{"id":19339,"date":"2016-01-24T16:05:16","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T00:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/?p=19339"},"modified":"2016-01-23T17:31:09","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T01:31:09","slug":"russell-brand-and-richard-dawkins-being-sensible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/2016\/01\/24\/russell-brand-and-richard-dawkins-being-sensible\/","title":{"rendered":"Russell Brand and Richard Dawkins Being Sensible"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RussellI came upon this video today, Russell Brand interviews Richard Dawkins<\/a>. It doesn’t have a date, but Dawkins mentions that it is one year after the release of The God Delusion<\/a><\/em>, so that would put it at late 2007 or early 2008. And what’s remarkable about it is just how reasonable it all it. I think that both men left that discussion thinking that they actually had a lot of shared ground. Obviously, Brand is being silly — especially about ancient aliens.<\/p>\n

The truth is that I know a lot of people like Russell Brand. They are some of my favorite people. So when Russell Brand talks about ancient aliens, he is being serious in the sense of this: it is<\/em> a wonderfully fun and interesting concept. People like Brand are the living embodiment of my philosophy that the greatest sin in the normal world (apart from real crime and political power) is to be boring. Brand is interesting when he’s being serious and<\/em> when he’s being silly.<\/p>\n

But the discussion is not about ancient aliens. Brand brings that up just to get a reaction out of Dawkins. And Dawkins is well aware of this. Richard Dawkins is also an interesting guy who at least understands silly, even if he isn’t a practitioner of it. They really do get into some interesting issues. Brand says that he thinks that “salvation through love” has replaced “salvation through God.” Dawkins says that he finds that an attractive idea. And they go back and forth about that.<\/p>\n

And then Brand says, “But do you not think that then that God is just a signifier really for oneness and truth and eternity — that exist beyond our plane of understanding.” And then they are off to the races in a theological discussion. Dawkins points out (quite rightly) that if that’s the case, there is no point of praying to it. So Brand notes that Richard Dawkins’ real problem is the personification of God and Dawkins agrees with that.<\/p>\n