Transcript of Stephen Colbert's Interview with Richard Dawkins on his book, "The God Delusion"

0'01.962 My guest tonight is a scientist who argues that there is no god!

0'05.712 Well, you know what?

0'06.877 He'll have an eternity in hell to prove it

0'08.785 Please welcome Richard Dawkins

0'12.180 Oh Yeah

0'13.737 Come on

0'16.747 come on

0'17.981 now!

0'25.455 Thank you for coming on

0'26.452 mhm

0'27.226 I am so excited to have you

0'28.519 though I have to admit, I thought I was getting Darryl Dawkins

0'30.989 ha

0'31.452 argh

0'32.153 Chocolate Thunder, I am not sure if it's a term you are familiar with

0'34.227 mhm

0'35.186 No? ok

0'35.972 Um

0'37.622 Usually they say they were expecting a man in a wheelchair who can't talk

0'42.373 Oh

0'42.756 They confuse me with Stephen Hawking

0'45.220 Oh, stephen hawking

0'47.007 ok, is he going to hell, too?

0'49.223 I reckon so

0'50.129 Yeah, maybe so, maybe so

0'51.386 yeah, god doesn't like black holes

0'53.123 Alright

0'54.102 um

0'57.970 Your book

0'59.473 started off great

1'01.196 okay?

1'02.043 It's got a shiny silver cover and I can see my face in it

1'05.592 But after that I got pretty upset

1'07.605 okay

1'08.491 You say that god is...

1'11.345 it's called "The God Delusion"

1'13.205 alright

1'13.959 and you say that there is no god

1'16.412 that god is a myth

1'18.651 and that religion is corrosive

1'21.936 Well, I say that god is very very improbable

1'24.217 you can't actually disprove god

1'25.992 Right! 'cause he exists!

1'28.992 no matter how much you fight

1'30.786 there is still a little bit of him left

1'32.177 You can't disprove anything

1'33.412 You can't disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster

1'35.377 You can't disprove Thor with his hammer

1'37.635 You can't disprove Zeus or Poseidon

1'40.555 Well, those are pagan gods

1'41.656 they don't exist

1'42.144 Yeah, that's right

1'43.638 They don't exist

1'46.147 You're an atheist about all those gods

1'48.855 Everybody here's an atheist about all those gods

1'51.122 some of us just go one god further

1'54.141 Wow, okay, bold

1'56.986 Alright, so let's hear it

1'59.107 There is no god, uh

2'01.862 our belief in him is a delusion

2'05.153 The world and the whole universe is created by a series of random acts...

2'08.499 oh, no, no

2'08.646 We're all just monkeys and we should fornicate and throw our feces

2'11.660 Marker 64

2'12.818 Those are your greatest hits, right?

2'13.496 You're right. That's up to you

2'14.368 I've encapsulated the book basically right there, right?

2'16.437 It's up to you

2'17.305 But, you mustn't say that it's all due to random chance

2'20.500 That's the one thing it isn't

2'22.228 because the Darwinian natural selection is the exact opposite

2'25.924 of random chance

2'27.932 It's a highly non-random process

2'30.195 The big thing that everybody misunderstand about Darwinism

2'32.955 is that they think it's chance

2'33.892 They think it's an accident

2'35.386 And, It's not an accident

2'36.379 Well, that's too complex for us to perceive

2'38.888 you know?

2'39.596 it's like

2'40.330 I know a Pachinko machine isn't an accident either

2'43.107 There is a reason why it bounces from nail to nail

2'45.409 but it looks random to me, right?

2'48.004 Nothing in nature looks random

2'50.112 nothing in nature looks random

2'51.200 I want you to address my Pachinko analogy

2'54.236 I've never even heard of it

2'55.346 What is that?

2'55.670 Never heard of Pachinko?

2'57.064 Oh, it's like Japanese Pinball

2'58.822 Okay

2'59.509 They're great

3'00.040 They make a..

3'00.554 They make, um, pornographic versions of it over there

3'03.883 We call it bagatelle

3'05.313 Bagatelle

3'06.575 Who, who is we?

3'07.496 Biologist or English people?

3'08.635 English people

3'09.339 Okay, alright

3'11.163 Um

3'13.183 Now, obviously I've already played my hand here

3'14.821 I believe in god

3'16.180 and you don't believe in god

3'18.488 so I've got that on you

3'20.092 so um...

3'21.153 this is kind of unfair, 'cause god's on my side in this argument

3'24.659 um

3'26.650 But 95 percent of Americans believe that there is a god

3'31.532 so, doesn't that disprove...

3'33.851 your argument

3'34.777 or else, ah, you don't believe in democracy

3'37.165 Well

3'39.556 Really? I mean, the people have spoken

3'41.149 Democracy is fine for policy

3'42.779 But democracy is no good for science

3'45.424 you would never

3'45.797 Oh, I disagree

3'46.740 I'll say that the President will disagree also

3'48.654 Well, you've got a point there

3'50.372 I have to give you that

3'52.783 You are right there

3'54.606 Now, you are not a big fan of Intelligent Design either, I am imagining

3'57.808 I am a very big fan of intelligent design for man-made things

4'00.609 But I am not a big fan of intelligent design for natural things

4'04.550 No, what do you mean?

4'05.482 What's the difference between those things?:

4'06.359 I mean, aren't we natural?

4'07.387 We are part of..

4'08.188 We are part of the natural order of things

4'08.932 that's right

4'09.950 There is no intelligent design in the natural order of things

4'12.174 There is plenty of intelligent design in computers and cars and telephones

4'16.151 They are all intelligently designed

4'17.635 And we are so stupid that we think

4'19.925 that just because telephones and computers and cars are intelligently design

4'23.927 that we are, too.

4'24.914 Well, we're not

4'26.358 and...

4'26.703 But I am more complex than my computer

4'28.633 You certainly are

4'29.808 Right, so how can I be here?

4'32.229 I mean...

4'33.090 It... it's either

4'34.266 it's either...

4'36.358 I am... lost...

4'37.406 Well, I'll tell you...

4'39.478 I'm lost

4'40.218 It hurts when I think.

4'41.484 See? If I just think that God just...

4'43.029 (clap)

4'43.166 dit it

4'43.744 that, I can understand

4'45.557 And who just did god, then?

4'51.621 God is outside of time

4'53.465 Ah, you see...

4'54.164 That's so easy. You get away with that

4'56.180 No, it's hard. It makes my brain sore.

4'59.969 You can get away with that. And then you can explain anything

5'02.608 I can't explain anything

5'03.692 Yeah, the point...

5'04.548 I can explain it

5'05.946 and the point...

5'06.458 And I can explain it by saying that

5'08.282 You get to complex things, like you

5'11.291 by slow, gradual drees.

5'13.438 and that is the only ultimate explanation that will work

5'17.126 You can't just suddenly magic complex things, like god, into existence

5'23.160 But, if this is intelligently designed,

5'25.733 like say, your book is intelligently designed,

5'27.729 It is, by the way

5'28.402 but the universe, but the universe is not intelligently designed,

5'32.891 then you're saying that the universe just

5'35.596 ah, just naturally came into existence

5'39.365 continues its existence through natural laws of nature

5'43.883 through physics, the thermodynamics, the laws of gravity and energy

5'48.782 produced you, eventually

5'51.005 and then through you, produced this book

5'53.467 that proves that it has no natural intelligent design

5'56.417 Okay, let's take that...

5'58.296 Let's take that step by step

6'00.118 Oh, I don't think we have time for step by step

6'01.160 You were right

6'02.935 You can either surrender or we can go

6'04.202 You were right as far when you got on to life

6'06.800 Life's a very special thing

6'08.608 Life starts naturally

6'10.626 and it then increases in complexity

6'12.676 by slow, gradual degrees

6'14.400 That's Darwinian natural selection

6'15.542 That's because God breathed into it

6'17.010 Oh, no.

6'19.297 That's at best, a superfluous hypothesis

6'22.048 and at worst, a highly unparsimonious one

6'24.576 Do both of those mean that you surrender?

6'28.255 We've got to go, I'm sorry

6'29.654 Richard Dawkins, thank you so much for being my guest

6'32.699 The book is, The God Delusion

6'35.980 We'll be right back