Subscribe to RSSAtheism Tapes: The Interviews
The Interviews
Colin McGinn is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. McGinn has also held major teaching positions at Oxford University and Rutgers University. He is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind, though he has written on topics across the breadth of modern philosophy. Chief among his works intended for a general audience is the intellectual memoir The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (2002). In his far ranging conversation with Jonathan, Colin sets up and then dismantles some of the many arguments in favor of God – he even puts up a few of his own! He also discusses the impact of Bertrand Russell on his own life at the age of 18 and what has become known as the “Russell effect,” whereby people read Russell and promptly lose their faith.
- Russell represented to me an alternative to religious idealism, it was a more you know secular idealism. I realised you could have some of the aspects of religion which appealed to me - you could have that without religion - and the bits that didn’t appeal to me, you know the virgin birth, that’s what I’ve done every since - basically the same thing.
Steven Weinberg is a prolific author of popular science books and (just in case anyone should doubt his credentials) he is a Nobel Prize winning physicist. He is the professor of physics and astronomy at Texas University. Having invited Jonathan to join him in his own home in Austin Texas, Steven discusses the role of science in the undermining of faith. Like Jonathan he accepts that many of the discoveries in his own field (physics) had little impact on religion and he regrets (laughing) that it was “just a biologist” (Darwin) who really did the damage. Steven has recently written many articles about the absurdities and dangers of religion but he is optimistic about America being able to escape from what appears to be a fundamentalist revolution that is taking over the political agenda. He sees the danger elsewhere
- I think what’s much more frightening in the world is Islam - where people, it seems to me, take their religion seriously to the point of madness. I think, you know, there have been times in the history of the world when Islam was a far more tolerant religion than Christianity but that is not the case now.
However in a worthy philosophical manoeuvre, Steven sees hope in the attitudes to extremists. After all you can only criticise them on the grounds that they are ”morally” wrong and the only morality that can be used to “trump” the fundamentalists’ religious views, is a secular morality.
- For example George Bush said that these terrorists have “hijacked a great religion”. Because their actions, their terrorist actions, don’t fit his idea of religion. You see what’s really happening there, is that instead of using religion to decide what is moral, he is actually using his moral sense, (which fortunately, in this case, is a perfectly good reasonable enlightened moral sense) to decide what is – or is not - religious - and if that’s the case, then what’s the point of the religion?
This is a series of half hour conversations between fascinating and intelligent men. It is designed to appeal to the viewers who, provoked by the contributions to A Short History of Disbelief will want to hear what these distinguished minds have to say in a more discursive environment. But it’s also designed to appeal to those who might not watch the series but who would simply be fascinated to listen to what these men have to say.
Daniel Dennett is a high octane American philosopher with an acerbic mind and a wicked sense of humour. His books (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea; Consciousness Explained; Freedom Evolves) are international best sellers. In his conversation with Jonathan, Dennet explains how Darwin’s theories unravelled the religious mindset:
“Darwin really broke the dam for disbelief”, he expands on his famous theory of Skyhooks & Cranes – the competing miraculous and rational explanations of phenomena - and he discusses the extent to which people need “magic” in their lives. Between them, Jonathan and Daniel discuss whether, as sceptics, they should resist the temptation to be as rude as they would like to be towards believers:
- I mean we don’t tell fat people they’re fat, we don’t tell ugly people they’re ugly, we don’t, we don’t - everyday we could go around saying things to peoples faces that would be perfectly true and we could prove them and it would just be really mischievous… but there are times when I think it would be much better if we were a lot franker and ruder about religious belief.
And they wonder whether or not there will ever be a world without religion.
- DANIEL I think a lot of people want their life to have a meaning
- JONATHAN Yes, but there must be something better than religion
- DANIEL Yes, we certainly hope there is. What’s it going to be?
Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller should also need no introduction. Probably the most distinguished playwright in 20th century Americas life, Arthur Miller rarely gave interviews but welcomed the opportunity to tussle with his English namesake (they are of course no relation). Apart from expressing his scepticism about the unholy alliance between religion and politics, some of which was used in the series, Arthur Miller looks back to his own early experiences of growing up in a Christian and surprisingly anti semitic country. His chilling accounts of American Nazi’s in the 1930’s have their modern counterparts today. But most touchingly Arthur Miller believes that religious faith probably survives because people find it so hard to cope with the death of their loved ones. His own beloved wife had only recently died and he talks about his own difficulties,
- My wife of 40 years died about a year and a half ago and I’m surrounded by all her stuff of her life and the idea that she’s not here is still, it defeats some impulse, to recreate her, but I know what that impulse is, its simply the inability to accept this absurdity, that all that consciousness and all that beauty simply isn’t there anymore.
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins hardly needs an introduction and you might have thought that you have heard all you need to from this Oxford Professor who seems to have made it his life’s work to publicly tackle religion wherever he finds it. Oddly enough though in this intimate conversation over coffee filmed in the relaxing atmosphere of Jonathan’s own kitchen, Dawkins displays a gentler and more contemplative side – and he reveals the deep religious convictions of his youth.
- Between 9 and 15 I was pretty devout, I used to, I mean I got confirmed, I used to pray, I used to sort have little fantasies at school, in boarding school, sort of creeping down to the chapel and praying and having sort of visions of angels and things.
But he and Jonathan also discuss the difficult rough edges of Darwin’s theories and develop the argument, touched upon in Jonathan’s discussion with Daniel Dennet, about the extent to which it is necessary or important to challenge religion and religious people.
Denys Turner, the Cambridge theologian and Professor of Divinity argued with Jonathan, the case for and against atheism, in an intellectual struggle that lasted, in its entirety, two full and exhausting hours. But they enjoyed themselves immensely without ever coming to any agreement. The conversation was complex and dense and defied simplification. As a result it was not used. But this half hour version gives these two mental gymnasts enough room to entertain us with the kind of questions that Denys feels are seldom if ever asked by scientists and sceptics, because they know that they have no simple answers. Questions like “Why is there anything – rather than nothing at all?”
- DENYS Well I think that you’ve got to find a way of avoiding a certain kind of question if you’re going to be a proper card-carrying atheist. Marx once said that each age asks only such questions as it can answer and it’s the cutting back on the agenda of questions which seems to me to be the important issue here
- JONATHAN But if you can ask the question “why is there anything at all” and your answer seems to be there is something which accounts for it (ie: God) - then I find myself, well why is there “God” then? Why does the question not go into a series of infinite regresses asking the question about why the cause of it all or the bringer about of it all does not itself, himself, or herself require some sort of explanation?
- DENYS But now you see you and I are, at least engaged in an argument!
Filmed in the surprisingly modern, glass and steel office of this contemporary theologian, this conversation is both provocative and challenging.