[Father George Coyne] Because God loves all his children.
But that's an aside.
[Richard Dawkins] Ok. Thank you very much.
[Dawkins] I've heard churchmen say that
they believe in evolution but evolution
is God's way of bringing life into being.
Bringing humanity into being.
[Coyne] Well many churchmen want to cling
onto God despite everything else.
My own view of that would be,
very clearly, the following,
if I believe in God for the many reasons
that we've talked about, but it's a
big if, I don't expect every body to do so.
If I believe in God and I know the way
the universe is, then I reflect upon
the God who I believe created the universe.
And I've said marvelous that God created the
universe to be the way it is.
Namely, it's an evolutionary universe.
It has a dynamism.
It has a creativity all its own.
In fact I once challenged theology a bit
by saying the following.
And I've been criticized for it but I have to
explain myself to the people who criticize me.
I said, if God were limited to being
imminent in the universe,
limited to that, it's an if,
for sake of argument,
would God have known a few billion
years after the Big Bang, and knowing
all the laws of physics etc,
could he have predicted that life would come to be?
And my answer is to be faithful to what
I know as a scientist my answer is no.
God could not know what's not knowable.
Life was not destined to be in the sense
of necessarily come to be,
I don't think, from evolutionary theory.
I mean, the combination of chance
and necessary processes and a very fertile
universe that I've talked about many times,
there were chance processes.
We could have come to be or not come to be.
We could have arms that come off our belly
button and our backs because of chance
processes, could have made that differently.
The theological answer of course is
in Christian faith,
God is transcendent. God is outside time.
All events are simultaneous to God.
Of course he would know.
But my point was to limit God to being in
the universe to emphasize the very nature
of the chance processes working in
the universe as we know it scientifically.
And I think we have to accept that.
[Dawkins] Thank you.
As you have just told us, Pope John Paul II
said that evolution was the best scientific
explanation. I would say that the best
explanation is the scientific explanation.
[Coyne] It's the best scientific explanation
but I would insist that science is not
everything. We can take scientific results
and give a philosophical, a theological
interpretation to them in many different ways.
I would say it's, I would not say it's the only explanation.
I say it's not that science provides sort of
the feeding grounds for philosophy and
theology. But philosophers and theologians
do think about, in a much broader context,
the results of science. And the question
the question of evolution. Because we have
come from apes, if that's true, and that
would have of course, as you know very well
be more specified, but let's say we've
come from apes. That does not make me an ape.
I mean that evolution is very creative and brings about
and has brought about a human being
that is not reducible to its antecedents.
It's not reducible. It's the whole scientific
idea of self organization bringing about
ever more complex chemical, biological systems.
A philosophical reflection upon that would
say we finally came to a complex
biological chemical system, the human being
that is more than just the organization of
the chemicals and the biology.
It has what in the religious tradition
you would say, spirit or soul.
But that would take us into a theological
discourse that I am not capable of following.
[Dawkins] Do you think then that the soul
entered at some point in evolution,
Australopithecus, Homo Erectus,
is it that kind of question?
[Coyne] I don't believe in the soul.
I mean if it's a question of belief,
I don't believe this idea that some time
in the evolutionary process God put a soul,
[Coyne] into a certain organism. [Dawkins] I think Pope john Paul II implied
[Dawkins] that is what happened.
[Coyne] Well, Catholic tradition can be
interpreted that way, but it's certainly
not a doctrine that I have to believe
and I don't believe. I simply think that
at best I like to think about, as Teilhard de Chardin did,
about the spirit emerging in this
whole evolutionary process.
That the whole process is continuous.
And that from there material evolution, the spirit
arose, however we define the spirit.
It came through the evolutionary process.
And God of course, is working with it all along.
So I'm not taking God out of the process.
In fact, I'm putting him more into it
than a God who, sort of puts his finger
in a magic moment, into this evolutionary process.
[Dawkins] You do think it arose during
[Dawkins] the, it must have been an animal that [Coyne] Yeah.
[Dawkins] didn't have a soul, and then a subsequent
[Dawkins] animal that did. [Coyne] Yes, but all of evolution,
[Coyne] as you know better than I do Richard,
all of evolution is continuous.
The passage from inorganic to organic,
from vegetable to animal, from
one kind of animal to another.
We can't decide, you know, when this little fish
became a reptile, can we?
[Dawkins] No indeed. [Coyne] So it's the same with the
[Coyne] rest of this process.
[Dawkins] But if you believe that the soul survives death, then you would...
[Coyne] Oh now. Oh now. Oh now.
I believe I survive death.
Now the mystery of that...
I don't believe my soul does.
I do.
I mean in the afterlife I surely want to
have a gin and tonic and play some tennis.
(laughter) But how that's going to happen,
it's a mystery.
[Dawkins] But do you believe chimpanzees survive death?
[Coyne] No.
[Dawkins] And all the common ancestors.
[Coyne] Not necessarily, I can't say they
don't, but I believe I do.
[Dawkins] There would be a first animal in
evolution that survived its own death.
[Coyne] Yeah I suppose so.
We always have to ask that question
of was there a first and yeah
we have to say there was a first
but we don't know when, how
in the whole evolutionary process
you know better than I do
the continuity of the whole process.
[Dawkins] Thank you.
I have said that evolution, in my
personal history, you've expressed personal history,
in my personal history it was my understanding
of evolution that led me to atheism, because of that
consciousness raising thing I mentioned earlier.
I take it you don't agree with that.
[Coyne] No absolutely, obviously I don't
agree with that. Far from it in fact.
I think evolution drives me to a more
confident and meaningful belief in God.
To a "theism." But it's not an "ism".
I mean God is a person so I hate to put the "ism" on it.
But just the opposite of driving me to atheism,
it's just the opposite. And the reason is
I repeat what we shared before.
That God is not a God of explanation.
If I were seeking for a God of explanation
for evolution, I'd probably be an atheist.
Because I can perfectly well explain all that I
know so far and I hope into the future
to, you know, explain it with science.
So if all I'm looking for is explanation,
I'd be driven to atheism. I agree.
[Dawkins] We're very similar because I was
looking for, when I believed in God, it was
precisely a God of explanation
that I was looking for. And so
when I realized he wasn't an explanation
I lost my faith in him.
And so we are left with your faith
coming from your tradition
from your family upbringing which sounds
to me pretty weak actually.
[Coyne] Oh I don't pretend it's strong.
It's strong for me but I can't give it a firm
completely rational explanation or
it wouldn't be faith.
[Dawkins] Yes. So it's faith and you can't question faith.
[Coyne] That's correct. I cannot.
It's too deep inside me.
[Dawkins] Thank you very much indeed.
[Dawkins] This was a fascinating conversation. [Coyne] A pleasure. You're welcome.