The Root of All Evil • 2006 • 2 episodes • 1h:34m
In this series, Dawkins argues that humanity would be better off without religion or belief in God, exploring how religious faith can conflict with scientific understanding and influence moral frameworks.
In the first episode, Dawkins examines the unproven beliefs held as facts by many religions and the extremes to which some followers take them. He argues that faith is not a way of understanding the world but is fundamentally opposed to modern science, which tests hypotheses and builds theories to describe the world. Dawkins visits the United States to interview Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and travels to Jerusalem to interview Yousef al-Khattab, an American-born Jew who settled in Israel before converting to Islam. He uses Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot analogy to respond to charges that scientific understanding does not entitle one to reject religion.
S1E1 • 2006 • People
The second episode delves into the moral framework that religions are often cited as providing and argues against the indoctrination of children. Dawkins compares religious faith to a virus, being passed from parents to offspring and teachers to pupils. He visits a London Hasidic Jewish school, where students are largely isolated from outside ideas, and Phoenix Academy, a semi-independent city academy following the American Accelerated Christian Learning curriculum. Dawkins interviews the headteacher about the integration of biblical stories into various academic subjects and explores the differences between secular ethics and morality based on religious law. He also discusses concepts from evolutionary biology, such as reciprocal altruism and kin selection, as explanations for morality.
S1E2 • 2006 • People