Do we need God to explain morality? - Richard Dawkins & Francis Collins

Richard Dawkins offers an evolutionary explanation for why humans are moral, which leaves Francis Collins unconvinced!

 

The Big Conversation is a video series from Unbelievable? featuring world-class thinkers across the religious and non-religious community. Exploring science, faith, philosophy and what it means to be human. The Big Conversation is produced by Premier in partnership with John Templeton Foundation.

[daveonaka]

Maybe I’m missing something but if we appreciate and admire “misfirings” then isn’t the appreciation itself a misfiring? And if the majority of people value this, then how can it be an evolutionary misfiring??

[Yugi]

Every thumbnail:
Francis: 😃
Richard: 🥴

[Anna-mcll]

Great quote from Polkinghorne made by Collins towards the end of this short clip! Thank you!

[DanFedMusic]

It seems like it often has to be either science or God, when in fact not only can it be both but it absolutely is both.
It very sadly seems like people like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and alike spend their entire lives desperately and angrily trying to figure everything out without the possibility of a creator.
It makes me think of a child who wants to do everything his way even though his parents are trying to help him but he keeps throwing a tantrum insisting that they leave him alone even though he's not really getting anywhere.

[mpaczkow]

I’m amazed that Dr. Collins can compartmentalize his faith from his science and uses different rules for his pursuit in both. At some point there is an overlap or intersection of the rules and I wonder how he prioritize his thought processes. If you use the rules of faith in science, things can go bad really fast.

[pablochaverri]

To say that something can be explained is not to reduce it or to dimish it. Actually, is the other way around: to look for explainations make the universe more interesting, amazing and spectacular. To do science require a sense of respect for what is under study, and the more we study something the more ignorance we recognize and the more humble we have to be.

[Anna-mcll]

“… it’s a wonderful thing to do… it’s a beautiful thing…”
But WHO or WHAT determines WHAT IS ACTUALLY WONDERFUL, BEAUTIFUL, ADMIRABLE in a universe where everything is nothing but the result of mere, random chance?

[PMKehoe]

Dawkins has had his say for decades & good for him; but, he doesn’t have the answers to the most profound and probative questions.

[WilliamJacobsenMusic]

I would like to see a debate about the origins of YHWH. To me the most significant challenge of Abrahamic monotheism is facing up to its polytheistic roots, and to the various political circumstances that shaped the text of the old testament (for example the Deuteronomic reforms under King Josiah).

Get some serious old testament scholars on here and knock yourselves out. Given that the show has gone over a lot of the same questions a few times now, this would be very refreshing.

[spooky]

As Dawkins says, "misfiring" isn't pejorative. I ask anyone, if you found out love was a misfiring, would you be capable of loving your family any less?

[jstube]

Ther is none that have a monopoly on morality. Morality changes from person to person and culture to culture. It is quite pointless to say one set of morals is THE set. It can be said that gods were invented as embodiments of each cultures version of morality. But the ideas of right and wrong change with the passing of each era. And as religions themselves are becoming more an more unnecessary. the answer to the question is an increasing NO.

[VGameLvesFRee]

I think the title question is a bit of red herring. How is morality needed to be explained (of what is right or wrong) when you can simply review morality as logical truth statements? It's just a matter of transparency into etymology (e.g. exploring thoughts, semantics, or logic). After all, in my understanding at least, given enough discipline, people can rationally arrive at the same truths if the innate human characteristic is to pursue truths and therefore productivity.

Just seems like a roundabout way for thiests to argue that an intelligent God is necessary to help facilitate productivity, while athiests may argue the negative.

[sarbajitghosh]

Evolution, has it been read in conjunction with Freud's Totem and Taboo?

[johnbrown]

Mis-firing? Talk about evoking a “god of the gaps!”

if something like adoption of a child and to show care and love, int he general form, let's not be concerned about the specifics of whether sending the kid to tutorial classes 6 days a week for 6 hours each day is an abuse or just extreme love and care, what of a beggar who decide not to adopt a child due to incapability of such, is that refusal, reluctance to adopt a child based on such concerns related to financial capability etc still an act of lack of "goodness"? If the answer to that is 'no', then such act of kindness is not objectively "good" and in fact turning it right into a subjective "good" as it has requirements, parameters that need to be satisfied, making such considerations something that has dependences, therefore subjective

[benjamintrevino]

Collins is the only one here who comes across as dismissive.

[Apriluser]

If there are couples that don’t want children, is that a misfiring?

[ChrisBasha]

Collins is committing the genetic fallacy here. Beauty and morality don't become meaningless when we find out where they come from or what they're made of. Dawkins is completely right in claiming that regardless if these things are misfirings, they're still meaningful. It's not a pejorative thing to say — it's Collins who's imposing that thought (due to some reasoning he might be unaware of), and you can see it clearly in the emotional language he uses near the end of the video.

[Aldous]

So Dawkins' default - the 'Darwinian Impulse, as he calls it - is the primary law of existence? I think not. Altruism is just as necessary, not some 'misfiring' of the 'tooth and claw' idiocy that many Darwinian supporters cleave to. The urge to procreate is one thing - altruism, sublime joy and very high intellectual and artistic faculties are another. But they are all fundamentally necessary to our experiencing of life to the full. Spiritual consciousness is equally fundamental, even though we constantly pervert it in our efforts to capture it in words, ritual, etc.

[Orthodoxi]

Without God, it's all meaningless babble. And where does that get us.