Channel 4 (UK) Documentaries

The Root of All Evil? (The God Delusion) (2006x14)

Air date: Jan 01, 2006

Atheist and scientist Richard Dawkins visits England, America and Isreal interveiwing prominant people of faith; Islamic, Hasidic Jews, and the new Christian sects popping up throughout the world, and expressing his view of the extent to which ths fanaticism has degraded our civilisation, and will continue to degrade it. The first part of the documentary is mainly attacking the idea and the obsession behind that idea of 'faith'. He talks about the story of Adam and Eve, which even the Catholic church admits this is metaphorical. So this guys Jesus has himself horribly tortured and murdered in order to save the souls of people who never existed from a sin that was symbolic! Dawkins describes faith as a virus. The second part delves into the lifestyles these extremists bring their children up in, sectorial schools, complete segregation. Children are very sensitive to what they're exposed to and what their elders tell them. In this way, Dawkins theorises, the narrow-mindedness of faith is spread like a virus from generation to generation. Very few of these children are coming out of school with a mind that is open to the world and everything in it. They're coming out with a whole other fantasy world inside their head, one most of us don't understand, and that world, in their mind, rules the real one that they share with us. Dawkins is successful in his subtle way of showing that although creationists think evolutionaries are the narrow minded ones, preaching your own 'faith' is a far more damagingly selfish act, probably the result of grandiose delusions.