#highest ideal

“Feel nothing, know nothing, do nothing, have nothing, give up all to God, and say utterly, ‘Thy will be done.’ We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go.” Swami Vivekananda “If you meditate on your ideal, you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God.” Ramakrishna –Total Consciousness is the movement from one state of consciousness…

Today’s Quote:  “Imposing one’s viewpoint on another is an imposition.”

As our nation descends into rancor, discord, division and violence, it is fruitful to pause and examine competing assumptions.  The woe, misery and travail of the outer world is an opportunity to look within for answers.

Our nation is facing true civil war.  Indeed, “we the people” have not been this divided since the 1861…

Icarus, Balance and Spiritual Flight

Today’s quote:  “Balance is living in spiritual flight.  Spiritual flight is living in balance.”

I have been a pilot most of my life and have often wondered about the metaphysical implications of the work we do.

“Airliner 123, cleared for takeoff, runway 27 Right” says the Tower Controller.  “Cleared for takeoff, 27R, Airliner 123” reads back my co-pilot.  As Captain, I switch on the takeoff…

Icarus, Balance and Spiritual Flight

The Fall of Icarus, Rubens, 1636

  Today’s quote: “Balance is living in spiritual flight. Spiritual flight is living in balance.”

I have been a pilot most of my life and have often wondered about the metaphysical implications of the work we do.

“Airliner 123, cleared for takeoff, runway 27 Right” says the Tower Controller. “Cleared for takeoff, 27R, Airliner 123” reads back my co-pilot. As…

There are would-be murderers all around the world who want to kill you and me and themselves, because they're motivated by what they think is the highest ideal. Of course politics are important - Iraq, Palestine, even social deprivation in Bradford. But as we wake up to this huge challenge to our civilised values, don't let's forget the elephant in the room. An elephant called religion.

The suicide bomber is convinced that in killing for his god, he will be fast-tracked to a special martyr's heaven. This isn't just a problem of Islam. In this programme I want to examine that dangerous thing that's common to Judaism and Christianity as well: The process of non-thinking called "faith".

I'm a scientist, and I believe there is a profound contradiction between science and religious belief. There is no well-demonstrated reason to believe in God, and I think the idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe. The 21st century should be an age of reason, yet irrational, militant faith is back on the march.

Religious extremism is implicated in the world's most bitter and unending conflicts.

Yousef Al-Khattab: "We want the non-Muslims off the lands of Mohammed. We want the kuffar [infidels] out of it."

America, too, has its own fundamentalists.

Pastor Ted Haggard: "The issue for the next generation is going to be islamification of Europe."

And in Britain, even as we live in the shadow of holy terror, our government wants to restrict our freedom to criticise religion. Science, we are told, should not tread on the toes of theology. But why should scientists tiptoe respectfully away?

The time has come for people of reason to say enough is enough. Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous.

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It looks lovely, doesn't it? Inoffensive and gentle. But isn't this the beginning of that slippery slope that leads to young men with rucksack bombs on the tube?

If you want to experience the medieval rituals of faith - the candlelight, incense, music, important-sounding dead languages, nobody does it better than the Catholics. At Lourdes, in southern France, the assault on the senses appeals to us not to think, not to doubt, not to probe. And if we can retain our faith against the evidence in the teeth of reality, the more virtuous we are.

Pretty impressive sight, isn't it? I could imagine finding it very seductive, partly because of the tremendous feeling of group solidarity that there must be. If you have the delusion that you're Napoleon, it must be a fairly lonely feeling, because nobody else agrees with you. Your faith that you're Napoleon needs a lot of shoring up. But these people here, thousands of people, all have exactly the same delusion. That must give wonderful reinforcement to their faith.

I used to think reason had won the war against superstition. But it's quite shaking to witness the faithful droves trooping through Lourdes. This is a benign herd, but it supports a backward belief system that I believe reason must challenge.

Daylight reveals more of this shrine, where a myth is perpetuated that a virgin who gave birth - Christ's mother Mary - appeared here once to an impressionable (and I do mean impressionable) young girl. The faithful make the pilgrimage here because they believe that terrible afflictions can be cured by dragging their poor bodies up to a pool of water, where the Virgin Mary made here miraculous appearance. In reality, they're probably more likely to catch something from the thousands of other pilgrims who've wallowed in the same water.

Dawkins: "Is it something that Catholics feel they ought to do in their life, rather like Muslims going on the Hajj to Mecca?" Woman #1: "Well yes, but you don't have to be a Catholic to do it. I mean any religion can come, as I know quite a few people, they're not Catholics at all and they have been here."

Dawkins: "And what are you hoping to get out of it?" Woman #2: "Well I have - I've got a lot out of it. I've got faith, I've got trust and a belief that there is a person up there stronger than any medical person." Dawkins: "Right. What about a cure, then?"

It may seem tough to question these poor desperate people's faith, but isn't bracing truth better than false hope? What is the evidence for any miracles?

Father Liam Griffin: "There are actually 66 declared miracles. There are about 2000 unexplained cures here. But then we would say there are millions of people who have been healed in different ways." Dawkins: "Healed in some sort of medical way?"

Father Griffin: "Healed in a spiritual way. People who have come to terms with their own particular situation. People who have rediscovered God in their lives again. People who have received a new grace here in Lourdes."

Dawkins: "So you tend to get about 80,000 per year." Father Griffin: "About 80,000 sick pilgrims who come here every year." Dawkins: "Yes. That's been going on for more than a century now-" Father Griffin: "Yes." Dawkins: "-for a century and a half." Father Griffin: "Yes." Dawkins: "So 80,000 per year, and of those 66 have been cured. I'm just - you see what the way I'm thinking..."

So the hard fact is that over the years, with their millions of pilgrims, there had been 66 supposed miracles. Statistically, it adds up to no evidence at all. I can't help remarking that nobody has ever

had a miraculous regrowing of a severed leg. The cures are always things that might have got better anyway.

People lean on their faith as a crutch, but I fear the comfort it provides is a shallow pretense, and I want to look at how the

suspension of disbelief dangerous ideas beyond.

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People like to say that side, but I don't think a discipline of investigation and constructive doubt, questing with logic, evidence and reason to draw conclusions. Faith, by stark contrast, demands a positive suspension of critical faculties. Science proceeds by setting up hypotheses, ideas or models, and then attempts to disprove them. So, a scientist is constantly asking questions, being sceptical. Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth, through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

Let me give you an example of this, with the story of the Assumption of Mary. Catholics believe that Jesus's mother, Mary, was so important, she didn't physically die. Instead, her body shot off into heaven when her life came to a natural end. Of course, there's no evidence for this. Even the Bible says nothing about how Mary died. The belief that her body was lifted into heaven emerged about six centuries after Jesus's time, made up like any tale and spread by word of mouth. But it became established tradition. It was handed down over centuries. And the odd thing about tradition is that the longer it's been going, the more people seem to take it seriously. It's as though sheer passage of time makes something that was, to begin with, just made up, turns it into what people believe as a fact.

By 1950, the tradition was so strongly established that it became official truth. It became authority. The Vatican decreed that Roman Catholics must now believe in the doctrine of the Assumption of The Virgin. Now, if you had asked Pope Pius XII how he knew it was truth, he would've said you had to take his word for it because it had been revealed to him by God. He shut himself away and thought about it, he just thought private thoughts inside his own head and convinced himself - no doubt on tortuous theological grounds - that it just had to be so.

None of this is particularly harmful when it is limited to the Virgin Mary going to heaven. But what about the Pope's personal convictions when it comes to, say, discouraging the use of condoms in AIDS-ridden Africa? Then, the power of the church through tradition, authority and revelation comes with an appalling human cost.

It would be unfair to pick on the Catholics. All religions are up to the same tricks. It could be Muslim imams issuing fatwas. It's the same principle. It's issued by the authority and then passes down through the ranks to parents, to children, and all without a shred of evidence.

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inherent in faith can lead to far more

faith and science can live together side by they can. They're deeply opposed. Science is

Unlike science, which sees it as a challenge, religion thrives on unsolved mystery. For early humanity, what was mysterious and unexplained was so vast, that only an equally vast higher being - an alpha male in the sky - could fill that gap. How would our ancestors have responded to the sunrise? There must be a fiery charioteer - a sun god - to accept our sacrifices, a supreme being who, on the first day of creation, announced "let there be light!"

But scientific investigation has rolled back that mystery. Today we know the Sun is a giant nuclear reactor, one of billions of stars pumping out electromagnetic radiation, heat and light.

How do scientists know the things that they know about the world and the universe? How do we know, for instance, that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and that it orbits the Sun that nourishes it? How do we know that these dinosaurs are hundreds of millions of years old? The answer is evidence - tons and tons of mutually supporting evidence. Science is about testing, comparing and corroborating this massive evidence, and using it to update old theories of how things work.

I do remember one formative influence in my undergraduate life. There was an elderly professor in my department who had been passionately keen on a particular theory for, oh, a number of years. And one day an American visiting researcher came, and completely and utterly disproved our old man's hypothesis. The old man strode to the front, shook his hand and said "my dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years." And we all clapped our hands raw. That was the scientific ideal of somebody who had a lot invested - a lifetime, almost - invested in the theory, and he was rejoicing that he had been shown wrong and that scientific truth had been advanced.

So what does the overwhelming evidence of all these fossils tell sceptical science? How did we and every creature get here, in all our improbable diversity? In past centuries, humanity had no choice but to resort to a supernatural hypothesis. Among the many creation myths around the world, the Book of Genesis imagined a designer god who fashioned the world and life in just six days. Finally, in the 19th century, science pieced together what had really happened. Charles Darwin hit upon a truly brilliant idea that elegantly explains all of life on Earth, without any need to invoke the supernatural or the divine.

Here's a helpful way to look at the problem Darwin faced: Climbing a mountain. Let's call it "Mount Improbable". Let's say at the bottom we have the simple bacterial beginnings of life on Earth. At the top, man today or any complicated piece of biology. So, how did we get to the top? If it had happened by blind chance, or by design, it would be equivalent to leaping up a sheer cliff in a single bound. Utterly out of the question. If we come round the other side of Mount Improbable, we find something very different. Here there's no sudden precipitous cliff. Here there's a gentle slope, a gradient, of evolution. All we have to do is put one foot in front of the other and get to the top. Darwin's great insight was that life evolved steadily and slowly, inching its way gradually over 4 billion years. Natural selection, not a divine designer, was the sculptor of life.

So evolution, driven by Darwin's motor of natural selection, gets us to the top of Mount Improbable. From primeval simplicity to ultimate

complexity. The design hypothesis couldn't even begin to do that, because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: Who made the designer?

The abundance and variety of life on Earth may seem improbable, but it's self-evidently futile to invent an improbable god to explain that very improbability.

I thought that in my lifetime evolution would be accepted and taught around the world as a scientific fact supported by overwhelming evidence, but unfortunately, the whole point about faith is that even massive and constantly accumulating physical evidence cuts no ice. Evolution today is under threat.

In the Bible Belt of Middle America, Evangelical Christians are fighting back against science. In the New World religion is free enterprise. Rival groups set up shop on every street corner, competing to save people's souls... and collect their money. Fundamental Christianity is on the rise among the electorate of the world's only superpower, right up to and including the president. If you believe the surveys, 45% of Americans - that's about 135 million people - believe the universe is less than 10,000 years old.

The is the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where conservative Christians have built an $18 million worship centre as their new Jerusalem in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Evangelical churches like this have become a powerful lobby, exerting enormous influence on everything in America, from the teaching of science in schools to foreign policy. This place strains belief. It isn't just a church, but a ready-made social network. The 12,000 strong congregation can also attend 1,300 organised programs where they can meet to exchange Christian tips on everything from marriage to dogwalking. It's all terribly exuberant and intense. Much less tradition here than in Lourdes, but plenty of swaggering authority. The pastor is Ted Haggard, a powerful man, chairman of the National Association of Evangelicals, and the New Life is Ted's Evangelical "Vatican".

Haggard (addressing crowd): "Alright, welcome to all of our friends. Take a moment and say hello to the people behind you, in front of you and to your right and to your left. Hey, we wanna welcome all of you that are visiting with us here today. If you're here for the very first time we have a packet of information that we wanna give to you, and so all of you visitors if you would, please...."

Sadly, the warmth of the welcome would prove short-lived when I started talking to Pastor Haggard about the Bible and scientific fact.

Haggard: "You'll find yourself wrong on some things, right on some other things, but please, in the process of it, don't be arrogant."

The New Life Church in Colorado Springs is a bastion of American religious conservatism. I've come to try to understand why what I see as irrational faith is thriving, and why it's attacking science.

Haggard: "Welcome to the United States!" Dawkins: "Thank you very much."

Pastor Ted Haggard has a hotline to God and to George Bush. A staunch Republican, he claims he has a weekly conference call with the

president, and has also rubbed shoulders with Tony Blair and Ariel Sharon.

Dawkins: "Well that was really quite a show you gave us today. A fair bit of money seems to have been spent here." Haggard: "Yes. I wanted people to be able to worship and enjoy it, and be in a setting where the speaker is close to them, that's why it's in the round, and so they can be up close to me and so I can look at them."

Dawkins: "Well it's certainly very effective what you do, I mean, it seemed to me to have all the arts of... I mean I was almost reminded, if you'll forgive me, of sort of a Nuremberg rally... I mean, such incredibly... Dr. Goebbels would've been proud."

Haggard: "I don't know anything about the Nuremberg rallies, but I know lots of Americans think of it as a rock concert."

Haggard: "When I prepare a presentation, I don't prepare it to get a group of lunatics to come in and just say "Oh yes Pastor Ted, you're just so wonderful, I believe everything you say!" I would be opposed to that."

Every person needs at the centre some sense of meaning about existence. It is life and death to us, it makes us who we are. Yet most of us, as we grow up and become responsible adults, accept that life is complex, that we live in a world of subtle shades, not sharp black and white. I worry that these born-agains are being persuaded to return to childish certainties. The only truth they need is God - God as interpreted for them by their pastor.

Haggard: "Everybody knows that we believe the Bible's the word of

God. And today, I talked I didn't have to produce psychological evidence-" Dawkins: "But you have a Haggard: "-The book is true." Dawkins: "How can you say they're asked to think for themselves and they're told everything in this book is true?"

Haggard: "Because they don't have to believe that." Dawkins: "The evidence I presented, if you go and read this book it

about "Love your neighbor as yourself." Now evidence - sociological evidence or

book."

says one thing, that book says book contradicts the others-" Haggard: "Well, the evidence I written over 1,500 years by 40 it doesn't contradict itself-" Dawkins: "It doesn't?" Haggard: "-where you can't give me two experts in certain areas that are in the same generation, in the same area of study, that don't contradict themselves."

Dawkins: "That's the beauty of science, we have lots of evidence and the evidence is all the time coming in, constantly changing our minds... and... whereas you have one book which you say it doesn't change, that's not getting them to think for themselves."

But my biggest concern is the Evangelicals like Haggard are foisting evident falsehoods on their flock. The Evangelicals are denying scientific evidence just to support Bronze Age myths.

Haggard: "We fully embrace the scientific method as American Evangelicals, and we think as time goes along, as we discover more and more facts, that we'll learn more and more about how God created the heavens and the Earth."

another, that book says another, that

can present is we've got a book different authors on one subject and

Dawkins: "The scientific method clearly demonstrates that the world is 4.5 billion years old, I mean do you accept that?" Haggard: "Yeah, you know what you're doing? You are accepting some of the views that are accepted in some portions of the scientific community as fact. Where, in fact, your grandchildren might listen to the tape of you saying that and laugh at you."

Dawkins: "You want to bet?" Haggard: "Sometimes it's hard for a human being to study the ear or study the eye and think that happened by accident." Dawkins: "I beg you pardon, did you say 'by accident'?" Haggard: "Yeah." Dawkins: "What do you mean by 'accident'?" Haggard: "That the eye just formed itself somehow." Dawkins: "Who says it did?" Haggard: "Well, some evolutionists say it." Dawkins: "Not a single one that I've ever met-" Haggard: "Really?" Dawkins: "-really." Haggard: "Oh." Dawkins: "You obviously know nothing about the subject of evolution." Haggard: "Or maybe you haven't met the people I have. Richard, see, you do understand... you do understand that this issue right here of intellectual arrogance is the reason why people like you have a difficult problem with people of faith. I don't communicate an air of superiority over the people because I know so much more. 'And if you only have read the books that I know, and if you only knew the scientists I knew then you would be great like me.' Well, sir, there could be many things that you know well, there are other things that you don't know well, as you age, you'll find yourself wrong on some things, right on some other things, but please, in the process of it, don't be arrogant."

We just had a rather disconcerting experience. We were just packing up our stuff, ready to go, and he suddenly drove up in his pickup truck and said "get off my land immediately! I'll have you thrown in jail! I'll seize your film!" And he then said a very curious thing, he said "you called my children animals!" Afterwards, we worked out that what he must have meant was that I talked about evolution. He thought I was saying that his flock were animals, which of course, in a sense, I was, because all humans are animals.

Haggard's approach is to say "Let's teach evolution as just another theory alongside the Bible's Creation story." - also called "Intelligent Design", which claims God helped evolution along. It sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? But, of course, it's nothing of the sort. These are not equal theories. Evolution by natural selection is supported by mountains of evidence, while Creation contradicts the evidence, and is only backed by some ancient scribblings.

With Haggard and his followers on their doorstep, the rational atheist minority here feels so browbeaten, that they've organised

themselves into what they call a "freethinkers group", which furtively - perhaps to fantasise about moving to Canada.

meets

Dawkins: "How nice to meet you." Woman: "Hey Richard! It's wonderful to meet you. Welcome..." Dawkins: "Do freethinkers in America feel pretty beleaguered moment?" John Spangler: "I've had my fair share of vitriolic letters and messages from parents say that I'm Satan's incarnate for teaching evolution. There are ministries here that indoctrinate students in

at the

summer programmes to challenge biologists... biology teachers in the classroom. And I've-" Dawkins: "So it's an organised campaign to challenge biology-" Spangler: "Oh they're organised campaigns, absolutely. I do not tolerate it..."

Woman: "-but they have this mindset that they are right."

Gary Betchan: "See, if a person comes out in this country as an atheist, they're likely to suffer career damage, they might lose a job, they might not get a job, they might lose an opportunity for an apartment."

Rick Baker: "-waking up as most Americans do very late on this, coming to a realisation as we did during the McCarthy era, and during-" Dawkins: "It's very similar to the McCarthy era..."

Baker: "-yes it is. We do begin now to see the dangers of this extremism." Dawkins: "Christian fascism, isn't it?" Baker: "Yeah. And whatever mantle you want to give it, which I've heard lately is "Domination Theology", "Dominion Christianity"..."

Fundamentalist American Christianity is attacking science. But what is it offering instead? A mirror image of Islamic extremism. An American Taliban.

We live in a time are pushing their how they can ever we've witnessed the religious insanities of the Middle East penetrate the heart of the secular West.

of lethal polarisation, when the great religions conflict to a point where it is difficult to see be reconciled. In New York, Madrid and London,

To understand the likes of Osama Bin Laden, you have to realise that the religious terrorism they inspire is the logical outcome of deeply held faith. Even so-called "moderate" believers are part of the same religious fabric. They encourage unreason as a positive virtue.

What's really scary is that religious warriors think of what they are doing as the ultimate good. Those of us brought up in Christianity can soon get the message: "Onward Christian soldiers. Fight the good fight. Stand up, stand up for Jesus ye soldiers of the Cross." But as far as I'm concerned, the "war" between good and evil is really just the war between two evils.

This is the Holy Land, where the terrible certainties of faith began and still rage. I've come here because it's a microcosm of the religious conflicts which threaten rational values and civilisation. The dreadful combination of politics and extreme faith has caused the death of almost 4000 people here in shootings, suicide bombings and reprisals in the last 5 years.

Despite the troubles, tourists that their particular brand of child. The Via Dolorosa, where during the last hours of his life; or the Muslim Dome of the Rock; or the Western Wall, Judaism's and the world's most holy ruin.

still flock to Jerusalem, to places religion taught them to revere as a Jesus was allegedly whipped and beaten

Church Guide: "This is a very special church, because the church here..."

On the surface, it looks like a place of harmless myth.

Guide: "... because here is the Hill of Calvary, where Jesus was crucified, and the Tomb of Jesus. Here, what we are facing to the Stone of Anointment, where the body of Jesus was taken down from the cross. So this is the slab where Christ's body was anointed with oil."

Dawkins: "How do we know that? Is there any evidence that it was here?" Guide: "You see, this is by telling from person to person." Dawkins: "It's tradition... yes."

Guide: "Tradition from generation to the next."

Guide: "We can see the hole where the cross was stood, where they putting the cross inside the hole, and this is the place... where the place of the crucifiction, where Jesus died on the cross." Dawkins: "You don't really believe that, do you."

Guide: "This is the Christians, as I explained to you that they believe this is the place where the crucifiction took place."

Guide: "If you come closer to here to my side please... Thank you. Guard of the Tomb is a Greek priest, for regarding the Tomb of Jesus."

Guide: "This is left from the big part of the stone which closed the Tomb, what we call it the rolling or ........... Watch your head, please. Thank you very much."

Guide: "This is where he was laid and rose from death. We call it Sepulchre, which means "empty tomb". God bless you, you can touching the tomb, you can make prayer..."

This holy city has to be one of the least enlightened places in the world. And it is also a place of barely suppressed religious hatreds.

Yousef Al-Khattab: "There will come the day, and that day is now. When you're on our lands spreading these ideas, that the soldiers of

Allah will

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not put up with this."

a time when religious belief is fighting back against scientific truth. This is a problem for all of us, because irrational roots nourish intolerance to the point of

We live at reason and religion's murder. I'm in Jerusalem's Old City, trying to understand the role deeply held faith plays in the bitter conflict here. One of the first things you notice is the edgy watchfulness. The different ethnic and religious communities live cheek by jowl, but there are security checkpoints throughout the Old City, and one section, above all, is under heavy guard.

For the Muslims, the compound enclosing the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque is, after Mecca and Medina, the third holiest site in Islam. It was from here, they believe, that the Prophet Mohammed flew up to heaven. As bad luck would have it, the Jews believe the same place is the site of the long-destroyed First and Second Temples - the holiest shrine in Judaism. Jews are not allowed to worship inside the compound. Their prayers are restricted to the ruined Western (or "Wailing") Wall.

Yisrael Midad: "When Jesus came here to overturn the tables, there was no mosque in view. When the Arabs conquered this part of the world, they established the Al-Aqsa Mosque and then they put over where we think is the main Temple compound, where the altar was, where the Holy of Holy was, they put another building called The Dome of the Rock, which is not properly a mosque, and we at the present moment are simply not allowed in there - inside the compound - identifiably as Jews."

The Muslims reject these Jewish claims, and when Ariel Sharon entered the Temple Mount area in the year 2000...

Sharon: "I came here with a message of peace."

...his visit sparked the second, or "Al-Aqsa" Intifada - a Palestinian uprising that has cost 4000 lives so far.

Haj Amin Al-Husseini: "And if the Jews sincerely want peace with the Arabs and the Muslims, then they should stand away - keep away - from the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

Midad: "In the Muslim religion there is no possibility anyway of sharing the territory. If I come in there, in some far corner, far away from a mosque, in an open area, under a tree somewhere, if a Muslim will catch me murmuring Psalms or some other prayer, he will call the police to have me egressed, shall I say..."

Al-Husseini: "As far as the Al-Aqsa Mosque is considered, there are no negotiations, absolutely no negotiation about it, because no Muslim has the right, worldwide, to negotiate over the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

Again and again, my conversations come back to the solid walls that religion puts up. Back to implacable faiths. 'My holy book is true!' ... 'I am right, he is wrong!' ... So I went to meet someone who, in my naivety, I thought might be able to see both sides of the story. Yousef Al-Khattab (used to be called Joseph Cohen), born and brought up as a secular Jew in New York. In 1998 he moved to Gaza as a Jewish settler, but there he discovered a different god: Allah.

Dawkins: "What I noticed, coming to this centre of world religions, what a lot of hatred religion fosters. I mean, I'm an atheist and I'm rather gentle, I don't hate people, but it seems to me I'm hearing hate on all sides. It seems to me all to do with religion." Al-Khattab: "I hate atheists because atheists don't care if somebody fornicates in the middle of the street. They don't care if their women go bouncing around on TV topless. It makes no difference and they don't believe anything. If you don't believe in a set rule, and you believe that a constitution can change, and you can amend the rules as they go along and you don't believe in God's rule, then what law do you have? You just have man-made laws."

I realised I was in the company of someone who has willingly bought into fundamentalist dogma.

Dawkins: "What do you think about the September 11th attacks on New York and the July 7th attacks on London?" Al-Khattab: "Ok, since you like to speak about evolution, I like to start before. What do you think about the Jews that have destroyed over 417 Arab villages including all mosques and masjids, which

wouldn't affect you 'cause you're an atheist. So what are you saying, that we should sit back-" Dawkins: "Not at all." Al-Khattab: "-and say 'Oh, you know what, let us progress, and let us

sit down and drink tea most ridiculous thing. Israel' there would've Dawkins: "But if we've helped if there are people of very very strong faith who simply know they're right and are no amenable to argument. Because there's somebody out there who's just as faithful as you and has his faith just as strong as yours, which is opposite to yours."

and talk about what to do.' I think that's the All I can say is if there was no 'State of been no September 11th." all got to live together, it's not gonna be

Al-Khattab: "You see, the problem is, Richard, I think that you have fear. You know that this party of occupying Muslim lands and polluting society with these evil ideas that are around, it's not gonna last forever. There will always be the soldiers of Allah there to give the response to this. So we also want the same thing. All we want is, that we want the non-Muslims at this point off the lands of Mohammed. All the lands of Mohammed, we want the kuffar [infidels] out of it."

Dawkins: "Do you want Islam to take over the rest of the world?" Al-Khattab: "Of course I want it to, and it will. So, my advice is to clean up your show at home, take your forces off our lands, correct yourselves, fix your society, alright? Fix your women-"

Dawkins: "'Fix your women', that's not my business, that's my business. They're not 'my women'." Al-Khattab: "No, it is your business. When you take the women dress them like whores on the street-"

women's and

Dawkins: "I don't dress women, they dress themselves." Al-Khattab: "-but you allow it as a norm, to let the women go street dressed like this. What's going on with your society?" Dawkins: "But I'm interested in religion and the effect it has on people's minds. And I'm worried about-" Al-Khattab: "And we're very worried about you. What's going on with the stealing, with the death, it's out of control..."

Clearly, historic injustice towards the Palestinians breeds hatred and anger. But we must face up to the fact that in creating the death cult of suicide bombers, it's unshakable, unreasonable conviction in your own righteous faith that is the key. If preachers then tell the faithful that paradise after martyrdom is better than existence here in the real world, it's hardly surprising that some crazed followers will actually swallow it, leading to a terrible cycle of vendetta, war and suffering.

I'm here on the Mount of Olives, looking out over this beautiful old city. We've heard some pretty extreme statements and hatreds and bigotry such as I haven't really heard before. I don't see what future the world has as long as people think like that, and people are going to go on thinking like that, as long as they're brought up from childhood, from the cradle, to think that there's something good about faith. To think that there's something good about believing because you've been told to believe, rather than believing because you've looked at the evidence.

I want to say that killing for God is not only hideous murder - it is also utterly ridiculous. Unlike religion, science doesn't pretend to know everything. There are still deep questions about the origins of the universe that have yet to be explained. But just because science can't answer them right now, doesn't mean faith, tradition, revelation or an ancient holy text can. Science can't disprove the

on the

existence of God, but that does not mean that God exists. There are a million things we can't disprove.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell had an analogy: Imagine there's a china teapot in orbit around the Sun. You cannot disprove the existence of the teapot, because it's too small to be spotted by our telescopes. Nobody but a lunatic would say 'Well, I'm prepared to believe in the teapot because I can't disprove it.' Maybe we have to be technically and strictly agnostic, but in practice we are all "teapot atheists".

But now suppose that everybody in the society - the teachers, the tribal elders - all had faith in the teapot. Stories of the teapot had been handed down for generations, it's part of the tradition of the society, there are holy books about the teapot, then, somebody who said they did not believe in the teapot might be regarded as eccentric or even mad.

There's an infinite number of things, like celestial teapots, that we can't disprove. There are fairies. There are unicorns. Hobgoblins. We can't disprove any of those, but we don't believe in them anymore than nowadays we believe in Thor, Amun-Ra or Aphrodite. We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

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In the next programme: How faith acts like a virus that strikes the young, and how the "Good Book" that people follow for moral instruction actually reveals a God who is surely the most vindictive character in all fiction.