Full Transcript for The Macpherson Angle | 8 November

with. Here's what the PM said when asked how he viewed the war with Iran. He said the conflict in Iran, though it was declared that it would last days and at most weeks, it's now going for many, many months. And there's no doubt it's having an impact on inflation and cost of living right around the world. Well, colour me pink, a war lasting more than a few weeks, unheard of. But worse, a war that's inconvenient, that requires a bit of sacrifice. Well, we're not doing that. Hey, if it means diesel's back under $ 3, let the mullers have the bomb. What's the worst that could happen? Don't get me wrong, I love our PM. He's great for the odd comedy podcast, but Winston Churchill, he ain't. It's curious to me that Anthony Albanese is going to lobby Trump to end the war. Why isn't he lobbying Tehran to stop firing on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz? Why isn't he lobbying the Iranians to surrender? Why isn't he directing his considerable powers toward the bad guys? Aside from his fear of losing Muslim votes in Western Sydney, I mean, which, let's face it, is about the only existential threat this Labor government will acknowledge. Labor has blamed the war for rising inflation. Now Albanese promises to lobby for an end to a war that he, you and I all know he has precisely no power to end. But when Albanese says he wants to end the war, we know ending the war is not really the point. There's a rather cynical calculation at work here, which I suspect is the only kind of calculation Labor now does. Albanese wants to look like the man standing up to Trump for the benefit of voters who dislike the American president. And he wants to look like the man fighting to bring down the cost of living for voters who are struggling to pay their mortgages. In other words, he gets to play statesman without having to achieve anything and peacemaker without having to persuade anyone to make peace. In the Albanese universe, that's apparently what passes for leadership. Well, nothing better illustrates the state of Australia right now than two news stories featuring prominently online this morning. One concerns a government running out of water. The other concerns a government running out of shame. Here's the first one. Aged care facilities in the West Queensland town of Claremont have suspended showers for the elderly because of water shortages. The local hospital has stopped showering patients too. And the town's 3,000 residents have been told to only flush the toilet, and I quote, when necessary. Just on that, when was the last time you used the toilet and thought it wasn't necessary to flush? Now, for the teenage boys watching, that was a rhetorical question. Ageing infrastructure means that drinking water in the town is largely undrinkable. Locals have been told they shouldn't even let their animals drink the water. In unrelated but entirely related news, the Albanese government is spending $ 32, 000 on a coffee cart to provide premium lattes for climate bedwetters at

this week's climate conference in Turkey. Talk about taking us all for mugs. Chris Bowen is spending millions on COP31 advertising the vandalism he's done to our power grid. And so I guess $ 32, 000 for a coffee card is loose change. But it illustrates the state of things, does it not? Australians can't get a glass of water in Claremont, but foreigners will get an almond milk latte courtesy of the Australian taxpayer at COP31 in Turkey. While we're keeping climate activists caffeinated, we can't keep our own citizens in Claremont hydrated. Opposition Energy spokesman Dan Tehan joins me now. Dan, of course, I'm not saying 32 grand spent on a coffee cart in Turkey could be used to fix water in Claremont. Claremont will cost a lot more than that. But it's a pretty good metaphor for this government's priorities, is it not? 00:06:43 Speaker 3: Absolutely, James. It's a beautiful metaphor. 00:06:46 Speaker 4: The priorities are just completely and utterly wrong. And the fact that Chris Bowen is happy to spend over $ 150 million on this cop talk fest while people are going out without drinking water, or as you've said, are being told that they shouldn't flush the toilet, just shows you how. 00:07:11 Speaker 3: Wrong the priorities of this government are. And the sooner. 00:07:16 Speaker 4: Chris Bowen just apologises to the Australian taxpayer and resigns the better because I haven't seen anyone spend taxpayers' money like it's confetti than Chris Bowen. 00:07:28 Speaker 3: It is just quite extraordinary. 00:07:31 Speaker 2: Prime Ministers travel. It's part of their job. And when things are going well domestically, there's usually not a problem. But when we've just copped our 17th interest rate rise under Labor and the PM was in the Caribbean, not even bothering to listen to the RBA governor explain the damage, it says something. And in the next few weeks, he's scheduled to be in Turkey for the climate conference, the Philippines for the East Asia summit, China for APEC, and in Miami for the G20. At this rate, the only thing travelling faster than the PM is the cost of living. You start to wonder if the reason Elbow is never home might be because it's just too expensive to live here. 00:08:07 Speaker 3: It's a very valid point. 00:08:09 Speaker 4: But, you know, the sad reality is there is no need for him to go to COP in Turkey. He should be back here focusing on how he can cut government spending. I mean, why does the Prime Minister need to go to Turkey other than to hold Chris Bowen's hand? 00:08:29 Speaker 3: There is no other reason. Or maybe he wants. 00:08:32 Speaker 4: A cheap coffee with Chris Bowen while he's over there rather than paying full-toed odds. 00:08:38 Speaker 3: Back here in Australia. 00:08:40 Speaker 4: It is just absurd that he's going rather than concentrating on his spending. And you know what he could do while Chris Bowen's out of the country? Get rid of the cheaper home battery scheme. Get rid of all the EV subsidies. Get rid of the Climate Change Authority. and then there would be something for Chris Bowen to focus on when he gets back to Australia, and that. 00:09:02 Speaker 3: Would be affordable energy. Wouldn't that be a nice surprise? 00:09:05 Speaker 2: That would be a wonderful surprise. Very quickly, before we go to the break, Senator Fatima Payman has accused the Prime Minister of offering her extra staff during the last term in Parliament in exchange for her vote on legislation. The PM's office has declined to comment. Nothing says the PM can't do it, but is this good for democracy, Dan Tehan? 00:09:25 Speaker 3: No, it's not. 00:09:26 Speaker 4: There's a bit of a pattern of behaviour here because we heard a week ago that similar offers were made to a One Nation member of. 00:09:36 Speaker 3: The lower house. 00:09:37 Speaker 4: So now we get this revelation when it comes to Senator Payman. So what is happening here and what is the Prime Minister doing? We know that the Prime Minister lies to us. Now it seems like he's prepared... to use public office to try and buy people's votes. And I hope Senator Payman, if she's serious about this, will take this issue further because the Prime Minister shouldn't be offering staff to buy people's votes. 00:10:09 Speaker 3: That's not on in a democracy. 00:10:11 Speaker 4: And if Senator Payman's serious, she should think about taking this matter further. 00:10:17 Speaker 2: Maybe instead of offering staff, they could just offer free coffee, Stan Tehan. That's all I've got time for. 00:10:25 Speaker 1: It's probably. 00:10:28 Speaker 3: What Chris Bowen will do when he gets back. 00:10:31 Speaker 2: I don't doubt it. 00:10:32 Speaker 5: Why not? 00:10:33 Speaker 3: He doesn't seem to mind spending our money. 00:10:36 Speaker 2: That's for sure. Dan Tehan, appreciate your time. Thanks so much for joining me. All right, don't go anywhere. After the break, I'm joined by the world's most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins. That's next. Richard Dawkins is probably the world's most famous evolutionary biologist and one of the world's most outspoken atheists. He transformed the public understanding of evolution with his best-selling book, The Selfish Gene, arguing that individual genes strive for immortality and you and I are just the vehicles they use to achieve that. To mark the book's 50th anniversary, Richard Dawkins has written an epilogue to it and is currently in Australia on a speaking tour with shows around the country this week. In tandem with teaching evolution, Dawkins has spent decades arguing that religion is irrational and that belief in God is an illusion. So how does a man who spent so much of his life thinking about the existence of God actually experience the world? Does he ever have doubts? What does he think about death? And what does he make of people who once shared his atheism but have since found their way to Christianity? Richard Dawkins joins me now. Richard, thank you so much for coming on the

program. It's a delight to have you with me. 00:11:43 Speaker 1: Thank you. 00:11:43 Speaker 2: I want to go back to where it all began for you. You were brought up in a Christian household. Do you remember when you started losing your belief in God? Was there a moment or was it a gradual process? 00:11:56 Speaker 1: I'm not sure I was brought up in a Christian household. I was sent to Christian schools, boarding schools, and so I had it pretty much thrust down my throat. Not as badly as if I was Catholic, but It was Anglican, which is more benign. I suppose when I was about nine, I began to realise that everybody has, in different parts of the world, they have different gods and so they can't all be right. But then I became more devout and was confirmed into the Church of England about 13 and then didn't give it up until I was about 16, I suppose. 00:12:29 Speaker 2: And what was it when you were 16 years old that made you give up your faith? 00:12:32 Speaker 1: Well, before that, I had been very impressed with the beauty and the elegance of living things. And I thought they had to be a creator. It was when I finally understood Darwinism, I suppose, that I realized that that wasn't true and that it was possible for the unguided forces of nature, of physics, going through evolution and Darwinian natural selection, that was well capable of building all the complexity and all the beauty that we see in the living world. 00:13:02 Speaker 2: How did your parents react when you told them you no longer believed in God? 00:13:05 Speaker 1: Well, I don't think they believed in God either. They never discussed it, but I don't think they did. 00:13:10 Speaker 2: They were Anglican people, though, weren't they? 00:13:13 Speaker 1: Like me, they were brought up Anglican. Yes, it doesn't mean they were Anglican, though. 00:13:17 Speaker 2: Do you ever feel nostalgia for the church and the faith of your childhood when you were involved in the church? 00:13:24 Speaker 1: I love cathedrals. Whenever I get a chance, I visit cathedrals. an ancient cathedral, and I'm very moved by the sheer size of them and the amount of effort that must have gone into building them in medieval times. I love some church music very much. I love some of the Bach church music handle, stained glass windows, and I'm familiar with the hymn book. I play hymn tunes on my instrument. So, yeah, I suppose you could call that nostalgia. Yeah. 00:13:57 Speaker 2: You've spent most of your life arguing that God doesn't exist. How do you respond to the possibility that you might be wrong? 00:14:03 Speaker 1: Well, everybody might be wrong, and it'd be rather thrilling in a way. I mean, I do think that the factual claims of religion, although I think they're false, they're very exciting. I mean, if there really was a superhuman intelligence, a creative intelligence at the root of the universe, at the base of the universe, it would be the most amazing thing scientific discovery would totally revolutionise our picture of what the universe is and why everything is there. So it would be very exciting. 00:14:36 Speaker 2: All right, so you wouldn't be disappointed if you found out you were wrong. You'd be thrilled if you were wrong? 00:14:40 Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure about thrilled, but certainly I'd be very curious. I mean, it would be a completely different scientific hypothesis about existence, and I'm always interested in that. 00:14:52 Speaker 2: Which leads to another question I wanted to ask you. Is there anything that could make you reconsider your atheism? 00:14:59 Speaker 1: I think so, yes. I mean, I think if Jesus returned in clouds of glory, probably. Although it's amazing what good conjuring tricks can do. 00:15:10 Speaker 2: Sorry, amazing what? 00:15:10 Speaker 1: What good conjuring tricks can do. 00:15:13 Speaker 2: So even if he did return in clouds of glory, you'd think, hang. 00:15:15 Speaker 1: On a second, this is probably a trick. No, I'd probably be convinced. 00:15:20 Speaker 2: Do you think you've become more certain of your atheism or less as you've gotten older? And how's that. 00:15:25 Speaker 1: About the same. 00:15:26 Speaker 2: About the same? Yes. OK. And how does that affect your daily life in terms of, I don't believe in God, I don't believe there's a life beyond this one? How does that practically outwork itself in the way you do life? 00:15:40 Speaker 1: It doesn't affect it very much. I mean, I live for my science and have done all my adult life, and so I'm thrilled to be... a part of educating myself in scientific reality. And so when you ask how it affects my life, my life is my science. And so I suppose that's the answer. 00:16:03 Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about a good friend of yours, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. 00:16:06 Speaker 1: Oh, yes. 00:16:08 Speaker 2: You were intellectual allies in the New Atheist Movement, and she was a very prominent critic of religion. And I know she was mentored very much by yourself. Then in 2023, she announced she'd become a Christian. I want to get your thoughts on that, starting with where were you when you found out she'd become a Christian, and what was your initial reaction when you heard the news? 00:16:29 Speaker 1: It's not one of those things that I remember, you know, like the assassination of John Kennedy. I think, I mean, I always knew, of course, that she was passionately anti-Islam, and I think that was her dominant motivation. When you say she was an atheist, I think she was much more anti-Islam, and. 00:16:50 Speaker 1: I suspect that part of her Christianity is seeing Christianity as a bulwark against Islam. And I get that because it's certainly in parts of the world, say in Africa, where there's a tussle between Christian missionaries and Islam propagandists. I see that there is a really good case for supporting team Christianity if the alternative is Islam. I think that may have been her main motivation. However, I do think she is a sincere

Christian now. I mean, I've talked to her about it, and she does seem to genuinely believe it. 00:17:29 Speaker 2: Did that surprise you? So you talked about, you know, because she was quite wary of Islam, so your initial thought was, OK, she's gone to Team Christianity because it's a good... but you say she seems to really believe it. Was that a surprise to you? Did you think, no, this is for political reasons, and then to find out she actually really does believe in Jesus? 00:17:50 Speaker 1: Yes, it was a surprise. I assumed that it was political. I mean, I had called her a political Christian, like I've called myself a cultural Christian, and I thought that neither of us were real Christians. I now think she probably is a real Christian, and. 00:18:09 Speaker 1: I think she's struggling with it. I've sometimes asked her, do you really believe Jesus was the Son of God? Do you really believe Jesus rose from the dead? And she doesn't say yes. She says, I choose to believe. And you can't really choose to believe something. Either you do believe it or you don't, is my view. 00:18:28 Speaker 2: What do you think she found in Christianity that caused her to convert so totally? 00:18:33 Speaker 1: Well, when I asked her that, she did say that she was... suffering from something close to a nervous breakdown. And Christian faith, as it were, rescued her from that. And I can't speak for her, but that's what she said. 00:18:48 Speaker 2: And has her conversion made you rethink Christianity at all? 00:18:53 Speaker 3: No. 00:18:54 Speaker 2: Not even a bit? 00:18:55 Speaker 1: Not even a bit, no. I mean, she's lovely and she's highly intelligent. And I can't say any more than that. 00:19:04 Speaker 2: Can you understand why a highly intelligent person might find Christianity compelling. 00:19:09 Speaker 1: I think I can, yes. I can't understand how a highly intelligent person could be a Genesis creationist, which he's not. And I don't think any really intelligent, knowledgeable person is, but. 00:19:20 Speaker 2: And yet she has faith in Jesus, the Son of God, risen. 00:19:23 Speaker 1: From the dead. Yes, she does. And you shouldn't talk to me about her. You should talk to her. 00:19:27 Speaker 2: Well, I'm just wondering, because she is, you're right, she's very intelligent. She writes beautifully. She speaks beautifully. 00:19:35 Speaker 1: Yes. 00:19:37 Speaker 2: So I was just curious as to how you felt when someone you know to be very intelligent becomes converted to Christianity, if that shocked you, surprised you, if you thought, has she lost her marbles? 00:19:49 Speaker 1: No, not at all. 00:19:50 Speaker 3: All. 00:19:50 Speaker 1: And certainly not as much as if she'd become a creationist, which she certainly hasn't. I don't think she believes in life after death, for example. OK. 00:19:59 Speaker 2: Well, I want to ask you about that, because that seems to be a pretty obvious question. You don't believe in an afterlife. What do you believe happens when you do die and does it make you nervous? 00:20:12 Speaker 1: Bertrand Russell said, I believe that when I die, I shall rot and nothing of my ego shall survive. And that's what I believe. I shan't be there. I mean, I shall know nothing about it. It'll be exactly like I was in the time of the dinosaurs and before and after. As I think it was Mark Twain said, I was dead for billions of years before I was born and never suffered the smallest inconvenience. 00:20:38 Speaker 2: It almost sounds nice. Yes. Are you frightened of death? 00:20:41 Speaker 1: No. I'm frightened of dying, but not of being dead. 00:20:45 Speaker 2: I want to talk a bit more about meaning and purpose. But just while we're talking about, you know, if you believe that when you die, that's it, you cease to exist. Is that sad? Does it make you think? What's the point of any of this? 00:21:01 Speaker 1: No, it certainly doesn't make me think of what's the point of it. It makes me sad in that I enjoy life and I'm curious to see what's going to... I mean, as a scientist, I'm curious to the rapid advances that science is making. I would like to be able to see what comes next. I mean, I'd like to come back in 500 years and go to university and learn again. But, yes, that does make me sad. 00:21:28 Speaker 2: What do you think about people who believe they'll see loved ones in the next life? I mean, you've got family, you've got friends. The idea that when you die, that's it. You never see them, hear from them, meet with them ever again. When someone that you love dies, what comfort does atheism offer? 00:21:47 Speaker 1: It's not the business of atheism to offer comfort. It's just realism. Obviously, when somebody I love dies, it is very sad, but there's nothing I can do about it. So I don't chide my philosophical position for failing to give comfort. That's not its business. The business is truth. 00:22:04 Speaker 2: Do you ever wish that there was something beyond this life? 00:22:12 Speaker 1: Well, certainly not eternal. I think that if there's anything frightening, it is eternity. I'd rather spend eternity under a general anaesthetic. than being there all the time. I mean, that's what it's going to be like. It's going to be like being under a general anaesthetic. We don't suffer under general anaesthetic. 00:22:31 Speaker 2: So what's your fear of eternity? 00:22:34 Speaker 1: The thought of going on and on and on and on and on for not just millions of years, billions of years, trillions of years. Don't you find that frightening? 00:22:44 Speaker 2: I find it frightening if our Labor government was in control for all that time. Absolutely. You believe we're here through the extraordinary workings of evolution and that our existence has no divine purpose. So where do you find meaning and purpose? If we came from nothing, we end up as nothing. Doesn't all of this mean nothing? 00:23:08 Speaker 1: No. It's tantalisingly feeding my curiosity. I mean, I love to understand.

I love to understand truth. I love to learn about truth. I love to discover all that we know about why we're here and where we come from. And that's what science provides. And I find it hard to imagine any better way to spend my intellectual life than in understanding how come we're here in the first place. 00:23:36 Speaker 2: Can I ask you, though, if there's no God, if there's nothing beyond the material, you talk about truth. What is truth? 00:23:45 Speaker 1: The study of reality of the real world and the real universe. 00:23:50 Speaker 2: That being defined by what you can see and hear and touch? 00:23:53 Speaker 1: Well, see and hear and touch, but aided by not only scientific instruments, but scientific modelling, scientific hypotheses, scientific theorising, which act as kind of super hyper telescopes and microscopes to aid our sense of reality. hearing and seeing and touching. 00:24:14 Speaker 2: How do you explain things like love or beauty, things that can't be touched, can't be studied through a microscope? Are they real or are they... Oh, they're real. 00:24:25 Speaker 1: And the fact that we can't study them in detail doesn't mean that they can't be in principle studied. I mean, they are brain states. They're manifestations of activity in the nervous system. And the nervous system is stupendously complicated, so it's not surprising that love and beauty are such baffling mysteries. They are, but they're not insoluble mysteries. 00:24:50 Speaker 2: They are chemical reactions within our own brain? 00:24:53 Speaker 1: I wouldn't put it as chemical necessarily. It's more electronic. I mean, it's like the number of neurons in the brain is very, very large, and so the interactions between those neurons produce... our sense of beauty and our loving, that kind of thing. 00:25:10 Speaker 2: Can something be objectively beautiful or is it all in the eye of the beholder since there's no objective beauty, there's no objective measurement? 00:25:19 Speaker 1: If by objective you mean that everybody would agree, then I suppose the answer is no because people don't agree about what they find beautiful. But I don't think there's anything sort of hovering in the air that you could call beauty. I think it is part of what's going on in the brain. 00:25:36 Speaker 2: You described yourself earlier as a cultural Christian, which is an interesting term. What do you mean by that? It's just funny when Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the world, says, I'm a cultural Christian. 00:25:48 Speaker 1: It doesn't mean anything. All it means is, as I said before, that I know my way around the hymn book and I know when to stand up and sit down in church. And I like Barth's Matthew Passion. 00:26:05 Speaker 2: Do you feel emotionally attached to a faith that you've intellectually rejected? Is there an emotional stirring? 00:26:11 Speaker 1: Like I said, I have an emotional response to great cathedrals and great church music, yes. 00:26:15 Speaker 2: When

you go to a great cathedral, do you, aside from the architecture is nice, do you feel anything when you're in a cathedral? Is there a sense of something other? 00:26:28 Speaker 1: I wouldn't use the word other. I mean, there's a stillness there. Maybe the organ is playing, maybe the choir is rehearsing, and I have an aesthetic response to those, yes. 00:26:40 Speaker 2: Something you could get just as easily in a concert hall that's got nothing to do with Christianity? 00:26:44 Speaker 1: Probably, yes. 00:26:46 Speaker 2: I read that you love Christmas carols. Why do you love Christmas carols? 00:26:50 Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't say I love them. I mean, it's... How do you feel when you hear them? I like some of the tunes. I mean, I don't feel anything spiritual, if that's what you mean. 00:27:00 Speaker 2: There's no nostalgia or anything like that? 00:27:02 Speaker 1: A little bit of nostalgia, yes. 00:27:04 Speaker 2: Do you think Western civilisation would be different, better or worse, if Christianity had never existed? 00:27:14 Speaker 1: I could sympathise with the case that it could be worse. 00:27:20 Speaker 2: How so? 00:27:20 Speaker 1: I think it's... that although Christianity was responsible for appalling things in the Middle Ages, it's grown out of that now in the way that Islam unfortunately hasn't. And I've said before that I've never met an Anglican clergyman I didn't like. I mean, I think either it attracts nice people or makes them nice. That's interesting. Yeah. 00:27:53 Speaker 2: After the break, more from my chat with Richard Dawkins. Has the decline in Christianity improved the West? And what does he make of the trans movement? All that coming up. Welcome back to the program. Let's return to my conversation with famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. What do you make of the decline of Christianity in the West? And do you think the West has gotten better because of the decline in Christianity? Or do you think the West has gotten worse because of the decline in faith? 00:28:24 Speaker 1: Well, I think that faith is a bad thing because faith means belief in something in the absence of evidence. And I think that evidence is the only reason to believe something. And if you have sufficiently powerful faith, you can be motivated to do appalling things like blowing up statues or blowing up people because you feel sincerely and really honestly motivated. that you're serving your God. 00:28:49 Speaker 2: Can I just ask you about that? Is it the faith that's the problem or is it the personal ideology that you have faith in? For instance, you're talking about Islam, so if I put to you faith in Jesus is very different to faith in Allah as Islam presents him. So faith is not so much the issue as the direction of one's faith. Would that be fair? 00:29:09 Speaker 1: No, I think it does have... I think faith is to blame precisely because you don't have to justify it, because you don't have to provide evidence for it. So although it's perfectly possible to have faith in good things, it's almost arbitrary. If you were brought up in a rival faith which taught that the really righteous thing to do was to blow up infidels, then because faith doesn't require justification, because faith is belief without evidence, if you're called upon to justify your belief, you say, I don't have to. It's just my faith. And that, I think, is pernicious, even though your faith, as it happens, might be good. I could put it this way. There is a logical pathway from faith to doing terrible things There's not a logical pathway between atheism and doing terrible things. Some atheists. 00:30:04 Speaker 2: The Soviet Union would probably disagree with you. 00:30:06 Speaker 1: Some terrible people have happened to be atheists, just as some terrible people have happened to be Christian and Muslim. But there is no logical pathway that goes from atheism to doing terrible things, whereas there could be a logical pathway between faith... in a God. It could lead you to do good things, and in many cases it does, but the fact that it's faith, the fact that it doesn't require justification is what's. 00:30:33 Speaker 2: Can I ask you about that? So you say there's no logical pathway between atheism and doing bad things, but there is between faith and doing bad things. So if I'm an atheist, so I don't believe there's any afterlife, there's no accountability, there's no God I have to answer to, wouldn't that be a fairly easy path to just doing whatever I want versus, say, a Christian who says, one day I've got to give account to God for my life, I'd better behave myself? 00:30:56 Speaker 1: That's rather an undignified reason for behaving yourself if you're sucking up to God. 00:31:00 Speaker 2: I think there's better reasons to behave oneself than to suck up to God. But just to make your point, you said, you know, atheism to bad things, there's no logical pathway. I would have thought... If you don't have to ever give account for your life, that's a pretty easy path. 00:31:14 Speaker 1: There's no logical pathway between atheism and doing good things. There's no logical pathway between atheism and doing anything. It's just a philosophical belief in the absence of a spirit world, in the absence of a divine creator, just like not believing in fairies. that doesn't have a logical pathway to doing either good things or bad things. Whereas positively believing in fairies or fairy godmothers or something like that might lead you to do either good things or bad things. 00:31:40 Speaker 2: I'll move on from this in just a moment. But what if you didn't positively believe in fairies, but you did positively believe in Jesus Christ and everything that he taught? The teachings of Jesus don't lead you to do bad things. 00:31:52 Speaker 1: As it happens, they don't. But that's not to the credit of faith. That's to the credit of Jesus, which is different. 00:31:58 Speaker 2: You're giving Jesus some credit? 00:32:00 Speaker

1: Of course, yes. I mean, Jesus was clearly a very good man. But faith is not a good philosophical stance. 00:32:08 Speaker 2: If Christianity continues to retreat from the public square, what should replace it? 00:32:16 Speaker 1: I think a rational approach to the world and an attempt to sincerely discover what's true. 00:32:26 Speaker 2: Do you have faith that humanity will get to that point? Or do you think that there will always be some other philosophical framework that people will need to worship something, they'll need to find meaning outside of their own? 00:32:40 Speaker 1: I wouldn't use words like worship, but I'm open-minded about whether we'll ever know everything. I mean, there are some physicists who think that we are on the threshold of a theory of everything. and will understand everything, when they unite relativity with quantum theory. Other physicists think there'll always be, every hill you climb, you look over the edge and you'll find you need a higher one than you need to climb. And I'm open-minded about that. I think either possibility is very exciting, either the possibility that we can know everything and understand everything, or the possibility that there's a completely open-ended pathway towards understanding which will never end. 00:33:21 Speaker 2: We are seeing the retreat of Christianity in many parts of the world. You've mentioned Islam as one competing value system that may fill the void. The other, I suppose, is what some people call the woke movement, the progressive movement. I can't really think of too many other philosophies at the moment in the West that are competing to fill the vacuum left by Christianity. Are you partial to either of those or would you choose Christianity over Islam and over woke progressive ideology? 00:33:52 Speaker 1: Probably, yes, depending exactly what you mean by woke progressive ideology. I mean, I'm in favour of kindness and human welfare and welfare of sentient beings. But some of the causes that the so-called woke people embrace, such as the trans nonsense, I'm strongly against. 00:34:12 Speaker 2: I want to ask you about the trans nonsense in a moment. But just before we get on to that, you mentioned kindness. You mentioned doing the right thing. If there's no Christian framework, where do those things come from? Is it not a matter of opinion, what you find kind? I might hate doing that and say, no, I'm going to do the opposite. 00:34:30 Speaker 1: Yes, in principle, I think that's right. I mean, I think that there is no absolute standard. 00:34:35 Speaker 2: So how do you organise a society if you say there's no objective truth, there's no right or wrong, it's every man for himself? 00:34:42 Speaker 1: Well, there's certainly objective truth, but there may not be an objective right or wrong. What has impressed me is that as history goes on in the long run, We seem to be getting nicer. I mean, we don't go to the Colosseum and cheer when lions eat Christians or anybody else. And we are appalled by cruelty to animals. We're appalled by cruelty to children. Our respect for women, our respect for children is steadily getting better by my standards and probably yours. 00:35:20 Speaker 2: So let me push back on that for a second, because we'll get to the trans issue in a moment. But in terms of our treatment of children, yes, in so many ways it's gotten so much better. And yet, right around the Western world, we're arguing for the right to ply children with puberty blockers and so on and so forth, which I think you have major problems with. 00:35:40 Speaker 1: I'm appalled by that. 00:35:41 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:35:41 Speaker 2: So on the one hand, I think there's many areas where we have become more moral, if you want to use that phrase, although it's difficult to use if you don't believe in a moral framework. On the other hand, though, we've become very sophisticated at barbarianism. We're not the Romans in the Colosseum, but we've come up with some very technologically advanced ways to be cruel, have we not? 00:35:59 Speaker 1: I think it's not quite right to say that we lack any criterion for morality. I mean, there are, as a very well-respected profession of moral philosophers who do things like generalise the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and it's Right to say that there's no objective proof that that's the right thing to do. But I think it possibly is a personal taste. I think most of us accept the idea that we would probably base our morality on something like that principle. 00:36:39 Speaker 2: I want to get to the trans issue, but you just gave me a thought. You mentioned, you know, do unto others as they would do unto you. Jesus famously taught that. You mentioned before you don't have a problem with Jesus at all. If I said to you, I'm going to be a Christian and I just want to follow to the letter the teachings of Jesus, would you endorse that and say that was a good thing and a good thing if most people tried to follow Jesus? 00:37:03 Speaker 1: I think so, probably, yes. I'm not sure I'd endorse Christian dogma. I mean, things like the idea that Jesus came down to earth to redeem our sins. I think that's a horrible idea. It's a disgusting idea, actually. 00:37:20 Speaker 2: The problem is he said that, though. 00:37:22 Speaker 1: I suspect it was not Jesus, but Paul and some of the church fathers. Okay. 00:37:30 Speaker 2: All right. Let's go to trans issues for a moment. You've spoken out against trans ideology, much to your own hurt. I think you were you were actually awarded an American Humor Association award, and then they withdrew that award because you said something so controversial as trans women are not real women. Talk to me about the trans issue and why you decided to speak out about it. 00:37:53 Speaker 1: It's a debauching of science and a debauching of language. I mean, there's the idea that you can just choose what sex you are. I have no objection to

people announcing that I wish to be called... Priscilla, when previously I was called Philip or something, that's their freedom to do that. But when they insist that other people do the same thing, when they insist that other people agree that they are women, or whatever it is, then that's debauching language. The divide between male and female is scientifically universal in all animals and plants. There's no reason why we should suddenly stick Homo sapiens on a pedestal and say ordinary language as a language of science doesn't apply anymore because we're human. That's sort of human exceptionalism without any scientific justification whatever. And the perversion of language using male language and insisting other people use male language when you actually are female or vice versa is a subversion of language. 00:39:08 Speaker 2: Speaking out about it, I mentioned you did pay a price. You had an award withdrawn. I imagine there would have been speaking engagements that were perhaps denied to you or universities where they perhaps didn't want you to speak anymore. Did that hurt? 00:39:23 Speaker 1: Yes. I mean, I've been attacked by religious creationists and that doesn't hurt at all. But there's a certain element of being hurt by what I had thought of as my own people. People of reason and science who've shown that they're not people of reason and science. What I actually said which so annoyed them was what's the difference between announcing that you're a different sex and announcing you're a different race. Because there have been celebrated cases of people, of white people deciding to be nice if they were black and saying, from now on, I want you to regard me as black. And that's an absolute no-no with these woke people, whereas saying exactly the same thing of sex is not. And I simply pointed out the comparison between those two and I actually used the word discuss. What's the difference between them? To them, It's just heresy to suggest that you can announce that you're a different race, but you can't announce that you're a different colour. I'm sorry, they're different to sex, but I love it round. 00:40:30 Speaker 2: It's quite confusing, isn't it? People like JK Rowling, yourself, have all paid a price speaking out against it. If it's not corrected, do you see it just being isolated to gender, or do you think there could be a problem for the West going further down the track once we start to reject... all boundaries, all definitions. Is this something you're afraid of for the West? 00:40:53 Speaker 1: Yes, I think it stems from a philosophical position that there is no such thing as objective truth. And the only truth is your own personal truth. Your truth is your truth. My truth is my truth. We're entitled to our own truth. You're not entitled to your own truth. There is a truth out there. And you may be wrong, I may be wrong, but one of us is wrong if we hold contradictory opinions. 00:41:15 Speaker 2: Let me finish by asking you, how would you like to be remembered? I mean, you're 85 years old. You're going strong. When I'm 85, I trust that I'll be as alert and as on point as you are. How would you like to be remembered, though? Do you start to think about legacy? 00:41:32 Speaker 1: I would like to be remembered as a man of science, a man of truth, who stood up for objective truth, which is truth. crew everywhere, all over the universe. 00:41:46 Speaker 2: Richard Dawkins, I really appreciate you coming to the studio and speaking with me. And I wish you all the best for your speaking tour this week. 00:41:53 Speaker 1: Thank you very much indeed. 00:41:55 Speaker 2: My pleasure. Well, there you go. That was my chat with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. You can re-watch the interview on news24. com. au and you can get tickets for Dawkins' Australian appearances at tickertech.com.au. Don't go anywhere. Joining me after the break to discuss what we've just heard, Kel Richards and Joe Hildebrand. That'll be interesting. That's next. Welcome back to the program. Joining me now is Joe Hildebrand and Kel Richards. Good evening. Keen to get your thoughts on that conversation. What did Dawkins say, Joe, in that interview that you found surprising? 00:42:31 Speaker 6: I thought it was a fantastic interview and I thought you did really well in sort of drawing out of him. And I think you could actually see him thinking in real time, is this really. 00:42:40 Speaker 2: What I believe? 00:42:41 Speaker 6: Or in some cases, is this really all I believe? I thought that, you know, saying, you know, that all we have in relation to, say, responding to a glorious piece of art, Michelangelo's David, the Mona Lisa, is just, you know, electronic neural reactions. I think a lot of people would find it difficult to actually accept that, let alone believing that the only reason you feel love for someone or that you want to spend the rest of your life with them is just a huge number of sort of electrical impulses going off in your brain. And... And I think that's where a lot of people who might have thought that they agreed with that kind of level of atheism, because that's ultra-atheism, would suddenly think, hang on, no, I'm more than a bunch of different electronic signals. 00:43:30 Speaker 1: I'm me. I am someone. 00:43:33 Speaker 6: And that, I think, is where we really get on. It's one thing to say I don't believe there's an afterlife. It's another thing to say I don't believe there's a soul or that human beings have a soul or, indeed, you talked about human exceptionalism or that human beings... are not exceptional. I think we are actually different to other species. I think there is something that separates us. And I think that for better or worse, you could call it a soul. And also we are the only species that conceive of something greater than we are to aspire to, to aspire to be, even if we know we might never, ever get there. A dog doesn't do that. 00:44:10 Speaker 2: A sheep

doesn't do that, as far as I'm aware. Certainly. What about you, Kel? What did he say that you thought, oh, I wasn't expecting that? 00:44:17 Speaker 5: Can I be honest and say nothing? Because I've read a lot of Dawkins over the years. I actually did my master's thesis on Dawkins. So he didn't catch me by surprise. He's still on a path that other people have spoken to him about. What he says about faith is just wrong. It's linguistically wrong. He's been corrected by various professors over the years and he won't change. Faith does not mean believing something without evidence. 00:44:44 Speaker 2: Correct. 00:44:44 Speaker 5: That's not what the word means. Faith means trust, rely, depend. 00:44:48 Speaker 2: And there is evidence for Christianity. There is. Now, you might say there's not enough evidence for a person to believe. Look, one of the books on my shelf is called... It's not based on nothing. 00:44:55 Speaker 1: That's right. 00:44:56 Speaker 5: One of the books on my shelf is called Know Why You Believe. And it's reasons for, so it's not in the absence of evidence. And faith means believe, means trust, rely, depend. I'm sitting on this chair because I have faith in the chair. It's not something mysterious. The other thing he gets wrong is he gets Jesus wrong. 00:45:14 Speaker 2: How so? 00:45:15 Speaker 5: You can't say Jesus is a good man and leave it at that. Jesus didn't leave that option open to us. Because most of his teaching, he did teach love your neighbor as yourself, but most of his teaching was about himself. I am the true vine. I am the way, the truth and the life. He mainly taught about himself and he said he was God. Now, someone who goes around saying to people and being believed by people that he's God is either lying. So he's malicious and nasty. 00:45:43 Speaker 2: That's not good. 00:45:44 Speaker 5: Or else he's a lunatic on a level with the man who thinks he's a poached egg. In that case, he's not good. 00:45:50 Speaker 3: Or it's true. 00:45:51 Speaker 5: If he's a good man, he is also God. 00:45:53 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:45:53 Speaker 2: Okay. I agree with that. All right. We've only got a few minutes, so I want to keep these answers brief. But was there a point in my conversation with Dawkins where, Joe, you were watching and thought, come on, James, jump. 00:46:02 Speaker 1: In at that point? 00:46:03 Speaker 6: No, I think you did it really well. I was glad it wasn't just a shouting match. I think those interviews are always really boring. We know that you're a man of faith. We know that he's a man who doesn't believe or actively disapproves of faith. And I thought it was a really, really good discussion. But I think it did sort of illuminate just how, I mean, it seemed to me, if I had to hang out with one of you, you seemed like you'd be a lot more fun to hang out with. 00:46:26 Speaker 1: I mean, he has such a. 00:46:28 Speaker 6: Narrow understanding for all his book smarts. He has such a narrow understanding

of the sort of depth of humanity. And I was reminded of Voltaire's great quote, if God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. And that's because human beings need to believe in things. They need to. 00:46:47 Speaker 1: Have that sense of faith. And it's called a mystery. 00:46:50 Speaker 6: I don't believe it has to be proven, but it's called the mystery of the faith because that gives us a reason to be alive. It gives us a sense of being part of something greater. 00:47:00 Speaker 2: You know, the other thing that he said that I did raise my eyebrows at, I said, what if you found out God was true? 00:47:06 Speaker 5: Yes. 00:47:06 Speaker 2: And he said, well, that would be very exciting. And it reminded me of C.S. Lewis, who once said, even if you don't believe in the claims of Christianity be true, you should wish that they were true. And he did take me a little by surprise when he said, well, I'd actually be excited if it turned out that I was wrong and God did exist. 00:47:25 Speaker 5: What was interesting was his personality. He has actually soaked up far more Christian culture than he's aware of. His sense of decency, his sense of right and wrong, is actually something he's absorbed from a highly Christianised culture. So you had two people really controlled by a Christianised culture talking to each other. That's why he was so nice and you were so nice and it was such a pleasant conversation to listen to because, in fact, it was a far more Christianised conversation than you expect from Dawkins. 00:47:54 Speaker 2: Can I just say I actually really liked him? Yeah. I quite liked him. Before the interview, during and after, I found him to be an absolute gentleman and we spoke before the interview. He knew where I was coming from. And we actually laughed about the fact we are completely diametrically opposed in our world views. But isn't that something we should be modelling, that, you know what, we can disagree nicely? 00:48:15 Speaker 6: This is exactly what the world needs now, the ability to disagree agreeably, as the English say. But this is, you know, just because you are... A Christian or a person of faith doesn't mean you are a good person. Just because you're an atheist doesn't mean you are a good person or a bad person. People will use those things. And, again, I have to take issue with his saying that atheism never led to anything. What about the cult of reason, which was an atheistic cult in the French Revolution? 00:48:43 Speaker 2: That was the. 00:48:44 Speaker 6: Most radical and it was in the middle of the terror and they went around beheading everybody they didn't like because they thought they were all too irrational. 00:48:51 Speaker 2: We've only got about one minute left, but right at the end there he was talking about... And he's been such a good advocate in terms of women's rights and talking about the truth regarding gender. But he said, you know, he sees this problem where if we go away from absolute truth and it's just everyone does what's right in their own eyes, then that would be a problem for Western civilisation. I thought... Richard, can you hear yourself speaking? 00:49:14 Speaker 1: Exactly. 00:49:15 Speaker 5: I mean, the word truth means, one of the great British philosophers said, truth just means how? 00:49:20 Speaker 2: Things are. 00:49:20 Speaker 5: It's as simple as that. And he's saying the same thing. But that's a Christian view of truth. We are trying to face how things are. And how things are is more than atoms and molecules. There's an unexplained residue over and there is an explanation. 00:49:35 Speaker 2: I was also fascinated, Joe, by, you know, he mentioned truth. I reckon a dozen times or more. And I don't know if I got this wrong, but I felt like when he mentions truth, he's talking about laws of the universe, which is interesting. But there's the truth of right and wrong, which he plainly said, well, that's non-existent. That is completely up for grabs. And how you have a a society where you don't believe in objective truth in terms of it's one thing to say this is a table, but it's another thing to say this is how we should live. And that's the gift, Chris. We're going to have to cut because we're going to go to Paul Murray. But thank you for joining me. 00:50:12 Speaker 1: Thank you, my friend. 00:50:13 Speaker 2: I appreciate your insights. Thanks for watching the program. I'll be back next week. But right now, here's Paul Murray. Good night.