Richard Dawkins Refutes “Christian Science” 

All the aggression thinly disguised as grinning and laughing, diverting his squinted eyes up or down as his mind struggles to contort an answer to a straightforward question while Prof. Dawkins remains open-faced, eyes directed at the object of his inquiry. You can almost see the defensive force field this man emits around himself. These are his only weapons to combat facts and reality. How terrified he would be without their protection. How tiresome small minds can be.

I don't know why Richard wastes his valuable time on 'Flatearthers' like that

Religion is a wonderful way of keeping common people quiet. - Napoleon

Sorry, but this is one of Richard's interviews that I can only tolerate for about 10 minutes. I've no idea how he has the self-control to spend so much time with idiots without shouting at them.

I don’t have the patience Richard has with dimwits. I had to stop

I think Richard is the most pleasant person on the planet right now.

The term "Christian Science" is an oxymoron used by people who don't understand what science is

Dawkins is a better man then I, how can he stand there a suffer such a fool as Hawkes?

It’s sad that these religious people didn’t evolve properly.

The #1 argument I always here is "you can't objectively prove moral standards, so without God, there is no objective basis for a moral framework." Well if that's true, then God's law isn't objective either, it's authoritative. If you're acknowledging that morality *cannot* be objective, then God can't have objective reasons for it either, which makes his moral code an arbitrary whim enforced through power. If God does have objective reasons for his moral code, then you're acknowledging that there is a logical basis for morality, so what exactly puts such logic out of human reach?

He’s clearly a real life David Brent

About 6 minutes in, Richard asks him about Noah's Ark - specifically "what's that got to do with a science lesson?" He immediately replies with - and I quote "well, I suppose that depends on your opinion....." I'm a bit surprised Richard didn't immediately pull him up on such a glaring error - that's ok precisely the point of science - it doesn't depend on your opinion - AT ALL. So really that belied he was on the defensive from the outset. I also found the charm offensive offputting -- the constant fake laugh got embarrassing. I don't know how Richard has the patience to deal with this shit tbh.....

If I walked around talking to "Dave", someone I believe lives all around us, but no one can see him, and I tell people we must live by a document that I say Dave wrote, and that I felt compelled to force Dave's words into the minds of other peoples' children, people would think I was suffering from a mental illness. I would be put on medical leave, given medications, be required to attend therapy sessions, and likely lose my job; and rightly so.

Constant interruption is not only rude but a sign of being defensive. IMHO if you believe that Noah's Ark actually happened you show your true colours.

I find it very hard to believe his anecdotal story at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1227">20:27</a>.

@ <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1834">30:34</a> - Show me that English exercise, because I don't believe you! show me!

I don't think GOD is afraid of my questions? So talking to your self, is the pathway to GOD? Religion, One Oh One: Self delusion, is a necessary requirement. 🤦‍♂

I wouldn't want any of my children going to a school that is teaching such drivel.

I think this man is a total fraud. The example of a 14 yr old given such a stupid exercise in English punctuation is nonsense. Horrific that any social worker would led a foster child near him.

Grief - I find his general outlook very frustrating - wanting to confuse the supernatural with the scientifically proven.

Dr. Richard Dawkins after watching so many times of religious people failingly attempting to use science and philosophy to defend their religious claims, it makes me question do religious people even actually care about philosophy and properly applying the scientific method or only using it’s knowledge and discoveries to support their belief systems?

He thinks he can put a belief and a fact into a box called TRUTH without thinking this to be at all dangerous. No wonder he doesn't want to teach Moral Philosophy. Quite pitiable.

Unfortunate that this episode is just airing a list of what this goofball finds "frustrating" when his make belief butts up against reality

Wtf

I suppose the case the man is making is; if there is no law giver (God), where does our morality come from?

@ <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1601">26:41</a> - and Noah's ark is factual history?

@ <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1379">22:59</a> - Hitchens would say "Religion poisons everything"

Most and by no means all the Christians that I know are just nice people and I suspect they would be without Christianity. Women are by and large gentler and kinder than men, go to church and you will find more women there than men, that speaks volumes.

I am a student attending a Korean high school. Can I have a written interview?

I did not like the format at all.

I loved seeing you in Austin. Thank you so much.

Dr Dawkins I respect your work immensely and think you're fundamentally correct. However, I find it so tedious that you promote your debates with boring religious thinkers. We know your position with respect to these thinkers. It would be so much more interesting if you engaged with the ideas of Jordan Peterson, or Jonathan Pageau, or John Vervaeke. No serious contemporary religious thinker actually engages with religious ideas at the level that these traditional religious thinkers that you debate do. Stop debating the strawman and engage with sincere, serious, interesting religious thinkers. You could contribute so much if you actually listened to what they have to say.

Religion is emotional cope. Morals arise from consequences. The consequences aren’t always immediately realized, which is why religion was invented. The problem is that religion was invented by people thousands of years ago with a primitive understanding of the world and long term consequences. All religions contain truthiness to varying degrees but they are fundamentally flawed at their foundations because they aren’t adaptable to new knowledge of nature and long term consequences. The most adaptable religion will survive the longest. Christianity has made a good effort to adapt with its multitudes of denominations but it’s starting to die out.

That guy's teeth are a dead giveaway. He's what you'd call "hill people" That full grin is truly frightening. I thought it was Joaquin Phoenix for a minute

The word ' enjoy' is doing some heavy lifting here, but yes, good job at trying to reach this unchangeable fellow.

Well... quite an interesting Idea... Comparing how (crappy) the world is and stating that Religions are in the majority... Isn't that an indication of how crooked Religion is? #Lawyermode

Would have been good to have the Late Karl Popper remark on this conversation. Science tests temporary hypotheses to be confirmed or refuted. Popper cites Einstein, who said the best fate for a theory was it to become a limiting case in a greater theory. When Dawkins debates theology, often it is with Christian, herein, a reduced concept to the God Construct is reviewed. Might the existence or non existence of God be better debated from the perspective of Deism, rather than Christianity? Herein, noting Newton, (Principia Mathematica, 1687): “The supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords; but we do not say, my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of Gods; we do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: These are titles which have no respect to servants. The word God usually signifies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God; a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God.” Peter S. Ph.D. (Atheist)

Loved the long shot. Thank you Richard for your grace and patience.

Thank God for Richard Dawkins…😅 If he wouldn’t engage with these frustrating discussions and interviews, who would? I believe that in a hundred years the likes of Richard and Christopher Hitchens will be remembered as the great missionaries of rational thinking, and in a thousand years as the great ones who dragged humanity from the dark era of superstition into the era of true enlightenment.

99% of the energy Dawkins wastes saying things he thinks is anything great can quickly be put aside by Jordan Peterson's one sentence 'i know much more about what he doesn't know than what he knows about what I don't know'. The foolishness of the old, narrow minded scientist. Sad

I used to be a teacher for 10 years, and if my opinion counts for anything, I think this guy is a good teacher, and probably a nice person. I still agree with Richard on the science matters (I am not insane!)

Lots of nervous laughs out there.

I wish I was ignorant about reality. It would be so much more magical to live in a delusion where there's someone looking after us, with the promise of an even better life after this one. Unfortunately it's all absolute utter bollocks.

Looks well suspicious! Wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him!

There's a lot of great comments here. I'd like to state something simple: Hawkes gets on my f*ing nerves!

I save some of Richard's content, I think I'll give this a miss

Camera man getting a full workout with this interview

Also, <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="911">15:11</a> be afraid. Be very afraid

You have influenced my life in the idea of consuming facts and not fantasy.

Dawkins is right, religion is not science. But it is also true that Dawkins' alleged "science" is actually religion. You don't believe it? Then read on... 😅 “There is no evidence that any religion is true," Richard Dawkins said elsewhere, and I agree - including his own. As a Christian, I can easily deal with Dawkins’ atheism, but as a mathematician I cannot accept his stunning lack of logic. What is a “religion” but a metaphysical worldview based on dogma and shared with others? And doesn't Dawkins share with his community a worldview based on a dogmatic claim to empirical evidence (rather than simply reason, which is the real basis of science by not ignoring the fact that there is a lot of "non-empirical" reality, such as dealt with in mathematics, e.g.) ? This is obviously a very dogmatic stance, because where the hell is the “evidence“ that all existence is empirically evident ? It is Dawkins' faith, his religion, he believes in it without evidence. On the contrary, It is astonishingly illogical, especially for an evolutionary biologist. For obviously there is a reality beyond the horizon of Homo sapiens, just as there is beyond the horizon of Pan troglodytes. This is what is called “transcendence” - something Dawkins is apparently blind to, even though it lies in the very logic of evolution. The French philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Henri Bergson understood evolution much better than Dawkins. In his main work "Creative Evolution" he brilliantly analyzes intelligence as a "product" of evolution and finds its blind spots. He understood that reality transcends human intelligence: "Philosophers are mistaken when they apply to metaphysical speculation a method of thinking designed for action." And Bergson astutely shows that creation (unlike magic 😆) is necessarily evolutionary. Dawkins' notorious attempt to ridicule other channels of human experience - spiritual, mystical, religious - is therefore not only stupid and arrogant, it is similar to the laughter of a deaf-mute who makes fun of a group of people dancing because he himself cannot hear the music .

The david brent of Christian science

Why are these characters Dawkins talk to so unpleasent? Always unpleasent....have you noticed, the less christian, the more pleasent and viceversa...what is happening? Is religion doing something for their charachter?

I've got a lot of respect for Richard Dawkins who managed to stay intelligent throughout his career, because every time I think about religion I feel in a very tangible way that my IQ is regressing. The quality of the argumentation is so low that if I spend too much time swimming in these waters I end up lowering my standards and it can be tough to get back to thinking about more complex problems.

This man that Dawkins is revolting. He is the sort that naturally recognizes the high control situation that a religious school provides. I do not think the chap ever did anything illegal with a student: but the immorality of teaching propaganda in that school is without doubt.

That was excruciating.

TY people in chat, didn't mean to anything other that respectful to some I disagreed with.

How old is this interview? I can’t find any reference to Adrian Hawkes on the internet. I’m appalled at his attitude. As a person who is involved in education to say that the only reason he does not commit pedophilia and or rape is because God forbids it is mind blowing.

Scary guy.

The gods i believe in are Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. 🇦🇺 🦘 😊

As if "eternal salvation" were a thing found outside of fiction. Faith is shameless. The believers are allowed to mask their crimes with worthless faith, indoctrinating children with abhorrent suffering on a cross for the sake of a name, a god, a state or what have you. The reminder of what lengths of punishment the human animal can inflict. The Jesus Christ Cult advocates violence with a mask of peace. The cult is made for wolves dressed as sheep. (Micah <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="421">7:1</a>-6; Luke <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="769">12:49</a>-53) 34Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’i 37Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; 38and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. 39Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Richard Dawkins is averse to to Christianity and God, and yet, he and every other atheists can not disprove the existence of a transcendent deity (God).