[Myers] It's like they can waffle between these
two views so easily, and it makes it really hard
to pin them down and wrestle with the ideas
is when you're not going to commit yourself.
You're not going support a particular position.
There's nothing you can do.
[Dawkins] Scientists don't do that do we really?
I mean, we have many vices but
I don't think that's one of them.
[Myers] We get ornery about our positions. (laughter)
[Dawkins] Yeah.
[Myers] Yeah, and if you try and argue
with us about, you know, what we
think about things we will spend, you know,
hours babbling trying to get the verbiage just right.
Trying to get all the ideas out. But we're not
trying to obscure things. What we're trying
to do is get a more refined understanding
of the concepts we are talking about.
[Dawkins] Do you think some, never mind about
theology, but there are some academic disciplines
that do deliberately try to obscure.
[Myers] Well yes. (laughter)
[Dawkins] I once coined, how does it go?
Dawkins' Law of Conservation of Obscurity
which was something like:
Obscurantism in an academic discipline
expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity.
So a subject like physics, which is genuinely difficult,
[Myers] Yes.
[Dawkins] good physicists will
really try, it's hard but they'll go out of their way.
I mean, Einstein tried, not very successfully but he tried
to explain using analogies with
trains going at near the speed of light and things.
Physicists will really work hard at trying to
[Dawkins] remove the obscurity from their subject. 
[Myers] Yes.
[Dawkins] But there seem to be other discipline
which have almost nothing to say and therefore
have to invent obscurity in order to be taken seriously.
[Myers] And often it's a disservice to the discipline.
I mean, I'm at a small liberal
arts college so I can't be too cruel to my
colleagues, but we have people who think
post modernism is a great thing. And they're right.
There's a kernel of really good stuff in there.
New perspectives on thinking about litterature
and thinking about culture, and it's worth pursuing.
But then what's happened is that they've
sort of imploded, destroyed their own discipline
with this effusion of gobbledygook on top of it.
[Dawkins] Well you gain prestige by being obscure.
[Myers] Exactly.
[Dawkins] I think, I had a wonderful story at Oxford,
I think yes, there was a post modernist scholar
expounding something and the person he was
talking to said "I find that extremely
difficult to understand." And the reply was
"Oh thank you very much!" (laughter)
A great compliment.
[Myers] Yeah it's exactly backward. You know
both of us write and you know that when we
write, what we're trying to do is we're trying to distill
ideas down to make them comprehensible. And not...
[Dawkins] Constantly struggling to be understood.
Constantly struggling to make clear.
To all the time looking for clarity.
[Myers] Yes. All the time this is what I'm
doing too. You read some of these papers
nowadays and it's this dense molecular
biology jargon and it's got references to all
these past work that the group has done and
so forth. And a modern scientific paper is this,
it's kind of painful to read sometimes unless
you're immersed in that particular culture.
And then what you want to do, you want to pull
that out and clarify, simplify, give the background,
explain the concepts.
[Dawkins] Put yourself in the position of the reader
and what are the difficulties
the reader would be having?
It's one of the things I most admire about
Darwin. However he may not always have been
successful, it's absolutely clear that the
moment you open a page of Darwin, he
really really wants to be understood.
He's working hard to be understood.
[Myers] Yes.
[Dawkins] And with immense sincerity.
[Myers] Yes and that was a book that wasn't
written necessarily for just his peers.
It was written for everyone in England to read.
[Dawkins] Yes, and he really wanted to be
understood. And sometimes I think he perhaps
realized he wasn't succeeding and tried and tried
and tried again to make it clear.
[Dawkins] We were both victims of a sort of
confidence trick and persuaded to take part
in this film called "Expelled." Although it wasn't
called that when I think we were invited.
[Myers] It was called
"Crossroads: Science and Religion"
[Dawkins] Well, I actually don't remember very
much about it. I do remember that I was very
very strongly given the impression that this was
a pro-science film and it was going to show up
the ridiculousness of the creationist
position. I was therefor extremely startled
when I read, probably on your blog, that,
actually this film was made by a creationist
front and is creationist propaganda.
What was your impression when
you were originally asked?
[Myers] When they called me they didn't tell me
it was necessarily going to be pro-science.
But they said it would be a serious discussion
of the conflict between science and religion.
And they told me that they were going to
try to get both sides. And I thought that
sounded perfectly acceptable. I don't mind
hearing discussions from the other side.
So yeah I agreed to it. One interesting thing, is
before I agreed to it I got on the web and I
went looking around to see if this was a legitimate
outfit of course. They had this
nice website with all these film properties
they were working with. I talked to
Barbara Forrest a while back and she said,
she was one of the first people called for this.
And they asked her if she would be willing
to participate and she said let me look around.
And she looked around and there was nothing
on the web. And she told them this.
That "You've obviously got nothing there. I don't
believe you," And she turned them down.
And then they quickly cobbled up this fake
website to fool the rest of us that came along.
So yeah, I am happy to talk about my opinions on
religion. They don't have to lie to me but
it just kinda puts them on shaky ground when they
have to lie to us to get us to do an interview.
[Dawkins] And I actually went out of my way
to help them. I put myself through some
trouble to find them a good venue in London
and I put myself to some trouble to go to
London to do it. I though I was going to be
interviewed by a man called Mark Matthis.
And I was very helpful to him and I was very
friendly to him and I feel kind of betrayed.
I never heard of Ben Stein. I was ushered
into the room and when he came in, a rather
unpleasant man I thought, I knew nothing
about him. I didn't like him.
But I didn't know that there was so much
to dislike then as I have since discovered.
[Myers] Yes. I knew he was Mark Mathis.
He probably didn't tell me it was Ben Stein
because I would know who Ben Stein was.
You know, Nixon speech writer, conservative.
It was Mark Mathis and yeah when he was there we
had conversations. He was friendly. He was
polite. A while back I was on a radio
interview with Mark Mathis and it was
like 180 degrees, night and day. At the end
of the interview he was, ended up exhorting all
the listeners to go to that guy's blog and
you'll see that he is an atheist, an atheist
an atheist. He was screaming it into the phone.
[Dawkins] Mathis was?
[Myers] Yes.
[Dawkins] You mean he's a religious nut himself?
I mean I assumed he was insincere.
[Myers] Oh no. He was using the fact that I am an
[Dawkins] Oh really?
[Myers] atheist as an indictable offense.
[Dawkins] So he is actually one of those.
[Dawkins] I assumed he was just a cynical sort of operator.
[Myers] If he is, he's very cynical. Because he was cynical
with a Christian radio audience too. (laughter)
[Dawkins] Oh really? Fascinating.
Ok well, we are going to see this film.
[Myers] Yes. We got free tickets.
[Dawkins] I look forward to doing so.
Maybe we can talk about it again after.
[Myers] And actually what I look forward to is
they don't know you are coming. This is gonna
be interesting. We hope they let you in.
[Dawkins] What about you?
[Myers] They know me but I'm not quite as
famous as you are and we'll see how they react.
Dawkins: But hitherto haven't they had some
kind of a rule that only sort of,
sympathizers are allowed in?
[Myers] Yes. When I signed up they asked me
for my affiliation, what group I was with, and
then they said how many guests do you want
to bring along with you? I said "Oh, well I'll
probably bring a few guests." So I slipped in a bunch.
They didn't ask about those.
So you're going as my guest. (laughter)
[Dawkins] Well I look forward to it very much
and we'll have another conversation
sometime later.
[Dawkins] Thank you very much.
[Myers] Should be enlightening. Yes. Thanks.
