'We'd be better off without religion'

Richard Dawkins was among the speakers at the debate sponsored by The Times and organised by Intelligence Squared at Westminster Central Hall in London last night. More details on The Times Faith Page, and you can also listen to the podcast. There is also an entertaining blog just up, summarising this post and some of the comments.

It was apparently sold out, even though I counted  more than 100 empty seats behind my front row on the side where I sat in glorious near-solitude, with one person to the right of me and none behind or to the left. This was only after I managed to squeeze past the slightly scary but fortunately very thin security guard barring the door and telling me there were no empty seats. I was barely able to see any of the speakers but I was at least able to hear them. And this was a debate sponsored by The Times! I'm telling you this just to prove that my employers are so fair-minded as to make sure conditions are such that no special treatment, reserved seating, pre-debate drinks, anything of that sort, could possibly influence their own staff to write a report prejudiced in favour of an event they've sponsored. And it worked. By the time the debate actually got going, I have to confess I was feeling pretty cross. I was looking forward to getting more fuel for my crossness from Richard Dawkins and going home in a right old temper to take it out on this blog.

But to my sorrow, Dawkins thwarted this intent.

The motion was: 'We'd be better off without religion.' On his side were Professor AC Grayling and Christopher Hitchens. Against were Baroness Julia Neuberger, Professor Roger Scruton and Nigel Spivey. The incomparable Joan Bakewell was in the chair. At these debates, styled along the lines of Oxford and Cambridge debates but disappointingly less hecklesome, a vote is taken at the start and another at the end.

The first vote was 826 votes for the motion, 681 against and 364 don't knows. By the end, the voting was 1,205 for the motion, 778 against and 100 don't knows. And would you know, so thrown into confusion was I by being almost convinced of the case by Dawkins that I actually voted for the motion at the end. Is God - I have no doubt that such a being exists at least - trying to tell me something I wonder?

The debate was not about the existence of God. It was about religion. But none of the speakers gave a proper definition of religion, not even those arguing in its favour, thus handing the opponents a gift. In addition, all the speakers for the motion spoke without a script. All those against it read from notes or a script. Keith Porteous Wood and Terry Sanderson from the National Secular Society sat in the 'congregation', grinning. 

At one point, when he was speaking, Dawkins seemed suddenly to realise that religion had not been defined in the terms of the debate, and that therefore its definition was up for the taking, and therefore religion could perhaps be broadened to include all kinds of things that he quite aproved of, such as worship of the scientific glories of the universe, or of the beauties of complex mathematical equations. He visibly faltered and a look of shock fleetingly passed across his face as he felt the pull of temptation towards this rational black hole. He quickly recovered. It was 'odd of God', though, that with the exception of Hitchens, they all seemed to veer half the time towards arguing for the opposing side. And I'm not sure I'd ever want Hitchens on the side of religion.

Nigel Spivey, who teaches classical art and archaeology at Cambridge and Rabbi Neuberger were particularly anxious to emphasise their non-religious credentials. Julia repeatedly emphasised that she was so liberal as to be almost near to dropping off the edge, and Spivey likewise was keen to make sure we knew he was not one bit religious himself. Oh no. He was just enormously appreciative of the enormous contribution that religion had made to art and archaeology. The religious instinct was an intrinsic part of human nature, he said. It was either there because it was necessary for survival, in a Darwinian sense, or because it was an ineradicable side-product of some other essential gene. I felt here that I was a bit like a monkey, still in thrall to this strange religious gene, and Spivey was a zoo keeper, observing the phenomenon and its benefits. He had evolved to the point where he was aloof to it all himself, but he was happy to nurture and acknowledge it, especially when usefully caged in the prism of arts and architecture. Spivey actually opened the debate on the side of religion! I knew then we'd lost it. 

Professor Scruton was the best for religion. I could have listened to him for hours. Central Hall is of course a place of Methodist worship and several of the speakers seemed to have long links with it. Rabbi Julia had been taken there for synagogue worship. It was used as the overflow by the West London Synagogue on festivals and highholydays. She described fasting during Yom Kippur and long services at Central Hall, having to smell the odour of fish and chips floating up through the wooden floorboards from the cafe below.

Scruton likewise had been introduced to Methodism at an early age by his father. 'When it crossed his mind that he could not bring his kids up totally without religion, he looked for the gloomiest chapel he could find and it was the Methodist chapel. We were sent there every Sunday and he did not attend. It had a profound effect on me.' His rebellion was to bunk off chapel, and secretly attend the nearby Anglican church instead. 'This was totally unrelated to the fact that there was a very attradtive girl there in a white makintosh. That was my first encounter with a transcendental religious experience.'

That's the thing that its opponents will never understand about religion. As this blog bears witness, so much of its appeal is that it is actually about drives and instincts related to love - love for our fellow humans as well as for the transcendent.

In a debate redolent with platitudes, Scruton was the least platitudinous, in spite of lecturing us on why Plato got it wrong in his Republic. Arguing on rational grounds that a society would be better off without religion was like arguing that society would be better off without love, he said. And as we all know, love is frequently irrational. He did not deny that there were wrong ways of pursuing the religious quest. But there was nothing irrational in looking for what is sacred. It was part of the human condition to search for meaning.

Hitchens, I thought, almost lost it for the anti-religionists when he interrupted Rabbi Julia with a vituperative: 'How dare you!' as she was speaking. She had been casting aspersions about the sensibilities of atheists. Joan Bakewell quieted the beast and reason took hold once more. And soon it became clear that the pro-religionists did not have a hope, given the calibre of Dawkins and Grayling.

ACGrayling, whose new book is called Against all Gods, was philosophic. By that I mean quick of tongue and logic. His mind at one point went too fast for his tongue and he lost me. But I got one paragraph down that contained the thrust of his argument: 'You do not need supernatural agencies or religion or scriptures to explain the fact that human beings are capable of good and that most of the good in the world has come from that source and not from some alleged supernatural source.'

Not surprisingly, Dawkins had no difficulty at all destroying Spivey's argument. I suspect that they are in fact on the same side. 'Speak for yourself,' he said about the allegation that the religious gene is in us all. 'It is not a part of me. It is not a part of the great majority of my friends in universities in England and the US and elsewhere.' (Dear Dr Dawkins, that's because you and your academic friends are all 'zoo keepers' in the Spivey sense. Spivey wasn't talking about 'people like you'! He was talking about people like me.) And as for Spivey's point that religion had given us the Sistine Chapel and other similar great works, Dawkins correctly pointed out that great artists painted about religion because the Church had the money to pay them. Even Hitchens was right to to note that every brick of St Peter's was paid for by a special indulgence.

It is strange how Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion and Channel 4's Root of All Evil programme, came over as an angry man. Because he is not at all like that in the flesh. Especially when seated next to someone like Hitchens.

'There are very good grounds to believe there is no actual truth in the claims of religion. I rather liken it to a child with a dummy in its mouth. I do not think it a very dignified or respect-worthy posture for an adult to go around sucking a dummy for comfort,' said Dawkins, perpetuating a common but gross misunderstanding of why people need religion. Some of us, I suspect quite a lot, are not religious for comfort. It is because we need to be battered, reduced, to have our monstrous egos squashed so we can control them properly. Speaking entirely for myself here of course.

Dawkins also compared giving children a religious education to erecting in their minds a firewall against scientific truth, rather like a computer firewall against viruses. He was particularly upset about a well-known Christian geologist who had abandoned his science when it became clear it was not compatible with a literal reading of the Bible. 'He said that even if all the evidence in the world pointed against creationism, he would still be a creationist because that is what the word of God pointed him to.' Well I'd be upset if my son became a creationist but there is no chance of that, not in the Church of England at least.

Dawkins did not have to work very hard to win the argument last night. His problem is that he takes religion too literally, and as many have pointed out, is too fundamentalist about his own atheistic creed. Apart from that fleeting moment of doubt I spotted, we are all creationists in his eyes. But I hope I might have the opportunity to explore some of these areas in an interview with him soon. I'll still be using in in my mind the nickname I have adopted for him: 'Mobius Dick.' But after last night I accept that Dr Dawkins does have more than two sides to his soul, more that two dimensions to his spirit. He just doesn't know it... yet.

(Update: Dawkins, who celebrated his birthday recently, has called me to reassure me there was no 'moment of doubt' whatsoever. More soon I hope.)

 

Comments

[David Smith]

I agree with Richard Dawkins, we WOULD be better off without religion.

But Jesus... without Him, we are all - literally - lost!

[Phil Craig]

This kind of format suits both Dawkins and Grayling if they speak in the same way that they write. They like to write controversial bluster which they don't need to provide references for or explain further.

I also feel the motion is kind of skewed. Does it make sense to talk of "religion" in general?

[Mike George]

Whenever I hear Richard Dawkins criticised these days it is for his firm speaking about religion, and never seems to actually offer much in the way of rational argument about the subject matter.

The truth is Richard Dawkins is no more zealous and outspoken for secularism than Christians are for their faith.

To suggest that he offers 'controversial bluster' with no explanation is to ignore the fact that the whole of his writing offer rational arguments and link to scientific study and theory.

Unlike the staunch protagonists for God, he is the first to think scientifically, even about the possibility of being wrong, or further knowledge being discovered that changes issues.

[heredal]

"They like to write controversial bluster which they don't need to provide references for or explain further."

Well, people seem to accept scripture without any explanation or 'references' from any contemporary and impartial source, and scripture is full of both controversy and bluster too.

Just fighting fire with fire, perhaps?

[michael jensen]

Is it known that AC Grayling became a Christian once, in the late 1970s?

[David Smith]

Mike George:
'To suggest that [Dawkins] offers 'controversial bluster' with no explanation is to ignore the fact that the whole of his writing offer rational arguments and link to scientific study and theory.'

Richard Dawkins:
1.'It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane, or wicked... '

2. 'I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywherein the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection (i.e. evolution).'

Still, at least Dawkins is consistent with Darwin himself.

Having made an exhaustive study of Darwin's 'Origin of the Species', which set the evolution ball running, American engineer Henry Morris wrote: 'One can search the whole book in vain for any real scientific evidences for evolution - evidences that have been empirically verified and have stood the test of time. No proof is given anywhere - no examples are cited of new species known to have been produced by natural selection, no transitional forms are shown, no evolutionary mechanisms are documented... One can only marvel that such a book could have had so profound an influence on the subsequent history of human life and thought.'

[Christopher]

Phil, in debate there is not time to footnote and reference every argument but both Dawkins and Grayling have bodies of work behind them that substantiate the positions they hold.

David Smith's position is merely semantics. Everyone descibes his beliefs as "the truth" and every one else's as "religion". It goes with the territory.

[Jill]

Heredal, you said on another thread (I cannot remember which, and my Internet connection is too slow for me to plough through them all again) that the 72% figure arrived at in the National Census on religion was skewed by an improper questioning method.

Just to set the record straight on this, here is the exact wording, from which you will see that every opportunity was given to put 'no religion' or 'other'.

I have only put in the questions for England and Wales; the rest of the country can be found here:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=984&Pos=6&ColRank=1&Rank=176

2001 England and Wales Census
What is your religion?

None
Christian (including Church of England, Catholic, Protestant and all other Christian denominations)Buddhist
Hindu
Jewish
Muslim
Sikh
Any other religion (please write in)

[Simon]

Grayling wrote a piece in the Telegraph (which was partially replied to) showing just how poorly thought out and curiously belief driven his views are. For example, the idea that the fighting in Ireland has been about religious issues, rather than the kind of historical tribal conflicts that existed long before formal religion, and reached their bloodiest phase when movements rose based on science (such as Marxism and eugenics), is simply nonsense. Who ever heard the real presence in the Eucharist etc being mentioned in statements about agrievances ?

When the agreement was signed the other day, Jerry Adams talked about the conflict between "green and orange". In the great wisdom of modern philosophy, which is noticably bare now that its detached from the combined study of science, history and theology, its actually colours that are the cause of the fighting in Ireland - clearly!

[michael jensen]

Well, as I say, when I knew Grayling in the late 1970s in Oxford and played with his son who is the same age as me, he was at least then a believer for a time...

[John]

Mike:
"The truth is Richard Dawkins is no more zealous and outspoken for secularism than Christians are for their faith."

Indeed. The problem is that Dawkins claims to be dispassionate, when he is clearly very passionate indeed. It's not sensible to criticise him for the passion with which he promulgates his views (whether we agree or disagree with them). What he can and should be criticised for is the hypocrisy of proselytising for his fundamentalist atheist views, while claiming to be dispassionately presenting facts.

pax et bonum

[Christopher]

Michael , if Grayling was once a christian and now isn't what conclusion do YOU draw from that? I was a christian once but now am not so I would argue that since religion is largely about opinion with absolutely no material evidence for its truth it is perfectly reasonable after long consideration to conclude that not all religions can be right, only one of them MAY be true. Which one is that? It's anybody's guess but much more likely that none of them is.

If you want to follow a religion how shall you choose it, therefore? Because your parents told you so? Because you like the ecclesiastical millinery and 'sacred' robes its pontiffs swish around in? Because it promises you virgins in heaven (if you are a man - I am not sure what women get)? Because its god threatens to torture you in the most unimaginably horrible ways for all eternity if you don't sign up? Because its prejudices chime in with your own? ......Or because of its noble aspirations and higher code of morals than the others? This last seems the only reason worth going for any religion and I am afraid the only one than comes anywhere near is buddhism.

[kevin]

The argument advanced by atheists that religion is "dangerous" or causes human suffering and therefore should be somehow outlawed or rejected is not applied by them to other belief systems and is unsupported by any historical model.

The violence of the last century was not motivated by religion. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge and the other spectacular murderers of the 20th century were atheists. They were also self socialists and thought of themselves as following (psuedo) scientific models such as eugenics or marxism. I don't hear the atheists talking about the need to outlaw marxism.

Hitchens and Dawkins seem to take a position that "but for" religion everyone would live in peace and harmony and embrace rational concepts of good will. There is no evidence in the historical record for this belief. Atheistic models of governance from our recent past expressly rebut this notion. What they miss is that religion, with some exceptions, has tended to place admittedly imperfect and often violated limits on the human capacity for violence.

Kevin K.

[Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA]

I would like to look further into the creation of great art and extend it into music, which I know more about, being a practitioner as well.

For those who have been following my blog, you may have seen that whilst trying to absorb into Haifa society, post-war, I have also been accompanying choirs.In fact, that is part of the absorption process in the Jewish State, where music abounds.

For those of you who are into music and art, I am sure you will agree that producing it goes beyond rubies. There is nearly nothing more wonderful, as far as I am concerned, than accompanying Mendelssohn's Elijah Oratorio on Mount Carmel, even if the choir is amateur and the electricity fails repeatedly during the lightning strikes which frequently occur up there, so heart and instinct take over.

As it happens, I was paid for a performance at an Old People's Home, but would have done it for free.

Such is the buzz and feeling of spiritual awakening which takes place when you are at one with music, or in the case of others, art.

And the Sistine Chapel etc would not have been created just because of the money. As in the case of Mendelssohn's Elijah, or all those other great works by Bach and Mozart etc, they were done out of love.

Which is also what religion is all about at source. And love can really move mountains and even lightning.

[Chris Gillibrand]

"I was a christian once but now am not so I would argue that since religion is largely about opinion with absolutely no material evidence for its truth it is perfectly reasonable after long consideration to conclude that not all religions can be right, only one of them MAY be true. Which one is that? It's anybody's guess but much more likely that none of them is."

Could I suggest that you read "An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent" by Cardinal Newman? It is heavy going but it does deal very effectively with the anybody's guess argument.

On a more personal note, I was carrying this book under my arm when I first met my wife at a diplomatic reception and was the reason she talked to me. It is a very good book.

[zankaon]

The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates

Is the unexamined faith worth retaining?

a door opening and closing,
with eternity on either side.
what is our statement nailed to the door?

[michael jensen]

Well, Christopher, just this:

It suggests to me that it is not merely a matter of cold hard rationality for Grayling that he doesn't believe now. Wouldn't it be interesting for him to declare why it is that he once joined the ranks of those he now so vehemently despises? What made it convincing then, and not later? It may explain why he froths at the mouth so much now.

I have not seen Grayling ever mention this in his writings (I might be wrong). It would seem relevant, no?

[Chris Sugden]

Why will Richard Dawkins not debate with someone who has made a clear challenge to his assertions in the public sphere?

Wikipedia notes:

Professor Alastair McGrath has been highly critical of Richard Dawkins, calling him "embarrassingly ignorant of Christian theology", and accusing him of mischaracterising religious people in general. McGrath asserted that Dawkins has become better known for his rhetoric than for his argument, and that Dawkins' hostility towards religion lacks empirical support.He has wanted to have a public discussion with Dawkins but Dawkins has declined.His book The Dawkins Delusion? – a critical response to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion – was published by SPCK in February 2007. When asked for his opinion of McGrath, Dawkins responded, "Alister McGrath has now written two books with my name in the title. The poet W B Yeats, when asked to say something about bad poets who made a living by parasitizing him, wrote the splendid line: 'Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?'"

McGrath suggested in the Times that "The ideological fanaticism of Richard Dawkins’s attack on belief is unreasonable to religion - and science."

[Father Bryan Storey]

Professor Dawkins is transferring the guilt. It's just not scientific to close the mind to the question adequate explanation of existence.

[Vronni Ward]

I believe in God but do not believe in religion, which to me is just man's attempt to mould God in to his or her way of thinking and to conveniently fit cultural and historical beliefs and customs. I still advocate evolution and see no incompatability, God may be the catalyst but nature has its way of creating new life.
New species take millions of years to evolve, so no-one will be around to see a complete new species evolve. Man's existence on this planet is, compared to many other creatures, very short indeed. But there are many instances of evolution - creatures showing adaptability and creating new 'strains'. eg The samurai crab of Japan: For centuries Japanese fisherman threw any crabs back into the sea whose carapaces remotely looked like Samurai faces in full armour. They believed they were the spirits of their dead ancestors. Over the years, the crabs have developed more and more Samurai-looking, just as plants are interbred to produce certain specifications, and many creatures including our pets have been bred to achieve a look or capability etc so clearly living things can be an highly adaptive, and many instances of natural selection (Goodbye dinosaurs) prove that life evolves and continues to do so.

[G. Tingey]

If you are going to believe, then which religion would you pick?

And how can you tell that this particular one is any better than the others?

They ALL claim to have unique and solitary access to the "Truth", and that evryone else is wrong.

How does one tell, because a maximum of one of them is correct, and the others mus all be wrong.

Right - now what?

[Ernie]

Chris Sugden........Dawkins just debated McGrath two days ago and ripped him to shreds! In fact Dawkins didnt have to, the moderator of the debate did it for him. McGrath talks and talks for ages but says absolutely nothing.......and this was proved two days ago thankfully!!

[Frankmoister]

Well, Dawkins did debate McGrath, who came off really poor. Listen here: http://richarddawkins.net/article,802,Richard-Dawkins-at-The-Sunday-Times-Oxford-Literary-Festival,Richard-Dawkins

[Michael Murray]

"Why will Richard Dawkins not debate with someone who has made a clear challenge to his assertions in the public sphere?"

I would have called McGrath's a very fuzzy challenge actually but Dawkins has debated him:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,802,Richard-Dawkins-at-The-Sunday-Times-Oxford-Literary-Festival,Richard-Dawkins

Dawkins is right. Time to spit the dummy and get on with trying to save the world without supernatural help.

Michael

[Terry]

I don't remember any time when there was widespread public discussion about atheism. I a mere fifty years old: so even if I wasn't paying attention in my early years I have given some thought to the existence of god and the related topic of am I better off with religion.

In my youth, as in from age 10 to 20, I strongly doubted the existence of god, so I would have very much welcomed the Dawkin philosophy of letting children 'discover' or really explore religion once they have grown up. Thankfully I was confirmed in the Anglican Church of Canada where they don't specifically ask you if you believe in god -- they just carry on with some fancy ceremony with a man dressed up like the Pope. Most of it is about the recitation of words, like the Nicene Creed...you recite the creed but does that mean you believe it?

Obviously, like most people, I've been lightly attending Church, or else the Church would have to close shop, turn off the lights. And so they have. Church buildings make excellent studios and workshops, and contain architectural elements that would be costly to build today. Praise the Lord for religion, and providing all those lovely stone and timber-frame buildings. And if it takes a Bishop to properly decommission a building as a church, I suppose he'll get another chance to dress up like the Pope.

[Jon]

Chris, Dawkins and McGrath did debate recently.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,802,Richard-Dawkins-at-The-Sunday-Times-Oxford-Literary-Festival,Richard-Dawkins

[David Smith]

Would someone who believes in the random evolution of man from lifeless matter like to give us JUST ONE PIECE of evidence in support of this THEORY?

Would they also like to tell us who brought that lifeless matter into existence in the first place?

[Sean Shalor]

Jon
"Would someone who believes in the random evolution of man from lifeless matter like to give us"

Nobody ever said that ! You'd need to rephrase the question.
But as for ...
"Would they also like to tell us who brought that lifeless matter into existence in the first place?"

You won't find any evidence for a "who" I think. If you can, please publish. If not, well any view would be mere speculation without evidence wouldn't it?

[Matthew]

It is completely wrong to say that evolution is "random" - it's more like a dead cert. Given another big bang and another 13.7 billion years, it is most likely that exactly the same thing would happen again.

Perhaps David Smith might like to explain who brought his god "into existence in the first place"?

[Chris]

It is insulting and misleading to call Richard Dawkins a "fundamentalist", thereby associating him with the religious mindset that has people blowing-up trains and throwing acid in woman's faces.

To question faith-based beliefs and challenge religious people to justify their assertions is not unreasonable. Why is Ruth Gledhill so defensive about her superstitions?

[Peter Hurst]

I was at the debate on tuesday and find your reporting rather harsh. Bearing in mind I was sitting 'front centre'and struggled to find a seat i can only pressume you were sitting upstairs. It did seem rather crowded and good seats were hard to find. You were quite right in saying that Roger Scrutton was good, Nigel Spivey however also made some valid points, whereas Rabbi Neuberger seemed clueless. In the camp for the motion, Chrisoper Hitchens was 'playing down' his 'Pit-bull' tendencies, Richard Dawkins was seemingly academic (as one would expect a 'Darwinist' to be) and A.C Grayling seemed most philosophical in manner. What Scrutton did with reference to Plato, was making us all aware of the shortcummings of mankind. We must remember that Plato's 'Republic' is an ideology, which sadly could not function with mankinds idiosyncracies. But it does make us aware of the quest for order, which religion seemingly brings.If we could do without religion then order would have to be brought by some other means, and to be honest I could not see anything that would be obviously better, so I was one of the 'don't knows'.Rabbi Neuberger would have been better off telling us how religion brings order to peoples lives etc, and I did find it curious that Islam was not represented. Rabbi Neuberger was less than competent when it came to mentioning religions liberality towards homosexuals and women, she would do well to remember that religion was held responsible for the 'Dark Ages', and also brought us the charming prospects of heresy (not very Liberal Ms Neuberger). In all it was an enjoyable deabte, but possibly the question could have been better defined.

(rg writes: I was downstairs, on the far left hand side of the hall from your seated perspective. The reason I was annoyed was that several friends had asked if they could come and I had to say no because The Times insisted there were no more tickets available. It would have been nice to have a friend there, and it just rubbed it in when there were all these empty seats. Journalists today are not the most popular of people and sometimes this one just gets fed up with being lonely.)

[Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA]

I don't think that Judaism says that all other religions are wrong. Judaism states that people of other religions and beliefs and none can also enter heaven.

In fact I was just discussing this with a leading practioner of the Church of England and quoting him chapter and verse.

Bloggers should read Hebrew midrash, the commentaries on the Bible. They fill in a lot of 'gaps' in the text. the Biblical text itself is deemed to be impossible to understand or complete without these commentaries, written by humans.

[Denis Collins]

Reading some of the comments on here is a depressing business- that some supposedly educated people (well, they read 'The Times'!) are so ignorant of scientific fact in 2007 is sad.

Jon, there are MILLIONS of pieces of evidence that humans, along with all other living things, evolved from non-living matter- though not simply 'randomly' as you say (this is a common mis-understanding). These are:
fossils- a couple of million now known, many of them now dated absolutely by radioactive decay methods and all of them dateable relatively by the strata in which they were found, which show- without a SINGLE anomaly- precisely the pattern predicted by neo-Darwinism.
genetics: we are now able to compare and contrast the genotypes of all species, and in every case so far studied the levels of inter-relatedness is exactly what biologists- before they had such tools- predicted.
biochemistry- the same.
comparative anatomy- the same.
and, best of all, in recent years, there have been several direct observation of speciation events- which alone destroy all the claims of creationists, whether old-style (Biblical) or modern (Intelligent Design).
There isn't room here to give all the citations for this- just Google away for them, it is all easily available online.

Michael Jensen, your ignorance of biology causes you to misunderstand Dawkins (and Darwin) in a sadly common fashion.
You quote him thus:

' 1.'It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane, or wicked... ' '

And he is correct. Notice he does not say any non-evolutionist is ALL of these things, but is at least ONE of them. Since evolution is a fact that has been proven from, at the very latest, the 1930s (when genetics reached the point whereby the mechanism of descent with modification that Darwin predicted in 1859 was found to be exactly as required for his theory), anyone who doubts it is, at best, ignorant- it is no more disputable than the roundness of the earth, say.

' 2. 'I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywherein the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection (i.e. evolution).' '

This second quote- EXCEPT for the final '(evoltion)' which some editor has added as a misleading gloss- is genuine and also correct, and it does NOT contradict his first quoted statement. Oddly enough I have had exactly the same task, fruitless then and probably now too, in explaining this remark to *Peter* Hitchens, a friend of mine, who is of course the exact opposite of his brother Christopher on matters of religion and politics. He is also ignorant of biology. You Michael, like him, through your lack of understanding of biology, elide two distinct things- Darwinism and evolution. Evolution is fact, for all the reasons I gave above in answer to Jon. Darwinism is the *theory* (correctly named- evolution is certainly not 'just a theory!) that explains the fact of evolution. Dawkins was asked, along with many other thinkers, to speculate on something he thinks likely but which is currently unproven, and so he said that he suspects that any *extra-terrestrial* life that exists will have come about through some variant of Darwinian evolution- and, of course, he can't prove that since, by definition, he/we have no access to any such life, should it exist, for study. Of course, creationists take this out of context and misrepresent it- doubly wrongly- as Dawkins admitting that evolution (whether by Darwinian mechanisms or any other) of terrestrial life is unproven! This misquoting of biologists is, of course, all that creationists CAN do, since all the physical evidence that bears on the question- mountains of it- unambiguously supports evolution.
By the way, Darwin wrote a book- ultmately the most important in history, since it was the first to reveal how we came to exist- called 'On the Origin of Species', NOT 'The Origin of the Species' as you say. I'm not nit-picking here: this mis-titling is common among those who do not believe in nor understand evolution, and betrays their own anthropocentric mindset- that is, like Aristotle and especially The Bible, they see Man as a special creation of God- i.e. 'THE Species'. This view is long disproven.
Finally Michael Jensen quotes an 'American engineer Henry Morris' who opines that Darwin did not give 'any real scientific evidences for evolution - evidences that have been empirically verified and have stood the test of time.' in his great book. The fact that an ENGINEER is quoted tells you all you need to know really- why not a biologist? Because not a single biologist (or geneticist, or zoologist, nor paleontologist, etc) doubts Darwin to be correct. Why not? Because they deal ever day in their work with preceisely such scientific, empirically verified evidence of evolution- it is impossible to do any form of life-science without acknowledging this, since, as Monod famously said, 'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.'
Though, of course, I've no dount that Jon and Michael will simply say "Ah, but that's because all these people have been taken in somehow, or are trapped by peer pressure', or suchlike- the same desperate nonsense that Peter Hitchens resorted to.
And, for those readers who are 'neutral' on this issue, think on this- as soon as one side of an argument resorts to conspiracy theories, you know the OTHER side is right.

[M Cottle]

Dawkins is obviously intellectually superior to his oponent(s)(so far).

Might it not be more illuminating or enlightening if Dawkins is found an oponent(s)of equivalent intellect.

The issues might never be resolved satisfactorily; but they might, at the least, be better understood.

Then from that understanding ..............

[Michael]

David Smith wrote: <>

My background is in molecular biology, so I'll focus there. I'll let others deal with the evidence from comparative anatomy, paleontology, etc.

1. Evolution has nothing to do with 'random'ness. Natural selection is the very opposite of random chance.

2. Natural selection can be experimentally demonstrated in the laboratory, using organisms with much shorter life spans than humans (or other higher organisms). The appearance of antibiotic resistance is perhaps the best example of natural selection at work.

3. Modern evolutionary theory suggests that regions of the genome that code for proteins (the genes themselves) should be subject to selection pressure, and thus should show very little variation between members of the same species, and should show high homology across species. However, regions of the genome that do NOT code for proteins (or regulate gene/protein expression) should not be subjected to selection pressure (since a change in their sequence causes no change in phenotype), and thus these regions should show less similarity between individuals of the same species, and less homology across species. This is exactly what we observe.

4. The chirality of the DNA of ALL known organisms is the same. There is no benefit to having one isomer over another, and yet all organisms use the same isomer. This is consistent with the DNA of all organisms being descended from a common life form, which used a specific isomer.

5. Darwin developed his theory WITHOUT knowing about the physical nature of the genetic material (i.e. he didn't know what a gene was, let alone that DNA was the genetic material). However, evolutionary theory makes predictions about the nature of the genetic material that were later confirmed. It didn't have to turn out that way.

Again, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming (the body of evidence is perhaps as large as any scientific theory). Natural selection, which is the putative mechanism by which evolution occurs, is demonstrably active, and the nature of the genetic material is consistent with what is required to make natural selection tenable.

There are many, many excellent sources of information on evolutionary theory. If you think natural selection is "random", you need to brush up on it a little bit.

<>

This is not a part of evolutionary theory; it is a part of theoretical physics. I can wager an educated guess, but this is not my area of expertise. Suffice to say, however, that this is an active area of research. Science isn't there yet (emphasis on the 'yet'). I would simply point out, however, that the extent to which science does not yet have an answer for something is NOT equivalent to the extent to which god explains that something. 'The god of the gaps' hypothesis is no longer acceptable. There have been many 'gaps' in the past. Science hasn't filled them all yet, but every gap that HAS been filled has been filled by science. Science is undefeated in this regard. God has explained exactly nothing.

[Peter Hurst]

Do you have an email address for Ms Gledhill please.
(yes this is me Peter, believe it or not I do all this myself. You or anyone else can email me here: ruth.gledhill@thetimes.co.uk)

[Steven Broadbent]

"The first vote was 826 votes for the motion, 681 against and 364 don't knows. By the end, the voting was 1,205 for the motion, 778 against and 100 don't knows"

By my count there are 212 extra votes in the second round of voting. Either God is moving in mysterious ways or someone is fiddling the figures.

(rg writes: or lots of people weren't asked for their vote at the beginning. I know I wasn't.)

[Sean Shalor]

M Cottle said: (29 Mar 2007)
Dawkins is obviously intellectually superior to his oponent(s)(so far). Might it not be more illuminating or enlightening if Dawkins is found an oponent(s)of equivalent intellect.

If you look at the many surveys, you'll find strong negative correlation between education(/intellectual ability) and religious belief. Without wishing to be snobbish about one or the other, the search may be long.

[Bill]

Hi there, believers. I've got a question for you. All believers tend to fall back on the "What is the meaning of life?" question/argument. This assumption of purpose underlines an arrogance of the human ego which is the reason why the more primitive mindset still requires a god of some kind.
I say arrogant because there is a very significant question that must be asked first and it is this - "Does life have a meaning?" I think that you will find that the answer to this question renders the second question irrelevant. (However, Nil desperandum, get rid of religion and we can create our own purpose)
If you can tell me or Dawkins or anyone else why life should have any meaning in the first place (and no sneaky invoking of divine purpose before answering) then I will start listening. No one's managed yet so I shall not hold my breath. Good luck!

[Denis Collins]

Sorry to post again immediately, but some of the non-creationist postings here need answering too.
I should make clear that, as Chairman of CUAAS (see URL) I know Dawkins and Grayling slightly. The former I find incredibly unhelpful while the latter is a prince among men. (I don't know Christopher Hitchens but I have, bizarrely, become a friend of his deeply religious Intelligent Designer brother Peter- who is shockingly confused about biology but still a good boke!). But I base my comments on their work and views without reference to them as men, as indeed should we all- the fact that Dawkins is an arrogant man does NOT mean he is wrong, of course.

David Smith said : 'Dawkins and Grayling ..... like to write controversial bluster which they don't need to provide references for or explain further.'
While this will necessarily seem to be the case in newspaper and magazine articles and interviews, it couldn't be further from the truth when it comes to their books, which are referenced and footnoted to a tee- when I last heard Grayling speak he actually performed a verbal footnote to a controversial statement he made!

I don't know whether or not Grayling was ever a Christian (Dawkins was, but only as a child, like myself), but it makes not the slightest difference to his arguments, which are valid.

Christopher, I don't want to make a big deal of the 'skewed religion poll' issue (after all, truth isn't a democracy), but I think the point is that it was worded so that respondents were faced with a list to choose from, with 'no religion' placed at the end, without it being explained to them exactly what definition of 'their religion' was being asked for- what they were born as, what their parents were, what place of worship they attend, etc. Thus many people will have been likely to think 'Well, I was baptised RC, so I'll put that', or 'My parents were C of E, so I'd better put that'- even if they themselves hadn't attended church for decades, and may well be among the many millions of apathetic non-religionists in Britain today. I'm reminded of an old Ben Elton joke:
"I went into hospital recently and they gave me a form to fill in my personal details. Under 'religion' I wanted to write ATHEIST... but I cickened out and wrote C OF E instead!"
I think this tendency has skewed the results here. There was, I recall, another major survey on the question not long before this one (I cannot, alas, give you a citation) that found the opposite- that most people in the UK were atheist/agnostic/don't know/don't care- it was phrased in a way more likely to bring out respondent's accurate viewpoint, as far as I recall.

Jill, of course the ongoing sectarian strife in Ireland is not SIMPLY about religion, but that was in fact the original cause of it and it has remained the underlying catalyst for it ever since- centering on the seperate communities, themselves coalesced around their own churches/orange lodge halls. Getting rid of religion wouldn't, either in this case or many others around the world. solve all disputes- but it would surely ease a lot of them. Dawkins answers your point at some length in one of his books (sorry, I can't remember which one offhand), and points out that if faith schools were abolished and hence Catholic and Protestant kids HAD to be together 30+ hours most weeks of the year then 'The Troubles' would inevitably die out- not overnight, but in exactly one generation. By the way, I don't consider Marxism to be 'science-based'- it may have been twisted that way by some of its latter-day proponents, but not initially (and, for the record, I am a passionate anti-Marxist). Eugenics was of course, based on twisted 'race science', but lest it be thought that it was born whole from this source, the institutionalized racism that supported slavery for centuries pre-dated any scientific notion of genetic differences and was based, among other things, on Biblical passages.

For those who claim Dawkins is a 'fundamentalist' in his own right, I think you need to define 'fundamentalism'- you presently seem to be confusing it with 'passionate' or 'uncompromising'. My definition of a fundamentalist is someone who holds a set of beliefs absolutely, in that they accept them without any evidence- or indeed IN THE FACE OF all the relevant evidence. This is certainly not Dawkins' position, as he can point to rock solid empirical evidence for everything he believes. It is, though, true of religionists- most of them, worldwide, and a few on here- who insist on holding to disproven ideas, such as creationism.

Oh dear, I shall have to leave off now and finish in another posting! Sorry all!

[Denis Collins]

Oh dear! Something has gone wrong with the blogging software on here. The long post above attributed to'Dr. Irene Lancaster FRSA' is actually by me, Denis Collins.

I hope THIS message is properly attributed!

[Denis Collins]

Doh! I realise my mistake above- I thought the name given ABOVE a post was that of the poster as it is on some other blogs I know), not at the bottom. So the posts have been correctly attributed after all- sorry for the confusion, and my apologies to anyone who I have misattributed points to.

Kevin's post requires an in-depth answer.

Kevin said that:
' The argument advanced by atheists that religion is "dangerous" or causes human suffering and therefore should be somehow outlawed or rejected is not applied by them to other belief systems and is unsupported by any historical model. '
This is partially true. Many atheists do indeed blame religion for much evil in the world while turning a blind eye, or even trying to defend, what the political psuedo-religions have done. However, Kevin, please don't think we are ALL like this- I'm certainly not and I know Dawkins and Grayling have written and said things against Communism, etc too. It may not have come up in this particular debate because it was irrelevant- the fact that these pseudo-religions (after all, they have sacred texts, liturgies, ceremonies, belief in transcendent things like 'Race' or 'Class', etc, parodying religion) have such a bad record does not let religion off the hook for its crimes- two wrongs do not make a right.
Kevin goes on to say:
' The violence of the last century was not motivated by religion. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge and the other spectacular murderers of the 20th century were atheists. '
This again is only partly true; for one thing the fanatical cruelty of Imperial Japan was religion-based, for instance. Moreover, Hitler was a Christian (albeit a confused one!), as is shown by many pronouncements and privately recorded comments about God he made throughout his career. Most of his henchmen were similarly religious, or, at the least, were brought up and educated as such. The Holocaust itself was the culmination of almost two millenia of Christian persecution of the 'Christ-killers'- it differed only by the modern industrialised scale and technical methods used to all the medieval and early modern pograms carried out by pious European Christians.
Stalin is a semi-exception- he studied to be a Orthodox priest for several years, and his slaughter of Jews- he killed more than anyone else in history except Hitler- may well have been informed by the anti-semitism of his early faith. The other monsters you name were, indeed, atheists who put their faith in the likes of Marx, Engels, et al.
Kevin later says:
' I don't hear the atheists talking about the need to outlaw marxism. '
Well, I for one would! Actually I wouldn't, but then neither would I *outlaw* religion- I just wish all these ideologies would disappear as people give them up *voluntarily*.
Kevin said:
' Hitchens and Dawkins seem to take a position that "but for" religion everyone would live in peace and harmony and embrace rational concepts of good will. '
I think this is more true of Hitchens, who is indeed a Marxist, than Dawkins, who is vaguely social democratic. I agree that Dawkins at least SEEMS to be too concentrated on criticising religion, but I suppose that is just his personal hobby-horse. I was disappointed that he called his TV series 'The Root of All Evil?' since, self-evidentally, religion is not the cause of ALL the world's problems, just some of them.
' There is no evidence in the historical record for this belief. Atheistic models of governance from our recent past expressly rebut this notion. '
Again, this is only half-true. While the OFFICIALLY atheist states, all of them Marxist in some way, have indeed been terrible failures, (Nazi Germany, and all the other fascist states of history thus far have been officially CHRISTIAN, lest we forget), it seems to me that we should blame this on their Marxist pseudo-religions, not their atheism. Most of the world's most successful states currently and in the recent past- such as most of western Europe, Australasia, Canada, and even the USA have been basically secular, at least in their laws and governance. The worst countries to live in, conversely, are often theocracies like Iran.
Kevin said:
'What they miss is that religion, with some exceptions, has tended to place admittedly imperfect and often violated limits on the human capacity for violence. '
You really need that 'with some exceptions' clause Kevin! The fact is that religion has only been generally conducive to human welfare where and when its adherents either have not been in power, or have not been able to put their beliefs into practise unchecked, or else where they have (thankfully) *selectively* chosen from and interpretated their holy writings The Old Testament and the Koran particularly are full of blood-curdling God-given commands to kill and torture anyone who does not believe and do what they dictate- and even the New testamnent, supposedly so enlightened, has a few of these too. Throughout most of Christendom prior to the Enlightenment many people were indeed persecuted, often unto death, on these very grounds, by pious people who were simply carrying out what their holy books told them must be done. In much of the Islamic world this is still the case- apostacy in Afghanistan and non-Muslim proselytising in Saudi Arabia carry the death sentence, for instance.
In summary, as I said above, it is adherence to ideologies- religious or pseudo-religious- that must be avoided as they cause most of the evil in the world.

[Michael]

It seems to me that, while relevant to the referenced debate, the "religion vs. atheism" question is not of the utmost importance. Whether atheism or religion have produced a higher body count isn't really the key factor here. I will simply state that while the majority of atrocities committed in the 20th Century were not committed in the name of religion per se (the supposed religiosity of Hilter, Stalin, and Mao aside), they were committed in the name of dogma; belief in a set of guidelines, without proper deference to empirical methods. Religion is a subset of dogma, but it is not the only subset. I would also point out that comparing the relative horrors of the Inquisition, for instance, to the Holocaust is unfair; if only machine guns and gas chambers had been around in the 15th century...

All of this is, as I said, beside the point; asking whether or not the world is better off because of religion, or whether or not abolishing religion would result in a better world, is not the same as asking whether there really is a god. It's unfortunate that the two questions have become so entangled. I am a staunch atheist, simply because there is no evidence to suggest that god exists at all; science has provided the answer to every question that has ever been answered; not all of the questions have been answered, of course, but whatever answers we have, we owe to science. I see no reason to thikn this will not continue.

But the argument for atheism can be made solely on the basis of reason and deference to empirical methods; the case does not, and should not depend on referencing the atrocities committed in the name of god.

[Denis Collins]

M Cottle wrote:

'Dawkins is obviously intellectually superior to his oponent(s)(so far).

Might it not be more illuminating or enlightening if Dawkins is found an oponent(s)of equivalent intellect.

The issues might never be resolved satisfactorily; but they might, at the least, be better understood.

Then from that understanding .............. '

Now, I don't want this to sound arrogant, nor indeed for this to taken as a paean to Dawkins (who has been utterly unhelpful in my few personal dealings with him), but I honestly think he has never faced anyone his intellectual equal in debate on this issue simply because there IS no one like this on the other side! There are of course religious people who are clever, some smarter than I am for sure, probably a very few who are smarter than Dawkins. The trouble is that these people, for all their expertise in certain areas (such as theology- actually a non-subject since it relies entirely on ancient texts and, every time it has made an empirically testable claim about the universe, it has turned out wrong!) are almost always clueless when it comes to science- that is, the only genuine study of the universe, its origins and our place within it, since it is the only one that studies the empirical evidence in a way that everyone else can check and, if necessary, correct.
I book speakers for Cambridge University Atheist and Agnostic Society (see below) and chair the subsequent talks, and the odd time I've managed to secure a religious scientist to speak to us it is, I'm afraid, deeply disappointing. They always fudge and hedge their bets and waffle, admitting- when pushed by questioners- that actually they don't REALLY believe in much of what their holy texts or the creeds of their churches say, AS SUCH- they always want to 'symbolise' everything into utter meaninglessness. Of course, this is their prerogative, but when someone claims to be a Jew/Muslim/Christian- while twisting the definition of these bodies of belief so severely that Moses/Mohammed/Paul/the Gospel Jesus (and HE was omniscient God, of course!), if they were brought here in a time machine, simply would not recognise it- then it is *my* prerogative to label them 'quasi-religionists'.
The least hopeless religious scientist we have had speak to us is Reverend Professor John Polkinghorne, who is a retired Anglican vicar who was also a professor of Physics here at Cambridge. He made the best of a bad job, but even he had to treat so much of The Bible as allegory/metaphor/symbolism- including much that the Gospel Jesus explicitly believed in *literally*, note- that it wasn't much of a defence of his faith (a faith which, once again, none of the founders of Christianity would even recognise). Whenever someone asked him an awkward question he would selectively quote a positive Biblical saying that had nothing to do with the question asked (while ignoring those verses which were relevant but obviously nonsensical or vicious), and then turn away and quickly pick the next questioner before the last one could point out the inadequacy of his reply. (Normally I, as Chairman, insist that speakers answer questions properly, but since Polkinghorne is very elderly and frail now I didn't in his case!)
Thus I really don't think there is anyone on the pro-religious side of the debate who can give Dawkins a decent arument- everyone available is either stupid, or ignorant of the scientific (i.e. true) world-view, or else only a 'quasi-religionist' (i.e. someone who clings desperately to the faith they were brought up in even thpough they know that much of it is certainly false).
As I said above, this view will make me look as arrogant and supposedly 'fundamentalist' as Dawkins, but my extensive reading, attendance of tectures, and indeed chairing of talks by these people leaves me with no other option.

[Alex]

I have read people's response here defending religion. The problem I have is that we can argue all day and night about whether religion is good or bad, the real question that Dawkins tries to answer in his book is "Does God Exist?". I don't here a lot of religious supporters trying to answer that question. Yes religion has done good things and has done bad things, but do either of those prove that there really is a god or that there are good people and bad people.
I hear a lot of religious people attack evolution but they never give evidence to prove that god really made us, except a bible verse. Yes evolution does have its problems but at least it has some evidence to prove that it's a theory worth investigating, where's the evidence in religion that proves god really EXISTS? (please don't quote a bible verse saying that god really exists, we all know thats not proof)

[Mark]

Um, to reply to David Smith. You quoted an American engineer (not an evolutionary biologist) who had read Darwin's Origin of Species, looking for some sort of scientific basis for evolution. To what end?

We all know that Darwin found the mechanism but was unable to explain how the mechanism worked. Since his time we have over 150 years of genetics, the discovery of DNA, and the amazing advances in cladistics, not to mention biology in general to prove that evolution is indeed the answer to Darwin's great mystery.

Please don't obfuscate the facts due to someone else's omission. You certainly don't want to sound like those fundamentalist Christians who live in the US.

Or maybe you do.

[Malcolm McLean]

I suspect that Denis Collins is looking for the wrong thing from religious figures in his debates. For instance Christianity is predicated on the idea that the universe had a beginning, and has long taught that God exists outside of time, i.e. that time was created. It teaches that language is a special phenomenon and more interesting than simple signal processing. It teaches that the human body is made of ordinary matter and that the Sun and Moon are ordinary objects in the universe. These are all statements which were once disputed, some of which are still under dispute. However presumably they are dismissed as "empiricially testable claims".

When religion moves to its home ground of moral or psychological claims, it is much more obvious that it is correct. As a society we are beginning to realise that we cannot afford the bill for divorce. The East has already realised that, even on its own terms, Marxist materialism was nonsense. Children won't believe in the hollow secular educational system of endless tests and league tables for long. But what do atheists have to replace it?

[Michael]

Malcolm McLean writes 'When religion moves to its home ground of moral or psychological claims, it is much more obvious that it is correct.'

While the 'home ground' of religion may be moral or psychological, it should not be forgotten that religion also makes concrete statements about the actual, physical nature of the universe and all of the things in it. Following the Golden Rule is one thing (and it is a good thing), but acknowledging the physical reality of things like the virgin birth, or resurrection, or transsubstantiation is quite another. I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, but rather to establish that one cannot have the "morality bits" of religion (as dubious as they are) without the "physical reality bits".

I find it fascinating that the world's many religions all tell us pretty much the same thing about morality (don't kill, don't lie, be good people, etc), but all tell us vastly different stories about the physical nature of the universe (How to decide which to believe?). Again, whether or not religion has inspired people to be moral, or to do good things is one thing. The question of whether or not there actually is a god is quite another. Sam Harris puts it best when he says, "Religion gives bad reasons for doing good things, when good reasons exist."

[Keith Downer]

"I hear a lot of religious people attack evolution but they never give evidence to prove that god really made us".

And that is really the point, isn't it? There is no proof that God exists and created us. On the path to understanding and accepting Christian beliefs, there is a gradual awareness that if God wanted to signpost His existence throughout His creation, He could have - but He didn't. And that is where faith comes into the equation and faith is what people like Dawkins have great problems with.

Yet faith is what sustains the spiritual dimension that exists at the core of our being. Through the Bible and Jesus Christ, God provided sufficient, basic substance, not to prove His existence but to suggest the possibility that He does exist. Being exposed to this possibility, an individual's response is determined by many factors, not least their vulnerability and awareness of their own limitations in this world of ours.

Modernism breeds Dawkins-like responses which see weakness and vulnerability as an inability to cope with that world. Like Maggie Thatcher at the height of her power, you steamroller over those situations which threaten you, you stand strong and firm; you don't start handing over your weakness to a spiritual being who no-one can see, hear or touch!

After 2,000 years of Christianity, there still is no proof that God exists and the belief that millions of people have - and have had - in Him is not scientific evidence. But can it be ignored?

Living through the Cold War, threatened by nuclear destruction on a world-wide scale, I did not have a faith to comfort me. But I knew, when that 4 minute warning sounded, I would be down on my knees, praying to this God that no-one can prove exists.

[Vivian Evans]

Re: The repeated claims that there is/there are no 'intellectual heavyweights' on 'the other side' who might be able to debate with Dawkins on the same intellectual level:
Well, I know of two such heavyweights.
The one is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams - the other is Bishop Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham.
The latter is indeed no intellectual slouch and has a wicked sense of humour - if one can say this of a bishop!
However - I think their duties may take up so much of their time that Prof. Dawkins would maybe have to accept a timetable not his own ...
(I'd be extremely interested in a debate between Bishop Tom Wright and Prof. Dawkins - maybe someone can arrange this?)

[hala mckee]

mr. Dawkins has a rigid mindset that will not allow him to think outside the box. What if he is wrong - that there is a god who speaks to us through the scriptures and through the church and he is wilfuly rejecting Him. His fate is terrifing.
No argument will ever convince him . A theist needs no argument.

[Denis Collins]

Thanks for your response, Malcom Maclean. With respect, you have provided me with a good example of the ignorant irrationality of the religious world-view.

What I am looking for in 'religious figures' is the same thing I am looking for when I attend any lecture or read any non-fiction book by anybody- truth. Religion in all its many guises has claimed to provide truth in all kinds of arenas for millenia now- and in each and every case that it has been possible to test (i.e. where there has been verifiable empirical evidence) it has proven to be wrong. There are no exceptions to this. A few examples will suffice to demonstrate this- I will answer your own claims.

Malcolm said:
' For instance Christianity is predicated on the idea that the universe had a beginning, '
Well yes- nearly all creation myths are, since it is so counter-intuitve that something could be beginning-less. The trouble is that the scale of this creation, in both time and space, is always wildly wrong in such myths- and the Biblical version is no exception to this.

' and has long taught that God exists outside of time, i.e. that time was created. '
What a pity that the length of time it gives is wrong by a factor of over a MILLION!

' in It teaches that language is a special phenomenon and more interesting than simple signal processing. '
Christianity never mentions 'signal processing', it couldn't since this is a modern scientific concept unknown until recent times. The little that Christianity did teach about language- that it is unique to humans and was originally given whole and unified by God before being deliberately diversified by Him as a punishment (i.e. the Babel myth)- is utterly false.

' It teaches that the human body is made of ordinary matter '
This is disingenious since Christianity said this only of the human BODY, then concetrated- as did all pre-scientific traditions- on an entirely bogus non-material 'soul' as the most important, eternal part of each human. Modern neuroscience has done away with this myth- our consciousness is physical and will inevitably end with our death.

' and that the Sun and Moon are ordinary objects in the universe. '
No, it doesn't. Genesis makes clear that the Earth is the centre of the universe (oh, and flat!), made specifically as an abode for Mankind, and that the sun and moon are the only other large celestial bodies, placed in orbit around the earth (sic!) in order to provide light and warmth for said Humans and the animals and plants put there specially for Man's use- they were NOT like all the other bodies in the heavens, the stars. which are actually tiny holes in the firmament!

'These are all statements which were once disputed, some of which are still under dispute. However presumably they are dismissed as "empiricially testable claims". '
They are indeed all empirically verifiable- and every one of them has been found to be utterly different from the claims made for it by Christianity.

Malcom goes on to say:
' When religion moves to its home ground of moral or psychological claims, '
It is only a very late attempted rationalization of religion, now that science has so discredited it, to try to say that its 'home ground' is 'moral or psychological claims'- what a pity that prior to the secular enlightenment, and indeed still in may parts of the world today, religion does indeed make so many false claims about the world.

' it is much more obvious that it is correct. '
Obvious to whom? It is true that humans have an innate tendency to believe in gods, angels, demons, entelechies, etc, as science- not religion- has demonstrated, and for good Darwinian reasons ironically enough (the reasons for this are too complex to go into here). That religions, as the repositories of social/folk wisdom have come up with many positive ethical teachings is no surprise- any society without any of these will soon tear itself apart. But it also fosters all sorts of problems- racism, homophobia, misogyny, sectarianism- that we are still suffering the legacy of today, even in largely post-Christian countries such as Britain.

' As a society we are beginning to realise that we cannot afford the bill for divorce. '
I agree- I am unusual in the secular humanist movement for being quite right-wing! But you don't have to be religious to be anti-divorce- I'm proof of that.

'The East has already realised that, even on its own terms, Marxist materialism was nonsense. '
Indeed it was. But please, Malcolm, don't make the shockingly common simple logical error of equating atheism with Marxism: though all Marxists were (officially) atheists, by no means all atheists are Marxists.

'Children won't believe in the hollow secular educational system of endless tests and league tables for long. '
I'm not sure why you equate secularism with school 'tests and league tables'. The architects of the latter- Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly spring to mind- are deeply religious.

' But what do atheists have to replace it? '
That's a very good question. Attempts were made in 19th century France to develop a 'secular religion' to teach morality to schoolchildren, but it didn't work too well. Personally I think we should take the best of religion's moral teachings- that is, the genuinely altruistic bits, not the torturing and killing bits- and use them, along with modern psychology, to instil moral values in kids.
Will this be effective? I don't know, but I do know that surveys have shown prison populations to be more religious, on average, than the general population, probably because, as someone said earlier, the less well educated and intelligent people are today the more likely they are to be religious- I know it sounds arrogant, but that's the truth, I'm afraid. The most religious developed country today- the USA- is also by far the most violent and crime-ridden.

[Father Bryan Storey]

Alex, if there is no adequate explanation of existence, nothing exists.

[Father Bryan Storey]

Alex, if there is no adequate explanation of existence, nothing exists.

[Joe Rous]

I am a huge fan of Dawkins, but I disagree with him about religion; and I speak as a devout atheist. Just as he realised that no one had defined "religion", he should also have realised that nobody had defined who "we" are and what being "better off" meant. The fact that every civilization has had some form of religion or other surely goes to prove that it essential for mankind's survival. Religion lends credibility to the "Selfish Gene" theory. Dawkins is arguing against himself.

[MARTIN WADDINGTON]

Three comments:
a) Dr Lancaster speaks movingly of the power of music in quasi-religious terms. I take issue however with her closing assertion: 'love can really move mountains'. Er...what mountains? When?
b) On the subject of the Channel4 programme 'The Root of All Evil', Dawkins has frequently said that the choice of title was not his, did not reflect his point of view accurately, and that he had vigorously tried to persuade the TV moguls to think again.
c) To Denis Collins, Chair of CUAAS: I am surprised and dismayed to hear that Dawkins has given an impression of being unhelpful. I can't help wondering why.

[Mike Homfray]

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that Dawkins is right, and am seeing myself as a post-Christian, almost an ex-Christian.

[Jim Britton]

WARNING: Some of this is may not be suitable for posting.

Ruth:

"Mobius Dick"?? Oh, please, no! It sounds like a porn-movie actor.

The Moby bit is, however, not all that inappropriate. Dawkins’ website had a picture of him in a curious pose. Shot from below, it shows him gazing resolutely out of the frame with his right hand on a large, vertical pole.

The angle would befit a Mao or Mussolini. Ah! Great Leader! Oh Fearless Visionary!! The pole itself is suggestive of a lance or harpoon or maybe a monarch's staff. It is of course a phallic symbol, with all the usual associations of power and authority. Perhaps, like a Captain Ahab, he is bracing himself with the mast of the good ship "Rationality" as it ploughs the heavy seas of post-modern cultural relativism.

The one nickname for Professor Dawkins that sticks in my mind is "Darwin's Rotweiler". Seems fitting. Not sure who coined it.

Anyway, Ruth, good luck with your interview.

With respect to the debate, I wish I had seen it (or, even more vainly, had been on the podium).

From what you say it seems as if all the debaters (apart from Roger Scruton) were on the anti-religion side.

It might have been different if the pro-religion side had an Augustine or Aquinas to offer. Even a Dorothy L Sayers or CS Lewis.

How do the organizers pick their teams?

Could they not have asked Michael Green, Alistair McGrath or even Nicky Gumbel to fill in? How about Hans Kung? Or was this limited to Britons? (But isn't Mr Hitchens, though British born, now a US citizen?)

In the broader debate about God, what the pro-religion side needs is someone who has deeply engaged with faith and reason; who knows the issues from the inside, as it were; and can articulate their views as a lover can extol their beloved.

Faith is, after all, a relationship to be lived and not (or not just) a topic to be learned.

[peter nicholson]

To Father Bryan Storey,are you seriously arguing thatif there is no adequate explanation of existence,nothing exists? If there is no adequate explanation for belief in god or gods,do such beliefs not exist?
The simple fact is that there are many things not understood,some of which might be unknowable.It takes an enormous ego and a large dollop of arrogance to think that the inhabitants of this tiny speck in the vast cosmos would have even the tiniest insight with regard to explanations of existence.

[Kevin K]

Denis,

Very thoughtful response. I apologize if I conveyed the impression that all atheists were mass murderers, obviously not.

I would point out that neither Hitler nor the Nazi hierarchy were Christians. Some may have held something like a religious belief. Hitler loathed Christianity as a psuedo-jewish faith which weakened aryans. Speer's memoirs seem quite clear that the Nazi hierarchy was anti-religious in any conventional sense. Hitler tolerated the Christian church but intended to destroy it after dealing with his external enemies.

I am so ashamed of leaving out Imperial Japan from my list. I am forever going on that the atrocities committed in China rival or exceed those in Europe by the Nazis.

The Japanese had a religion and it certainly influenced their conduct but their imperial ambition seems more driven by secular than religious principles. The "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" just does not come across as a crusade. Obviously they did, and do, see themselves as a distinct and special people. The bushido code is a religious-warrior ethic but it did not compel imperial adventures before the late 19th and 20th Century.

Oddly, we are in almost complete agreement that religion does not prevent violence when it is given unchecked powers.

I do disagree insofar as, in my opinion, ideology itself is not the threat. It is unchecked ideology with essentially unlimited access to state power. Power tending to corrupt and absolute power tending to corrupt absolutely.

I have an ideology but it includes the principle that I can not impose that ideology on others.

There are many examples of religion at least attempting to moderate violence. In the middle ages clerics were forever seeking to mediate disputes and to enforce certain periods of peace, "the truce of God" and such.

I do not dispute that giving anyone absolute power is a bad idea and this does not exclude the religious. If people have power to enforce their ideology, they will use it, whether Marxist or Christian. The trick is organizing the state in a way that the power to enforce a particular ideology is not readily acquired. The reason why the United States is the most overtly religious nation in the West is that there has been very little mechanism and no long term political will to enforce a religious ideology.

One thing that interests me about this debate and perhaps the atheists can answer is: Why do you care? I don't think anyone here is being pulled over and given a breathlyzer test to see if they are DWE, driving without eucharist.

If you believe that this is a silly superstition, so what? People believe all sorts of things. Why it is important for you to convince people that there is no God?

If it is genetic, as some here suggest, the existence of relgion and the relgious through history must mean that the trait provides some survival advantage to those with it. If religion is genetic, arguing that it is false is about as effective as arguing to a gay man that he should be attracted to women. You can make some great arguments, but you can't persuade.

But if atheists are correct, if there is no God, in a hundred years everyone who is reading this today will, almost certainly be dead. Our corpses decayed. Most of us forgotten. What will it matter to you what people believed? It seems to me that if I were an atheist, having more people believing in religion would be an advantage to me.

Kevin K

[Denis Collins]

Martin, thanks for that information about Dawkins' dismay at the title of his TV series, which I wasn't aware of.

Since you wonder why he has been so unhelpful to CUAAS, I'll say something about it here. We founded CUAAS back in 2000, and it was then the only atheist/secularist/humanist student society at any UK university- sad but true (there are now several others, I'm pleased to say). When I contacted Dawkins his secretary (sic) e-mailed me to say he would be honoured to be our patron, and I should keep in touch and let him know what we are up to and if there is anything he can do to help us. So I did, for a couple of years- and got no reponse whatsoever. Eventually I phoned and spoke to him- and he denied all knowledge of our existence! He apologized for this then, but I still got no response to later correspondence. This pattern was repeated a couple of times. The one time I met him I had to stand in line with people getting their books signed, and was granted a 30-second 'audience'! I don't wish to sound like a whinger, and I know Dawkins is a very busy man, but it seems to me that if you agree to be the patron of a society you should not then utterly ignore it.

By the way, here is the CUAAS website:

www.cuaas.org.uk

It isn't kept very current as you'll see, but we have talks most weeks of termtime, and anyone is welcome to come along (you needn't be a member of Cambridge University).

[Fran]

Martin Waddington writes

"Dr Lancaster speaks movingly of the power of music in quasi-religious terms. I take issue however with her closing assertion: 'love can really move mountains'. Er...what mountains? When?"

Well, the mountain of the slave trade was moved by people convinced that God loves all people equally and so should we.

The mountain of apartheid was moved without recourse to the bloodbath which so often forms part of radical restructuring after profound injustice. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission based its premises upon the teaching of Jesus that Christians should be prepared to forgive those who have wronged them.

And on a smaller scale millions upon millions of people can attest to mountains of bitterness, illness and addiction in their lives being moved by faith in an encounter with a loving God who transforms mourning into joy and conflict into reconciliation.

[Ian McCulloch]

Father Bryan Storey says: (29 Mar 2007)
"if there is no adequate explanation of existence, nothing exists."

What a curiously silly play on words.
Read a bit of quantum dynamics and have a look at some of the entities that undoubtedly exist, but (still) defy explanation. There is NO causal connection between "existence" and "explanation". How could there be ? For a start, existence obviously precedes explanation!

[Sean Shalor]

Joe Rous said (29 Mar 2007)
"The fact that every civilization has had some form of religion or other surely goes to prove that it essential for mankind's survival."

Joe - that proves nothing more than that religion has been popular.

In fact every civilization preceding our own has died out. Using your logic, we could claim that religion ensures mankind's demise.

The presence of something proves nothing more than its presence.

[Fran]

The crucial issue here is not what Dawkins thinks about biology, but what he thinks about the right of people to disagree with him.

He may seem an awfully nice chap Ruth, but Dawkins is spouting the same hatred of believers as any of the great atheist dictators.

He dehumanises people who don't accept his atheistic view of the origins of the universe by calling them (amongst other things) wicked and insane, and he would like the law to forbid believing parents from passing their faith on to their children.

We've seen all this before in the revolting practices of the Soviet Union. We see it now in Kim Il Song's North Korea.

Can't people see that Dawkins isn't arguing for a particular view of how the universe came into existence? He moved on from that years ago

He's working towards the actual outlawing of faith, and with it, freedom of thought itself.

Whatever our views about Dawkins as a biologist, we should all oppose his assault on people of faith, because once the freedom to believe in God is taken away - as Dawkins appears to want - every freedom of opinion or thought will go.

[Marie-Louise, Brussels]

I'm sick of religion getting the blame for all the ills of society. The history of Europe is a history of warfare and far more lives have been lost in wars for territorial gain than through religious intolerance. Nor can science escape its responsbility. In modern times every weapon that ever maimed a child has been invented thanks to science so could we have a little less hypocrisy please? A little less tailoring of the facts to suit one's prejudices?
Only a complete Philistine could come up with such comments about the Sistine Chapel. All the money in the world cannot produce the spiritual glory of a Michelangelo. Communism poured money into its culture and what did it come up with? Statues of Stalin.

[snafu]

Father Bryan Storey -

"...if there is no adequate explanation of existence, nothing exists."

So what is your adequate explanation of why God exists?

Presumably, that you attibute the property of necessity to him. In which case, I will do the same for the universe. Seems simpler to me: after all, I have extensive background knowledge that the universe exists. I wish I could say the same for God.

[Father Bryan Storey]

Will Mike Homfray also put his head in the Dawkins' sand?

[Father Bryan Storey]

Peter Nicholson, I'm quite serious in saying that it's just not possible to get something from nothing. Who's trying to kid whom in this debate?

[Neil Murphy]

I loathe and despise religion. But where religious values aer taught and enforced, social behaviour is almost always better than where it isn't. The morality of western countries, even one as non religious as Britain is informed by a judeao christian past, and where families do keep their kids in order, that religios background is there.

[Father Bryan Storey]

Snafu, an infinitely, intrinsically inadequately explained Universe has to have an adequate explanation outside itself. Millions of 'have nots' put together still make nothing. Come, Sir, I don't see myself as brilliant, but it really has to be.

[Heredal]

"But where religious values are taught and enforced, social behaviour is almost always better than where it isn't"

I presume the 'almost always'is there to deliberately exclude Pakistan's madrassahs?

In fact, we don't teach religious values at all, even in faith schools. We teach human values that existed long before and outside the scope of Christianity - justice, equality, compassion. It's just that Christians like to hijack these values and claim them as their own invention.

As to whether God exists, or the universe exists, the Pope has been telling us this week that Hell exists, and that presumably means Satan too. Last year I seem to recall the Pope telling us that limbo was just 'a theological hypothesis', as Ruth Gledhill's column reported last October, and could be discarded in spite of hundreds of years of apostolic witness to its existence.

When is something 'real' and when is it just a 'theological hypothesis'? And where is the Pope's evidence that Hell is real? His institution has been telling believers since the Middle Ages that limbo is real, but now he says it isn't.

isn't the existence of God just a theological hypothesis as well?

[Michael]

Father Bryan Storey wrote: "I'm quite serious in saying that it's just not possible to get something from nothing. Who's trying to kid whom in this debate?"

Keep extending that argument. It will get you nowhere. By this logic, there can never be a "prime mover", because the prime mover itself would had to have come from somewhere.

Even if we were to accept this argument, however, and state that the universe MUST have been created by god, I fail to see how that is equivalent to saying god is one way or another. To paraphrase Dawkins, we are all atheists about most of the gods that have ever existed; some of us just go one god further. That is to say, even if we accept the notion of god, which god should we believe in? Is there any reason to favour the god of Abraham over Thor, or the Olympian gods, or any of the infinitely possible gods?

Once again, the question of whether there is or is not a god is entirely different from the question of the nature of that god.

[Michael]

Neil Murphy wrote: "But where religious values aer taught and enforced, social behaviour is almost always better than where it isn't."

I'd love to see your data source on this. Sam Harris has some insights on this in "The End of Faith"; the correlation isn't nearly as neat as you'd imagine.

Since you "loathe and despise religion", I wont point out the fact that even if what you're saying about the morality of highly religious areas is true, it says absolutely nothing about whether god actually exists.

Is It Unscientific to Believe in God?
WHEN reading about science, it is not unusual to come across religious expressions. For example, scientists have been referred to as "the high priests of a new technological culture," and their laboratories as "temples" or "shrines." Of course, such expressions are merely metaphors. However, they can lead to this important question: Is there really a gulf dividing science from religion?

Some may feel that the more scientists learn, the further they get from any belief in God. It is true there are many in the scientific community who scorn religious faith. But a significant number of others find themselves deeply impressed by the evidence pointing to design in the natural world around us. Other scientists wonder about more than design; they begin to think about the Designer.

Winds of Change Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has been prevalent for a century and a half. Some educated people may have expected that by now, belief in God would be banished to the realm of the ignorant, the gullible, and the naive. Nothing of the kind has happened. Many scientists openly profess belief in a Creator. Granted, they may not believe in a personal God or in the Bible. Yet, they are convinced that the design evident in nature requires an intelligent Designer.

Can such scientists be dismissed as naive? Reporting on scientists who believe that intelligent design is responsible for our cosmos and life in it, a book review in The New York Times comments: "They have Ph.D.'s and occupy positions at some of the better universities. The case they make against Darwinism does not rest on the