Professor Richard Dawkins, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

By Anne Herssealee, recently, despite you being perhaps the world's most famous atheist,

described you as one of the most Christian people that she knows. Why did she say that? I adore I am. I'm a

great fan of hers. I have talked to her about this. I think the respect in which we differ is that for me

what really matters is the truth claims of Christianity and for her what really matters is the morality, the politics actually. I think for her

Christianity is a bastion against something worse as Hiller-Belle-Bellechseg always keep a hold of

nurse for fear of finding something worse and for her I think she she wants a faith which will help people to stand up against worse faiths and she singles out Islam, she singles out China I think, and Putin and Wokeism.

Wokeism, yes.

And I'm with her on all those.

And to the extent that I think that a religion might be valuable for political reasons,

I would go along with her, but I think it's the wrong way to approach religion.

I think that what really matters about a religion is whether it's true.

And to adopt a religion for, it's almost as though one is saying, well, I don't believe

this nonsense, but it's's very good idea if other people do.

There's something patronizing about that. She doesn't do that. She goes, she says, I believe

in it. I am a Christian. And therefore it's not patronizing but I think the fundamental motivation is a political

and a moral one.

I presume as both an atheist and as a person with an understanding of not just

biological but also memetic evolution, having coined the term meme, you'll have to think of religion as essentially something which serves some kind of social function.

That must be why it exists, it's why it evolved.

Given that that's the case, is it really so inappropriate to think about religion in terms of how it serves us socially if that from our

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