It can be stated fairly comfortably that science and religion have been at loggerheads since the beginning of their existence.
Getting an atheist and a religious person into the same room to talk about the conflict would result in an interesting debate to say the least. And this video between renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan is just that.
As an educator, Dawkins has publicly denounced religion and its lack of logic – while Hasan played the Devil’s advocate as he tried to make a case for the many educated religious people like himself.
The crossfire exchanged between the two parties was interesting to say the least –
When Dawkins made a rather broad statement saying that a majority of suicide bombers were directly influenced by the promise of heaven after martyrdom, Hasan threw some research.
When Hasan tried to impose the fact that what Dawkins was advocating was essentially something many communist regimes had used as propaganda, the biologist made his stance very clear.
However, Hasan persisted with the many regimes’ anti-religion stance and Dawkins clarified that there was a different between being anti-religion and a peaceful atheist.
Hasan questioned Dawkins’ lack of balance in his book, about how he hadn’t highlighted the good religion had done for the world.
Hasan just couldn’t wrap his head around how Dawkins could be so blind towards the positive effects of faith, while Dawkins couldn’t fathom why a well-read person like Hasan would believe in flying horses.
Which is exactly Hasan moved in to ask the personal question – did Dawkins consider himself superior to Hasan, just because the journalist was religious?
Dawkins even made a rather controversial statement about how raising someone to be Catholic was a severe form of child abuse.
Dawkins re-asserted his position about how religion offered the metaphorical crutches for human beings, to serve their needs. And nothing else.
Watch the whole video here:
Where do you stand?