Beautiful Minds (2010) - full transcript

What does it take to be
a scientific pioneer?

To reframe
and popularise evolutionary theory?

To reveal a new material and
win science's most coveted prize.

Or discover one of palaeontology's
elusive missing links.

Is the key to brilliance
pure talent, ego,

or just plain good luck?

What makes
a beautiful scientific mind?

Prof Richard Dawkins is amongst
Britain's most outspoken

and prolific scientific thinkers.

I don't think he's quite
in the Oxford English dictionary yet,

but it's almost at that level.



In the 1970s, he made his name with
an explosive book

that turned evolutionary thinking
on its head.

It was a wonderful, radical new
vision, set out in sparkling prose,

and, above it all, this wonderful,
wonderful metaphor, the selfish gene.

The book propelled him
into the spotlight and gave Dawkins

a platform to speak out
as a ferocious critic of religion.

Lord Jakobovits is
an educated man,

he knows perfectly well the world
was not created in six days.

Richard gives definitive answers
to things.

If you don't like those answers,
you'll find it controversial
and you're not going to like him.

Sir, there could be many things
that you know well, but, please,

in the process of it,
don't be arrogant.

How did Richard Dawkins become
the most influential

evolutionary thinker of
a generation?



And how did this lead him

to assume the mantle of
evangelical spokesman for atheism?

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
Professor Richard Dawkins!

Richard Dawkins' public career
spans four decades.

Since the publication of his global
bestseller, The Selfish Gene,

he has penned a further 10 books,
written hundreds of articles,

and become
a well-known TV personality.

INAUDIBLE

Would you please welcome
Professor Richard Dawkins.

Please welcome
Professor Richard Dawkins.

His message about science is simple.

I try to emphasise

that science is magical
in the best sense of being

spellbinding, spine-crawling,
exciting - magical, in that sense.

His thinking is defined by logic

and by an insistence
on scientific evidence.

To say, "I don't understand X,
therefore it must be magic,

"or therefore it must supernatural,
must be a miracle,"

that is cowardly and defeatist, lazy.

I try to rather strongly
make the case against that.

You have to be open
and constantly questioning

and using the methods of science to
try to find out what is really true.

A zoologist by training,
Richard Dawkins has spent a lifetime

questioning the mechanisms
of the natural world.

As a child of keen naturalists,
biology was practically in his DNA.

I grew up in what was then Nyasaland,
now Malawi, until I was seven.

Both my parents loved flowers,
when my sister and I were young,

and when we went on walks, they would
constantly be telling us the names

of all the wildflowers, my father
in Latin, my mother in English.

And, um, so, we both of us

had every opportunity to love nature.

Perhaps surprisingly, Richard
did not share his family's passion

for animals and plants.

I suppose it should have been
a paradise for a young naturalist

and I did enjoy what I saw,
and I love butterflies and birds
and things,

but I never really developed properly
into a young naturalist,

I think perhaps a bit to
the disappointment of my father,
who always was,

and his father, my grandfather.

I remember, on a visit to England,
which we occasionally did,

my grandfather looked
out of the window and asked me

whether I could identify a bird that
was on the bird table.

I hadn't the faintest idea.

So I said, "Is it a chaffinch?"

And Grandfather was absolutely
shocked that I didn't know that it
was a blue tit.

Instead, Richard showed signs of
being a different kind of thinker,

one who was more interested in ideas
than in outdoor life.

I loved reading and I used to
read in a rather sort of

clandestine way,
both at school and at home.

Um, at school, I used to sort of
disappear when I was supposed to be

using my hands in the workshops
and things like that, and read.

And at home, I used to sort of
sneak up my bedroom and read

when I was really supposed to be
out in the big outdoors.

The natural order of things
came alive to Richard,

not through country walks,

but in the pages of Hugh Lofting's
Doctor Doolittle books.

Dr Doolittle is rather
like Charles Darwin on the Beagle.

All the plots of the Doctor Doolittle
books concern

animals and animal welfare, really,

and I think that really
did influence me

in the direction of having a great
sympathy for non-human animals.

When I learned about evolution,

I became even more aware of the
continuity, as Darwin very much was,

the continuity between humans
and other animals.

We are African apes and we are

a rather recent offshoot from
other African apes.

And so, the sort of
great moral and political barrier

that we tend to
erect around homo sapiens,

as an evolutionist
I can see is not logical,

and, as a child, I was kind of
schooled into by Doctor Doolittle.

Though Darwin's theory of
natural selection would come to form

the bedrock of Richard's science,

as a child he did not
immediately grasp it.

I'm not sure that I really got it,
actually.

I think I sort of misunderstood it.

I didn't really think it was up to
the job of explaining all of life.

"It is interesting to contemplate
an entangled bank,

"clothed with many plants
of many kinds,

"with birds, and with
various insects flitting about.

"And to reflect that
these elaborately constructed forms

"have all been produced by laws
acting around us."

To Richard, natural selection
appeared to be inadequate because

Darwin's idea was so simple.

Darwin's original argument

was that species
produce more offspring

than can survive to adulthood.

And among those offspring, it is
not random who survives,

but larger ones survive or ones
who are somehow better fitted to

survive and to reproduce do.

As the fitter individuals reproduce,

their characteristics are
transmitted to their young,

while the less fit individuals
perish, or leave behind
fewer offspring.

As those forces work through,

down the generations,

those that have that characteristics
that that enable them to

survive will do so and will be
more represented in the generations.

Natural selection takes place
slowly,

through tiny, incremental changes,
over vast spans of time.

Richard would be in his teens before
he really took this in.

It was probably my father who
explained it to me

so that I first got it.

Then, fairly gradually,

became aware that
Darwinian natural selection really
was not just big enough,

but hugely big enough, it was
a really gigantically good idea.

Aged 13, the bookish Richard went to
Oundle School in Northamptonshire.

Here he met Mr Thomas,

a teacher who would shape
his approach to scientific thinking.

He was an inspired teacher.

He clearly was
inspired by the living world

and he spoke with great passion
and...poetry, really,

of what a marvellous subject biology
is, and how much it would encompass.

Ioan Thomas taught his class to
rigorously question

scientific ideas.

But Richard did not yet stand out
amongst his classmates.

He wasn't a star pupil,
but the group that I had were

a lot of very able - it would be
rather difficult

to be a star amongst them.

They were great fun to teach and he
was somebody who was fun to teach

because he responded
in the right sort of way.

But he didn't look
necessarily as being outstanding.

His parents became concerned that
he was not applying himself enough

to make the grade and get into
the Oxford college they were set on.

I think I'm right in saying that
11 members of the Dawkins family

went to Balliol College, Oxford,

and it was my grandfather's great
hope, and my father's great hope,

that I would as well.

So I was sort of automatically
entered for Balliol.

My parents went to see Mr Thomas
to talk about it.

They did come to see me
where I was staying in Oundle,

and I think I did say that I don't
think he is going to get to Balliol
at this stage.

He'll get into Oxford but he won't
get to Balliol.

But anyway, I applied to Balliol

and Mr Thomas had me in his house
for several evenings,

I think about once a week, actually,
for extracurricular coaching.

And then the pace seemed to change,

which was what my intention
had been.

Spurred on by Mr Thomas's
hot housing,

Richard rose to the challenge,
and, in 1959,

he made it to Balliol College,
where he would study zoology.

Here, he entered a world where
Darwin's theory was

barely on the radar for
academic biologists.

Darwin's theory has
a curious history. People think of it

as Darwin revealing it to the world
in 1859

and then the Origin sailing forth

and Darwinian theory
being on top of science ever since.

It wasn't at all like that.

It actually went through
a great decline,

it is sometimes called
the eclipse of Darwinian theory.

That started around the time that
Darwin died in 1882,

and went on until, really, past
the middle of the 20th century.

During that time it was deeply
misunderstood, often ignored

and reviled, but when it was used,

it was not understood how
the logic of it worked.

As an undergraduate, Richard was
less concerned with Darwin

than with the meticulous
detail of his weekly essays.

He was developing a flair
for writing and original thinking.

The topics we were given for our
weekly essay could well have been

very specialised, narrow topics,

and we were given the latest
research literature on that topic,

went into the library, one of
the finest libraries in the world,

and spent a whole week immersing
oneself in this topic.

And I did that to such an extent that
I would kind of sleep,

eat and dream the topic,
whatever it was.

I never, ever just sort of produced
a textbook answer.

It was always my own take on
something, which I absolutely adored.

My tutors,
they said they loved my essays,

I don't know
whether they were just being nice.

His talent for refining
and communicating ideas

caught the eye of one tutor
in particular.

World-renowned animal behaviourist
Niko Tinbergen.

When I do this,
you know at once what I mean.

The angry face, the clenched fist,
convey a mood of aggression.

It is a simple form of communication.

Richard graduated in 1962 and
Tinbergen was so impressed by

his abilities that he agreed to take
Richard on as a doctoral student.

I then became a member of his group
on animal behaviour.

And that was a big turning point
in my life.

Before I had tutorials with Tinbergen

I had been going to do
something biochemical,

which I know would not
have suited me.

And so I am very, very glad that
that happened.

The doctoral subject Tinbergen
set for Richard was

the study of innate behaviour
in young animals, such as chicks.

Richard immersed
himself in the work.

At that time,
the animal behaviour group lived in

and worked in an old
Victorian house in North Oxford.

It was one of those very vertical
houses with two rooms on each floor.

My memory of Richard was as

one of the senior, perhaps slightly
austere figures in the group,

but absolutely remarkable for
his clarity of thought

and clarity of expression.
That was one of the things that
struck me from the very beginning.

The high spot of the week, for me,
was the Friday night seminars,

where we all gathered around,
and Niko was there

and somebody gave
a talk about their research.

And Niko was quite, um, relentless
in his questioning.

I can remember one of
these weekly seminars where

a very distinguished scientist from
Bristol University called John Crook

came to give the seminar, and he got
through the first sentence

and Niko stopped him and said, "What
exactly do you mean by that?" -
whatever it was he'd said.

He never had a proper chair, he sat
on an old orange box or something,

and was chain-smoking,
rolling his own,

chain-smoking, pacing up and down,

chain-smoking,
sitting on the old orange box,

and interrupting quite frequently.

"Ja, ja, ja," and then interrupt.

That insistence on absolute
clarity of thought must have had

an influence on Richard's thinking.

It certainly had
an influence on my thinking.

So, in a sense, Richard was
following in the Tinbergen
tradition.

I think I came away from that
enormously enthused about science,

about asking scientific questions.

And feeling that science
really was for me.

Richard had found his vocation
at an exciting time.

Zoologists were returning to
Darwinian ideas and beginning

to wrestle with the question of how
natural selection really worked.

They knew that evolution
favoured the survival

and reproduction of the fittest,
but the fittest what?

The fittest individuals,
groups, or species?

For Darwin, it was the individual.

It is us, WE reproduce.

But, in the 1960s, it became apparent
that that view

was not wholly adequate.

It was very difficult to take
that view and still account

for some of the behaviours that we
see out there in the natural world,

especially altruistic behaviours.

Behaviours where animals apparently
sacrifice themselves
for other animals.

How could that be,

if we are, if individuals are
programmed to survive and reproduce?

The answer for many biologists
was that

the fittest groups of organisms
survived and reproduced.

If one wildebeest behaved
altruistically,

to take care of
another wildebeest's infant,

the whole group would be successful
and altruism would blossom.

But other biologists thought
this approach illogical.

Let's imagine a hypothetical example
where everybody in a group

behaved altruistically.

And let's say they give up
their food for other people,

but that one individual in that group
now behaves differently,
behaves selfishly.

So, instead of giving up food,
it grabs food from others,

and food translates into survival
and reproduction.

You play the tape forward through
a few hundred generations

and what's happened,
all the goody-goodies, the altruists
who gave away their food,

have been supplanted, replaced, by
the selfish individuals who scoffed

the food and reproduced as result.

An alternative theory was proposed
by Bill Hamilton,

an evolutionary biologist with
a particular interest

in social insects.

He wanted to know why female worker
insects take care of the colony

when they have no chance of ever
reproducing in their own right.

He came to believe that the
sterile workers were sacrificing

themselves for the Queen
and male drones

because they all contained
the same genes.

And he believed it was true
not just of social insects

but of all biological organisms.

The main thrust was the idea

that animals share genes
with their relatives.

So, if I do something for my brother,
let's say,

then the genes that cause me
to do it will survive in him.

And so there is a kind of...

There is essentially
a gene-centred process going on.

If we took
a gene-centred view of the world

we could explain
some of those behaviours

because it is the case that
although we have our genes,

our genes are not uniquely ours,
we share them with our relatives.

What Bill Hamilton did, in 1964,

was to realise that what matters

is not just reproduction,
not just producing children,

but assisting the survival
of your own genes, any gene that

assists the survival of itself
by working through

sisters and brothers and nephews
and nieces and so on,

such a gene would propagate itself.

Though Bill Hamilton
published his work in the mid-60s,

it attracted little attention.

It was, I think, one of
the most difficult papers to follow

that has ever been written.

So, although the paper was there,
it wasn't having much impact.

But Richard, now
lecturing for Tinbergen at Oxford,

had found his way through
Hamilton's complex mathematics

and he brought the ideas
into his 1966 course notes.

I was immensely enthusiastic about it
and brought it into my lectures.

The '66 lectures were
a eureka moment for me.

I has this sort of semi-poetic
vision of immortal genes manipulating

mortal bodies, survival machines,
as I call them,

throwing them away, and then
marching on down the generations.

It, it's...

It's true, it's what happens,

the thing about genes
is that they are potentially immortal

because they are copied and copied
and copied, identically,

down through countless generations,
and the bodies are thrown away.

These were ideas Richard would later
immortalise in The Selfish Gene.

But for now,

an emerging technology kept him
from getting down to writing.

He was still studying
behaviour in chicks

and was swamped in statistics.

What Richard needed was a way to
process the data.

He was one of the very early people
into the use of computers.

In those days,
there was just one computer in Oxford

and you had to submit your job
on punched-paper tape and then you

came back the next day, or maybe
two days later, got the results,

and you found a stupid mistake
which you corrected,

put back the paper tape, and came
back with another stupid mistake

and so on,
so it was a very laborious business.

I learned how to program
and became utterly intrigued by it.

Richard was then in charge of
an animal behaviour group computer,

which was about the size of a room,
and had about the calculating power

of a mobile phone, or less
than a mobile phone, in fact.

But Richard was one of
the very early adopters.

I remember once I dreamed that
I was a computer
just chugging my way through,

repeating and repeating and repeating
and repeating,

a sort of horrible nightmare
of a night.

I got up very early at dawn!

But, anyway, the fascination of
computers stayed with me.

I can remember Richard trying to
teach all of us

in the animal behaviour group
how to write computer programs
in machine code,

a string of zeros and ones, so
he was a real pioneer in that field.

And it reflects his logical mind
and, I think,

his interest in how things work.

I became, I think the correct
word would be addicted,

to computer programming,
and the addiction became much worse

when computers, following Moore's
Law, became smaller and faster

and cheaper and so one could have
access to one's own.

And then I really did become addicted

and had to more less
positively cure myself of it.

Richard was not only
distracted by computers.

In the late '60s, he took
a lecturing post at the University
of California in Berkeley.

It was the height of flower power

and he soon discovered
a passion for campaigning.

My first wife, Marian and I,
had just got married,

and we went out together for
a sort of adventure, in our 20s.

We were, both of us,
very politically active.

We got involved in
the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations.

We got involved in
the campaigning for

the Democratic candidacy
for the presidency.

And so our old car was simply covered
with electioneering posters

and things,
and we went to demonstrations

and political meetings and things,

both in Berkeley and in
San Francisco.

And I lectured on animal behaviour,
and I suppose it is really a time

of youth which sort of haunts one's
dreams for some time afterwards.

But after two short years,
Niko Tinbergen managed to lure

Richard away from California, back
to a research position at Oxford.

The England he returned to could
not have been

more different from
sunny California.

ARCHIVE: There have been fierce
struggles between the police

and pickets as the strikers tried to
stop lorries entering and leaving.

Britain was in the grip
of industrial unrest.

A miners' strike in the early '70s
brought Richard's computer work
to a standstill.

There were constant power cuts

and it wasn't possible to do research
that involved electrical apparatus.

So I thought it would be a good idea
if I tried to put together

the ideas that had so inspired me
in 1966, and write a book.

And I started to write it,
I wrote two chapters.

But then the power came back on,
and so I gave up the project

and went back to my research.

But evolutionary thinking
was moving fast.

Like Bill Hamilton, who had
inspired Richard in the '60s,

other academics
such as John Maynard Smith

and Bob Trivers were also publishing
papers about altruism and genes.

Reading their work spurred
Richard into action.

It was the advent of the Trivers
papers and the Maynard Smith papers

in 1971, '72, '73 and '74,

which goaded me into finally getting
back to

taking out my first two chapters out
of the drawer

and getting down to it properly.

I think I felt, yes, I think that is
right now, it is coming back to me -

I think those extra papers,

I really felt, gosh, I've got to
get back to that book,

this is so exciting,
there's so much to add.

So I wrote it in
quite a frenzy of energy.

The manuscript was finished in 1975.
Now, it needed a title.

I remember Richard ran
a little competition amongst us,

his friends and colleagues,
for the title of the book.

And my...my submission
was Immortal Coils,

which I think he used as
one of the chapter headings.

But he stuck with his own idea
as the title of the book.

The title Richard chose was
The Selfish Gene.

I called the book The Selfish Gene
because if anything is

a selfish entity maximising
its own survival, it is the gene.

You don't want to talk about
the selfish organism,

the selfish individual, because most
of the time, a good bit of the time,

organisms are being altruistic.

There are driven to be
altruistic by the selfish genes.

It was this now iconic title that
appealed to publisher

Michael Rodgers
at Oxford University Press.

So Michael asked if he could see what
I was working on and I gave him

some chapters.

And I was phoned up and he said,

"I must have that book!"

And he then, nothing would deter him,

I mean, it was absolutely...

I don't what you'd call it,
like a bull charging.

I started reading
and I couldn't stop.

It was so good,
and it was so brilliant,

and I was completely,
absolutely gripped

and I thought it was so wonderful.

And from then on, um...I
couldn't sleep for worrying

that, um, we wouldn't get the book.

I wanted to publish this book

because I thought it was going
to be important and do really well.

The book was a huge success.

Dawkins' gift for distilling ideas
and communicating them

had come together
in one seminal piece of work.

It gave a radically new view
of the world.

It was a view that
we are just vehicles for our genes.

It's the genes' interests
that matters, it's not us.

And that, he showed, has all sorts
of unintended consequences

for the way in which we think.

New consequences for the way
in which we view human behaviour.

And it was a wonderful, radical new
vision set out in sparkling prose.

And above it all,
this wonderful, wonderful metaphor,

The Selfish Gene.

It revealed the logic
with crystal-clear precision.

And that enabled people to see

why natural selection
must be gene centred.

Why it doesn't make sense
to talk about it in any other way.

Richard was, in a way,
taking ideas that existed,

but making us look at them
in a different way.

Viewing them
through a different window.

Through the window
of The Selfish Gene.

It was just the beauty of the way
he expressed the ideas

was absolutely riveting.

And, I thought, overwhelming,
for me. Captivating.

As somebody who knew a lot
about the ideas,

but hadn't really seen them

expressed in exactly that way
before.

It's stunningly right.
It's stunningly clear.

It is the most extraordinary book.

The book was immensely popular.

But it also came in
for heavy criticism.

Some biologists argued
that The Selfish Gene was wrong

because genes do not code

for any specific characteristics
of an organism.

There is no one-to-one correlation
between any gene

and any bit of how an organism
actually operates.

Many genes are involved
in the expression of any feature

in the organism
and, um, each gene is involved

in many, many different aspects
of how an organism is.

Once you don't have
that one-to-one correlation,

it cannot be the gene is the unit
of selection in this sort of way.

I have never, ever suggested

a sort of atomistic relationship

between genes
and the actual form of the body

and the behaviour of the body
and what it does.

Complete nonsense.

I never said it and I certainly don't
think it and never did think it.

My emphasis on genes is strictly
an evolutionary emphasis.

That the gene is the level
in the hierarchy of life

at which natural selection acts.

It is the gene which survives
or doesn't survive.

That's my emphasis on the gene.

But the debate around
The Selfish Gene

goes beyond the argument about
what genes specifically code for.

Richard Dawkins' critics claim
that his ideas reduce human beings

to mindless agents,
controlled by our genes.

You cannot say,
as Dawkins did in The Selfish Gene,

that organisms are simply
lumbering robots, passive vehicles,

whose only function is to
help a gene transmit itself

into the next generation.

This gene-centred, gene-metaphor
way of describing the world

is what I would call
genetic determinism,

what many people call
genetic determinism.

Genetic determinism
is the notion that, um,...

if there is, "a gene for altruism

"or another gene for another kind
of behaviour,"

somehow, that means that the genes

determine everything in our bodies
and the way we are

and we have no liberty
to change things, no free will.

It's the idea that our genes
rule the show.

If we have a natural disposition
to be nasty,

then we'll be nasty whatever,

and there's nothing
we can do about it.

This is a deep,
deep misunderstanding.

There is absolutely nothing fixed
about our behaviour.

Look around us.
We can see that it's not fixed.

We can see that we respond
in different ways.

Genetics and Darwinism
had always had a dark side.

Natural selection had long appealed

to those who wanted to use
it as a justification

for weeding out
the less-fit members of society.

TV: 'Not all mental deficiency
is hereditary.

'But heredity accounts for more
of the mild, feeble-minded types.

'such as you see in this group
of men

'exercising in the grounds
of the institution.

'If carefully trained, they can be
taught simple routine tasks.

'But it would have been better
by far for them

'and for the rest of the community
if they had never been born.'

If we want to maintain the race

at a high level
physically and mentally,

everybody sound in body and mind

should marry
and have enough children

to perpetuate their stock
and carry on the race.

Post World War II,
eugenics had fallen from favour.

But in the '70s, extremist groups
like the National Front

perpetuated the notion
of racial purity.

They seized on The Selfish Gene

as an intellectual defence
of their ideas.

'A warm review
appeared in a journal

'published by the National Front.'

'One result of kin selection

'is a tendency to identify
with individuals

'physically resembling oneself.

'And to be nasty to individuals
different in appearance.'

Dawkins hit back
against what he saw as

the political hijacking
of his work.

Some people completely misunderstood
what's implied

by a book I wrote
called The Selfish Gene.

On the right, we had various writers
from the National Front
and French equivalents

who saw the idea of The Selfish Gene
as chiming in very much

with their own rather nasty
political philosophy.

On the left on the other hand,

I remember being blamed
in a magazine article

by one influential left-wing writer,

almost personally blamed,

for the election of Mrs Thatcher
in the last general election.

Though The Selfish Gene
was conceived

in the halcyon days of the '60s,

it hit the zeitgeist in the '80s.

Many still see it
as a justification

for a greedy,
self-serving society.

During the 1980s, Thatcherism,

free market economics,
what I call selfish capitalism,

was in urgent need of some kind of
profound intellectual justification.

A deeper argument to justify it.

And it's interesting
that The Selfish Gene

didn't become a bestselling book,

one that was read widely
by the public,

rather than by just a few academics,
until the 1980s.

During that time, it was interpreted

as suggesting that it's natural
to be selfish.

That it seemed to be a justification

for the idea that greed is good.

When Margaret Thatcher famously said,

"There's no such thing as society,
they're only individuals
and families,"

she was, if you like,
endorsing the claim of the gene myth

that what matters is not the social
organisation in which we're embedded.

What matters is actually only
the individuals,

their genes
and their genetic relationships.

People have used it and taken it

as a philosophical justification
for extreme right-wing politics.

What is your answer to that?

To the extent
that natural selection

is politically unpleasant,
which it actually rather is.

I mean, if you were to live your life

as though you were constantly
aiming for Darwinian success,

then the political world
which that would result in

would be a very unpleasant world,

with the strong
oppressing the downtrodden.

We can emancipate ourselves
politically by saying,

I want to live in a kind of society

which is very far from Darwinian
natural selection.

I'm a passionate Darwinian

who believes that it's
Darwinian natural selection

that's given us our bodies
and our brains,

but I also believe that our brains
have become big enough

that we can rebel against that.

Although the book argues this case,

Dawkins has never entirely
rid himself of the accusation

that his book
was a defence of selfishness.

It is a lesson that sometimes people
will read a book by title only

and omit to read the rather large
footnote, which is the book itself.

The book could have been called
The Selfish Gene
And The Altruistic Individual,

or even just
The Altruistic Individual.

That would have been a bit long.

Do you think if you'd had called it
something else,

we'd still be talking about it
35 years later?

I like to think that the book itself
has certain merits

which might have caused it
to be being talked about.

Um,...yes, I think...

I'm kind of talking myself around
to thinking

perhaps the title was a mistake.

But for Richard Dawkins,
the disputes around The Selfish Gene

are also a lesson in the importance
of scientific freedom.

You cannot govern science by saying,

if it's suggesting something to you

that's politically or morally
or emotionally unpleasant,

therefore,
it mustn't be allowed to be true.

The great John Maynard Smith
once satirised a left-wing scientist

who was objecting
to some scientific principle

on grounds that it was unpleasant.

More or less just that,
politically unpleasant.

And John Maynard Smith said,

what should we have done,
falsified the equations?

Of course you can't do that.

Of course you can't
subvert your science

by just twisting it
to be politically acceptable.

You have to report the science
the way it is.

But then you can say,
let's not run our politics like that.

Richard Dawkins followed up
the success and controversy
of The Selfish Gene

with The Extended Phenotype,
an academic book

which explained gene-centred
natural selection in more detail.

But it was his next book,
The Blind watchmaker,

which would set the stage for
his role as a defender of science

against the claims
of creationists.

The Blind Watchmaker was a book about

the argument from design
and what's wrong with it.

And it seemed to me
a very natural place to go.

The Selfish Gene had dealt with
the topics of The Selfish Gene.

There was nothing more
I wanted to say about that.

And so, the next obvious thing was

the widespread scepticism
about evolution.

Creationists believe
that the complexity of nature

can only be explained
by the work of a creator.

The concept is called
intelligent design.

And in the '80s, the creationist
movement was gathering support.

'For over 100 years,
science has told us

'that human beings are a chance
product of a mindless process.

'Evolution.'

'But, as the human future
gets bleaker,

'so more and more people are turning
from the cold analysis of science

'to the apparent certainties
of religion.'

# I'm no kin to the monkey
No, no, no

# The monkey's no kin to me

# I don't know much
about his ancestors

# But mine didn't swing from a tree

# It seems so unbelievable

# And yet they're saying
it's true... #

'A new battle for the literal truth
of Genesis

'is being fought out on the campuses
of American high schools.

'It's an attack on what's being
taught in science classes.

'Kelly Segraves
is a fundamentalist Christian

'with three children at school.

'Earlier this year,
he took his battle

'with the school authorities
into the law courts.'

We believe in the home and in our
church that God created man as man.

I send my son to school
and I tell him, you're going
to get an education here

and I want you
to listen to the teacher.

Then the teacher's teaching things
in opposition to our faith.

In the book and the TV version
of The Blind Watchmaker,

Richard Dawkins led the charge

against what he sees as the false
scientific claims of creationism -

like the idea that men and
dinosaurs walked the Earth together.

These two have been interpreted as a
man's two feet standing together.

This one is a very large foot
with the big toe there

and the other toes going around
here and here.

Although why Cretaceous man
should have stood

with his legs like that requires
a little bit of explaining.

These are the kinds of slight
unimpressive resemblances

that can be produced by chance alone,

by the random forces
of physics alone.

But there are things in the world -
living organisms, you and me -

that are so complicated they are
vastly too improbable to have

been brought about by chance alone.

Dawkins became a tireless
promoter of evolution,

arguing the case that
only natural selection

could produce such complexity.

This is a flatfish, a halibut.

Its ancestors once swam
normally in the water,

like a normal fish does, like that.

But the ancestors of the halibut
settled down on the bottom

of the sea, one side down.

But when it did that, the ancestor
found that one of its eyes

was looking straight into the sand...

only the other one was looking up.

And so, gradually in evolution,
the other eye,

the one that was
looking into the sand,

migrated round the side of the head
and came up to the top.

Now, anybody who was going to design
a flatfish wouldn't do it that way.

For Dawkins,

this kind of adaptation is key
evidence for evolution.

And an insistence upon evidence
defines his thinking.

In a 2003 book of essays,

Dawkins even published a letter he
had written to his daughter Juliet

stressing the value
of critical thinking.

"Next time somebody tells you
something that sounds important,

"think to yourself, "Is this the kind
of thing that people probably

""know because of evidence?

""Or is it the kind of thing that
people only believe

""because of tradition,
authority or revelation?"

"And next time somebody tells you
that something is true,

"why not say to them, "What
kind of evidence is there for that?"

"And if they can't give you
a good answer

"I hope you'll think very carefully
before you believe a word they say."

I was trying to tell her how to
think about certain things.

Not what to think, but how to think.

And I was trying to encourage her
always to demand evidence.

So we know something only
when there's evidence for it.

And I was particularly
trying to warn her,

trying to guard her against various
wrong ways of thinking

that you know something,
such as tradition.

You should never say,
"Our people have always believed X,

"so you should believe X."

Authority - you should never say,
"Professor so-and-so believes X,

"therefore you should believe X."

Or your priest believes X
so you should believe X.

Or revelation: "I have this inner
conviction that X is true,

"therefore you should believe X."

No, the only reason you should
believe X is that

there's evidence for X.

It is, ultimately, this passionate
belief in the importance

of evidence which has fuelled
Richard Dawkins'

most controversial role -
as an outspoken advocate of atheism.

In 2006 he published
The God Delusion,

a polemic against religion.

It became his fastest-selling book
and pitted him head-to-head

with the religious establishment.

Richard really had two careers -
his career as a very successful

writer on evolutionary biology -
I mean, the most influential

figure of his generation, I would
say, in broader public terms,

and one of the most influential
in the scientific community.

But then he's had this other
career as a promulgator,

as a proselytiser for atheism,
which I think stems very much

from the same kind of logical
clarity of thought that he's used in

his biological work to say, "Well,
what does it actually boil down to?

"What is religious belief
trying to explain?"

Dawkins sees this militant
opposition to religion

as a natural progression
from his scientific roots.

Right from certainly before the time
when I wrote The Selfish Gene,

I have been every bit as militant
an atheist as I ever became,

and the perception of
The God Delusion as a militant book

is really because it is a book that's
all about religion,

and my other books only touched on
religion peripherally.

But if you look at The Selfish Gene
you'll find phrases which are

just as militant as anything you'll
find in The God Delusion.

It's just that that wasn't
a book about religion,

whereas The God Delusion is.

Richard Dawkins has campaigned
tirelessly to promote science
over religion.

Religion is part of a complex
of supernatural beliefs

that are founded on lack of evidence
and astrology, homoeopathy,

all sorts of things like that.

And it could be said that
some of these are harmless.

I don't think it's harmless. There is
something insidious about

training children to believe things
for which there's no evidence.

And so an uncritical,
kind of too open-minded,

so open-minded your brains fall out
attitude is a great pity

because it means you miss such a lot.

And merely to say that religion is
harmless isn't good enough.

And he has taken every opportunity
to publicly attack religion

in the strongest terms.

The God of the Old Testament has got
to be the most unpleasant

character in all fiction.

Lord Jakobovits is an educated man.

He knows perfectly well the world was
not created in six days.

There is nothing
special about the Bible.

Richard gives definitive
answers to things, and, um,

if you don't like those answers,
you're going to find it

controversial,
you're not going to like him.

I'm rather less interested in what
people think than in what's true.

A human brain is extremely good at
making things up.

The age of the Earth -
5,000 years - I mean,

that's...
I'm sorry, Rabbi, that is ridiculous.

People find him argumentative

because he doesn't suffer
fools gladly,

and he is rapier-like in his ability
to pick up a hole in your argument.

And some people find that
uncomfortable.

I'm looking for God.
Well, which God? I mean, why not
Jupiter, why not Zeus, why not Thor?

You're a Taurean,
you have great gravitas,

you find change anathema. You're
Venus-ruled, that's why you've got

those rather lovely, kissy lips
on your tie.

Richard Dawkins, where would you put
astrology on a scale of belief?

Somewhere among fairies.

JEREMY PAXMAN LAUGHS

What if you're wrong?

LAUGHTER

Well, what if I'm wrong?
I mean, anybody could be wrong.

We could all be wrong
about the flying spaghetti monster

and the pink unicorn
and the flying teapot.

What if YOU'RE wrong about the great
juju at the bottom of the sea?

APPLAUSE

Nobody not brought up in the faith
could reach any verdict other than
"barking mad".

Sir, there could be many things
that you know well.

There are other things that
you don't know well.

But please, in the process of it,
don't be arrogant.

Many of Dawkins' critics believe
that their own spiritual

experiences are proof
enough of God's existence

and that Dawkins treats their faith
with a lack of respect.

I think they should grow
thicker skins.

I mean, we all have to bear satire on
whatever it is, our political views.

And if politicians sort of started
blubbing every time somebody

drew a satirical cartoon of them
or something,

they'd never get anywhere
in politics.

There's no reason why religion
should be regarded as particularly

vulnerable to satire

and should be handled with kid gloves
any more than politics.

But a powerful argument against
Dawkins is that he does not

appreciate the deeply consoling role
religion plays in human life.

Science and religion are performing
very, very different roles,

they're setting themselves very
different questions

and they have very different
ways of answering them.

What religion does is generate
narrative structures.

We are storytelling animals,
that's what human beings are.

They need stories.

And the thing about religions
is that they all have

lots of stories, and I think those
stories are about helping

human beings to find meaning
and value and purpose.

And to come to terms with the
seemingly arbitrary nature

of human experience.

I can see why you might want to find
something consoling.

I can see why you might want
consolation.

I can see why you might want to take
a drug that consoles you,

or why you might go and cry on a
friendly shoulder and get patted

and hugged and get consolation
from that, but to believe that

something is the case when you have
no more reason to think it's

the case than that it is consoling,
that is just fatuous.

That's ridiculous and illogical.

If it's bleak, too bad.

I mean, why should it be anything
other than bleak?

I mean, there's no caring about the
universe, why should there be?

Why should the universe
care about what happens to us?

But we can make our own world,
we can make our own purposes,

our own warmth, our own affections,
our own loves,

and we can lead a life that's
anything but bleak.

We gaze up at the stars
on a dark night, with no moon

and no city lights,
and breathless with joy,

we say the sight is pure magic.

In this sense, "magical" simply means
"deeply moving, exhilarating,

"something that gives us goosebumps,
something that makes us

"feel more fully alive".

Richard Dawkins'
evangelical stance has made him

one of the most recognisable
faces in science.

He has sold five million books

and regularly packs out
venues around the world.

But all of this may have come
at a cost.

'Richard has become almost
a household phrase.'

You see it in leaders
in the broadsheet newspapers.

They refer to "Dawkins",
or "Dawkinsisation",

or something like that.

So it's almost become...
I don't think he's quite

in the Oxford English Dictionary
yet, but it's almost at that level.

Yet Richard himself is
actually quite a shy

and retiring person, in many ways.

He... I mean, I suspect he probably
finds it quite stressful

to be continually on public
platforms, as he is.

And, whilst many revere him, he has
also faced very personal criticism.

His e-mail inbox has, at times,
been flooded with hate mail.

People regard any attack on
their religion almost as though

I'm saying they've got an ugly face
or something,

it's a personal attack on them.

And I think that they feel cornered
and so they lash out

with personal attacks,
what amount to personal dislike.

So, given the hostility he faces,
what drives Richard Dawkins

to continue as the outspoken
public figure he has become?

'Richard keeps on going.'

I mean,
his messages about evolution,

his messages about religion are
very well articulated

and have been presented many times,
but Richard keeps on going.

And one might wonder why that is,
what drives him.

I think it's passion

and it's belief that he has got
an important message to put across.

The true understanding,
the scientific understanding

of the nature of existence
is so utterly fascinating.

How could you not want people
to share it?

Carl Sagan, I think, said,

"When you're in love,
you want to tell the world."

And who, on understanding
a scientific view of reality

would not, as it were, fall in love
and want to tell the world?

And at the age of 70,

he shows no sign of giving
up on his desire to understand

the wonders of the universe
and communicate them to others.

Different people have different
ways of responding to the thought

that they're very lucky to be alive.

For me, it seems to suggest
a great responsibility

to make the most of it.

I mean, you're extremely
lucky to be here.

The odds against your being
here are far greater than the odds

against your winning the lottery,

so be thankful and spend your time -
your brief time - under the sun,

looking around and rejoicing
and wondering and being fascinated

and trying to understand everything
about the universe in which

you are so fortunate to be born.

# It's all too beautiful

# It's all too beautiful

# Over Bridge of Sighs

# To rest my eyes in shades of green

# Under dreaming spires... #

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