Wendy: Hey Bill.
My name is Wendy and my question is: would
the world be a better place if everyone was
an atheist or had no beliefs in god or religion?
Bill Nye: Wendy, this is a great question.
Practically, I don’t know.
People get a lot of community out of religions.
They get a lot of friendship and they have
extended families as a result of religion.
And my atheist friends—and, you know the
old saying: “some of my best friends are
atheists”—I mean I do have a large circle
of atheist friends.
We’re all very supportive.
We have our own community in a different way.
So I think what we want is to transcend families,
extended families and tribes to an understanding
that everybody in the world is in this together.
That all of our tribes are in this together.
People from different religious traditions,
we’re all in this together.
And whether or not there is one god that makes
decisions for you, whether or not there is
one god that influences your life based on
what you’ve done in past lives, whether
or not there is no god, these are all questions
that are very important to ponder individually.
But in the bigger picture I’m not going
to claim the world would be better with or
without communities.
I think the communities and interactions of
tribes, or tribal-style nations and groups,
is very important to the future of humankind.
So as you may know, I am not a believer.
I’m a non-believer.
I spend a lot of time trying to understand
my place in the cosmos and I’ve reached
my own conclusions.
But I’m the first to say that ultimately
we are all agnostic.
This is to say you can’t know whether or
not there is a giant entity running the show
or choosing to not run the show.
You can’t know.
So we all are, I believe, best served by just
living good lives.
Trying to leave the world better than we found
it.
That’s a great question.
Whew.
