-Hi my name is Chase, and I read an article on the internet that I thought was interesting
and I hoped you guys could respond to it. One of the things it posited was that
the Theory of Evolution, like, there was an intellectual jump that you have to make
to get it. And then there's consequences which are really threatening to people's
beliefs. And the suggestion the gentlemen had was that maybe you could try to teach them
something that is similarly unintuitive, but doesn't
have the same threatening aspects to their beliefs.
And the thing that he cited, not as an instance of evolution, but just something that was
similarly unintuitive was Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a very strange idea.
You have anyone edit something, and you would think that garbage would come out.
And instead you get something that is really useful. So I was just wondering
if you think that's a good idea, or if there are similar things
that you can use to get people to step into the idea of evolution?
Kind of in a more stepwise approach that isn't as threatening. Thank you.
Dawkins: I'd like to pay tribute to Wikipedia.
When I was first told about it my immediate reaction was obviously "Oh that won't work."
It's just a ridiculous idea that people could actually go in and edit.
Then I went in and had a look and I looked up something I know something about,
and I was astounded at how good it was!
I tried the experiment of altering something, (laughter)
it actually needed to be altered I looked up
Natural Selection, because I know a bit about that, and it was an almost perfect article
it was really, really, really good but there was one
thing that stood out to me like a sore thumb,
which was a recommendation of a book which had
nothing whatever to do with Natural Selection
but maybe there was one sentence in it that had
something to do with Natural Selection but clearly,
it didn't belong in an encyclopedia article on natural selection so I removed the reference
and the very next day it was back, so I removed it again,
I think within minutes it was back. (laughter)
But these examples are relatively rare.
So I do think it's an astonishingly counter-intuitive feat of human achievement,
but the interesting question
could you, I take it you mean soften up people to evolution by pointing to something
which is less threatening? Which might be equally hard to understand.
I don't quite see why Wikipedia would do that, but as you were talking
I did see perhaps one way to do a bit of seduction,
not quite in Lawrence's way but in a different way.
Rather than trying to seduce people by saying evolution is fully compatible with
your religion, which I don't think it is,
to say evolution is not a handbook of immorality and violence.
It doesn't lead to Hitlerism, it doesn't degrade humanity to be related to
other apes, I say other apes because
we are apes, we're not just descended from apes.
So maybe that's another kind of seduction technique I could buy into.
I wouldn't have to compromise my principles by saying
evolution is compatible with your supernaturalist hogwash.
(laughter)
But what I could say, is evolution is fully compatible with your morality, with the fact
that you don't steal, you don't kill, and you're not a racist.
All of these things could be done with a sufficiently,
sophisticated interpretation of evolution
I have to add, not a naive interpretation.
Audience member: Thank you very much for your talk today. I have a question for each of you.
If the majority of Americans don't believe in evolution, and it appears that they don't,
and if the majority of Americans go to school, you can see where the failing lies.
But it can't just be that people start going to church,
and it's too late for the school to educate them.
Because so many people convert to religions as adults.
And it is my understanding that all Southern Baptists are required at a certain age
to say I want to believe in all this, whatever it is, nonsense.
So that can't be the issue. And so my question to you- I guess more Professor Dawkins
because you're going back to England- I know you're not a political strategist
either one of you, but I'm becoming increasingly frightened in this country
that in order to run for political office, one has to declare his or her religious bona fides.
Krauss: Yeah, I agree with that a ton
(applause)
Audience member: ...and I honestly don't know what to do
If either of you has a suggestion I would love to hear it.
Dawkins: Well, as you say, I am not an American, and I have to be a
bit careful treading in this field, not that I often am,
but it is certainly very noticeable that American politicians can not make a speech
without mentioning God. British politicians can not ever mention God when making a speech.
There are religious British politicians, Tony Blair, is a very religious man.
(Inaudible) ...into the Roman Catholic Church
But whenever challenged to wear his religion on his sleeve
he would retreat hastily.
When he was challenged by Jeremy Paxman
who's Britain's most aggressive television interviewer
he said, in a kind of sneering way, "Is it really true, Mr. Blair, that you actually
pray with George Bush?"
(laughter)
And Blair said, "No, no, no, no!"
(laughter)
So there is something different
about the way politicians are trained by their minders and their
spin doctors to address their public because everybody believes that the United States
is a nation of religious maniacs.
I'm not sure that I do believe that, I think this country has been maligned.
I don't think it's as bad as all that anything like, and I think it's up to people who don't
take a religious view to stand up and be counted and perhaps form a lobby.
Because the other side is very, very good at lobbying, and what politicians really
respond to is not so much perception of
what the total number of people who believe in such and such a thing is,
they get systematically lobbied by
special interest groups, and so there's the Irish lobby, there's the Jewish lobby, there's the Steel lobby, there's
the Coal lobby, and the Oil lobby and things,
and these are powerful well-financed interest groups.
So maybe, what the Godless among the American population need to do
is to recognize that they really are a very substantial proportion of the population,
and behave as if they were.
As you know, organizing Atheists has been likened to herding cats,
which is a compliment, in a way, but it doesn't help to get results in the political sphere.
Krauss: Part of the problem with that though, and I've been involved in political campaigns
in a number of different ways in this country,
one of the challenges we've had trying to create the Science Debate between the
presidential candidates, which is scheduled, by the way,
for April 18th in Philadelphia at the Franklin Institute, you can applaud,
(applause)
it's scheduled but none of the candidates have yet agreed to do it so...
You should write the candidates, they need more pressure,
it's at the point where I think it may
happen but the more pressure
they can get the better because
particularly the problem with Atheists being a lobby or scientists being a lobby, one of the reasons
that it doesn't work very effectively is that, unlike some lobbies they don't vote as a block.
I don't think that's ever going to happen
even if scientists disagree with the science policies or funding policies of the candidate, they
usually don't make that a monolithic reason for voting,
and because the politicians realize that they won't vote as a block,
and I think probably for good reason they won't vote as a block,
they tend to ignore them.
So I think it's pretty hard to take people who by nature don't have one overriding
idea which is going to be the one reason you vote for a candidate.
On the fundamentalist case
I think it's much easier to imagine people voting specifically because
Dawkins: You don't mean block, do you? You mean a one-issue.
Krauss: Yeah, a one-issue
that's the problem, they don't vote as a one-issue thing.