One of a series of five-minute interviews on the BBC website conducted by Matthew Stadlen. Dawkins gives quick summary answers to a number of quick-fire questions about his atheism. As in his debate with John Lennox in Oxford, he doesn’t entirely dismiss the possibility of God, but clearly doesn’t think there is any evidence worth paying attention to. Dawkins is rightly insistent on the importance of evidence. He says, ‘there’s no reason to believe anything for which there isn’t any evidence.’ Absolutely. The problem is what kinds of evidence Dawkins considers to be legitimate. In A Devil’s Chaplain (p. 248) he writes:
Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: ‘Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?’ And next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: ‘What kind of evidence is there for that?’ And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.
I agree with this completely. My quibble is with his underlying assumptions that the only valid evidence is empirical and that only scientific knowledge is valid. The trouble with these assumptions is that they are self-defeating. You cannot scientifically prove, or have empirical evidence for, the idea that only scientific knowledge is valid and that you need empirical evidence for everything.
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