RICHARD DAWKINS: Thank you very much, Tim. But the word debate does appear up on the notice there. It may turn into more of a dialogue than a debate. I suspect that Steve Pinker and I are perhaps largely of the same mind here, so there's a risk that anybody who's come here expecting a confrontation will go away disappointed by too much agreement. I don't know if this will happen, but if it does, I don't think there's any need to apologize. The adversarial approach to truth isn't necessarily always the best one. On the contrary, when two people disagree strongly, a great deal of time may be wasted. It's been well said that when two opposite points of view are advocated with equal vigor, the truth does not necessarily lie mid-way between them. And in the same way, when two people agree about something, it's just possible that the reason they agree is that they're both right. There's also I suppose the hope that in a dialogue of this sort each speaker may manage to achieve a joint understanding with the other one, better than he would have done on his own.

Is science killing the soul? This is a cunning title, because it cunningly mixes two different meanings of soul. The first and oldest meaning of soul, which I'm going to call Soul One, takes off from one set of definitions. I'm going to quote several related definitions from the Oxford dictionary:

"The principle of life in man or animals -- animate existence."

"The principle of thought and action in man commonly regarded as an entity distinct from the body, the spiritual part of man in contrast to the purely physical."

"The spiritual part of man regarded as surviving after death, and as susceptible of happiness or misery in a future state."

"The disembodied spirit of a deceased person regarded as a separate entity and as invested with some amount of form and personality."

So Soul One refers to a particular theory of life. It's the theory that there is something non-material about life, some non-physical vital principle. It's the theory according to which a body has to be animated by some anima. Vitalized by a vital force. Energized by some mysterious energy. Spiritualized by some mysterious spirit. Made conscious by some mysterious thing or substance called consciousness. You'll notice that all those definitions of Soul One are circular and non-productive. It's no accident. Julian Huxley once satirically likened vitalism to the theory that a railway engine works by "force-locomotif." I don't always agree with Julian Huxley, but here he hit the nail beautifully. In the sense of Soul One, science has either killed the soul or is in the process of doing so.

But there is a second sense of soul, Soul Two, which takes off from another one of the Oxford dictionary's definitions:

"Intellectual or spiritual power. High development of the mental faculties. Also, in somewhat weakened sense, deep feeling, sensitivity."