Joe Rogan Experience #1366 - Richard Dawkins

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   All right. Here we…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      All right. Here we go. Mr. Dawkins, thank you very much for being here. I really appreciate it.

   2. RDRichard Dawkins0:03

      Thank you.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:04

      Uh, I'm a huge fan of your work and we have a new book out, Outgrowing God. When does it come out? Is it out now?

   4. RDRichard Dawkins0:09

      It is out now.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:10

      It is now.

   6. RDRichard Dawkins0:10

      Yes.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      Like this week, right?

   8. RDRichard Dawkins0:12

      Uh, last week I think, yes.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      I read The God Delusion in, in preparation for this. Could you pull that microphone right up to your face? Just get it about a fist away from your face. You don't have to move.

   10. RDRichard Dawkins0:20

       Okay.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:20

       Let the microphone move for you.

   12. RDRichard Dawkins0:22

       Okay.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:22

       Um, I'm a huge fan of your work and I, I always wanted to ask you, it... You, you go so hard against religion and you have for so long, has there ever been a time where you've gotten fatigued from this? Where you're like, "I just... Leave this to somebody else."?

   14. RDRichard Dawkins0:37

       Well, obviously not because I just produced another one.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:39

       (laughs)

   16. RDRichard Dawkins0:40

       Um, it, it's not so hard as you think. I mean, uh, you, you remember it as hard, but actually if you read it again, I think you'd find it was not as hard as you remember.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       I didn't mean hard in, in a negative sense. I mean, you push. You're, you're-

   18. RDRichard Dawkins0:53

       Okay.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:53

       ... you're so enthusiastic about your atheism.

   20. RDRichard Dawkins0:55

       I am enthusiastic.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:56

       Yes.

   22. RDRichard Dawkins0:56

       Uh, I'm also humorous. I mean, I, I-

   23. JRJoe Rogan0:58

       Yes.

   24. RDRichard Dawkins0:58

       I like to think it's a funny book. Um, but a lot of people do think it's hard in the other sense, and, and they... Sometimes when they read it again, they realize actually, no, it's more humorous. It's not so h- not so edgy, not so hard-hitting as, as they think, as they originally thought it was.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:15

       Well, I think that's probably because you've had some interviews in the past where you have talked to some fiercely religious people and you've had some cantankerous interactions with them. I think maybe so they, they associate you with having this, uh, v- almost aggressively atheistic stance.

   26. RDRichard Dawkins1:31

       Yes. Well, p- perhaps you're thinking of Bill O'Reilly. I'm not sure.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:35

       (laughs)

   28. RDRichard Dawkins1:35

       Um, well, I mean, he's aggressive all right.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:37

       Yeah, in the-

   30. RDRichard Dawkins1:38

       A-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Yes. …

   1. RDRichard Dawkins15:00

      they're so young, that we can see how they grew up. You can see-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:02

      Yes.

   3. RDRichard Dawkins15:02

      ... the actual process. Uh, M- Mormonism, I'm depressed by how successful it is, actually, Scientology as well, but Mormonism since ... I mean, we know Joseph Smith was a charlatan. Um, everything about him screams charlatan. Uh, and yet, plenty of respectable people, including presidential candidates, men in suits, um, appear to believe it. In the case of ... I mean, I discuss it in Outgrowing God, in addition to the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith purported to have translated another book called the Book of Abraham, which, uh, was in a different language, uh, some ancient Egyptian language. And he published his full translation of the Book of Abraham, which was, he said, was all about Abraham's j- journey to Egypt and lots of detail about Egypt and Abraham in Egypt and things. Um, the original manuscripts was, were destroyed in a fire in Chicago, and so he was safe from anybody, um, exposing his translation. Then it was discovered that actually some of these manuscripts had sur- had survived, and they had not been destroyed. And modern scholars who actually knew the language, uh, including some Mormon scholars, translated it again, a true translation, which had nothing whatever to do with Abraham or Egypt. This is absolute, cast-iron demonstration that Joseph Smith was a complete fake and charlatan, and this is fully documented, and yet they go on believing that he was a prophet.

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:45

      And he was 14, too, when he came up with it, which is even more bizarre.

   5. RDRichard Dawkins16:48

      Was he?

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:48

      Yeah. 1820, he was 14 years old.

   7. RDRichard Dawkins16:51

      I didn't know that.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:52

      He was a little kid.

   9. RDRichard Dawkins16:52

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:53

       Just a, a boy with a fantastic imagination, and it sort of caught fire.

   11. RDRichard Dawkins16:59

       Yes, the Golden Plates, which disappeared.

   12. JRJoe Rogan17:01

       Yeah, and the-

   13. RDRichard Dawkins17:02

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:02

       ... seer stone, where he-

   15. RDRichard Dawkins17:03

       Yes, and he put it into a hat and ... Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:06

       (laughs) It's just so strange to me that it persists, but the people that practice the religion are so nice. They are some of the nicest cult members I've ever met in my life.

   17. RDRichard Dawkins17:18

       Yes, I suppose so (laughs) .

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:19

       Mormons are my fav- they're my favorite.

   19. RDRichard Dawkins17:21

       Yeah, okay.

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:21

       They're absolutely my favorite.

   21. RDRichard Dawkins17:22

       Yeah, even when they come on your doorstep and sort of-

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:24

       They haven't.

   23. RDRichard Dawkins17:25

       Okay.

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:25

       If they did, maybe I'd change my, my tune.

   25. RDRichard Dawkins17:27

       Yes.

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:27

       You all right over there, Jamie?

   27. RDRichard Dawkins17:28

       I was wrong. Sorry. Good? Okay.

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:30

       Okay.

   29. RDRichard Dawkins17:30

       I'm, I'm also very interested in the, perhaps the, uh, the even more recent things like the cargo cults of-

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:36

       Mm-hmm.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   I think that's a…

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      just, when you first hear that, I mean, I'm, th- that was put, probably put the first seeds of doubt in my head when I was a young boy, when I was like, "Wait, what, there's more than one?" Like I, I'll, I'll never forget that moment 'cause we were all sitting around the dinner table, and I was just a little kid, and I remember thinking, "What, what do you, what do you mean there's another one?"

   2. RDRichard Dawkins30:18

      I think that's a very powerful way of...... get to children is to just simply sh- tell them that.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:24

      Yes.

   4. RDRichard Dawkins30:24

      Telling them nothing but facts, you know, not indoctrinating them-

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:27

      Right.

   6. RDRichard Dawkins30:27

      ... but you're just telling them, "There are lots of different religions and Hindus believe in hundreds of gods, and Jews believe in one god, and Muslims believe in one god, and they don't believe in Jesus," and, and, um, just lay out all the different religions. That would be a very good educational exercise.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:45

      Has there ever been a civilization that's ex- existed without belief in a higher power?

   8. RDRichard Dawkins30:50

      I don't think there has, no. Um, of course there are plenty of individuals who educate the... d- do not believe in a higher power. But I think probably true to say that every, every... I, I mean, anthropologists might con- might deny there might, there might be some tribe that doesn't, but I suspect they all do.

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:07

      Well, there's been some tribes that worshiped animals, and particularly-

   10. RDRichard Dawkins31:10

       Oh, yes.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:11

       ... animals that they survived off of.

   12. RDRichard Dawkins31:12

       Yes. Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:13

       Yeah.

   14. RDRichard Dawkins31:13

       And, and, and, and river gods and thunder gods-

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:17

       Mm-hmm.

   16. RDRichard Dawkins31:17

       ... and, and moon gods and sun gods and fire gods and things, yes.

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:22

       When you look at human civilization and you, you go back to the origins of religion and you look towards the future, do you envision a time where humanity is free of what you would consider irrational belief systems, or belief systems that are not based on fact?

   18. RDRichard Dawkins31:37

       I do. Uh, I'm not sure that it'll come soon, uh, but I, I do, and I look forward to that time, of course. Um, I think we're moving in the right direction, and the figures bear that out, uh, in even in America, which is off the s- off the scale of, of, of Western civilizations. Um, even in, in America, the number of people who now subscribe to a religion, um, uh, is, is, is dropping dramatically, and the number who say they have no religion is now about 25%. That's a lot.

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:10

       That is a lot.

   20. RDRichard Dawkins32:10

       That's a great deal. And that compares to any one particular Christian denomination. And yet, politically, the, that group, the, the nons, the no, the no beliefs, have no lobby, they have no, no powerful, um, uh, pressure group. So politicians will go out there and suck up to, I don't know, the Irish lobby, the Polish lo- lobby, the Jewish lobby, the Catholic lobby, et cetera, but the atheist lobby hasn't got its act together, or is n- only just now beginning to get its act together.

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:41

       Well, politically, I think people are terrified of the concept because it's such a s- s- such a long branch to go out on. One of the things that you brought up in The God Delusion was the willingness of people to vote for a gay candidate for president, a Black candidate for president, a woman candidate for president, but then an atheist, which is, w- I believe 40%.

   22. RDRichard Dawkins33:03

       They think, they think that, um, you've got to have a belief in some kind of higher power in order to be moral. But the weird thing is that it doesn't have to be the same higher power as the one you believe in. Anyone will do-

   23. JRJoe Rogan33:16

       Right.

   24. RDRichard Dawkins33:16

       ... as long as there, as long as there is one. But if you don't believe in a higher power, you must be, uh, immoral. Uh, you, you... And, and that, uh, is totally ridiculous when you think about the horrible immorality of, for example, the, both the Bible and the Quran, which a- which are horrific in the sense that if you beli- if you actually got your morals, if you got your moral values from the Old Testament or the Quran, and they've, they share them, uh, great deal, of course, you would be stoning adulterers to death, and stoning people to death for breaking the Sabbath, and doing sacrifices, human sacrifices, and animal sacrifices, all sorts of horrible things, which of course do go on now, uh, in Islamic countries especially. Gay people getting thrown off high buildings and women being beheaded for the crime of being seen with a man not their husband, and that kind of thing. Um, so that, that... We, we can see what you get when you get your morality from an Abrahamic scripture. And yet there are still people in this country who say you cannot be moral unless you believe in a higher power.

   25. JRJoe Rogan34:27

       What do you think... Uh, let's extract this, this concept of a higher power. Let's, let's get rid of it. Let's, let's get rid of... Where, where do you think people get their morals and their ethics from then?

   26. RDRichard Dawkins34:38

       That's a profoundly difficult question. Uh, we clearly don't get them from religion. Uh, and yet we get them from somewhere, and you can demonstrate that by the fact that, uh, the moral values of any particular century are markedly different from those of other centuries, uh, even decades. So in the 21st century, he- we here now have moral values which are really significantly different from 100 years ago or 200 years ago, or 300 years ago. And, um, within any one of those centuries you could take people who are in the vanguard of moral progress. For example, in the 19th century, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, T.H. Huxley would have been on the liberal, uh, progressive end of the spectrum, and other people would have been on the opposite end. But even Abraham Lincoln, for example, made a speech that I quoted in Outgrowing God in which he said, "Of course, no- nobody would seriously think that Black people are the equal of white people. Nobody would seriously say that Black people should be allowed to vote, or should be, uh, um, uh, allowed to marry white people." Um, this is Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves-

   27. JRJoe Rogan35:57

       Right.

   28. RDRichard Dawkins35:57

       ... and was, uh, as I say, in the forefront of progressive thought. Charles Darwin, again, was in favor of freeing the slaves. He was passionately anti-slavery. But he too, uh, thought that there was no question about Black people being equal of white people. They obviously weren't. And, and, and, and Huxley, Thomas Huxley, again Darwin's bulldog, thought the same way. Now, those people were at the fr- at the forefront, as I say-... today, they would still be in the forefront, and they would be horrified to look back on what they said-

   29. JRJoe Rogan36:32

       Mm-hmm.

   30. RDRichard Dawkins36:32

       ... in the 19th century. Well, something is changing as the centuries go by. I, in Outgrowing God, I call it something in the air, which of course doesn't explain anything. But what I mean by that is that it's, it's not literally hovering in the air, but it's a con- col- it's a con- collection of, oh, um, conversations between people, dinner party conversations, um, parliamentary decisions, Congressional debates, uh, judicial decisions by judges, juries, um, newspaper articles, journalism. All these things together conspire together to produce something in the air, something that d- that defines a, a given century or maybe even a given decade, uh, with the moral values of that, of that decade.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   I agree. But of…

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      she exist in that structure while being so intelligent?

   2. RDRichard Dawkins45:03

      I agree. But of course, you, I, I feel the same way about apparently intelligent people who believe obvious nonsense.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:11

      Yeah.

   4. RDRichard Dawkins45:12

      And, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to understand.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:16

      It seems to be a part of what we are though. It seems to be a part of what human beings are because they exist in so many different civilizations.

   6. RDRichard Dawkins45:24

      Yes, but decreasingly number, decreasing numbers of actual individuals.

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:30

      Right.

   8. RDRichard Dawkins45:31

      In places like Holland and Scandinavia, um, hardly anybody is religious.

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:36

      Really? What are the numbers there?

   10. RDRichard Dawkins45:38

       A- a- apart from immigrant Muslims who still are, but apart from them.

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:42

       Hmm.

   12. RDRichard Dawkins45:43

       I don't know, they're, they're pathetically small.

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:46

       Is there any evidence that that is reaching the Muslim world as well and that people are-

   14. RDRichard Dawkins45:50

       Well, as I was saying, um, uh, the, the, the downloads of, of, of, of my, of my books have been encouraging. We have this thing called... CFI has a thing called the Translation Project, which is specifically in, in order to do that, in order to, um, to take my books and we hope other people's books as well, and put them into PDFs and then have them available for, for, for free download. And, um, I hear evidence from I- Iran, from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, from individuals who say, "Yes, there's now quite a substantial groundswell of anti-religious, anti-Islamic opinion." And I think it's going to increase, and I'm really e- encouraged by that.

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:35

       One of the things about being Muslim, i- in my eyes (clears throat) is very similar to being Jewish, is that Jewish people, they, it's... There are many Jewish people that are not religious, but they are Jewish. Like I have a very good friend, my, my friend Ari. He is, he is Jewish, but he is an atheist. And it's... He identifies with being a Jewish person. He has Jewish relatives. His father, uh, is a Holocaust survivor, but he looks at it like a thing that he's a part of, like a, a great long tradition that he's a part of, but he doesn't observe.

   16. RDRichard Dawkins47:10

       No, I understand that. I, I think especially for people of Jewish heritage who have relatives killed in the Holocaust, I, I think it could be a matter of kind of loyalty to, to their murdered relatives.

   17. JRJoe Rogan47:23

       Mm-hmm.

   18. RDRichard Dawkins47:24

       I could easily get that. And I think that, um, there are probably, uh, cultural Muslims who, who probably not for the same degree of loyalty, but think of themselves as Muslims. I suppose I'm a cultural Anglican in a way. I mean, I, I sort of... You know, I can sing the hymns and, and I... My family observes Christmas in a des- Deseret sort of way.

   19. JRJoe Rogan47:49

       When someone sneezes, do you say, "Bless you"?

   20. RDRichard Dawkins47:51

       Uh, I never did say bless you, actually. But-

   21. JRJoe Rogan47:53

       What do you say?

   22. RDRichard Dawkins47:53

       But, but I... Nothing.

   23. JRJoe Rogan47:54

       Gesundheit?

   24. RDRichard Dawkins47:55

       I, I ne- I never... I don't say anything, but...

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:57

       (laughs)

   26. RDRichard Dawkins47:57

       I, I've no objection to saying gesundheit or because that's of course religious, not religious, but, um... They... My college at Oxford, uh, had, um, a, a fellow who was a famous philosopher, a famous atheist, A.J. Ayer. And he, when he was senior fellow, he used to say grace at dinner. And when he was asked why, he said, "I will not utter falsehoods, but I have no objection to uttering meaningless statements."

   27. JRJoe Rogan48:22

       (laughs)

   28. RDRichard Dawkins48:22

       And that's about what I feel.

   29. JRJoe Rogan48:23

       (laughs) Well, now, when you set out to write this book and write it for young people, how did you structure it in your mind? Did you use... Did you, uh, address... Did you think of it as addressing young people-

   30. RDRichard Dawkins48:36

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:01:37

   But it's just a,…

   1. RDRichard Dawkins1:00:00

      two, two, 2,000 million years.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:01

      But it's just a, it ... When you're living in the present and you're, you're, you're thinking of yourself and you're thinking of biological life, it's, it's hard for a person to see things on those scales which is one of the reasons why I think for many people that aren't educated in these, these sort of subjects to, to buy into this concept of, of a, an ... Some sort of intelligent design.

   3. RDRichard Dawkins1:00:25

      Yes. Well, um, time scales are, um, we, we have no concept of millions of years. We can, we can just about cope with ... I mean even thousands of years, even going back to the ancient Egyptians, we get a kind of frisson of, of, of awe at, at you know, wondering what it was like, what the Epic of Gilgamesh, what, what was it like then. That's nothing compared to evolutionary time, that's just-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:48

      Right.

   5. RDRichard Dawkins1:00:49

      ... it's not even yesterday, it's, it's a couple of minutes ago, it's, it's ridiculously short time.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:54

      Well, you have a hard out at 4:00 and that time has come so, uh, I wanna thank you for being here and I wanna thank you for your commitment over the years to educating people and this ... You, you have an, an amazing amount of endurance for this stuff and, uh, because of that a lot of people have, you know, shifted their ideas and, and, and gravitated towards science.

   7. RDRichard Dawkins1:01:12

      It's been a pleasure, thank you very much indeed.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:13

      Thank you very much. Richard Dawkins, ladies and gentlemen.

   9. RDRichard Dawkins1:01:15

      Bye-bye. (upbeat music)

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:01:18

       That was great.

   11. RDRichard Dawkins1:01:19

       Good, thank you, and I have to sign this.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:25

       Yeah. (laughs)

Episode duration: 1:01:38