The Unbelievers, A New Film Starring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Werner Herzog, Woody Allen, & Cormac McCarthy

The so-called New (or “Gnu”) Athe­ism arrived at a time when fear, anger, and con­fu­sion over extrem­ist reli­gion had hit a fever pitch. Sud­den­ly, peo­ple who didn’t pay much atten­tion to religion—their own or any­one else’s—became intense­ly inter­est­ed in reli­gious crit­i­cism and debate; it was the per­fect cli­mate for a pub­lish­ing storm, and that’s essen­tial­ly how the move­ment began. It was also, of course, pre­dat­ed by thou­sands of years of philo­soph­i­cal athe­ism of some vari­ety or anoth­er, but “new” athe­ism had some­thing dif­fer­ent to offer: while its pro­po­nents large­ly hailed from the same worlds as their intel­lec­tu­al predecessors—the arts, polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism and activism, the sci­ences and aca­d­e­m­ic philosophy—after Sep­tem­ber 11, these same peo­ple took the dis­cus­sion to the pop­u­lar press and a pro­lif­er­a­tion of inter­net out­lets and well-orga­nized con­fer­ences, debates, and meet­ings. And their expres­sions were uncom­pro­mis­ing and polem­i­cal (though not “militant”—no shots were fired nor bombs det­o­nat­ed).

In the wake of over a decade of con­tro­ver­sy unleashed by “new athe­ism,” a new film The Unbe­liev­ers (trail­er above) fol­lows two promi­nent sci­en­tists and stars of the movement–evolutionary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins and the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Lawrence Krauss—as they trek across the globe and explain their views. Dawkins and Krauss receive sup­port from a cast of celebri­ty inter­vie­wees includ­ing Ricky Ger­vais, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, Cor­mac McCarthy, Sarah Sil­ver­man, Ayaan Hir­si-Ali, and sev­er­al more. The film’s web­site has no offi­cial release date (oth­er than “2013”), but it does fea­ture links to online buzz, both glib—Krankie snarks that the trail­er makes it look like Dawkins and Krauss have packed in the sci­ence and start­ed a band—and sub­dued; the evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Post does lit­tle but quote from the press pack­age.

These cham­pi­ons of rea­son-over-reli­gion have always had pow­er­ful crit­ics, even among those who might oth­er­wise seem sym­pa­thet­ic (take Marx­ist lit­er­ary crit­ic Ter­ry Eagleton’s charge that new athe­ism is noth­ing but counter-fun­da­men­tal­ism). Then there is the host of reli­gious detrac­tors, many of them respect­ed sci­en­tists and philoso­phers them­selves. One notable name in this camp is famed geneti­cist Fran­cis Collins, who head­ed the Human Genome Project. Obvi­ous­ly no denier of the explana­to­ry pow­er of sci­ence, Collins nonethe­less argues for faith as a dis­tinct kind of knowl­edge, as he does in the inter­view excerpt below from an appear­ance on The Char­lie Rose Show.

The debates seem like they could rage on inter­minably, and prob­a­bly will. I, for one, am grate­ful they can hap­pen open­ly and in rel­a­tive peace in so many places. But as the same sets of issues arise, some of the ques­tions become just a bit more nuanced. British pre­sen­ter Nicky Camp­bell, for exam­ple, recent­ly presided over a large debate among sev­er­al promi­nent sci­en­tists and cler­gy about whether or not all reli­gions should accept evo­lu­tion (below). While Dawkins and Krauss ulti­mate­ly advo­cate a world with­out reli­gion, the par­tic­i­pants of this debate try to shift the terms to how sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and reli­gious iden­ti­ty can coex­ist with min­i­mal fric­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Some­thing from Noth­ing? Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Dis­cuss Cos­mol­o­gy, Ori­gins of Life & Reli­gion Before a Packed Crowd

Alain de Bot­ton Wants a Reli­gion for Athe­ists: Intro­duc­ing Athe­ism 2.0

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness


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Comments (12)
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  • dale watters says:

    its fucked up that no one han­dles med­ical mal­prac­tice. Desert Oasis in Palm Springs is crim­i­nal in the way they treat their patients. HMO are big­ger than the law and is held account­able by no one.

  • David says:

    I grew up an athe­ist enam­ored of sci­ence, sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy. I evolved a dif­fer­ent view after com­ing of age expe­ri­ences in and around my col­lege years. At this point, hav­ing stud­ied for­mal­ly and infor­mal­ly both sci­ence and reli­gions, I con­clude that none of them have it right.

    None of the major human reli­gions have a lock on “truth” but all of them have noble pieces of it. Sci­ence is awe­some, but we are yet tod­dlers splash­ing in the shal­lows, pick­ing up pret­ty shells and mak­ing sand cas­tles. The “truth” lies beyond the cur­rent frame­work of both sci­en­tif­ic and reli­gious think­ing. I think the sci­en­tif­ic method is sol­id, but it still requires human cre­ativ­i­ty and intel­li­gence to get any­where with it.

    I cer­tain­ly don’t believe in a deity who inten­tion­al­ly cre­at­ed the uni­verse in any way like human scrip­tures describe. To believe that God cre­at­ed us with a pur­pose and a spe­cial plan is both arro­gant and imma­ture in the face of a “known” uni­verse on the scale we can now just begin to mea­sure. If there’s a per­son­al God, such a being is oper­at­ing across bil­lions of light years and get­ting “per­son­al” with a mind­bog­gling­ly vast diver­si­ty of life forms. If there’s a God like that, human scrip­tures to date haven’t cap­tured that effectively…at all. Such a God is a vast, ele­men­tal super spi­der of a being…which would be pret­ty damn cool, actu­al­ly.

    Yet sci­ence has yet to account for con­scious­ness and mind beyond a rudi­men­ta­ry sense of bio­chem­istry and elec­tri­cal brain func­tions. Sci­ence the­o­rizes that 95% or so of the “known” uni­verse is dark (mat­ter and ener­gy). That’s an awful lot of mys­tery to be so damn con­fi­dent about, athe­ists. How­ev­er, I don’t blame sci­ence for not mak­ing claims that it can’t prove. I do blame humans who are over­ly con­strained by a world­view lim­it­ed to what’s “proven.”

    I put good mon­ey on the poten­tial for humans to evolve (giv­en a chance) to a point where our mas­tery of the phys­i­cal world involves a par­a­digm shift or three about the nature of mind/spirit/information. At what point does a sophis­ti­cat­ed enough pat­tern become self-sus­tain­ing beyond the phys­i­cal body? Is that a soul…or just high­er brain func­tion ele­vat­ed to a place where it can sus­tain its pro­gram­ming and mem­o­ry and sen­tience in the as yet poor­ly under­stood fab­ric of space­time?

    You want to be immor­tal and have eter­nal life? Evolve. It may take a mil­lion years…but that’d be worth it and the jour­ney is bound to thrill.

  • David Jones says:

    @ David .. your com­ments are high­ly astute. At this point in our appar­ent devel­op­ment we are not capa­ble of tru­ely under­stand­ing the impli­ca­tions of the Uni­ver­sal space and our inher­ent rela­tion­ship to it. There are it would seem many ‘mod­els’ on which to base a par­tic­u­lar per­spec­tive but they are mere­ly that .. just par­a­digms of which there are prob­a­bly an infi­nate num­ber to explore. We do not need the the mis­con­strued, obsti­nant arro­gance of DOGMA to under­pin our abil­i­ty to per­ceive the nature of real­i­ty. Our human nar­ra­tive is both lin­ear in as much as we live and die in mate­r­i­al terms but at any point in the jour­ney of life there are ver­ti­cal inter­pre­ta­tions to con­sid­er. We are evolv­ing still and our col­lec­tive intel­lect requires that we expand both inwards and out­wards. I would sug­gest that at this point in our jour­ney no one per­son or premise has the monop­oly on the true nature of real­i­ty and our place­ment with­in it.

  • Aysenur uNAL says:

    I have nev­er been able to under­stand how any rea­son­ably intel­li­gent per­son could NOT be athe­is­tic…

  • harry` says:

    I believe that David has the best point .I am puz­zled by the lack of humil­i­ty and the arro­gance of the Athe­ists in their claim with cer­tain­ty that THERE IS NO GOD. I could under­stand an Agnos­tic but there can not be a rea­son­able Athe­ist.

  • Scott says:

    God is as out­ra­geous a hypoth­e­sis as the bil­lions of oth­er hypothe­ses that can be dreamed up. Sci­ence isn’t out to prove there is no god but through the sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tions the god of the gaps get paint­ed into small­er and small­er cor­ners. Igno­rance is now a will­ful choice.

  • Mary says:

    When my daugh­ter and son asked me why I did­n’t believe in God, I told them this, “Just because I don’t under­stand some­thing does­n’t mean that it is mag­ic.” What was before the Big Bang? I don’t know, but it does­n’t have to be mag­ic.

  • David 2 says:

    To Har­ry, Why would you show humil­i­ty to a group who cov­er up for pedophiles, cam­paign to stop con­doms in Africa caus­ing aids to become epi­dem­ic, and prac­ticed geno­cide against the indige­nous Cana­di­an tribes while preach­ing that their reli­gion is the only way for human­i­ty to have morals?
    .

  • Reg says:

    To my new “friend” har­ry:

    The old tired “athe­ists claim ‘THERE IS NO GOD’ ”. Sor­ry. After exam­in­ing the­ist claims of God and not a shred of evi­dence, our claim is, “WE DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD.” To use your false claim, would give the whole sad hypoth­e­sis more valid­i­ty.

    To my new “friend” David:

    > I con­clude that none of them have it right.

    But if you con­clude, then aren’t you claim­ing YOU have it right? You’re not real­ly “above” this debate then are you? You can’t real­ly claim the moral high ground. The the­ists claim they have it right about believ­ing in God. Athe­ists don’t claim to have answers, we claim that since the the­ists have noth­ing to show for their claim oth­er than their faith, the hypoth­e­sis is lack­ing in verac­i­ty and thus very unin­ter­est­ing.

    > None of the major human reli­gions have a lock on “truth” but all of them have noble
    > pieces of it.

    ALL of them eh? And noble to boot? Well, I guess you’re a big fan of Deep­ak and share his OPINION that “all reli­gions and all spir­i­tu­al­i­ties are right; it is the non-believ­ers who are wrong.”

    >Sci­ence is awe­some, but we are yet tod­dlers splash­ing in the shal­lows, pick­ing up pret­ty >shells and mak­ing sand cas­tles.

    Please. Spare us the poet­ry. Thank you Keanu, for say­ing sci­ence is “awe­some” but it’s such a tired insult to those who do real sci­en­tif­ic work. I think we know who the real tod­dler is here.

    > The “truth” lies beyond the cur­rent frame­work of both sci­en­tif­ic and reli­gious think­ing.

    Oh, it does? Real­ly? How noble of you to say. You real­ly seem to like your­self quite a bit. I only wish I could attain such a high­er lev­el of think­ing. Of being. And you have what to offer for mak­ing such a grand and tru­ly mag­nif­i­cent state­ment?

    >I think the sci­en­tif­ic method is sol­id, but it still requires human cre­ativ­i­ty and >intel­li­gence to get any­where with it.

    Thank you for say­ing. And how in any way does the require­ment reduce it to the lev­el of reli­gious think­ing which has absolute­ly no method­ol­o­gy what­so­ev­er for its claims, oth­er than FAITH? It doesn’t.

    >Such a God is a vast, ele­men­tal super spi­der of a being…which would be pret­ty damn >cool, actu­al­ly.

    Like, pret­ty, way, total­ly cool bra. Pass the blunt will ya?

    > Yet sci­ence has yet to account for con­scious­ness and mind beyond a rudi­men­ta­ry sense > of bio­chem­istry and elec­tri­cal brain func­tions.

    Total arro­gant BS. No, YOU have to account for con­scious­ness and mind if YOU think there is some­thing “beyond” the phys­i­cal brain. If you think neu­ro­science is rudi­men­ta­ry, then you cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly don’t know what the …. you’re talk­ing about.

    > Sci­ence the­o­rizes that 95% or so of the
    > “known” uni­verse is dark (mat­ter and ener­gy). That’s an awful lot of mys­tery to be so
    > damn con­fi­dent about, athe­ists. How­ev­er, I don’t blame sci­ence for not mak­ing claims > that it can’t prove.

    Here we go again. Hope­less­ly lost in the “mys­tery.” Spooky lan­guage. Woo-woo! Just because we do not cur­rent­ly have an ade­quate expla­na­tion for a phe­nom­e­non does not mean that it is for­ev­er unex­plain­able, or that it there­fore defies the laws of nature or requires a para­nor­mal or “mys­te­ri­ous” expla­na­tion. The­ists and the­olo­gians SAY — not the­o­rize – on the ques­tion of, “Is it pos­si­ble the uni­verse could exist with­out God?”, No!, it could not. So of course, David should and would reply, “That response is an awful lot of noth­ing to be so god-damn con­fi­dent about the­ists.” Those who do not believe in God and are there­fore, athe­ist, don’t care if you believe in God — go nuts! – but if you think she oper­ates in the “known” dark uni­verse, we CAN answer that ques­tion with robust sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis, and there­fore, end up reject­ing that hypoth­e­sis as being null.

    > I do blame humans who are over­ly con­strained by a world­view lim­it­ed to what’s
    > “proven.”

    Then you’ll give me the cour­tesy of blam­ing humans who are over­ly con­strained by a world­view that is lim­it­ed to claim­ing a (non-exis­tent) virtue on what could be, Oh, what could be!, but yet, when asked for an even minis­cule amount of sub­stance to the claim, have noth­ing to offer except say­ing just because some­thing isn’t proven, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have valid­i­ty. If that’s the stan­dard by which you oper­ate, good luck to you, I’m inter­est­ed in real sci­en­tists, doing incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult and very valid research that devel­ops into strong the­o­ries based on facts.

    > I put good mon­ey on the poten­tial for humans to evolve (giv­en a chance) to a point
    > where our mas­tery of the phys­i­cal world involves a par­a­digm shift or three about the >nature of mind/spirit/information. At what point does a sophis­ti­cat­ed enough pat­tern >become self-sus­tain­ing beyond the phys­i­cal body? Is that a soul…or just high­er brain >func­tion ele­vat­ed to a place where it can sus­tain its pro­gram­ming and mem­o­ry and >sen­tience in the as yet poor­ly under­stood fab­ric of space­time?

    Lots of phi­los­o­phiz­ing here and no action. How about putting your mon­ey where your mouth is and start get­ting to work on it. Just because you have an idea, does not make it worth a thing except in your own brain until you can demon­strate it. You can sit under your apple tree and wax poet­ic all day long about how “poor” and “rudi­men­ta­ry” our under­stand­ing is (which is a total insult to real sci­en­tists, unlike you, who do this every day of their lives) but you haven’t done a thing to con­tribute to under­stand­ing.

    • Mila says:

      Good­ness Reg, calm down, have a cup of tea and maybe indulge in some calm­ing psy­che­delics and see if you still feel that there’s noth­ing “beyond the con­scious­ness of the phys­i­cal brain”…

  • Jake says:

    To every­one bab­bling about whether athe­ist make sense because they don’t believe in God. They are per­fect­ly jus­ti­fied in say­ing there is no god for the same rea­sons we aren’t prepar­ing for war against the space mon­keys com­ing from nep­tune. There is no evi­dence to sup­port them. Absence of evi­dence real­ly is evi­dence of absence. Research the null hypoth­e­sis, it’ll help you under­stand bet­ter!

  • Kathryn Paine says:

    It is fun­ny that I have the same com­ment but for the oppo­site per­spec­tive. I can­not fath­om how a per­son can­not believe in, and think, that there is no high­er intel­li­gence than them­selves? Arro­gance lies in man believ­ing he is the epit­o­me of intel­li­gence, bar­ring those who believe in extrater­res­tri­al life. I can­not see how one can look in depth into the uni­verse, and its oper­a­tions, and think that there is no “Intel­li­gent Design” involved. Every­thing has an intel­li­gence to its oper­a­tions or it would not work. The ques­tions keep rolling out of “Why, why, why”. If one answers, “Oh just because, or one day we will know,…” That is no dif­fer­ent than one who believes in God. You do not have the final answer, and we do not ade­quate­ly explain every­thing, either. Why do you believe your answer is supe­ri­or when you do not have the final answers any­more than we do? This is an even play­ing field, as far as proofs. Many ‘believe’ in some­thing based on faith and not based on proof. Black holes. Who out of our audi­ence can prove they exist. You trust in an experts’ word, but that is a choice, or a leap of faith in anoth­er fal­li­ble human. Who is the arbiter of truth? Anoth­er human being you choose to believe?

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