WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 That splendid music, the coming-in music -- 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:11.000 "The Elephant March" from "Aida" -- is the music I've chosen for my funeral -- 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:12.000 (Laughter) 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:17.000 -- and you can see why. It's triumphal. 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:21.000 I won't feel anything, but if I could, 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:25.000 I would feel triumphal at having lived at all, 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:27.000 and at having lived on this splendid planet, 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:30.000 and having been given the opportunity to understand 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:37.000 something about why I was here in the first place, before not being here. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:44.000 Can you understand my quaint English accent? 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:50.000 Like everybody else, I was entranced yesterday by the animal session. 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:55.000 Robert Full and Frans Lanting and others -- 00:00:55.000 --> 00:00:57.000 the beauty of the things they showed. 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:03.000 The only slight jarring note was when Jeffrey Katzenberg said of the mustang, 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:07.000 "the most splendid creatures that God put on this earth." 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:10.000 Now of course, we know that he didn't really mean that, 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:14.000 but in this country at the moment, you can't be too careful. 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:15.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:22.000 I'm a biologist, and the central theorem of our subject: the theory of design, 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:27.000 Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:31.000 In professional circles everywhere, it's of course universally accepted. 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:37.000 In non-professional circles outside America, it's largely ignored. 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:41.000 But in non-professional circles within America, 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:44.000 it arouses so much hostility -- 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:45.000 (Laughter) 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:51.000 -- that it's fair to say that American biologists are in a state of war. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.000 The war is so worrying at present, 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:55.000 with court cases coming up in one state after another, 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:58.000 that I felt I had to say something about it. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:02.000 If you want to know what I have to say about Darwinism itself, 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:05.000 I'm afraid you're going to have to look at my books, 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:08.000 which you won't find in the bookstore outside. 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:11.000 (Laughter) 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:13.000 Contemporary court cases 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:17.000 often concern an allegedly new version of creationism, 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:21.000 called "Intelligent Design," or ID. 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:25.000 Don't be fooled. There's nothing new about ID. 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:28.000 It's just creationism under another name, 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:32.000 rechristened -- I choose the word advisedly -- 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:33.000 (Laughter) 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:35.000 -- for tactical, political reasons. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:37.000 The arguments of so-called ID theorists 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:40.000 are the same old arguments that had been refuted again and again, 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:44.000 since Darwin down to the present day. 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:47.000 There is an effective evolution lobby 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:49.000 coordinating the fight on behalf of science, 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:52.000 and I try to do all I can to help them, 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:56.000 but they get quite upset when people like me dare to mention 00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:00.000 that we happen to be atheists as well as evolutionists. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:05.000 They see us as rocking the boat, and you can understand why. 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:10.000 Creationists, lacking any coherent scientific argument for their case, 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:15.000 fall back on the popular phobia against atheism. 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:19.000 Teach your children evolution in biology class, 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:24.000 and they'll soon move on to drugs, grand larceny and sexual pre-version. 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:29.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:32.000 In fact, of course, educated theologians from the Pope down 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:35.000 are firm in their support of evolution. 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:38.000 This book, "Finding Darwin's God," by Kenneth Miller, 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:40.000 is one of the most effective attacks on Intelligent Design 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:43.000 that I know, and it's all the more effective 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.000 because it's written by a devout Christian. 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:51.000 People like Kenneth Miller could be called a "godsend" to the evolution lobby -- 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:52.000 (Laughter) 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:56.000 -- because they expose the lie that evolutionism is, as a matter of fact, 00:03:56.000 --> 00:03:58.000 tantamount to atheism. 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:03.000 People like me, on the other hand, rock the boat. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:06.000 But here, I want to say something nice about creationists. 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:09.000 It's not a thing I often do, so listen carefully. 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:10.000 (Laughter) 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:13.000 I think they're right about one thing. 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:15.000 I think they're right that evolution 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:18.000 is fundamentally hostile to religion. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:22.000 I've already said that many individual evolutionists, like the Pope, 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:25.000 are also religious, but I think they're deluding themselves. 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:28.000 I believe a true understanding of Darwinism 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:33.000 is deeply corrosive to religious faith. 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:39.000 Now, it may sound as though I'm about to preach atheism, 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:42.000 and I want to reassure you that that's not what I'm going to do. 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:46.000 In an audience as sophisticated as this one, 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:49.000 that would be preaching to the choir. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:53.000 No, what I want to urge upon you -- 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:55.000 (Laughter) 00:04:55.000 --> 00:05:00.000 -- instead what I want to urge upon you is militant atheism. 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:02.000 (Laughter) 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:05.000 (Applause) 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:08.000 But that's putting it too negatively. 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:13.000 If I was a person who were interested in preserving religious faith, 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:18.000 I would be very afraid of the positive power of evolutionary science, 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:20.000 and indeed science generally, but evolution in particular, 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:28.000 to inspire and enthrall, precisely because it is atheistic. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:32.000 Now, the difficult problem for any theory of biological design 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:38.000 is to explain the massive statistical improbability of living things. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:43.000 Statistical improbability in the direction of good design -- 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.000 "complexity" is another word for this. 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:50.000 The standard creationist argument -- there is only one; they all reduce to this one -- 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.000 takes off from a statistical improbability. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:56.000 Living creatures are too complex to have come about by chance; 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:58.000 therefore, they must have had a designer. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:00.000 This argument of course, shoots itself in the foot. 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:04.000 Any designer capable of designing something really complex 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:09.000 has to be even more complex himself, and that's before we even start 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:11.000 on the other things he's expected to do, 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:14.000 like forgive sins, bless marriages, listen to prayers -- 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:17.000 favor our side in a war -- 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:19.000 (Laughter) 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:22.000 -- disapprove of our sex lives and so on. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:24.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:29.000 Complexity is the problem that any theory of biology has to solve, 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:34.000 and you can't solve it by postulating an agent that is even more complex, 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:37.000 thereby simply compounding the problem. 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:41.000 Darwinian natural selection is so stunningly elegant 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:45.000 because it solves the problem of explaining complexity 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:49.000 in terms of nothing but simplicity. 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:52.000 Essentially, it does it by providing a smooth ramp 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:56.000 of gradual step-by-step increment. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.000 But here, I only want to make the point 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:02.000 that the elegance of Darwinism is corrosive to religion 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:07.000 precisely because it is so elegant, so parsimonious, so powerful, 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:09.000 so economically powerful. 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:18.000 It has the sinewy economy of a beautiful suspension bridge. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:20.000 The God theory is not just a bad theory. 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:26.000 It turns out to be, in principle, incapable of doing the job required of it. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:29.000 So, returning to tactics and the evolution lobby, 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:38.000 I want to argue that rocking the boat may be just the right thing to do. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:44.000 My approach to attacking creationism is unlike the evolution lobby. 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:49.000 My approach to attacking creationism is to attack religion as a whole, 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:53.000 and at this point I need to acknowledge the remarkable taboo 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:56.000 against speaking ill of religion, 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:59.000 and I'm going to do so in the words of the late Douglas Adams, 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:01.000 a dear friend who, if he never came to TED, 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:04.000 certainly should have been invited. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:06.000 (Richard Saul Wurman: He was.) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:08.000 Richard Dawkins: He was. Good. I thought he must have been. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:11.000 He begins this speech which was tape-recorded in Cambridge 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:13.000 shortly before he died. 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:17.000 He begins by explaining how science works through the testing of hypotheses 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:21.000 that are framed to be vulnerable to disproof, and then he goes on. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:25.000 I quote, "Religion doesn't seem to work like that. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:29.000 It has certain ideas at the heart of it, which we call 'sacred' or 'holy.' 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:32.000 What it means is: here is an idea or a notion 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:36.000 that you're not allowed to say anything bad about. 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:40.000 You're just not. Why not? Because you're not. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:44.000 (Laughter) 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:48.000 Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Republicans or Democrats, 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:53.000 this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows, 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:56.000 but to have an opinion about how the universe began, 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:00.000 about who created the universe -- no, that's holy. 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:03.000 So, we're used to not challenging religious ideas 00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:06.000 and it's very interesting how much of a furor Richard creates 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:10.000 when he does it." He meant me, not that one. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:13.000 "Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it, 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:17.000 because you're not allowed to say these things, yet when you look at it rationally, 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:21.000 there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:25.000 as any other, except that we've agreed somehow between us 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:32.000 that they shouldn't be." And that's the end of the quote from Douglas. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:36.000 In my view, not only is science corrosive to religion; 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:40.000 religion is corrosive to science. 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:46.000 It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial, supernatural non-explanations 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:52.000 and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp. 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:59.000 It teaches them to accept authority, revelation and faith 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:04.000 instead of always insisting on evidence. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:10.000 There's Douglas Adams, magnificent picture from his book, "Last Chance to See." 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:14.000 Now, there's a typical scientific journal, the Quarterly Review of Biology. 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:17.000 And I'm going to put together, as guest editor, 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:22.000 a special issue on the question, "Did an asteroid kill the dinosaurs?" 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:26.000 And the first paper is a standard scientific paper 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:30.000 presenting evidence, "Iridium Layer at the K-T Boundary, 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:32.000 Potassium-Argon Dated Crater in Yucatan, 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:35.000 Indicate That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:38.000 Perfectly ordinary scientific paper. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:42.000 Now, the next one, "The President of The Royal Society 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:46.000 Has Been Vouchsafed a Strong Inner Conviction" -- (Laughter) -- 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:49.000 "... That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:53.000 (Laughter) 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:59.000 "It Has Been Privately Revealed to Professor Huxtane 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:01.000 That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:04.000 (Laughter) 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:07.000 "Professor Hordley Was Brought Up 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:10.000 to Have Total and Unquestioning Faith" -- 00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:11.000 (Laughter) -- 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:18.000 "... That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:23.000 "Professor Hawkins Has Promulgated an Official Dogma 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:26.000 Binding on All Loyal Hawkinsians 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:29.000 That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:32.000 (Laughter) 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:36.000 That's inconceivable, of course. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:38.000 But suppose -- 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:48.000 (Applause) 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:51.000 -- in 1987, a reporter asked George Bush, Sr. 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:54.000 whether he recognized the equal citizenship and patriotism 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:57.000 of Americans who are atheists. 00:11:57.000 --> 00:12:00.000 Mr. Bush's reply has become infamous. 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:04.000 "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:06.000 nor should they be considered patriots. 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:09.000 This is one nation under God." NOTE Paragraph 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:12.000 Bush's bigotry was not an isolated mistake, 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:15.000 blurted out in the heat of the moment and later retracted. 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:20.000 He stood by it in the face of repeated calls for clarification or withdrawal. 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:21.000 He really meant it. 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:27.000 More to the point, he knew it posed no threat to his election, quite the contrary. 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:31.000 Democrats as well as Republicans parade their religiousness 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:37.000 if they want to get elected. Both parties invoke "one nation under God." 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:42.000 What would Thomas Jefferson have said? 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:47.000 Incidentally, I'm not usually very proud of being British, 00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:51.000 but you can't help making the comparison. 00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:59.000 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.000 In practice, what is an atheist? 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:06.000 An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:13.000 the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:17.000 As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:22.000 that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:25.000 (Laughter) 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:32.000 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:35.000 And however we define atheism, it's surely the kind of academic belief 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:39.000 that a person is entitled to hold without being vilified 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:44.000 as an unpatriotic, unelectable non-citizen. 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:47.000 Nevertheless, it's an undeniable fact that to own up to being an atheist 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:53.000 is tantamount to introducing yourself as Mr. Hitler or Miss Beelzebub. 00:13:53.000 --> 00:13:56.000 And that all stems from the perception of atheists 00:13:56.000 --> 00:14:01.000 as some kind of weird, way-out minority. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:04.000 Natalie Angier wrote a rather sad piece in the New Yorker, 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:06.000 saying how lonely she felt as an atheist. 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:09.000 She clearly feels in a beleaguered minority, 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:15.000 but actually, how do American atheists stack up numerically? 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:18.000 The latest survey makes surprisingly encouraging reading. 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:20.000 Christianity, of course, takes a massive lion's share 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:24.000 of the population, with nearly 160 million. 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:27.000 But what would you think was the second largest group, 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:33.000 convincingly outnumbering Jews with 2.8 million, Muslims at 1.1 million, 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:36.000 and Hindus, Buddhists and all other religions put together? 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:39.000 The second largest group, of nearly 30 million, 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:44.000 is the one described as non-religious or secular. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:47.000 You can't help wondering why vote-seeking politicians 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:52.000 are so proverbially overawed by the power of, for example, the Jewish lobby. 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:54.000 The state of Israel seems to owe its very existence 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:58.000 to the American Jewish vote, while at the same time 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:03.000 consigning the non-religious to political oblivion. 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:07.000 This secular non-religious vote, if properly mobilized, 00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:11.000 is nine times as numerous as the Jewish vote. 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:14.000 Why does this far more substantial minority 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:18.000 not make a move to exercise its political muscle? NOTE Paragraph 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:22.000 Well, so much for quantity. How about quality? 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:25.000 Is there any correlation, positive or negative, 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:28.000 between intelligence and tendency to be religious? 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:36.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:39.000 The survey that I quoted, which is the ARIS survey, 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:42.000 didn't break down its data by socio-economic class or education, 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:44.000 IQ or anything else. 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:48.000 But a recent article by Paul G. Bell in the Mensa magazine 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:50.000 provides some straws in the wind. 00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:52.000 Mensa, as you know, is an international organization 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:56.000 for people with very high IQ. 00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:00.000 And from a meta-analysis of the literature, 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:06.000 Bell concludes that, I quote, "Of 43 studies carried out since 1927 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:10.000 on the relationship between religious belief and one's intelligence or educational level, 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:15.000 all but four found an inverse connection. 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:18.000 That is, the higher one's intelligence or educational level, 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:21.000 the less one is likely to be religious." 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:26.000 Well, I haven't seen the original 42 studies and I can't comment on that meta-analysis 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:30.000 but I would like to see more studies done along those lines. 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:32.000 And I know that there are, if I could put a little plug here, 00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:34.000 there are people in this audience 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:40.000 easily capable of financing a massive research survey to settle the question, 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:42.000 and I put the suggestion up -- for what it's worth. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:44.000 But let me know show you some data 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:46.000 that have been properly published and analyzed 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:51.000 on one special group, namely, top scientists. 00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:54.000 In 1998, Larson and Witham 00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:57.000 polled the cream of American scientists, 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:01.000 those who'd been honored by election to the National Academy of Sciences, 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:03.000 and among this select group, 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:10.000 belief in a personal God dropped to a shattering seven percent. 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:15.000 About 20 percent are agnostic, and the rest could fairly be called atheists. 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:18.000 Similar figures obtained for belief in personal immortality. 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:21.000 Among biological scientists, the figures are even lower: 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:28.000 5.5 percent, only, believe in God. Physical scientists: it's 7.5 percent. 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:31.000 I've not seen corresponding figures for elite scholars 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:34.000 in other fields, such history or philosophy, 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:37.000 but I'd be surprised if they were different. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:41.000 So, we've reached a truly remarkable situation, 00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:46.000 a grotesque mismatch between the American intelligentsia 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:48.000 and the American electorate. 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:52.000 A philosophical opinion about the nature of the universe, 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:56.000 which is held by the vast majority of top American scientists 00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:00.000 and probably the majority of the intelligentsia generally, 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:02.000 is so abhorrent to the American electorate 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:08.000 that no candidate for popular election dare affirm it in public. 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:11.000 If I'm right, this means that high office 00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:13.000 in the greatest country in the world 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:19.000 is barred to the very people best qualified to hold it -- the intelligentsia -- 00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:22.000 unless they are prepared to lie about their beliefs. 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:25.000 To put it bluntly, American political opportunities 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:28.000 are heavily loaded against those 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:31.000 who are simultaneously intelligent and honest. 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:38.000 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:42.000 I'm not a citizen of this country, so I hope it won't be thought unbecoming 00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:45.000 if I suggest that something needs to be done. 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:47.000 (Laughter) 00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:50.000 And I've already hinted what that something is. 00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.000 From what I've seen of TED, I think this may be the ideal place to launch it. 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:57.000 Again, I fear it will cost money. 00:18:57.000 --> 00:18:59.000 We need a consciousness-raising, 00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:03.000 coming-out campaign for American atheists. 00:19:03.000 --> 00:19:05.000 (Laughter) 00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:08.000 This could be similar to the campaign organized by homosexuals 00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:10.000 a few years ago, 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:13.000 although heaven forbid that we should stoop to public outing 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:15.000 of people against their will. 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:18.000 In most cases, people who out themselves 00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:22.000 will help to destroy the myth that there is something wrong with atheists. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:24.000 On the contrary, 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:26.000 they'll demonstrate that atheists are often the kinds of people 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:29.000 that could serve as decent role models for your children, 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:34.000 the kinds of people an advertising agent could use to recommend a product, 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:38.000 the kinds of people who are sitting in this room. 00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:41.000 There should be a snowball effect, a positive feedback, 00:19:41.000 --> 00:19:44.000 such that the more names we have, the more we get. 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:47.000 There could be non-linearities, threshold effects. 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:49.000 When a critical mass has been attained, 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:52.000 there's an abrupt acceleration in recruitment. 00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:55.000 And again, it will need money. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.000 I suspect that the word "atheist" itself 00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:02.000 contains or remains a stumbling block 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:06.000 far out of proportion to what it actually means, and a stumbling block to people 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:09.000 who otherwise might be happy to out themselves. 00:20:09.000 --> 00:20:12.000 So, what other words might be used to smooth the path, 00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:19.000 oil the wheels, sugar the pill? Darwin himself preferred "agnostic" -- 00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:25.000 and not only out of loyalty to his friend Huxley, who coined the term. NOTE Paragraph 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:27.000 Darwin said, "I have never been an atheist 00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:31.000 in the same sense of denying the existence of a God. 00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:33.000 I think that generally an 'agnostic' 00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:37.000 would be the most correct description of my state of mind." NOTE Paragraph 00:20:37.000 --> 00:20:42.000 He even became uncharacteristically tetchy with Edward Aveling. 00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:44.000 Aveling was a militant atheist 00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:46.000 who failed to persuade Darwin 00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:49.000 to accept the dedication of his book on atheism -- 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:52.000 incidentally, giving rise to a fascinating myth 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:55.000 that Karl Marx tried to dedicate "Das Kapital" to Darwin, 00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:57.000 which he didn't. It was actually Edward Aveling. 00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:02.000 What happened was that Aveling's mistress was Marx's daughter, 00:21:02.000 --> 00:21:05.000 and when both Darwin and Marx were dead, 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.000 Marx's papers became muddled up with Aveling's papers 00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:14.000 and a letter from Darwin saying, "My dear sir, thank you very much 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:16.000 but I don't want you to dedicate your book to me," 00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:19.000 was mistakenly supposed to be addressed to Marx, 00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:22.000 and that gave rise to this whole myth, which you've probably heard. 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:24.000 It's a sort of urban myth, 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:27.000 that Marx tried to dedicate "Kapital" to Darwin. NOTE Paragraph 00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:35.000 Anyway, it was Aveling, and when they met, Darwin challenged Aveling, 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:42.000 "Why do you call yourselves atheists?" 00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:46.000 "'Agnostic,'" retorted Aveling, "was simply 'atheist' writ respectable, 00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:50.000 and 'atheist' was simply 'agnostic' writ aggressive." 00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.000 Darwin complained, "But why should you be so aggressive?" 00:21:54.000 --> 00:21:57.000 Darwin thought that atheism might be well and good for the intelligentsia, 00:21:57.000 --> 00:22:02.000 but that ordinary people were not, quote, "ripe for it." 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:06.000 Which is, of course, our old friend, the "don't rock the boat" argument. 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:11.000 It's not recorded whether Aveling told Darwin to come down off his high horse. 00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:13.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:15.000 But in any case, that was more than 100 years ago. 00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:18.000 You think we might have grown up since then. 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:23.000 Now, a friend, an intelligent lapsed Jew, 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:25.000 who incidentally observed the Sabbath 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:27.000 for reasons of cultural solidarity, 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:31.000 describes himself as a "tooth fairy agnostic." 00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:33.000 He won't call himself an atheist 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:37.000 because it's, in principle, impossible to prove a negative, 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:40.000 but agnostic on its own might suggest that God's existence 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.000 was therefore on equal terms of likelihood as his non-existence. NOTE Paragraph 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000 So, my friend is strictly agnostic about the tooth fairy, 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:54.000 but it isn't very likely, is it? Like God. 00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:56.000 Hence the phrase, "tooth fairy agnostic." 00:22:56.000 --> 00:22:58.000 Bertrand Russell made the same point 00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:02.000 using a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars. 00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:04.000 You would strictly have to be agnostic 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:06.000 about whether there is a teapot in orbit about Mars, 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:09.000 but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence 00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:12.000 as on all fours with its non-existence. NOTE Paragraph 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:15.000 The list of things which we strictly have to be agnostic about 00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.000 doesn't stop at tooth fairies and teapots. It's infinite. 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:21.000 If you want to believe one particular one of them -- 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:26.000 unicorns or tooth fairies or teapots or Yahweh -- 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:28.000 the onus is on you to say why. 00:23:28.000 --> 00:23:32.000 The onus is not on the rest of us to say why not. 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:37.000 We, who are atheists, are also a-fairiests and a-teapotists. 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:39.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:42.000 But we don't bother to say so, 00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:45.000 and this is why my friend uses "tooth fairy agnostic" 00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:48.000 as a label for what most people would call atheist. 00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:54.000 Nonetheless, if we want to attract deep down atheists to come out publicly, 00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:56.000 we're going to have find something better 00:23:56.000 --> 00:24:01.000 to stick on our banner than "tooth fairy" or "teapot agnostic." NOTE Paragraph 00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:04.000 So, how about "humanist"? 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:09.000 This has the advantage of a worldwide network of well-organized associations 00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:11.000 and journals and things already in place. 00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:14.000 My problem with it only is its apparent anthropocentrism. 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:16.000 One of the things we've learned from Darwin 00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:18.000 is that the human species is only one 00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:22.000 among millions of cousins, some close, some distant. NOTE Paragraph 00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:25.000 And there are other possibilities like "naturalist," 00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:27.000 but that also has problems of confusion, 00:24:27.000 --> 00:24:29.000 because Darwin would have thought naturalist -- 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:32.000 "naturalist" means, of course, as opposed to "supernaturalist" -- 00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:34.000 and it is used sometimes -- 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:37.000 Darwin would have been confused by the other sense of "naturalist," 00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:41.000 which he was, of course, and I suppose there might be others 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:43.000 who would confuse it with nudism. 00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:45.000 (Laughter) 00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:52.000 Such people might be those belonging to the British lynch mob 00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:57.000 which last year attacked a pediatrician in mistake for a pedophile. 00:24:57.000 --> 00:25:02.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:07.000 I think the best of the available alternatives for "atheist" is simply "non-theist." 00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:10.000 It lacks the strong connotation that there's definitely no God, 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:16.000 and it could therefore easily be embraced by teapot or tooth fairy agnostics. 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:20.000 It's completely compatible with the God of the physicists. 00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.000 When atheists 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:28.000 like Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein use the word "God," 00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:31.000 they use it of course as a metaphorical shorthand 00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:36.000 for that deep, mysterious part of physics which we don't yet understand. 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:42.000 "Non-theist" will do for all that, yet unlike "atheist," 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:49.000 it doesn't have the same phobic, hysterical responses. 00:25:49.000 --> 00:25:51.000 But I think, actually, the alternative 00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:54.000 is to grasp the nettle of the word "atheism" itself, 00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:57.000 precisely because it is a taboo word 00:25:57.000 --> 00:26:01.000 carrying frissons of hysterical phobia. 00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:05.000 Critical mass may be harder to achieve with the word "atheist" 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:06.000 than with the word "non-theist," 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:08.000 or some other non-confrontational word. 00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:12.000 But if we did achieve it with that dread word -- "atheist" itself -- 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:16.000 the political impact would be even greater. NOTE Paragraph 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:20.000 Now, I said that if I were religious, I'd be very afraid of evolution. I'd go further. 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:23.000 I would fear science in general if properly understood. 00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:27.000 And this is because the scientific worldview 00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:30.000 is so much more exciting, more poetic, 00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:33.000 more filled with sheer wonder than anything 00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:39.000 in the poverty-stricken arsenals of the religious imagination. 00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:44.000 As Carl Sagan, another recently dead hero, put it, 00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:48.000 "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science 00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:53.000 and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! 00:26:53.000 --> 00:26:55.000 The universe is much bigger than our prophet said, 00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:01.000 grander, more subtle, more elegant?' Instead they say, 'No, no, no! 00:27:01.000 --> 00:27:06.000 My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:08.000 A religion, old or new, 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:11.000 that stressed the magnificence of the universe 00:27:11.000 --> 00:27:13.000 as revealed by modern science 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:16.000 might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe 00:27:16.000 --> 00:27:21.000 hardly tapped by the conventional faiths." NOTE Paragraph 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:24.000 Now, this is an elite audience, 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:31.000 and I would therefore expect about 10 percent of you to be religious. 00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:38.000 Many of you probably subscribe to our polite cultural belief that we should respect religion, 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:42.000 but I also suspect that a fair number of those 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:46.000 secretly despise religion as much as I do. 00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:47.000 (Laughter) 00:27:47.000 --> 00:27:50.000 If you're one of them, and of course many of you may not be, 00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:53.000 but if you are one of them, I'm asking you to stop being polite, 00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:57.000 come out and say so, and if you happen to be rich, 00:27:57.000 --> 00:28:02.000 give some thought to ways in which you might make a difference. 00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:05.000 The religious lobby in this country 00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:10.000 is massively financed by foundations -- to say nothing of all the tax benefits -- 00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:15.000 by foundations such as the Templeton Foundation and the Discovery Institute. 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:21.000 We need an anti-Templeton to step forward. 00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:24.000 If my books sold as well as Stephen Hawking's books, 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:30.000 instead of only as well as Richard Dawkins' books, I'd do it myself. NOTE Paragraph 00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:39.000 People are always going on about, "How did September the 11th change you?" 00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:41.000 Well, here's how it changed me. 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:46.000 Let's all stop being so damned respectful. NOTE Paragraph 00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:48.000 Thank you very much. 00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:53.000 (Applause)