, and simple beginnings are easy to explain. The engineer or any other living thing is difficult to explain -- but it is explicable by evolution by natural selection. So the relevance of evolutionary biology to atheism is that evolutionary biology gives us the only known mechanism whereby the illusion of design, or apparent design, could ever come into the universe anywhere. Int.: With that logical reasoning, Professor Dawkins you have successfully destroyed what used to be one of the most persuasive arguments for the existence of God. So can you now tell us why many people still insist on believing in God? R.D.: Yes, this is where a knowledge of biology can be very helpful. From a biological point of view, there are lots of different theories about why we have this extraordinary predisposition to believe in supernatural things. One suggestion is that the child mind, for very good Darwinian reasons, is susceptible to infection the same way a computer is. In order to be useful, a computer has to be programmable, to obey whatever it's told to do. That automatically makes it vulnerable to computer viruses, which are programs that say, "Spread me, copy me, pass me on." Once a viral program gets started, there is nothing to stop it. Similarly, the child brain is preprogrammed by natural selection to obey and believe what parents and other adults tell it. In general, it's a good thing that child brains should be susceptible to being taught what to do and what to believe by adults. But this necessarily carries the down side that bad ideas, useless ideas, waste of time ideas like rain dances and other religious customs, will also be passed down the generations. The child brain is very susceptible to this kind of infection. And it also spreads sideways by cross infection when a charismatic preacher goes around infecting new minds that were previously uninfected. Int.: So that is what you mean when you say "religion is a virus". I see. In a sense, religion can be dangerous to your health and well-being. Now that brings me to another strong statement you have made; you've said that raising children in a religious tradition may even be a form of abuse. Tell us about that. R.D.: What I think may be abuse is labeling children with religious labels like Catholic child and Muslim child. I find it very odd that in our civilization we're quite happy to speak of a Catholic child that is 4 years old or a Muslim child that is 4, when these children are much too young to know what they think about the cosmos, life and morality. We wouldn't dream of speaking of a Keynesian child or a Marxist child. And yet, for some reason we make a privileged exception of religion. And, by the way, I think it would also be abuse to talk about an atheist child. Int.: Yes, I can see how labeling or inappropriate labeling can be a very serious matter but right now I would like to move on to another of your theories that you are working on in your new book. I understand you are working on a new book tentatively called "The God Delusion." Can you explain it? R.D.: A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence. Religion is scarcely distinguishable from childhood delusions like the "imaginary friend" and the bogeyman under the bed. Unfortunately, the God delusion possesses adults, and not just a minority of unfortunates in an asylum. The word "delusion" also carries negative connotations, and religion has plenty of those. Int.: Negative connotations? What are its negative connotations? R.D.: I am glad you asked that because now we are getting to the very heart of the matter. Now we can apply all of this theory to daily living and now we can see the effects of "Dark Age" thinking can have. So let me emphasize that a delusion that encourages belief where there is no evidence is asking for trouble. Why? Because disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument. And why is that - because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle. Instead, disagreements are settled by other means which, in extreme cases, inevitably become violent. Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics. But you don't do that if you just know your holy book is the God-written truth and the other guy knows that his incompatible scripture is too. People brought up to believe in faith and private revelation cannot be persuaded by evidence to change their minds. No wonder religious zealots throughout history have resorted to torture and execution, to crusades and jihads, to holy wars and purges and pogroms, to the Inquisition and the burning of witches. Int.: Yes, I can see where in the past extremist religion led to torture, execution, crusades and jihads, holy wars and purges and pogroms, to the Inquisition and the burning of witches but that is all ancient history. Are you saying that there are still dark sides of religion today? R.D.: Absolutely! How about the following -- terrorism in the Middle East, militant Zionism, 9/11, the Northern Ireland "troubles," genocide, which turns out to be "credicide" in Yugoslavia, the subversion of American science education, oppression of women in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and the Roman Catholic Church, which thinks you can't be a valid priest without testicles. Int.: When you put it that way I can see why you are concerned. But is there no hope? I recall that fifty years ago, philosophers like Bertrand Russell were optimistic. They felt that the religious world view would actually fade as science and reason emerged. Why hasn't it? R.D.: That trend toward enlightenment has indeed continued in Europe and Britain. It just has not continued in the U.S., and not in the Islamic world. We're seeing a rather unholy alliance between the burgeoning theocracy in the U.S. and its allies, the theocrats in the Islamic world. They are fighting the same battle: Christian on one side, Muslim on the other. The very large numbers of people in the United States and in Europe who don't subscribe to that world view are caught in the middle. Actually, holy alliance would be a better phrase. Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them. Int.: So do I understand you correctly to be saying that religion contributes to the violence of Islamic extremists? And how about Christian extremists? R.D.: Of course it does. From the cradle, they are brought up to revere martyrs and to believe they have a fast track to heaven. With their mother's milk they imbibe hatred of heretics, apostates and followers of rival faiths. I don't wish to suggest it is doctrinal disputes that are motivating the individual soldiers who are doing the killing. What I do suggest is that in places like Northern Ireland, religion was the only available label by which people could indulge in the human weakness for us-or-them wars. When a Protestant murders a Catholic or a Catholic murders a Protestant, they're not playing out doctrinal disagreements about transubstantiation. What is going on is more like a vendetta. It was one of their lot's grandfathers who killed one of our lot's grandfathers, and so we're getting our revenge. The "their lot" and "our lot" is only defined by religion. In other parts of the world it might be defined by color, or by language, but in so many parts of the world it isn't, it's defined by religion. That's true of the conflicts among Croats and the Serbs and Bosnians -- that's all about religion as labels. The grotesque massacres in India at the time of partition were between Hindus and Muslims. There was nothing else to distinguish them, they were racially the same. They only identified themselves as "us" and the others as "them" by the fact that some of them were Hindus and some of them were Muslims. That's what the Kashmir dispute is all about. So, yes, I would defend the view that religion is an extremely potent label for hostility. That has always been true and it continues to be true to this day. Int.: We have been discussing various ways in which religion is detrimental to humanity and peace on earth but can you tell us if, from a broader perspective, there are also environmental costs of a religious world view? R.D.: Absolutely. While there are many religious points of view where the conservation of the world is just as important as it is to scientists there are also certain religious points of view where it is not. In those apocalyptic religions, people actually believe that because they read some dopey prophesy in the book of Revelation, the world is going to come to an end some time soon. People who believe that say, "We don't need to bother about conserving forests or anything else because the end of the world is coming anyway." A few decades ago one would simply have laughed at that. Today you can't laugh. These people are in power. This is a scary concept -- not only is the future of humanity at risk, so is the future of the planet. Int.: Professor Dawkins, you have made some very powerful statements condemning religion as the root of all evil. Would you now care to explain in a more positive way how we would be better off without religion. R.D.: That is a very good point. How would we be better off without religion? Well, let me suggest the following: we'd all be freed to concentrate on the only life we are ever going to have. We'd be free to exult in the privilege -- the remarkable good fortune -- that each one of us enjoys through having been being born. An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of the tiny minority whose number came up. Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. The world would be a better place if we all had this positive attitude to life. It would also be a better place if morality was all about doing good to others and refraining from hurting them, rather than religion's morbid obsession with private sin and the evils of sexual enjoyment. Int.: Professor Dawkins, I have time for only one more question and I would like to make this one just a little more personal if I may. Is there an emotional side to your intellectual enterprise of exploring the story of life on Earth? R.D.: Yes, I strongly feel that there is an emotional side and it is very important. When you meet a scientist who calls himself or herself religious, you'll often find that that's what they mean. You often find that by "religious" they do not mean anything supernatural. They mean precisely the kind of emotional response to the natural world that you've described. Einstein had it very strongly. Unfortunately, he used the word "God" to describe it, which has led to a great deal of misunderstanding. But Einstein had that feeling, I have that feeling, you'll find it in the writings of many scientists. It's a kind of quasi-religious feeling. And there are those who wish to call it religious and who therefore are annoyed when a scientist calls himself an atheist. They think, "No, you believe in this transcendental feeling, you can't be an atheist." That's a confusion of language. Some scientists say that removing religion or God from their life would leave it meaningless, that it's God that gives meaning to life. My book, "Unweaving the Rainbow", specifically attacks the idea that a materialist, mechanist, naturalistic world view makes life seem meaningless. Quite the contrary, the scientific world view is a poetic world view, it is almost a transcendental world view. We are amazingly privileged to be born at all and to be granted a few decades -- before we die forever -- in which we can understand, appreciate and enjoy the universe. And those of us fortunate enough to be living today are even more privileged than those of earlier times. We have the benefit of those earlier centuries of scientific exploration. Through no talent of our own, we have the privilege of knowing far more than past centuries. Aristotle would be blown away by what any schoolchild could tell him today. That's the kind of privileged century in which we live. That's what gives my life meaning. And the fact that my life is finite, and that it's the only life I've got, makes me all the more eager to get up each morning and set about the business of understanding more about the world into which I am so privileged to have been born. Int.: Professor Dawkins, I would like to thank you for talking to me this morning. Your thoughts and ideas have been very interesting. R.D.: Thank you for inviting me to talk with you. * * * You can buy his book, "Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder," by clicking here.