Root of All Evil? (2006) - full transcript

Richard Dawkins' highly critical documentary attacks the pulsing heart of all mainstream religion- faith; with special focus on Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Contains repeated references to sectorial schools as child abuse and faith as the stepping stone to terrorist activity.

How do we explain the mysteries of life?

Science has steadily overturned

old religious myths about
how all this came to be.

Yet those who adhere to
Judaism, Christianity or islam

still prefer to ignore reason,

and have faith in their forever
unprovable, omniscient creator.

I had thought science was
rolling back religious belief,

but I was wrong.

Far from being beaten,
militant faith is on the march

all across the world,
with terrifying consequences.

As a scientist, I am increasingly worried



about how faith is undermining science.

It's something we must resist,

because irrational faith is feeding

murderous intolerance
throughout the world.

In this programme, I want to examine

two further problems with religion.

I believe it can lead to a
warped and inflexible morality

and I'm very concerned about the
religious indoctrination of children.

I want to show how Faith acts like a
virus that attacks the young

and infects generation after generation.

I believe in a law-giver,
a god right there

actually not behind it, right
imminent here, right now.

I want to ask whether ancient mythology

should be taught as truth in schools.



Professor Dawkins, I'm very impressed
that you're the new messiah, and I

appreciate your desire to
redeem the world, but..

It's time to question the
abuse of childhood innocence

with superstitious ideas
of hellfire and damnation.

I would rather for them to understand

that hell is a place that they
absolutely do not wanna go.

And I want to show how
the scriptural roots

of the Judeo-Christian moral edifice

are cruel and brutish.

"...thou shalt save alive
nothing that breatheth:

But thou shalt utterly destroy them..."

"DESTROY"

What in the 21st century are we doing

venerating a book that
contains such stuff?

Science weighs up evidence and advances.

Religion is high-bound belief for belief's sake.

It's bad for our children,
and it's bad for you.

There is something exceedingly odd

about the idea of sectarian religious schools.

If we hadn't got used to it over the centuries,

we'd find it downright bizarre.

Sectarian education has proved
to be deeply damaging.

It has left a terrible legacy.

When you think about it, isn't it weird
the way we automatically

label a tiny child with its parents' religion?

These are Jewish children.

In another part of Jerusalem,
we've seen Moslem children.

In Northern Ireland we have Catholic children
and Protestant children

all going to separate schools.

But what's so special about religion
that it is allowed

to label small children 'Catholic' or
'Protestant', 'Jewish' or 'Moslem'?

Nobody would categorise children
by the political party their

parents support; call them 'Tory'
or 'Labour' children.

We agree they're too young
to know where they stand

on questions of politics.

So why is not the same for where
they stand on the cosmos,

and humanity's place in it?

In genetic evolution,
a species divides into two,

initially geographically. There's
some initial separation

between the two sub-species,

and they divide away from
each other genetically.

There's no longer gene
flow between them,

and so they can become separate species.

It's a divisive force.

Sectarian education acts in a similar way.

Children are initially isolated from each other

because of their parents' Faith.

Then their differences are
constantly drilled into them

and they embark on opposing life trajectories.

Such divisions are encouraged,
not just in faraway Israel

but right on our doorstep, in
northern Ireland for instance

or in London.

In north London, the
Hasidic Jewish community

is the largest after
Israel and New York.

Here, religious division is taken to its extreme.

These ultra-orthodox Jews
only marry within their sect.

Television is frowned upon,
and of course

children attend exclusive
religious schools,

cloistered away from external influences

which just might persuade them

to look outside their community.

I want to find out why these children
are being segregated,

and whether their culture allows them
to open their minds to reality.

Hello?

- Hello.
- Rabbi Gluck. Nice to meet you.

I'm Richard Dawkins. How do you do?

Thanks for coming, nice to meet you.
Please come in.

Thank you very much.

Rabbi Gluck is London born and bred,

but you wouldn't
necessarily know it.

His accent is a testament to the
isolation of this religious sect.

Why should children be victims of the

particular tradition in which they
happen to have been born,

rather than choosing for themselves

by being shown all the
evidence that's available?

We are all to a certain extent
affected by our surroundings.

There's no such thing as a
person living in a vacuum.

No, indeed.

We're all affected by our parents, by our families

but at the same time we have a choice
to stay or otherwise.

I think it's important for

a minority to be able to have a space

where it can express itself, where it can
learn about itself.

Well couldn't you preserve the customs,
the traditions, the history

without somehow imposing upon the children

views about the universe which modern
science would say are simply false?

I would say impose upon a Jew anything,

I would say that's something
which is impossible,

I think it's scientifically impossible.

We believe that God created
the world in six days,

we know about evolution, every single
Jewish kid knows about evolution

and has thought about it and has studied it,

and has looked at it, and has
thought, "What's going on here?"

How many of the children who come up
through your system, your school system

end up believing in evolution?

I think that the majority
don't believe in evolution, they...

but at the same time it isn't they don't
believe because they don't know about it.

You realise they're being taught
that the entire world

began after what archaeologists would
recognise as the agricultural revolution?

I mean, these children are being brought up
in a very distorted world indeed,

and I worry about children being victims

of this kind of what I can only
describe as mis-education.

I find the terms 'distorted' and
'mis-education' rather disturbing.

Judaism has its tradition.

I think there are various scientists
who have their tradition.

This so-called 'the theory of evolution'..

Well it's called that, but that's
in a very technical sense.

But still, but still it's called that,

and it's not called the 'law' of evolution.

Well I will call it the 'fact' of evolution, and..

Then you're a
fundamentalist believer in it.

No, no, I'm not a
fundamentalist believer.

The age of the earth: 5,000 years?
I mean that is..

I'm sorry, Rabbi, that is ridiculous!

Of course, Rabbi Gluck is
right that it's important

for us to learn about
our own background,

but what upsets me is
that in pursuit of that,

these innocent children are being
saddled with demonstrable falsehoods.

And this is not just a
problem of the Jewish minority.

There's pressure from
an increasing number

of Faith schools of other religions

to put scientific fact on a par
with primitive creation myths.

In science classes, why can't they
simply teach science?

- You said this is truth 'cos it's based on evidence.
- Well no, you don't exactly say that,

you say, "We're struggling
towards the truth," and

as new evidence comes in,
we refine it.

And in the middle of that, Jesus
says, "I am truth."

We live in the shadow of
a religiously inspired terror

in an era when science
has plainly shown

religious supersitions to be false.

And yet it's a strange anomaly that
Faith schools are increasing

in number and influence in
our education system,

with active encouragement from
Tony Blair's government.

There are already 7,000 Faith
schools in Britain,

but the government's Trust Reforms
are encouraging many more.

Over half the new City Academies
are expected to be sponsored

by religious organisations.

The most worrying development is
a new wave of private evangelical schools

that have adopted the American
Baptist A.C.E. curriculum:

'Accelerated Christian Education'.

Have you been to one of
these schools before?

- No, I never have.
- No. Okay.

Accelerated Christian Education slips
religious superstitions back into science.

If you want to be rude, you'd say
it's "programmed learning",

If you want to be polite,
it's "individualised instruction".

- Okay.
- So really, each one is teaching themselves.

To a certain extent, of course. That
has to be modified

with adult supervision and so on.

I had a look at the curriculum
booklet that you use for science,

and it was very noticeable that God or
Jesus did come on just about every page.

Yes, yes. We don't have anything like
religious instruction in the school

- ..because it is part of the..
- I can see you wouldn't need it.

No, of course not. Absolutely.

In one section of this thing, I
suddenly, I was sort of taken aback,

because I suddenly started reading
about Noah's Ark.

I mean, what's that got to do
with a science lesson?

Well I suppose that depends on your
opinion. It could have a lot.

If you believe in the story, it could
have a lot to do with science.

But I mean the stuff that I was taught
when I was a kid at school in science

now you would laught at
and say it was a myth,

- But that's what I was taught..
- But what were you taught?

When I was taught at.. one of the
things that they told me at school

that I've always remembered was that the
moon came from the ocean here on earth.

and was flung into space, and
that's where it came from.

Well what you should have been taught,
I suppose, is that there is

a strong current theory that
that's what happened.

So what you're really
trying to ask me is:

"Do you think the Genesis story
was true, and that..

God created the world in seven days?"
That's what you'd really like to ask me, right?

My answer to that is: "I don't know."

Having said that, do I think that if God
wanted to do it in seven days, he could?

- Yeah, I think he could.
- He can do anything.

- Yeah.
- Yes.

So it's sort of an academic question,

which actually I don't care about
the answer very much really.

Does that make sense?

Kind of, yes. It does make sense.
It doesn't make sense to me

because I do care about the answer.

Why?

Because I care about what's true, and I..

I care about what's true.

Well I find Christianity encompasses
everything about life.

Christianity is life, so it's about
everything. It touches

education, politics, care, social
services, everything.

Let me ask about another thing
in the booklet, which was

about AIDS and HIV. I think
somewhere it talks about

AIDS being the wages of sin.

Is that mixing health education
with moralistic preaching?

I suppose the flip side of that is that if
there is no God and there is no law-giver,

why does it matter what I do? Why is
rape wrong? Why is paedophilia wrong?

Why are any of these things wrong
if there is no law-giver?

You've just said a very revealing thing. Are
you telling me that

the only reason why you don't steal and rape and murder
is that you're frightened of God?

I think that all people, if they think they can
get away with something,

and it is, there is no consequences, we
actually tend to do that.

I think that is the reality. Look at the
world in which we live.

That is the reality.

- Okay, well I think better leave it at that.
- Okay.

Adrian Hawkes, I'm sure, is
a well-meaning man.

But why should he impose his personal
version of reality on children?

Not only are they encouraged to
consider the weird claims of

the bible alongside scientific fact,
they are also being indoctrinated

into what an objective observer
might see as a warped morality.

Let me explain why, when it comes to children,
I think of religion as a dangerous virus.

It is a virus which is transmitted
partly through teachers and clergy

but also down the generations,
from parent to child to grandchild.

Children are especially vulnerable to
infection by the virus of religion.

A child is genetically pre-programmed
to accumulate knowledge

from figures of authority.

The child brain, for very good Darwinian
reasons, has to be set up

in such a way that it believes
what it's told by its elders,

because there just isn't time for
the child to experiment with warnings

like: "Don't go too near the cliff edge," or
"Don't swim in the river, there are crocodiles."

Any child who applied a scientific, sceptical,
questioning attitude to that would be dead.

No wonder the Jesuit said, "Give me the child for
his first seven years and I'll give you the man."

The child brain will automatically
believe what it's told, even if

what it's told is nonsense.

And then, when the child grows up,
it will tend to pass on

that same nonsense to its children.

And so religion goes on, from
generation to generation.

For many people, part of growing up
is killing off the virus of Faith

with a good strong dose
of rational thinking.

But if an individual doesn't
succeed in shaking it off,

his mind is stuck in a
permanent state of infancy,

and there is a real danger that he
will infect the next generation.

I'm going to meet someone who has
experienced religion as child abuse first-hand.

- Jill Mytton.
- Oh, hello.

- I'm Richard Dawkins, how do you do?
- Hello, Richard.

Jill Mytton was brought up in a
strict Christian sect.

Today she's a psychologist who
rehabilitates young adults

similarly scarred by their
narrow religious upbringing.

They need to be allowed to hear
different perspectives on things.

They need to be allowed to investigate.
They need to be allowed to

develop their critical faculties, so that they
can take a number of different viewpoints.

and weigh them up, and decide
which one is for them.

They need to find their own pathways. Not to
be forced into a particular mould as a child.

If I think back to my childhood, it's one
that's kind of dominated by fear.

And it was a fear of disapproval while in the
present, but also of eternal damnation.

Do they get taught about hell
fire and things like that?

Absolutely. And to a child, images of hell
fire and gnashing of teeth

are actually very real, they're not
metaphorical at all.

- Of course not.
- No.

If you bring a child up and discourage
it from thinking freely and making

choices freely, then that's still.. to me that is a
form of mental abuse or psychological abuse.

Or if you tell a child that when it dies
it's going to roast forever in hell.

In hell. That is abusive, yes.

What did they tell you about it?
I mean, what happens in hell?

It's strange, isn't it. After all this
time, it still has the power to

affect me when you asked me that question.

Hell is a fearful place. It's
complete rejection by God.

It's complete judgement.

There is real fire.

There is real torment, real torture,

and it goes on forever, so there
is no respite from it.

It's deeply disturbing to think that
there are believers out there

who actively use the idea of hell
for moral policing.

In the United States, Christian obsession
with sin has spawned a national craze

for 'hell houses', morality
plays-cum-Halloween freak-shows,

in which the evangelical hobby-horses of
abortion and homosexuality

are literally demonised.

Pastor Keenan Roberts is rehearsing a new
production of his Colorado-based hell-house,

which he's written and staged for
almost fifteen years.

He fervently believes that you have
to scare people into being good.

The call upon my life as a pastor, as a
minister, is to tell people what the book says,

and what I, and we in our church,
and hundreds of churches

across this country and around the world
are doing is we have found

a very creative, effective tool that is
getting people's attention

- ..to consider the message.
- I believe it. I believe it.

We want to leave an indelible impression
upon their life that sin destroys.

Every scene preaches the truth that
either sin destroys or Jesus saves.

If this is a rehearsal, think how
horrific the full production must be.

I presume you have a cut-off age for the tour,
I mean no children below an age of..

What is your cut-off age?

Well over the years of having
audiences and people go through this,

we have come to the decision that the best
age for young people is really at twelve.

Would it worry you if a child of twelve
coming to see your performance

had nightmares afterwards?
Or would you like that?

I would like them... I would like
for their life to be changed.

No matter what.

I would rather for them to understand
that hell is a place that they

absolutely do not wanna go. I would rather
reach them with that message at twelve,

than to not reach them with that
message, and have them live a life

of sin and to never find the lord Jesus Christ.

In the case of homosexual marriage,
what harm does that do?

Why would you be so
passionately against that?

They're living in sin.

That's your opinion. But it's nothing to
do with you, is it. It's their decision.

It's not my opinion. I'm
telling you what the bible says.

It's the bible's opinion. But these are two
people who want to live together.

Isn't it their own business? What
right have you to interfere?

I want them to know
homosexuality is sin.

But you believe it presumably on the
basis of scriptural authority.

- Absolutely.
- Yeah, um...

- Unapologetically.
- Yes, unapologetically. But why are you

so sure that's right? I mean if you think
about where the scriptures come from,

I mean, who wrote them, and when?

What makes you so confident
they're right?

- It's what I believe.
- I know you believe it, but why?

It is a faith issue with me.
Why do you not believe it?

Uh... because of evidence.

Hell House is the brash end of a much bigger
problem with the way religious belief works.

Taken to its extremes, as by
American evangelists, the bible

is scanned for passages to justify right-
wing views on abortion and 'family values'.

I'm about to meet a believer
who uses the word of God

to fight against centuries of human progress.

I think execution for adultery is not rejected.

Not rejected by who? By you?

- No. By the New Testament.
- What about you? Do you

favour execution in adultery?

I think that's fair to say, that that's
still a proper punishment that

the State ought to prosecute.

It's not so bad, surely,
to believe in moral codes

handed down to us from the good book.

Doesn't the bible give us a
moral framework in which to live?

Well no. The holy texts are of
dubious origin and veracity,

and they're internally contradictory.

And when we look closely,
we find a system of morals

which any civilised person today
should surely find poisonous.

The Old Testament is in every church and
synagogue throughout the world,

and is the root of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam.

If your brother, the son of your father
or of your mother, or your son or daughter,

or the spouse whom you embrace
tries to secretly seduce you,

saying, "Let us go and serve other gods"...

This is God's advice on what to do
to a friend or family member

who suggests you believe in another deity:

"You must kill him, your hand must strike
the first blow in putting him to death.."

"..and the hands of the rest of the people following."

"You must stone him to death, since he
has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God.."

The god of the Old Testament has got to be
the most unpleasant character in all fiction.

Jealous and proud of it. Petty. Vindictive.
Unjust. Unforgiving. Racist.

An ethnic cleanser, urging his
people on to acts of genocide.

If God doesn't set a good
moral example, who does?

Abraham, the founding father of
all three great monotheistic religions?

The man who would willingly make a
burnt offering of his son Isaac?

Maybe not.

How about Moses, he of the tablets
which said, "Thou shalt not kill"?

Well the same man, it says in the book of
Numbers, was incensed by the Israelites'

merciful retraint towards the
conquered Midianite people.

He gave orders to kill all male
prisoners and older women.

But all the women children, that have
not known a man by lying with him,

keep alive for yourselves.

How is this story of Moses
morally distinguishable

from Hitler's rape of Poland,
or Saddam Hussein's massacre

of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs?

So let's leave Moses out of it.

But there are lesser characters facing
somewhat more everyday moral dilemmas.

Maybe they provide a better role model.

In the book of Judges, a priest was
traveling with his wife in Gibiah.

They spent the night in
the house of an old man.

But during supper,
a mob came to demand

that the host hand over his male guest.

"..so that we may know him..."

Yes, in the biblical sense.

Well, the old man replied:

"Nay, my brethren. Nay, I pray you.
Do not so wickedly."

"Behold, here is my daughter a maiden,
and his concubine.."

"..them I will bring out now, and humble ye them,
and do with them what seemeth good unto you.."

"..but unto this man do not so vile a thing."

So enjoy yourselves by raping
and humiliating my daughter,

but show a proper respect for my
guest who is, after all, male.

Whatever else this
strange story might mean,

it surely tells us something
about the status of women

in this religious society.

Now of course, nice Christians will
be protesting, "Everyone knows the

the Old Testament is
deeply unpleasant."

The New Testament of Jesus, they claim,
undoes the damage and makes it alright.

Yes, there's no doubt that,
from a moral point of view,

Jesus is a huge improvement, because Jesus,
or whoever wrote his lines, was not content

to derive his ethics from the scriptures
with which he'd been brought up.

But then it all goes wrong.

The heart of New Testament theology
invented after Jesus's death is

St Paul's nasty sadomasochistic
doctrine of atonement for original sin.

The idea is that God had himself
incarnated as a man, Jesus,

in order that he should
be hideously tortured

and executed to redeem all our sins.

Not just the original sin of Adam
and Eve, future sins as well,

whether we decide to
commit them or not.

If God wanted to forgive our sins,
why not just forgive them?

Who's God trying to impress?

Presumably himself, since he's judge and
jury, as well as execution victim.

To cap it all, according to scientific
views of prehistory,

Adam, the supposed perpetrator of
the original sin,

never existed in the first place. An
awkward fact which undermines

the premise of Paul's whole
tortuously nasty theory.

Oh but of course the story of Adam and
Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn't it.

Symbolic?

So Jesus had himself tortured
and executed for a symbolic sin

by a non-existent individual?

Nobody not brought up in the faith

could reach any verdict
other than 'barking mad'.

The strange theology and questionable
texts wouldn't matter,

but for the unfortunate fact
that there are people out there

who really believe this stuff is
the word of God, and act on it

challenging progressive values
and the rule of law.

If you take the 'good book' to its
literal extreme, and some people do,

you can justify murder.

In 1994, the reverend Paul Hill
shot and killed Dr John Britton

outside his abortion clinic in Florida.

In 2003, Hill was executed for murder.

But he went to his death claiming his
actions were backed by holy scripture.

I'm going to meet the Paul Hill's friend
and defender, the reverend Michael Bray.

- Mr Bray?
- Yes, sir.

- Hello.
- Hello.

- I'm Richard Dawkins.
- It's good to meet you, sir. Michael Bray.

On what moral basis can he, as a Christian,
defend a self-professed, cold-blooded killer?

Your friend Paul Hill, who was convicted
of murdering a doctor,

he took the law into his
own hands, didn't he?

No.

Paul Hill, by his own testimony,
acted defensively,

not in retribution.

That's the job of the law.

- The job of the law is to punish.
- No.

The job of citizens is to, is indeed out
of love, to protect one another.

Does it ever occur to you that that
doctor had a wife to grieve for him?

Paul Hill killed him!

Now the embryos that Paul
Hill was 'defending',

they were tiny little things without any
knowledge, without any memory,

without any fears, without all the things
that a full-grown adult doctor had.

Doesn't that give your conscience
a little bit of a twinge?

Well I don't think we measure the value
of someone by their cognizance of their

surroundings or their.. or even of
their relationships.

The value that we give human beings
historically, and thankfully

from the scriptures, is that they are created
in God's image, and they are.

They have a certain sanctity
because of that.

So whether they be imbeciles or...

To most sensible people, Bray's
fellow clergyman Paul Hill

looks like a dangerous psychopath,
righting what he perceived as wrong

by committing another,
more terrible wrong.

Yet people like Hill and Bray
don't see the world that way.

They declare that their justification
is in the bible,

and by re-declaring the bible
as the absolute word of God

they give their actions validity.

Many of us who don't subscribe
to any particular holy book

worry about suffering. We actually
worry about whether the victim

of a murder, whether it's the murder
of a, in your terms, of

an embryo, or of an adult doctor.
I mean, can you not see

that there's a big imbalance there
between those two deaths.

Well I couldn't take into account,
because I'm not omniscient,

to know all the sufferings that
various people suffer.

Where do you think he is? Paul Hill.

Oh, I have high hopes that he's doing well.

-You think he's in heaven.
-Yes.

You think Jesus approves of
murdering doctors.

I think that, uh... he said that, uh...

he said that we're to love the children
just as we love others.

Suffer the little children
to come to me.

I reckon I have a fairly strong moral
conviction as well, but I'm not that confident.

I wouldn't like to
go and kill somebody

for the sake of my morality.

How can you be that confident?

I think, uh... my own confidence,
I guess, has come with time.

The more I, I think the scriptures, the more
I live, the more satisfied I am intellectually

that they interpret reality for me.

It was curious. I quite liked him.
I thought he was sincere.

I thought he wasn't
really an evil person.

And I was reminded of a quotation
by the famous American physicist

Stephen Weinberg the Nobel
prize-winning theoretical physicist

Weinberg said, "Religion is
an insult to human dignity."

"Without it, you'd have good people
doing good things.."

"..and evil people doing evil things.."

"..but for good people to do evil things,
it takes religion."

People like Michael Bray are a
big problem for Christian morality.

Not all Christians are as rooted
in the spoil of scripture,

but they do all take inspiration
from the same holy text.

But who is right?

The established Church of England
is being painfully torn apart

by these differences of
opinion over the scriptures.

The battleground is not so much abortion,
but homosexuality and gay clergy.

On one side are vociferous
scriptural purists.

On the other: more moderate believers
who interpret the bible selectively.

You're on the liberal wing
of the Anglican church.

Maybe the other side are the ones who
are being true to their scriptures

in a way that you're not. I mean you, who
are liberal and much closer to what

I would think, are the one who's departing
from the.. certainly from the scriptural,

and perhaps from the fundamentals.

Um, well if you take the issue of
homosexuality there's no doubt about it,

there are a number of texts, not as many as
people think, but a few texts, which

clearly regard homosexuality as wrong, both

in the Old Testament very strongly,
but they're also there

in the New Testament. But of course it's
a question of how you interpret the bible,

whether it's really right to just
simply extract a few isolated texts

rather than seeing the whole message of
the bible, the whole message of Jesus.

But I think there's another, perhaps even
more fundamental one which links in

to your fundamental interest in evolution. Our
understanding of what it is to be a gay or

lesbian now is very very different from what
it was, let us say in the Roman world,

when the New Testament was written.

Therefore it's purely
a matter of choice.

We now actually know that a significant
percentage of people

are predominantly attracted
to members of their own sex.

So it's a question of the changing facts, as
well as a changing understanding of how

the bible should be interpreted.

This of course is all music to my ears,
but I'm kind of left wondering

why you stick with Christianity
at all therefore.

And maybe some of the fundamentalists
might say just that to you.

I think that moderates need to be passionate,
both about their religious beliefs, and

about rationality, and it's possible to be a
passionate moderate. It's much more difficult...

Some say that while religious fundamentalists
betray reason, moderate believers

betray reason and Faith equally.

The moderates' position seems
to me to be fence-sitting.

They half-believe in the bible. But how do
they decide which parts to believe literally

and which parts are just allegorical?

I take it that as an Anglican
bishop you wouldn't deny miracles,

and I think you ought to, to be consistent
with what you've just been saying.

I think if God was doing miracles the
whole time, then we would live in

an Alice in Wonderland-type world.

- Yeah.
- It would be unpredictable.

And you and I wouldn't be able
to have a rational conversation.

It's almost as though you think there's
a kind of 'ration' of miracles,

which mustn't be exceeded, or we
get into 'Looking Glass' territory.

We can't say what that 'ration' is. If
miracles were happening all the time,

whenever we wanted them to happen, then
human life as we know it couldn't exist.

And what about the sort of really
big miracles, like the virgin birth?

What do you think about that?

I don't think that it's on a par
with the resurrection, for example.

I mean, I actually do believe that the
resurrection of Jesus from the dead

is absolutely fundamental to Christianity,

in a way that I don't
believe the virgin birth is.

It seems to me an odd proposition
that we should adhere to some parts

of the bible story but not to others.
After all, when it comes to

important moral questions, by what
standards do we cherry-pick the bible?

Why bother with the bible at all, if we have
the ability to pick and choose from it

what is right and what is
wrong for today's society?

I suspect that religion is simply a parasite
on a much older moral sense.

I want to examine how science reveals
the true roots of human morality.

Morality stems not from some fictional
deity and his texts,

but from altruistic genes that have been
naturally selected in our evolutionary past.

Humans have much more sophisticated
versions of the kinds of social

instincts you see in chimps
and other creatures.

But really there's no great leap. It's just...
If you can think of chimps as MS-DOS,

and humans as Windows 2000.

Religious believers like to claim that
their god and ancient texts

provide them with an inside track to
defining what is good and what is bad.

But it is surely far more moral to do
good things for their own sake,

rather than as a way of sucking up to God.

Our true sense of right and wrong
has nothing to do with religion.

I believe there is kindness, charity and
generosity in human nature.

And I think there is a Darwinian
explanation for this.

Through much of our prehistory, humans lived
under conditions that favoured altruistic genes.

Gene survival depended on
nurturing our family

and on doing deals with our peers.

The "I'll scratch your back if
you scratch mine" principle.

I don't think we need
religion to explain morality.

And if anything, it just gets in the way.

Morality is a lot older than religion.
Humans have an innate moral sense,

or a range of moral senses that
you could think of as

sophisticated versions of the
kind of social instincts you see

in chimps and other social species.

What sort of morality or proto-
morality would you expect

to find in a chimpanzee troupe?

We find that they live in family groups,
the mothers look after their kids,

they work in teams, and also
chimps are particularly good at

competing for status through
what's been called public service.

So they compete for status not
just through brute force, but

by being good leaders, by
intervening to settle disputes...

What are the main evolutionary reasons
for cooperating and being altruistic?

Working together often produces mutual
benefits for those that are involved, so

you can often just do better by working in a
team than you can by working by yourself.

Perhaps it is our genetic inheritance
that explains why those of us with

no allegiance to a holy book or a pope or
an ayatollah to tell us what is good

still manage to ground ourselves in a moral
consensus which is surprisingly widely agreed.

As social animals, we've worked out
that we wouldn't want to live in a society

where it was acceptable to rape,
murder or steal.

We have a moral conscience
and a mutual empathy,

and it is constantly evolving.

Religious or not, we have changed in unison,

and continue to change in our attitude
to what is right and what is wrong.

Fifty years ago, just about everybody
in Britain was somewhat racist.

Now only a few people are.

Fifty years ago, it was impossible for
gay people to walk along the street

hand in hand. Now it's easy.

Some of us lag behind the
advancing wave of moral standards,

and some of us are ahead.

But all of us in the 21st century are ahead
of our counterparts from the time of

Abraham, Mohammed or St Paul.

But progressive shift often emerges
in opposition to religion.

It's driven by improved education, and then
expressed by newspaper editorials,

television soap operas,

parliamentary speeches,

judicial rulings

and novels.

I guess my starting point would be: The
brain is responsible for consciousness,

and we could be reasonably sure that
when that brain ceases to be,

when it falls apart and decomposes,
that'll be the end of us.

From that, quite a lot of things
follow, I think especially morally.

We are the very priveleged owners of
a brief spark of consciousness,

and we therefore have to
take responsibility for it.

You cannot rely, as Christians or
Moslems do, on a world elsewhere.

a paradise to which one can work towards and
maybe make sacrifices,

and crucially,
make sacrifices of other people.

We have a marvellous gift, and you see it
develop in children, this ability to

become aware that other people
have minds just like your own.

and feelings that are just as
important as your own.

And this gift of empathy seems to me to be
the building block of our moral system.

I profoundly agree with you, and I've
always felt that one of the things

that's wrong with religion is
that it teaches us to be satisfied

with answers which are
not really answers at all.

And if you have a sacred text that
tells you how the world began,

or what the relationship is
between this sky-god and you,

it does curtail your curiosity.
It cuts off a source of wonder.

The loveliness of the world
in its wondrousness is not apparent

to me in Islam or Christianity and
all the other major religions.

To an atheist like Ian McEwan,
there is no all-seeing, all-loving God

who keeps us free from harm.

But atheism is not a recipe for despair.
I think the opposite.

By disclaiming the idea of a next life, we
can take more excitement in this one.

The here and now is not
something to be endured

before eternal bliss or damnation.

The here and now is all we have, an
inspiration to make the most of it.

So atheism is life-affirming, in a
way religion can never be.

Look around you. Nature demands our
attention, begs us to explore, to question.

Religion can provide only facile,
ultimately unsatisfying answers.

Science, in constantly
seeking real explanations,

reveals the true majesty of our
world in all its complexity.

People sometimes say, "There must be more
than just this world, than just this life."

But how much more do you want?

We are going to die, and
that makes us the lucky ones.

Most people are never going to die
because they're never going to be born.

The number of people who
could be here in my place

outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.

If you think about all the different ways
in which our genes could be permuted,

you and I are quite grotesquely
lucky to be here.

The number of events that had to
happen in order for you to exist,

in order for me to exist.

We are priveleged to be alive,

and we should make the most
of our time on this world.