real time debating people of faith so clearly people of faith are interested in having discussions they're not just all blind believers insisting on their way of nobody said anything about all of them i mean the vast majority of religious people are perfectly good people. as you are there's no suggestion i've ever made that all religious people are evil of course not there is a logical progression that goes from believing in faith having faith that your god tells you to do something and doing terrible deeds like suicide bombing like flying planes into into skyscrapers the vast majority of people of faith don't do such terrible things but those people who do terrible things do it believing that they are righteous and good and they think that they're doing the will of their god so they are they're not evil people that actually good people by their own lights they believe they're doing good things and that's why religion is evil because it can make you do evil things believing that they are good do you really believe that

people who go out and carry out suicide bombings it is faith religion is to blame not geopolitics not the world not their lives not what's going on around us it's religion plain and simple. not always since not in the case of the tamil tigers for example but i think in a great majority of cases it is and i think it certainly makes a hell of a lot easier the evidence is plain that in many islamic suicide bombers you talk to them those who fail to talk to them afterwards they've got paradise on the brain they're desperate to go to a martyrs heaven and that's what they think about professor robert pape of the university of chicago studied every case of suicide terrorism to get three hundred fifteen cases and he came to the conclusion that there is quote little connection between suicide terrorism and islamic fundamentalism or any of the world's religions the root of suicide terrorism he says is nationalism it's about it's about power it's about politics it's not about faith faith is just a cover what do you know that he doesn't know well i've seen. in other other

evidence there are different people say to say different things i've seen plenty of of testimonies of suicide bombers who have said precisely that they do it because they want a martyrs paradise through the seven seven bombers and. yes i believe so if you watch the video i'm not sure that i have no fear you talk about afghanistan no talk about iraq they talk about crusades they talk about war between the west and the muslim world they talk about invading armies and there's a lot of there's a lot of real world stuff in there i'm not saying of course not the faith doesn't doesn't play a role but i'm just interested in the idea that you think faith is is the issue you say you said in a very famous column you wrote four days after nine eleven that this came from religion there are enormously good reasons for people to take political action and this of this we see in northern ireland we see it in afghanistan we see it in in sri lanka with the tamil tigers operated so yes there are political reasons but.

the promise of martyrs heaven which is we cannot deny that this is part of islamic doctrine. that martyrs go straight to paradise. not they would not terrorists not murderers not criminals will they believe that because they're told it by their then what about the majority of the world's muslim clerics who came out and condemned nine eleven straight i'm delighted they did but they were pretty quiet about it what about the argument that says. human beings are prone to violence they're prone to carrying out crimes against their fellow man you can blame religion you can blame politics people of economics lots of factors lots of excuses why oh well i don't get why you only focus on religion for fairness why did you also isolate the other factors there are lots of other factors and i'm quite happy to say that yes there are lots of rain if you look at the wars of history some of them have been about religion plenty of them have not been about religion i never said religion is the the the sole cause of wars and violence you may not have the

book but you would accept that the new atheists people like sam harris the late christopher hitchens have blamed a lot of history's wars on god and religion and you make a similar suggest going to god delusion here i would blame a lot of history's wars but the most terrible wars in history the two major wars of the set of the twentieth century are nothing to do with religion. and the cold war and vietnam yes i would of course of course yes so when you have a situation where some of the world's worst crimes are carried out not by believers how then does that square with your idea that it's religion that causes good people to do bad things religion that's driving violence your original statement against religion at the start of a dogmatic belief in something like religion or something like marxism or something like naziism these are all patriotism in my country right or wrong these are all pernicious beliefs which can drive people to do to do terrible things in the second world war. hitlerism was driven by by by racism by

a sort of sub wagnerian pagan religion which revived. stalin's atrocities were motivated by a dogmatic belief in marxism and a few. starlin happened to be an atheist but he was never motivated space of union was not based on scientific rationalism on the elimination of religion and god. starlin persecuted the church stand in persecuted just about every point. are you saying that the soviet union and the leaders of the soviet union were not driven by a hatred of religion. and a belief that science and human progress and materialism was the way forward they believed that materialism science human progress there was a kind of mark that there was a marxist slant on those on those words and they were hideously misused mouser dawn when he invaded tibet told the dalai lama that religion is poison the

subtext to the late christopher hitchens book is religion poisons everything can you blame people of religion for saying hold on we've heard these ideas before that religion poisons everything and it leads in one direction it's an incidental fact that market on and start didn't happen to be atheists they were suddenly it wasn't you want caught to communism. i think it was not quarter communism though so when cole marx was talking about religion being the repeal of the masses i was just a throwaway line. but yeah i mean that was that was. an out of context statement i mean what on earth you think that's got to do with atheism i don't know let me put a statement in context to. one of the world's worst dictatorships tyrannies that we've seen in the last hundred years article thirty seven of. communist constitution declared quote the state recognizes don't religion and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant

a scientific materialistic world outlook in people what do you think your saying i mean that's an appalling thing to say of course it is why is it an appalling thing to say what do you disagree with in that statement why would i want to support atheistic propaganda i support science and truth but you don't support spreading atheism i support spreading science and truth if that happens to be atheism i swear i support it i'm not going to start bullying people into been to being atheist i'm not going to start. trying to compel people to be to be atheist that was what the albanians were doing it's nothing to do with what i would like to of course but you like to persuade them not to be believed as an example i'd like to raise consciousness in a gentle civilized way using argument rational argument from evidence in your book you cite lots of evidence for the bad things religions and what i wonder is if you were being fair when you've also included some of the good things that religion has done my passion is for scientific truth i don't much care about what's good and evil actually i care about what's true i mean do you actually believe in your

muslim faith do you believe that mohammed split the mood into do believe that mohammed flew to heaven on a wing horse for example i pay you the compliment of assuming that you don't know i do believe in merely believe that yes you believe that mohammed went to heaven on a wind horse i believe in god i believe in miracles i believe in revelation i mean the point here is that let's assume i'm wrong richard i'm less. i'm happy to concede that richard i'm happy to concede i'm wrong all religions are wrong god does not exist we're all mad the issue is we exist we've existed for a while i think even christopher hitchens said and you've said in your writings we're not going anywhere so my question to you is why not acknowledge for example the good things that really do except that religion has done good things despite all of our beliefs and our miracles that individual religious people have done an enormous number of good things not driven by religion. well i mean who knows or mean spirited you won't get any credit for telling somebody like. martin luther

king for example reverend martin luther king yes. obviously he was a he was a cleric. so. i imagine that that fed into the good things that he did plenty of other things did he was a great admirer of gandhi. and he was a great admirer of nonviolence he was a brilliant and wonderful great man would you disconnect. nonviolence and gandhi's nonviolence from the very strongly held religious beliefs they didn't well. i think that. it's not a thing that i really care about actually i mean i think they will you care about it richard people carry out violence in the name of god and i cite through example of very famous people who've done good and nonviolence in the name of god and you say i'm not interested if god doesn't exist then doing something good in his name it's great that something good gets done but there's no evidence at all that

believing in god makes you more likely to do good things i can't see any noble logical connection between being religious and doing good things let's concede that god does not exist let's concede that religion is false my problem here is trying to understand why some of the new atheists are so anti religion when religious people clearly are doing lots of good things and they're doing it in the name of god i've never denied that religious people are doing good things or non-religious people are doing good things i care about what's true i'm an educator i'm a scientist and i want people to understand the truth about the universe in which they live that's what i care about and i regard religion as. a distraction and in some cases a pernicious distraction from true education which of which i love and value of the way you value love your god can you not do both well so long as they don't convert evolve into richard along with each other but if you if you if you actually believe

mohammed flew to heaven on a weekend horse that's an anti scientific belief and that could be wrong but not evil is wrong but that doesn't change that doesn't change how do you know it's wrong come on you're a man of the twenty first century i'm just asking it comes back to my original question to the russian opposition to the head russian revolution is the agnostic position why are there no russian over this i didn't say out there i didn't pick but why would a horse be that be the way to get to heaven it was not up there i asked i asked asked a question about why. proof i'm all for saying i can't prove it but can you prove he didn't do it i mean this is the. this is the only thing i'm just asking on your criteria i'm just asking and no i can't prove it and i can't prove it wasn't a golden uni but i'm fascinated that you would rather i'm fascinated to rather talk about what animals the profit may or may not have used for two hundred years ago rather than talk about what muslims or islam is doing in the world today good or

bad well. seems to be the destruction if anyone is distracted seems to be you well that's your that's your view fascinated by how somebody a respected sophisticated journalist in the twenty first century could believe that a prophet flew to heaven on a weekend horse let me ask you this people who hold beliefs in god and in miracles in the supernatural do you regard them all is intellectually inferior to you. i regard those beliefs as intellectual nonsense i don't regard the individuals as intellectually inferior to me because many of them palpably are not if you go back in history then all bets are off because before before darwin for example it is not at all surprising that before darwin people believed in all kinds of things which they wouldn't believe in now there are many people many scientists today who say they're religious and if you actually ask them what they believe in many cases it turns out what they believe is in some sort of deistic god some sort of.

intellectual spirit some sort of. creative intelligence that lay at the root of the universe perhaps invented the laws of physics something like that i don't agree with this book but it's an excellent book very well argued very passionate clearly there's one section in the book where you talk about bringing up children oh yes and you talked about education you talk about a story when you were you tell a story about being in ireland and talking about the catholic child abuse scandal and there's one quote on page three hundred fifty six which i will read out to you horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was the damage was arguably less than the long term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up catholic in the first place you believe that being brought up as a catholic is worse than being abused by a priest. there are shades of being abused by a priest and i quoted the i quoted the example of a woman in america who wrote to me saying that when she was seven years old she was

sexually abused by a priest in his car and at the same time a friend of hers. who was protestant all of protestant family i should say died and she was told that because her friend was protestant she had gone to hell and would be roasting in hell forever and she told me that of those two abuses she got over the physical abuse it was the yucky which she got over it but the mental abuse of being told about hell she took years to get over and respect richard you're an empiricist you're a rationalist one letter from one woman in america isn't really but a basis to extrapolate and makes of course we lose of course true and i'm not basing it on that it seems to me that telling children such that they really really believe that people who sin are going to go to hell and roast forever. for ever your skin grows again when it when it peels off with with with with

burning it seems to me to be intuitively entirely reasonable that that is a worse form of child abuse that will get more nightmares that will give more genuine distress because they really believe that don't believe it's not a problem of course you also let me just mean i i been put on the spot about this hellfire thing. i have really been put on the. put on the well i i i sense that you think it's somehow obvious that that having a priest if you're a small girl having a priest was very very interested in asking your audience whether being told about heaven and hell as a child no man brought up as catholic is worse than worse than being abused by a priest ok let's have a show of outlets is it worse to be abused by a priest. if you believe it's worse for a priest to abuse a child than to bring up your child catholic raise your hands. are both as bad as

each other. so we have a three way split in the audience. let's finish the section with one last related subject on this question a personal question for me you talk about how. to teach children that there is one god or that god created the world in six days that is child abuse to even teach your children religion is child abuse so i have a daughter i teach her about islam in the halls. am i guilty of child abuse you teach or the world was created in six days because islam doesn't teach that i'm delighted to hear that i ask again am i guilty of child abuse for teaching my child stories from the koran or not they're good to know we are going to talk more about science and we're going to go back to the audience to ask some questions to professor dawkins in part two we'll be back after the break into.

this weeks of price a new method of cremation is helping him to tradition become more environmentalists friendly and we visit a danish community and you have taken sustainability to new heights just over there on the horizon to some so i only know they are officially one hundred percent renewable and. look at that so this is it that's the energy right generated points of change on al-jazeera al-jazeera is a very important force of information for many people around the world when all the cameras are gone i'm still here go into areas that nobody else is going to talk to people that nobody else is talking to and bringing that story to the forefront. at night in a stalking somali patrolled streets police. or lack of.

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al-jazeera coming up next it's head to head. t. welcome back we're talking about religion and its impact on the world of good evil we're joined here by our guest evolutionary biologist professor richard dawkins richard science is your great passion and you're a great believer in science you're an evangelist for science a promoter and defender of science but what would you say to those people who say there are some quite important questions genuine questions that science cannot answer why we here what's the meaning of life where does morality come from and that if we want to have a cracker answering knows what science is objection i'm not sure i'd accept that science can't answer those particular questions i think there are other questions science probably shouldn't try to answer like what is what is right and what is

wrong those are the questions that are not of the immediate concern of science but what's the meaning of life why is there is there anything how did it all start but those seem to me to be scientific questions or potentially scientific questions if there are some questions of that sort that science can never answer. then we should at least keep trying to answer them and if science can't answer them religion having a crack at arms' for in them is there's no reason to think that religion has any any but any basis for an answer then why would religion have a crack why would you bother to listen to religion having a crack at answering them. i mean one thing i would say is that maybe questions that science can't answer like the origin of everything but if science can't answer them then religion certainly can't and nothing else can either why why is the science for nothing well yes because because science is is is the method of getting

a what's true i mean if you take something like how do. the universe began which is a very baffling deep question how did life begin another baffling deep question both those questions are unanswered the best methods we have of approaching those are the methods of science because these are the methods that that look at evidence that evaluate evidence in all sorts of sophisticated ways what is religion got to do with that other than just looking at the the writings of somebody who wrote a few centuries ago i mean why would you bother to. read those writings so the great philosophers and theologians in history grappled with these big questions and thought about spiritual issues moral issues the transcendent they're wasting their time yes they're wasting their time what about why does my life have meaning what's it's worth well you know as my dignity your your meaning and your dignity are up to you and mine are up to me and these are not questions that science will attempt to

answer each person finds their own meaning in their in their own life and good luck to them and what's what's wrong with religion religion offering moral certainty if as you say science can answer moral questions science can't offer moral certainty but i don't see that religion can either you don't think that the religious values we have today the moral codes we live by today were originally derived from christian values islamic values in devalues not really no i mean there are things like the golden rule things like treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself these are ancient. values which are which crop up all over the world they've been adopted by many religions you can find justifications for them in moral philosophy you can find justifications for them in evolutionary biology which is my own my own subject i don't seriously think you're going to base your morality on on religion because if you do then you've got to say will do it do i

base it on scripture i hope you don't base it on scripture because if you do then you're going to have some pretty horrible values unless you are. it liberally cut out those parts of scripture which which is which are unacceptable to modern morality if you believe science is that it can answer questions i've already said no i've already said it can't answer moral questions but questions about the real world questions about reality questions about the origins of things. why life is the way it is why the world is the way it is why the universe of the way it is science is that is the way to answer that some of your critics of argued that you are willing to hold religion up to a very put under the microscope to account scrutinize it criticize it you don't do the same to science or scientists or some of the bad things that have come out of science well bad things that come out of science. if by that you mean horrible weapons nuclear weapons. these are these are terrible things which

are technology that arises out of science and it's certainly true that if you want to do terrible things with technology or terrible weapons for example science is the best way to do it because science is the best way to do anything and even bad things even bad things i mean that's right if you want to develop a terrible weapon you're not going to do it in any other way than than by science the trick is not to want to develop a terrible weapon and. that's a political decision and you do not you do not see science and religion as occupying two different compartments they can live side by side they are in conflict with one of. in so far as religion attempts to. talk about reality and has an alternative vision of reality i think they are incompatible yes. despite the fact as we discussed earlier many of our leading scientists are believers. i think it's baffling i mean what they impact practice do

is they leave their their religion at the door when they go into the lab and so they get on with their science say they don't well i know they do but ok isn't it because religion. has all sorts of human needs and spiritual urges which science never can it's not the real issue you can't get away from religion they are. human needs i mean for example if you're terrified of dying religion may answer the need for comfort and consolation or if you if you miss a loved one who's died and you hope to see them one day in heaven then religion answers the need it doesn't make it true and one last thing and i will go to the audience what do you say to those people who say. you talk a great deal about the power of science the truth of science you have people like sam harris who say morality can be determined by science you have quite charismatic forceful people going around the world proselytizing on behalf of science that

science is actually the new religion that you guys are pitching i wouldn't say it's a new religion i mean it certainly does some of the things that religion traditionally has tried to do like to answer the deep questions of existence and it does that and it does it successfully in a way that religion never has but it isn't a religion because it's not based upon any holy books it's not based upon faith it's not based upon revelation it's not based upon tradition it's based upon evidence and there is a huge difference in anything we do not have evidence for that's not scientifically testable you would dismiss well scientifically testable is is putting the bar rather highly but i do think that evidence is the only good reason to believe anything yes love. me i mean that there's obviously important questions and if you ask some question like how do you know that your wife loves you. it's from evidence i mean it's not it's not scientifically testable evidence but it's

evidence it's little looks in the eyes it'll catch is in the voice it's. that is evidence that's not that's not just internal revelation ok let's open up to the audience we've been talking about god evolve war terrorism bringing up your children living a good life religion happiness science versus religion who would like to answer the first question yes you. don't want to got. suddenly. on the. part of you. what is your reaction are you going to believe or are you going to go against what it takes to believe in god not just me. through the cloud that's the thing i've worried about a lot. of me. do wonders for the book the reason i worry about it is that. as

a scientist i am committed to the view that i would change my mind if evidence came along and it's a very important question what would that evidence look like and i talked about it with my colleagues a great deal. i used to think yes if there was a great deal paul robeson voice coming out of the clouds saying this. then yes obviously i would i would believe it but have you ever seen a really really good country trick there are things that i've seen done that it seems to me to be god that's got to be a miracle and yet you know it's not and so that there is a real problem there that we are easily fooled let's take another question from. gentlemen here very interesting i was extremely amused when you described faith. sort of no argument this university of course began with the study of theology most of the people here would have been studying theology at the beginning

of the university and indeed the way in which it was taught was not professorial you didn't have lectures mostly mostly you had discussions debates people didn't write monographs they collected discussions notes of discussions people disagreed about their face. absolutely everything everybody had to lift different opinions and everybody expressed it and everybody was heard the idea that so the question is . do you really think that you all your view of facebook in no argument. to really any experience of of how people think about their faith you talked about the evidence that your wife loves you i think for most religious people the evidence that there is a god is rather like that well. obviously i would be mad to suggest that theologians don't argue they argue all the time and always have the fight wars over their arguments so clearly they argue and say when i say no argument i don't mean

that they don't argue when you say that theologians. have had disputed interesting discussions. i take it that from your gob you take a position one way or the other on whether the transubstantiation whether the bread and wine really is the body and blood of a first century jew or is merely symbolic but what. evidence you bring to bear on such an argument i cannot imagine it would not be a real argument to talk it would be a false argument would not be an argument which could be settled by by real evidence just deal with the point about the evidence level when you when you when you say that you are that your wife loves you and you you you are getting evidence from looks in the looks in the eye and catches in the voice was the phrase that i actually used. and the question of said that's the way religious people feel about

god yes they feel that about god but there's no evidence that they're getting any cues a tall i mean they're there god is an imaginary god inside themselves they feel that they're getting a little looks from the eyes of god and science from the voice of god but why should we believe them since we can't see or hear any evidence to that effect. gentlemen here in the secular with regards to religion you give an example where the spirit of the muslims basically the rock themselves often bombs because that's what they believe in the islamic faith but i disagree with you because there are more than a billion muslims living in the world today who actually believe in the scripture which you said it's obvious to everybody started believing in the scripture then that would be horrible but i disagree with you because more than a billion people billion muslims believe that if you kill one innocent person it's as if the entire humanity today humanity is about seven billion people so more than a billion muslims do not strap themselves up and actually go in you know. the

problem with many scriptures that i think the koran is no exception is that you can find a verse that says so then you find another verse that says the opposite and so you have to you have to pick and choose i mean is it not the case for example we choose the bad ones i mean i'm suggesting that you shouldn't be in the position of having to choose i mean you shouldn't base your your your life on a holy book which has contradictory verses where you can choose one verse when you want to make one point and another verse when. i want to make make another point i mean isn't it the case that the penalty for apostasy is death you can't take these things and just hold i could hold up an example of we mentioned earlier sam harris has said there are some views that are so irrational people should be put to death for them should i hold all atheist him course i won't hold him to let me put it dealing is the penalty for apostasy death no good i'm delighted to hear that what why didn't i look around and say it is well and some islamic scholars do ok but that's debate and discussion is going on things take place over centuries ok let's

make a point and during the debate lady was waving actually in the qur'an many kind refers only to muslims and excludes infidels which is all the rest of us so that's a small point but really my question to professor dawkins is how does he feel about the encroachments of all religions extremists eventually screw and a lot of muslims into politics and everyday life and how does he feel about religion in trying to influence politics and public you know how do you feel about religion influencing politics and public life people should be free to speak their minds i mean i'm a great believer in free speech and so members of parliament should speak their minds and if their minds are influenced by their religion then that's that's fine what i would object to i think is the view that somehow religion has a privileged. right to speak because it's religion and i think you probably agree

with that as well if you start up in parliament and make an excellent speech in favor of something which religion has a view or like abortion say if you make your points well and win the vote by making your points well that's fine but what you shouldn't be allowed to get away with this saying because it's religion and therefore. this is what we should do. as a social scientists we sort of the model of the rational actor is somewhat. we don't look at all actors or all times as acting rationally in fact we assume they don't but that is the prelude to my question my question was really would you accept that it's not so much religion that course is complex but sincere can commitment to some belief that you think is morally important and in that sense do we get rid of morality well i think i partly said that when i said that in the great wars of the of the century these were driven by non-religious motivations but they were

driven by my country right or wrong kind of patriotism that's a little bit different from morality we're talking about at least it's it's not religious i was interested in what you said in your preamble when you said that didn't i take it you're a social scientist and you're you're no doubt right to suggest that since social scientists are studying the human animal you notice that people actually don't behave rationally well unfortunately that's true but that doesn't mean we shouldn't behave rationally just because people don't let's take a question from an atheist or agnostic gentleman in the black jacket there are three rows down in the middle. i think it will know when it right. is excellent it became very apparent to me that. evolution has given the human species some very very powerful survival instincts we don't grass earth men want to spread their genes we want to gather as much resources together as we can to to help

a continuance of vive and as a result of that there's been a lot of very very dark episodes in our history of the roman empire which was terribly oppressive headed mystic the vikings who stole raped pillaged the parish and so on and so forth do you not think that it was actually that i do years of religion that human the human race the human species from beyond these big. survival instincts and started to give them a new paradigm for thinking which was not necessarily in the interests of their instinct for survival it is perfectly true that. sort of selfish gene view of. life which is what i've mostly mostly written about is a very unpleasant view of life and if you followed the the creed of the selfish

gene literally and actually lived your life according to it it would be a very unpleasant world in which to live it would be a sort of thatcher right. i mean i i often said that while i'm a passionate darwinian when it comes to explaining the way life is i'm a passionate anti darwinian when it comes to organizing. our lives the world be a better place if religion disappeared tomorrow yes. it's about all the good things we discussed the rest of the. still of the nazi holocaust of communism you would have the charities that's fun. you would have the charities but it's only your assumption but i want to finish the question actually challenge me by saying that it was religion that helped us to escape from the unpleasantness of the of the selfish gene i don't actually think that is true i

think that we have escaped by a long slow process of civilization in which religion no doubt played a part if you look historically over the very long time span of of history we're getting better we're getting nicer we're getting more charitable we're getting kinder getting less cruel i wouldn't give religion the credit for that i think i would give a much more complicated mixture of civilizing processes to the credit for it and religion is probably a part of that. one last question. gentlemen there in the blue jumper we have to make the last question professor dawkins as an atheist is it not the case that you either believe in the universe just popping into existence without a cause which is worse than hocus pocus or in this thing called the multiverse which has as much independent imperiled evidence as hades controlling the on the

world right that the physiology you use is somewhat biased somewhat somewhat slanted. popping into the universe popping into existence out of nothing the multiverse theory is used in this context to. explain the fact that some physicists believe that the physical constants are to finally adjusted it's as though it's a put up job it looks as though the physical constants are so finely adjusted that if you change any one of them. the universe would collapse and all them had to say that yes. the multiverse hypothesis is a kind of darwinian way of solving that problem it says there are billions and. billions of universes all of which have different settings of their fundamental constants a tiny minority of those billions and billions of universes have their constant set in such a way as to give rise to

a universe which last long enough to give rise to galaxies stars planets chemistry and hence the process of evolution do you understand does make me chuckle that you mock me for believing in a prophet that flies into heaven but you believe in lots and lots of university you can't show me proof to me test them in a lab as a basis of getting out of believing in a god of the prophet. i'm astonished that you should compare the two i'm comparing the lack of evidence for the two well you cannot use your. intuitive common sense in order to dis physics i mean if you could do that we wouldn't need physicists i mean they they are very sophisticated people they do mathematics but their officers like paul davies who have dissed the multiverse theory as being. well paul davis would rather take the view that there's something mysterious in the origin of the universe and that's a perfectly respectable physicists' view steven weinberg the nobel prize winning fifty respectable a physicist holds a view about mystery in the universe but not of any one else holds or if we're

talking about the origin of the universe that is a problem in physics yes let's end with a couple of quick questions if as christopher hitchens the late christopher hitchens wrote religion is a radical and as you put it harder to get rid of than smallpox doesn't this basically mean that whatever motivations you have no matter how passionately you are driven and love for the truth you war essentially wasting your time i would never admit to wasting my time trying to propagate the truth and i think i can claim a modicum of success with the people that i've written read my books the people who've attended my lectures it's a doctrine of despair to say that we're stuck with religion for all eternity the religions of ancient greece and ancient rome and the vikings of all. dead nobody believes in jupiter or thaw anymore and i have great hopes that the same is going to be true of that of the god of abraham. and one last thing there's a new book out from one of this country's well known philosophers called religion

for atheists which makes the case that no matter how false religion is no matter how imaginary god may be there are some lessons there are some institutions there are some values that atheists could usefully borrow i've heard that argument put i've heard people say that we that humans do need some sort of. rituals and they need some sort of gathering places meeting places i can sort of see that is not a thing that interests me very much i don't feel the need for for for ritual i don't feel any great need to fill the alleged vacuum that will be left when religion goes i think there's plenty to fill it already. fantastic discussion it's a pleasure to how do you hear on our. thank you all to the audience here in the oxford union chamber and thanks to you all at home for watching goodbye and dare i say god bless each

. it does look more and more like bangladesh is becoming a one party state give me one good reason why the opposition should have been voted to do power isn't the problem the human rights watch describes how opposition members have been arrested killed and even disappeared maybe house and goes head to head with a gal who is very bright going to fuck you too you want to be a developer and they don't is disputing the economic revolution what i don't recall saying this is the product of development is not the same as democracy head to head on out here on. you responding six continents across the. aisle just zeroes correspondents live and bring the stories they. have that was not good.

enough to see on. were at the mercy of the russian camp for palestinian but i'll just see iran food in world news. weather is lousy try and find across much of the middle east but the side of the med it is still a little on the disappointing side but some places the cloud just sliding as it's we could see some rather heavy rain for a time making its way to will cyprus last monday's pitch had generally fine and dry beirut not doing too badly at around twenty two degrees will see some of the temperatures of baghdad and also fall kuwait city further east for fours and fives the full couple over the next day lossy dry look behind me that they got becomes that wet weather it will be absolutely tipping down northern parts of seriously some heavy rain pushing up across the turkish mountains we're looking at snow eighteen degrees there for beirut then a bit some places

a cloud also sliding down across northern parts of saudi arabia as we go on through the next monday not see bad twenty five celsius here in doha quite a keen wind fashion model wind setting in as we go. i want him to choose they will see the ten which is hanging on to a similar value but there is that in place and that that thick cloud just pushing a little further south with sun up and it could see one of two spots of rain as well spots of rain so into the eastern parts of south africa some wet weather on the card table for much of the region it is fine and dry we have got some more of the showers continuing across eastern. green bacteria in a broad street and superheated gas escaping from book cannick in iceland. and the from what happened to experiments. and. how counter the effects of

climate change the science of capturing. on the scientific on the back of my montagne i just have to contend techno on or to zero. reports of at least twenty five people killed in venezuela's border with brazil as protesters fight with security forces. hello and welcome to al-jazeera live from doha i'm martin denis also coming up

a senior afghan taliban leader a rising cata for talks with the u.s. a ceasefire is on the agenda after seventeen years of war. security is tight in indian administered kashmir is the military continues its crackdown on separatists activists plus. remember. a few surprises at the ninety first academy awards in los angeles. more people may have been killed in violent confrontations along venezuela's border with brazil than previously thought at least twenty five people are now believed to have died in the town of santa elena as venezuelan forces try to stop opposition supporters from bringing foreign aid into the country mohammed jam jhoom reports

now from back in brazil right on the border with venezuela. a second round of clashes between venezuelan migrants and venezuelan security forces in as many days calm was eventually restored but things didn't stay quiet for long. as pro-government venezuelan demonstrators converged on their side of this border with brazil. chanting their support for president nicolas maduro insisting like he does that they need no outside aid and don't really want to say we came to sing on national anthem to show how we respect the sovereignty of all people so others also need to respect our sovereignty we're not begging for anything. a short distance down the same road new allegiances were announced. as two soldiers who defected to brazil the night before declared their support for venezuelan opposition leader. and sent him into play as a venezuelan pederasts

a few pain it pains me to see all the suffering of people. at times the defectors were cheered even though there was little to be cheerful about it's almost sunset and as you can see behind me brazilian security forces are still blocking access to the brazilian side of the no man's land between brazil and venezuela for the past few hours the only vehicles we've seen coming through are ambulances. then shocking news a new albeit unconfirmed death toll from three days' worth of clashes between security forces and opposition supporters in and around the venezuelan town of santa ana. at the moment we estimate there are twenty five people dead and eighty four injured and the thing is we don't control the hospital the military controls it the people they killed they put them in an armed vehicles and took them to a military base that's why we're not sure of the exact number of dead leaving these venezuelans to wonder just how much darker the coming days maybe mohammed atta and

parker dima on brazil's border with venezuela. and in a few hours from now the u.s. vice president mike pence is due to land in colombia's capital bogota he is expected to meet the venezuelan opposition leader. and outline steps that the trump of ministration is prepared to take against nicholas my daughter has appealed to world leaders to keep all options open to restore democracy in america editor lucien human ripples out from san antonio that sin venezuela. and israeli security forces again denounced in the aftermath of saturday's violent response to unarmed protesters i believe that the first time the un high commissioner for human rights strongly condemned the use of excessive force by venezuela's national guard and especially pro-government armed groups the venezuela's government has

a different explanation than. the plan was to use terrorist to cross the sea bridge run over anyone they saw people and then blame the government of nicolas maduro. as for the quality of pro-government armed gangs when we saw take over the streets and shoot the protesters in san antonio rodriguez claims there is illegal colombian paramilitaries who operate on both sides of the border. however after taking refuge from the gunfire we were able to see and film members of the college devils alongside national guardsman while they looted a close store then surely some of the guardsman joined in to pick through the booty call it deals maybe paramilitary but residents tell us they are venezuelan operating in open complicity with security forces oh yes and i mean they're here they belong to the government and they come through here threatening people slashing tires breaking windows. i mean i shot someone on the corner they're

stealing motorcycles. on sunday morning they were still roaming the streets. albeit more discreetly near the now closed cmon believer to bridge the it's here that we've found more of an israel and preparing to migrate to one of the countless illegal border crossings fleeing the violence and poverty that is driving millions of in israel and from their homeland to see in human are just sita san antonio and israel and. the afghan taliban is co-founder and political head is in cata for talks aimed at ending the country's seventeen year war door harney baradar is among several senior taliban members who will meet the u.s. special envoy zalmay khalilzad for four days of talks the taliban is pushing for a full withdrawal of u.s. troops from afghanistan but it does presence is being seen as a significant boost to these talks let's go live now to our course when the

stephanie decker she is in doha or in stephanie the presence of baradar at these talks is being considered a significant a positive contribution to the momentum that was built up last time that's the challenge isn't it to continue with the pace that they achieved in the last round. absolutely it's the most senior level of talks between the taliban and the americans since the talks of starch and they've been going on for months martine and they are being quite tight lipped about where and when they're going to happen today but certainly his presence and this is a man as you mentioned he's one of the founders of the town of on he is from the political leaders he's the political head of their office here he has been in prison in pakistan until october of last year and his release is seen to be a man who can be part of this negotiating process who can actually implement things on the ground of course the challenges remain we know what are they talking about they talking about the cease fire they talk about the withdrawal of u.s.

troops talking about getting the taliban to talk to the afghan government which at the moment the taliban has refused to do so is all about the timeline of that and bringing the taliban into the political fold and no longer being an armed militant group so these are the challenges i think that's the thing we're going to have to wait and see what comes out of these talks but certainly whatever the agreed to here if they manage to agree on some kind of official agreement whether that's going to be implemented on the ground in afghanistan because of course you mentioned there it's been seventeen of your seventeen years of war since the americans came in two thousand and one but the people of afghanistan have endured conflict for forty years they want peace they want security so this is something that they are also looking forward to seeing what will come out of the talks here in doha and stephanie at this particular point in time the taliban a negotiating from a position of strength they would control over a large swathes of the country. i think there is

a certain irony here you know the americans went in in two thousand and one after september the eleventh because they accused the taliban of harboring al qaida some of bin laden it's been a deadly fight tens of thousands of people killed civilians afghan military american soldiers and now also the taliban that now you have a situation where the taliban is in control contesting control over around or over half of the country there at the negotiating table they're being discussed to go into politics so people some people will say to you what what has been achieved or this certainly we know that donald trump is keen to get the americans out the afghan government is concerned about the implications of that they want some kind of framework that can be guaranteed on the table so i think it is significant we have to wait and see what they can agree on i think we do have to urge caution because there are incredibly complicated details to be ironed out but i think as you mentioned there the presence of love but i thought here in doha sitting

opposite the u.s. delegation is significant and we're going to have to wait and see how the next couple of days will unfold seventy deca. thank you the residents in indian administered kashmir say there's a shortage of fuel and gas is the military continues its crackdown on separatists shops and businesses were closed over the weekend in protest against the government police and paramilitary soldiers are patrolling the streets in the main city sure to go in and to submission of possible demonstrations tension between india and pakistan is high after a suicide bomb attack killed at least forty indian soldiers earlier this month we can talk now defense correspondent who is in the indian capital new delhi so this crackdown then against the people of india the witness of kashmir continues more than a week after this attack happened in which more than forty indian security forces were killed. well martine this

crackdown is actually leading to a lot of panic in people on the ground there telling us that they're on edge and a lot of this is based on fact as well as rumor now the fact for a lot of this is because of article thirty five a this is the part of the indian constitution that gives here it's autonomy and special rights one of which is that only indigenous residents can buy property now the rumors going around there at the fact sorry let's stick with those is that india supreme court will be hearing a case against that soon but the rumors are that the indian government will issue an ordinance this is a temporary cabinet order that would remove thirty five a from the constitution that's upset many people on the ground and as actually united local politicians across political stripes say that if that happens this could threaten india's instrument of ascension to kish near that was signed in one nine hundred forty seven that's the basis of india's entire legal claim to the region so that's been causing

a lot of tension added to that was other reports that local hospitals were asked to stockpile two months worth of medicines and as we reported saturday ten thousand paramilitary troops have been brought into the reason into the region and dozens of pro separatists have been arrested now that is now cost panic people are stockpiling fuel cooking fuel petrol because they believe something is going to happen and all of this has made the situation there very tense and meanwhile as you mentioned the violence is continuing this weekend there were several gun battles where three gunmen were killed including as well a police officer and that want to what kind of message is coming from the government then to try to assurances to the people of india in menace of kashmir and also how is the maybe government responding to pakistan because the rhetoric was quite high just a few days ago.