Root of All Evil?
Root of All Evil?
| 09 January 2006 (USA)
Root of All Evil? Trailers

In this two-part Channel 4 series, Professor Richard Dawkins challenges what he describes as 'a process of non-thinking called faith'. He describes his astonishment that, at the start of the 21st century, religious faith is gaining ground in the face of rational, scientific truth. Science, based on scepticism, investigation and evidence, must continuously test its own concepts and claims. Faith, by definition, defies evidence: it is untested and unshakeable, and is therefore in direct contradiction with science. In addition, though religions preach morality, peace and hope, in fact, says Dawkins, they bring intolerance, violence and destruction. The growth of extreme fundamentalism in so many religions across the world not only endangers humanity but, he argues, is in conflict with the trend over thousands of years of history for humanity to progress to become more enlightened and more tolerant.

Reviews
Greenes

Please don't spend money on this.

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Derry Herrera

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

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Tayyab Torres

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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Staci Frederick

Blistering performances.

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S F

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.

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Qahtan Jasim

I totally agree with everything Dawkins says but the problem with atheists is that they too are fundamentalist believers just like theist ones, they are so sure that what we know yet about the universe, biology and evolution is the absolute truth and everyone else who disagree with them is blind and wrong. I don't believe that god exists (no evidence), we all know that, but I also don't believe that god does not exist as there is no evidence on this claim too, so I can say that I'm an atheist until proved otherwise. but what we think we know about god and the universe which is religion is bad and naive and causing much more harm than good to the human race(hatred, killing in the name of god, terrorism,myths and superstitions blocking our pursuit of the truth about this world). If there is a god somewhere (which I highly doubt given the indifference and lack of interference in our war torn world) I don't think that such a deity who made us in the first place and programmed us (genetics) to be good or evil would burn us in hell for eternity if he's to be fair, and if he's not then why bother praying and dedicating our time and finite resources to the stupid and meaningless rituals that we human beings do throughout our lifetime hoping that in the other life god will reward us and save us from hell when he already decided who wins and who loses.Richard Dawkins - two thumbs up.

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r-letkeman

I watched this after watching Religulous and have to say I can't recommend it. It's a straight forward attack as preachy as the people he attacks. Both sides are arrogant and superior sounding to each other as they ask the other to "not be arrogant and superior sounding".The whole thing seemed an exercise of watching 6 year old kids fighting in a school yard. It was even ironic how Dawkins continuously pushed his faith like a preacher, demanding proof for everything which is a goal not a possibility. All the while forgetting that the basis of science is faith. We can't prove anything in science, all it does is help disprove things and we assume what's left, no matter how improbable is true or real or at least almost so.I also wish the language he used were less harsh and more objective. It could have a nice documentary instead of verbal porn.See Religulous instead. It's gentle and funny.BTW, my 6/10 means it has redeeming values, just barely. Watch it if you're really really bored.

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siderite

This is a show about nothing! :) Well, about how ridiculous it is to believe in a god that simply isn't there. Dawkings is clearly an anti-theist, not simply an atheist, being rather violent in his search for the supremacy of evidence based logic over dim witted religion.That is actually the problem with the documentary. The people interviewed on the religious side are simply too far gone to sound remotely lucid. Dawkings chose the people on their religious fervour, therefore they can only look ridiculous in a film based on logic.The arguments are solid though, no matter their aggressive delivery. One of the things I liked is the ending of the first part from where I quote: "we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in, some of us just go one god further".By omitting the few good things about religion, Dawkings appears just a extremist as the religious fanatics that preach on about holy armies and the true god. Bottom line: if you are an atheist, there is nothing new in the film that you haven't already thought of yourself; if you believe in god, you will most likely feel attacked and dislike the film.

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