Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life

The Meaning of Life (1x3)

Air date: Oct 29, 2012

Why does an atheist bother to get up in the morning? That's the question Richard Dawkins seeks to answer as he continues his exploration of the big questions of life in a world shaking off religious faith. In a journey that takes him from the casinos of Las Vegas to Buddhist monasteries in the foothills of the Himalayas, Richard Dawkins examines how both religious and non-religious people struggle to find meaning in their lives. He looks at how our existence is ruled by chance, meeting people whose fate was to be born into extreme poverty in India's slums and the survivors of a natural disaster in Joplin, Missouri, a city ripped apart in 2011 by a tornado on a random course. In the face of what appears to be a blindly indifferent universe, Dawkins argues that we each have to forge our own sense of meaning. He meets the comedian Ricky Gervais, an atheist since the age of seven, for whom meaning comes through doing something creative. For Dawkins, it is the awe and wonder in scientific enquiry - from the human genome to the quest for the Higgs Boson - that get him up in the morning.