The Problem with Identifying as a Different Gender | A Conversation with Nick Gillespie

The subjective feeling of gender is one thing but it's when it's when there is a demand that others shall count out to that is specifically when it becomes therefore because I I I believe I believe I'm female therefore I should be allowed to enter female athletic competitions. that kind of thing where you you're not just privately saying, "I I feel my gender is female. Please address me as she and her." That's fine. But when when you actually muscle in kind of literally on um on um women's swimming competitions or boxing competitions and and gain the

advantage of uh male physique, then I think that's another matter and and uh not to be approved. I guess gender is a social construct. Yes. Um, and but what is what is not a social construct is the male body that you bring to a female only swimming competition. And that's that's real. That's a that's biological fact. And you you are wanting you're winning your medal unfairly by bringing your male body. Do you feel good that atheism or maybe a better term is godlessness is ascended? Yes. Um I do. And you don't hesitate to say that.

You're not like, "Oh my god, what? God's going to strike me dead. There's no residual there's no residual guilt." No, I'm not I'm not There was a man called Charles Bradlaw who was the famous atheist in the 19th century who would stand up and and invite God to strike him dead. Um Um there there was I I'm very fond of I'm very fond of PG Woodhouse and PG Woodhouse um had a character who called called Galahad 3 who told a story of somebody who who said um some who stood up stood up and said um

if I tell a lie may I be struck by lightning this minute and by very odd coincidence he Pause. Heat. Hi everybody. Uh thank you all for coming out to see me. I appreciate that greatly. Uh I am Nicholas. I'm an editor editor at large at Reason magazine. uh established in 1968 were the uh planet's leading magazine which means the only magazine of free minds and free markets. Um my this is a real honor for me and I only wish that I believed in an afterlife so that my parents who raised me as a good

Catholic. I've got five of seven sacraments could be looking down from heaven and saying, "What are you doing talking to somebody like Richard Dawkins? We didn't send you to Catholic school so that you could talk to an evolutionary biologist who effectively won the war against religion. And we're going to talk about that and a lot of other things tonight. And we're especially going to talk about his most recent book, which I suspect many of you already have own. And it's like, you know, it's like getting a Harry Potter book. when a Dawkins book comes out,

you buy it immediately and then stay up all night reading it under the covers, right? Uh with a flashlight. So, without further ado, let's welcome Richard Dawkins. Please give him a huge round of applause. All right. Thank you so much uh for that warm welcome. Richard, um before we get into the discussion of the uh of the book uh genetic the genetic book of the dead, a Darwinian revery, I want to ask this is your farewell tour, your uh the uh final bow, a final bow tour. Uh we'll come back to this later, but let's

uh put a little bit out there. What does an atheist look forward to after the final bow? I'm working on another book. Okay. All right. So, uh, and, um, I don't expect to make a tour of it when it's finished, but I shall be visiting United States again, just not on a major travel around the whole country. All right. Very good. Um, so, uh, let's talk about the Genetic Book of the Dead, a Darwinian Rey. How many of you have read it? It only came out yesterday, would it? Well, you know, I read it. I

bought it and read it overnight. So, how many of you are going to read it? Okay. How many of you are going to understand it? No. Well, that is actually um uh you know, I first encountered your work as an undergrad. I was a psychology major as well as an English major. And um one of the things that struck me is I couldn't believe that I was reading science because I understood what you were saying. Um and that's um but in um in the genetic book of the dead you use uh a term a palumst

as a controlling metaphor. Let's start by talking about that. What is a palumst and why is it so important to what you're doing in this book? A palimpest is a manuscript which is erased and then the paper rather the parchment is used again because in the days when paper was not available people wrote on parchment it was quite scarce uh they would reuse it and so it would be partially erased or even wholly erased and then and then reused. The point of it in the book is that the genetic book of the dead is a

description that every animal bears in itself in its genes and in its body. A description of the worlds in which its ancestors survived. This, it seems to me, follows from natural selection. The animal has been put together by a whole lot of selection pressures over many, many millions of years. That's why I call it a palmest because it is partly very ancient writings in the book of the dead and then partly more recent writings and then more recent writings still and finally writings during the animals own lifetime. That's why I call it a palimpest. Would

you uh give an example of you you in the book you talk about how sometimes that you know that it is literally on the organism's skin or back or shell or whatever. What's a good example of how any camouflaged animal has uh that sits on the background that that it resembles and that's why you can't see it. I use the example of a desert lizard. A lizard in the Mojave Desert which has more or less painted on its back a picture of desert. It's got little stones and sand. It looks like a desert. It's whole

the whole of its back is a painting of the desert. Well, that's an obvious example. And any camouflaged animal is an obvious example. My thesis is that that principle must apply right the way through every bit of the animal. right into the interior of the animal. It's just that the camouflage skin is the most obvious example. And uh I believe that the same principle must apply to every cell, every biochemical process, every detail right the way through every part of the animal. in the in the selfish gene, you um did did a number of things

um you know that that kind of changed the way that people understood uh evolution and the point of evolution. And one of one of which is the idea that you know we think that we are using genes or that somehow we're in control as humans but in fact we're being used by the genes. Yes. U you know we are kind of automatons or something like that. In this book, you say you you've outdone yourself by saying that we are actually a gig a gigantic colony of cooperating viruses or a cooperative of viruses. So now it's

it's even more punishing and I guess my question is what do you have against human beings? But could you explain how you go from the selfish gene to this? The this the selfish gene had what you call a sting in the tail. the the last chapter switched to a different topic which was memes. Um and I thought this book should have a stick in the tail as well. And so this is this idea that we are a gigantic colony of cooperate cooperating viruses. uh it takes a bit of time to explain. Um the one of

my books is called the extended phenotype. And this is the idea that the genes in an animal work to survive not just by influencing the body of the animal in which they sit, but they reach outside the animal. And part of the so-called phenotype of the of the genes is outside the body. In obvious examples are a bird's nest or a bower bird's bower which is not a part of the animal but which nevertheless is a Darwinian adaptation. It's shaped by natural selection and this must mean that there are genes for nest shape. Genes for

bower shape. Now this principle of the extended phenotype applies not just to inanimate objects like nests and bowers. It applies to other individuals. An animal, a parasite, can influence the behavior of the host in which it sits in order to further its designs as a parasite. Um, and that means that the genes in the parasite are having phenotypic effect on the body and behavior of the host. Now um if you think about a parasite in an animal like a worm or a virus or a bacterium, its task is to get into the next host. Now

there are two ways in which can it can do this. It can either be uh expelled from the host in some way like sneezed out or coughed out of the host and then breathed in by the next host. That's what we think of normally as a as a parasite. When a parasite does that, when it exits the body by some such route as being coughed or sneezed out, it has no great interest in the survival of the host in which it sits. For all it cares, the host can die. But what about a parasite which

passes to the next host via the gametes, via the eggs or sperms of the present host? Mostly eggs, I suppose. Well, a parasite that is going that whose hope for the future is to go into the progeny into the offspring of the present host, if you think about it, its extended phenotype will be identical. Its its aims, its its desires, its hopes for the future will be identical to the genes of the host. It will want the host to be a successful survivor. It will want the host to be a successful reproducer. It'll want the

host to be sexually attractive, to be a good parent, because everything about what the host regards as success, namely having offspring, will be the same as what the parasite regards as success, namely the host having offspring. Kind of like my tapeworm myself. Exactly. Um that that's if the if the tapeworm were passed on via gametes, which it's not. Yeah. But a virus can be. Well, if you think about the logical conclusion to this, all our own genes, the only reason they cooperate in building us, in building the body, in in building well any any animal

is that they all have the same interest at heart. They all get into the next generation via the gametes of the host. In other words, they have the same interest at heart in exactly the same way as a virus that it gets passed on in the gametes or a bacterium that gets passed on in the gametes. So that's why I say that all our own genes can be regarded as equivalent to a gigantic colony of cooperating viruses. You have to read the book to get the discussion. Are you are you just becoming a softy because

you've gone from and and there's uh extended discussions of of the title the selfish gene and why it could have been many other uh perhaps more accurate titles. You know, there seemed to be um God in Selfish Gene was 76, right? It was published. Evolution seemed to be more about competition or survival of the fittest, things like that. And now you're speaking more about cooperation. Can you talk about what you know what may helped you move toward away from competition to cooperation? I think that's a misunderstanding. Okay. Um I'm not becoming a softy. Um or

rather in the sense I always was a softy. Yeah. Um because uh the selfish gene is not really about selfishness. It's about selfishness at the level of the gene, but that translates out into altruism at the level of the individual. Or it can be and and that's largely what the book is what the self regime is about. Um, genes are selfish in the sense that they are striving to get into the next generation. That's what they do. That they they are in a sense immortal. But they do it by cooperating. I've always said that in

the selfish gene there's a a chapter in which I have the analogy of a rowing race where you have um eight men. I think of the Oxford Cambridge boat boat race. eight men sitting in in a in a in a row in a boat and they're cooperating and that's what the genes are doing. The genes are cooperating in building a body that will carry all of them to the next generation via reproduction. So they have to cooperate. The reason why they cooperate is precisely that they are destined to enter the future by the same route,

the same exit route from the present body, namely the gametes of the present body. So I I've always said that I've always said that they that they cooperate. Um, can you at at one point in the uh in in the book you talk about how there really are not genes for specific things that that becomes kind of it's a misnomer. Can you talk about how that plays out and where does that misunderstanding? We're always looking for the gene that does this or controls this or controls that? Yes. Um when you talk about a gene for

anything, it's tempting to think about it as a a unit of you know those butchers diagrams where you have um brisket and rump and and flank and things like that and and it's tempting to think that there's a gene for this bit and a gene for this bit and a gene for this bit. It's not like that. Um genes work together to control the processes of embryology. And so it's rather more like a uh the the genes are more like the words of a recipe, a cookery recipe or a computer program where they work together

to produce a whole embryo and then a whole uh whole baby and whole body. Um so genes cooperate as I've just said before um to in the process of embryology there there's not a one gene for this and a one gene for that. The reason why you can to some extent talk about a gene for this and a gene for that is that you focus on differences between individuals. What geneticists actually study when they talk about a gene for the Mendle, Gregor Mendel, for example, studied wrinkled peas and smooth peas. Well, what he's really talking

about there is individual differences. a gene genetic difference controls an individual difference. So when you talk about um say there's the the Hapsburg chin the the the hereditary uh mal foration of the of the chin which uh which affected the royal families of of of Europe. The Hapsburg chin. There are lots and lots of genes that enter into the making of a chin. But what this particular gene does is to make the difference between somebody who has the Hapsburg chin and somebody who doesn't. So gene for X always means gene for difference between somebody who

has X and somebody who doesn't have X. At what point do you think and try and pinpoint it to the year did the Hapsburg chin stop uh giving more inclusive fitness to the person? I don't think I'm not sure the Hapsburg chin ever gave more inclusive fitness. Inclusive fitness is the is the um is is is one way of expressing what uh natural selection would make a gene want to do so to speak. I hope you understand what I mean when I use a word like like want. um in inclusive fitness is WD Hamilton's uh

mathematical expression of the what an individual organism will be trying to maximize if what what is really going on is that its genes are maximizing their own survival. So the Hapsburg chin almost certainly didn't maximize survival in any sense. other genes do and that's what natural selection is is all about. But um the Habsburg chin was just a well an anomaly. Yeah. Um can you have your work over time uh certainly and and in um in the genetic book of the dead it collapses any kind of easy distinction or or dichotomy between nature and nurture.

And I realize I'm showing my age here by even using such outmoded terms, but can you explain how certain types you talk about genetic templates or predispositions towards behaviors then interact with the environment in a way that you know that is different from the way that we used to be taught about either something was completely a function of kind of genetic determinism or it was cultural determinism. And we're in a very different world now. Nature and nurture comes from Shakespeare, doesn't it? Yes. Um it's um an interaction. Uh and uh to revert to what I

was saying about individual differences, um the statistical quantity called heritability is a statistical measure of the contribution to variance. which is a statistical measure of variation that genes exert. So leaving genes out for the moment. um when you do say um when Ronald Fischer who's one of the fathers of statistics worked for a long a long time on agriculture and so he would be concerned with um a field where you plot um where you have randomized plots and you vary the fertilizer in different plots and you vary um the seed quality and that kind of

thing. And so you have variation in the wheat growth in the in the in the which you can measure that that's the that's the dependent variable. That's the growth of wheat. And you then look to see how much of the variance in wheat growth can be explained by variance in fertilizer. How much can be explained by variance in watering regime? how much can be explained by variance in uh seed type for example and interactions between them. So that's analysis of variance. A particular case of analysis of variance is where you partition the variance between genetic

contribution to variance and environmental and all the rest environmental contribution to variance. And one way, one rather powerful way of doing this is twin studies where you take monozygotic twins, identical twins who have all the same genes and you compare the similarity between monozygotic twins with dzygotic twins where you know um that uh how much genetics they have in how many genes they have in common. So you compare the dependent variable might be musical ability or height or intelligent I IQ or or you can measure anything anything you like and you then say how similar

are monozygotic twins in this variable say say IQ as compared with dzygotic twins and you also look at monozygotic twins read apart and read together and dzygotic twins read apart and read together. And by looking at all four of those of those categories, you can calculate for a particular population the heritability, the contribution to variance of the genes and it you'll come up with a with a figure like 8 or 6 or 3 or something of that sort. And um so that that's one way of of measuring the contribution to variance of genetics which is

the way of sorting out nature and nurture. Um in a in another part in the book you talk about how uh you talk about the possibility of a nice example of how a cultural change and you're talking about the taming of fire can have evolutionary consequences. The shrinking of jaws and teeth. Yes. Can you discuss that because this I I found fascinating. Yes. Um there's a book by Richard Rangham um who's a an anthropologist at at Harvard uh about the importance of cooking um on human evolution. One of the things you see as you look

at the uh fossil um record, human fossil record is that our jaws have shrunk. Um, our ancestors had much bigger, more powerful jaws than we have. And Rangom thinks that this is because of the invention of cooking, the discovery of fire, the invention of cooking, which enabled us to cope with tougher um well with with to to to make food less less tough. We didn't need such powerful jaws. Um, and so that's an interaction between culture, namely the the taming of fire and the development of cooking and and genetic evolution. How long over what time

period does that kind of emerge? Well, it looks as though Homo erectus, which is our our immediate ancestor species, which lived about a million years ago, um, had fire. It's not absolutely definite, but there do appear to be archaeological remains of hearth suggesting that they had fire and they pos they probably had cooking. He at least Rangom thinks so. So maybe a million years. Yeah. Are you able to keep those kinds of time scales in your head when you're thinking I I have trouble keeping my Google calendar for a week? But how how do you

how do you manage that? Um only by analogy. I mean actually a million years is nothing. I mean we're deal we're dealing with hundreds of millions of years, thousands of millions of years when we talk about evolution and it is it's frightening actually. I mean you it's very hard for us to um to cope with when we think about ancient Babylon for example. We think we back in the midst of time. It's we sort of get a sort of fre of of of of ancient history. And of course that's just yesterday. That's 5 minutes ago.

um by by um geological standards um there are various analogies I mean you've probably seen analogies of of if if you represent the whole of of geological time since the origin of life by a year and then humans come on the scene what what is it about you know 5 minutes to midnight or or something there are there are various analogies which sort of help to to to get it across Um, I mean I I like the one where you you stretch your arm out and you say the origin of life is is where where

my tie is and then um it's all bacteria up to about there. And then the dinosaurs are about there and um humans come on the scene about where my fingernail is. And the whole of recorded history, the whole of history, the the Romans and the Hebrews and the Babylonians and the Assyrians, uh, is the dust that falls from one stroke of the nail file. Do you uh, as you get older, do you feel that time and history, does it speed up or slow down? Speeds up. Yeah. And does does it speed up on an individual

level? Does it speed up on a societal level? On an individual level, I mean, time passes more quickly. What is do you remember your do I was going to say, do you remember your first memory? Uh, which is a kind of strange sentence, but what is your first memory and has it stayed constant over? Uh, yes. Um, I think my first memory was having an injection um from a doctor. My second memory was having an injection from a scorpion. Oh wow. So um let's talk about science and the scientific method. Um you uh last year

in the spectator um you wrote an article uh called sticking up for science and you said yes I Richard Dawkins at this late date in life are I'm going to stick up for science finally. But you were talking about the adoption of certain kind of Mauy uh you were in New Zealand and you were talking about Mauy origin myths kind of being pushed into schools as science. Yes. Um explain what was going on there. This is a very strange business. Um I arrived in New Zealand and was immediately aware that I was in the midst

of a great controversy. Um the New Zealand government which was then a socialist government it's changed now but the present government I think is doing the same thing is importing compulsorily into science classes in New Zealand schools Maui myths uh and um they are being given equal status to what they call western science which just science and it's not western it's just science um and so The children in New Zealand are, I would have thought, being bewildered by, on the one hand, learning about the Big Bang and the origin of life and DNA and things

like that. On the other hand, they're being told it's all due to this sky father and the earth mother um probably having it off together. And um the um it it's it's pandering to I think a kind of guilt that white New Zealanders feel towards I'm sort of psychoanalyzing them now towards the the Mari ind indigenous population. Um and sort of bending over backwards to show respect to the indigenous population. And I think that's fine. I mean, it would be great for mar for New Zealand children to learn about Mari culture and Mari myths in

classes on anthropology and history, but to bring them into science classes is just that's just not science. and and I became involved because a number of distinguished scientists in New Zealand, fellows of the New Zealand Royal Society, which is the New Zealand equivalent of um the National Academy of Sciences here um had written a letter protesting about this to a New Zealand journal called The Listener and they had suffered as a consequence. They had been had their lectures canled. um they were threatened with expulsion and things really quite unpleasant uh victimization of these distinguished scientists.

I had lunch with about half a dozen of them and heard all about it from them. And so when when I left I I wrote this article in the spectator uh about it. And you uh you mentioned on the flight out uh the flight attendants on the New Zealand airflight thanked the Malry gods for That's right. The Maui gods were were giving a lift to the to the And at that point, I guess you were making sure you had a parachute on, right? actually Air New Zealand um on and this is nothing not not really

relevant but but they did have a rather attractive um safety briefing in earlier time um you saw you you know when when it says you know when when the in the unlikely event of the calling comes down and and um safety is our top priority and lights will guide you to the exits which are here here and here all all that sort of stuff. Um and you you finally realize that all the people involved the the pilots the stewardesses the the flight attendants they were all naked but they were painted with uniforms. So, and and

you only realized this right at the very end when you saw um a a female flight attendant walking down the aisle and and you saw from behind that she was actually naked although she was painted with with I thought that was a much better um I've forgotten what you were talking about to be quite honest. Um you also have you have a chapter in a in a collection that'll come out next year um uh that the uh producers of this tour shared uh with me uh that's titled scientific truth stands above human feelings and politics

and in that essay uh which is is of a piece with what you're talking about in New Zealand but also more broadly across the you know you know maybe across the world but certainly across the advanced the OECD economies. Um uh we can say um you talk about Lysenkoism and about the the history of placing mere politics above scientific truth. Um talk about Lysenko and the the tradition of that and why is that front of mind for you now? Okay. Um in the 1930s and 40s a an in the Soviet Union in Russia an aronomist

called Lysenko uh who was a charlatan uh got the ear of Stalin and um he became immensely powerful because Stalin believed in him partly I think or mainly because Lysenko's theories is he despised genetics. He despised uh mendle and and everything that we think of as as genetics and he espoused a kind of Lamarian theory which is acquired characteristics are inherited which is which is false um but um but and importantly false um can I ask just before you continue was do you know what was the origin of Lysenko's contempt for genetics or was it

that it was something that was unchangeable or I think it was Marxism. I think I I think that that that it was Marxist dogma that well to go back to the question about nature and nurture that nurture is all important and uh humans are indefinitely improvable and if humans are indefinitely improvable regardless of genetics then everything else ought to be as well. ought to be as well. And so, um, I think that's the reason why it appealed to Stalin. In fact, I I know it is because because it was Stalin actually said so. Um, and,

uh, my chapter contains uh, quotations from a book which was edited by Lysenko uh, with the innocuous sounding title, The Situation in Biological Science Today. a very boring title, but it's a very sinister book because it's an account of a 1948 conference held in Moscow of Soviet aronomists and it was a kind of hatefest against genetics and um all western genetics all all genetics apart from the from Lysenko is genetics and one by one. Uh they got up and made speeches denouncing geneticists and some of them confessing rather pathetically confessing to their ill got ill

ill um their sins really um of of having been Mandelian geneticists and how they now saw the error of their ways. And several of them were actually imprisoned. U most famously Vavalof who was a genuinely distinguished Russian geneticist. Um he was uh imprisoned and um on a on a false charge of espionage and horribly treated and died in prison. Um and but he wasn't the he wasn't the only one. So this was I I quoted the this episode as an example of what can happen when politics is given uh is given sway over over true

science. Can you before I I want to follow up on this but um when you say true science what is true science as opposed to I suppose evidence-based science. Yeah. Um because uh the the Mandelian genetics which which Lysenko uh despised is is massively supported by evidence and uh Lysenko's genetics caused a disastrous famine in Russia which is directly attributable to uh Lysenko taking control of the whole of Soviet agriculture and Chinese agriculture as well because it was adopted there as well. huge disastrous famines resulted from from Lysenko's crackpot theories. Where do you see the

uh the analogous energy in contempor in the in the contemporary world of a kind of neolysenic? Yes. The the second half of the of the essay which um I hadn't realized actually you you've got a copy. I'm interested. Okay. Um the second half of the of the essay having dealt with the first half deals with with Lysenko. The second half is about it's it's less serious but um contemporary in America and Britain um the sort of dogma that states that um sex is a is a continuum that that that um that that sex is not

is not is not binary that that you can be any sex you like. Uh you can choose your sex. The sex that a doctor assigns to you when you're born is just a temporary assignation until you decide better what what what sex you are. And I I made the comparison between this and and lysenoism um as as an example of um ideology uh being given um priority over evidence-based science. And this is because in a in a biological sense there are only two sexes based on the gametes. That's right. I mean in the whole of

the animal kingdom and plant kingdoms as well for that matter. Um the the it's just about the only true binary we've got actually. I mean everything else is a continuum. Tall and short, fat or thin, um black or white. I mean this is all all continuum. um all um a spectrum of of variation. Sex is the one thing which really is binary and it's binary throughout the animal and plant kingdoms based on gamt size. Um the phenomenon of anisogamy uh male gameamtes are small and numerous. Female gameamtes are large and few. Uh and this um

comes from it's quite interesting. I mean there is a phenomenon called isogamy whereby the the gamts are all are the same size. So you have two equalized gamts. This this occurs in some fungi and some algae where you have equalized gameamtes and you need two of them to make enough um resources to make a proper zygote to make a to make an embryo. And and mathematical models show that was unstable. What happened was that there was a runaway evolution towards some of these isogamtes becoming smaller and exploiting uh the fact that others got larger. And

so some got smaller, some got larger and and they got smaller and smaller and larger and larger until now we have the situation throughout the animal kingdom and the plant kingdoms where where um we have these two different radically different sizes of of gamut. There are no intermediates. Absolutely no intermediates. Um and um that is the basis of the binary sex difference. Is that the conversation that's being had though when people you know I mean if we're talking about trans yeah they talk about gender. Um so and in that sense um you also you you

discuss uh postmodernism or or you say this is a kind of epiphenomenon of postmodern thinking which gets rid of objectivity uh in in favor of subjective issues of truth which can also be politically manipulated or polit consensus that comes from that. What um what is the problem with somebody's you know regardless of biological sex if they say I feel as if I'm trapped in the other sex's body and I want to live my life. Yeah, I think that's fine. I mean that I I I respect that and and and if somebody wants me to to

use pronouns um then I I do that. But um the the the the subjective feeling of gender is one thing but it's when it's when there is a demand that others shall count out to that is specifically when it becomes therefore because I I I believe I believe I'm female therefore I should be allowed to enter female athletic competitions. that that kind of thing where you you're not just privately saying I I feel my gender is female. Please please address me as she and her. That's fine. But when when you actually muscle in kind of

literally on um on um women's swimming competitions or boxing competitions and and gain the advantage of uh male physique then I think that's another matter and and uh not to be approved. um you uh mention uh you know the the very tiny numbers. I mean it's a fraction of 1% of the population that is is almost you know appears to be trans and in the way that you're discussing it. Um well not that small. I mean yeah I mean quite a number of people are say they're trans. Right. Uh, I'm sorry. I'm I'm thinking of

the um uh the statistic that you quoted that Oh, interex. Yeah, interex. That's quite different because because trans people don't claim to be interex. Yeah. So, that's that's quite And it's interesting they're not non-binary either. They just think they're the other side of the That's that that's right. No, what you're talking about now is in into interexes. Yeah. which where you have um as you know as the al although the um the definition of sex is is based on on gamt size. Um the uh what determines sex in mammals is the xxxy system and that

and and that occasionally breaks down and you have um xxy people for example or x0 with with no and they and they are um actually those particular ones are unambiguously male respectively and female respectively. Um but there there is a tiny minority where where it is something I think something like 0 8%. Mhm. um which which you could say are are inter intersects by the I guess my my larger question is why do you think at this point in time why is this discussion happening when it seems to you know we are at a moment

in uh you know European and North American society for sure where more people are more accepted than ever and this seems to be a relatively small number of people even talking about trans people Why? Why do you think there is so much discussion about this? Well, I'm not a sociologist. Um I suppose I could call myself a memeticist and Well, you are the the meme the father. I mean, I I I think um I think it's a fashion um like a fashion for wearing baseball hats backwards. Um it it's it's something that that spreads um

among young people especially. I mean, I've I've had letters from American school girl, one American school girl rather sadly, saying she she feels she's the only sort of non trans Mhm. person. I mean, it's sort of um we all at at school remember crazes where you where you have a particular toy that everybody wants and and and um so there's it that spreads through the school like an epidemic. I think it's a bit like that. Um, you talk about how male and female again biologically are not social constructs, but is the is the expression of

gender a social construct? And how do we, you know, is it worth kind of figuring out, okay, where does that end and where does yes, true biology take over? A social construct. Um I think the sort of archetypal social construct I try to get my head around what it means even and I think money is a is a very good example. I mean I mean something like a bit of green paper with $1 written on it is worth a hundred times less than a bit of green paper with a hundred dollars written on it. And

both of them are worth less than they used to be. Yes. I guess that's reality intruding. Right. So that so money is clearly a social construct. Um uh the number of days in a year is not a social construct because that's determined by um the the rotation of the earth and the and the but the way that we talk about it changes. I mean you talk about how the calendar Oh yes. The Gregorian and Julian calendar. Yes indeed. That's right. And there were actual riots, right? When there's a rumor that that that when when the

Julian calendar um gave rise to the Gregorian calendar, there were riots because 11 days were lost. We'd lost 11 days of our life. That was um well, I assume people who were in dungeons were kind of happy, right? So, it's um so I guess I guess gender is a social construct. Yes. Um and but what is what is not a social construct is the male body that you bring to a female only swimming competition. And that's that's real. That's a that's biological fact. And you you are wanting you're winning your medal unfairly by bringing your

male body. because you say my gender is is female. Therefore, I'm entitled to I mean the male body is not a social construct. It's a biological construct. Mine is uh kind of a failing construct at this point. So I um if I um just to push on this a little bit more, you you you attack postmodernism and my my background is in literature. So, uh, I I need to speak up for postmodernism a little bit in the sense of, uh, you said, um, it's bereft of, uh, uh, of a precise definition even in the minds

of those who profess it. Um, and I will grant uh, that can you give one? I mean, yes. Yeah, I could. So u a good working definition is from Jean Leotard's uh book from 1979 the postmodern condition when he says it is incredul toward meta narratives. So that it's and in in the most charitable reading because I think in the the the most dogmatic and doctrinire reading of a postmodern sensibility, it's um it's an extreme version of the say pure warf hypothesis. The idea that reality does not exist um only language exists and reality is

completely a function of the words we use to describe things and if we don't have those words, we don't see it. It doesn't exist. And that is kind of crazy. Um, but incredility toward meta narratives and and the reason I bring it up is because it seems to me to fit nicely into the way that you talk about science or the way science actually operates, which is it's not that we don't have meta narratives, that we don't have large explanatory theories, but that we are always questioning whether or not they are the right one. And

we look at the limits of knowledge rather than the extent of knowledge. Would a extreme postmodernist say that before there were humans there were there was no reality. There was no dinosaurs. I mean yeah that's a I I don't know. I'm not an extreme postmodernist but that is is potentially a problem. Or, you know, the thing that could be said is that, you know, they would say if you grew up in a language that did not have a a term, a word for the color blue or that shade, then you don't perceive it. And that

seems wrong. That has been disproven by theories and things like that. But I guess um before we turn to talking about um atheism uh another large project in your life, I I wanted to ask that question of you know evolution, not evolution um and not Darwin and not evolutionary science but many appeals to the natural world have been used in a political context to legitimate uh you know certain kinds of social status quos. um women were too emotional so they couldn't do this or they were not strong enough. I grew up in a world without

women pole vters because uh you know it was just themed up until sometime in the 80s or 90s women couldn't pull vault of course um and then that changed but is it I guess uh how do we know that we're in doing science right so that we are doing it in a way that we are learning more as opposed to ratifying a social consensus. this with an appeal to nature or to the troop. Yes. I I mean I didn't know about the pole vters. That's interesting. Yeah. Go back and look where were the women palters

in the in the 1956 Olympic games. So it was just assumed that they couldn't pull vault and they didn't have the upper body strength. Women don't have upper body strength. Yes. And they and and they and they in fact do. I mean well they pv vault. I mean they don't pull vault as high as men but they and many of them are quite attractive. Bible say I'm I'm I'm delighted they pulled um I and I think I think um but you you could substitute in any number of things that women women can't be chess masters

women don't want to do this or men don't want to do this because of their nature. Um I mean it it it is a curious fact that that since chess doesn't actually require muscular strength right there are very few women right but it's also if they were not allowed in the clubs for long I mean there'll be a time when exactly well I think I agree with you yes um so u broadly speaking how important is uh you know and I'm I'm not going to be able to use the right terms so excuse the imprecision

here. How important is it that you were born at a time when you were able to take advantage of a liberal uh political era so that you could actually do a lot of the work that you did if you had been born 200 years earlier or god knows 20 years later maybe not right. Yes. Um totally I mean very very important of course. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. What do you what accounts what accounts for that kind of social and I I would say moral progress? We're more you know we are more open as a society. I

am fascinated by this. I mean, I in one of my books, The God Illusion, I talk about the the shifting moral zeitgeist and um there's something you could say it's in the air, but that's not very helpful. But something changes as the centuries go by and um you you've only got to go back to say the mid 19th century where um people like Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Henry Huxley who were in the vanguard of enlightened liberal thought by today's standard were the most terrible racists. Um I mean they they would say things like um Huxley

said of course nobody would take seriously the idea that that our prognosis cousins had no he was and and Lincoln said something similar that that of course I don't seriously think that black people should should vote. I mean um I mean I don't want them to be slaves but I you know I don't want them around. Um so the the shifting moral zeitgeist is something that changes not just over the centuries o over decades right um if you look at uh fiction from the first half of the 20th century if you look at um Agatha

Christie type thrillers um detective her one of her best known novels can't be published under its original right yes in the United States that's Yeah. And and um uh Bullog Drummond who was who was a um sort of precursor of James Bond in the 1920s I think and 30s um would talk about things like foreigners and other unwashed folk. Um well the zeitgeist moves on and why it moves on is a fascinating I guess sociological. So, what I'm hearing is you if you could do it all over again, you'd be a sociologist. I'm not sure

about that, but um but but I I I am genuinely curious about what it is in the air. Yeah. That that that that changes. It seems to me to be a it's a bit like Moore's law in computing which which is a a a definite mathematical uh straight line um on a on a log scale um in in computer power and I think it's not due to any one thing it's it's it's a composite of things and I think the shifting morals I guess is the same it's a it's a composite of um conversations in

dinner parties journal journalism, parliamentary congress decision, technological innovation, scientific breakthroughs, um, uh, books, um, uh, just everything moves moves on. what what do you think the role of atheism was in that or or has been in that because um or you know a challenge to the to the supremacy of religion if not as a kind of scientific theory of order but then a social or cultural theory of order. Well, I think atheism is just sensible. Um um I'm not sure I mean are there uh any atheists out there tonight? Um I mean this is one

of the most amazing but you're talking about a a a change in society and yes well it is it is true if you look at polls that um Gallot polls that um in America and in Western Europe um the number of people who profess religion is being is going down steadily going down. Um there are more religious people in America than there are in the rest of Western Europe, right? But but it is coming down. Um so I guess that's part of the shifting zeitgeist. How what do you think um you know and part of

that zeitgeist has to do with books that you wrote or the colony of organ bacteria that are you wrote um in order who knows what they're getting out of it but um what do you think the most convincing arguments that you advanced were to people? Could be the wrong way round to put it. I mean you if you want to believe something you've got to have reason to do so. So um convincing arguments, it's rather rather better to say what are the most convincing arguments for theism. Um and um I'm not sure there are any.

Um but uh obviously there are a lot that appear convincing to many people. um the the and I think the argument from design is probably the most powerful one right because in a way you kind of advance a similar a godless design though don't you with evolution you think everything is designed every absolutely I mean it it it's an astonishingly powerful illusion of design um and uh it it breaks down in certain places where you is bad design like like the the retina the vertebrate retina being backwards that kind of thing. Um but uh one

of the things that I've tried to do in most of my books actually is to is to show how beautifully perfect the animals are. um they they really really do look designed and um it was I think this is probably why why it took so long for a Darwin to come on the scene that it that people just couldn't fathom the idea that it that it could come about through through unconscious laws of physics. Do you feel um do you feel good that atheism or maybe a better term is godlessness is ascendant? Yes. Um, I

do. And you don't hesitate to say that. You're not like, "Oh my god, what? God's going to strike me dead." There's no residual there's no residual guilt. No, I'm I'm not. There was a man called Charles Bradlaw who was the famous atheist in the 19th century who would stand up and and and invite God to strike him dead. Um um there there was I'm very fond of I'm very fond of PG Woodhouse and PG Woodhouse um had a character who called called Galahad 3 who told a story of somebody who who said um some who

stood stood up and said um if I tell a lie may I be struck by lightning this minute and by very odd coincidence he was um you despite uh not believing in God uh You have called yourself a cultural Christian for at least over a decade from my readings. What do you mean by that? Nothing more than the fact that I was educated in in Christian schools and so um and a Christian society and Christmas in England is Christian society. Um that's right. And and it it's doesn't mean anything at all. It doesn't mean I'm

I'm sympathetic towards doesn't mean I believe it you um by the way in 5 minutes we're going to start the question and answer period with the audience. You can uh start to line up over in this aisle. If you have a question it will be a question uh and it will be brief and concise and illuminating but um so you can start lining up over in that column. Um you have said that if you had to live in a Christian country or an Islamic country, you would pick the Christian country every time. Yes. I would

not wish to live in a country where the penalty for apostasy is death. Yeah. Um and where that would be gay people are thrown off high buildings and um women are stoned to death for the crime of being raped. Um so but other than that, Dr. Dawkins. Um there is an argument uh that liberal the a kind of liberal political philosophy which you know allows for limited government. It allows for things like free speech and open inquiry. Um you know uh things like that proceed from Christianity. uh the British English civil war. Um part of

the argument there was that the king did not have dominion over other men because we are all equal in front of God etc. Um I read a critique of you saying that you are like you are a person who has been in the tree of Christianity and you've been sawing the branch off Yeah. your whole time and now you're you know calling yourself a cultural Christian. You're kind of free riding on something. How how do you respond? No. Well, I I'm rather sorry I said that thing about being cultural Christian because people have taken to

mean um that I am sort of sympathetic towards the belief which I don't at all. It's just that I always have been. Now that thing about um uh the sort of society which lets science be free to do what it does being a Christian society that I mean that's a matter of historians and they might be right. I mean it's it is it is possible that uh that Christendom was the right breeding ground for um for what we have now for for for science to to arise in the in the um in the um 17th

18th 19th centuries um and your point about the English Civil War could well be valid as well. what um religion organized religion again at least in Europe and North America and I you know I think throughout the world uh the research I've seen kind of suggests this with obvious exceptions but religiosity is declining what happens if I I'm not going to say we're evolved to be religious but religion has been a part of human history and civilization is there an issue that what replaces it or or rather um you know that it the religious impulse

graphs on to other forms of disbelief or non-thinking belief extremism. Yeah. I mean GK Chesterton is possibly wrongly thought to have said um when men stop believing in religion they believe in right anything. Um there could be something in that. It's rather a pessimistic view. I mean I would like to think you believe in evidence. Mhm. Um and um I think it's rather demeaning to human nature to suggest that you they've got to grasp onto some giving up one sort of nonsense. You've immediately got to go and seize on some other sort of nonsense. So

before we go to the audience questions which will be questions and will be wonderful. Um can I ask to go back to the idea of your your final bow. Um, what happens to you when you cease to exist? When you become brain dead or however we define death? Uh, well, you cease to exist. I mean, you you No, but you you you where do you have a do you have a mental image of what? Well, it will be just like it was in the time of the dinosaurs when I was nothing. Um, uh, I think

was it Mark Twain said, "I was dead for billions of years before I was born and never suffered the smallest inconvenience." Yeah. Do you um what do you hope that you and I apologize for the morbidity of some of this, but what do you hope you will be remembered for? What what will be, you know, you you are a palumist. My pronunciation is way off, but you you are writing over uh previous scientists, previous thinkers and things like that. What do you hope is the the message that sticks around long enough to influence people after

you? Um I suppose the message of the the selfish gene that that um uh natural selection chooses among immortal replicators uh which happen to be genes on this planet but which are um anywhere in the universe where there is life it will be the same principle the Darwinian principle of the non-random survival of randomly varying potentially immortal replicators. H. Okay, let's go to questions. Can we have the lights up, please? Yeah. Okay, we've got we've got 30 minutes for questions. I am going to end it when the clock runs out. So, let's go through questions

as quickly as possible. Go. Well, I do have a question, but I just very briefly wanted to say that uh You're breaking the rules. You're breaking the rules. I'll skip it then. Um I just wanted to say thank you. You were an inspiration to me. Um I'll take that. I'll take that. Okay. Um I I've been doing some research and I don't think uh the audience here would be inclined to take interest in it, but um I uh Thank you so much. Yeah. uh I I wanted to just pose in the abstract though the question

um that's at stake in terms of principles which is um with respect to uh uh change of state of matter. Um I've been encountering some confusion because I understand that there's a difference between temperature which is a uh a qualitative absolute or an intensive property versus um heat which is an extensive property has to do with the quantity of calories thermal calories being released. Um so with respect to a change of state is that um I'm asking this to you in your capacity as the former professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford. Um

I was hoping you could help me understand this issue. Is the change of state is it absolutely regulated by temperature or um does uh the the thermal quantity of calories um could that uh cause a change of state irrespective of the temperature not being I wish I was a physicist. I'm not a physicist. Um I I I'm sure there are physicists here who can answer that. I but I'm not one of one. I'm I'm sorry to say I don't think I I I can help you on that. I'm sorry. Thank you for the question. Big

hand. Thank you. Next question. Thank you. May sorry maybe a little bit more within your field of study. um the uh you know parents today of an embryo can select for or unselect uh certain genomic traits prior to implantation and I think inevitably um novel gene editing techniques um will affect clinical embryology. I'm wondering to hear your thoughts on how you foresee um gene editing um in uh the field of clinical human embryology and um more importantly I guess if you were if you were to steer that ship in some way um where would you

want it to be in um two or three decades from now? Yes, it's very interesting. Um, as I understand it, this this can be done uh using IVF, in vitro fertilization um where you have um you get a a woman to super ovulate and so you have um say in a petri dish you might have have 10 embryos um and they might have divided up to the eight cell stage. And what you can do then is you can remove one cell from the from the eight cells and without damaging the embryo and look at its

genes. So in principle you could instead of re-implanting in the woman one of these uh embryos at random which is what's done at present. You could choose non-randomly which one you implant. Well, in those cases where there is some reason to fear a genetic defect such as hemophilia, the obvious thing would be to um non-randomly choose one of the uh 50% whatever it is of the embryos that does not there's not a carrier of of hemophilia. I think it's hard to imagine anybody objecting to that form of what would amount to eugenics. Um where it

becomes more controversial is where um in the future and not perhaps very distant future it's possible to say this embryo uh is going to be a better musician than that one um or a more intelligent a better mathematician um a better rugby player I mean these are not totally fanciful in the not too distant future that becomes controversial. Not entirely sure why because it doesn't um it's it's not eugenics in a sort of Hitler sense of of forcibly sterilizing people. It's just simply choosing instead of choosing an an embryo at random to reimplant, you choose

what choose you choose non-randomly. Um one objection to it is that it could be a sort of privilege of the rich to do this kind of thing. So that would be regarded as unfair. Um and um I suppose well I I can't see much objection to to it if if you're asking a moral question that um it does mean the end of the Hapsburg chain. There's no way it survived, right? So that's good. Thank you very much. Uh next question, please. Yes. Hello. Uh so thank you for doing the tour, Mr. Dawkins. uh much like

you, I was raised Christian and then uh when I got to college, that's when I started losing uh kind of my faith and my religion. So now I'm I describe myself as an atheist. Uh but then and that hasn't been much of a conversation with my wife up until we had children. So we have three childrens on under four. And so I'm wondering if you find any merit to the idea of raising them as cultural Christians until they're old enough to make their own mind or they go through the process that I went through the

same and whether they end up on one side or the other it doesn't matter. Uh because again the fear is as you quoted uh once you don't believe in God it's not that you believe in nothing is that you start believing in anything. So that's going to be the is this something you're facing yourself at the is this do I gather it's some it's a dilemma you're facing yourself he has three children under the age of four for my children so it's more myself I'm pretty good with my with my uh convictions but I'm saying

how how should I carry that to my kids well I I okay that that's interesting I mean I I do feel that there's something wrong with the automatic assumption that people make that a child will will inherit the religion of their of their parents. And and I um sort of make fun of this by say saying, "Do would you ever speak about a an existentialist child or a logical positivist child or a postmodernist child?" Um and of course you you you wouldn't. But religion is the one thing where there is a kind of presupposition that

uh a child will will tend to inherit the religion of of of its parents. Um I was once at a conference at an atheist conference and there were lots of children there. People brought their their children and the children they sort of had a playing area and and at one point somebody stood up on the platform and said all you atheist children come up on the platform and I hit the roof because this this is not what it's about. I mean that's exactly what what I I criticized in in the assumption that a child of

say Catholic parents is a Catholic child. Um, oh, you can assume they're anti-atholic deep down. Yeah. Is there an age of consent for religion? Well, that's the it's hard to make a definite it's another continuum. It's, as I said, biology is full of continuums. Continuum. Um I think you if you live in a Christian society and if your wife is Christian then um I think it's it's reasonable to educate children in to to so that they know about Christianity. Um, I I mean in my book, The God Delusion, I I I lament the illiteracy of

some people in of the Bible. I think it's very important to to know something about the Bible. You can't appreciate English literature if you if you know if you can't take you can't take your illusions um if you if you don't know the the Bible as literature. So I think it it's not totally wrong I think to to not not tell the child you are a Christian child but but this is Christianity and this is the the this is the Bible and and and educate them in in what the religion is and the literature of

the religion the history of of the religion. Thank you. Next question. Good evening professor. I had a a softy question. if you're okay with that. I had read your lament for Douglas Adams and it was very moving and uh if you haven't read it, it's very it's very it's really an element of po poetry for me and I was hoping you could share a story about Douglas Adams if if you were comfortable with uh I first met Douglas Adams because I read uh Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency, not the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dirk

Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency. I wrote him a fan letter, the only fan letter I've ever written to anyone. And um he wrote me a fan letter back, which is very nice. And uh invited me to go and meet him in London. And uh so I went to his house and knocked on the door. I was not prepared for his gigantic size. I mean, he must have been nearer 7 feet than 6 feet tall and and was well proportioned. Um I I well, he wasn't fat. I mean, he was he was I lit I just mean

well proportioned. Um and he was laughing as he opened the door and I think he was laughing because he knew that I would be amused at his height. And um it was a wonderful I mean he showed me all around his house which was littered with dead Macintosh computers um because he all every time a new Mac came out he would be the first to get it and so the previous ones were just sort of put on a shelf and gathering dust. Um he was my go-to guru for all things tech technological. I would I

would whenever I had a computer problem uh I would email him and wherever he was in the world which could be absolutely anywhere he would immediately reply and solve my problem in in using language which I could understand um which might not necessarily be the case if I ring a a so-called tech expert. Thank you very much. Next question please. Hi Professor Dawkins. Uh I think quite recently you've described uh Christianity as I think like a fundamentally decent religion. I think you've done that mostly in comparison to Islam and I mostly agree with that sentiment

but um do you think that that sort of provides cover for Christianity? I think you've accused moderates of providing cover for Christianity before. What's the key word? Would it say cover? Um, so if you're a uh calling Christianity a fundamentally decent religion, Christians might feel like, well, Christianity is fine to kind of latch on to as opposed to other religions. Do you think that that provides extremists and and people that are sort of like fundamentalists cover? I'm not getting that word. Cover cover. Cover. Does it provide an excuse or a a way of glomming on

to something? Yes. I mean, I I said that in an interview on the radio and I only meant that Christianity, like I said, doesn't advocate throwing gay people off high buildings and and it's not not anymore. Right. Right. Not anymore. It's it's not it's it's not much of a recommendation. I mean, it's I um Yeah. I I I think I think I think fundamentally is a strange word to use there as is all right. It it it it is relatively speaking a decent religion. Relatively speaking. Fair enough. Yes. And I I I have said that

I've never met an Anglican clergman that I didn't like. Okay. That's a tepid endorsement for one of the worst religions in the world. Right. One of the worst sex. Next question, please. Hi. huge fan. Um, so I go to a four-year college and I'm curious about what you think of the current state of American universities and do you think they will recover from some of the things that have been taking them over? Current state of American universities referring to I would have you have you paid off your student loan debt yet? I wouldn't dare say

anything about the current state of American university. And who would? I mean, it it it's um uh I I get it in the neck if I'm if I say anything about American politics. Um uh I No, I mean I I I suppose to be to be to be serious, I mean, some American universities are the finest in the in the world and and um some are not. Um but but that's true of any country I suppose. Thank you. Next question please. And the quicker we go the more we get to. Thank you for coming to

Milwaukee. Um my question is with the how connected we are with the whole world and with advancing of technology. If you could challenge all the scientists of this current generation to answer one problem, what would it be? One problem. Um, well, I think you probably mean uh a problem that would benefit mankind. Yes. Um, and rather than an an academic pro problem. I mean, I I'm very interested in academic science and I would I would like to see um I would like to see uh the solution to the origin of life, for example, which is

which isn't going to benefit mankind at all. Um uh it's pure it's purely academic. Um I I don't know what I would choose to to benefit mankind. I think I'm I'm What about immortality? Well, I don't know about immortality because um there wouldn't be room for everybody. Um okay. And um well there's a whole lot of planets out there that we can well now yes we're talking about um uh exporting humanity to the universe. Um this is something which uh some science fiction people have thought about. Um it's um it's pretty inhospitable place out there.

Um, you would you would have to I mean uh you should see Milwaukee in December there. I mean exporting to Mars is is the ambition of of one very uh rich individual. Um and um and he has good reason. I mean, it's it's it's a sensible ambition in in a way because um it's the don't let's put all our eggs in one basket uh argument. Um the the meteorite or comet that killed the dinosaurs. Uh there will be more like that. uh and where whereas the dinosaurs didn't have the technology, we potentially do have the

technology to divert such a missile. Um it's it's an interesting problem. It's it's not a matter of of it's not sort of shooting straight at us. It's it's in orbit around the sun, an elliptical orbit around the sun and the and the orbit may happen to coincide with that. We can foresee that in a few hundred years one will its orbit will coincide with ours. All you have to do is speed it up a little or slow it down a little, change its orbit. Uh and it it's only a matter of of a few miles

per hour change in velocity that you'd need in order to do it. So it it is it is doable. Human technology in the not too distant future could could do it. Um, so that that that's a reasonable ambition. Whether it's reasonable to colonize Mars, I mean, that's that's a really difficult one. And and be beyond that, other star systems, that's way way in the in the future. Thank you. Uh, next question, please. Do you pay any credence to or see any validity in the stoned ape theory? I.e. it was psilocybin and psychoactive compounds of its

ilk that gave rise to sentience and chimpanzees 6 million years ago. And if so, I'd love for you to elaborate on it for about a minute. I didn't get that. I'm sorry to say. uh the stoned ape hypothesis that our uh human uh predecessors uh ate magic mushrooms and that jump started the development of our brain. I'm not familiar with that theory. Would you would you like to be? Uh yes, I would. Um uh I would like to read up on it. Um, as always, when I hear an interesting theory, I like to read up

on it. Um, what's the name of the book? I've seen it in a handful of different articles, journals, not the I've never seen it. I've never seen it in a in a book before. I just We'll get you an Amazon link, but uh Terrence, the work of Terrence McKenna, uh, speculate. Thank you very much. Uh, next question. Yes, thank you. Um, so when you were talking about the shifting moral zeitgeist earlier, um, I'm curious about the degree to which you uh, accept the contributions of continental philosophers, for example, like Michelle Fuko or Jacqu Dereda and

the way they describe power structures and elucidate the evils and ills of them. And we see a lot of artists using those theories in the way they create their work and put it out into society. And I'm curious about um whether or not um you view those as beneficial contributions like moral contributions as secular humanists or how much we should take those into account. I again plead total ignorance. I mean I learned from I learned from Nick just now um more than I had known before about postmodernism. Um it didn't make a lot whole lot

more sense than than I had thought before. Okay. Um I let's uh to simplified. Did the European continent not the aisle of you know the United Kingdom the Isles of the United Kingdom. Have they done anything worthwhile? Some who who has No, I'm joking that um but thank you. I think Yeah. Um, next question. Hello. How are you? My name is Hassan and I'm really I'm really honored to be here with you and talk to you. My question with you going from the start 14 billion years ago after the big bang with all of the

randomness and the ectoy that we have in our world suddenly around two billion years ago there is a selection that happened that actually drive all of us to this point where we're actually conscious and talking to to each other. Well actually that's my question is we call the natural selection. Why how you could explain a selection that happened without a consciousness or awareness and where is the selection actually happened because if it's a selection we know it's a selection where it happens and who maybe religious people who call God maybe others but I would just

like to clarify what's your answer on that that sounds like an interesting question I didn't quite hear it though uh I think he was uh talking about how given the uh the moment Yeah, if you want to repeat it, stand closer to the microphone. All right. Sorry for that. So, I'm just I was asking about 14 billion years ago where the big bang started and all of this the universe start going on 2.2 billion years where the first natural selection that was actually there and this election happened to lead us to this point where we

all conscious and aware about this. My question is how this the fair selection the natural selection how this happened and in which consciousness who make this selection to be happen and these genes to be selected to be driven this way till we reach a point where we're actually both conscious human being talking to each other and discussing composition. Did you I got that. Um I you know I'm still kind of stuck in the stone ape theory right now. It because I have this question for a long time. Sorry. It's it's a question and uh just

quickly I think um you know how did the how did natural selection begin? Where did that come from? arrive to a point where all of us are sharing a consciousness that we can actually communicate through. Does that get towards some of it? Yeah. Um yeah, my I would just try to simplify it more. Who is selecting in the Who is selecting? And by the way, you should read his book uh because he talks about that. But sir, well, nobody is selecting. I mean it it's just life or death. Um there is no selector. This this

was Darwin's great insight. Darwin um looked at artificial selection, breeding of cows and horses and pigs and cabbages and roses and things where you have a selector who actually chooses which offspring to rear and which not to and you can you can turn a a wolf into a peak and ease by doing this. What Darwin realizes you don't need a selector. There is no selector. It's just survival. It's just um some individuals survive and some don't survive and they and their genes that get passed on. Yeah. And I mean that's part of the brilliance of

genes, right? Is that they prop I mean evolution it propagates. But you know this is one of the things I was taught about your theories when I was in undergrad that you know people used to think that evolution was going to a particular point or a tilos an end point which was always human but in fact it's it's just like a chaos machine it's just creating more and more of everything. Yes. And then some hit and some don't. Yes. Next. Thank you sir. That was an interesting question. Next one please. Hi good evening. It's an

honor to have you in Milwaukee. It might surprise you to learn that a lot of people denounce British food. So, what are some of your favorite British dishes? Oh, thank you. And Curry is not Curry is out. Well, actually, no Indian food. There really almost isn't a British dish. I mean, curry is it is pretty much become curry. Um is that a is that a good thing or a great thing? It's brilliant. Um I mean the other thing is is that Indian restaurants are always open. I mean you can anytime you can you can get

you can get food. Um and it's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Uh next question. Big honor to be able to ask Richard Dawkins a question. Um, considering that this is your final farewell tour, I'm interested to know if there's um any ideas or thoughts or concepts that you've reversed, changed, or softened up on a little bit since the beginning of your tours, and if so, what are the top ones that come to mind? Thank you. Well, Nick said I was getting soft. Yeah. Um, and I I denied that. Um I suppose I I I mean

uh I don't I don't get so aggressive perhaps towards um people who talk nonsense. Um um um bit more tolerant. Um I I mean I I certainly have have have made mistakes and and and have um changed my mind about particular details and um in the first edition of the selfish gene I was very scornful for example at the so-called handicap theory of animal communication and especially sexual selection. And by the time the second edition of the selfish gene came out I had to uh change my mind in a big way. But and that's a

particular example. It's fairly not that minor. I mean, it's a it it was a a definite mistake which I corrected in the second edition mainly because of brilliant mathematical modeling by a student of mine. Really, Alan Graffin. Thank you. Uh, next question. Yes, my name is Charl. Um, I have a question about your scale of religiosity. Um, you said you were a six, not an extreme seven. Um I was wondering do you have any spiritual leanings? Thank you. Well spiritual that's an interesting word because um I think I'm spiritual in the same kind of way

as Einstein was. Einstein was always using spiritual language but he did not actually believe in God. Although he used he used the word God a lot. I think unfortunately because people wrongly assume that he believed in God but he didn't. Um, but I feel something you could call spiritual when I lie on my back in the tropics and look up at the Milky Way. Uh, and feel just feel spiritual about the the um immensity of space. That's just a local galaxy. Um, so when you're saying spiritual, you don't mean that there is a world that

is not governed by material. Absolutely not. No, you feel part of something expansive. I I have an emotional reaction to the immensity of space and the immensity of time and the immensity of biological complexity. But I but I'm a materialist. I mean I and and so I prefer not to use the word spiritual. I use the word spiritual in deference to the questioner, but but um but I I I would I would say that I'm a materialist. We have time for one last question. Make it a quick one and a great one. All right, I

made it. It's a two-hour drive. Worth it. Um so a common way you use to ridicule uh religion is to use one religion to argue against another. I think it's very powerful. And then that makes me wonder if the world only has one religion and that is consistent in its Bible and it's always tell people to do good and um it even doesn't have many supernatural things except there's a dark god and there's no evidence that that would make it very hard to argue against. Uh what do you think? All right. Thank you. If we

if there was only one religion in the world and regardless of whatever else it said, it basically taught people to do good for other people and themselves, it would be hard to argue against that, wouldn't it? It certainly would. Yes. And and um I think I think I believe in in that. I mean, it's it it doesn't have a a a very easy rationale to one can derive from evolutionary biology. Far from it. Um but um I think I could say that I would want to live in a society where people um are good to

each other and not selfish. Sort of really almost the opposite of a Darwinian society. Um, and I've said this before that I'm I'm a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining why we exist and a passionate anti-darwinian when it comes to um the way society that I would like to live in would be organized. I think you're getting a little soft. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, if you have a VIP ticket, um, please stay in your seat. Um but the evening has concluded the interview. Please join me in standing up and thanking Richard Dawkins for

coming. Thank you so much. Okay, heat. Yeah.