Shadowing Practice: Is Religion Good or Evil? | Richard Dawkins vs Mehdi Hasan - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Are you an atheist?

For all practical purposes, yes.

Nobody can actually say for certain that anything doesn't exist.

But I'm an atheist in the same way as I'm an a -leprechaunist and an a -fairyist and an a -pick -unicornist.

So you're not 100 % sure God doesn't exist, but you're sure enough to make it practically...

I'm as sure as you are sure that fairies and leprechauns don't exist.

And do you see an equivalence between the idea of God and the idea of a fairy and a leprechaun?

The evidence for both is equally poor.

You say in The God Delusion, one of my favourite sentences that jumps out of the page,

that the God of the Old Testament is a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic,

homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capricious, malevolent bully.

As a piece of rhetoric, superb.

But do you really believe that?

Congratulations on getting megalomaniacal right, by the way.

Most people fumble on that.

Yes, if you've actually read the Old Testament, I think you would have to agree.

It's hideous.

It's an anti -the God of the Old Testament who is a monster.

But also the God of the Koran, the New Testament, the Hindu scripture?

Well, the God of the Koran, I don't know so much about the God of the New Testament,

is widely advertised as being a bit more gentle.

and certainly, on the whole, he is.

There are things about the New Testament that I find, in a way, almost more objectionable than the Old Testament.

But the sheer horror of the character, I said he was the most unpleasant character in all fiction, because I regard it as fiction, of course.

And yes, he is.

I mean, he's jealous, he's vindictive, he's callous, he's cruel.

And this is a God that is worshipped by, loved by, adored by, followed by millions, billions of people.

I hope not.

I hope that the God that is adored by millions of people

is a grown -up kind of God who is no longer...

I hope that most people who.. the kind of people I would like to know who worship

and admire him regard those stories as not literally true.

Now, there are some who do regard them as literally true, and I suspect they either haven't read the Old Testament,

or they're not the kind of people I would wish to know, because you do not want to worship a character like that.

By all means, worship some kind of great spirit of the universe, some kind of creative intelligence who created the universe, but don't worship this vile,

vindictive monster of the Old Testament.

So why throw around these sweeping statements about religion, not the God of the Old Testament, but religion itself being evil?

I mean, do you believe religion is evil?

No. You say plenty of times in this book that religion is evil.

You said in a speech, famously, that I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils,

comparable to the smallpox virus, but harder to eradicate.

I do think that, yes.

Because what I'm talking about there is faith, where faith means belief in something without evidence.

Because if you believe something without evidence, then that justifies anything.

You're no longer vulnerable to somebody coming back at you and saying, hang on a minute, let me argue the case.

If you believe it without evidence, which is what faith is, then you don't argue the case.

You say, no, I'm not arguing that case.

This is my faith.

It's mine.

It's private.

I don't dissent from it.

I don't retreat from it.

You're just going to have to accept it.

Now, that is evil.

And yet you spend so much of your time debating people of faith, so clearly people of faith are interested in having discussions.

They're not just all blind believers, insisting on their way of...

Well, nobody said anything about all of them.

I mean, the vast majority of religious people are perfectly good, nice people, as you are.

There's no suggestion I've ever made that all religious people are evil.

Of course not.

There is a logical progression that goes from believing in faith, having faith that your God tells you to do something,

and doing terrible deeds like suicide bombing, like flying planes into skyscrapers.

The vast majority of people of faith don't do such terrible things.

But those people who do terrible things do it believing that they are righteous and good,

and they think that they're doing the will of their god

so they are they're not evil people

they're actually good people by their own lights they believe they're doing good things

and that's why religion is evil because it can make you do evil things believing that they are good.

Do you really believe that people who go out

and carry out suicide bombings

it is faith religion is to blame not geopolitics not the

world not their lives not what's going on around us it's religion plain and simple?

Not always since not in the case of the Tamil Tigers for example, but I think in a great majority of cases it is

and I think it certainly makes it a hell of a lot easier.

The evidence is plain that that in many

Islamic suicide bombers, you talk to them, those who fail, you talk to them afterwards, they've got paradise on the brain.

They're desperate to go to a martyr's heaven and that's what they think about.

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago studied every known case of suicide terrorism, 315 cases, and he came to the conclusion

that there's quote little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism or any of the world's religions.

The taproot of suicide terrorism, he says, is nationalism.

It's about land, it's about power, it's about politics.

It's not about faith, faith is just a cover.

What do you know that he doesn't know?

Well, I've seen other evidence.

There are different people say different things.

I've seen plenty of testimonies of suicide bombers who have said precisely that they do it because they want a martyr's paradise.

Do you include the 7 -7 bombers in that case as well?

Yes, I believe so.

Have you watched their suicide videos?

I'm not sure that I have, no. They talk about Afghanistan, they talk about Iraq, They talk about Crusades.

They talk about war between the West and the Muslim world.

They talk about invading armies I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of real -world stuff

in there I'm not saying of course not the faith doesn't play a role

But I'm just interested in this idea that you think faith is is the issue

You say you said in a very famous column you wrote four days after 9 -11 that this came from religion

There are enormously good reasons for people to take political action

and this this we see in Northern Ireland We see it in Afghanistan

We see it in in Sri Lanka where the Tamil Tigers operated.

So yes, there are political reasons, but the promise of a martyr's heaven, which is, you cannot deny that this is part of Islamic doctrine.

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Martyrs go straight to paradise.

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Yes, but not terrorists, not murderers, not criminals.

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Well, they believe that because they're told it by their Imams.

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But then what about the majority of the world's

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Muslim clerics and ulama who came out and condemned 9 -11?

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Well, I'm delighted they did, but they were pretty quiet about it.

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What about the argument that says human beings are prone to violence, they're prone to carrying out crimes against their fellow man.

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You can blame religion, you can blame politics, you can blame economics.

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Lots of factors.

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Lots of excuses.

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What I don't get is why do you only focus on religion? For fairness.

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Why don't you also isolate the other factors?

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There are lots of other factors and I'm quite happy to say that, yes.

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There are lots of...

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If you look at the wars of history, some of them have been about religion, plenty of them have not been about religion.

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I never said religion is the sole cause of wars and violence.

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You may not have said that, but you would accept that the new atheists, people like Sam Harris, the late Christopher Hitchens,

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have blamed a lot of history's wars on God and religion, and you make a similar suggestion under God Delusion.

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Yeah, I would blame a lot of history's wars, but the most terrible wars in history, the two major wars of the 20th century,

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are nothing to do with religion.

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You accept that point?

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Yeah, of course.

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And the Cold War and Vietnam?

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Yes, I would, of course, yes.

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So, when you have a situation where some of the world's worst crimes were carried out not by believers,

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how then does that square with your idea that it's religion that causes good people to do bad things,

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religion that's driving violence, your original statement against religion at the start of this?

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Dogmatic belief in something like religion or something like Marxism or something like Nazism, these are all, or indeed patriotism,

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I mean my country right or wrong, These are all pernicious beliefs which can drive people to do terrible things.

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And in the Second World War, Hitlerism was driven by racism,

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by a sort of sub -Wagnerian pagan religion which Hitler revived.

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Stalin's atrocities were motivated by a dogmatic belief in Marxism. And atheism.

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Stalin happened to be an atheist, but he was never motivated specifically.

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The Soviet Union was not based on scientific rationalism, on the elimination of religion and God?

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Stalin persecuted the church.

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Stalin persecuted just about everybody.

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Are you saying that the Soviet Union, the leaders of the Soviet Union, were not driven by a hatred of religion?

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And a belief that science and human progress and materialism was the way forward?

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They believed that materialism, science, human progress, there was a Marxist slant on those words, and they were hideously misused.

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Mao Zedong, when he invaded

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Tibet, told the Dalai Lama that religion is poison.

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The subtext to the late Christopher Hitchens' book was religion poisons everything.

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Can you blame people of religion for saying, hold on, we've heard these ideas before, that religion poisons everything, and it leads in one direction?

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It's an incidental fact that

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Mao Zedong and Stalin didn't happen to be atheists, they were not...

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Incidentally, it wasn't core to communism.

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I think it was not core to communism, no. So when Karl Marx was talking about religion being the opiate of the masses,

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that was just a throwaway line?

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Yeah, I mean, that was an out of context statement.

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I mean, what on earth do you think that's got to do with atheism?

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I don't know.

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Let me put a statement in context to you.

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Albania, one of the world's worst dictatorships, tyrannies that we've seen in the last hundred years.

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Article 37 of Albania's communist constitution declared,

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quote, the state recognizes no religion and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific, materialistic world outlook in people.

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What do you think you're saying?

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I mean that's an appalling thing to say, of course it is.

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Why is that an appalling thing to say?

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What do you disagree with in that statement?

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Why would I want to support atheistic propaganda?

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I support science and truth.

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But you don't support spreading atheism.

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I support spreading science and truth.

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If that happens to be atheism, I support it.

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I'm not going to start bullying people into being atheists.

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I'm not going to start trying to compel people to be atheists.

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That was what the Albanians were doing.

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It's nothing to do with what I want to do. Of course.

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But you'd like to persuade them not to be believers and become atheists.

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I'd like to raise consciousness in a gentle, civilised way, using argument, rational argument, from evidence.

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In your book, you cite lots of evidence for the bad things religions are.

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What I wonder is, if you were being fair, wouldn't you have also included some of the good things that religion's done?

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My passion is for scientific truth.

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I don't much care about what's good and evil, actually.

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I care about what's true.

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I mean, do you actually believe in your Muslim faith?

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Do you believe that Mohammed split the moon in two?

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Do you believe that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse, for example?

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I pay you the compliment of assuming that you don't.

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No, I do.

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I believe in miracles.

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You believe that?

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Yes.

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You believe that Mohammed went to heaven on a winged horse?

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Yes, I believe in God, I believe in miracles, I believe in revelation.

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I mean, the point here is, let's assume I'm wrong, Richard, I'm wrong.

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Yeah, let's.

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Let's assume I'm wrong.

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I'm wrong.

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I'm happy to concede that, Richard, I'm happy to concede it.

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I'm wrong.

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All religions are wrong, God does not exist, we're all mad.

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The issue is, we exist.

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We've existed for a while.

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I think even Christopher Hitchens said, and you've said in your writings, we're not going anywhere.

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So my question to you is, why not acknowledge, for example, the good things that religion has done? good things,

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despite all of our mad beliefs and our miracles.

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I accept that individual religious people have done an enormous number of good things.

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Not driven by religion?

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Well, I mean, who knows?

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You're very mean -spirited.

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You won't give any credit at all to that.

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Take somebody like

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Martin Luther King, for example.

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Reverend Martin Luther King.

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Yes.

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Obviously, he was a cleric, so I imagine that that fed into the good things that he did, plenty of other things did.

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He was a great admirer of Gandhi, and he was a great admirer of non -violence.

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He was a brilliant and wonderful, great man.

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Would you disconnect MLK's non -violence and Gandhi's non -violence from their very strongly held religious beliefs?

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They didn't.

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Well, I think that's, it's not a thing that I really care about, actually.

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I mean, I think they were...

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You do care about it, Richard.

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You're saying that people carry out violence in the name of God.

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And I cite to you an example of very famous people who have done good

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and non -violence in the name of God and you say, I'm not interested.

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If God doesn't exist, then doing something good in his name, it's great that something good gets done.

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But there's no evidence at all that believing in God makes you more likely to do good things.

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I can't see any noble, logical connection between being religious and doing good things.

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Let's concede that God does not exist.

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Let's concede that religion is false.

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My problem here is trying to understand why some of the new atheists are

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so anti -religion when religious people clearly are doing lots of good things and they're doing it in the name of God.

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I've never denied that religious people are doing good things and non -religious people are doing good things.

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I care about what's true, I'm an educator, I'm a scientist, and I want people to understand the truth about the universe in which they live.

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That's what I care about.

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And I regard religion as a distraction, and in some cases a pernicious distraction from true education

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Which I which I love and value the way you value and love your God.

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Can you not do both?

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Well, so long as they don't come to divide Richard They don't contradict each other

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But but if you if you if you actually believe Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse

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That's an anti -scientific belief and that could be wrong, but that is wrong, but that doesn't change

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That doesn't change

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How do you know it's wrong?

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Oh come on You're a man of the 21st century.

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I'm just asking.

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It comes back to my original question that the rational position

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The rational position is the agnostic position.

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Why up there?

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Well, I mean the rational position.

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I didn't say up there.

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I didn't pick a place.

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Why would a wind horse be that be the way to get to heaven if it's not up there?

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I asked I asked I asked the question about you asked about proof I'm more for saying I can't prove it,

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but can you prove he didn't do it?

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I mean this is the end old debate I'm just asking on your criteria.

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I'm just asking.

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No, I can't prove it and I can't prove it wasn't a golden unicorn.

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But I'm fascinated that you'd rather talk about

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what animals the Prophet may or may not have used 1 ,400 years ago rather than talk about what

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Muslims or Islam is doing in the world today, good or bad.

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That seems to be the distraction.

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If anyone's distracted, it seems to be you.

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Well, that's your view.

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I'm fascinated by how somebody, a respected, sophisticated journalist in the 21st century can believe that a Prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse.

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Let me ask you this are all people who hold beliefs in god

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and in miracles

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and the supernatural do you regard them all as intellectually inferior

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to you i regard those beliefs as intellectual nonsense um i don't regard the individuals as intellectually inferior to me

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because many of them palpably are not

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if you go back in history then all bets are off because before before darwin for example

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it is not at all surprising

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that before darwin people believed in all kinds of things

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which they wouldn't believe in now there are many people many scientists today who say they're religious

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And if you actually ask them what they believe, in many cases, it turns out what they believe is in some sort of deistic God,

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some sort of intellectual spirit, some sort of creative intelligence that lay at the root of the universe,

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perhaps invented the laws of physics, something like that.

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I don't agree with this book, but it's an excellent book.

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Very well argued.

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You're very passionate, clearly.

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There's one section in the book where you talk about bringing up children.

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Oh, yes.

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And you talked about education.

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You talk about a story when you were, you tell a story about being in Ireland and talking about the Catholic child abuse scandal.

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And there's one quote on page 356, which I will read out to you.

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Horrible as sexual abuse, no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long -term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up

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Catholic in the first place.

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You believe that being brought up as a Catholic is worse than being abused by a priest.

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There are shades of being abused by a priest.

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And I quoted the example of a woman in America who wrote to me saying that when she was seven years old,

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she was sexually abused by a priest in his car.

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And at the same time, a friend of hers, also seven, who was Protestant, of Protestant family, I should say, died.

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and she was told that because her friend was Protestant she had gone to hell

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and would be roasting in hell forever and she told me

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that of those two abuses she got over the physical abuse it was yucky

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but she got over it

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but the mental abuse of being told about hell she took years to get over

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and I respect Richard you're an empiricist you're a rationalist one letter from one woman in America isn't really

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but the basis to extrapolate makes of sweeping

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That is, of course, true, and I'm not basing it on that.

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It seems to me that telling children such that they really, really believe that people who sin are going to go to hell and roast forever,

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forever, that your skin grows again when it peels off with burning,

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it seems to me to be intuitively entirely reasonable that

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that is a worse form of child abuse that will give more nightmares, that will give more

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genuine distress

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because they really believe it they don't believe

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it's not a problem of course you also say let me just let me know

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I've been put on the spot about this health bar thing I we haven't really been put on this

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but in what sense have you been put on the spot well I I sense

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that you think it's somehow obvious that that having a priest

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if you're a small girl having a priest

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but I would be very interested in asking the audience whether being told about heaven

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and hell as a child you know I'm brought up as Catholic is worse than

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that was worse than being abused by a priest okay let's

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have a show of hands is it worse to be abused by a priest and

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if you believe it's worse for a priest to abuse a

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child than to bring up your child catholic raise your hands

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are they both as bad as each other raise your hands

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so we have a three -way split in the audience let's finish

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this section with one last related subject on this question a personal question from me

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you talk about how um to teach children

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that there is one god or that god created the world in six days

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that is child abuse to even teach your children religion is child abuse

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so i have a daughter i teach her about islam

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and the horse am i guilty of child abuse do you

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teach her the world was created in six days no

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because islam doesn't teach that i'm delighted to hear

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that i ask again am i guilty of child abuse for teaching my child stories from the quran yes

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or not are you an atheist science is your great passion and you're a great believer in science, you're an evangelist for science,

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a promoter and defender of science.

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But what would you say to those people who say there are some quite important questions, genuine questions, that science cannot answer?

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Why are we here?

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What's the meaning of life?

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Where does morality come from?

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And that if religion wants to have a crack at answering those, what's science's objection?

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I'm not sure I'd accept that science can't answer those particular questions.

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I think there are other questions science probably shouldn't try to answer, like what is right and what is wrong.

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Those are questions that are not the immediate concern of science, but what's the meaning of life,

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why is there anything, how did it all start, those seem to me to be scientific questions or potentially scientific questions.

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If there are some questions of that sort that science can never answer, then we should at least keep trying to answer them,

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and if science can't answer them, religion having a crack at answering them.

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If there's no reason to think

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that religion has any any any basis for an answer then why would religion have a crack?

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Why would you bother to listen to religion having a crack at answering them?

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I mean one thing I would say there may be questions

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that science can't answer like the origin of everything but

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if science can't answer them then religion certainly can't and nothing else can either.

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Why?

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Why is it science or nothing?

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Well yes because because Because science is the method of getting at what's true, I mean if you take something like how did the universe begin,

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which is a very baffling deep question.

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How did life begin?

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Another baffling, deep question.

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Both those questions are unanswered.

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The best methods we have of approaching those are the methods of science, because these are the methods that look at evidence,

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that evaluate evidence in all sorts of sophisticated ways.

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What has religion got to do with that, other than just looking at the writings of somebody who wrote a few centuries ago?

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I mean, why would you bother to read those writings?

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So the great philosophers and theologians in history who grappled with these big questions and thought about spiritual issues,

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moral issues, the transcendent, they're all wasting their time?

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Yes, they're wasting their time.

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What about, why does my life have meaning?

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What's its worth?

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Where does my dignity come from?

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Your meaning and your dignity are up to you

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and mine are up to me and these are not questions that science would attempt to answer.

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Each person finds their own meaning in their own life and good luck to them.

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And what's wrong with religion offering moral certainties, if, as you say, science can't answer moral questions?

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Science can't offer moral certainty, but I don't see that religion can either.

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You don't think that the religious values we have today, the moral codes we live by today,

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were originally derived from Judeo -Christian values, Islamic values, Hindu values?

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Not really, no. I mean, things like the Golden Rule, things like treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.

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These are ancient values, which crop up all over the world.

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They've been adopted by many religions.

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You can find justifications for them in moral philosophy.

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You can find justifications for them in evolutionary biology, which is my own subject.

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I don't seriously think you're going to base your morality on religion, because if you do, then you've got to say,

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well, do I base it on scripture?

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I hope you don't base it on scripture, because

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if you do, then you're going to have some pretty horrible values unless you deliberately cut out those parts of scripture

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which are unacceptable to modern morality.

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Do you believe science is omnipotent, that it can answer all questions?

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I've already said no. I've already said it can't answer moral questions.

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But questions about the real world, questions about reality, questions about the origins of things, why life is the way it is,

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why the world is the way it is, why the universe is the way it is.

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Yes, science is the way to answer that.

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Some of your critics have argued that you are willing to hold religion up to a very.. put it under the microscope,

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hold it to account, scrutinise it, criticise it.

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You don't do the same to science or scientists or some of the bad things that have come out of science.

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Well, bad things that come out of science, if by that you mean horrible weapons...

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Nuclear weapons, gas chambers, eugenics.

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Yeah.

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These are terrible things, which are technology that arises out of science, and it's certainly true that if you want to do terrible things with technology,

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with terrible weapons, for example, science is the best way to do it, because science is the best way to do anything.

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Even bad things?

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Even bad things.

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I mean, that's right.

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If you want to develop a terrible weapon, you're not going to do it in any other way than by science.

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The trick is not to want to develop a terrible weapon, and that's a political decision.

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And you do not see science and religion as occupying two different compartments that can live side by side?

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They are in conflict with one another?

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Insofar as religion attempts to talk about reality and has an alternative vision of reality, I think they are incompatible, yes.

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Despite the fact, as we discussed earlier, many of our leading scientists are believers?

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I think it's baffling.

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I mean, what they in practice do is they leave their religion at the door when they go into the lab.

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and so they get on with their science.

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They say they don't.

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Well, I know they do, but, well, okay.

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Isn't it because religion answers all sorts of human needs and spiritual urges which science never can?

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Isn't that the real issue that you can't get away from?

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Religion may answer human needs.

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I mean, for example, if you're terrified of dying, religion may answer the need for comfort and consolation.

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Or if you miss a loved one who's died

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and you hope to see them one day in heaven then religion answers a need it doesn't make it true

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and one last thing and then we'll go to the audience what do you say to those people who say

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you talk a great deal about the power of science the truth of science

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you have people like sam harris who say morality can be determined by science

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you have quite charismatic forceful people going around the world proselytizing on behalf of science

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that science is actually the a new religion that you guys are pitching?

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I wouldn't say it's a new religion.

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I mean, it certainly does some of the things that religion traditionally has tried to do, like to answer the deep questions of existence.

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And it does that, and it does it successfully in a way that religion never has.

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But it isn't a religion because it's not based upon any holy books, it's not based upon faith, it's not based upon revelation,

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it's not based upon tradition, it's based upon evidence, and there's a huge difference.

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And anything that we do not have evidence for that's not scientifically testable.

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you would dismiss?

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Well, scientifically testable is putting the bar rather highly, but I do think that evidence is the only good reason to believe anything, yes.

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So love, beauty, aesthetics, metaphysics?

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I mean, those are obviously important questions, and if you ask some question like, how do you know that your wife loves you?

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It's from evidence.

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I mean, it's not scientifically testable evidence, but it's evidence.

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It's little looks in the eyes, little catches in the voice.

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It's, it's, um, that is evidence.

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That's not, that's not just internal revelation.

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Okay.

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Do you understand?

427

It does make me chuckle that you mock me for believing in a prophet that flies into a heaven,

428

but you believe in lots and lots of universes that you can't show me, prove to me, test me in a lab,

429

as a basis of getting out of believing in a God and a prophet.

430

I'm astonished that you should compare the two.

431

I'm comparing the lack of evidence for the two.

432

Well, you cannot use your own intuitive common sense in order to diss physics.

433

I mean, if you could do that, we wouldn't need physicists.

434

I mean, they are very sophisticated people, they do mathematics.

435

But there are physicists like Paul Davies who have dissed the multiverse series being nonsense.

436

Well, Paul Davies would rather take the view that there's something mysterious in the origin of the universe.

437

And that's another perfectly respectable physicist's view.

438

Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize winning physicist.

439

It's respectable if a physicist holds a view about mystery in the universe, but not if anyone else holds it.

440

If we're talking about the origin of the universe, that is a problem in physics, yes.

441

Let's end with a couple of quick questions.

442

If, as Christopher Hitchens, the late Christopher Hitchens wrote, religion is ineradicable and, as you put it, harder to get rid of than smallpox,

443

doesn't this basically mean that whatever motivations you have, no matter how passionately you're driven and love for the truth, you are essentially wasting your time?

444

I would never admit to wasting my time trying to propagate the truth,

445

and I think I can claim a modicum of success with the people that I've written, have read my books, the people who've attended my lectures.

446

It's a doctrine of despair to say that we're stuck with religion for all eternity.

447

The religions of ancient Greece and ancient Rome and the Vikings are all dead.

448

Nobody believes in Jupiter or Thor anymore and I have great hopes

449

that the same is going to be true of the God of Abraham. And one last thing.

450

There's a new book out from one of this country's well -known philosophers called Religion for Atheists,

451

which makes the case that no matter how false religion is, no matter how imaginary God may be, there are some lessons, there are some institutions,

452

there are some values that atheists could usefully borrow.

453

I've heard that argument put.

454

I've heard people say that humans do need some sort of rituals and they need some sort of gathering places, meeting places.

455

I can sort of see that.

456

It's not a thing that interests me very much.

457

I don't feel any great need for for ritual.

458

I don't feel any great need to fill the alleged vacuum that will be left when religion goes.

459

I think there's plenty to fill it already.

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze spreekles is gebaseerd op de video “Is Religion Good or Evil?”. Deze video bevat 459 zinnen en 5504 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 28:00. De spreker praat snel, ongeveer 197 woorden per minuut, dus reken op verbonden en ingeslikte klanken. 83% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden; de rest kun je beter vooraf bekijken. 73 van de 459 zinnen zijn vragen, dus het is goede oefening voor vraagintonatie en korte antwoorden.

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

15 woorden uit de video die het leren waard zijn, met uitspraak en betekenis:

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
atheist zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈeɪ.θi.ɪst/	atheïst, atheïste
belief zelfstandig naamwoord	/bɪˈliːf/	geloof
priest zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈpɹiːst/	priester, pastoor
moral bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ˈmoɹəl/	moreel
regard zelfstandig naamwoord	/ɹɪˈɡɑːd/	respect, achting
argue werkwoord	/ˈɑɹ.ɡju/	redetwisten
crack zelfstandig naamwoord	/kɹæk/	barst, breuk
worship zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈwɝ.ʃɪp/	verering, aanbidding
miracle zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈmɪɹ.ə.kəl/	wonder, mirakel
rational bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/	rationeel, redelijk
prophet zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈpɹɑ.fɪt/	profeet, profete
morality zelfstandig naamwoord	/məˈɹælɪti/	moraal
believer zelfstandig naamwoord	/bɪˈlivɚ/	gelovige
horrible bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ˈhɔɹ.ɪ.bəl/	verschrikkelijk
physics zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈfɪz.ɪks/	natuurkunde, fysica

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
bring up werkwoord		opvoeden
carry out werkwoord	/ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/	uitvoeren
come out werkwoord	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	uitkomen
get on with werkwoord		aan de gang gaan met, doorgaan
go out werkwoord		naar buiten gaan
grow up werkwoord		opgroeien
turn out werkwoord		uitvallen, resulteren

Zinnen om te herhalen

Korte, volledige zinnen uit de video die je in alledaagse gesprekken kunt gebruiken:

I mean, do you believe religion is evil?
What do you know that he doesn't know?
Why don't you also isolate the other factors?
What do you think you're saying?
How do you know it's wrong?

Grammatica in deze video

De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:

Structuur	In de video
Voorwaardelijke zinnen if + zin, will/would + werkwoord — een voorwaarde en het gevolg	if you were being fair, wouldn't you · if you could do that, we wouldn't need
Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt	you've actually read · haven't read · I've ever made
Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet	is widely advertised · is worshipped · is adored
Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding	evidence, which is · people who do · people who go

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 163 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals I'm, don't, you're. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De “th”-klanken: atheist /ˈeɪ.θi.ɪst/, bother /ˈbɑðɚ/, ethnic /ˈɛθ.nɪk/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/
De klanken “sh” en “zh”: worship /ˈwɝ.ʃɪp/, rational /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/, revelation /ˌɹɛv.əˈleɪ.ʃən/, distraction /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: morality /məˈɹælɪti/, terrorism /ˈtɛɹəɹɪzəm/, revelation /ˌɹɛv.əˈleɪ.ʃən/, intellectual /ˌɪntəˈlɛkt͡ʃʊəl/, justification /ˌd͡ʒʌstɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: regard /ɹɪˈɡɑːd/, afterwards /ˈæf.tɚ.wɚdz/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, acknowledge /əkˈnɑ.lɪd͡ʒ/, shade /ʃeɪd/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: crack /kɹæk/, rational /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/, morality /məˈɹælɪti/, paradise /ˈpæɹədaɪs/, distraction /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: regard /ɹɪˈɡɑːd/, argue /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/, dignity /ˈdɪɡnɪti/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/

Zo oefen je met deze video

Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als atheist, belief, priest.

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?

Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.

Shadowing-techniek: lees de volledige stap-voor-stap-gids →

Shadowing Practice: Is Religion Good or Evil? | Richard Dawkins vs Mehdi Hasan - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Zinnen om te herhalen

Grammatica in deze video

Uitspraak om op te letten

Zo oefen je met deze video

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?