[Father George Coyne] of Islamic literature,
of church traditions that had passed on
since the founding of the church, etc.
They are all well established human endeavors.
Now, you can examine those and accept them,
or you can examine them and reject them,
but they have to be examined.
They are clear evidence outside of science.
I mean they're not tricks.
Somebody is not tricking us into believing
[Coyne] in the supernatural. [Dawkins] No but they're evidence that
in these traditions people though certain things.
But that doesn't mean that what they thought
was right. It's hardly evidence just that
people for 2,000 years have thought something.
[Coyne] That is correct. That is correct.
But if I examine what they thought
over this long period of times, I find
that I can, without divorcing my whole
rational structure, I can accept that.
I do not find that I, as a person,
and as a scientist, am sort of schizophrenic.
That is, I am being strict about my scientific
methodology but I'm sort of being, I'm being juvenile,
I'm being non-rational, I'm being non-inquisitive
when I accept scriptures and church tradition
and all that comes with them.
I think it's coherent.
[Dawkins] Yes. You mention both the Christian
tradition and the Islamic tradition.
[Dawkins] These are not the same. Yes. [Coyne] Buddhist, oh no they are not.
[Dawkins] So, how do you decide which one,
I mean you're a Catholic priest,
why light up on that tradition rather than
[Dawkins] any of these other ancient traditions? [Coyne] It's because of my history.
[Coyne] All of us have our personal history,
which we struggle with.
I mean I grew up in very Catholic family. Ok?
Does that mean that I've been duped?
I grew up in a Catholic family.
I went to a Catholic schools.
I questioned it.
Went through the traditional juvenile
rejection of this, rejection of that.
I grew up as an adult. I studied the science
and I found through the long,
my own personal history, and I think
this reflects many, many believing scientists,
through my own personal history I found
not only was there an inconsistency
but there was a coherence.
[Dawkins] But if you had been brought up in an Islamic
country, you'd be a muslim, therefore.
[Coyne] Probably so. I mean we are all, we are all
subject to our personal histories.
[Coyne] I can't deny it. [Dawkins} Well we clearly are.
[Dawkins] But undermine your feeling of
validity of the one you just happen
to have been born into?
[Coyne] No because it's my, this is a faith statement now,
it's my firm belief that God deals
with each of us in his own way.
[Dawkins] So the Muslim's beliefs which
contradict yours are equally valid
in his personal history and therefore
[Dawkins] equally valid? [Coyne] That's a very challenging question.
[Coyne] I would say there are ingredients
of God's speaking to the Muslim tradition, to the
to the buddhist tradition, to the Catholic tradition.
There are elements of God's true
revelation to these people in all
of those traditions.
Each of us wants to make our own claims.
I think it's always wrong for any
of the traditions to claim that they have the
absolute truth. That they are the ones
that God really speaks to.
I don't think, I think that's a caricature
of what happens, but it has happened in
history of course. We have to face that.
[Dawkins] Why don't you accept those things
which are universal, like the existence of God?
Why do you in addition accept those things
which would be contradicted my these
other traditions like the,
I don't know wether the virgin birth or
some part of the Catholic tradition which
is particular to the Catholic tradition?
[Coyne] Becasue besides, you know, believing in the
existence of God, I firmly believe that God
has spoken in a very special way, okay,
through the Jewish tradition up until the
birth of his own son. I firmly believe
that Jesus Christ is true god and true man,
sent to us by God to save us.
That's all my religious tradition and I find
that that is not incoherent with my life
in general. And certainly not in coherent
with my scientific pursuits.
[Dawkins] No not with that, but with the possibility
that you might have been brought up in a different
tradition and would believe something
that really did contradict it.
[Coyne] Yes. Ok we're speaking now, if I could
you know, sort of broaden the discussion,
we're speaking about a very short period
of human history,
much less an extremely short
period of cosmic history.
[Dawkins] Indeed, yes.
[Coyne] So if we're living in a
universe that is 14 billion years old,
human civilization, how far back would
we date just the first human being?
Some fraction of a million years?
[Dawkins] Yes. But you wouldn't want to call that civilization.
[Coyne] No. And then you know, religious history
certainly Judaic Christian tradition from
I would say roughly 2,000 years before Christ,
these are very short periods of time.
Who knows in the whole kind of more cosmic,
universal view of things, that the religious
traditions will not, eventually, unify?
[Dawkins] Well, maybe. This, the sort of
paltriness of the human timescale
compared to the timescale that you,
as a distinguished astronomer, are used to
dealing with, and I , as a biologist,
am used to dealing with,
doesn't that seem rather small?
Don't you feel there is a kind of
grandeur about the universe which
the religious traditions you're talking
about fail to do justice to?
[Coyne] Richard, I would firmly agree with you
that many times we do not appreciate
the fact that our religious traditions
are very small in time. I expect also
in space, though, you know, I'm not gonna speak
as to whether there are extraterrestrials,
let's leave that. Certainly from all we know
thus far probably very limited in space.
And we don't appreciate that enough.
I must tell you that I often tell
my fellow colleagues in the pursuit
of our religious pilgrimage, we think
Catholicism in particular, Christianity
in more general, and the Judaic Christian
tradition more generally,
often tell that. Do you realize
that I firmly believe that God spoke to us?
So of course we are limited in space and time
and religious tradition even moreso.
I often have to remind religious
believers, especially in my own
religious tradition, that we believe
that God, through scripture,
is speaking to us. The inspiration
of scripture. What that exactly means
is far too difficult to get into.
I mean I have my own reasoning.
But I do believe that God is speaking to
us through scripture and through the
traditions of the church. But the point
is God is speaking to us.
So we have to interpret the author's
of scripture are human beings who
lived in different cultures over a
long period of time. For instance
the book of Genesis, it's rather clearly established now,
is written by many authors over a long
period of time. There are two
creation stories that contrast if you
try to interpret them literally
and scientifically, contrast with one another.
Point is that all that we believe are
human beliefs. And we have to accept that.
We have to accept the limitations of it.
We have to accept what I would call
the fallibility of it. It's not absolute,
you know, final truth that we have.
And much less if we talk about extraterrestrials
so people say, you know...
I say I don't know whether God spoke to
them if the exist. And if he did, what he said.
All I know is what God said to us.
[Dawkins] What do you say to fellow
Christians who take the book of Genesis literally?
Adam and Eve, and six days, and things like that?
[Coyne] I say as little as I have to, because
I tend to get very upset by it. Any literalist,
fundamentalist interpretation of scripture
because it simply reveals, I hate to
be this harsh with people who are real
believers and very religious but,
[Cameraman] Sorry.
[Coyne] It does, because it reveals a very fundamental
ignorance of what scripture is all about.
And what, let me put it this way,
scripture was written between let's say
5,000 years, at least the traditions back
to the prophet Abraham, the Patriarchs,
until about 200 years after Christ,
which is the Gospel of St. John,
that's the span of the Judaic Christian
scriptures. Modern science came to be
in roughly the 17th century with Galileo
on through Leibniz and Newton.
There is no science in scripture.
There can't be because of that conflict of dates
but they had no scientific mentality.