I have never heard a more eloquent speaker. He is a joy to listen to whether you agree with him or not.

so appreciative for uploaders like this and youtube, you guys are great

Grayling seem to pick up where Russell left off in more than one fundamental way, and I applaud him for that. I hope he, too, will fruitfully and progressively challenge the parts of our thinking that just don't add up (and that's a lot!) and attract more people to good philosophy. He may not remind me of why I first fell in love with philosophy, but he sure reminds me of why I'm staying in it!

This has the single most important quality for any talk on any matter, in my opinion, and that is this: during this talk, I was presented to with many perspectives on science and religion that I had never considered in that precise way before, that I know I will be thinking many of his points over again for a long time to come. Rather often, talks on science and religion are certainly entertaining, but don't give you anything new to chew on. This was a very interesting presentation.

This man is what it means to be human. Listen and learn. Only my opinion but heartfelt nonethe less.

21:22 wow I love that word I have read his books. he writes like he talks here, his books are very easy to read because they have the rhythm of a conversation like he dictated his books, even the parentheses, you can hear it in this talk lol

@CallanPage I believe a correct term for FeelOfFriction is, Hard to Follow Speaker. I myself am having a hard time following AC Grayling but the stuff that I have pick up have been very... Awesome.

A C's eloquence is evidence of the evolution of humanity's erudition.

By far an excellent lecture.

I think AC is right. I can't see the friction between science and religion easing in the foreseeable future. It will probably just get more acute as time goes on. There's probably still a place for something resembling religion - some people seem to need it to prop up their lives; but I can't see the old 'respect' being maintained in perpetuity.

@TomFynn I think it's a bit sneaky to use the word 'evolution' in a vague way. It doesn't mean a completely physical process, such as random mutation and selection clearly is, it means some kind of change and development from one thing to another.

@TomFynn Yes, “So, yeah if…inconsistent.” *was* a long sentence and not too clear. I meant that it's inconsistent to claim that, the ability of Darwin's mechanism to explain life forms is evidence that the process is totally mechanistic, and so there's no need to postulate agency, but it's inability to do so wouldn't count as counter-evidence to that position.

I wish that the audible version of The Good Book is read by AC Grayling himself.

I like AC Grayling. I used to dislike his soft spoken manners, but the more I listen to him or read his writtings, I think he is actually smarter than Dawkins, Dennett, Harris or even Christopher Hitchens.

Point at 8:50 also applies to corporate control of research. One's manager is likely to be a scientist, but their manager may have studied economics or business studies and would purely be interested in increasing their profit.

There are only a small fraction of humanists & atheists doing there part to educate American Christians on why they shouldn't fear those who practice freedom from religion. The mainstream media only deals with this issue 2-3 times a year in brief when interviewing a famous scientist or celebrity who is "out of the closet" on this issue. The LBGT community made a dedicated effort to confront those who feared & hated them for living their own lives explaining why there choices do not harm others. We must do this also, but it requires openness. The size & general attitudes of the Millennial generation in the USA gives us an opportunity to re-assure those who are going to dominate US society for decades. I'm sure most of them already have friends who prefer science to superstitions. We must continually point out the fact that religious dogmas are equivalent to practicing superstitions and those who pray in public restaurants before they eat are no different from those who knock on wood or avoid stepping on cracks. These things are equal superstitions that effect nothing. I openly state that" I am superstitious" anything someone brings up religion. If they push me, I will elaborate but otherwise I won't belittle their fantasy life. I want everyone who hears my remark to know religions ARE superstitions that people practice out of their choice to avoid reality (or out of fears of reality). I understand this but I will not show respect for cowardice or ignorance, nor should anyone else. Cowardice & ignorance are to be confronted & overcome, not encouraged. Humans have real reasons to fear nature but fear did not extend the avg human life span from just a few decades to currently over 80 yrs. Curiosity & knowledge has done this. Our fears of natural disasters like hurricanes made us believe our actions created them. Confronting our inability to eliminate such nature phenomena gave us the incentive to create early detection methods. Teaching bravery to our children & the necessity to continually seek additional wisdom is basic to the survival of our species. It is appalling how many man hours are wasted globally by people researching the same Hebrew myths over & over their entire lives.

What a great man.

@TomFynn It's implied to me, because if description can never come to an end, that implies that reality can never, even in principle, be summed up by physical description. Therefore, there is more to reality than physical description. It may be difficult to comprehend, but no more so than the belief that consciousness arose from physical causes. Finding rabbits in the pre-cambrian wouldn't disprove the blindwatchmaker hypothesis, so it's irrelevant.

@arminius6661 ..and your point is..? A spelling error invalidates the hypothesis? - surely not! The most brilliant lecturer I ever had at Uni was quite dyslexic. A biologist who spelled ground "grownd" for example.

What a brilliant man. And this is the first I've heard of him - how embarrassing for me :p I'll be listening to & reading more from this fellow.

@TomFynn They're not saying that self-organisation just determines the building blocks. I read the Plausibility of Life and the authors were saying that some kind of organising principle of those building blocks explains the origin of large-scale structures, like organs. Kaufmann and Newman have similar ideas. That's obviously not what Darwin was suggesting, and to imply that it was is disingenuous.

@TomFynn I think they say more than that, I think they say that self-organisation is the reason fro the origin of biological structures. If you require self-organisation to explain a complex structure, then the idea that it has been built up bit by bit by darwin's mechanism is not part of that explanation- or if it is, it adds nothing beyond saying 'whatever survives, *does* survive'. Obviously natural selection *weeds out* anything that's not viable, but that's not what Darwin claimed for it.

@JordanKimball How old were you when you were cured?

@TomFynn A lot of the stories don't make much sense to me, but I don't presume to know that therefore they're meaningless. I don't think that science is the only way of 'knowing'. J.B.S Haldane no doubt said that. The fact remains that neo-darwinism and 'evolution' are separate concepts.

I don't see that a belief that there is an aspect of reality that transcends physical description is incompatible with a belief that physical description is always open-ended-- in fact I think it virtually *implies* it. Also, the characterisation of religion he gave, that it's simple to explain and not open-ended at all, applies to the idea of the blind watchmaker of random mutation and natural selection.

I really cannot find the meaning of his opening: "Everything has been said but not everyone has said it." I must be that english is not my native language, does anyone care to explain above statement? Thank you!

@FeelOfFriction It really depends on your definition of "boring speaker". You make no attempt to explain your thought without providing at least the first analysis of why your found him boring. AC Grayling is one of the foremost philosophers and critial thinkers of the modern day and as such should not be judged on his mannerism (which I myself find rather charming) but rather on the content of speech. Only when this is considered, you would perhaps realise that his speech was far from boring,

All fantastic scientists and philosophers have amazing hair. If they don't they can't be classified as a 'great'. :P

How many times is A. C. going to use that Hungarian MP joke? :)

@DoctorPlausible Meh, there really is no use for a tv anymore.

considering i only been speaking english a year and half and learned it all on my own. i do pretty well. what is your excuse? ps about grayling. light travels faster than sound. thats why some people seem bright until they open their mouth

@JaguarEscarlata you might be right but nobody can snarl like Hitch!

@gerontodon Darwin claimed “that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected.” Origin of Species (1st Ed., p. 6) If self organisation determines the building blocks, so what? Crystals are self-organised, do they change? No. The question of evolution is how change in complex organisms as a whole comes about.

Scientific thinking, theoretically, he said, is not a reduction of humanism. And yet it is a powerful tool to teduce humanity to capitalistic resouces . I am a scientist myself, but looking at the damage left in the wake of pandemic and the advent of IR4.0, it appears to me that it is a rather inadequate way of looking at the world.

@TheObservationDeck Er..I think you missed the point somewhat

@TomFynn All this aggressive atheism, or materialist philosophy as I think it really is, is probably more understandable in the US, where freethought might have been a bit suppressed. I know that the 'synthetic theory' being shown to be wrong won't prove God or anything, but it will obviously raise questions- or it should do, since it would be inconsistent to draw on it for support for atheism, as many do, but not think it's unreality could have implications.

@TomFynn Actually I retract that statement that your challenge is meaningless, I read your statement as saying that we haven't found an organism that natural selection has acted on and hasn't changed, not that we haven't found one which hasn't been changed thru natural selection which was unjustified. I don't think that because evidence of natural selection is widely, and, for all I know, universally found in the genomes of organisms, logically implies that it's built them.

ALL HAIL THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER!!11!1

@stinny777, Atheism seems to be a consequence of intellectual integrity. Once a person decides to use their capacity for reasoning to examine their beliefs religion starts to look not just meaningless, but unjust, inane, and very counterproductive. I agree that the highest standards of living are achieved by the more secular societies. I agree its due to higher levels of education that are simply not available to religious people because they reveal religion to be so willfully dysfunctional.

@gerontodon To imply that I intentionally misrepresented their ideas is disingenuous. As I can make it out, the principle of "facilitated variation" claims to shed light on the mechanism of variation. These mechanisms constrain the number of systems on which natural selection then acts. They did not disprove Darwin, but added to and refined on the question of variations, which Darwin had observed. I stand by my judgement on their theory.

nicely said, but I think also, not everyone has been paid perhaps $20K+ to make his unique collection of ununique points"! Jonah Lehreh that journalist got paid about $20K to speak. ""the fee was not unusual for a well-known author to address a large conference""

@TomFynn Obviously we can't find an organism that doesn't change in accordance with natural selection, because natural selection necessarily incurs change- so your challenge is meaningless. People who dispute Darwin's theory generally don't dispute natural selection, what they dispute is its ability to originate complex systems. I don't see any relevance of Dinosaur fossils holding banners at all, I don't see why non-physical agency has to 'outside'....

@rarehman I have never heard of a 'schizophrenic convulsion' before, I'm sorry I had to point that out. I thought that was funny. Anyhow, it is understood that our sciences have remedies for delusions and types of schizophrenia. What makes this of human value? There might be monetary gain or gaining function in society. But what does it give in terms of real objective meaning. I agree with you that science is more conducive to health, being the fact that religion is not a health science.

@rarehman...it has now become dependent on science creating this so-called value. It has just become subjective and thus valueless because its non-objectivity.

So good to drink the water from a clean well.

@TomFynn So yeah if it comes to be that the scientific consensus is that Darwin's mechanism can't do what's on the tin- i.e. originate species, then you can still believe that all causes in the world are physical. But you can't pretend there's as much evidence for that belief as there would be if Darwinism looked convincing, because having used Darwinism as evidence for materialism, that would be inconsistent.

The notion that there is no second layer to reality has already been thoroughly refuted through the scientific study of near death experiences for example by the Dutch cardiologist Dr Pim van Lommel, and by multiple phenomena. so if the proposition is faulty there's no point in carrying on with it...

@gerontodon What is beyond physical description now, or ever, is irrelevant, since we do not know about it. If people want to make up stories about, fine. But never claim that they're more that that. Stories. "Rabbits fossils in the pre-Cambrian" -J.B.S. Haldane in response to the question what would disprove evolution.

great podcast on Humanism google: Speaking of faith Exploring a New Humanism

It actually seems that countries that placed highly on the U.N.'s quality of life ranking were typically more atheist. Although I think your idea of taking a step away from atheism as a social prescription is a good idea. It seems more probable that atheism arises from the success of the government to provide for it's citizens. If people no longer have to constantly worry about death or desperation and actually achieve a high level of education they feel less of a need for God.

@TomFynn people like Dawkins make a big show of saying how the existence of such non-physical agency *is* incompatible with the facts, so to say that it is, when life clearly does look designed, as he himself states, would make it an obvious possibility. Why do you assume agency has to be physical? If it's on the basis of neuroscience, I disagree that correlation between brain activity and subjective experience proves cause. Can you empirically prove that reality is primarily mindless?

@rarehman My only quandary, is humanism, creating objective human value, and science,creating only facts, that how can it be that such a mechanistic functioning could be derived a human value. It seems a bit myopic to relegate human value to what science can tell us, rather than the human science. This makes science and humanism incompatible with each other because anything derived would have to be dependent on science. Humanism, creating objective human values, loses its objectivity because..

Novel about an alternative view of evolution see video book trailer

@gerontodon Kaufmann, Newman and that MPP guy say the physical mechanism of self-organisation is part of the evolution of life forms. So? Every enzyme works because of it. In the words of N. Block and P. Kitcher: “For 150 years everybody in the business has known, very clearly, that cases of natural selection are diverse.” Boston Rev. Online 3/2010 Oh and: Nothing sneaky about the word evolution in the context of this discussion. Period. PS: “So, yeah if…inconsistent.” WTF?

@BachScholar 1. Darwin, Humanism and Science is the name of the conference A C Grayling is speaking at. 2. Evolution is not pseudo science 3. Its not that Darwin wasn't smart enough for medical school, he never had the stomach for it. 4. If you really wont to argue evolution with me, you first need to clearly define your position. Young earth or old earth? Are you OK with "micro" evolution? Please explain your position in as much detail as possible

@TomFynn I wonder whether what Dawkins and his fanswill say when the blindwatchmaker turns out to be as real as 'the flying spaghetti monster'. I expect they'll say that they were being intellectually honest and following the evidence-- but why not now, when many qualified people already think the evidence is against it?

I love the fact that Creationists claim we don't properly understand a book that was written second hand by semi-literate scholars with a blinding agenda. They probably didn't understand what they were writing either...

@ridgetownpimp Probably, but if creationists actually bothered to watch videos, read books, listen to discussions then they probably wouldn't be creationsts

@TomFynn Irrelevant to you I'm sure, but that's pretty irrelevant to me. I think that the popularity of Dawkins, Dennett and co is part of the last burp of positivism- and that will be demonstrated when fashion changes, probably around the same time that it becomes glaringly obvious that the modern synthesis (which many of its advocates refer to as neo-darwinism in print, whatever E. Mayr said) is incorrect.

Strange they didn't put that in the bible

hard to follow... I had to restart like 8 times....9 times... I have a short attention span but with this video it is exaggerated to the point of seconds.

@richardaberdeen I believe you misunderstand the meaning of DEFINITION. a DEFINITION of humanism would go something like this: A way of life that has grown out of the enlightenment, which has brought us the great democratic experiment of the United States, cures for countless diseases, the ability to stem off our own extinction, helped us to understand our origins and encourages a lifestyle that treats others well because it's right and not because of a baseless fear of an imagined sky god.

@gerontodon To have meaning is not the same as being real or an accurate description of reality. What you think or think to "know" is irrelevant. Only what you can demonstrate. "...the term neo-Darwinism for the synthetic theory is wrong, because the term neo-Darwinism was coined by Romanes in 1895 as a designation of Weismann's theory." E. Mayr, Proc. Bien. Meet. Philos. Sci. Assoc. 2: 145-156, (1984) Weismann's theory of inheritance by what he called "germ plasm" is now known to be wrong.

@TomFynn As is typical, you're arbitrarily introducing a lot of question-begging assumptions about what we should consider rational premises, and not explaining either why you believe them to be true, or their relevance, which makes it hard to know what specific points you're making. Maybe science should only explore the physical world. It doesn't then follow that its findings must suggest that only physical reality exists and we should believe that.

It's a joke. Speakers in English countries, including academics, often open comments or addresses with a joke. It is certainly easy to miss as a non-native speaker.

there is no argument here, never was. you have to be able to think you are wrong before you can argue; and I am guessing that is not your best ability.

@07Aristotle When you have delusions and schizophrenic convulsion the science can treat you. Science provides far better explanations of the questions that religions had been trying to answer. The religions start with a figure, never discuss where that supernatural figure came from, and attribute everything to them. If you don't have a secular society then you have a religious society like in pakistan and Afghanistan. Do you think they have a better moral standards and values.

@rarehman Lets be honest, religion is not a science by it being not as practical as our sciences. Religion is a set of belief systems that people act in accordance. It gives human beings structure and human beings thrive on structure and routine in their lives. That is why religion, by itself, is so popular because it conforms to our natural tendencies. Not because what the religion itself promotes, but how well it conforms to our tendencies. It has not relevance on the things believed in.

@ridgetownpimp Atheists and humanists do the same thing on creationist videos. Grayling never discusses Darwin or Darwinism in all 36 minutes. But equating Darwinism with science is one of the biggest mistakes atheists and humanists make because Darwinian evolution is unscientific (or pseudo-scientific) and Darwin wasn't even a scientist by our standards today. He wasn't smart enough to study medicine and had only a bachelors degree not in science, but theology. (See my other comment)

@stephenblackman2003a What very charitable comments. Clearly your adhominem remarks must replace your lack of salient facts to support your case. It surprises me that you have such an approach towards 'academic divas' when religious 'theologians' adopt a pseudo academic stance about the Bible or Koran when what is really being undertaken is literary review (if one can place it that high).

@richardaberdeen you have misplaced your knowledge. I hope that your "wisdom" guides your claims more appropriately in the future.

You should try exploiting a book on spelling and grammar.

Hungarian MP 😜

seek help; seriously.