Bill Moyers talks with Jonathan Miller about “A Brief History of Disbelief”
Transcript excerpt from Bill Moyers’ interview with Jonathan Miller about “A Brief History of Disbelief”:
BILL MOYERS: So you wouldn’t be - you wouldn’t have done this series unless people were rising up to confront you with beliefs that you found harmful?
JONATHAN MILLER: Well, there are two reasons. I think that I, perhaps felt inclined to undertake the series because I believe there were harmful outcomes from fanatical and overzealous beliefs. But also, I suppose that once the discussion got out in the open as a discussion, I simply was struck by the logical incoherence and inconsistency of what seemed to be a very strong feature of human mental life. And namely, a belief in supernatural agency. It seemed to me to make no sense. And therefore, I wanted to point out its philosophical inconsistency. Long before I became a scientist, long before I had– knew anything about biology, let alone anything about natural selection, the thought of God never crossed my mind.
Video and transcript available online here:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05042007/watch3.html