Richard Dawkins and Jon Stewart Debate Whether Science or Religion Will Destroy Civilization

One of the sad facts of human psy­chol­o­gy is that knowl­edge can be used for evil just as eas­i­ly as it can be used for good. If the human race had nev­er fig­ured out how to use fire, for exam­ple, we would­n’t have to wor­ry about those pesky arson­ists.

If some peo­ple are will­ing to use the fruits of knowl­edge to hurt peo­ple, should we stop acquir­ing knowl­edge? It sounds absurd, but that’s a ques­tion that is often asked, though it’s invari­ably couched in dif­fer­ent lan­guage.

When Richard Dawkins, the evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist and out­spo­ken athe­ist, made an appear­ance on The Dai­ly Show last week to pro­mote his new mem­oir, host Jon Stew­art asked: “Do you believe that the end of our civ­i­liza­tion will be through reli­gious strife or sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment?”  The answer, Dawkins said, is prob­a­bly both. “Sci­ence pro­vides, in the form of tech­nol­o­gy, weapons which hith­er­to have been avail­able only to rea­son­ably respon­si­ble gov­ern­ments,” said Dawkins, and those weapons “are like­ly to become avail­able to nut­cas­es who believe that their god requires them to wreak hav­oc and destruc­tion.”

The con­ver­sa­tion then moves beyond reli­gious fanati­cism. “Sci­ence is the most pow­er­ful way to do what­ev­er it is you want to do,” said Dawkins, “and if you want to do good, it’s the most pow­er­ful way of doing good. If you want to do evil, it’s the most pow­er­ful way to do some­thing evil.”

Dawkin­s’s last state­ment echoes the words of Albert Ein­stein, who warned that the sci­en­tif­ic method is only a means to an end, and that the wel­fare of human­i­ty depends ulti­mate­ly on shared goals. You can hear Ein­stein make his point by vis­it­ing our post, “Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)”.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Com­mence­ment Address: The Entire World is an Elec­tive

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being


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Comments (11)
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  • Richard Tisdale says:

    Any­way of see­ing it if I’m in the UK?

  • Reza says:

    So far many peo­ple have died because of sci­ence used by non-reli­gious gov­ern­ments.

  • Guest says:

    Peo­ple die because of igno­rance and the mis­use of sci­ence or reli­gion. nn“The most sav­age con­tro­ver­sies are those about mat­ters as to which nthere is no good evi­dence either way. Per­se­cu­tion is used in the­ol­o­gy, nnot in arith­metic, because in arith­metic there is knowl­edge, but in nthe­ol­o­gy there is only opin­ion. So when­ev­er you find your­self get­ting nan­gry about a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion, be on your guard; you will prob­a­blyn find, on exam­i­na­tion, that your belief is going beyond what the nev­i­dence warrants.“nnQuote from An Out­line of Intel­lec­tu­al Rub­bish, by Bertrand Rus­sell

  • Jkop says:

    Peo­ple die because of igno­rance and a mis­use of sci­ence and religion.nn“The most sav­age con­tro­ver­sies are those about mat­ters as to which there is no good evi­dence either way. Per­se­cu­tion is used in the­ol­o­gy, not in arith­metic, because in arith­metic there is knowl­edge, but in the­ol­o­gy there is only opin­ion. So when­ev­er you find your­self get­ting angry about a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion, be on your guard; you will prob­a­bly find, on exam­i­na­tion, that your belief is going beyond what the evi­dence warrants.“nn(quote from An Out­line of Intel­lec­tu­al Rub­bish, by Bertrand Rus­sell)

  • Margaret Rose STRINGER says:

    Being a mere Aus­tralian, I am not per­mit­ted to view the video: The Dai­ly Show is beyond my legal reach — why, I have nev­er under­stood (mean­ing that it’s not only some Amer­i­can con­tent but also a lot of British I may not view). But I want to say only that Jon Stew­art is a refresh­ing reminder that there ARE some intel­li­gent peo­ple sit­ting behind anchor desks in tele­vi­sion. Astound­ing!

    • I would nev­er sug­gest that a fel­low res­i­dent of Aus­tralia abuse the rights and priv­i­leges of “the via­com enter­tain­ment fam­i­ly” by using the brows­er exten­sions avail­able at https://mediahint.com/

      • Margaret Rose STRINGER says:

        Thank all the gods, Mar­tin! — how appalling it would be if any­one took notice of so pirat­i­cal a suggestion!nFor myself, I can’t offer you my thanks, as I have, of course, com­plete­ly ignored your post, the con­tents of which were hith­er­to unknown to me and will remain so FOREVER.nHad I not done so, I would fall to the ground and kiss your toes in grat­i­tude u2026

  • Socialmedic says:

    The “unin­tend­ed con­se­quence” would be more like­ly the less sci­ence is fund­ed by gov­ern­ment and the more sci­ence is fund­ed by unreg­u­lat­ed pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions. As we have seen over the last three decades, greed does not take a back seat to pub­lic safe­ty. And prof­it motives do not fund pure sci­ence they fund what­ev­er is going to be prof­itable for the tiny minor­i­ty of major­i­ty stock hold­ers. Sci­ence is ever increas­ing­ly about mon­ey, peri­od, while all of the laws are writ­ten to relive cor­po­ra­tions and their CEOs of any respon­si­bil­i­ty or account­abil­i­ty for the dam­age they cause. Reli­gion has played a major role in grant­i­ng cor­po­ra­tions this kind of pow­er. Neg­li­gence, in the name of “unin­tend­ed con­se­quences” are most like­ly to wipe us out so long as Reli­gion ser­vices Big Busi­ness like a pros­ti­tute.

  • Andrew Planet says:

    Reli­gion is his­tor­i­cal sci­ence

  • John says:

    Sci­ence in the hands of cap­i­tal­ists is very dif­fer­ent than sci­ence in the hands of a democ­ra­cy (one with a demo­c­ra­t­ic econ­o­my of which there are no nations like this at present). Oth­er­wise this is like say­ing that cars kill peo­ple, when in fact it depends on who is dri­ving them.

  • an old one says:

    But attend­ing to this type of gen­er­al­ized blame or cred­it (to reli­gion or to sci­ence) is actu­al­ly futile — a waste of time. If each of us looked at our own self and real­ized that hap­pi­ness only comes from there — our own self­’s being in good, kind rela­tion­ship. With oth­ers, with our own self, with all the uni­verse. If this was done, how much evil could hap­pen using sci­ence or using reli­gion or what­so­ev­er were used? if every one knew and focused their dai­ly lives on that fun­da­men­tal neces­si­ty to work on mak­ing good rela­tion­ship? (And this is con­ta­gious; this effort can make a world cul­ture.) Evil and good are each accom­plished one by one, by each per­son mak­ing each deci­sion. That does often result in col­lec­tive evil or col­lec­tive good — but the accom­plish­ment occurs in the deci­sions of each indi­vid­ual who par­tic­i­pat­ed. And the deci­sions fun­da­men­tal­ly are results of the indi­vid­u­al’s own wis­dom or igno­rance about what is best for one­self, what will give one­self com­fort and ease and hap­pi­ness, whether it be in sci­ence’s this life, or reli­gion’s this and next. And the key is known- attend to doing this: “Walk in beau­ty with all your rela­tions” (to para­phrase the White Buf­fa­lo Calf Wom­an’s accu­rate secret of hap­pi­ness and suc­cess, which is also core to the find­ings of most cur­rent psy­cho­log­i­cal and socia­log­i­cal and med­ical sci­en­tif­ic research, and also the core val­ue of most reli­gions’ prime teach­ings.

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