Root of All Evil?

The modern man, singular in history, carries the unusual pride of living in his own era - a novel sentiment born from the marvel of technology and a Promethean mindset. We proclaim that science unveils the mysteries of nature, imagining ourselves freed from illusions and superstitions. Yet science itself rests upon beliefs and subtle superstitions, differing only in form from those that existed before the Enlightenment. The "scandal of reason," as Kant called it, persists: we cannot conclusively prove the simple evidence of an external world independent of ourselves. Karl Popper, with prudent diplomacy, suggested that this external world is merely a working hypothesis for natural science, careful not to offend the sensibilities of the modern spirit.

This documentary provides a great view at religion and its contradictory evilness. As we live in a world that's threatened by religious fanatics and almost all major conflicts are based on religion, shouldn't it be time we start questioning religion? Dawkins does question religion and everything else. And he continually stresses that as opposed to faith, science tries to discover the world and congratulates everyone who makes theories obsolete.

There's a common word used against people like Dawkins - arrogance. But isn't arrogant the one who says he knows everything? Dawkins says he knows nothing but what the facts reveal him.

Fear the one who offers all knowledge for he is lying.

It's about time that somebody made a documentary like this. All religions are the same - foolish superstition -. Do these people actually believe that their holy books and myths were written by divine supernatural pan-dimensional beings? There were written by Human Beings not unlike themselves. There is no longer any purpose for these superstitions. They have no redeeming qualities - unless fear, shame, lies, intolerance and hatred are your ideas of good qualities -. God is dead... it's about time. Try having faith in Humankind instead because that's the only way things get done. Vapid religions succeed in creating hate, praise Mankind instead

This documentary came out around when I was born. At a young age, I had questions about a lot of things discussed in this piece. Though never answered, or answered with abuse and fear of hell, I thought I was not normal or maybe Satan had more control over me than others. Turns out I was lucky to have those questions.

I never knew at the same time a person had already asked those questions as I was doing, but in a far more disciplined and organised way.

Later on my journey led me to atheism, and today to this documentary. And I wish I had watched this earlier.

Anyone who questions or at least thinks about religions, whether a muslim, Christian or an atheist, must watch this. This documentary is not for atheists only, this is a piece of curiosity and questioning for anyone who has the brains to question things and is in search of truth and meaning.

Roots of Evil by Richard Dawkins is documentary about how Dawkins tries to prove to people that God is a delusion. In order to prove this, Dawkins visits sites and interviews people with either strong opposing views to debate with them, or people who he believes will strongly agree with him to prove his point that Religion and God is a complete delusion, and that people should really start questioning themselves, and become like he is, a man of Science. As an intellectual man, he does ask some important questions that encourage thinking, but I believe Dawkins is too harshly criticizing religions and is pushing his views on tense circumstances, forcing the cold hard truth on people who have already chosen their faith and belief and that he should just leave people to believe what they want.

I personally found this movie hard to enjoy. While he an intellectual man, he can't seem to be able to accept the fact that not everyone believes in the same thing that he does. I believe that Religion is a very vulnerable and tense subject, therefore is very important not to push things too far. This is what I think Dawkins does by saying going to the Lourdes and after receiving statistics, concludes that all the 66 alleged miracles are meaningless and the conditions would have cleared up naturally. Next, he goes on to say that the "fact" that Mary's body ascended into heaven is an assumption, and that even the pop would have said it was revealed to him by God or that it was actually by word of mouth that this tradition came about and it is wrong. As he moves on to the issue of creationism and evolution. He says that we only have creationism because our world needed a supreme being such as a God to deal with the mystery surrounding us, but now that Science has explained that the Sun is one of billions of stars, he said it is time to abandon the belief of the God. As he debates with many other people, not only are his points not as strong as theirs, but he also doesn't let them freely speak. In fact, the movie even cuts of one man while he is speaking because he probably has a very strong point that Dawkins couldn't rebut.

While Dawkins was definitely proud of his belief and knows it is true, this movie was hard to enjoy as he continued harshly forcing his beliefs on people who clearly did not agree with him.