Terry Pratchett on the Guardian Book Club

There are lots of positive laughs, as well a few ‘shock’ noises from the audience, as Terry Pratchett addresses the Guardian Book Club.

Pratchett is the beloved author of the Discworld series and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Pratchett describes Carl Sagan’s Cosmos as “the best piece of popular science that there has ever been” and advises the audience to “go and get it”.

“There are lots of people including Einstein, and Spinoza, and … me,” he says, prompting laugher, so he adds, “and Stephen Hawking,” who are all naturally inclined to the good. “In my religion the building of a telescope is the building of a cathedral,” he says, dismissing Genesis and the Old Testament as indicating only the presence of a “maniac” god, to applause from the audience. On the New Testament he says that St Paul “should have been introduced to a good woman” – this time eliciting a smattering of applause but also noises of outraged (but not too outraged) surprise.

He then addresses the science of evolution, saying how much more interesting it is “that a bunch of monkeys got down off trees and stopped arguing long enough to build this, to build that, and to build everything!” Evolution is far more interesting than the Bible, and street lamps are more important than stars: “there’s only a few million of them in the universe, and they were built by monkeys!”

He concludes, “I would much rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.”

Terry Pratchett also spoke to the BHA earlier in the year on a number of topics related to his humanism, to meaning, science and his books. The first video from that interview, on the topic of assisted dying, is available on the BHA’s YouTube channel and below.

Pratchett supports the legalisation of assisted dying, saying, “I’m thinking of a sensible decision, that at a point x a life should stop. Without pain, without undue suffering. … It seems sensible and generous.”