for the nice conversations of great minds i'm very pleased to be joined by a british apologist and evolutionary biologist professor richard dawkins is a scientist and author whose life work has educated millions and challenge the popular beliefs of a generation professor dawkins is best known for the ideas laid out of his landmark book the selfish gene and develop further in the extended phenotype which is the radical notion that darwinian selection happens not at the level of the individual but at the level of our d.n.a. implies that humans evolved for only one purpose to serve our genes he's also equally well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design is an atheist and humanist and vice president of the british humanist association and supporter of the rights movement professor dawkins is becoming has become a leading figure of new atheism english language version of his groundbreaking book the god delusion argues that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion sold more than two million copies have been translated into more than

thirty languages is in america's fellow at the university of oxford and founder of the richard dawkins foundation for reason and science he joins me now from our studios in miami professor dawkins welcome it's a pleasure thank you it's a pleasure and an honor to have you with us in the selfish gene you shook up the discussion of natural selection you coined the term the selfish gene as a way if correct me if i have this wrong place as way of expressing the genes centered view of evolution as opposed to the views focused on group selection given that you also say that genes just are they can survive independently of the cell the cell can survive in the better the organism how do you reckon to reconcile the need for biological cooperation with your hypothesis of a selfish gene. cooperation takes place at the level of the individual or individuals cooperate selfish the whole point about my book the selfish gene is not

that individuals and selfish but individuals may well very well be able to restrict cooperative as a result of their genes in being selfish and obviously that takes a book to explain but it does not mean that individuals are selfish through less that they should be selfish. point taken and a good point i'm curious about the the genes been so sure the visual genes themselves. would take a book to explain we have actually a. twenty some odd minutes or talk can you can you explain. your reasoning others yeah well obviously genes are their innovative d.n.a. so they can't actually be selfish in the same sense as we are they don't actually have have motives they're not conscious they don't think but a gene that causes individuals to behave in such a way as to foster the welfare of that gene will survive and so it's the self

interest of the gene and that sort of metaphorical sense but i mean what you will not get is natural selection favoring a gene that sacrifices itself for the benefit of other genes but you may very well get an individual that sacrifices itself for the benefit of other individuals would wouldn't that. willingness to sacrifice yourself for other individuals be seen driven behavior. yes it would and that's the point that a gene that makes an individual sacrifice itself the individual self for the benefit of the gene will survive and that would often need for the benefit of copies of the gene in other individuals notably close relatives were right so in other words our altruistic impulses the desire not to be selfish but to care for our family for friends for

a community and to sacrifice for them actually perpetuates our genes even if we don't produce offspring because those genes are also appearing in others of our of our local family. that's correct you know ok genes aren't static will express various or wheels in response to the environment around spontaneous development so we act as ease the response to food poisoning for example or to get a pretty good example so how does that entire concept of an interactive phenotype fit into your theory. what you're talking about is the expression of genes so that's the genes that are in you may or may not express themselves and whether they express themselves and they depend upon the environment they depend upon your food may depend upon your age and so so the genes themselves. just in you and they may or may not get passed on to your offspring but how they express themselves will depend very much on the environment and notably by the other genes that happen to

share the body with them and not just in an individual organ or cell or click close area but. more broadly. yes. and also it would be their interaction with. with other genetic material for example my understanding is that more than half of the total d.n.a. in our body is not human genes it's all of viruses and bacteria and fungi and other . well that's that's true and that's very interesting and and yes interaction with with the bacteria for example in our gut which are massively numerous in our guts and even within every one of our cells a mitochondria which of these vital little organelles that are responsible for giving us energy they were once upon a time bacteria and they reproduce by the same means as bacteria do reproduce as an

entirely independent population inside ourselves and they get storm in the egg to the next generation so at some point in the past cells were infected by bacteria and thus began the evolutionary process that led to mitochondria and cells . in the very remote past i'm curious if if in your in your work you've come across anything that might indicate that phage is played for ages or the super smart for laws for viewers the super small viruses that in fact only bacteria rather than entire if they have played a role in modifying the genes of bacteria that we then interact with and that may in fact modify our genes or any evidence or very probably yes very very probably but syria rather different from assume that bacteria are constantly swapping genetic material rather like we computers copy and paste bits of text from one

document into another but clearly are constantly swapping exchanging copying and pasting the genetic material into into other bacteria and viruses phage is play a role in that yes i've had over the years a number of political discussions. which is typically the topic of my programs other than the segment and how jack of us in particular people who are. followers of iran actually quote you and suggest your selfish gene metaphor and the economics of milton friedman or. and the modern libertarian movement are the same thing and your selfish gene movement or your self-esteem. hypothesis assertion what. you have to fill in the word so i don't have the correct word. which informs that not informs

that movement but demonstrates the validity of of individual selfishness i'm curious how you would respond as i'm sure i would disown that one of the most surprising things that happened after the selfish gene was was published with it i started getting letters from rightwing libertarians in america i've never even met a rightwing libertarian but they started writing to me and it's a total misunderstanding as i said before genes are selfish and that's nothing to do with whether individuals are selfish or other it's a very complicated relationship and in particular it says nothing whatever about the moral rightness or wrongness of being selfish you could take a stand on baps which is based upon something quite different from. evolutionary biology there's no reason why somebody shouldn't read the selfish gene and i that happens be a right wing libertarian but absolutely there is no reason why they should read the selfish gene and therefore become

a right to terry and i have always voted on the left in british elections it's interesting i'm curious your thoughts on the relationship between genetics and political world view there's been a fair amount of speculation in writing and in recent months about the genetics or at least the neurobiology of politics a political worldview. how do you think that all that whole dance plays out at the level of genes. it's. well i mean one's political opinions like everything else about one's bunsby was about everything governed by one's brain and brains are of course built by genes interacting with each other and with the environment in the presence of embryonic g. so there are doubtless genetically influence differences in brains which affect political opinions which is going to be very complicated and i would hesitate to

say anything in detail about just this so it would be more like. there is no gene for a storage system genes for all these various characteristics and there is no gene for being a conservative or a liberal there are genes that might give people certain proclivities that would cause them to draw toward one of the other that's right didn't it yes in very complicated interaction with other genes i'm with upbringing education and so on you write and talk a lot and i apologize i've only read two of your books but i've read pieces of many others and and and a lot of commentary over the years you write and talk a lot about classical the classical concept of gradual darwinian evolution i'm curious and my apologies if you've already. dealt with this morning of course i just missed it about your thoughts on stephen jay gould's concept of punctuated equilibrium as an enhancement of darwin the concept that. evolution really macroevolution the species evolution is not generally this slow gradual process

but rather there are periodic disasters that happen that wipe out ninety plus percent of a of an individual or group and the small subset of their group that is most. adapted to the new environment even though they may have been maladapted to the earlier environment are the ones that continue to survive and maybe even that accounts for gaps in the fossil record i'm curious your thoughts on about. well what you have just outlined is not really punctuated equilibrium although you could be forgiven for thinking that because punctuated equilibrium was expressed in such a confused way perhaps everybody would be forgiven for muddling up at least three different things what you've just described is the phenomenon of mass extinction which is indeed very important and every few every twenty or thirty. million years or so you may get a mass extinction and then occasionally get

a very very large mass extinction and after that in a sense evolution kind of starts all over again so when the dinosaurs went extinct sixty five million years ago. the mammals which up to them had been rather small bit players in in the in the grammar suddenly flourished because the dinosaurs had gone and gave rise to all the great diversity of mammals that we see today now that pattern of periodic mass extinctions followed by a new flowering of evolutionary diversity that is undoubtedly true that happens that is not punctuated equilibrium. point to equilibrium is the idea that there are if you follow the evolution of any one lineage through the fossil record you may see long periods of stay since when nothing very much happens they stay pretty much the way they are and then suddenly there's a jump to a rather different form now even that is confused it's confusing because it muddles up two different things it muddles up one idea which is that there really is

a sudden leap in evolution a macro mutation a child is born of a different species from its parents that's one possible interpretation which i think is wrong the other possible interpretation is that evolution has been going on very rapidly during the time when as it were paleontologists aren't looking during the time when fossils are not being laid down perhaps the fossils have been laid down in a different geographic. area so if you get any one place you don't see the change what you see is a what looks like a sudden change because. animals that have been evolving in a different area suddenly read migrate into the area where you're digging so that looks like a sudden jump now that's perfectly plausible that probably happened that probably doesn't count for some of the apparent gaps in the fossil record but i do deprecate

the use of the word of the phrase punctuated equilibrium because from the very start from eldridge and gould the initial introduction of it it has been confused not least my order to improve themselves very interesting now it's been twenty years or worse and so since i read gould so thank you for correcting me on this we will get back to get back to. back to you i'd like to get into a conversation of religion. and spirituality and some of the other issues you tackled some of your other books in just a moment first we have to take a break just for a second more conversations with great minds of richard dawkins we come back in just. drives the world of fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions great through good through who can you trust no one who is in view with the global machinery to see where we had it state controlled capitalism is called satchels when

nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. on the back conversations of the great minds that i've been speaking with evolutionary scientists richard dawkins whose work has made him a leading figure in new atheism as are dawkins new book the magic of reality how we know what's really true will be released in the united states on october fourth and

professor dawkins welcome back. your new book the magic of reality how we know it's really true and some of your other works the god delusion for example you were in well actually let me let me go to the magic of reality first i this is just a beautifully illustrated book and and make science so excessive bill to basically people of any age you asked the first question of the first chapter what is reality what is magic. is almost an existential question you want to take a whack at that. well this is a book designed for young people primarily but actually fought for all ages and i'm trying to make the point that magic is in the in the sense of supernatural magic magic spell didn't fairy tales and miracles and harry potter and things but reality real science where there aren't any miracles is much more exciting and much

more magical in the good sense of the sort of poetic magic when we say it's magical looking up at the milky way at night that that kind of thing so i'm trying to show that myths can be fun and there are plenty of myths in the book but science is better science is more interesting more fascinating more in thrall ing and that takes reality seriously we don't have miracles we don't have supernatural spells we don't have to have magic in that sense what we have is reality which is magical is wonderful and we study it by the methods of science and speaking of reality and and magic and i would put probably most religions in the category of magic. and perhaps you do in the u.k. you have religious fundamentalists but there are largely politically marginalized here in the united states basically the religious fundamentalists have become

a portal through which candidates for the presidency was asked particular republican side do you think this may have something to do with your country having had the experience of religious zealots like rodwell and guy fawkes were as we hear they've never heard of for the accuracy. it's very difficult to know it's a curious anomaly because if you look worldwide religion is pretty much a third world problem religion goes with lack of education because of poverty it goes with despair and i mean that's why in western europe religion is dying all except for the muslims but in. christendom in western europe christendom religion is dying because of prosperity and everything that one would think that america has and indeed does have and yet half of america very nearly half is not only religious but preposterously so i mean half forty percent of the american

electorate actually believe that the world is only six thousand years old or less than ten thousand years old which is a quite ludicrous error it's not a slight error it's a massive error and this is something which it stands out like a sore thumb in you you expect to find that in islamic countries and you do expect to find that in iran pakistan afghanistan and so on you could not expect to find it in the richest and most highly educated country in the in the world and but i think you possibly can get a clue to it by noticing that those parts of the united states which are most. influenced by this kind of fundamentalism tend to be those parts that that are less well educated that are. less less prosperous less looked looked after and so there might be a tendency for people who have. who don't have a very very nice life for one reason or another to turn to religion as

a kind of. refuge and that's one theory that i've heard advanced there are others been another theory is that because the united states has a constitution which church and state is very rigidly separated unlike in western europe. many countries including britain have an established church and because we have an established church it's been argued religion has become sort of boring it's a church or the place you go to to be married and to be buried but otherwise you don't go to church but in america where there is a constitutional separation between church and state perhaps this is freed up religion to become free enterprise and to use all the sort of tricks of capitalism of advertising and so on and that may be why it's taken such a hold of the less educated classes in america and in a way that we give them complete tax breaks so you end up with that's where it's

just shocking yes indeed so you know people like pat robertson is a billionaire with a b as a result of those i'm curious if our genes are controlling our behavior and many people have had experiences that they would describe as deeply spiritual and maybe draw them to religion why would a gene echo why would such a gene echo down through the generations. well it's a difficult thing to say that deeds control us we are. very much influenced by our education by our environment so i'm not sure that i would want to. ask that in an innocent of genetic way it's probably true as we said in an earlier on in our conversation when genes do influence brains and brains are decide whether you're a and to be religious or not and so there might be a genetic component in whether you are. in whether you tend to be drawn to religion

now you mention the word spiritual and that's a much nice used word because people often use or to mean the kind of thing that i mean by the magic of reality thing i mean by looking up at the stars and filled with wonder in filled with with joy at seeing this. the endless cycle of the universe or looking down a microscope or thinking or going to the grand canyon and looking down through the layers of geological time i mean that's magical in the sense of the magic of reality and you could even call that spiritual but i rather resent the hijacking of that call it spiritual if you like i prefer not to i rather resent the hijacking of that feeling which i feel and which any of my scientist friends feel hijacking my religion it is not a monopoly of religion we all feel it we all are capable of feeling it's just the human condition. in the garden luzhin you're asserting that

a supernatural career doesn't exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as at the reason you also make that argument for the belief in any sort of consciousness be armed individual for example could it be that the universe itself is a conscious organism and works one expression of it within it or for that matter what is conscious as. well i don't know what consciousness is and that's a very difficult philosophical question i don't think it's probably going to be helpful to talk about the universe as a whole being conscious i know that some rather mystical philosophers that just did something like that i think that whatever consciousness is it's manifested by brains is something to do with brains are all the functional equivalent of brains i don't i wouldn't rule out that one day somebody might build an electronic computer which was programmed in such a way that that it was conscious that seems to me to be actually quite likely. but it comes from very very complex organization such as the brain which is an

extremely complicated organization of billions of. neurons and if anybody makes a computer that's conscious that again would be extremely complicated with many many many. units electronic units if you think there are no. i don't think it's helpful to think that consciousness resides in the universe of the whole i think consciousness is something that emerges by the evolutionary process in the universe wherever in the universe brains or something functionally equivalent to brains evolve do you think it's conceivable that as the internet of the number of computers connected to it begins to approach. the numbers that are similar to the number of axioms and ganglions and synopses of the brain. that the internet itself may use and consciousness emerges from it the consciousness may emerge from the air . that is

a fascinating science fiction speculation and before we laugh it away we should remember that that's pretty much what did happen in the evolution of brains because brains started off as very simple nervous systems and then the simple nervous systems got bigger and bigger and bigger more and more interconnected in complicated ways and that is what's happening to the internet and so i wouldn't absolutely rule out the possibility that sometime in the future something like the internet probably very different from the way the internet is now but something like the internet and global network of electronic connections between computing devices all over the world might develop something like the same properties as the brain evolved millions of years ago quite remarkable under turn your computer and it's well hello there professor. i'm sure that's already possible i'm sure that's already possible but only really

literally it would be a bit of a trick it would be a bit of a bit of a favor with the world back to your book the magic of reality we have just two minutes left here and i want to be sure. you ask a number of great questions if you're always the first person for example. well yes i mean that's chapter two of the book every every chapter in the in the book is a question like that and every chapter begins with myths and then goes into the science so who really was the first person well they never really was a first person because every animal ever born is of the same species was of the same species as its parents and so there never was a first homo sapien hence born to homo erectus parent it all happened gradually but if you stick together enough generations going back into the past then you will find a gradual turning into apes and monkeys and shrooms and. going back to fish. beyond so we are descended from fish. but every single creature that

was ever born is of the same species wasn't the same species as its parents the process is so gradual rather like the movement of the hour hand of your watch you can't see it move but if you wait long enough you see that it has moved first or it's extraordinary we have just only thirty seconds left the main message that you would want our viewers to know about your work. i'm passionate about the truth and the proof can be ascertained by science by evidence and never believe anything until you've seen the evidence that's brilliant professor richard dawkins thank you so very much. thank you very much to watch this conversation again as well as other conversations with great minds go to our website conversations with great minds. as the big picture first night for more information on the stories we cover is that our web sites and thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org and dot com also check

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