The root of all evil - documentary

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The title of this thread is also the title of Richard Dawkins' excellent BBC documentary based on his book "The God Delusion". Interestingly, he initially objected to the name of the documentary. This documentary comes in two episodes and in it, Richard Dawkins interviews fundamentalists from all three Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) and promotes atheism while arguing against religion. I have found the full documentary on youtube, so I was hoping it might stimulate debate (what was I thinking, this is PPR so I guess it most likely will ). Anyway, the first episode, rather predictably entitled "The God Delusion" is below:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DIxV1q1Hsw&feature=bf_prev&list=PL0EC06FDFBB876388[/youtube]

Below is the second episode of the documentary entitled "The Virus of Faith". I would suggest Ragtime start with this one because it contains (at least in my opinion) a good refutation of the moral argument for God:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy1pMukuZQ0&feature=bf_next&list=PL0EC06FDFBB876388[/youtube]

Enjoy.

The title of the documentary was in fact 'The Root of All Evil?' Richard Dawkins wasn't pleased with it's name (thinks it's a ridiculous idea) and asked for Channel 4 to insert the question mark.

Dawkins seems to be a bit naive about what it involves to be a controversial public figure. He's just telling his honest opinions to anyone who will listen (and they are totally standard opinions which are widely held among nonbelievers), but the media want to sell him as The Cranky Atheist.

Anyone who pays attention can see that he tries very hard to fight against this misrepresentation of himself. Sadly, not many people pay attention.

Regardless, I don't much like Dawkins. I think that he's unfair towards liberal religious people (I can't claim to understand how they reconcile liberalism with their faith, but I'm not going to argue with them) and he's also made a chauvinistic comment or two,

Just to be clear, I am an atheist myself.

In what way? His basic argument about moderate religious people, at least according to what he says in the above documentary, is that they are able choose passages from the Bible (or Koran etc.) which are in accordance with their morals and which are meant to be symbolic, while also condemning acts of violence motivated by religion as immoral. Therefore, as his argument goes, there sense of morality cannot really come the holy books and so the idea that we need religion and holy books to justify morality must be wrong.

Now, I don't see that as being unfair to them so much as being a rational argument. I have also watched an interview on Youtube between Dawkins and a moderate Irish priest named Alister McGrath, which was done for this documentary but was cut. I did not see Dawkins become chauvinistic in that interview.

Last edited by Jono on 20 Apr 2012, 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think the people who replied to this thread so far are atheists. I was hoping that some religious people would reply, trying to argue against the points that Dawkins made in the documentary after watching it. But it seems like they are avoiding this thread so far.

AstroGeek is not talking about his conversation with McGrath, he's talking about the feud with Rebecca Watson.

http://www.salon.com/2011/07/08/atheist_flirting/

I'm agnostic, but I'll not be pedantic about it.

My view on the root of all Evil is not a religious one my view is this the root of all Evil to me is free will and human nature is the root of all evil but then again evil comes in many diffrent forms.

When was the last time an Orthodox Jew strapped on a suicide bomb or hijacked a plane to crash into a tall building filled with unarmed folks?

ruveyn

Samson, and that was 3000 years ago.

I love watch Dawkins looking ascance at the pilgrims at Lourdes. What a sour-puss!

ruveyn

Ha wow your so wrong

I miss understood then. In his first sentence, he spoke about Dawkins being unfair towards liberal religious people, so I thought he meant being chauvinistic about that, not in the sense of being a male chauvinist.

The famous elevator incident? This is not the subject of this thread but I just to point out that I disagree that Dawkins was being chauvinistic and that article does not accurately portray what happened.

Last edited by Jono on 20 Apr 2012, 2:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was referring to the documentary. Have you watched the videos?