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The Root of All Evil?

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Writer and presenter
Richard Dawkins

The Root of All Evil? is a television documentary written and presented by Richard Dawkins, in which he argues that the world would be better off without religion. The documentary was first broadcast in January 2006, in the form of two 45 minute episodes (excluding advertisement breaks), on Channel 4 in the UK. Dawkins said that the title "The Root of All Evil?" was not his own choice, and he wasn't in favour of it, but that Channel 4 insisted on it to create controversy.[1]

Part 1: The God Delusion

The God Delusion explores the unproven traditions that are treated as fact by religious faiths, and the extremes to which some followers have taken them. Dawkins opens the programme by describing "would-be murderers . . . who want to kill you and me, and themselves, because they're motivated by what they think is the highest ideal." Dawkins argues that "the process of non-thinking called faith" is not a way of understanding the world, rather it is opposed to modern science which tests hypotheses and builds theories to describe the world.

Lourdes

Dawkins first visits Lourdes which he sees as relatively benign, but questions Father Liam Griffin about its effectiveness. Dawkins states that he considers the 66 declared miracles, and claims of about 2,000 unexplained cures (out of approximately 80,000 visitors per year over about 150 years), to be statistically meaningless. He then discusses the origins of religious myths, how "faith requires a positive suspension of critical faculties." He cites the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary, which became Roman Catholic doctrine without any evidence, even from the Bible, as an example.

Faith versus science

Following a description of the scientific method of using evidence to find out about things like how the sun works, and the age of the earth, Dawkins relates how, as a student, he attended a lecture in which a visiting American researcher demolished a hypothesis long promoted by an elderly professor. The professor then strode to the front and shook hands saying, "My dear fellow, I wish to thank you, I have been wrong all these fifteen years." The audience "clapped their hands raw" at this example of the scientific ideal. Dawkins then sets out his "Mount Improbable" analogy of Charles Darwin's idea of gradual evolution through natural selection, as being like slowly walking round a gradual slope rather than leaping up a cliff in one bound, as per the supernatural hypothesis of a "designer God." Thus science explains the complexity of life, but "The design hypothesis couldn't even begin to do that, because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who made the designer?"

Colorado Springs

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Dawkins and Ted Haggard

Next, Dawkins visits Colorado Springs to discuss the rise of fundamentalist Christianity in America, and his concern that proponents "are foisting evident falsehoods on their flock. The evangelicals are denying scientific evidence just to support bronze age myths." In an interview, Ted Haggard, in an attempt to discredit evolution, claims that evolutionists say that "(the eye) just formed itself somehow." Dawkins, irritated, states that no evolutionists have ever claimed this is how the eye formed. Haggard responds by saying "maybe you haven't met the [evolutionists] I have," but fails to cite any examples, becoming increasingly animated as he talks forcefully of "intellectual arrogance." Later, as Dawkins and the camera crew pack up, Haggard drives up and tells them to get off his land, threatening jail and seizure of the film. Dawkins explains that Haggard apparently took talk of evolution as amounting to calling his flock animals, which in a sense humans are.

Jerusalem

Dawkins then goes on to Jerusalem, where he interviews people on both sides of the Middle East conflict. He expects Yousef al-Khattab (Joseph Cohen), an American-born Jew who came to Israel as a settler before converting to Islam, to see both viewpoints. Al-Khattab responds to Dawkins' atheism by saying, "I hate atheists because atheists don't care if somebody fornicates in the middle of the street, they don't care if their women go bouncing around on TV topless. It makes no difference to them, they don't believe anything. If you don't believe in a set rule and you believe that a constitution can change, and you can amend the rules as they go along, and you don't believe in God's rule then what law do you have? You just have man-made laws."

When challenged by al-Khattab on the how Western men "dress their women," Dawkins responds that it is not for him to "dress" women, that they are free to dress themselves. When asked of his thoughts on the September 11, 2001 attacks, al-Khattab states that if there were no state of Israel, then there would have been no such attacks on New York City.

Part 2: The Virus of Faith

In The Virus of Faith, Dawkins makes a more emotional appeal. He examines the moral framework that religions are often cited as providing, and argues against the indoctrination of children. The title of this episode comes from Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene, in which Dawkins first introduced the concept of a meme.

Sectarian education

Dawkins interviews Rabbi Herschel Gluck at a London Hasidic Jewish school, in which students are largely isolated from the outside world. Dawkins cites Rabbi Gluck’s stereotypical Jewish accent, despite being "London born and bred," as being "a testament to the isolation" of the Hasidic Jewish community in London. Rabbi Gluck advises that all the schoolchildren are made aware of evolution (as they must be under English educational standards), but is confident that the majority will believe that God created the earth in six days. Dawkins seems bewildered when Rabbi Gluck goes on to describes science, like religion, to be merely a "tradition," as opposed to a discipline of reason and doubt, whose claims change on an almost daily basis.

Also in London, Dawkins visits Phoenix Academy, one of the semi-independent city academies introduced by Tony Blair's government, pointing out that it follows the American Baptist Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, which "slips religious superstitions back into science." Dawkins is shown round by Adrian Hawkes (the head teacher of the school) and remarks on how the curriculum booklet used for science has God or Jesus on "almost every page," to which Hawkes says that they don't have separate religious instruction lessons because it is part and parcel of the teaching. Dawkins was taken aback by finding Noah's Ark in a lesson, and asks what that has to do with science, to which the head says it depends on what you believe, and as a kid he had been taught science that is no longer accepted.

Another lesson talks about AIDS being the "wages of sin," and Dawkins asks if this is mixing health education with moralistic preaching. Hawkes responds that, "the flip side of that is that if there is no God and there is no law-giver, why does it matter what I do? Why is rape wrong? Why is paedophilia wrong? Why are any of these things wrong, if there is no law-giver?" Dawkins replies, "You've just said a very revealing thing. Are you telling me that the only reason why you don't steal and rape and murder is that you're frightened of God?" When Hawkes then says that "all people, if they think they can get away with something and there is no consequences, we actually tend to do that," Dawkins says, "I think we'd better leave it at that," ending the debate but in a voice-over commenting that the children are being "encouraged to consider the weird claims of the bible alongside scientific fact," and are "also being indoctrinated into what an objective observer might see as a warped morality."

Religion as a virus

Next, Dawkins discusses specifically the theme of religion seen as a virus. He begins by explaining how he sees the mind of a child to be genetically pre-programmed to believe without questioning the word of authority figures, especially parents – the evolutionary imperative being that no child would survive by adopting a sceptical attitude towards everything their elders said. But this same imperative, he claims, then leaves children open to "infection" by religion.

Dawkins meets the psychologist Jill Mytton who suffered an abusive religious upbringing herself – she now helps to rehabilitate similarly affected children. Mytton explains how, for a child, images of hell fire are in no sense metaphorical, but instead inspire real terror. When pressed by Dawkins to describe the reality of hell, Mytton reveals that the images of eternal damnation which she absorbed as a child, still have the power to affect her now.

Dawkins then meets someone who is unapologetic about using images of hell to inspire terror. Pastor Keenan Roberts has been running the Hell House Outreach programme for 15 years, producing theatre shows aimed at children as young as twelve. We see rehearsal scenes depicting an abortion, and a gay marriage ceremony. Roberts says he wants to leave an indelible impression upon the youngsters who come to see his show, and Dawkins is in no doubt that he will do just that.

Biblical morality

Dawkins interviews Michael Bray, a friend of Paul Hill who was sentenced to death for murdering a doctor who performed abortions. Dawkins takes Bray's belief that the Bible sanctions capital punishment for adultery as a cue to discuss his views that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, clashes with modern secular ethics and how people are using "the word of God" to "roll back centuries of human progress."

Quoting from the Old Testament, Dawkins describes its God as "the most unpleasant character in all fiction," and expresses similar disregard for the New Testament's "sadomasochistic doctrine of atonement for original sin." Dawkins then goes over a typical “story” from the Old Testament to show how events and morals in the bible are often “cruel and brutish”. The story in question (Judges 19) describes how an old man throws his daughter out to a crowd of men, who have surrounded his house, to be raped, humiliated, tortured and murdered, in an attempt to save his male guest. Dawkins claims that “whatever else this strange story might mean; it surely tells us something about the status of women in this religious society”.

Dawkins interviews Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, a liberal Anglican, questioning why he accepts some parts of the Bible while rejecting others, including many of its moral teachings. Harries counters that it is quite possible to be intellectually fulfilled as a Christian rationalist.

Secular morality

Finally, Dawkins searches for an explanation of morality based upon evolutionary biology, which naturally he sees as more fruitful territory than the ancient texts. Together with the evolutionary psychologist Oliver Curry, he discusses the primordial morality to be found among chimpanzees. Curry states that he doesn't feel we need religion to explain morality, and that, if anything, it gets in the way. Rather he feels a more convincing explanation lies in the concepts of reciprocal altruism and kin selection. It's simply that often we can do much better by working in teams, explains Curry.

After a brief survey of the rise of secular values, Dawkins goes on to discuss morality with the novelist Ian McEwan. McEwan takes as his starting point the mortality of human life, which he feels should naturally lead to a morality based on empathy – one which he feels should confer upon us a clear sense of responsibility for our brief span on earth. By contrast, he feels that the teachings of the major religions merely cut off a source of wonder about the natural world. Dawkins then brings the documentary to a close on these themes.

The cast

Dawkins' advocates

Dawkins' opponents

Track listings

The following list of times refer to the Google Video links, not to the original transmission.

Part 1: The God Delusion (47:21)

Part 2: The Virus of Faith (47:58)

Quotes

  • The time has come for people of reason to say: enough is enough. Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive, and it's dangerous.
  • For many people, part of growing up is killing off the virus of faith with a good strong dose of rational thinking. But if an individual doesn't succeed in shaking it off, his mind is stuck in a permanent state of infancy, and there is a real danger that he will infect the next generation.
  • The god of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, racist, an ethnic-cleanser urging his people on to acts of genocide.
  • Fundamentalist Christianity is on the rise among the electorate of the world's only super power, right up to and including the President. If you believe the surveys, 45 percent of Americans, that's about 135 million people, believe the universe is less than ten thousand years old.
  • We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. We are privileged to be alive, and we should make the most of our time on this world.
  • We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Criticism

Writing in the New Statesman,[2] Dawkins stated that Channel 4's correspondence in response to the documentary had been running at two to one in favour. Journalists including Howard Jacobson[3] had accused Dawkins of giving voice to extremists, a claim Dawkins responded to by noting that the National Association of Evangelicals has some 30 million members, and also that he had invited the main UK religious leaders to participate, but they all declined.[2] Aside from the specifics of his argument, Dawkins has also been criticised by the theologian Keith Ward for hysteria regarding his approach to religion.[4]

Video

References

  1. ↑ The Jeremy Vine Show, BBC Radio 2, January 5, 2006.
  2. ↑ a b Richard Dawkins, 2006. "Diary." New Statesman.
  3. ↑ Howard Jacobson, 2006. "Nothing like an unimaginative scientist to get non-believers running back to God." The Independent.
  4. ↑ Keith Ward, 2006. "Faith, hype and a lack of clarity." The Tablet.

Vorlage:Dawkins

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