Richard Dawkins vs Piers Morgan On Religion and Gender | The Full Interview

he's one of the most fearless and fascinating thinkers on the planet provocative polemicist best-selling author World leading scientist Richard Dawkins one on one [Music] from London this is Piers Morgan uncensored good evening London welcome to a special edition of Piers Morgan uncensored I'll go head to head tonight with one of the most influential intellectuals there is he's one of the most controversial thinkers on the planet biologists controversialist world famous atheist Richard Dawkins inspired Millions by popularizing evolutionary biology but is his work on religion and morality it's become a lightning rod for controversy I despise uh

people who believe something without evidence and then go out and take action which damages other people his 2006 Blockbuster The God Delusion made in the global face of atheism what's wrong with in your opinion with believing in a god regardless of who the God is I think it's false uh I think that it's a matter of belief without evidence while his combative style has created fervent admirers and ferocious enemies to his fans he's the whip smart scientist who's Waging War for facts over feelings science is interesting and if you don't agree you can talk to

his critics he's incendiary out of touch and deliberately offensive well tonight he's here and he's uncensored and Richard Dawkins joins me now Richard Dawkins thank you very much indeed for agreeing to appear on Piers Morgan uncensored pleasure I assume you will be uncensored of course you've never been said so have you no try to sensei and we're going to come to a bit of that letter of this canceled culture has even come to your door what do you make of of that people these days not wanting to hear opinions they don't like I think it's

very sad I think especially in universities where I spent all my life universities are places where you should be free to speak your mind and listen even to something that you don't like and it's very tragic that universities seem to have bought into the idea that if you don't like what you think you're going to hear from someone you should shut them up and refuse to let them speak yeah I mean I find it completely baffling that at a place of Education where the whole point is to test your own thought processes and to deliberately

be exposed to other thoughts we're now in a place where a lot of students feel they just don't want to hear it they only want to hear stuff that validates their own opinion they use this word safe they want to feel safe and university is the one place where you should not feel safe yes dangerously safe yes exactly in terms of thinking yes you know I just think you want to be constantly challenged and provoked about what you believe and what you think you ought to be physically safe but but yes intellectually you should be

challenged I'm going to come more to this because I think the whole canceled culture woke kind of world we live in is is a fascinatingly disturbing one and you've got strong views of it but I want to start because you're known as one of the world's big thinkers I want to start with some big theme stuff and I guess there's no bigger theme than Evolution itself and I think I'd ask a question like this what do we know now about where we've come from and what don't we know okay we know once you've got a

self-replicating entity which nowadays is DNA but it wasn't originally want to see what life started once natural selection darwinian natural selection has got going then we pretty much understand the four billion year history of what's given rise to us and all other living creatures we don't know how it started and that's still a mystery and it may always be a mystery because it happened a very long time ago and we may never know exactly what did happen we know the kind of thing it had to be what kind of thing do you think it was

it was the origin of a self-replicating molecule a molecule that makes copies of itself DNA is such a molecule but the original one was almost certainly not DNA because DNA is a it's been called a high-tech replicator there had to be a precursor to DNA something the laws of chemistry gave rise to a molecule which had this unusual property of making copies of itself which mutated changed in random ways and that gave rise to competition between rival versions of it and that gave rise to the whole panoply of Life eventually okay so I Catholic I

was raised to Catholic um so I'm a religious person which I know is anathema to you we'll come to that but my arguments with atheists historically have always come down to one thing and maybe you've got an answer which will persuade me of the Folly of my ways which is this what was there at the start we don't know but I don't know and you don't know but no human brain unless you want to correct me can actually comprehend nothingness right no but it's a it's a fallacy to think that because I don't understand how

it happened therefore God did it I mean that's just weak well no I'm not okay but I'm prepared to have an open mind about this yes but somebody did and I just I've never met a human brain they can explain to me what happened before say you go for the Big Bang argument what was that before what does nothing look like physicists are debasing this I'm not a physicist but they're debating it my point is that they don't know and I don't know and you don't know and it doesn't help to postulate a God that

did it you're certain is not a God and yet you admit you don't know no I'm I'm certain that it doesn't help to postulate something very complicated at the outset because what we've got is primeval Simplicity and from that stems everything and what science does it starts with Simplicity which is relatively easy to understand and from that it develops into the whole of the universe and the whole of life it doesn't help to start with complexity and a creator has to be complex the reason that I subscribe to the theory there must be a more

powerful being out there than anything the human race has created is because like I say a human brain can't comprehend nothingness or what may have come before nothingness we can't we're not able to extrapolate what that is right I mean no scientists can explain nothingness can they plausibly well maybe they can't you'd have to talk to a physicist but even could you explain it no I'm not a physicist but either you're a very smart guy and you're a very vehement atheist well you're pretty vehement I mean you just think all belief in all gods is

ludicrous right I think that it doesn't help to introduce complexity at the outset that's my No I get that but but I don't think you do get it well no I do because I but you're asking me to consider that my own belief in a deity that may be above human thinking and understanding and brain power that was there universally that my theory is scientifically flawed whereas I would throw back at you okay but I need to be given an alternative I need some scientists somewhere to explain to me right four four billion years all

right but then what was there before that well scientists can't answer that and they and what they say is things like it's like going to the it's like going north of the North Pole I'm sure I gather recently introduced Stephen Hawking he probably said that to you yeah he did actually yeah um but the point is this science can explain things starting with Simplicity and working up too complexity I get there but where science can't explain something I.E in the case I just gave you is it not possible that you're all wrong on the atheist

side of the argument it could be it could be all wrong but what when you might get a shocking surprise one day when you're no longer with us you might and you discover we were right all along it's possible you can see it as possible it's highly unlikely you don't know though do you of course I don't um scientists take a pride in admitting when what they don't know and they don't know what happened before the Big Bang they don't even admit that the word before means anything with respect to the Big Bang Jesus will

tell you but it has to I mean well it doesn't because that's a naive statement um physicists will say that that you do not have to say there was a time began in the Big Bang is what some physicists will say to which I immediately respond with my basic human brain well okay if time began when did it begin what was there before right which is a fairly obvious question it is a very obvious question it's too obvious and physicists will tell you they'll be naive yeah but they don't know why I'm being naive because

they can't provide have you ever just said the human brain is not capable of growth right that's my point so why is it not possible that there is a superior being power which many people believe in different ways at the bottom of the garden and all sorts of things are possible you can't deny that well I said I've never seen fairies in regardless you've never seen God either no but you don't know for sure that either doesn't exist no I don't know that fairies don't exist fairies May well there may be leprechauns it's milder about

this as you've got older yes have you got more accepting that there may be you may be wrong less certain well um yes of course a scientist may always be wrong and that's a definitely a thing that a scientist has to say but I'm not vehement you're provoking me to be vehement because you're taking that tone with me well you've been provoked before yes and you've been quite vehement in response I'm actually not trying to provoke you I'm genuinely curious yes because I don't have all the answers but I'm always skeptical of people who think

they do I don't think you think you do absolutely not but you're a mission that you don't have all the answers to me is quite interesting because it lends the possibility you might be wrong well it's not interesting I mean no no scientist has all the answers um but but the one thing you shouldn't say is that because I don't know therefore God did it that's that's what I think it happens when you die as Bertrand Russell said I believe that when I die I shall rot and nothing of my ego shall remain that's it

yes yes nothing there's nothing else how could it how could it be otherwise I mean you you have a brain an evolved brain which works by nerve impulses and when that decays what could possibly be left so you don't believe in for example a spirit or a soul none of that is that's all conditional entirely on a link to a an actual cerebral yes if by spiritual Soul you mean something that outlasts the brain that I do not believe in it no really well how could I well people have gone through weird sort of outer

body near-death experiences where they they've been pronounced dead for a few minutes they always talk about almost all of talk about this weird there's a tunnel a tunnel right at the end yeah so I mean yeah it could be couldn't it yes well read Susan Blackmore on that would you like to be pleasantly surprised or would you be appalled if you were wrong uh well I would be pleasantly surprised for a while I don't think I'd like to deliver all eternity would you would again I don't know it depends what it's like well fraternity was

watching you know Cricket at Lords all day and watching Arsenal win every weekend yes give me that really well if eternity is is blissful and a wonderful experience and some people believe I think there is something actually rather frightening about eternity and I'd be quite glad to be spending it under a general anesthetic feared given the finality of what you think death to be do you fear it as you get older I fear the process of dying but when you're dead you don't know anything it's just like before you were born I think it was

Mark Twain said I was I was dead for billions of years before I was born and never suffered the smallest inconvenience but when when you have loved ones who've died for example that's tragic yeah but how do as somebody who believes literally in the finality the the rotting of the body and that's it it must be worse than for somebody like me where I genuinely believe there's something better to come it's it's worse so what not so what just curious that it must be for you awful each time far worse than it is for people

who ever believe yes it is a lot of people take great comfort from their belief in God that there is a different life out there yes they do you don't have that sucker at all no so is it incredibly painful more more for you perhaps than something that I don't think who is a Believer let me put it to this way if you really did believe it wouldn't you say to the person on the deathbed looking forward to seeing you in purgatory a lot of people say looking forward to seeing you in another life yeah

yes a lot of people say that you don't really believe it though actually I I do yeah I do actually because I find it when I think about it in Big Picture which is your great thing thank you How likely is it that we just got put on this planet Earth as human beings as a one-off kind of entity that existed here and then you die and that's it and we and it only lasted four billion years and before that was absolutely nothing at all How likely is that to have been the case I don't

think that's likely my human brain which is limited does not think that is likely I think it's very likely really it's exactly what happened yes we are a tiny tiny dot in the universe exactly so you don't know what else is out there really other than what scientists have already established no I I think it's highly likely that there are other beings out there which are much cleverer than we are um super human not Supernatural but superhuman and I would love to meet them I probably couldn't understand what they said about but whether where we

are right now which I think we can reach them here about the culture wokery and what it's doing to us as human beings about Richard Dawkins after the break [Music] what about with Richard Dawkins Richard recently members of the ecology and evolutionary biology language project funded by scientists in the US and Canada produced a list of 24 harmful terms these included male female man woman mother and father they're recommended using phrases like sperm producing egg producing XY XX individual and they should be used to avoid reinforcing societally imposed ideas of a sex binary to which

your response was the only possible response is contemptuous ridicule yes which I cheered I have to say because it was complete Madness how have we come to this English is my native language it's your native language and um I propose to use it in the way that I have always used it and I'm not going to be censored by have you looked at those people I mean they look like teenagers well it's just strongly to me is they they want to what they call degender and neutralize language but they're doing it from a completely false

pretext you can somehow pretend biology doesn't exist particularly when it comes to someone's sex I mean it's incontrovertible there's no scientific doubt about this and yet a small group of people have been quite successful actually in reshaping vast ways of the way Society talks and is allowed to talk it's bullying and we've seen the way um JK Rowling has been bullied catering stock has been bullied um they've stood up to it but but it's very upsetting the way this tiny minority of people has managed to capture the discourse um to um really talk aren't nonsense

what's the answer to it science I mean um there are two Sexes um you can talk about gender if you wish and that's a subjective when people say there are a hundred genders for example yeah I'm not interested in that as a biologist there are two Sexes uh and that's all there is to it you had a humanist award stripped in 2021 because of your comments about this kind of thing uh you had a tweet in April that year in 2015 you tweeted Rachel dolezal a white chapter president in America the na NAACP was vilified

for identifying as black she was white some men choose to identify as women some women choose to identify as men you'll be vilified If you deny that they are literally are what they identify as discuss and all hell broke loose and you had your award stripped because you were effectively doing what JK Rowling others have said you were just espousing a biological fact I wasn't even doing that I was asking asking people to discuss discuss that's what I've done all my life in universities why have we lost that ability to actually have an open and

Frank debate there are people for whom the word discuss doesn't mean discuss it means you've taken a position um which I hadn't um but anyway um I thought it was a reasonable thing to discuss this was on on the one hand uh I actually wrote a couple of follow-up articles to it to this um race is actually a much more fluid concept than than sex um for one thing many people are of mixed race and so they really can be um you know right I had my DNA done for example yes uh properly tested it

came back I had zero English DNA zero I actually have six percent Middle Eastern yes for example right so that was a shock to me I had no idea yes um a lot of killed a lot of Irish and Scottish and Welsh yes but no English whatsoever yes well we're all mixed and therefore it actually is a perfectly reasonable thing for somebody to identify as some particular race if they want to but sex is not like that sex really is binary and therefore um it's it's something it's certainly worth discussing that odd anomaly which I

pointed out in that tweet I mean we now have a situation where in women's sport for example transgender athletes are destroying women's records and beating women in women's sport you know by immeasurable distance we don't disagree about this there's no no but we're doing right yeah um I mean it seems to me complete Madness just scientific Madness that we're allowing this to happen it is one of the problems that scientists have and we saw this in the covid pandemic is that scientists by definition they evolve positions according to changing facts and we saw in the

pandemic that originally the perceived scientific wisdom was that masks for example would be ineffective in preventing the spread of covid then they changed their mind about that we were told that the vaccines would stop passing on the virus and it turned out that wasn't true we were told there's been old debate as you know about where the virus may have started the belief was from a wet Market maybe it was from this lab in Wuhan and so on those who were anti-science they leap on these things and they said well there you go there you

go why should we believe or follow the science when they do such dramatic u-turns in a Health crisis for example what do you say to that well it's true I mean science actually does change its mind because when I mean I think it was John Maynard Kane said when the facts change I change my mind what do you do sir yes um and so this was this all happened in such a hurry it was all great rush to to produce advice and there wasn't time to take the normal balanced look at the evidence and so

naturally they changed their mind and it's a virtue of science actually that they can change their mind scientists can change them what is not a virtue is that social media allows large groups of people to whip each up each other up into a sort of lava yes of self-righteous certainty yes positions which can actually in a pandemic for example be deadly to people I quite agree I mean if the wrong types of people who are most vulnerable to say a covid virus if they believe this stuff and don't for example get what was pretty extensively

seemed to be a pretty safe vaccine in most cases could kill them yes what do you think about that new phenomenon in society social media creating these kind of it is interesting it interests me a lot actually because there was a time when um you could express your opinion by writing a letter to the newspaper yeah chances that would be not accepted by theater but that was it that was the only way you could communicate anybody can do it and so and so it is actually um possible for the sort of people who write graffiti

on walls to reach the world if if they Jack if they get the do you like social media no uh I don't on the whole I use it I use them but I I don't I don't like them why because there's a there's a culture of nastiness there's a culture of hostility a culture of um outright rudeness which and is that has that always been there and we're just seeing it manifest itself now because of social media or do you think the very nature of social media whips people up into be something that they're not

normally I I think you wouldn't normally actually yell insults to somebody's face if you've met them in the street and that's in effect what's going on um it's partly fostered by anonymity many people don't use their own name on social media and so they they call themselves Tinky Winky or something and and therefore they feel they can yell abuse at people without it rebounding on them is it more important than ever that leaders particularly political leaders of countries that they Pride themselves on veracity of their public statements and is it really dangerous when you have

social media this kind of tribal nature of the following that if you have people who literally don't tell the truth but have huge positions of influence that can be for a society very fracturing yes I think so and I I think you're perfectly right to focus on tribalism it's it's been actually demonstrated that many of us believe what our tribe what's good for our tribe that's the left-wing tribe or the right-wing tribe um rather than looking at the evidence and I think we need to train ourselves to get out of the tribal mindset and to

look at the evidence as it is I mean we've seen it with brexit we've seen it with Donald Trump we've seen it with covid we've seen it just recently in the UK with Gary lineker and this huge row about him where his supporters and I've been one of them even though I didn't agree with what he said his supporters have said this is about free speech those on the right in the sort of conservative tribes have all immediately said it's all about free speech he should be fired for what he said and yet you know

that they would all be saying the opposite if it suited their tribe and we saw that with say Jeremy Clarkson where all the people paying for lineker's blood defended Clarkson against demands for him to be fired and similarly all those defending Gary lineker who's on the left and is considered a woke darling they all wanted Clarkson fired so I looked at these two stories and I thought well actually I want them both to have the right to say what they want to say and be judged accordingly but they shouldn't lose their jobs for honestly held

opinions however crass and offensive they may be I agree that's right I do yes I do I think I think that um we too readily fall into the tribal mindset of of right versus left and I I rather admire Christopher Hitchens latest virgins who was on the left and of the right as well and you couldn't Place him and and I was edited through the Daily Mirror when we opposed the Iraq War for example yes and we opposed it very aggressively for several years but I employed Christopher Hitchens in that period because he supported the

Iraq War and that was a surprising position for many people who supported Christopher Hedges why is he doing this and actually he argued his case with great Verve and intellectual rigor as you'd expect I didn't agree with him but he argued it well I once said if you're invited to debate against Christopher Hitchens decline all right professor Professor Stephen Hawking told me shortly before he died that the biggest threat to mankind was artificial intelligence learning how to self-design I'll play you that clip after the break and get your reaction still more from Richard Waters up

[Music] Richard Dawkins is still with me so Richard I had the great honor of doing one of the last interviews with Professor Stephen Hawking before he died up at his office in Cambridge and I asked him what I think is a pretty important question let's take a look is artificial intelligence going to be the end of us and if it's not how do we best work with it ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution there have been fears of mass unemployment as machines replaced humans there is a greater Danger from artificial intelligence if we

allow it to become self-designing for then it can improve itself rapidly and we may lose control what do you think of that well I think that on a massage unemployment is one of the problems but I think that in a way they might do a better job than we do I mean yes I could imagine in a thousand years time perhaps um there'd be nothing but robots would look back on a kind of dawn age when there were that means no humans yes why would you look forward to that I suppose you don't care because

you won't be here and I think that's what we look forward to it I think it's an interesting possibility that the future of humanity might lie in its artificial Creations really I'm not saying stuff of a horror film isn't it yes um I think it's interesting isn't it I just really look forward to it I mean I'd be terrifying that that could happen yes it is rather yes you think it's a possibility I haven't got a long way to go I mean he talked about um self-reproducing robots and that's a key um I think it

was either Von Neumann or Morgan's term I forget which who postulated this idea I think it was a fun Diamond of a self reproducing machine that could actually evolve um well I think we probably are on the threshold of a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence I'm not that impressed by the way with the one that was talking about now called the chat GPT yeah I had had a go on that and superficially impressive but then I happen to mention Helen spurway who was the wife of JBS holder in the great um biologist and it said

later Helen spoa married Richard Dawkins [Laughter] which she didn't presumably she did not yes and many many major factual errors of that sort yeah um but in the early days reminds me a little bit of when they used computers to play chess against the grand Masters and the grand Masters sent the computer packing but then the computer got better and better and better and now there's no human being who can beat the best computers that's right or even come close yeah so you just you have to assume that this chat thing AI chat is going

to get progressively better I think the problem is playing chess is one thing because it's a limited domain and there have been other um AIS that have worked on colored bricks on the table you know put the blue one on top of the red one and then knock knock it over that it can do that but a versatile AI I'm in a sentient AI is really what I think I'm talking about to know whether it really is sent sentient but um Turing proposed the mathematician Alan Turing proposed of a test whether he could actually be

fooled by it and you probably will be fooled by yes um I suppose I'm committed to the view that sentience must be since we I know that we have it I know that I have it I presume you have it um I think I'm committed to the view as a materialist it must be in principle possible for a machine to be sentient um Hawking was on The View once that happens it's all over for the human race yes I don't see this all over for the human race um it could be especially if it was

self-reproducing you yourself compared Trump to Hitler I would hesitate to compare anybody to Hitler well I think you said in a way you said national pride is evil consequences prefer pride in humanity German Pride gave us Hitler American Pride gave us Trump British Pride gave us brexit if you must have pride be proud that homo sapiens could produce a Darwin Shakespeare Mandela Einstein Beethoven yeah so the implication was that Pride leads into dark place but that's different from that I agree with that I I stand by that but I don't stand by comparing Trump to

Hitler I mean they're both liars is it always a mistake to evoke Hitler and the Nazis and that's literally you're talking about people pretty pretty nearly yes I mean it it was such an outlier that that um I I would hesitate to compare anybody to him in a full sense I mean you can compare him in one sense like Trump and Hitler are both Mega Liars that's true enough um but I wouldn't go much further what are the other dangers do you think facing mankind oh well um nationalism um national pride um of the kind

that we saw with the Nazis where they literally want to take over the world yes and and um in a smaller where we're seeing it to put in um obviously um climate change is one we have to worry about artificial intelligence is perhaps not another one um you said before that Islam or fundamentalist Islam is one of the greatest I think I think fundamentalist Faith where you believe absolutely that you're right without any evidence is a major danger because that license is you to do anything if you're really really sincerely believe that you've got right

on your side because God told you then really we sort of understand how the Inquisition mind worked and how the modern islamist mind but you're being accused of being an islamophobe are you or would you be taking the same view of the Christians back in there well I'm not an Islamic what I am what I'm a phobic about is um clitoridectomy of throwing gay people off buildings um Banning dancing and music and having fun generally I'm phobic about all those sorts of things but that's different from being islamophobe Muslims are the biggest victim of islamism

yes they are there's been a big debate about this Isis bride shamima begum whether she should be allowed to come back to this country do you have a view about that your oven I'll say I haven't studied it enough well she was married to an Isis fighter yeah I know she was a young but she was 15 when she went out there yeah the debate really is what she groomed to be part of this terror group in Syria and as such should we show mercy and allow her back to this country yes I'm not going

to say about that are you worried about me do you get threats because of the positions you've taken on some of these things when you saw what happened to salmon rush to you didn't send a shot of three are you saying no you don't want to talk about it or yes right I mean that's interesting in itself because is it there are areas which you would prefer not to discuss I should have said that before we started yeah no medicine I'm I think it's sad that you can't I don't think anything should be off limits

in interviews with people like you the whole point of the world's smartest thinkers is we ought to better have free and open debate I don't think we do because people use murderous retribution against Free Speech really is what it amounts to right well I'm passionately in favor of free speech should there ever be limits to free speech Yes I mean incitement to violence that's that's the normal answer and I think it's a good reason but outside of that people should be free to I think so yes have you noticed at Oxford a change in the

mentality of the way they operate I don't think really at Oxford no um I hope not I don't think so who's the smartest thinker you've met in your life um if you've had a moment you sat there and go my God this guy is or this woman is oh many many times yes um you've forced me to mention someone I would say Peter meadower Nobel prize winning medical scientist um and what was it about his mind that you found so oh Big Island he well he he was a brilliant scientist but also a wonderful wit

a wonderful writer a wonderful um immensely knowledgeable um hugely well read what do you hope to achieve you're 82 now you're saying no son of slowing down you have a new book flights are fancy Defying Gravity by Design and evolution all about flying um you've written 17 books I think you told me in one of the breaks and it's a lot do you hope to keep writing books discussing things I do have any great unfulfilled ambition well I'm writing a book at the moment what's it about it's called the genetic Book of the Dead and

it's anyone know what it's about yes okay um well if you if you look at a camouflaged animal like a lizard in the desert it's got It's in environment painted on its back it's got stones and sound and things actually it's the ancestral environment that's placed on its back because it's natural selection of its ancestors that did that and my point is that that is not just Skin Deep the whole of the animal every single little tiny detail of the animal in its interior of every cell will be as precisely a record of ancestral environment

as the skin is so the animal is a description of the world in which its ancestors lived fascinating I want to come back and ask you one simple question what is the question that you Richard Dawkins would like to have answered before you die answer up hold your hold your answer okay [Music] welcome back to you please welcome left Richard Dorking on a cliffhanger which is right what is the question you would most like to get answered I think it is uh is there extraterrestrial intelligence I think I would like to be visited by well

I will never be visited by actual bodies I think but visited by radio waves um from another star system do you believe it exists yes uh I'm not totally confident but but I I if if I well Carl Sagan once said he didn't know and so he was pressed to say well what's your gut feeling and he said well I try not to think with my gut but uh yes I I think statistically the odds must be that that there is it might be quite rare let's say maybe only a billion instances in the universe

and that's very rare indeed because the number of possible planets is something like 10 to 22. um so a billion would be very rare So Rare we might never encounter it what else would you love to know origin of life um the origin of the universe consciousness um if I were a physicist I would want to know um how to unify quantum theory and gravity but not a physicist so don't ask me about it when you saw Professor Stephen Hawking with his black hole Discovery and so on it's like you're envious when you see them

pull off things like that suppose so yes I mean there's a thing called physics Envy yes um and I I sympathize with that um yes I I but I I don't have the the intellect for that kind I don't have the mathematics to do to do that um see what's interesting to me have you spent some time with you never met you before you don't seem that like provocative or Bingo you got it I'm not right where does this reputation come from I don't know but I see some of the clips from earlier yeah of

you in your more fire brand yeah I get provoked and people right people goad me like like a bullfighter yeah but I'm you don't actually come over that one no I'm a very mild do you feel you get a bad rap yes but what's the real Richard Dawkins like then well um I I suppose I'm polite and and um interested and interesting and I like to talk to people and hear what they have to say are you just incurably logical are you basically like a human Spock from Star Trek I would like to say that

no I'm I'm quite emotional as well I mean I love poetry and music um and are you romantic person I suppose I am yes can you be logical and romantic Sparkle was found that really different I think so yes I think you can because isn't it illogical romance yes it is um but I I can be moved to Tears by musical poetry do you have a political allegiance to a party well I voted lib Dem most of my life um and someone say that's a weird religion well I I don't feel very strongly about it

I mean I I don't I'm not I'm not as I'm not a zealot do some of your sort of logical thinking and this may be one of the reasons you get a controversial rap so I'm sticking into what you said for example there's outrage feminists over the years and it's quite interesting because you said for example date rape is bad stranger rape at knife point is worse mild pedophilia is bad violent pedophilia is worse if you think that's an endorsement of mild pedophilia go away and learn how to think pure logic right I understand the

logical thinking yes but I also understand why a feminist would think what the hell are you talking about rape is rape it doesn't matter whether it's date rape or knife Point Break yeah I mean I think that's so illogical because it what it means is that I mean I I had a friend who was actually raped in in Africa three men pounded on her in a dark in a dark house and and two of them held her down while they took turns to rape her um now that seems to me to be a different order

of magnitude to um a boyfriend who gets drunk and goes too far and and it seems to me that it's absolute nonsense to say that there's just rape is rape is rape of course there are it's like it's like saying a pickpocket who steals a quid from you pocket is like a bank robber who you know that there are clearly degrees of well in a way but I would counter and say I could see your logical mind thinking that but actually if you steal a pound or a million pounds you're a thief if you kill

someone uh You're a murderer it doesn't matter how you kill it and if you're if you're a rapist you are a rapist and I can understand why feminists would say well hang on who are you to decide which is more invasive to a woman on a scale of violence she actually went on my my next tweet was uh strange stranger rape is is bad date rape is worse if you think that's an endorsement a stranger go go away and sit and learn how to think the point was go away and learn how to think if

you think that talking about one thing being milder than the other is an endorsement of the of the mild one of course it's not no I don't think it's that but it's more like you're drawing you're drawing a kind of comparative scale for something where a woman would say many women would say that actually rape is rape it doesn't actually matter how I know they would let's let's go back to the stealing a quid from from robbing a bank you're surely not saying that they should have the same jail sentence because theft is theft is

theft no but they're always but they're all they're all thieves yes but so what they're all thieves the Paul you wouldn't get the same jail sentence for varying degrees of sexual assault good exactly that's all I'm saying right but a woman might say that they can be equally as invasive and terrible for someone's life I believe that yes that's possible yes possible yeah your logical mind would allow that thought process yes and and all I said was if you think that's an endorsement of the mild one go away and learn how to think have we

lost the ability to think logically and critically about things some people may have would you sense we have that everyone's quick to pounce on these kind of things and say I'm outraged I think so but I haven't really thought through what they're outrageous let me take one of the other ones you even mentioned mild pedophilia that I got I got hell for that yeah um I was the victim of mild pedophilia at school I expect you were many many people were I wasn't no no I'm glad to hear it um you were yes now um

suppose I had said this has ruined my life like this it's a total catastrophe then somebody who really was raped by a priest say or by a uncle or something night after night after night he would say how dare you compare your 15 minutes of embarrassment to what I went through night after night after night that's what I was saying you get it I get your argument I'm not entirely sure I completely concur with it because I think what you're again you're trying to do is individuals are individuals they all react to things in different

ways I could imagine there'll be some people who've been through what you went through who would be scarred for life by it's a different type of personality you clearly so you're not okay um I mean many I'd say most of my friends at that school were brilliant and and we just joked about it because you were applesauce right no God no oh that's a Catholic School which one were you at well that's not relevant because because that it it it's I don't I don't want to mention it right have you talked about this before I

think so yes yes it's no secret and it's it's not a big deal it's in my autobiography not a big deal but I mean it's in my autobiography yeah yeah I mean I it's interesting because I can have really conversations like this with people all day long and I wouldn't be outraged by stuff I hear I'd want to argue and Challenge and get to the bottom of what you're really thinking but we don't live in that kind of world anymore people live in some by alley yeah they do they just want to pick out a

line and then being sensed by it yes and we've also got a culture of just general victimhood I think in society people want to be a victim they want to play a victim they want to play that victimhood card because they think it's something that now gets celebrated and can be rewarding actually for some people I think that's true that's different to how Society used to be I think that's true yes is it I'll be going the wrong way well if you're right yes do you think I'm right I think you probably are you know

who Dr Spock is right yes I do he was Mr logical yeah I know yes do you don't think you're the human manifestation of him no what's the one thing you'd like to achieve no rest in the rest of your life well um I think I'd like to be um known for science and for helping people to understand science from understanding science myself and not known for being vehement and an atheist which is only two of my books you finally you've got a chance to write your own headstone here lies Richard Dawkins he um I

think I'd maybe copy Jacques mono the great biologist i s he said I come from I I seek to understand well I started to understand I think I understand you a lot better after meeting you Richard thank you very much indeed thank you enjoyed it very much that's it for me whatever up to Keep It Uncensored and like Richard Dawkins keep asking questions that's it good night [Music]