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i think her question was coming from a much different place than his answer. She asked, seemingly, from a sense of obligation. He used rational arguments about the 'luck' of circumstance, but the sense of hubris is not specific to her. It is endemic in a way of thinking, from which Dawkins himself is not entirely divorced.

Dawkins shits me these days. He's a man almost entirely devoid of humour and does not have the temperament to face people with opposing viewpoints to himself.

I recently watched him be interviewed by Australia's own Andrew Denton, and my god did Dawkins come across as a humourless dick.

I hate that he is so much the face of atheism these days, because he doesn't show the humanity of it well at all. I MUCH prefer Neil deGrasse Tyson, because he is a man of humour, of wit, of charm. All of which I think Dawkins lacks.

He just makes me cringe now.

He still didn't answer her question. He turned it back on her to make a different point.
I would like to hear him answer that particular existential question.

Yo spoco2, Parker and Stone covered the phenom quite well I thought on Southpark-In my experience and with Americans especially, people tend to become assholes to the uninitiated from point-of-epiphany, forward.

SCIENCEDAMMIT!

It is the time of the otters now..

If you didn't see the humor in his response then perhaps you are the humorless dick.

It was not only funny it was brilliant. Only a person with such a narrow/ignorant viewpoint would ask such a question.

If you believe a bunch of nonsense with it's own made up rules about what will happen to you IF you believe the story and what will happen IF you don't believe the story then you already know the answer to the question "what if you're wrong".

The real question should be of the thousands and thousands of stories created by man to explain man's existence on this planet where do you get the balls to assume you got it right and everyone else (not just atheists) needs to be worried about "what if you got it wrong"?

Because it was an answer she already knew....she knows the stories of what happens to believers and what happens to non-believers. So the real question should be...of all the stories about all of the gods why should he be worried about the ONE she thinks is the true story when she (and most people) are not concerned in the least that what if THEY got it wrong.

The question seems pretty inane to me. I mean, are we talking about a sort of pascal's wager thing here or are we literally asking what the null hypothesis of atheism is?

The consequences of being wrong shouldn't have any impact on your decision. It is not evidence one way or the other. If you want to get really existential you might as well ask, "What if I am wrong about ME existing".

Agreed. While I take his point (and agree with it) about how an accident of birth can influence our worldview, I find his methodology in answering this question rhetorically inadequate. Maybe he's been doing television and the Youtubes for too long as some of his answers lately have struck me as more posturing for those who agree with him than anything else. He may be tired of answering versions of this question, but I would have preferred something more sincere, rather than the slightly academic version of "Because I said so."

How would you answer that question? I could be reading too much into this, but I assume when she asks "What if you're wrong?" she means if you died tomorrow and found yourself brought before a god that believes homosexuality, premarital sex, abortion, etc.. are all sins how would you justify yourself. What would be a sincere answer in your estimation? If it were me I'd have probably just told god I thought he was a dick.