Join us this spring for the sixth annual nexxus, the northeast largest conference dedicated to critical thinking and science education. It's all going down in New York City the weekend of April 11th through 13th 2014. We're excited to feature a keynote by physicist Lawrence Krauss, who's authored bestsellers like The Physics of Star Trek and who just started with Richard Dawkins in a new film last year called The Unbelievers. This is in addition to a great lineup of other speakers like Paul Offit, expert on vaccines and infectious disease, and Cady Coleman, veteran astronaut for NASA.

Of course, Masimo and I will be there taping a live episode of the nationally speaking podcast, and so will the cast of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Get your tickets now at NextG. That's an easy Sorg. Registration prices go up after March 20th. So don't wait. Get your tickets today.

Rationally speaking, is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry and science education. For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptic's Doug. Welcome to, rationally speaking, the podcast, where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense. I'm your host, Masimo, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Julia Gillard. Julia, what are we going to talk about today?

Well, I am very pleased today to welcome back to the show. One of our earliest guests from almost four years ago now. And one of our most beloved Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science communicator. He is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and the author of popular books like The Pluto Files Death by Black Hole and most recently, Space Chronicles. Neil is a regular guest on programs including The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and the Russian speaking podcast, Rationally Speaking and the Spring.

He'll be hosting Cosmos A Space-Time Odyssey, which is a sequel to Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Neil, welcome back. Well, thanks.

And I'm always curious when Mossimo says Julia, who do we have today? Of course, he knows who we have.

This this is almost completely believable. This is all a pretentious man. He is not convincing. So Julia surprised me today. I just want you to know you're not fooling anyone.

I don't know. He wants to give away all the secrets of the show. Anyway, Neal, so good to see you. Good to see you.

And actually, good work out there. Thanks for thanks for being in the trenches. Absolutely.

Thank you. Now, this this time you're coming here for a specific reason. Actually, you want to talk about a video that you made because you got annoyed at some people or something. Can you tell us about it?

Oh, sure. It's not that I got annoyed at people is that I posted the video and people got annoyed with me. OK, well, and I thought, well, what better place to sort of explore this territory than with an educated pair of podcast interviewers who are knowledgeable about nonsense, knowledgeable about science, knowledgeable about religion and arguments made. And it has to do with a short video that where the big think series, you may be familiar with it.

It's very easy to find on the Internet. This is an organization that invites people who are known for thinking, I guess.

But you actually have to not only think, but write about what you thought. Otherwise you don't know.

Nobody will know. Yes, no one would know.

And so in that, they asked me a hundred different questions about a hundred different things, one of which was about the distance I was putting between myself and the atheist movement, if I would acknowledge that. And this got me some into some hot water with some ardent atheists out there. I think other people you meet there are ardent atheists. Wow.

I did notice is that there are I don't know. Is that the right word? I want to use the word militant because that has other implications. Right.

I could hear your throat clearing from space now. Yeah, exactly.

So in that little bit, couldn't it lasted more than three or four minutes? All I said was that I have found that the atheist community is is claiming me in the movement and I get out of there as one as one of their own.

That's correct. And I wouldn't otherwise have a problem with that, except I know that my conduct and things I think and say and do are not what I don't think or what a person would think I would say or do if they labeled me as an atheist in modern times. And so I thought the two of you have thought long and deep and hard about this. And this would be a good venue to sort of have this conversation. What I what I wanted out of that interview was to say, don't label me anything, have the conversation with me first.

When you're done. If I fit some label that you've established, go ahead.

But to pre label me implies that you assert that you know. All you need to know about me on that subject, thereby precluding a conversation that would actually unfold, and so I felt that. Labels are intellectually lazy ways, presuming that you know about, you know, more about someone than you've actually earned.

So have the conversation. And so and what triggered this in me was on my Facebook page some years ago. There's a friend of mine who's an astronaut, a scientist, engineer, astronaut who went into effect. It was Mike Massimino who Fungai. He's now in New York for a year off sabbatical from his time as astronaut. Not that American astronauts are going many places right now anyway. Really? Right. That's a whole other conversation. Yes. Invite me back for that one.

But he he was on his way up to repair the Hubble telescope. So I put a Facebook update, Facebook status, where I said STX, I forgot the number 132, whatever it was going off to repair the Hubble telescope. Godspeed, shuttle astronauts. And then then out then came.

People said, wait a minute, I thought you were an atheist.

And then all of a sudden my conduct was being constrained by people who establish for themselves what they thought I was. All of a sudden, I can't use the word God speed or they're telling me how to behave. So if I'm not behaving in a way I'm supposed to as an atheist, then I wonder whether there's some other word that applies to me. And I thought maybe you're a good question. Both of you guys are, you know, how to get to the bottom of this.

And so I just thought this would be a good place to hash this out. Yeah, so I I watched your excellent video, and one of my reactions was that I'm I'm very sympathetic to your desire to avoid labels and and sort of tribal affiliation. And it is true that the word atheist carries baggage and that many people will make assumptions about your ethical values or your baby eating habits or what have you upon hearing that word. And and even as a sort of in terms of your own self conception, there's a good argument for avoiding labels.

There's a great essay by Paul Graham called Keep Your Identity Small. And it's all about how labels affect your own self conception and how labeling or labeling yourself, especially with a sort of iste label like atheist or I don't know, I reject all this except scientist that.

Yeah, right. Yeah, totally.

I will say he does actually make that exception, that being sort of a rationalist or scientist or empiricist is sort of it's not really a real kind of label because it's sort of more of the absence of labels than it is label in itself. So he makes that that allowance. But basically he just said it's it's really hard to think objectively about things when you have this sort of identification of self identification with a group that is supposed to believe a certain set of things.

It makes it hard to change your mind or I also avoid labeling myself. But but at the same time, labels are also just words. And like the reason that we have words, that all is just to make it sort of efficient to communicate with each other about what we mean. And so I think there's a stronger case to make for some labels, like maybe like liberal or Democrat to avoid those labels because they are so complex and there's so many different positions that maybe any one person doesn't identify with, that you want to avoid identifying yourself so that you can sort of remain objective about all the various components of that label.

But something like atheist, I can see how people would say, well, it's just a very simple thing. It's just do you have a belief in a god? Do you think it's very likely that there is a God or gods exist or not? And if not, then you're an atheist and that's basically all there is to it. And all of this other baggage, like whether you're publicly vocal about your position or I don't know whether you think that Christianity should die out, you actively want it to die out.

That's that's all unrelated to the label atheist. And by accepting that association of all of that baggage with the label, you're sort of making the problem worse.

OK, so so I hear you and you make an important and excellent point. However, I think about words often I've studied the trend line of how people use words, what they think they mean, and there are those who would assert wrongly that the dictionary defines words we use in our language. But that's false, not in the English dictionary. The English Dictionary defines nothing. The English dictionary describes words as they have come to be used and as they have come to be interpreted.

That's what a dictionary does. So you can say atheist has this really simple definition that you strongly doubt or feel pretty confident that there's no God in the world or anywhere in the universe, and fine, if that's all it is. And I say I'm an atheist, then why does someone tell me what words I should or shouldn't use? Why does someone why does someone then want to fight me for the four with expectations of what that word should mean when applied to an individual?

I don't want to have those fights because I'm an individual.

And for example, I would fight strenuously to keep A.D. and B.C. in our time reckoning because I think that was in the Gregorian calendar is an awesome achievement in the measurement of time. And we ought to credit where credit is due, the frickin Gregorian calendar, and it's created by Christians, Jesuit scientist, let it be. And it is that the conduct of what an atheist would do if not find me another word and if or rather finally, no word at all.

Just I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Call me that.

But OK, two points, actually. One point, one question so we can move the discussion of the point about you do make an interesting point about the dictionary usage.

And by the way, I don't think that's true in France. I think they actually yes. They control the language. That's correct.

There's a language in the language police.

But I think in general, if you look at the way linguists describe dictionaries, dictionaries actually do perform both functions to some extent. I mean, yes, addiction is descriptive, of course, of what the usage, the current usage of words is. It's also to some extent and in a limited period of time, prescriptive, meaning that, you know, you can say to somebody, well, using the word incorrectly, because most people at the moment, as reflected by the whatever it is dictionary or the Oxford or or the Webster defines it that way.

But you're right. You know, going back to dictionaries, it's not of much use despite that.

And let's try to get a little deeper into the discussion. So what is it that you think about God? Because that would be a better way. I mean, you're talking you started out this discussion by saying, you know, really we need to have a conversation. So let's have that conversation. What's your thinking about sort of not religion as an institution? Because that's a whole different matter, but just the idea of a God or a supernatural, not even necessarily a Judeo-Christian Muslim God, of course, because there's many different versions of that concept.

So before I answer that question, I'll say that of all my speeches and all my writings, no more than one half of one percent, I would say. Of the content of what I've delivered to the public in videos and in television programs, in interviews, no more than one half of one percent even addresses God or spirituality or anything of the sort.

So it is not my priority to have conversations on this topic. It's not what I'm about. I'm an educator. I'm a scientist.

And I like singing the praises of the universe, the glory of self. Fair enough. But we're having this conversation, just the three of us. No, no, I understand nobody else is listening. I just don't.

Unbelievable.

I just want to make it clear that this is a huge exception to my conduct to come to you on this matter.

And we're very proud of it. OK, OK.

So I remain unconvinced by any claims anyone has ever made about the existence or the power of a divine force operating in the universe.

OK, so from that perspective, let's say you don't believe in gods for it's not what I said.

I said I remain unconvinced. I prefer my words than I don't use the word believe. Right. Because I'm very evidence driven. And when your evidence driven, the word belief has very little role in your life. So I'm unconvinced by any any statements or evidence put forth forth by others in the claim of the existence of a powerful entity that is in control of the world or had even started the world, whether or not they're still in control.

I take your meaning. The reason I use the word belief, actually, is because. Yes, you're right, of course, especially within this kind of conversation. As soon as you start talking about beliefs, then you're talking about faith and blah, blah, blah.

But we're talking about thoughts without evidence to support. Right. But but in fact, I was, I suppose, using the word belief in a sort of Bayesian sense that is proportion your belief to the evidence. And in that case, it's a legitimate word to use in this case, if you don't like it, we can use another one. But the question is, let's say that instead of gods, we're talking about unicorns. Do you think that you don't you're just as unconvinced about unicorns as you are as gods or is?

That's about right.

Right. I think OK. I think of, you know, cryptozoology, I think is where that comes from. You know, Nessy and and Abominable Snowman. I've not seen I never got why he's abominable anyway.

Whatever. That's fine with me.

I mean, that seems like Adam would surely think it. So clearly, you're not in the club, obviously. But I think the surely it's possible to find life forms that we've never known were out there. In fact, it's happening daily, but it tends to be you know, we're discovering new species all the time. I work at a natural history museum, and while I'm not the one discovering species, I'm friends with those who are.

And so, I mean, I enjoy. Being in their presence when that happens, because there's there's excitement and there's there's. There's a sense that we're still learning more about the biosphere, those creatures, those animals don't tend to be huge, huge, you know, 300 pound animals running the countryside.

They tend to be much smaller, even microorganisms or insects or or some obscure fish that had never swum high enough for anyone to photograph it in the bark from the bottom of the ocean.

So so but I remain unconvinced by any evidence put forth. And we're pretty much occupied everywhere on our surface and no one's really put forth a unicorn. So I think that one's pretty good. We got that one right.

Right. Right. So, you know, because we never talk about labels. I know that Julian has actually another question coming up. But talking about labels, you know, whenever I on my Facebook profile, for instance, my social networks, when on the religion, I said that I'm a unicorn, just that I don't believe in gods. And exactly.

Pretty much the same way in which I don't believe I say agnostic in that slot. Yeah.

Let's talk about agnostic in a minute. But I think that Julie has a as a as a question.

Well, actually, that's a perfect segue into my question, because I, I was reminded upon reading about your upcoming sequel to Cosmos that your predecessor, I would argue, really was Carl Sagan and that you're both scientists turned science communicators who have probably done the most in your respective generations for giving people the sense of wonder and awe about the scientific understanding of the universe. Well, thank you for saying and also, if I'm not mistaken, preferred the word agnostic.

And I was wondering if that was an inspiration to you or also if you feel like you have a similar way of thinking about these issues, as Sagan did.

I came up with that myself.

I mean, I read Huxley who coined the term, and I thought, yeah, that well, if let me clarify, if you had to pick a word to label me that where your extra thoughts beyond that label would come closer to being accurate, I would say agnostic works better than atheists does in the modern invocations of those two terms. But as I said in my big think video, I'd rather not have any label at all. And maybe I should go back to the Facebook page and say I am no label at all.

That would be more accurate than me trying to find a word for you to call me just so that you can have a convenient portfolio of ideas about what you think I believe or what you think.

I think I have to wonder if, you know, if if lots and lots of atheists adopted your strategy and I'm sorry if lots and lots of people who, like you were unconvinced by arguments for the existence of a God instead of calling themselves atheists, decided to call themselves agnostics. Do you think then the battle would just shift and that now the people who are opposed to lack of belief in God would just start to demonize the agnostics and now you'd have to just find another term to shift to?

OK, so I had to divorce yourself from those negative associations of no no stridency and baby eating.

Right. I have to I have to interrupt. You started this a couple of questions ago by presuming that the distance I'm putting between me and and the ardent atheist is to put distance between me and all the weird, crazy, negative stuff that the public thinks about atheists like baby eating, amoral, immoral. No, no, that's not what that's not what's motivating me at all. It's simply do you have an accurate understanding of my conduct? If you're going to say to yourself, I'm an atheist, and in my experience, the answer to that question is no.

And I could just give you a list. Let me I'll just give we can compare my list with that of Richard Dawkins. OK, let's let's do that. So in this competition, let's call Richard now.

Go ahead.

I don't know what his answers to these questions would be, but I'm betting there'd be very little overlap with my answers to these questions.

OK, do your best impersonation of Dawkins. Go ahead. I mean, it's a very, very I'm not that literate.

I just want to note that the reason I have that impression was that you talked about the associations with the term atheist as being in your faith, atheists who are sort of public about their atheism and trying to convince other people and also sort of sitting around a room talking to each other about how little they believe in God.

Yeah, exactly. But that does not reference whether people think we eat babies, right? Oh, yeah. So I think that's a different. But anyway, go on.

That's just crazy people out there of which there are many, of course.

So here's a list of things I freely use the word God speed. It is a cultural word that is embedded in the space program. I'm a participant in the energy of and and the spirit of that of that investment of of of our energy, time and money. So. That's in my vocabulary, by the way, we all use the word goodbye, which, of course means God be with you. But many people who are even atheists who use that word don't know that.

So I have learned when I gave a talk and reference to that very fact.

So I say, oh, my God or thank God. And I used to know a guy who would correct me every time I said that and say, You mean thank carbon.

So again, again, there are people trying to edit your behavior and conduct upon hearing what you say based on the label they have ascribed to you. So other things. One of my top three favorite musicals of all time is Jesus Christ Superstar. One of my favorite rock songs of the 1970s is Spirit in the Sky, which is in fact an anthem for praising Jesus if you actually listen to the words. Yes, it is one of my favorite choral pieces.

I'd say a very close second to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is Handel's Messiah. And yes, I stand up during the Hallelujah Chorus when I see that performed live as is prescribed, because King Henry did that when he first heard it in its premiere. I of say premier broadcast their performance in England.

Other things I take actively take my kids into beautiful churches so we can see the art.

I, I thought it was really cool when Hurricane Sandy was threatening and beating down on New York, right when the lights went out because we lived in lower Manhattan where we're just when the the power station flooded, the lights went out. I pulled out the flashlights and I said, kids, I'm going to read from Genesis in the Bible just to fill the spirit of the air, sort of the apocalyptic feeling that the electricity is gone and the storms are coming.

And they got a kick out of that. And we had fun. And so I and if your friend is deeply religious, I don't engage them in debates about the existence of God. I just don't want to come up.

It can come up self-described atheists so it can come up.

And I don't I don't walk away from the conversation. I just don't initiate it because I'm not interested. I'm not interested, and so if you say that describes all atheists or most atheists, then you have to explain to me why other people who think the word atheists don't they're shocked when I tell them this. The fact that they're shocked means their understanding of the word does not apply to me.

That's all. OK, I want to go back to Dawkins. Good. So what was that? Let's play the Dawkins game. Since you were about to say that you and the Huskies are going to have different, very different answers. I think so.

And I'm a I'm a proponent of BC and AD, for instance, for instance, as an example. And I will fight for that.

That's a good one. I think we should do that. We should undo this BCE crap you do in that it's it's a Christian calendar.

Get over it. OK, you lost that one. You got another place to put the zero on the calendar, find it and put it up and get people to research it and make an awesome calendar. Then we can have that conversation. Until then, shut up about it and embrace what is real. Two thirds of the stars in the night sky have Arabic names named in a period where Islam reigns supreme throughout the Middle East. And Baghdad was the intellectual center of the world.

Are you going to say no? That came out of a religious right. And so we're going to rename the stars and not have them Arabic names?

No, that's just to be childish. That's just an al Qaeda plot to my friend. I hadn't read that plot. A time machine. All right.

Dawkins credit, when somebody makes a discovery, no matter the source, you give credit for it.

I can sympathize with that. But so, OK, Dawkins will probably go to philosopher says I can sympathize, but watch out.

Dawkins would say see and be for sure what else.

I think my favorite guitar rift is in spirit in the sky from the 1970s and probably not. Probably not. Talking to one of my top three favorite musicals is Jesus Christ Superstar, and I probably listen to that musical on my iPod more than any other musical, any other show music. I have long drives each week and we go to a sort of country place and it's common to hear that in the car. I own the movie. I play the movie at least a few times a year.

When I was in graduate school, I played Handel's Messiah every single Sunday morning. And I bought the music to it and I followed along and I counted how many times they said amen at the end, which gets very hard when all four vocal group starts overlapping. That is hard to count how many times that happens. I also counted how many times I said hallelujah during the Hallelujah Chorus. I don't think Dawkins would waste his time doing that. He's got money now.

He's got other things.

But now.

So I want to go back for a second to the also most most of Richard Dawkins tweets are some critique of religion or its excess. That's right. Or its abuses.

And I've I've never tweeted on religion, but I think the difference there, to be fair, and I don't say that very often when it when it comes to Dawkins, but to be fair, I think that he really does consider this point himself a AIDS activist. You are right. So which you have you very clearly made the point that you're not even I completely respect that activity.

Of course, it's a really important tool out there. Yeah, right.

So so I think the difference between sort of the choices you were talking about in the last few minutes is may come down simply the fact that he has made this decision that, yes, I'm a scientist, but I actually going to devote a significant amount of time and write books on it and give lectures on it and and tour with it.

Right now, what I wanted to do was to go back to words, because as much as we don't like labels and all that there, as you were saying right at the beginning of the podcast, somewhat useful. And it's nice to sort of be clear on what the words mean or perhaps should mean, regardless of what people actually think they mean.

So particularly agnostic versus atheist again. Right. So my take when I am asked that question, you know what?

I you know, first of all, I, I use actually a number of labels. Try telling other people I am more or less I'm this, this and this and that.

And you figure out what the intersection of those things is. At least I'll give you a homework to do and then came back to me.

But the certainly if I'm put in front of the of the 80s versus agnostic apic atheist and I it this for the following reason because again, if we're talking, if we're using the word belief in sort of in a sense proportion to evidence, then I take an agnostic to B to having about 50/50 Prior's or or thereabouts about the supernatural or about gods. And I don't have those priors. I have priors that are probably into the, you know, 99 point something on the one hand and zero point something on the other hand.

Therefore, I, I feel uncomfortable using the word agnostic. Should people sort of revise their entire understanding of what agnosticism an atheist means and just give up entirely with the with the labeling stuff or what? I mean, I guess you will go for No Labels.

Go look for No Labels at all for No Labels. But is that practical? Probably not. Maybe what we need is I've spoken with my wife about this.

We've had our conversations on this very topic. And she had described how there are plenty of other circumstances where that's what adjectives are for. What kind of atheists are you? Are you an ardent atheist or are you a passive atheist?

Atheist? What kind of an apathetic and apathetic.

Yeah, yeah. What do you rally or do you just not even care. Right. And so I'd be on the I really don't care side of that if you had to find adjectives to put in front of the word atheist, if you. So but I, I like words.

I like the fact that English has more words than any other language.

I'm I feel word impoverished that I'm on this scale. Yet there's not a single word to describe me.

I compiled a slight aside. I compiled every possible I love that siren. That's evidence that we're in New York City.

Yeah. They're coming to us with some type of business. Oh, they heard what we were talking about. Exactly. And because we tape in New York City, it often happens that they think they hear a siren approaching their car. But it's actually just our background character.

Yeah, it's just it's the acoustic wallpaper that we all live with in New York. So. So this is a slight aside, but it it drives home my point. I felt compelled one day to make a list of all the single words we have to describe states of water that exist. And I came up with more than 100 words in English that, you know, if moving flow of water is one size, it's a river, it's if another sides are to stream, it's another size.

It's a creek for another side. It's a brook. These are four completely different one syllable words to describe what water is doing. A cloud that's on the ground has a different word than a cloud that's floating above your head. And I think that's cool. That's rich, that's textural.

The moment you have to start finding an adjective to modify a word because the word actually doesn't really apply to you anymore in the way anyone is using it, then that is evidence that you are in need of more words. That's that's just my opinion about a word, the existence of word words and the usage of words in a language in Germany they don't really care much about.

They just stapled together and they don't care how long the damn where it is.

It's some great atheist would just be one word.

It would just be one word. And they and they you staple together. That's the new that. There you are. That's you. And then they get on with life so they don't really distract themselves by this. But I like words and I like watching them evolve, like I said earlier.

But I have, I guess, one more follow up about the words and labels this year, and then I'll toss the floor over back to Massimo. Now I have to fops really quickly. So there are some people who are basically taking the opposite tack that you are now the Secular Student Alliance, for example. My brother has been the communications director there for several years, and one of their main reasons, d'être, is just to try to convince the public that a lot of atheists are very nice moral people and being atheists does not mean being a jerk or amoral, etc.

And they want an atheist to come out of the closet, is what you're saying.

Sorry. You want atheists to atheists to come out of the closet?

I mean, I think that's part of their goal, but is just to change the perceptive perception of atheists for other reasons.

The way the gay community has accomplished that is you get people who everyone otherwise knows and loves and knows them to be moral, upstanding individuals. Then they come out and say, hey, I'm gay. And so whatever you might have thought, you deal with that fact now. So that's been quite potent in the gay community and I think it's so great.

So this is like another strategy to deal with the fact that people have these associations with assumptions about atheists. And so, you know, it would be nice if there were more public atheists, maybe not active people who self-identified as such. When asked who said, yeah, of course I listen to Christmas music or Jesus Christ Superstar, whatever, or not, you know, like it's it's silly to shun an entire class of arts and music just out of some sort of principled objection.

And you could counter people who you think have it wrong on this issue, like Dawkins, who think you can't use the Christian calendar for whatever principled reason. If that's if you don't feel like you want that to be your fight, then I guess I respect that. But that is, I think, another very valid strategy to deal with this problem of involving words. I don't. Never enough to initiate those conversations outside of this encounter with the two of you right now, when I'm out there, I want to talk about black holes and the big bang in the early universe and the multiverse and dark matter and dark energy and the release of the new cosmic.

You know, there's stuff I want to talk about because I think it's really cool and I think you'll think it's cool and that's why I'm in your face about it. But otherwise, that's so. So it's I've chosen how I want to spend time in my life professionally. And so I find I'm intrigued by how often there is this land grab for me by the. Oh, you're quite a catch, Neal.

Well, I actually don't I'm not surprised, actually, because if you think about it, you know, you are a public intellectual. And once you become as opposed to simply a scientist.

Right. So a scientist is somebody who could spend literally their entire life in their ivory tower, which most of them do, and essentially never have much of contact with with with the public, certainly not outside students.

But once you are a public intellectual, you know, that comes with the territory.

I mean, it may be unpleasant, but it does come with the territory. People, all sorts of people will want to, you know, used you as a as a badge or as a as a point of reference or whatever it would mean.

You're setting the agenda of what you want me to talk about when I'm in the public. And the only thing that draws me to the public is my love for the universe.

After that, you want to talk about something else? I go back home and I don't we don't need each other at that point.

Fair enough. But that does bring me to a sort of broader question, which is the general relationship between science and religion. And I want to hear your thoughts about this. So outside of, you know, whatever people like or wouldn't like to label you, what do you think is a thoughtful scientist supposed to think or the best the most reasonable thing that I wasn't supposed to think about religion?

I'm not now. I'm talking about religion in general, not just about the supernatural, specifically, no knowledge of God, but also religion as an institution and so on and so forth. I mean, you think that there is any such thing as, oh, well, yes, scientists really should be thinking along those lines or you I expect them to think more about those lines.

Yeah, I can't and I won't speak for other scientists. I they have. You just spoke for Dawkins, but. Yes, OK, well, I know him personally so I can make some judgment as to how he would have responded to those questions, but. I can't and I won't speak for other scientists, but you know, the statistics as well as I do in some surveys, it's as high as 40 percent of scientists in America would claim a personal god, a God to whom they can pray, who would intercede in their daily affairs.

And it's fascinating to see the spread among the scientific disciplines in that number because some would come in higher and others would come in lower, of course, so that it averages at about 40 percent. And the astrophysicist, the physicists, the biologists come in lowest. The mathematicians, engineers come in highest above 40 percent.

I mean, I'm intrigued, but that's an intriguing fact. If you want to say that high education and scientific training promotes atheism, how come that number isn't zero? In fact, go to the National Academy of Sciences and do the same survey within the numbers still does not go to zero. It estimates it's about seven percent. You've seen the numbers. So seven percent of the most elite scientists claim a personal God who answers their prayers.

And if you can't convince that seven percent of the absence of God as an ardent atheist, what why are you running around to people who are not so educated, who are not so scientifically trained and complaining that they're a bunch of idiots for how they feel? I think that's I think that's disingenuous. It's it's it's an unfair battle you were picking when people in your own church, so so to speak, so to speak.

Right. Are disagree with you about that very premise. And so so that's how I view this. I think it's go convert the seven percent. And until that goes to zero at the National Academy of Sciences, shut up about what the rest of the public thinks and feels.

Unless unless let me make it clear, because in my book Think video, I analogized gathering atheists together to talk about their belief in God as I analogize that to, well, is there a word for non golfers? Do non golfers all gather and complain about the fact that other people watch golf all the time? No, of course not. All right.

And by that same rationale, I cannot see myself going into a room talking about how God doesn't exist. I can't do that. I want to do different things with my time. However, however, I see myself as a responsible educator. And in that role, if you want to put your creation philosophies into a science classroom, I'm going to stand at the gate and prevent that with all that I can and basically with all that I can in my power.

I know we've got other people who are in the courts doing it and that may be more than I have the energy to do, but I'm going to be vocal about it and I'm going to say, no, it doesn't belong in the science classroom. I'm not saying it doesn't belong anywhere. Put it in comparative religion. Put it in religious philosophy class.

Go ahead. I don't have an issue with that.

To me, to be fair. I mean, I hear you to be fair.

Of course, I think I'm going to it's my turn to channel Dawkins now and you know, somebody like Dawkins.

Yeah, but but, you know, golf players don't do quite as much damage to humanity as some, at least. Religious. Religious, no.

No. So the issue, though, excuse me, the issue there is not that religious people through religious wars and and other crazy behavior like flying planes into buildings. It's not that religious people mess up society. That's the wrong way to look at this. The issue is. Dogma in any form messes up society. You can have political dogma, which is has no less guilt messing up society as religious dogma.

The issue here is dogma. You fight dogma. And if it happens to be under the guise of religion, fine. But as an educated scientist atheist, if you're going to go out there and fight religious people, you're really fighting dogma where people want you to believe something in the absence of evidence and make that policy, make that educational curricula make legislation based on that.

That's where you have problems and that's where you get Naziism. That's where you get the the Lysenko ism.

That's where you get all of these isms that have risen up that had some of them even had some some patina of being academically derived. But when you actually part the curtains, there is dogmatic invocation of rules established by some committee of people who decide how they want you to think about all the various. I agree.

When I want to piss off my my A.D. friends, I always remind them of the secular regimes of the 20th century and the disasters that have caused Pol Pot, for example, and Stalin and so on and so forth.

I mean, those are you're completely right. The problem is dogmatism. The problem is ideology pushed to the extreme. Nonetheless, I think Julia has next question up, right?

Yes. Thank you. Well, that's a nice lead to this thread that we're on right now. So I personally, if I were queen of the universe and could snap my fingers, I would say, why wouldn't you?

I mean, if you were God going say yes to see that that was a sentence that was not in your head.

But you say queen of the universe, snap your fingers and make something. So that's God.

So you're saying any labels to be put on? OK, fair enough.

So I do I would prefer that people would all just magically become allergic to dogma and evidence based and, you know, reasoning. People who don't take anything on faith, whether it be about claims about the supernatural or about politics or economics or what have you. And I think that, you know, pursuing that goal is very valuable. And it's something I'm personally trying to do as well. But there are still specific beliefs that I think. Plausibly cause a lot of damage to our country or to the world because of the way those particular beliefs affect the way people vote on drug policy or on gay marriage or on national security or foreign policy.

And so I think, well, it's a good case to be made that if you can't cure everyone's susceptibility to dogma, which you probably can't, there's still a lot of value to be had in trying to attack particular beliefs.

What you don't want is dogma being the source of legislation, dogma being the source of curricula got dogma being the source of political leadership. And other than that, if people just have a view that if Jesus if someone feels Jesus is their savior, that's that sort of dogma within their personal lives, it becomes an issue.

It only becomes an issue the way they treat other people. It only becomes an issue if they want their their dogma to apply to everybody else, then it's institutionalized dogma and then that's the problem. So, yes, you fight that. You don't fight the individual. That's my point. And I as an educator, I will educate people so that they will enjoy science, become scientifically literate, and maybe some of that will prevent them from trying to bring their dogma to others or bring a superstition to others.

So I don't have a problem with people who have superstition. I don't we live in we live in a free society. At least we tell ourselves that you ought to be able to think and feel however the hell you want. I don't have a problem with that. Well, I do.

So so, I mean, the fisheries, you want to go people.

And if someone if someone prays to crystals on their shelf, you want to go tell them they're idiots and that they shouldn't. And I'm saying I'm not. What I will prevent them from doing is taking those crystals into the classroom and telling other people that that's what they have to see.

First of all, no, I wouldn't go out and tell anybody that they're an idiot. I hope I get that sort of stuff.

Well, it's not all that well, you know, and I know that if you get some good, strident atheists going in, the tone of the voice is just speaking to an idiot.

Sure. Yeah, no, but the three of us are not strong and atheists, so. OK, so, no, I definitely don't think that it's right to go to somebody and say, first of all, it's not only not right and not nice, but it's also extremely unhelpful to go up to somebody and say you're an idiot, because that's that's the last thing you know.

You're not going to get some. Yeah, you're not going to convince them.

But I do think actually it is particularly as an educator and as somebody who likes generally about sort of building a slightly more rational society. I do think that superstition does not seem to be challenged from an education perspective.

And I do think that there is a relationship, a connection between people thinking about believing about crystals or thinking that Jesus is their personal savior. And then some other people like them trying to impose that belief on somebody else. I mean, that's the problem with a lot of dogmatic or beliefs or beliefs, not based on evidence that people tend to be so damn sure about those beliefs that then eventually they will, in fact, try to impose them on somebody else.

And that goes, of course, also for national religious beliefs, political scientist and as and speaking as a particular kind of educator, you will never see me debating anybody on any topic. You have this a zillion YouTube videos of me out there that people don't post any of them. By the way, people, I'm happy and I'm flattered that people like some clip of mine and they post it OK. And there there are clearly videographers with too much extra time on their hands who have taken my word and put very beautiful imagery greatly value adding to the impact of the messaging that I put out there.

So I find the kind of educator I am is not one to debate the ufologists, the the crystal healer's, the the astrologers. You will never see me debate any of them. I see it as my task as an educator to enlighten you on how the universe works.

And perhaps, in fact, it may even be likely that upon that exposure, you will take a second look on your own at the rest of these activities and find the folly within them. Well, I will not otherwise confront you directly on your folly. It's not how I that's that's fair enough. I mean, everybody has different strategies and it's probably a good thing that.

Oh, by the way, you can ask me about it, but I'm not going to not talk about it. But I'm not going to I'm not going to get myself invited to a place and give a public talk on it.

Although, no, that's not true, I gave one talk at Tam Tam, you know, the the amazing meeting in Vegas that they've been they've been asking me for, like, years and years and who doesn't love our man, you know, Randi, the amazing Randi. So basically, as a favor to to to Randy, I came and gave a talk and was all my random thoughts that I've had on all these weird ways of thinking.

Let me guess, you got in trouble. You're warning us, the rest of us not get our hopes up. I don't get you. No, no, no. I didn't get in trouble.

I don't care if I don't care if I get in trouble as long as I get in trouble accurately for reasons for that actually relate to what I actually said. I have no problems about getting in trouble. All right, well, not to get you in trouble right now, but we are over time in this part of the podcasts. So with your consent, I will move us along now to the rationally speaking PEX. Welcome back. Every episode, Julie and I pick a couple of our favorite books, movies, websites or whatever tickles our irrational fancy, and this time we have our guest, Neil deGrasse Tyson, for his suggestion Neil.

Oh, so thanks. That means you care about what I do behind closed doors. All right, let me see. You know, I got raked over the coals for putting out a few critical tweets on the physics. They got wrong in the film Gravity. Oh, yes. But I actually like the movie. And people who didn't read to the 12th tweet would not have known this because Steam was already coming out of their eye sockets.

I think three short attention span. Maybe you could. I think that 13 tweets might have been too many because the 13th was by the way, I like the movie Chill Out, but I thought that the fact that people are debating in the blogosphere, the physics of a movie or a first run movie, and that it's sustained in that state for several weeks, I thought is an extraordinary fact that gives me hope for the future of our society that such a movie could occupy such a place in people's argumentative spirits.

So I wholly recommend gravity. If it's not still in theaters, it can't be that much longer before it's out on Netflix or, of course, DVD.

So there's that also. I am I am tickled by the fact that there's a Facebook page called Ifill's and that Facebook page that's an abbreviation. Of course, I don't know what they. Credit the title from, but I know I heard those words uttered by Jon Stewart after I got him all excited about some recent discoveries on Mars, he just put his fist down on the table and said, I fucking love science.

And so that was some years ago. Since then, there is a Web site called Ifill's that has more than six million followers. Six million likes. And on there, there's a staff of people, maybe be one person, the the purveyor of that stuff, putting science content, grabbing it from all around the Internet.

It is a clearinghouse of cool science. And six million people get that seed. And I'm think that is just that gives me hope. And the Big Bang Theory, as controversial as the sitcom is and has been, nonetheless, it is the number one comedy on television and it portrays, yes, they're caricatures, but the geeky side of scientific life. And it's a number one show on television who would have predicted.

I think you need to convince Masimo. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Whoo hoo hoo. Ten years ago, if you said I got an idea for a show, let's have five nerds who are all scientists and they'll say things in science speak and we're not going to translate it for you. It'll just go by and you'll just have to live with that. That that that's a great show, isn't it? Look at how successful all the incarnations of of CSI, Crime Scene Investigation, NCIS, hugely popular shows that have real scientists, you know, doing real scientific experiments, not just let's get the fingerprints.

It's led us chemically analyzed the DNA of the sample and they'll show you how they do it and they show you the results they get. These are fully fleshed out people not wired here, crazy people in lab coats. We don't care about their personal life or their private life. I think there is hope for this country.

We've got we've got picks that any one guest I was going to say, given a the category, we got our whenever I check out the latest from Aflac, which I do visit regularly, I will read those words in Jon Stewart's voice. But thank you for that. Exactly. All right. Well, it's been a pleasure. It's so great to have you back on the show after almost four years.

Well, thanks for having me on. And you are the only podcast I've ever called and said, will you take me on for an interview?

Thank you. Where on earth are all the others? I'd rather just stay home and then call me. So no, I deeply respect your mission and the education and wisdom you bring to each of your your broadcast or your podcast. So thanks for being out there in the trenches, even when I'm not thinking.

All right.

Well, this concludes another episode of Rationally Speaking. Join us next time for more explorations on the borderlands between reason and nonsense. The rationally speaking podcast is presented by New York City skeptics for program notes, links, and to get involved in an online conversation about this and other episodes, please visit rationally speaking podcast Dog. This podcast is produced by Benny Pollack and recorded in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York. Our theme, Truth by Todd Rundgren, is used by permission.

Thank you for listening.