This is the first part of a brand new BBC documentary series narrated by Richard Dawkins, dealing with, what he considers, the delusion and dangers of superstitious beliefs. This is an extension of his previous highly controversial documentary series Root of All Evil? (you can watch it here), which shows the perils of using religious beliefs based on ancient and scientifically unsophisticated premises, especially when combined with modern day technology (in other words, stone age pious monkeys using nuclear weapons, or using planes to fly into crowded buildings... yeah, totally scary).As Dawkins shows, this is not just a matter of whether some beliefs are true or not, or comforting or not. Beliefs do not exist in a vacuum; they produce behavioral consequences which ultimately affect people in a variety of ways, causing psychological and/or physical damage in many cases.
Watch out for all the excuses that paranormal "experts" use when just about every single experiment conducted on their craft does no better than expected chance based on mere random probability. And then there's the guy who says that astrology has been "proved" to him against his rationality, and then proceeds to try to use his reason to justify them; if that's not the greatest contradiction, I don't know what is...
Finally, the wonderful alternative to all this hocus-pocus spook stuff, Dawkins argues, is science, which is even more poetic, not just because it's more beautiful, elegant, sophisticated and awe-inspiring, but because it's much closer to reality and truth.
Check out more of this nonsense here.
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