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‘RELIGION INFORMS YOUR MORALS BY SCARING YOU’ – RICHARD DAWKINS |
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WORDS: END OF TERM AGENT ROISIN CAIRD
Scientist Richard Dawkins was in Scotland recently promoting the Edinburgh International Science Festival. Always ready to stoke controversy when it comes to his opposition to organised religion, the author of ‘The God Delusion’ says he’s consulted a lawyer while examining recent accusations of sexual abuse be members of the Catholic clergy – and claims he plans to perform a ‘Citizen’s arrest’ on Pope Benedict XVI when he visits the UK this summer.
HOW IS SCIENCE RELEVANT TO YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY?
Well I think that’s a less important question than why science is important in the first place. Science is what underlies technology, but even if it didn’t you would be a barbarian and an illiterate if you didn’t know some science. Science is the explanation for why we exist, why the world exists, why the universe exists and why there’s life. If you’re going to be a civilised person, you ought to know something about that.
GIVEN ALL THE EVIDENCE SUPPORTING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY, WHY DO PEOPLE CONTINUE TO DENY SCIENCE AND HOW IT APPLIES TO EVERYDAY LIFE?
Well, I’m not so interested in everyday life. I’m interested in the cultural benefits of science; the fact that science is a major part of our understanding of everything about us. Nobody can deny that.
If, by everyday life you mean what happens in the football, science may well be irrelevant – although it’s not irrelevant about how you find out about such things, how the television works, how the newspapers are printed, and things like that.
CAN’T RELIGION BE A POSITIVE INFLUENCE ON PEOPLE’S LIVES, AS PERHAPS A MORAL GUIDE OR COMFORT?
Suppose you were to get your morals from the Bible; that would mean that you would be stoning people to death for adultery and for not observing the Sabbath. In so far as we do get our morals from the Bible, we ‘cherry pick’; we decide which verses we like and which verses we don’t like and the basis on which we decide is something other than religion.
We all agree, living in the 21st century, that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. Nobody nowadays believes in slavery although the Bible sanctions it, so we’ve changed. You can probably find other verses in the Bible that do prescribe good morals but again, they’ve been cherry picked as the ones that fit in with your modern 21st century morals. So we don’t, as a matter of fact get our morals from the Bible.
Even if we did, it’s not a very good reason to acquire them because the other way in which religion informs your morals is by scaring you with what’s going to happen to you after you die or giving you a ‘carrot’ for what ‘might’ happen to you. Not a very noble motive for doing right. It’s better to do right for proper moral reasons rather than religious reasons.
IS RELIGION A MORAL INSTRUMENT WHICH PREVENTS SCIENCE FROM OVERSTEPPING ETHICAL BOUNDARIES OR IS IT A LIMITATION TO OUR SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT?
I think there might be reasons why you would wish to limit certain of the technological spin-offs of science but I don’t think those reasons would ever be religious – not if they’re good reasons. You might apply, for example, the so-called precautionary principle of ‘don’t mess around with nature and things that you don’t understand.’ That’s a very sound (not so much moral) but political principle. It doesn’t come from religion and there’s no reason why it should.
MORE: www.sciencefestival.co.uk
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 14 April 2010 13:04 |
