Dawkins is just great. What a wonderful voice he gives us all.

Onanite

I think sometimes that Dawkins takes a perverse pleasure in allowing documentary producers and directors to film him against a backdrop of religious settings and objects/icons. Such as on the lawn of a church, or, in this case, actually in a church. It so obviously just rolls off of him, and has no hold at all over his way of thinking. Just saunters into the other side's headquarters and makes himself at home. A pew in a church is just a bench in a building with good acoustics. Good film; thanks for posting it.

Though Dawkins' arguments concerning the differences between religion & science always seems sound, I do agree with the interviewer on one point. At the societal level, I think it would take much more than simply removing sectarian education, or removing religion.

There's a great deal complexity to human society that perhaps Dawkins hasn't fully considered. In fact, I think it would take a generation or two of grass-roots and institutional-level education directed at teaching people how to accept and embrace diversity, and not just religious diversity. To take, for example, his description of Northern Ireland. Though children may not be divided by religion (assuming a great deal of change occurs as a result of the elimination of sectarian schools), they will still divide themselves by class. That is to say, by income, by where they live, by their parents politics, etc..

In other words, I think religion is most of the time intertwined with and reinforces (or is reinforced by) other cultural considerations that help create divisions. Someone, somewhere always likes to think they are better than everyone else, and finds "evidence" to support that belief. Religion is simply one more place to find it.

Maybe it's Dawkins' intention though, to focus on religious belief and leave the other considerations to people qualified in those areas.

I don't know, but I admire his ability to explain science and his willingness to champion atheism.