tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89701580453670196002024-03-27T19:53:07.370-04:00Hitchens Debates TranscriptsTranscripts from Christopher Hitchens' debates, discussions, and interviews with theists.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-89289888249031112522011-12-16T07:28:00.002-05:002011-12-16T07:50:47.415-05:00Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)We at HDT mourn the loss of the great wit and wonder, Christopher Hitchens. In a pungent irony to which he would no doubt raise a glass, Hitchens, who decried hero worship, became an idol to countless muckrakers and misanthropes.<br /><br />A classic Hitchslap from a recent debate:<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QbBVB66DC5k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-56180478418560695112011-10-21T16:26:00.038-04:002012-03-29T17:52:19.182-04:00Hitchens vs. McGrath, Georgetown University<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Cristopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alister_McGrath>Alister McGrath</a>: Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World<br /><li>October 11, 2007, <a href=http://www.roythomson.com/>Georgetown University</a>, Washington, D.C., USA <br /> <br />[Introductions by <a href=http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/banchoff/>Thomas Banchoff</a> and moderator <a href=http://eppc.org/scholars/scholarid.10/scholar.asp>Michael Cromartie</a>]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj91OJomYLef87iWVVsNuTtQstKG_j5rB09Lk7E1Is0QDvQE5gscnuu-rdkaB6D62lQGKTMkziWAo1Ah7cIp0YFBpBsZysl9Ga7fWa2SydTgYfB5LyH31wNklQtkBud-dHzfDHpLe5VXOw4/s1600/Hitchens.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj91OJomYLef87iWVVsNuTtQstKG_j5rB09Lk7E1Is0QDvQE5gscnuu-rdkaB6D62lQGKTMkziWAo1Ah7cIp0YFBpBsZysl9Ga7fWa2SydTgYfB5LyH31wNklQtkBud-dHzfDHpLe5VXOw4/s320/Hitchens.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666051120104769282" /></a>HITCHENS: Well, thank you Georgetown, thank you ladies and gentlemen for coming. Thank you, Michael, for that suspiciously terse introduction, which of all the introductions I've heard to myself, is certainly the most recent. Thank you, seriously, to the Ethics and Public Policy Center and for your work, for conceiving this idea, for encouraging me to do it, for bringing us (Dr. McGrath) all the way from our common alma mater of Oxford and for the regular seminars that you may not know that Michael does all the time on these matters of faith versus reason which is, after all, the ground on which we are met this evening. I always come before events like this with antagonists like Dr. McGrath with a slight sense, a very slight sense—I hope it doesn't sound self-pitying—of inequality. My views are, if I say it for myself, tolerably well advertised and if they're not, it's partly your fault because what I say is fairly intelligible, very plainly stated, if—you know what I think if you care to find out. When I debate with Jews and Muslims and Christians, I very often find, I say, "Well, do you really believe there was a virgin birth?" "Do you really believe in a Genesis creation?" "Do you really believe in bodily resurrection?" and I get a sort of Monty Python reply: "Well, there's a little bit of metaphorical, really." I'm not sure, and I’m going to find out—I’m determined to find out this evening which line on this my antagonist does take and I want you to notice and I want you to test him on it because I think it's fair and I'm going to talk to him and to you as if he did represent the Christian faith. I can't do all three monotheisms tonight. I may get a whack at the other two in the course of the discussion, I can only really do his and I'm going to assume that it means something to him and that it's not just a humanist metaphysics and I think I'm entitled to that assumption. The main thing I want to dispute this evening—because I'm either drowning in time with twenty minutes, it's either too much or too little—is this: you hear it very often said by people of a vague faith that, well it may not be the case that religion is metaphysically true; its figures and its stories may be legendary or dwell on the edge of myth, prehistoric, its truth claims may be laughable; we have better claims—excuse me, better explanations for the origins and birth of our cosmos and our species now, so much better so, in fact, that had they been available to begin with, religion would never have taken root. No one would now go back to the stage when we didn't have any real philosophy, we only had mythology, when we thought we lived on a flat planet or when we thought that our planet was circulated by the sun instead of the other way around, when we didn't know that there were micro-organisms as part of creation and that they were more powerful than us and had dominion over us rather than we, them, when we were fearful of the infancy of our species. We, we wouldn't have taken up theism if we'd known now what we did then, but allow for all that, allow for all that, you still have to credit religion with being the source of ethics and morals. Where would we get these from if it weren't from faith? I think, in the time I've got, I think that's the position I most want to undermine. I don't believe that it's true that religion is moral or ethical. I certainly don't believe of course that any of its explanations about the origin of our species or the Cosmos or its ultimate destiny are true either. In fact, I think most of those have been conclusively, utterly discredited, but I'll deal with the remaining claim. It is moral—okay, and I can only do Christianity this evening—is it moral to believe that your sins, yours and mine, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, can be forgiven by the punishment of another person? Is it ethical to believe that? I would submit that the doctrine of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is utterly immoral. I might, if I wished, if I knew any of you, you were my friends or even if I didn't know you but I just loved the idea of you (compulsory love is another sickly element of Christianity, by the way), but suppose I could say, “Look, you're in debt, I've just made a lot of money out of a God-bashing book, I'll pay your debts for you. Maybe you'll pay me back some day, but for now I can get you out of trouble.” I could say if I really loved someone who had been sentenced to prison if I can find a way of saying I'd serve your sentence, I'd try and do it. I could do what Sydney Carton does in a <i>Tale of Two Cities</i>, if you like—I'm very unlikely to do this unless you've been incredibly sweet to me—I'll take your place on the scaffold, but I can't take away your responsibilities. I can't forgive what you did, I can't say you didn't do it, I can't make you washed clean. The name for that in primitive middle eastern society was "scapegoating." You pile the sins of the tribe on a goat, you drive that goat into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. And you think you've taken away the sins of the tribe. This is a positively immoral doctrine that abolishes the concept of personal responsibility on which all ethics and all morality must depend. It has a further implication. I'm told that I have to have a share in this human sacrifice even though it took place long before I was born. I have no say in it happening, I wasn't consulted about it. Had I been present I would have been bound to do my best to stop the public torture and execution of an eccentric preacher. I would do the same even now. No, no, I'm implicated in it, I, myself, drove in the nails, I was present at Calvary, it confirms the original filthy sin in which I was conceived and born, the sin of Adam in Genesis. Again, this may sound a mad belief, but it is the Christian belief. Well it's here that we find something very sinister about monotheism and about religious practice in general: It is incipiently at least, and I think often explicitly, totalitarian. I have no say in this. I am born under a celestial dictatorship which I could not have had any hand in choosing. I don't put myself under its government. I am told that it can watch me while I sleep. I'm told that it can convict me of—here's the definition of totalitarianism—thought crime, for what I think I may be convicted and condemned. And that if I commit a right action, it's only to evade this punishment and if I commit a wrong action, I'm going to be caught up not just with punishment in life for what I've done which often follows axiomatically, but, no, even after I'm dead. In the Old Testament, gruesome as it is, recommending as it is of genocide, racism, tribalism, slavery, genital mutilation, in the displacement and destruction of others, terrible as the Old Testament gods are, they don't promise to punish the dead. There's no talk of torturing you after the earth has closed over the Amalekites. Only toward when gentle Jesus, meek and mild, makes his appearance are those who won't accept the message told they must depart into everlasting fire. Is this morality, is this ethics? I submit not only is it not, not only does it come with the false promise of vicarious redemption, but it is the origin of the totalitarian principle which has been such a burden and shame to our species for so long. I further think that it undermines us in our most essential integrity. It dissolves our obligation to live and witness in truth. Which of us would say that we would believe something because it might cheer us up or tell our children that something was true because it might dry their eyes? Which of us indulges in wishful thinking, who really cares about the pursuit of truth at all costs and at all hazards? Can it not be said, do you not, in fact, hear it said repeatedly about religion and by the religious themselves that, "Well it may not be really true, the stories may be fairy tales, the history may be dubious, but it provides consolation." Can anyone hear themselves saying this or have it said of them without some kind of embarrassment? Without the concession that thinking here is directly wishful, that, yes, it would be nice if you could throw your sins and your responsibilities on someone else and have them dissolved, but it's not true and it's not morally sound and that's the second ground of my indictment. [To Michael Cromartie] (Michael, you will tell me when I'm trespassing on the time of Dr. McGrath, won't you?) On our integrity, our basic integrity, knowing right from wrong and being able to choose a right action over a wrong one, I think one must repudiate the claim that one doesn't have this moral discrimination innately, that, no, it must come only from the agency of a celestial dictatorship which one must love and simultaneously fear. What is it like, I've never tried it, I've never been a cleric, what is it like to lie to children for a living and tell them that they have an authority, that they must love—compulsory love, what a grotesque idea—and be terrified of it at the same time. What's that like? I want to know. And that we don't have an innate sense of right and wrong, children don't have an innate sense of fairness and decency, which of course they do. What is it like? I can personalize it to this extent, my mother's Jewish ancestors are told that until they got to Sinai, they'd been dragging themselves around the desert under the impression that adultery, murder, theft and perjury were all fine, and they get to Mount Sinai only to be told it's not kosher after all. I'm sorry, excuse me, you must have more self-respect than that for ourselves and for others. Of course the stories are fiction. It's a fabrication exposed conclusively by Israeli archaeology. Nothing of the sort ever took place, but suppose we take the metaphor? It's an insult, it's an insult to us, it's an insult to our deepest integrity. No, if we believed that perjury, murder and theft were all right, we wouldn't have got as far as the foot of Mount Sinai or anywhere else. Now we're told what we have to believe and this is—I'm coming now to the question of whether or not science, reason and religion are compatible or I would rather say reconcilable. The great Stephen J. Gould—the late, great Stephen J. Gould said that he believed they were non-overlapping magisteria; you can be both a believer and a person of faith. Sitting in front of me is a very distinguished—extremely distinguished scholar Francis Collins, helped us to unlock the human genome project, who is himself a believer. I'd love to hear from him, I hope we hear from him. I don't believe that he says his discoveries of the genome convinced him of the truth of religion. He holds it, as it were, independently. [to Francis Collins] I hope I do you no wrong, sir, in phrasing it like that. Here's why I, a non-scientist, will say that I think it's radically irreconcilable, I'd rather say, than incompatible. I've taken the best advice I can on how long <i>Homo sapiens</i> has been on the planet. Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, many others, and many discrepant views from theirs, reckon it's not more than 250,000 years, a quarter of a million years. It's not less, either. I think it's roughly accepted, [to Francis Collins] I think, sir you wouldn't disagree. 100,000 is the lowest I've heard and actually I was about to say, again not to sound too Jewish, I'll take 100,000. I only need 100,000, call it one hundred. For 100,000 years <i>Homo sapiens</i> was born, usually, well not usually, very often dying in the process or killing its mother in the process; life expectancy probably not much more than 20, 25 years, dying probably of the teeth very agonizingly, nearer to the brain as they are, or of hunger or of micro-organisms that they didn't know existed or of events such as volcanic or tsunami or earthquake types that would have been wholly terrifying and mysterious as well as some turf wars over women, land, property, food, other matters. You can fill in—imagine it for yourself what the first few tens of thousands of years were like. And we like to think learning a little bit in the process and certainly having gods all the way, worshipping bears fairly early on, I can sort of see why; sometimes worshipping other human beings, (big mistake, I'm coming back to that if I have time), this and that and the other thing, but exponentially perhaps improving, though in some areas of the world very nearly completely dying out, and a bitter struggle all along. Call it 100,000 years. According to the Christian faith, heaven watches this with folded arms for 98,000 years and then decides it's time to intervene and the best way of doing that would be a human sacrifice in primitive Palestine, where the news would take so long to spread that it still hasn't penetrated very large parts of the world and that would be our redemption of human species. Now I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that that is, what I've just said, which you must believe to believe the Christian revelation, is not possible to believe, as well as not decent to believe. Why is it not possible? Because a virgin birth is more likely than that. A resurrection is more likely than that and because if it was true, it would have two further implications: It would have to mean that the designer of this plan was unbelievably lazy and inept or unbelievably callous and cruel and indifferent and capricious, and that is the case with every argument for design and every argument for revelation and intervention that has ever been made. But it's now conclusively so because of the superior knowledge that we've won for ourselves by an endless struggle to assert our reason, our science, our humanity, our extension of knowledge against the priests, against the rabbis, against the mullahs who have always wanted us to consider ourselves as made from dust or from a clot of blood, according to the Koran, or as the Jews are supposed to pray every morning, at least not female or gentile. And here's my final point, because I think it's coming to it. The final insult that religion delivers to us, the final poison it injects into our system: It appeals both to our meanness, our self-centeredness and our solipsism and to our masochism. In other words, it's sadomasochistic. I'll put it like this: you're a clot of blood, you're a piece of mud, you're lucky to be alive, God fashioned you for his convenience, even though you're born in filth and sin and even though every religion that's ever been is distinguished principally by the idea that we should be disgusted by our own sexuality. Name me a religion that does not play upon that fact. So you're lucky to be here, originally sinful and covered in shame and filth as you are, you're a wretched creature, but take heart, the Universe is designed with you in mind and heaven has a plan for you. Ladies and gentlemen, I close by saying I can't believe there is a thinking person here who does not realize that our species would begin to grow to something like its full height if it left this childishness behind, if it emancipated itself from this sinister, childish nonsense. And I now commit you to the good Dr. McGrath. Thank you. <br /><br />[Introduction by Michael Cromartie] <br /> <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9TVQggm-LS94KHIszE8ulLjn5iBar_r4H6FuF8SzvsbyD1eh0lqL7gcmeyLLH1aWkskQ08RQ6nCzmLPrOKgQOcaE-ZTnUfPvGmP8ozs-9vk3YeXMD31-8JxqkHPrNXWODsafiwiY6-ix0/s1600/AlisterMcGrath2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 128px; height: 128px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9TVQggm-LS94KHIszE8ulLjn5iBar_r4H6FuF8SzvsbyD1eh0lqL7gcmeyLLH1aWkskQ08RQ6nCzmLPrOKgQOcaE-ZTnUfPvGmP8ozs-9vk3YeXMD31-8JxqkHPrNXWODsafiwiY6-ix0/s320/AlisterMcGrath2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666054566960478082" /></a>McGRATH: Well thank you very much, indeed. It's a huge pleasure to be here at Georgetown this afternoon. Now, if someone had told me when I was growing up that I'd be here at such a distinguished place as Georgetown talking about atheism, I would have been extremely surprised, I think for two reasons. One was: I grew up in Northern Ireland. Now, some of you might come from this place. It's a kind of rather backward place and the greatest annual event of my youth was the Donnekadi Donkey Darby, so you can see coming to some place like Washington is just amazing, so, you know, it's great to be here. But what surprised me more if someone were to say that you're taking part in a debate about atheism, is that I would have assumed I would have been on the atheist side, because certainly as a young man that was what I believed. I grew up in Northern Ireland studying the sciences, wanting to go to Oxford to take this further and it was very, very clear to me that the sciences disproved God, they completely eroded the ground on which faith stood and of course there was violence between Protestant and Catholic in Northern Ireland. Therefore, my logic was infallible: no Catholics, no Protestants, no violence between Catholics and Protestants. So it seemed to me to be very, very straightforward. And certainly when I went up to Oxford to begin to study the sciences in much more detail, it seemed to me, really, I had sorted things out and could relax for a while. But I found myself being challenged by a number of things. One was being challenged by—beginning to read the history and philosophy of science and reading that the kind of scientific positivism I had imbibed wasn't quite as straightforward as I had suggested. And also beginning to realize actually that the evidential basis for atheism was much weaker than I had realized and I began to find myself being excited intellectually and stimulated far more than I dared to think by the Christian faith. And so in the end I came to faith swapping my old faith of atheism for my new one of Christianity. I don't think I did so as any kind of wish fulfillment, of any kind of psychological need, it was much more just a profound intellectual conviction that this was right, that this made sense in itself and this made sense of things, as well. It was like someone I suppose who had knew water suddenly discovering champagne. So for me this was really a very significant event and indeed to this day I still look back at my atheist days with great nostalgia, even though I no longer actually hold to those positions. And so it's a very great pleasure to be able to interact this afternoon with Christopher Hitchens. And I wanted to make it very clear that what he is saying today needs to be respected and I hope I will behave respectfully towards him. I want to offer some points of disagreement, some points of challenge, some points of agreement and also some genuine points of curiosity to try and get our conversation underway. And so I want to really focus on his main argument which I think you've heard very, very clearly, that religion is immoral and leads to immorality; that in some way it is toxic. These seem to me to be very significant arguments, very significant claims and, therefore, I want to try and engage with them. I apologize to him and indeed I also apologize to you in that in the time available I will not be able to interact with him properly, but at least I hope I can begin to get this conversation moving forward. So an obvious question I find myself asking as I both read Mr. Hitchens' book and also listened to him speak is that I think there are aspects of this that I would have loved to have heard more about. For example, in recent years, especially the last 15 years, there's been a very substantial body of scientific research into the empirical effect that religious commitment actually has on people. And as someone who was a scientist and still remains wedded to evidence-based thinking, I wondered if this might actually come into Mr. Hitchens' presentation. To give you an example, if we look at Koenig and Cohen's very famous book published in 2001, <i>The Link Between Religion and Health</i>, we find that the overwhelming body of empirical studies to look at this find a positive correlation between religious commitment and well-being. Now that does not prove that there is a God and certainly it does not prove that all forms of religion are good for you. Now I will gladly concede because I think Mr. Hitchens is right on this that there are some forms of religion that are pathological, that damage people. But there is a need I think for a real discussion about what is pathological and what is normal, about what is the center and what are the fringes. And that, I think, also extends to Mr. Hitchens' analysis of the impact of religion in general. He makes the point, and I think I want to say he is right to make this point, that religion has done much damage in history. I regard that point as being beyond contradiction and it seems to me that every one of us here this afternoon needs to say that is right. But I think we need also to go further and begin to explore and the kind of questions I would like to open up for discussion would include these: Yes, religion has done damage, but is this typical or is this a fringe element? Who are the normal people, who are the fanatics? And it seems to me there's a real need to try and make this kind of adjudication. I grant the history is there, that there have been some awful things done, but Michael Shermer, who is President of the Skeptics Society, wrote in the book <i>How We Believed</i> some years ago, for every one of these atrocities which must cause all of us deep concern, there are 10,000 unreported acts of kindness, generosity, and so forth arising from religious commitment. And trying to get this balance right seems to me to be of enormous importance. What is the fringe? What is the center? So that's one point I think I'd like to open up for further discussion. But I'd also like to try and just make a more general point and that is I think that worldiews in general, whether they are religious, irreligious, whatever they are, have the capacity to animate people to the extent that they feel they must go and do things which many of us would regard as morally reprehensible. We see this in the Soviet Union, a rather grim period in modern history where we find, for example, Lenin having said basically that there is no higher authority by which he may be judged, feeling able to "authorize the protracted use of brutality against religious believers." And it seems to me we have here an ideology, a world view which basically is sanctioning violence, in this case anti-religious violence. Now I would not argue from that that this shows that atheism in general or atheists in particular are violent people. It's much more about what movements do to people, about the damage that world views can cause when they begin to take over and begin to really animate people to want to do things. Again, look at the period under Stalin. There are many other examples we could give of world views that may well have begun with great excitement, great enthusiasm, a commitment to ideals that we can all identify with, but something happens and they go wrong. The French Revolution, I believe, began with an outburst of energy for liberty, but by 1793 it had degenerated into the reign of terror in which an appeal to liberty sanctioned the most dreadful acts of violence. And many of you all know the tragic story of Madame Roland who was brought to the guillotine on trumped-up charges in 1793 and as she was led to the guillotine, she pointed to a Statute of Liberty in the Place de Revolution and said, "Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name." History I think discloses a complex judgment here. I do not believe that it simply points to religion as being the cause of evil. I think it points to the capacity of all worldviews to begin to do this. It's not so much religion or, indeed, anti-religion, it seems to be something actually about human nature itself, which means that acts of kindness can be accompanied by acts of violence. There's something about us, I think, that really needs to be addressed there. So I don't think it's [x] religion poisons everything? I'm not sure. It can do, but so can other things, as well. The real problem I think is extremism, the kinds of ideologies that force violence upon us and those it seems to me do need to be challenged and on that, I'm at one with Mr. Hitchens. But is it God that's doing this? Let's move on and talk about this. Clearly a very important question here is how we know what God is like. Can you imagine God saying, "Go and do violence to someone." Well I think some could, quite easily. But I speak from a specific perspective, namely, that of a Christian theologian and for Christianity. The identity, the nature of God is disclosed in Jesus of Nazareth. He is the image of the invisible God, he is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. And when we look at Jesus of Nazareth, we see something I think that is very, very challenging. We have one who refuses to do violence, even in Gethsemane, when some want to raise swords to defend him as he's about to be betrayed, he bids them put their swords down. Jesus does not do violence, but he has violence done to him. And the point I want to make is that your vision of what God is like has a profound impact on what you think God is urging you to do. And it seems to me that if one is a good Christian, then one is going to take the vision of what God is like and what God wants us to do from what we find disclosed in Jesus with the utmost seriousness. Now let me make it absolutely clear, I concede, and I may well be one of these, that there are many bad Christians around who fail to live up to this vision, but I want to draw a clear distinction between "some Christians are bad" and "Christianity is bad." There is an aspiration, an inspiration, and norm and that means one can challenge those who want in some way to use violence in the name of God. And of course you can see this impacting on the way which people behave. In an episode that happened a year ago here in the United States, you've had, unfortunately, in recent days, some shooting incidents and of course what I'm talking about is the Amish schoolhouse killings of October 2006. Many of you know of these and some of you may have been affected by them. A crazed gunman broke into an Amish schoolhouse and shot I think it was ten Amish school girls, of whom five died. The Amish, as I'm sure you all know, are a very conservative Protestant sect who wear 17th-century clothing, who won't drive cars, they use horse buggies, and they also regard the ethical example of Jesus as absolutely normative. For them, there would be no retribution of any kind. The cycle of violence was broken instantly because for them, Christ ordered them, commanded them to show forgiveness. That's a very important point. Religion, or at least in this case Christianity, contains within itself the capacity for self-criticism. This is not the way God is, this is not the way we should be behaving and I fully concede there are those who fail to live up to that, but there is a challenge that can be issued to them: Why behave like this when there is the norm before you authorized as to what God would like us to do? So it seems to me there's a very important point to make there. Now Mr. Hitchens made some very interesting points about the relationship of science and faith. And of course, for me who was studying science, got to Oxford, doing research in molecular biophysics, these were live questions and I certainly welcome his challenge to discuss these things further, but for me there has never been this opposition between science and faith. Certainly some say there is, but I would want to make this point, building on what Stephen J. Gould says: Gould, in his book <i>Rocks of Ages</i> makes the point, I think fairly, that although in his case he's an atheist, he was not an atheist on account of his science, that in many ways his atheism was already there; he brought it to his science. And he makes this point: That science by its legitimate methods cannot adjudicate the God question. Certainly we can read nature in an atheist way, we can read nature in an agnostic way, we can read nature in a Christian way. But nature in itself and of itself does not force us to any of those positions. I will simply say that I find my Christian faith gave me new intellectual energy both to engage the natural order, to engage nature is to learn more about God and also to energize my understanding of what I was observing. And I find this summed up in a quote from C. S. Lewis which I am in the habit of quoting, I'm afraid: "I believe," he writes, "in Christianity, as I believe the sun has risen, not simply because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." In other words, it gives you an intellectual lens or framework through which you can look at the world, ourselves, culture and see it in a new light. So for me science and religion, there may be tensions, but is also a very powerful synergy which I believe to be both welcome and also something that can be developed further. But let me move on if I may, and make a further point. Mr. Hitchens makes some very significant criticisms of religion, which I need—which I agree need to be taken seriously but what, I wonder, does he offer in its place? In his book he talks a bit, especially the beginning and the end, of the need for a New Enlightenment. And I find this puzzling, though nevertheless extremely interesting. I find it puzzling because for me as an intellectual historian, the Enlightenment really had been left behind us as being, in the view of many post-modern critics, a world view that led to intolerance and a world view that actually generated the potential for conflict and violence. You all know why post modernity moved away from modernity on that point. And also, again a point I would love to discuss further with Mr. Hitchens, people like Alistair McIntyre, other critics of modernity, make the point that its foundational judgments about the nature of reason, the nature of what is right actually cannot be sustained on the basis of an appeal to history and reason itself. For McIntyre and for many others, the enlightenment offers us a vision of a rationality and morality which actually are unattainable in practice. Now again, we might want to have a discussion about morality and I fully accept that Mr. Hitchens is very committed to the moral vision as a real sense of what is right and what is wrong. But I wonder if one can sustain that without some sort of metaphysical basis. And the point I would want to raise is this: Is an evolutionary account of morality actually adequate to do the job? Richard Dawkins, with whom I disagree on many things, in his <i>The Selfish Gene</i> makes the point that we alone have the capacity to react against our genes to offer something better than we are genetically landed with, and it seems to me that is a very significant position. Moreagain, I discovered that both Mr. Hitchens and I are lapsed Marxists. To take Antonio Gramsci's point: Gramsci made the point that in culture, moral values are manipulated by interest groups. How on earth can we defend ourselves against this? My real question to Mr. Hitchens is, "Can one have a viable moral system without some sort of transcendent basis of morality?" I make this point not to challenge him as a moral thinker, but simply to ask whether one can actually do this. So I must end and I do so, if I may, by telling you a story based on my own Northern Ireland. The story is told of two Catholic nuns who were driving along one night when they ran out of gas. They realized they passed a gas station about 100 yards back, so they decided to walk back and fill up with gas. They rummaged about in the back of the car and they found a glass container which would do the job. Unfortunately it was a medical specimen jar with the word "urine" written all over it. That is all they had. They went back, filled it up and went to the car and started to pour this into the gas tank. A Protestant farmer drove by on his tractor and he looked at them in utter astonishment and he said, "Ladies, I don't think much of your religion, but I certainly admire your faith." And as I hear Mr. Hitchens speak, I find myself wondering if he, too, is a man of faith, a man who believes that even though we can't absolutely justify certain beliefs, nevertheless, we can trust them. He says, "Our beliefs are not beliefs," but I think they are and the real question for me is in a world where reason and science do not deliver what we once thought they did, on what can we base our lives if we are to know that we are truly living the good, the beautiful, and the true life. Thank you very much.<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Mr. Hitchens will take the podium again. <br /> <br />HITCHENS: Michael wanted to do this sitting down, but I'm—it's the old demagogue in me; I need the pulpit, I need the podium, and if I can't be erect at least I can be upright. (By the way, do you know why the Amish girl was excommunicated? Two men a night.) Look, I'm going to take the Doctor's excellent points in order, if I may, and you will I'm sure have minds orderly enough to recall the order in which he made them. On the empirical evidence, so-called adduced, that a religious faith can lead to greater health and well-being, I, in a sense, do not doubt it. In other words, I can easily imagine those who think they are the special object of a divine design, feel better for thinking so. I just think it's going to be very important for anyone claiming this to see the dismaying trap door that is right under their feet. If you're going to claim this for one, how are you not going to claim it for all? Do we not hear incessantly that the Hamas organization in Gaza is a provider of welfare to the poorest of the poor? Have we not heard this? Do we not hear that Louis Farrakhan's crackpot racist organization, the Nation of Islam, gets young people off drugs? For all I know, it's true. It not only says nothing about the truth or validity of their theology, but it must say a certain amount at least about our willingness to think wishfully or cultishly, which was, if you like, part of my point to begin with. As to the center versus the fringe, I get this all the time, "Don't judge religion by its fundamentalists and its extremists." No, why should I? I don't have to. I judge it by its foundational texts and I judge it by the statements of its authorities. Take a case from the Koran, just for once, does it—actually, it's not the Koran, excuse me, take a case from the Muslim foundational documents, the Hadith, which have equal conical authority. They say if someone becomes an apostate, leaves or changes their religion, they must be killed. The sentence is death. Don't anyone be telling me that's a metaphor. Oh, it's just intended as just a sort of admonition. No, it means what it says and it's been applied to a couple of people who now have to live, friends of mine, as a matter of fact, as political refugees in Washington, D.C., who know how true the impact of that Hadith is. There's no wiggle room there, so the question for a Muslim must be asked, "Do you think this is the word of God or don't you?" Because if you don't, you're saying that God shouldn't be able to tell you to do an evil thing and if you do, you're saying he should. In either case, faith falls as a reinforcement of ordinary morality. Recently—Dr. McGrath is a member of the Church of England, the Anglican communion, the Episcopalian communion, but what George Herbert, my favorite religious poet after John Donne, "the sweet mediocrity of our native church"—or something—he referred to, "the sea of Canterbury." Everyone thinks it's the mildest of all, and it not only calls itself a flock, it looks very sheep-like. However, the Bishop of Carlisle recently—tipped I'm told to be the next Arch Bishop of Canterbury, really said that the floods in Northern Yorkshire that devastated a large part of England in the Summer and killed and dispossessed a large number of people were a punishment for homosexuality. Now to connect meteorology to morality seems to me, I have to say, flat out idiotic, whichever way you do it. If there was a connection between meteorology and morality, which religion has very often argued that there is, I don't see why the floods hit Northern Yorkshire. I could think of some parts of London where they would have done it a lot more good, just as the hurricane that devastated New Orleans, we found, punishment for sin as it must have been, left the French Quarter alone. You have to make up your mind on this, you either think God intervenes or he doesn't. I'm clear, I say I don't think so. Will Dr. McGrath say that He does intervene and that we can tell when He does or will he not say so? You have to ask him, you have to hear his answer, does he say “He sometimes intervenes,” or does he say, “He moves in mysterious ways”? My position is clear, his remains I think distinctly opaque. It was the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, Jeffrey Fisher, who said the following: That "a thermal nuclear war would only hasten our transition into a more blessed state into which we were bound to eventuate anyway." If I had told you that remark and asked you to guess, you could have said Mahmoud Ahmadinajad said it or some other fanatical verminous Mullah. No, the Archbishop of Canterbury said it and why shouldn't he? Because another immoral and sinister thing about religion is that lurking under it at all times in every one of its versions is a desire for this life to come to an end, for this poor world to be over. The yearning, the secret death wish that's in all of it, let this be gone, let us move to the next stage, is present at all times. Unless it's repudiated, which I invite Dr. McGrath to do. But if he does so, I don't see what eschatological sense he can claim to remain a Christian. And he can't take it à la cart. If you claim or accept the one version, you have to accept the other. If it's true in general that religion does one thing and some people do good from it, then you have to accept all the wicked acts that are attributable to it as well, and I think you'll find that those don't quite equalize at the margin, depressing though that conclusion would be. I have a challenge which I have now put in print on the <i>Christianity Today</i> website, in Holy Blossom Synagogue in Toronto the night before last and in many other places, and on the air, and on the web, and it's this: If it's to be argued that our morality or ethics can be derived from the supernatural, then name me an action, a moral action, taken by a believer or a moral statement uttered by one, that could not have been made or uttered by an infidel, a non-believer. I have tried this everywhere on a large number of people, and I've not yet had even one reply. But if I was to ask you can you think of a wicked action that could only have been performed by someone who believed they were on an errand from God, there isn't one of you who would take 10 seconds to think of an example. And what does that tell us? I would say it tells us a lot. And here's the bogus answer to it that was only very gently mentioned by Dr. McGrath this evening: “Well what about atheist nihilism, what about atheist cruelty, what about 20th-century totalitarianism?” I take this seriously enough to have put a chapter in my book about it (available, by the way, in fine bookstores everywhere) and I can only summarize it now and I will do it so very tersely as I can. First, Fascism, the original 20th-century totalitarian movement, is really, historically, another name for the political activity of the Catholic right wing. There is no other name for it—Francoism, Salazarism, what happened in Croatia, in Austria, in Barbaria and so on—the church keeps on trying to apologize for it, can't apologize for it enough, it's the Catholic right, Mussolini. You can't quite say that about Hitler, National Socialism, because that's also based on Nordic and Pagan blood myths, leader worship and so on, though Hitler never repudiated his membership of the church and prayers were said for him on his birthday every year until the very end on the orders of the Vatican. And all of these facts are well known and the church still hasn't found any way to apologize for that enough. And whatever it is, you can call that, you can't call it secular. You may not call it secular. By the way, Joseph Goebles was ex-communicated from the Catholic Church. 50 percent, according to Paul Johnson the Catholic historian, of the Waffen SS were confessing Catholics, none of them was ever threatened with ex-communication, even threatened for it—with it for taking part in the final solution. But Joseph Goebles was ex-communicated for marrying a Protestant. You see, we do have our standards. Now, ok, moving to Marxism, moving to Leninism. Ok, in Russia in 1917, for hundreds of years millions of people have been told the head of the State is a supernatural power. The Czar is not just the head of the Government, not just a king, but he stands between heaven and earth. And this has been inculcated in generations of Russians for hundreds of years. If you're Joseph Stalin, himself a seminarian from Georgia, you shouldn't be in the totalitarianism business if you can't exploit a ready-made reservoir of credulity and servility that's as big as that. It's just waiting for you to capitalize on. So what do you do? Well we'll have an Inquisition, for one thing; we'll have miracles, for another, Lysenko's biology will produce four harvests a year; we'll have harvestry hunts; we'll tell everyone they must be grateful only to the leader for what they get and they must thank him and praise him all the time and that they must be aware all the time of the existence of the counter-revolutionary devil who waits to—you see where I'm going with this. [To Cromartie] Uh, Michael? Oh do I really need two [minutes]? Ok, I'll tell you my North Korea stories another time. Here's—its surrogate, it is and the very best and the very worst, the examples I've been talking about, are a surrogate for Messiahnism for the belief in ultimate history and the end of days and the conclusion of all things which is, I've tried to argue, I hope with some success, the problem to begin with. The replacement of reason by faith, the discarding of the one thing that makes us important and useful and different from other primates in favor of something that requires no evidence and just requires incantation. Not good for you. If Dr. McGrath or anyone else could come up with an example of a society which had fallen into slavery and bankruptcy and beggary and terror and misery because it had adopted the teachings and the precepts of Spinoza and Einstein and Pierre Bayle and Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, then I'd be impressed and that would be a fair test on a level playing field, but you will find no such example. Indeed, the nearest such example that we do have is these great United States, the first country in the world to have a Constitution that forbids the mention of religion in the public square, except by way of limiting it and saying that the State can take no interest in establishment of faith. Best known under the rubric of the wall of separation. My new slogan is, “Mr. Jefferson, build up that wall.” Hope you'll join me in it. Very quickly in my last minute: Yes, Dr. McGrath, you're right, there is something about us as a species that is problematic, it isn't just explained by religion. Something about us that tempts us to do wrong. It's pretty easily explained, I think. We are primates, high primates, but primates. We're half a chromosome away from chimpanzees and it shows. It especially shows in the number of religions we invent to console ourselves or to give us things to quarrel with other primates about. If anything demonstrates that God is manmade, not man God made, surely it is the religions erected by this quasi-chimpanzee species and the harm that they're willing to inflict on that basis. I think on the point of Christology that you closed with I ought not to take any more of the audience's time but be prepared to discuss and I hope I've yielded back some of my time to questions and I'm grateful, again, for your indulgence. Thank you.<br /><br />McGRATH: Well, Mr. Hitchens posed quite a few questions for me in his opening address [indecipherable] begin to wrestle with them. What do I think about the resurrection? Do I think it as being metaphorical? Well, I'll tel you what I think and you can make up your own minds about this. I think the resurrection is a historical event, something that happened in history, was seen as intriguing but not obviously interpreted as something of dramatic significance. The key question was not simply the history, but also its meaning. And so in the New Testament, for example, we see debates taking place around the time of the resurrection which are primarily concerned "what does this mean?" In other words, something seems to have happened, but it's a historical event, what is the overall meaning of this event? And so for me that, that second question begins to emerge as being of major importance. And in the New Testament we see a number of ideas beginning to emerge, the most important of these is that in some way Jesus had been demonstrated to have some sort of relationship with God that validated his teaching; in other words, that authorized him to speak with authority on what God was like. It's a bit like, you know, interpreting something like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. I mean, you can think of that as having two different elements: On the one hand there is the physical event, the crossing of a river, which of course in this case is not particularly difficult, but then there is its historical significance in that the Rubicon marked the boundary between the Roman colonies and Rome itself. To cross that with an armory was, in effect, a declaration of war. So for me an historical event with a deeper theological significance and that significance, it seems to me, is articulated by the New Testament in terms of, first of all, who Jesus Christ is, but secondly also what the implications of this might be for human nature. And of course the Christian hope of eternal life, the very strong New Testament declaration that we are people who have hope is very much grounded on that particular idea. Now Mr. Hitchens moved on and began to talk I think very interestingly about God as a celestial dictator. And again, I think that is a very significant idea. Now certainly I hear what he's saying, but for me God is a celestial liberator. And I wonder if we have a very different perspective on this same event. Is there a real difference here which we can justify in terms of metaphysics or is this simply a different perspective on how we see things? Mr. Hitchens clearly is emphasizing that religion can do some bad things and I want to say that I believe he is right to alert us to that and to avoid any uncritical evaluation of religion. But there is this deeper side which I do want to just emphasize. The New Testament talks about the truth setting you free, it talks about the glorious liberty of the children of God and maybe we've lost that. Maybe somehow we've bound this up with all kinds of rituals and so on, so have lost sight of it. But as you read the New Testament, I think, there is this outburst of energy, of liberation that something has happened which has transformed the human situation, brought hope and at the same time liberated us from fear of death and also to do some very good things. Certainly we fail, certainly we fall, but for me I think the idea of God as a celestial dictator is one that I don't really recognize myself, although I can see where it's coming from. Now Mr. Hitchens then went on and issued a very powerful challenge against religion as any form of wishful thinking that provides consolation. And again, he makes a number of points that I think are perfectly fair. One of these is that wishful thinking is precisely that; it's what we would like to be the case, it bears no relationship to what actually is the case. And also he makes a point that consolation is, well, I'll put it like this, it's for losers, isn't it? Certainly when I was an atheist myself I very much took the view that religion was for mad, bad, or sad people and certainly you can see that emphasis on consolation would correspond very well with that third group. But I think there are some points we need to look at. The historical roots of this argument go back to Ludwig Feuerbach in the year 1841 when he wrote his very famous book dealing with the essence of Christianity. And in that book he argues very lucidly along the lines Mr. Hitchens indicated, that people believe in God because in some way this is about their aspirations, their hopes, their longings being actualized when of course there is no God to believe in. It's simply we wish it were like this, but we know it's not and we're in denial. So a belief in God is seen as the projection of some imaginary figure on some transcendent's screen. Now I think Feuerbach does make an important point. But I want to make two points in response. Number one: the fact that we might wish something to be true certainly does not make it true, but the fact that we wish to be true does not make it false for that reason. I mean, for example, you can hear my voice is beginning to dry up and I would very much there to be some water and—there is still some left I'm pleased to say. But the point is my desire does not negate the reality. [To stage] Thank you very much indeed. I'll turn away and count to five. [To audience] But I think more interestingly is this: I wonder—I wonder if atheism might also be a form of wishful thinking. Now again, those of you who studied cultural history will know that one of the points very often made is that the emergence of atheism as a significant historical phenomenon in the eighteenth century was this deep desire to change things. If there were no God, we could do as we please. You all know Dostoyevsky's possessed were, and Kirilov makes this following comment: "If there is a God, I must do what God wants, but if there is no God, I do what I want." And again, you can see with atheism a kind of ethic of liberation. I'm able to do what I please, there are no limits. And again, you may have come across a very interesting essay by Czeslaw Milosz in the New York Times book review about ten years ago called "The Discreet Charm of Nihilism" where he says look, what has captivated us today is not the idea of religion as an escape from reality, but the idea that there is no God and, hence, no accountability. So we do what we please, and we are accountable to nobody. So I wonder if this argument actually works both ways. I think it's certainly a very interesting possibility to explore. Now Mr. Hitchens then moved on to talk about Mount Sinai. He made a point which I think is an interesting point and one that I need to engage with. "Mount Sinai," he said, "changed everything. Are we to understand that people had no moral sense before this, that somehow this brought morality into being?" And I think what I would say and I think most Christian theologians would say something like this, is that both the Old and the New Testaments are very, very clear that there was human wisdom around long before Sinai, that to use Paul's imagery that we are judged on the basis of what we do know where there is no knowledge of the law. What I would want to say is that the Old Testament and indeed the New Testament do not kind of way throw something down and say, "There, that's it, you didn't know about this before," but to quote from that very interesting document <i>Fides et Ratio</i> (Faith in Reason) origining from the late Pope, I mean, that in some way, grace does not abolish nature, but rather perfects it. In other words, it brings to fulfillment these basic human instincts about what is right and what is wrong, correcting them when necessary, but still fulfilling these longings for righteousness, this desire to do what is right, which I believe to be so fundamental a part of human nature. And, therefore, for me the Christian faith, for example, does not kind of in a way throw down a series of arbitrary dictats, but rather it builds on what is already there precisely because for Christianity we are all God's creation and God has planted, if you like, signals or reminders of what He is like. Or to use that wonderful phrase from Gerard Manley Hopkins, in some way nature and humanity is "instressed" with the likeness of God. We then move on to talk about something that I think I touched on—Mr. Hitchens talks about the tension between science and faith. I think I may have touched on that in my own talk, so I won't repeat that now, only to say that for me there is a very healthy convergence and mutual enrichment between science and faith. But finally, he also made a point which is basically that it seems very unjust that Christianity teaches that redemption depends on explicit response to a gospel that's preached when so many haven't heard it. And I would certainly agree that that does seem very unjust. But again, the Christian tradition down the ages has been that the proclamation of the gospel brings things to fulfillment, but where it has not been heard, we are judged on the basis of what we do know and how we respond to it. Again, grace does not abolish nature, but perfects it. Thank you.<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Well thank you, gentlemen, this is where we now have a conversation and I have got some questions from the audience and if there are other questions I am glad to receive them, but I have some here. Now the first question obviously is for you, Christopher. Since Mr. McGrath has just finished, I will put the question to you which is if God does not exist, on what basis can anyone say this action is right or this action is wrong?<br /><br />HITCHENS: So whoever asked that only just came into the room, right? I mean, I can't believe that I didn't say what I thought about it, but I won't repeat it because actually what Dr. McGrath just said I thought was unusually good on this point. You'll recall what he said on the Dostoyevskian matter. (If God exists, we have to do what he says, if he doesn't, we can do what we like.) Now just apply this for a second in practice and in theory. Is it not said of God's chosen people and is it not said to them by God in the Pentateuch that they can do exactly as they like to other people? They can enslave them, they can take their land, they can take their women, they can destroy all their young men, they can help themselves to all their virgins, they can do what anyone who had no sense of anything but their own rights would be able to do, but in this case with divine permission. Doesn't that make it somewhat more evil? In Iran where I've been—I’ve been to all three axis of evil in those countries by the way, and I think I'm the only writer who can say that—you're not allowed to sentence a woman who is a virgin to death even though she may have committed in the eyes of the Mullahs a capital crime, perhaps by showing her hair too often or her limbs. She can't be sentenced to death. But religious law means she can be raped by the revolutionary guards, and then she's not a virgin anymore, then they can kill her. Do what though wilt shall be the whole of the law used to be considered the motto of Satanism, as I recall. Divine permission given to people who think they have God is on their side enables actions that a normal, morally normal unbeliever would not contemplate. The mutilation of genitalia of children, who would do that if it wasn't decided that God wanted it? Just as when a poet in England gets the poet laureateship they start to write drivel instead of poetry, for some reason. It's the King's scrofula the other way around. Morally normal and intelligent people find themselves saying fatuously wicked things when this subject comes up. The suicide bombing community is entirely faith based. The genital mutilation community is entirely faith based. Slavery is mandated by the Bible. You keep hearing how many abolitionists were Christians, well it was about time that they took a stand against it, having mandated it for so long. So it's not even a tautology, I think, to say that there's a relationship between the human impulse to do evil, to be selfish, to be self-centered, to be greedy, and a contrast between that and faith because given only faith, mountains can be moved and millions of people who would never normally acquiesce in evil are brought to it straightaway and with ease and with self-righteousness. There, that's my answer to that. And the questioner did not answer my challenge: name an ethical statement made or action performed by a believer in the name of faith that couldn't have been by an infidel. And name, if you can (this is easier) a wicked action that could only be mandated by faith and then you'll see how silly your question was, whoever you were.<br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Well let me ask it, then, Christopher. Did you—you heard Professor McGrath, also, though, condemn any form of religious violence.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well that's easy to do, I mean I could say—look, an atheist could be a nihilist... <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: No, I think there's room for agreement here between the two of you on that point. <br /> <br />HITCHENS: I'm not looking for consensus, baby, I'm just not in the mood. "I'm not in the vain," as King Richard says, "I'm not in the vain." No, I'm glad he condemns religious violence. Does he condemn the promise of other peoples territory to the chosen people, for example? Does Jesus say or does he not say, "I come to bring not peace, but a sword"? He does say that. Should I take that literally or metaphorically? Fine. Is genital mutilation of a small boy as mandated by Jews and is it often mandated by Muslims, or not? Is there a paradise to which people can hope to get by dying for their faith or isn't there? Has holy war been proclaimed by both the Pope and by the mullahs or not?<br /><br />CROMARTIE: You put a lot...<br /><br />HITCHENS: These are problems not for me. For me it's simple: we're primates. This is what we would expect to happen if there was no God.<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Let me...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's what we would expect to see if faith was pointless, but it's an endless mystery where none exists if you think there's an intervening finger from on high, then it becomes mysterious.<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Thank you.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Don't mention it. You're welcome.<br /><br />CROMARTIE: For Professor McGrath, here's a question: I would like to hear you expound on Mr. Hitchens' claim that the idea of a vicarious sacrifice is immoral or unethical. What is Christianity's explanation of this?<br /><br />McGRATH: Well the phrase "vicarious sacrifice" isn't actually a Biblical phrase. It's a phrase that's used by some writers to refer to a particular interpretation of a Biblical teaching. And the key idea in the New Testament is that in some way the death of Christ, again violence done to Christ, not violence done by Christ, is seen as having a transformative potential for human beings and this transformative potential is articulated using a range of models, some of which are drawn from the Old Testament. For example, there's an analogy drawn with animal sacrifice and that is seen as in some way establishing a link between Christ's death and the bringing of the possibility of purity to someone. That is one of the images used. Others include, for example, the whole idea of healing, the idea of being set in the right relationship with God. There are a wide range of these. Now, Mr. Hitchens' particular criticism... <br /> <br />HITCHENS: Which of them is yours? I'd really like to know. <br /><br />McGRATH: I'll tell you right now.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, please.<br /><br />McGRATH: I want to make sure I do justice to both the question asked and your criticism made. For me—and I'll speak now very personally because I think I've been invited to and I'd be very happy to do that—for me the death of Christ on the cross means that something that I could never gain for myself has been done for me and offered to me. In other words, it is something that by myself as a human being I could never hope to achieve, is achieved on my behalf and offered to me and I am asked, "Will you accept what has been done for you?" In other words, it's about the possibility of transformation being offered to me but not being imposed upon me. And for me, that is about a God who offers but does not demand that I respond to him in this way. And I find that to be a very good summary of what the Christian faith is trying to say about a God who offers but does not impose. And again, those of you who are familiar with the New Testament will think of the imagery of Revelation, chapter three, which speaks of Christ knocking on the door and asking us to open the door but leaving that action open to us. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Okay. Mr. Hitchens? <br /> <br />HITCHENS: Not imposed? Did you really say not imposed? What if you reject this offer, what are you told? What have you been told by centuries of Christians if you reject this offer that took place by means of a torture to death of a human being that you didn't want and should have prevented if you could? What if you reject the offer? And if you accept it you have eternal life and your sins are forgiven. Oh, great. What a horrible way to abolish your own responsibility and get your own bliss. I don't want it. Oh, you don't? Well then you can go to hell. This is not imposed? This hasn't been preached to children by gruesome elderly virgins backed by force for centuries? This hasn't poisoned whole societies? No, of course it's imposed, it's not voluntary. The Pope of Rome, as I call—the Bishop of Rome, Mr. Ratzinger, Herr Ratzinger—has recently said actually it's worse than that: only my version of Christianity can get you salvation, there is only one way. I say it in Georgetown. There's only one. You presumably don't believe that because you're an Anglican, but on what basis do you tell the Pope that he's a heretic? Once you grant this stuff, once you start with this white noise chat about redemption, where's it going to end? Of course there's nothing voluntary about it and I must say the book of Revelations seems one of the less voluntary texts of the—all it does is look forward gleefully to Apocalypse, and to the passing away of this veil of tears into our ultimate destruction. This is morality? I don't think so. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Your response? <br /> <br />McGRATH: Well I think if I can just build on that because I think a very interesting line of discussion has opened up here. Number one, I think I do challenge your reading of the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation is very much saying to Christians who are being persecuted for their faith by a secular authority who are, in effect, being victimized that this is not the way it's going to remain, that one day there will be an inversion of the world order. It's in effect an encouragement to those who are suffering. And again, I make my point again that Christianity is saying, "Look, here is an offer, it is yours to accept or not." I take it you do not believe in hell or anything like that and, therefore, I don't see what the difficulty is for you personally. It is not about imposition... <br /> <br />HITCHENS: You're in the right church but the wrong pew. I mean, yes, of course I've emancipated myself from all that nonsense and I wish you would do too. I'm saying what is the belief, and when you say it's voluntary, it's up to you, it's entirely optional, I don't think it's any more optional than Abraham saying to his son do you want to come for a long and gloomy walk, because God seems to be telling me to do something that had better be moral. Otherwise, it would have to be said that God had taken a perfectly normal person and asked him to commit an atrocity. Now where else could that have come from? Millions of people every year celebrate this act of sadomasochism as if it proved that God loved us so much that he'd make us kill our own children and then he decides to love us so much he'll kill one of his own. You said in a debate with Richard Dawkins, I have it down, you said that the great thing about God is He knows what it's like to lose a son. Now I want you ladies and gentlemen to ponder that expression for just a moment. First, it's self-evidently—if the story is true, which I don't think it is—it's self-evidently not the case, even in the narrative. He doesn't lose a son, He lends one. He doesn't offer one because no one's demanded it. There's no problem that has so far been identified in the human species that demands a human sacrifice. For what problem, for what ill is this a cure? There's no argument, there's no evidence that there is. No, it's imposed upon you. I'm doing this because the prophets said I would and I'm going to have the boy tortured to death in public to fulfill ancient screeds of Bronze Age Judaism. But wait, I don't want it. I don't need it. I don't feel better for it. I feel very uneasy about it. Well that's a pity, because then you're going to be cast into eternal fire. This is no way to talk. I don't like to be addressed in that tone of voice. So, to all this I have to return a slight <i>non serviam</i>, if I may be so bold, and take my chances morally, that that's the more ethical thing to do. I don't want torture, don't want human sacrifice, don't want authoritarian blood lettings, smoking temples and alters, incantations of priests around, don't want it, can't think of a single thing it will make better about our veil of tears. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Let me see if Professor McGrath has a response. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh yes, by all means. I'm sorry if I bang on a bit about this.<br /><br />McGRATH: No, I...<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Don't worry, I'll interrupt.<br /><br />McGRATH: I don't want those things either, and I think that nobody here really would. I think that one can interpret these things in these ways. You do and I appreciate that, but I want to make the point there are many other ways of looking at these within the Christian tradition and that it is very important to say that, you know, there are other ways of making sense of this. And I think we need to get some of them on the table. For me, and again I'd want to emphasize this point, the Christian vision of God is not a God who leaves us on our own, but a God who chooses to enter into time and history where we are in order to make possible for us, if we want it, a transformation of our situation.<br /><br />HITCHENS: After 98,000 years of abstention?<br /><br />McGRATH: I don't see any need to say this leads to torture or anything like that. If it does, that needs to be challenged, but the point for me is this is about something being offered to us with enormous potential for change. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Let me ask a question of Mr. Hitchens. As someone who considers himself a high primate, it seems strange that you would consider loving and witnessing the truth an obligation. Would you explain how a soulless primate can have any obligations? <br /> <br />HITCHENS: Well it's a question one often asks oneself. For example, why do I care, why do I mind about other primates? I think I know that, because I hope that they will, at the very lowest, as I said, because I hope they'll mind about me in return. I'll give you an example: <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Why should they? <br /> <br />HITCHENS: Why, indeed. Why does one do the right thing, or what one hopes is the right thing, when no one's looking? Why does a Muslim cab driver go to all the trouble to come back to my apartment building when I didn't have his number to return a large sum of money I left on his back seat, said it was his religious duty. But if I allow him to say that that's his religious duty, what am I going to say when he says it's his religious duty to veil his wife or to blow himself up, or to impose Sharia Law? If you grant it once, you have to grant the whole thing, you can't do it a l&aecut; cart. Now I'll give you an example from my old socialist days (this will bring moisture to the eyes of Dr. McGrath, as well): it was our favorite example, Professor Peter Townsend's book on the gift relationship, you remember? Why does the British National Health Service never run out of blood, though you're not allowed to charge for it, you have to give it free? Never runs out of blood. Because people like to give blood. They want to feel useful. I like to do it, I like it very much and I'm not a masochist and I don't particularly like being stuck, but I lose—I like the way that I lose—someone gains a pint and I don't lose one because I replenish it quite quickly. Someone's instantly better off, I haven't had to abnegate myself by giving anything away. I like the fact that I'm helping someone who I don't know and, as it happens, I have a very rare blood group indeed, and one day I'm going to have to count on other people feeling the same way. So, human solidarity will get you quite a long way ethically and there's every reason why that should be in our genes, in our, so to speak, inscribed—we wouldn't have gotten this far if we didn't have these qualities. To say we couldn't have them without celestial permission seems to me to be simply slavish. And if we're all made in God's image, then how come there are so many sociopaths who don't notice the existence of other people or so many psychopaths for whom it's a positive pleasure to inflict pain? None of these—all of these are easily, easily solved questions if you make the assumption of evolution by natural selection and consider us as an animal species. If you detect the finger of God in all of this, you invent myriad problems that do not exist and cannot be solved and that are actually a waste of our mentality. Ockham's Razor disposes of all the supernatural assumptions that have ever been made. We have better and more elegant explanations for everything that happens in our cosmos and in our biology now and if we had had these to begin with, there would never have been the foothold for the death cult of Christianity or Islam or Judaism. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Professor.<br /><br />McGRATH: Well, perhaps I could just take this on the stage further. I mean, I think what you seem to be saying is that we are able to offer a complete scientific account of things which eliminates any place for the transcendent and I want to find...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, no, sorry, if I may, not that I—I wanted to speak to this and I will later I wanted to later, transcendent and the nominous are very important, but they are not to be confused with the supernatural. <br /> <br />McGRATH: I would want to say that the word "transcendent" means a number of different things and certainly the supernatural can be one of those, but it can also <br />mean some sort of sense that there is something beyond us and I don't think we need to use the word "supernatural." I'm thinking of Iris Murdock's idea in, for example, <i>The Sovereignty of Good</i> which he tries to posit something which, though beyond us, nevertheless elicits a response to us. For example, in trying to articulate what the notion of good actually is. And it seems to me that science actually is extremely good at clarifying the relationship between the different levels of material order, but when it comes to questions of meaning or value, which might well include transcendent meanings, it actually doesn't really help us very much. And so I would want to suggest that actually science offers us one level of explanation of the way things are, but it does not prevent us from adding extra levels of meaning on top of that. And it seems to me that that is one of the reasons why one can talk about the dynamic interaction between science and religion because they are certainly engaging the same reality, but they're offering different perspectives or different levels of engagement of that same thing. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Professor McGrath, here's the next question. You said that acts of violence in the name of God come from the fringes of religion, but God has ordered many acts of violence, for instance, in the Old Testament that killed thousands. Is God on the fringe of his own religion? <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: You have a response to that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No.<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think it should stand alone. No, next, I would say.<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Professor McGrath, here's the next question: you said that acts of violence in the name of God ceom from the fringes of religion. God has ordered many acts of violence, for instance in the Old Testament, that killed thousands. Is God on the fringe of His own religion?<br /><br />McGRATH: Well clearly the way that question is phrased, actually, in effect, answers itself. I would not wish to set out quite like that and therefore I'd like to try and offer an answer which goes like this: I'm a Christian, and, obviously, I read the Old Testament and one of the questions is how on earth do I make sense of those passages which seem to, at least on the face of it, authorize acts of killing and so on which I personally find very, very disagreeable. And for me as a Christian, as I was saying, a fundamental theme here is that Christ is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. In other words, not simply that he brings to fulfillment their intentions, but that in some way he is authorized to show us what these are really meant to be like. In other words, that there are other interpretations, but these are relativized or placed to one side because of who Jesus is and what he did. And, therefore, I would want to look at the Old Testament through this lens and say that I believe it allows us to look at these passages and challenge the most natural interpretations. For me one of the great themes of Christian history is the idea that—what I call progressive revelation, that we gain a firmer understanding of what God is like, a firmer understanding of what God is like as time goes on and above all, for example, through the revelation of Christ and, again, whether you're a Protestant or a Catholic, you might talk about the continued guidance of the Holy Spirit or indeed continued reflection on the part of the church, but the engagement of the scripture is dynamic and ongoing. It's not really something that's been ended in the past. <br /><br />CROMARTIE: Ok, for Mr. Hitchens: why would...<br /> <br />HITCHENS: Oh sorry, can I comment on that briefly, or...<br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Yes, you sure can. <br /> <br />HITCHENS: ...was I not invited to do so?<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Please do so.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Don't let me—well, I mean some of the early Christian church fathers I think, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, I think Marcian was among them, did contemplate starting a movement that was just basically Christian, based on what was understood or believed about the apparent, very opaque, brief life of Jesus of Nazareth and not inherit, not forced upon themselves, as St. Paul had suggested, the ghastly, gruesome Jewish books of the Old Testament—to start again. I think they might have done better to do that because, having decided that they inherit all of that, they do inherit, in particular, the most wicked and immoral doctrine of the lot which is original sin in Adam and the expiation by the sacrifice of children, human sacrifice of children, than which I don't think any morally normal person can think of anything more repulsive. So that it is, I'm afraid, innate that there is to be cruelty and violence and fantacism in the religion and the responsibility is not expiable. Bizarrely—I mean many people think, well, the Old Testament, it's true it's full of blood letting, it recommends genocide, extermination, slavery and all the dispossession, all of these things. The New Testament is more meek and mild. I've given you my comment on that, it's the first time that hell is mentioned, but it is in the Christian version that another called different kind of immorality is proposed, the worst kind of immorality yet, which is the wicked idea of non-resistance to evil and the deranged idea that we should love our enemies. Nothing, nothing could be more suicidal and immoral than that. We have to defend ourselves and our children and our civilization from our enemies. We have to learn to educate ourselves in a cold, steady dislike of them and a determination to encompass their destruction. Who here heard anyone after September the 11th in holy orders actually say, oh, well we must turn, learn to love these people. Did they dare say that then; of course not. They saw the emptiness and the futility and the immorality of what they would have been caught saying if they even tried it. We have to bear all this stuff in mind. This is not moral teaching at all. We have to survive our enemies, we have to learn to destroy them, especially because they, too, are motivated by the hectic, maniacal ideas of monotheism which really seeks and yearns for the destruction of our planet and the end of days. That's why it's not moral. That's why we have to outgrow it and defeat it. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: I have a feeling you want to comment. <br /> <br />McGRATH: Well I'd like to comment. First of all, I do not think that the principle of trying to love your enemies leads to these things at all. I think if anything it leads to the obviation of violence. It does not mean we have to ignore moral issues. It means that we see these people as human beings, as someone who, in effect...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Primates.<br /><br />McGRATHE: ...bears the same flesh and blood as us. <br /> <br />HITCHENS: Fellow primates. <br /> <br />McGRATH: And it may mean that we want to try and resolve the issue saying we believe you are wrong, but it's also trying to avoid dehumanization. And it seems to me this really is a very significant question I'd like to pursue. I mean I may have misunderstood you, but what you seemed to be proposing is to see your enemies in dehumanized form and for me as a Christian, I could not do that because I have to see even my enemies as those who God has made and loved and, therefore, even though I may dislike them intensely, I have to show that love and compassion towards them and see them as human beings, not as the other, the enemy. I think really there's more to this idea than you suggest. <br /> <br />HITCHENS: There's no need to dehumanize people who are set on dehumanizing themselves and on the murder of others and on a cult of death. There's no need to dehumanize them. They’ve done all that for themselves.<br /><br />McGRATH: But would you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Like someone once accused me of trying to assassinate his character and I said "No, your character committed suicide a long time ago." They've done the dehumanizing work for us, thanks, and they are fellow primates. Of course there's no question of redefining them as another species, but there is a very important question of whether we intend to assert our own values as superior to theirs and is worth defending against them. And Christianity with the sickly relativism that you've stressed so often this evening disarms us for this very important struggle, that's why the Arch Bishop of Canterbury is this evening groveling at the feet of the mullahs in Iran saying we should leave them alone and let's try not to hurt their feelings. As he groveled at the feet of Saddam Hussein, as actually every Christian church has been doing in the recent past saying well, you know, faith is better than no faith. Any faith is better than none. They all agreed to condemn Solomon Rushdie for blasphemy rather than the people who tried to kill him for money for writing a novel, for example. They all condemned the Danish cartoons because blasphemy against any faith is an offense to all. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Can I interrupt you here?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ok? Well this is serious, ladies and gentlmen because this stuff could kill you, ok?<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Yes, Christopher, I've heard you, yourself, at one of my own conferences expound at great length at the Christian just war tradition. You seemed to have left that whole rich tradition out of what you just commented on. <br /> <br />HITCHENS: Yeah, but I think the Christian just war tradition is a nonsensical tautology. It says that you can only go to war when you're sure you're in the right, when you're sure you can win, when you're sure that the violence is going to be proportional, and so on. You can't know any of this, Aquinas couldn't have known it, nor could the later thinkers about it like Grotius. They couldn't have known, they said, "Wouldn't it be nice?" It's just wishful thinking again. I know a just war when I see one. And we're engaged in one now. And our faith-based forces are of no—are about as much use as the Pope's balls in this struggle, ok?<br /> <br />CROMARTIE: Well we are getting a little off course here, but...<br /> <br />HITCHENS: I know. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: I had a feeling it might come up. <br /> <br />HITCHENS: I wanted this to come up. <br /> <br />CROMARTIE: You know, we've actually gone overtime and I feel like we can stay until about ten o'clock, but...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'm not in a hurry. My mission statement is I won't go until—if anyone can claim that I didn't answer a question. So, I'll be on...<br /><br />CROMARTIE: There are a lot of people here.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'll be on the steps outside having a smoke and a miniature.<br /><br />CROMARTIE: We were going to go fifteen minutes over.<br /><br />HITCHENS: There's one more?<br /><br />CROMARTIE: [To McGrath] Well it was for you, but I'll let you comment on this and we'll let Professor McGrath make some final comments. I think we can be in agreement we should do this again. I think we just got started. Would you both be agreeable to that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sure.<br /><br />CROMARTIE: [To the audience] You all would back, wouldn't you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: [Gesturing to the front row] That's my daughter sitting there<br /><br />CROMARTIE: Why would, Mr. Hitchens, why would scientific discoveries about the origin of the universe obviate the existence of God? <br /> <br />HITCHENS: Well they don't in and of themselves, but I just would submit—I really will be quick this time and I know I've been a little verbose up until now—the likelihood that what Edwin Hubblesaw through that telescope—the red light escaping at speeds that none of us here are really capable of imagining towards the ultimate expansion and collapse of the universe and the heat death—that all that happened so we could be sitting here is to me, in the very, very highest degree, improbable. That a process of evolution by natural selection just on our own tiny little planet which in its own tiny little solar system is the only one on which life can be supported, everywhere else just in our little system, all the other rocks are either much too hot or much too cold to support life as is much of our planet which we know has for a long time been, not recently either, on a climatic knife edge and which is still cooling, only one, and on this planet, 99.8% of every species that ever evolved died out. This is an extraordinary way I think to make sure that <i>Homo sapiens</i> comes to Georgetown. It is the, only the most extraordinarily self-centered species, could imagine that all this was going on for our sake, that's why I don't like people saying that their religious faith is modest or humble. It's the reverse. It's unbelievably solipsistic and that's why you get people apparently abject, much too abject for my taste like Mother Teresa. "Oh, I'm so humbled I can hardly bother to feed myself, but out of my way because I'm on a mission from God." No, this is arrogance, as a matter of fact, and it claims to know what it cannot know. I could say that Einstein was right when he said the miracle is—of the natural order—the miracle is there are no miracles. Understand this paradox. The natural order doesn't interrupt itself; the sun doesn't stand still at midday; God doesn't catch a child as a kid falls out of a window or heal lepers around him and none of that ever happens. The miracle is there's a force that holds it altogether that's consistent and unvarying. That's wonderful. Okay. He may show there's a mind somewhere in the universe, but to say we know what that mind is, to move from the deist position to the theist one, we know what God wants us to eat or not eat, we know in what positions he wants us to make love or with whom. We know his instructions on—is an unbelievable piece of conceit and in my opinion it's the reason why, I may be a very poor spokesman for my side of this argument, but I think anyone that who thinks about it has to vote that given the amount of uncertainty that we have and given how much we now know, how much more we know about how little we know (the definition of education in our civilization) the only people who have to lose in this argument are those who say they do know and who claim, "Yes, I do know what God wants, I do think He sent His son, I do think there was a resurrection, I do think there's salvation," claiming to know things they cannot conceivably know. I mean to put it differently in a mild way, if Dr. McGrath has such extraordinary sources of information as the ones he's claimed to have available to him, I can't understand why he's only occupying a chair at Oxford University.<br /><br />McGRATH: Well, if I could respond to that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You should be, with the knowledge you've got, you should be a real mensch. And I'm afraid you don't know any more than I do about whether there was ever a Jesus of Nazareth, a resurrection, a miracle, a virgin birth or anything. You couldn't know any more than I do, you can't. You just claim that you do. I'm afraid that means, I think, that you lose this round. <br /> <br />McGRATH: Well, if I could respond. To deal with the first point before we came on to that second one, I don't think it's all solipsistic to say let's reflect on why we are here, let's reflect on why there is something rather than nothing. It's to ask a very important question about how the universe came into being. Why is there something rather than nothing? I mean for Wittgenstein that was a hugely important question and it seems to me to be entirely right to answer that question, or at least to try and answer it. On my own status, I mean, I appreciate very much the compliment you pay, but I'm simply making the point that all of us are interpreters of what we observe. I made it very, very clear I was not making any claims to special knowledge, I was looking at what I saw, what others say. I interpreted it in this way. I claim no privilege. I say it is my judgment that this is the best explanation and it means this, and I'm open to challenge on this, as you have challenged me, but I am not claiming anything special. I'm saying there are public events there, they are open to interpretation, as they were at the time, and the issue really is what is the best explanation of those. And I think that is a legitimate debate. I've made it very clear what my conclusion is. I made it clear it is a matter of faith and I cannot prove this, but I'm also suggesting that whatever judgments we make on this is actually a matter of faith and therefore while I'm very happy to be challenged on this, I think I'm still entitled to say that this seems to me to be the best way of making sense of it and live my life out on its basis. <br /><br />CROMARTIE: Thank you.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-38939705643180636222011-06-28T22:21:00.012-04:002011-07-03T18:30:54.006-04:00Hitchens' address to the American Atheists National Convention 2011<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens'</a> address to the <a href=http://www.atheists.org/events/National_Convention>American Atheists National Convention</a><br /><li>April 22, 2011, [Venue unknown], Des Moines, Iowa<br /><br />Dear fellow-unbelievers,<br /><br />Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death. Nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4uzZhfLSSK5KmBI2LAe258Ok-_WAsaVACTKFpWM6Z-AsIrD_3vWlDz04hPTiaZQfsHDnXpsyZuuekLt95u8CPom_rb8_fWomneY7w5SaEUthaTenOUWq_Km-CbRtJ473vjSkM7RtRVdk/s1600/hitchhat.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4uzZhfLSSK5KmBI2LAe258Ok-_WAsaVACTKFpWM6Z-AsIrD_3vWlDz04hPTiaZQfsHDnXpsyZuuekLt95u8CPom_rb8_fWomneY7w5SaEUthaTenOUWq_Km-CbRtJ473vjSkM7RtRVdk/s320/hitchhat.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623464754920322882" /></a>points to be made while the discussion goes on. I have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. I hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now I have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstitition. It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency. <br /><br />That essential sense of decency is outraged every day. Our theocratic enemy is in plain view. Protean in form, it extends from the overt menace of nuclear-armed mullahs to the insidious campaigns to have stultifying pseudo-science taught in American schools. But in the past few years, there have been heartening signs of a genuine and spontaneous resistance to this sinister nonsense: a resistance which repudiates the right of bullies and tyrants to make the absurd claim that they have god on their side. To have had a small part in this resistance has been the greatest honor of my lifetime: the pattern and original of all dictatorship is the surrender of reason to absolutism and the abandonment of critical, objective inquiry. The cheap name for this lethal delusion is religion, and we must learn new ways of combating it in the public sphere, just as we have learned to free ourselves of it in private. <br /><br />Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations. <br /><br />As the heirs of a secular revolution, American atheists have a special responsibility to defend and uphold the Constitution that patrols the boundary between Church and State. This, too, is an honor and a privilege. Believe me when I say that I am present with you, even if not corporeally (and only metaphorically in spirit...) Resolve to build up Mr. Jefferson's wall of separation. And don't keep the faith.<br /><br />Sincerely,<br />Christopher HitchensHitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-87148839363993284082011-06-28T22:18:00.018-04:002011-07-05T14:27:23.176-04:00Hitchens, Authors @ Google<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> discusses his book <i>god is Not Great</i><br /><li>August 16, 2007, <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googleplex>Google headquarters</a>, Mountain View, California<br /><br />[Introduction by Google staffer]<br /><br />Thank you, darling. Sweet. Well, thank you so much for that suspiciously grudging introduction. And thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for coming. I understand we’ve only got the balance or so of an hour together so I’ll try and break the rule of a lifetime and be terse. And, I think I’ll put it like this: it’s true that publishers sometimes want to put a catchy or suggestive or challenging title—subtitle on a book. And so, when we hit upon, or rather they hit upon, well, how religion poisons and why religion poisons everything, I knew what would happen: people would come up to me, they'd say, you mean absolutely everything, you <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmuQvcHBfICIcWMhz6rv6eJZCmtN000Ni5x0MnuCZXzzkfj1HT0kj1VwzyhwW51x6dlIjz9kVvvCcsyORknLDiRpor4RwRAsoveizEp_McDYAOg1X72gGrrB3S0_w6fAXX0t8dYzHx1WhE/s1600/hitchgoogle.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 208px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmuQvcHBfICIcWMhz6rv6eJZCmtN000Ni5x0MnuCZXzzkfj1HT0kj1VwzyhwW51x6dlIjz9kVvvCcsyORknLDiRpor4RwRAsoveizEp_McDYAOg1X72gGrrB3S0_w6fAXX0t8dYzHx1WhE/s320/hitchgoogle.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5625249115187080610" /></a>mean the whole thing? They’d take me literally. I thought, well, all right, one of the things you have to do in life as an author is live up to your damn subtitle. So I thought today I'd defend the subtitle because I think the title probably, when it came to me in the shower, I realized, it pretty much does speak for itself. Unlike that sign outside Little Rock airport—huge yellow and black sign black sign that you see from the airport that says, just "Jesus," a word I have used myself, and a name I know but put like that seems to say both too much and too little, you know what I mean? Well, here’s how religion has this effect, in my opinion: it is derived from the childhood of our species, from the bawling, fearful period of infancy. It comes from the time when we did not know that we lived on an orb; we thought we lived on a disc. And we did not know that we went around the sun or that the sky was not a dome; when we didn’t know that there was a germ theory to explain disease, and innumerable theories for the explanation of things like famine. It comes from a time when we had no good answers, but because we are pattern-seeking animals (a good thing about us), and because we will prefer even a conspiracy theory or a junk theory to no theory at all (a bad thing about us). This is and was our first attempt of philosophy, just as in some ways, it was our first attempt at science, and it was all founded on and remains founded on a complete misapprehension about the origins, first of the universe, and second, about human nature. We now know a great deal about the origins of the universe, and a great deal about our own nature. I've just had my DNA sequenced by National Geographic. You should all, by the way, get this done. It’s incredibly important to find out how racism and creationism have been abolished by this extraordinary scientific breakthrough, how you can find out your kinship with all your fellow creatures originating in Africa; but also, your kinship with other forms of life including not just animal but plant, and you get an idea of how you are part of nature, and how that’s wonderful enough. And we know from Stephen Hawking and from many others, Steven Weinberg and many other great physicists, an enormous amount now about what Professor Weinberg's brilliant book calls the "first three minutes," the concept of the Big Bang. And we can be as sure as we could probably need be that neither this enormous explosion that set the universe in motion, which is still moving away from us in a great rate, nor this amazingly complex billion dollar—billion year period of evolution, we can be pretty certain it was not designed so that you and I could be meeting in this room. We are not the objects of either of these plans. These plans don’t know we’re here. I’m sorry to say, wouldn’t know or care if we stopped being here. We have to face this alone with the equipment, intellectual and moral, that we’ve been given, or that we've acquired, or that is innate to us. And here’s another way in which religion poisons matters: it begins by saying, well, why don't we lie to ourselves instead, why don’t we pretend that we’re not going to die, or that an exception can be made at least in our own case if we make the right propitiations or the right moves. Why do we not pretend that the things like modern diseases which we can sequence now, sequence the genes of, like AIDS, are the punishment for wickedness and fornication? Why don't we keep fooling ourselves that there is a divine superintendent of all this because it would abolish the feeling of loneliness and possibly even of irrelevance that we might otherwise have. In other words, why don’t we surrender to wish thinking? That poisons everything, in my opinion. Right away, it attacks the very basic integrity that we need to conduct the scrupulous inquiries, investigations, experiments, interrogations of evidence that we need to survive and to prosper and to grow. And it's no coincidence, no accident that almost every scientific advance has been made in the teeth of religious opposition of one form or another that says we shouldn’t be tampering with God’s design. I suppose the most recent and most dangerous one of these is the attempt to limit stem cell research. But everyone could probably think of other forms of scientific research and inquiry, especially medical that had led to religious persecution, in reprisal. Thirdly, it’s an attack, I think, on what’s also very important to us, our innate morality. If there’s one point that I get made more than another to me when I go and debate religious people, it's this, the say, "Where would your morals come from if there was no God?" It’s actually—it’s a question that’s posed in Dostoyevsky's wonderful novel <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i>, one of the brothers says—Smerdyakov, actually, the wicked one, says it: "If God is dead, isn’t everything permitted, isn’t everything permissible? Where would our ethics be if there was no superintending duty?" This, again, seems to me a very profound insult to us in our very deepest nature and character. It is not the case, I submit to you, that we do not set about butchering and raping and thieving from each other right now only because we’re afraid of a divine punishment or because we’re looking for a divine reward. It's an extraordinarily base and insulting thing to say to people. On my mother’s side, some of my ancestry is Jewish. I don’t happen to believe the story of Moses in Egypt or the exile or the wandering in the Sinai, and, in fact, now even Israeli archaeology has shown that there isn’t a word of truth to that story or really any of the others, but take it to be true. Am I expected to believe that my mother’s ancestors got all the way to Mount Sinai, quite a trek, under the impression until they got there that rape, murder, perjury, and theft were okay, only to be told when they got to the foot of Mount Sinai, bad news, none of these things is kosher at all? They’re all forbidden. I don’t think so. I think, I think we can, actually have a better explanation ever since—superior as well as better—that no one would have been able to get as far as Mount Sinai or in any other mountain or in any other direction unless they had known that human solidarity demands that we look upon each other as brothers and sisters, and that we forbid activities such as murder, rape, perjury, and theft, that this is innate in us. If those activities are not innate, the sociopaths who don't understand the needs of anyone but themselves and the psychopaths who positively take pleasure in breaking these rules, well, all we can say is, according to one theory, they're also made in the image of God which makes the image of God question rather problematic, does it not? Or whether they can be explained by a further and better research and have to be restrained and disciplined meanwhile, but in no sense here is religion a help where it claims to help most which is to our morality, to our ethics. Finally, I would say—not finally because I’m finished here, I’m not quite done. Don't relax. I hope everyone has got to drink, something to eat, but on the poison question, I think there’s the real temptation of something very poisonous to human society and human relations which is the fear of freedom, the wish to be slaves, the wish to be told what to do. Now, just as we all like to think and we live under written documents and proclamations that encourage us to think that it is our birth right and our most precious need to be free, to be liberated, to be untrammeled, so we also knew that unfortunately the innate in people is the servile, is the wish to be told what to do, is the adoration for strong and brutal and cruel leaders, that this other baser element of the human makeup has to be accounted for and it gives us a great deal of trouble around the world as we speak. Religion, in my view, is a reification, a distillation of this wish to be a serf, to be a slave. Ask yourself if you really wish it was true that there was a celestial dictatorship that watched over you from the moment you were born, actually the moment you were conceived, all through life, night and day, knew your thoughts, waking and sleeping, could in fact convict you of thought crime, the absolute definition of a dictatorship, can convict you for what you think and what you privately want, what you’re talking about to yourself, that admonishes you like this under permanent surveillance, control and supervision and doesn’t even let go of you when you’re dead because that’s when the real fun begins. Now, my question to you is this, who wishes that that were true? Who wants to lead the life of a serf in a celestial North Korea? I’ve been to North Korea. I’m one of the very few writers who has. I am indeed the only writer who’s been to all three axis of evil countries, Iran, Iraq and North Korea. And I can tell you North Korea is the most religious state I’ve ever been to. I used to wonder when I was a kid, what would it be like praising God and thanking him all day and all night? Well, now I know because North Korea is a completely worshipful state. It's set up only to do that, for adoration and it’s only one short of a trinity. They have a father and the son, as you know, the Dear Leader and the Great Leader. The father is still the president of the country. He’s been dead for fifteen years, but Kim Jong-il, the little one, is only the head of the party and the Army. His father is still the president, head of the state. So you have in North Korea what you might call a necrocracy or what I also called them mausolocracy, thanatocracy. One—just one short of a trinity: father, son, maybe no holy ghost, but they do say that when the birth of the younger one took place, the birds of Korea sang in Korean to mark the occasion. This I’ve checked. It did not happen. Take my word for it. It didn't occur and I suppose I should add they don’t threaten to follow you after you're dead. You can leave North Korea. You can get out of their hell and their paradise by dying. Out of the Christian and Muslim one, you cannot. This is the wish to be a slave. And in my view, it’s poisonous of human relations. Now, I’ve already babbled for nearly twenty minutes. I’ll be quick. It is argued, well, some religious people have done great things and have been motivated to do so by their faith. The most cited case in point I have found is that of Dr. Martin Luther King, who I know I don’t need to explain to you about. Two quick things on that: first, he was it’s true a minister. He did preach the Book of Exodus, the exile of an enslaved and oppressed people as his metaphor. But if he really meant it, he would have said that the oppressed people, as the Book of Exodus finds them doing, were entitled to kill anyone who stood on their way and take their land, their property, enslave their women, kill their children, and commit genocide, rape, ethnic cleansing and forcible theft of land. That’s what the Book of Exodus described happening, the full destruction of the tribes. It's very fortunate that Dr. King only meant the Bible at the most to be used as a metaphor and after all he was using the only book that he could be sure all of his audience had ever really read. That’s the first thing. The second is, during his lifetime, he was attacked all the time for having too many secular and leftist and non-believing friends, the people like famous black secularists like Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph and others, the men that actually did organize the march on Washington;,which leads me to my third observation which is this: It’s a challenge I've made now in debates with rabbis, with priests of all Christian stripes, with imams. Once with a—I know this sounds like an opening of a joke about some bar, but once also with a Buddhist nun in Miami. I asked them all. Here is my challenge: you have to name me an ethical statement that was made or a moral action that was performed by a religious person in the name of faith that could not have been made as an action or uttered as a statement by a person not of faith, a person of no faith. You have to do that. Not so far and I’ve done it at quite a high level with the religious, no takers. No one's been able to find me that. That being the case, we're entitled to say, I think, that religious faith serve as the requirements whereas if I was to ask anyone in this room, "Think of a wicked thing said or an evil thing done by a person of faith in the name of faith," no one would have a second of hesitation in thinking of one, would they? Interesting to realize how true that is and how much truerit's getting. Does anyone ever listen to Dennis Prager’s Show? He’s a slightly loopy Christian broadcaster—religious broadcaster, I should say, he’s more Jewish than Christian—Judeo-Christian broadcaster who quite often rather generously has me on his show. And he asked me a question the other day, he had a challenge of his own. He said, “You are to imagine that you’re in a town late at night where you've never been before, and you have no friends and it’s getting dark. And through the darkness, you see coming towards you a group of men, let’s say ten. Do you feel better or worse if you know that they’re just coming from a prayer meeting?” This is Mr. Prager’s question to me. I said, “Well, Mr. Prager, without leaving you, from just without quitting the letter B, I can tell you I’ve had that experience in Belfast, in Beirut, in Baghdad, in Bombay, in Bosnia, and in Bethlehem. And if you see anyone coming from a religious gathering in any of those places, you know exactly how fast you need to run. And no one has to explain to you why and I haven’t had to waste any time telling you, have I, ladies and gentlemen? So I submit to you that it is those who are people of faith who have the explaining to do, who have the justifying to do if this is indeed the case. If they can't account for anything about the origin of our cosmos or our species, if they say that without them, we’d be without morals and make us seem as if we are merely animals without faith, if further, everybody can name an instance where religion has made people actually behave worse to one another and act as a retardant upon the advances of knowledge and science and information, I submit that the case to be made is theirs rather than mine. And we have a better tradition. We’re not just arid secularists and materialists, we on the atheist side. We can point, through the Hubble telescope, the fantastic, awe-inspiring majestic pictures that are being taken now of the outer limits of our universe, and who’s going to turn away from those pictures and start gaping again at the burning bush? We have smaller microscopes that can examine for us the miracles of the interior of the double helix and the sheer beauty of that. The natural world is wonderful enough, more wonderful than anything conjured by the fools who believe in astrology or the supernatural. And we have a better tradition politically against the popes and the imams and the witch doctors and the divine right of kings and the whole long tradition of civic repression combined with religion that's known as theocracy. We have created in the United States, the only country in the history of the world written on founding documents testable, organized, works in progress based on the theory of human liberation and the only constitution in the history of world that says that there shall be a separation between the church and the state. God is never mentioned in the United States Constitution except in order to limit religion and keep it out of politics and put it under legal control. This achievement was described by President Jefferson, whose biographer I am in a small way, to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut in a letter after they'd written to him for fear of persecution. By the way, who do you think the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut were afraid of being persecuted by? Anyone knows?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: The Methodists?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, the Congregationalists of Danbury, Connecticut. People forget what it used to be like, see how the Christians loved each other, how they've tried to repeat the European pattern of one religious sect repressing and torturing another one. And as you probably know, the president wrote back and said, “No, you may be assured that there will ever be in this country a wall of separation between the church and the state.” So I have a new slogan and I’m taking it on tour and I invite you to join me in it and it goes like this, “Mr. Jefferson, build up that wall.” Okay, thank you very much for coming. And I’m all yours. And that was 25 minutes, I hope that’s fair. And I’ll point out the questioners if you like because I don't think anyone thinks that I’ve planted my immediate family in this hole, but, Carol, stay out of it. Bring it on.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Thank you for coming to Google.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It’s my honor.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: So you make it sound really, really simple. I mean you have explanations for everything.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: And I agree with a lot of your arguments and, you know, I lived in, you know like, a socialist country. I mean, I come from Croatia so I, you know, I empathize with a little bit of when you say like the axis of evil and especially North Korea being a perfect theocracy, I can relate to that. But I don't understand why do you say that these people really want to be enslaved, if you could explain this to me. I mean, I think there’s really a system, you know, like set up by a minority which is really a brutal system and I don't understand about that part, like, you know, like this is something that these people want so...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Did you say you were Croatska, Croatian?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Yes, yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah. Well, then I would be upset if you thought I meant that these man-made regimes were there because people wanted them to be, no. That’s not what I meant at all about North Korea. Particularly, these have been riveted onto...<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...people. I mean, North Korea is a hermetic place unfortunately in that it has ocean on either side of it; the Demilitarized Zone which is several miles wide on the south and Russia and China are on the north. So, you have a place where you can horribly conduct an experiment on human beings, essentially. You can isolate them totally. The North Korean State was set up in the same year that Orwell published 1984. And you almost think that somebody gave Kim Il-sung a copy of 1984 in Korean and said, “Do you think we could make this fly?” And he said, “Well, I can’t be sure. We sure can give it the old college try.” Because that’s how it feels there. I went there, I thought, I've had his experience—I’ll just digress for a second. I’ve had this experience twice in my life. Journalists hate cliché. I know it doesn’t always seem like that when you read the papers, but we try and avoid them. I went to Prague once under the old days of the communist regime. I thought whatever happens to me here, I’m not going to mention Franz Kafka in my essay. I’m going to be the first journalist not to do it. I went to a meeting of the opposition underground, somebody betrayed us because the secret police came in and, suddenly, wham like this just broke down the door, dogs, torches, rubber truncheons, the lot. They slammed me against the wall, "You’re under arrest." "Well, I demand to see the British ambassador." "Blah, blah, you’re under arrest." "What’s the charge?" "We don't have to tell you that." I thought, fuck, I’ve got to mention Kafka after all. They make you do it. Well, I—that’s actually what a cliché is. Communism is a cliché in itself. The same in North Korea: I thought I don’t want to mention Orwell, I don't want to mention Orwell, now I have to mention him. There’s no other standard of comparison. No, what I meant about the fear of freedom was this: many, many people don't of course want to live under a hellish starvation regime of gulag type, like that. But they quite like being told what to do. They don't want to be told that life doesn’t—the world doesn’t owe them a living and that they’re on their own and they quite like it and repeatedly vote for parties and sometimes leaders who promise to provide everything as long as they'll give up just a little bit of freedom, just a little bit. In the tradeoff, you’ll get more security and more welfare. It’s a temptation. In some cases, it takes an extreme form, and I'm very impressed by how often when I debate with the religious people, they will tell me that they gravitate towards faith because they want someone to, if you like, look after them. The whole idea of a heavenly father, for example, is built up on this. The old joke says, "Some say God is dead, some say God is dad." You figure. Then there are people who—well, Islam for example, the word means—the word "Islam" means surrender, prostration. You give everything to God. Everything's in his hands. This is implicitly totalitarian. That’s what I mean. But I think it's innate in most people is the feeling that they quite like someone to take care of them all of the time so it can be hard to argue with them that there is no such person.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: I understand better now but it's not...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Okay.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: ...just to follow up a little bit. So is there a possibility there to say that then some people are more freedom-loving than others and is this some sort of, you know, like—I wouldn’t call it racism or anything but, you know, like, differentiating people by their love towards freedom and I'll end with that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I’m certain that the same feelings are innate in all people. And that one day there will be a North Korean edition of 1984, and it will be a huge bestseller there.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Uh-huh.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I am as sure of that as I can be of anything. Though, at the moment, it’s hard to imagine that there’s anyone in North Korea who's even allowed to consider the concept of political liberty. It will come because it is innate. I have no doubt about that.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: To follow up to on this fear of freedom and there is an innate idea, sorry to beat that horse, but what do you think would possibly replace this? I also think that there are some—I mean it’s obviously much easier to say my life is out of my control and these events are out of my control so, you know, I’m going to thank God for the good things and, you know, hate the devil for the bad things, whatever. So, like, you know, from Plato to Nietzsche to Sartre have said it’s difficult to choose the life where you're actually deciding and making choices for yourself and taking responsibility and appreciating the fact that the world doesn’t care about your existence and then doing what you need to do with that. It is difficult. How do we, you know, well—how could we possibly imagine a world where everybody buys into that idea and how do we—where would we go like—where would that structure that some people feel they can’t do without, where would they get that from? I guess what would religion be replaced by so to fulfill this natural need?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah. Well, I would say that emancipating oneself from religion and from the combined sort of solipsism and masochism, this is what I was trying to say to the comrade here a moment ago. Religion says to you, remember, the monotheistic ones, you're a miserable sinner, your sin is original, you can't escape it, you’re born as a wretch, you’re made out of dust or according to the Qur'an, a clot of blood, you’re a worm, you’re nothing, you know, but a piece of gunk basically. But—and you got to work really hard to get away from the terrible punishment that awaits you for that. So total abnegation, but there’s also good news: the universe is designed with you in mind, and God has a plan for you personally. So just when the person thinks they can't take anymore abuse—it’s like being inducted into a cult—just when the person thinks they can't take anymore humiliation, they're told, ah, but father loves you and he wants you to join our group. That’s not good for people. You’d be better off without it. So would everyone you know, so it’s not a matter of what we would put in its place; we wouldn’t. We’d be emancipated from that kind of sadomasochism. That’s a good thing to start off with. Second, we have the wonders and beauties of science to study. We have instead of ancient texts that are full of lies and myths, we have increasingly a wonderful world literature that’s available to anybody who can read even a little. Most recently, I would cite you, because yesterday was the birthday of India, happy birthday by the way to all Indians here. And Pakistanis, if you insist, though I think the partition was a huge mistake. There’s a—and religious partition is the worst kind, and it’s going to lead one day to a thermonuclear war so—I didn’t have time to go into that but maybe someone will ask me. There's incredible literature in English written by Indians. It’s sort of a sub-branch, but I shouldn’t even say sub, I mean a branch, a new branch of English writing by Indians in English. It's becoming a great part of world literature. There’s all this extraordinary excitement. And people say no, no, no, you should, as Thomas Aquinas said, "I'm only a man of one book," you know, you should be reading a bible, you don't really need anything else, they’re destroying libraries in the Muslim world that could have any books that contradict the Qur'an. This is no way to live. But having said all that, and said what the—and the consolations of philosophy too which aren’t that hard to study are very rewarding. And ethical and moral dilemmas that you get out of the study of literature, George Eliot, Dostoyevsky, people of that kind, James Joyce. Still, it’s only a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. There are no guarantees and an atheist can be a nihilist, or a sadist, or a Stalinist, or a fascist—actually it’d be unlikely the last one but that’s possible. Okay, but there are no guarantees and in part that it’s the recognition of that, that’s the beginning of wisdom as well as I think the beginning of liberty.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: One short and one longer one. I just want to be sure, I assume that you have read the <i>Captain Stormfield's Journey To Heaven</i> by Mark Twain?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sorry. Yes, I've read a lot of Mr. Clemens on religion.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Yes. That seemed a sort of a definitive work on the hierarchy structure of a more standard religion.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes. By the way, you can't read too much Twain, ladies and gentlemen, on the subject. And now all of his stuff is available. There are websites on Mark Twain and religion. It used to be really hard to get his writings on religion even 10 years ago. Sorry.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: And my longer question which hopefully won't choke you up. I actually have several friends who are very well-educated, in some cases in the sciences, who became religious late in life. They had been atheist or agnostic, and then just decided they were feeling something and became religious. Do you have anything to say on that sort of grounds or why that might be occurring?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, I suppose I could speculate, but that’s all I would be doing.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Of course.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think for some people, the Hubble View, say, does have the opposite effect from the one it has on me. It makes people feel, well, then, whoever designed this must be even more amazing than I thought. And that’s—there are attempts made by creationists now to say that. Instead of saying, "No, Darwin was wrong. God made all this stuff." They now say, "Well, okay, there was evolution, but God did that, too." So as you may know arguments that explain everything, explain nothing. That’s a definite principle I think of underlying poor cognition. If they can bend their argument so it can comprehend everything, comprise everything then it isn't an argument. But I think that we are certainly made in such a way as to be worshipfully inclined, shall we say. That tendency is certainly within us. And when people think that there's something awe inspiring, what they feel is awe. And then what they feel is well, maybe there's some majesty I should be acknowledging here, though that isn't at all a logical step. By the way, do you know about "awe?"<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: In what sense?<br /><br />HITCHENS: John Wayne played the Roman centurion in one of the films about the crucifixion?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: I don’t believe I've seen that one.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And there's a certain point the rain has to come down hard, and there's thunder and lightning and the veil of the temple splits and so on. And John Wayne, standing as a centurion, is supposed to say, "Truly, this was the son of God." So he does this. I forget who the director was, I think it’s Houston. And cue rain, thunder and lightning, so Wayne stands there stoically, under the waters, "Truly, this was the son of God." And the director's, "John, that was great. That was terrific. I just wonder if we could have it with a little more awe." So they cue again the rain, thunder, the veil of the temple splits in twain, earthquakes, you know, it's all happening and Wayne says, "Aw, truly, this was the son of God."<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: So this is a kind of a follow-up on Tom's question. I have a buddy who styles himself as a kind of an allegorical pagan. And he's had a lot of angry criticisms of religion, many of which echo yours. But at the same time he feels in himself a kind of a biological need to be part of a circle of believers in a community which he feels helps his rather fragile emotional demeanor. He goes through, you know, depression and things like that, and he finds that belief—so what he'd done is try to find what he feels as the least obnoxious religion he could find and then not take it too seriously. What would you say to such a person?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, that used to be called the Church of England, or the Unitarians, about whom Bertrand Russell said, "The great thing about them is they believe in one god maximum." Peter DeVries is very good on this. He says, "People used to be pagans and polytheists and believe in multiple gods, and then they started believing in one god and they're going nearer the true figure all the time." This is progress.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: On an article, I believe it was in <i>Slate</i> I read, you seemed reluctant to endorse if not critical of Richard Dawkins's attempt to sort of organize the atheists under the title of "Brights."<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: And I believe that your comment was that we infidels need no such machinery of reinforcement. My question is, if like-minded people do not organize, especially if those whose ideals we oppose are more organized, how can we attempt to kind of steer our society the way that we would like it to go?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I was thinking of saying this to the previous question. I mean, I’m in some ways the wrong person to ask these questions. I’m no longer a joiner up of groups. I don’t feel the belonging need anymore. I used to when I was younger and more left than I am now feel that the need to be involved in an organized way. Now I don’t, and I think I probably have more influence as an individual than I ever did as a cogwheel in a so-called party. (A point for anyone to ponder actually who was asked have they ever considered registering independent, for example. People may fight harder for your vote if you don’t give it away in advance.) Separate question, and it’s very important to me that I don’t belong to a church. People who believe as I believe don’t need to get together all the time and remind ourselves what we believe, reinforce it, ram it home in case we forget the incredible propositions that, you know, we're singing and all of this kind of thing. You just recognize a fellow free-thinker when you meet one. That should be enough. And in any country or any language as well. There will be in Washington in October a big gathering where Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and myself and many others are going to be—Victor Stinger. Because there has been an extraordinary vogue of successful books on this subject now, and I think there's a change in the zeitgeist going on about religion. And let me just say this, if that zeitgeist has been brought about—the change has been brought about in that zeitgeist, it hasn’t been by any organization. It's been by a group of like-minded people writing their hearts out and refusing to be intimidated by religious bullying. Or, to allow religious nonsense to be taught in the schools, for example, in place of science. Or to allow euphemisms to be spread about the behavior of the parties of god in Iraq or elsewhere. That’s what created it, not an organization but what you might call an intellectual tendency. I think that’s fine. I think it's encouraging.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: Hi. A few of the things that you said don’t really seem consistent with our experience in the United States. Two things in particular: one is that you said, you know, once people, you know, have Hubble telescopes and microscopes, the burning bush is not as interesting. And the other thing you said is that, you know, religion kind of feeds into, you know, innate human nature for, you know, being told what to do or not having as much freedom. Well, in the United States, you have the most advanced, wealthy, most powerful nation in probably the history of the world, and you have probably the most freedom-loving, you know, almost inventing—not inventing but really espousing the philosophy of freedom and individuality and trying to, you know, propagate that throughout the world. Yet, you also have the most religious nation. Well, it's true. I mean, you can argue with the methods but I mean, there's no question that, like, we are trying to promote democracy. And yet you have, yeah, the most religious nation. You have like people going to church is probably an all-time high. Religious people affect who are leaders are, you know, to a great degree. So how do you explain, like, that contradiction?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I don’t think it’s a contradiction because religious, the section of the constitution means you can have religious pluralism. Now for example where I come from, originally (you can probably tell I was born in England), the head of the church is the head of the state and the head of the armed forces. It's an official church and you have to pay for it and whether you want to or not. And on the moment that Her Majesty the Queen expires, the head of the Church of England will become a bat-eared half-Muslim with no taste in women as far as I can see, the lugubrious Prince Charles, who goes to classes on Islam and talks to plants and is a loon. That’s what you get for founding a church on the family values of Henry VIII. In the United States, you can't have any of that. That'd be completely unconstitutional. You can belong to any church you want, the government has nothing to do with that. And people I think take a Toquevillian view, if you like, of the church. They go, many of them, to church for social reasons. Some of them for ethnic ones, some of them for charitable, some of them for community reasons as you might say. If you ask someone now—I've been doing this a lot recently. I have debated at every stop of my book tour. "Okay, so you said you are a Baptist minister?" "Yes." "Well, do you believe in John Calvin's teaching on predestination and hell fire?" "Why do you want to know?" "Well, only because you said you were a Baptist." "Yeah, but I mean I’m a Southern Baptist, you know that kind." Well, come one. They don’t love the question. They—ask Catholics if they really believe what their church teaches or what the Pope tells them. Of course they don’t for the most part. The fastest growing group of people in the country has been measured as being those of who have no belief or who are atheists. By far the fastest growing, it’s doubled in the last ten years. People are evidently lying to the opinion polls, that there are not enough churches in the country—there are plenty of them. They’re not enough to take all the people who say that they go to them, just couldn’t be done, couldn’t fit them in. I don’t think people who have doubts about religion are going to tell them to opinion pollsters who call them up at dinner time. They will say, "Yes, I am a Methodist." or whatever it is, they’re not going say "I sometimes wonder if John Wesley was really the man." Not when the multiple choice boxes are being gone through. So, but unfortunately, I mean, there are people who think that that’s the way to go politically. The president, for example, thinks that to say someone is person of faith is axiomatically to confer a compliment on them. And if you remember, he did it to Vladimir Putin, KGB goon and hood, and increasingly evidently a very dangerous man to have in charge in Russia. President meets and says right away, “Right away, well, I could tell by looking into his eyes and seeing that he was wearing his grandmother’s crucifix, that he was just the chap for me.” Now, in a strong field, I think that’s the stupidest thing the president has yet said. And he must, I think, occasionally regret it. And I got—tried to get a research grant to this one to find out just, I just need to know something: has Vladimir Putin ever worn his grandmother’s crucifix since? Had he ever been seen wearing it before? Or did he just think this should be enough for the president of the United States? Because if so, it would show that religion was not just metaphysically incorrect, but as I have I believe said, a danger and a poison to all of us. If our republic can be—and its president can be pushed over, like that, like someone offering garlic to a vampire, then we really are in trouble.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: Just a follow-up, though: it just sounds like you would have almost no religion in the U.S. if you—if it’s true that you were saying, that once you became an advanced scientific society, you know, you’d lose interest in religion which is not the case.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Alright. I'll say a bit more: I mean, take the case of the so-called “intelligent design school.” They want at least equal time, they used to want to ban evolution, now they want equal time in schools. So, they brought with their Discovery Institute friends from Washington, moves on school boards and courts in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and the most conservative county of Pennsylvania around the town of Dover. And they have been humiliated in each case. And this is in Kansas, in Texas, in Oklahoma and in the most reactionary part of Pennsylvania, thrown off the school board by the electorate and thrown out of court as flat out unconstitutional by the judges, in all cases, Reagan Republican appointees. And I don’t know what they’re going to do next, these rednecks, I don’t know what they’re going to do. But, I know why it doesn’t work, and why it’s not going to work, because there may be many parents in Kansas who say, “Well, I personally think that God made the rocks and so on and only made them 6,000 years ago," but they don’t want their children taught that in school. They don’t want to come from a state where they get laughed when they say where they’re from. "Oh you’re from Kansas, that’s the place where…" they don’t like that. It was the same with the confederate flag issue, quite apart from the racism. A lot of people didn’t want to come from a state that had a confederate battle flag on its [indecipherable]. Among other things people won’t have their conventions in your state and you’ll suffer for that too. You’ll get laughed at when you travel. They don’t want this. And nor should they have to put up with it because of a handful of crackpots. So, no, I don’t say there aren’t a lot of devout people in this country and I don’t say that science just negates religion. But I say that the influence of religion as opposed to scientific rationalism is hugely overestimated, yeah. Shouldn’t impress people to the point where they feel it must—can’t be opposed.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: Thank you for coming.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Thanks for having me.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: I think you already answered one of my questions regarding organizing a larger effort. So separate from that, I wanted to get just some comments and thoughts based upon the idea of if there is going to be an independent movement whether at the Atheist or Anti-theist movement, whether you’re part of it or not, if you have any suggestions for the average person not may not have say a publishing company or a production company, but does have the Internet, you know, does have their own thoughts...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Right.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: ...and a keyboard in front of them, what they can do to either give resources to other people or to actually express their thoughts in ways that you find to actually be, you know, exceptional...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: ...to further some sort of movement, if there may be one.<br /><br />HITCHEN: Yeah. My friend, Rich Dawkins actually at the end of his book, <i>The God Delusion</i>, does have a list which you can look up, and his is an excellent book, I should say, of websites where, so to say, help is available. Well, there’s one for example—there is a very important one of called, “Leaving Islam,” is about people want to get out and are afraid or are being intimidated, ways of actually doing it and finding contact with people who feel the same way. Very serious because there are quite a lot of our fellow citizens now who don’t feel that they do have religious freedom because they are imprisoned in a religion that can kill them for even considering changing their minds about it, this is not a small matter. But I tell you what I would do: I would become a subscriber to a magazine called <i>Free Inquiry</i> which is published out of Amherst, New York. It’s every month I think, a very, very good rationalist and skeptical magazine which has itself a lot of local activities that you can look up. And then, there’s another magazine called <i>Skeptical Inquiry</i>, published from nearer here, maybe more appeal to people of a scientific or technical bent which does things likes they expose frauds that are on TV claiming to be able to put you in touch with your relatives, or divine water or all these kinds of nutbags that are often featured on primetime shows. And puts you also in touch with the work the great magicians Penn and Teller and James Randi, who again show that miracles are easy. And they can also show the fraudulence of anyone who tries to exploit them. A world of wonder awaits you. And these magazines will also show you, point out to you the areas where resistance is needed, say to the continued attempt to teach nonsense in American schools. “Yes, children that concludes the biology period, and now get ready for your creation studies hour and after the astronomy class we will have the astrology class for equal time, and then the chemistry/alchemy period.” It’s enough to make a cat laugh, isn’t it? There are people think this is what should be done to stultify American children. So, you can meet up with other people could think that that’s a bad idea.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 9: Yeah, two things, an observation and a concern: my first observation is that I think you share something in common with Jesus in that both of you have seems to be attacking aspects of religion, but in his case, he attacked specific religious leaders whereas you attack religion itself. And, I just find that interesting…<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, our resemblances are often pointed out.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 9: I’m sad to hear, I thought for sure I’d be the first. And secondly, the bit of concern, if we start going more and more toward atheism—you mentioned some of the horrible things that happened in the name of religion, but I look at one of the greatest genocides or at least mass murders ever, was by the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin when in the name of among another things atheism, they killed an enormously large number of their own people. And what do you think would prevent that from happening if indeed you were successful?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I have a chapter on this in my book because it is a very frequently asked question, I think it’s also a very serious one. I have to condense the chapter if I may, but here’s the situation: until 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, millions of Russians, millions and millions of them had for hundreds and hundreds of years been told that the head of the state, the Czar, was also the head of the church and was a little more than human, he was the little father of the people. He wasn’t quite divine. He was more like a saint than a human. And he owned everything in the country and everything was due to him. That’s how a gigantic layer Russian society was inculcated with servile, fatalistic ideas. If you are Josef Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business in the first place if you can’t realize this is a huge opportunity for you, you’ve inherited a population that’s servile and credulous and superstitious. Well, what does Stalin do? He sets up an inquisition; he has heresy hunts, trials of heretics, the Moscow trials; he proclaims miracles, Lysenko’s agriculture that was supposed to produce three harvests a year or whatever it was, the pseudo-biology that would feed everyone in a week; he says all thanks are due at all times to the leader and you must praise him at all times for his goodness and kindness. And incidentally, he always kept the Russian Orthodox Church on his side. It split. It split the church and some of them moved to New York and set up a rival. But the Russian Orthodox Church remained part of the regime, he was not so stupid as not to know he had to do that, just as Hitler and Mussolini made an even more aggressive deal with the Roman Catholic Church and with some of the Protestants. And remember the other great axis of evil person of that time, the Emperor of Japan, was not just a religious person but actually a god. So Fascism, Communism and Stalinism and Nazism are actually nothing like as secular as some people think, and much more religious than most people know. But here's what a fair test would be: find a society that's adopted the teachings of Spinoza, and Voltaire, Galileo, Einstein, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and gone down the pits as result of doing that into famine and war and dictatorship and torture and repression. That would be a fair test. That's the experiment I'd like to run. I don’t think that's going to end up with a gulag.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 10: Hi. Thank you for coming.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Thank you for having me.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 10: More ladies asking questions would be awesome and please. I implore you to be really hilarious so we can prove Mr. Hitchens is wrong about why women cannot be funny.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I was wondering what you'd done with your chicks here I must say.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 10: We're a technology company. So, I'm not religious but just to play a little devil's advocate, what do you say to studies that show that people who consistently go to church, who pray, who believe in God have, like, lower blood pressure and live longer lives, et cetera?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I’d say it wouldn't prove much. I mean, the—it'd be hard to prove. I'm not sure I would be able to trust the methodology but suppose it was true, the same could be said of being a Moonie for example. I mean, it is said that Louis Farrakhan's racist crackpot Nation of Islam, sectarian gang gets young men of drugs. For all I know it does, it may but that doesn’t recommend it to me. Nor does it prove a thing about its theology, if you see what I mean. Whereas I can absolutely tell you that of the suicide bombing population, 100% are faith based.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 10: This is true.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And I don’t think that that in itself disproves faith but I think it should make you skeptical of that kind of random sampling.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 10: Sure. There seemed to be...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Of the genital mutilation community the same can be said.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 10: I've a lot of progressive religious friends who—I used to be pretty condescending towards religion but I feel like I've learned a lot from them and learned about their religious practice and what it means to them and as you stated earlier a lot of religious people don’t really believe all the tenets of what their faith says anyway. So, I feel like those friends of mine are looking for community and looking for a feeling of oneness with other people and with the universe and ultimately on a scientific level that bears out anyway because on, like, a quantum level everything is one and is the same. So, I feel like churches at least in this country provide the sense of community that I don’t think exists any other way in our culture. I don’t feel like I had that growing up and I feel like my friends that went to church, they can go back to their church now and there are all of these adults that aside from their parents that were there to nurture them as they were growing up and then ask how they're doing and I never had that. So, I'm jealous of that in a sense.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It takes a lot to make me cry but you...See me afterwards, I mean...Look actually it’s what I said about if there's any who read, who read de Toqueville, <i>On Democracy in America</i> should—that's what he said about communitarianism and religion. It's very—it's the reason why America is so religious but it's a different form of religion. Ask yourself a related question: it's amazing to me how many Americans change religion when they get married. You hear it all the time, you've heard it. I used to be Seventh Day Adventist but my wife was Congregationalist, now I go to the Congregationalists. It doesn’t matter the Seventh Day Adventist used to say, "If you don’t stay with us you're going straight to hell." Changed very easily. Go to another church instead. Wouldn't consider perhaps not going to one but it shows the depth of the strength of religious allegiance. I also think that, well, it's notorious about, say, Polish Catholics in Chicago or Greek Orthodox or many Jews, the church has been a means of transmitting, preserving an ethnic tradition as well. The solidarity in the face of often quiet bleak kinds of life, and now there's even a phenomenon known as Churchianity and expressed by the megachurches, the people who lead half transient lives don’t have very stable employment or residence who often are moving around the country. On a Sunday they want to know where they can go take the old jalopy and be among friends, and these characters are waiting for them believe you me to remove what few savings they do have left from them. Because that's another indissoluble fact about American religion just as community and blood pressure may be involved. It has to be mentioned in the same breath as open fraud to an absolutely astonishing extent. I mean, the shake down community, the genital mutilation community, the suicide bombing community, the child abuse—I would prefer to say child rape communities, all these are communities of faith, believe you me.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: Oh, it's my turn?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sir.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: Try to diverge a little from the immediate subjects. You've expressed your regrets for this perverse impulse in the human spirit which seems to desire to be dominated, to prostrate itself before the mysterious altar of power. It occurs to me that the current government of this nation has, in a calculated fashion, exploited this perverse desire and exploited the language which seems to inspire it or appeal to it. Now, I'm strongly opposed to a particular policy of this government which is the indefinite detention of so-called terrorist suspects in Cuba and in particular I dislike the way the government tries to justify this policy by using these very discourses of power and secrecy which come of a particular religious stamp. So I would like to ask, not to be impertinent, how you can square what you've said today with other comments you've made apparently in support of this very policy.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, there's no danger of you being impertinent so don’t worry about that. I've just returned from Guantanamo&mdashwell, I say "just", I was there last month. It took me a long time to get down and haven't yet written anything about it so you won't know my views as I'm not sure that I know them in full myself, but about your question: I know what my views are about indefinite detention in principle. I didn't see or must have missed any allusion that all made to religion, in the decision to declare them enemy combatants.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: Um...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You're suggesting there was a religious justification for the detention policy?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: Not a religious justification per se but in my opinion the Bush administration in its public deliveries often uses a language of power very much akin to that used by religious tyrants and demagogues down the centuries and this language comes up particularly strongly when justifying controversial actions such as Guantanamo Bay.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, again I think we have a disagreement. I mean the language they seem to use to me is the language of the secular language of emergency powers and special circumstances requiring extraordinary measures. That’s a very old argument especially in the United States, it goes back to President Lincoln’s attempt to suspend habeas corpus in the Civil War. It reminds me of that and not of any argument about or with theocracy.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: "Emergency powers" and "extraordinary rendition" and other terms like this, to me, rather smack of secrecy jargon...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: ...at the same time used by preachers.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Or by secular despots. I mean, I just don’t think you’re quite carrying your point about the theological. If by all means if you want to discuss the question of civil liberties, let’s do so, but I mean it’s a departure from the rubric. The Bush administration is not conducting a holy war in this respect. It is confronting a holy war, however. I mean one thing you can’t miss about the inhabitants of Guantanamo is how faith based they are, and that’s part of the reason why we are presented with this problem. The difficulty seems to me to be the following: if you treat them as criminals, as some argue, then you can’t say really that you are fighting a war, then it’s only a law and order question. If you say you’re fighting a war, then in what sense are these not enemy soldiers? If they are enemy soldiers, how can you try them as criminals? Why are you holding people as criminals and building a military tribunal? I visited the room where they’re going to have them tried, where they'll be able to say, “Well, thanks for having me here and admitting that I am a soldier," when the whole point is that the Geneva Convention says that they’re not. So that’s bad enough to begin with and it’s a territory no government has yet had to step onto. But in addition, we’re apparently not allowed to do any of those things, nor are we allowed extraordinary rendition nor can we return them to their countries of origin in case they get maltreated there by their own governments. Well, this leaves the—apparently only two alternatives. One is not to take any prisoners and the other is to let everybody go and say we’ve got no right to hold you. Neither of these seems to be very attractive. This is as far as I’ve got now with my reasoning about it.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: Do you not dislike the way that’s all of these actions might not be unconstitutional? They’re not justified in constitutional terms but in language such as "extraordinary rendition," "emergency powers"...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah, I do dislike that very much, yes. I mean, no one’s ever been able to point out to me that Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus helped to defeat the confederacy, for example. And I certainly don’t think that the president has the right under the Constitution to suspend habeas corpus. Only the Congress can do that. It doesn’t mean it can’t be suspended. The Congress has to do it, the president cannot. I'm rather a stickler for that kind of thing. Call me old fashioned if you will.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: Well, I feel I’ve taken up a little too much time now.<br /><br />HITCHENS: A very welcome question, believe me.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: I would posit that the Bush administration has restrained itself or needs to be restrained from using genuine religious language in the way it’s approached its so-called war and terror and I believe the word crusade was used earlier in the campaign by President Bush, it’s not been used since. And we remember that the original name of the campaign was "Infinite Justice," another rejected piece of unfortunate language, obviously picked out by some careful PR person.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Fair enough.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: Hi. Thank you very much for coming. I was—just had a question about something that many people have probably find to be a less serious issue but I'm curious about your thoughts on art, music and creativity and how those fit in with your other ideas. These are—those were three things that formed communities that maybe could be argued on faith, you know. The greatest composers throughout history always dedicating their work to God and things of that nature and I'm just curious how you view these things and beauty of these things to be similar to the beauty that you suggested you can find in nature or how you think that they might be more suited, more fitting in with religion. I'm just curious if you think that any would be devalued in this new system or any—with your ideas.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah, we don’t know—of the extraordinary buildings, the great Gothic cathedrals for example or the, even the Great mosques of Andalusia, we don’t know if the architects who built them that they were themselves convinced that it was for the greater glory of God. We just know that at the time you couldn't get a job as an architect if you didn't affirm that. And if—certainly we know what would have happened to you if you said, “What God?” That would not just be the end of your career as an architect, so we don’t know about that. We don’t know the same about, even the devotional painters, we don’t know that they were believers, or the composers. Of the devotional poets, and I'm on stronger ground here as a literary critic, I know a bit more about it. People like John Donne or George Herbert, it would be very, very hard to fake writing that if you weren’t a believer. It would be extremely hard. Where would you get your inspiration from? And my feeling is that it’s real devotional poetry and I personally couldn't be without it. We’d be much poorer. To stay with the literature if you don’t mind. The King James version of the Bible, the King James translation, referred to in the <i>New York Times</i> recently as the St. James translation, is itself a great work of literature and one couldn't be without it. If you don’t understand the beauty of that liturgy, there’s a lot of Shakespeare and of Milton and Blake you wouldn’t get, you wouldn’t know what was going on. So it’s part of literacy to know it. I once wrote a book about the Parthenon, very important building for western civilization, great deal to be learned from it and from—by its beauty and by its symmetry and by its extraordinary architecture and sculpture. But I no longer care about the cult of Pallas Athena. I no longer care about the mystical ceremonies, some of them involving animal sacrifice and possibly human, that were conducted on the road from Eleusis. And I don’t have to care about Athenian imperialism and what it did to the Greek colonies in the rest of the Mediterranean. I can just appreciate the building and some—and know about the philosophical context and the plays of Sophocles and all the other things that were going on at the same time without any reference to their gods. So I propose that what culture largely means to us now is how to deal with civilizational art and great creativity in a post-supernatural era. In other words, how to keep all of that that’s of value without having to care about the culture of Pallas Athena, for example, or to be forced to bear in mind that say, St. Peter’s in Rome, actually not I think that impressive a building, was built by special sale of indulgences, I mean that’s how the money for it was raised. We can consider that independently now. We can value this building without knowing that. Though I always find it’s somewhat hard to forget.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: Right. Okay. I was just curious, I mean I wanted to seek more towards how all these things in art and music and creativity are often relayed between individuals as being spiritual or something along that nature whether or not the actual topic.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, no, then let me add—I wanted to say a bit more of this when I was speaking first. I think that the human need for the transcendent or the spiritual is undeniable but that’s not the supernatural. It’s very important to understand. The feeling that people get out of landscape and music, or landscape and music in combination or the feeling of war and love at the same time has had extraordinary consequences for many people, say, or one or other on their own. These are the things we can’t do without but there’s no reason to attribute them to the supernatural.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You’re not glimpsing anything but nature from that.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: Thank you. Thank you.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 13: Hi. So it turns out if you follow the money trail back for a lot of these things, this whole creationism, teaching creationism idea, you’ll eventually find political organizations that are trying to energize a base, right? And these bases...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 13: ...what they’d like to do is to get these people to feel like they’re being attacked. And in a lot of the discussions we have in your presentation, there’s a fine line between attacking people versus attacking ideas, right? What do you do to kind of ensure that you’re not going after people and not making people feel like you’re telling them that they’re idiots for example, right? How do you make that separation?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I think my answer’s been anticipated perhaps.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 13: Right.<br /><br />HITCHENS: If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings I’m still waiting to hear what your point is.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 13: Right.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'm very depressed however in this country you can be told "That’s offensive!" as if those two words constitute an argument or a comment, not to me they don’t, and I'm not running for anything so I didn't have to pretend to like people when I don’t.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 13: Right. Thanks.<br /><br />MODERATOR: Hello. Oh, thank you so much for speaking. I think we’re going to have a book signing right outside over here. So, if everyone got their copy of the book, thank you very much for coming.<br /><br />HITCHENS: How very nice of you to do that.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-209922860415483872010-11-27T09:10:00.026-05:002011-05-24T15:11:16.167-04:00Hitchens vs. Blair, Roy Thomson Hall<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Cristopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair>Tony Blair</a>: Be it Resolved, Religion is a Force for Good in the World<br /><li>November 26, 2010, <a href=http://www.roythomson.com/>Roy Thomson Hall</a>, Toronto, Ontario, Canada<br /><br />[Introductions by <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Munk>Peter Munk</a> and moderator <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Griffiths>Rudyard Griffiths</a>]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTAXQ9orukgl6oeWz2qY7V87UMxWK7AirNiV70axZbxT6YO47L89v1MVvpKAPaGNbjLFmeXqHUVNlXIFt-cBQ7PT68Yqq3iu8YLJoNTpbFOKvXkNkV8d4oIiZgsBo3HN6wWcCkW98BBI46/s1600/hitchensdrawing.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTAXQ9orukgl6oeWz2qY7V87UMxWK7AirNiV70axZbxT6YO47L89v1MVvpKAPaGNbjLFmeXqHUVNlXIFt-cBQ7PT68Yqq3iu8YLJoNTpbFOKvXkNkV8d4oIiZgsBo3HN6wWcCkW98BBI46/s320/hitchensdrawing.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544236503544346226" /></a>HITCHENS: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much to the Munk family, great philanthropists for making this possible. Seven minutes, ladies and gentlemen, for the foundational argument between religion and philosophy leaves me hardly time to praise my distinguished opponent. In fact, I might have to seize a later chance of doing that. I think three and a half minutes for metaphysics and three and a half for the material world won't be excessive. And I have a text—and I have a text and it is from, because I won't take a religious text from a known extremist or fanatic, it's from Cardinal Newman, recently, by Mr. Blair's urging, beatified and on his way to canonization, a man whose <i>Apologia</i> made many Anglicans reconsider their fealty and made many people join the Roman Catholic church and is considered, I think, rightly a great Christian thinker. My text from the <i>Apologia</i>: "The Catholic church," said Newman, "holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail and for all the many millions on it to die in extremist agony than that one soul, I will not say will be lost, but should commit one venial sin, should tell one willful untruth or should steal one farthing without excuse." You'll have to say it's beautifully phrased, ladies and gentlemen, but to me, and here's my proposition, what we have here, and picked from no mean source, is a distillation of precisely what is twisted and immoral in the faith mentality. Its essential fanaticism, its consideration of the human being as raw material and its fantasy of purity. Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well. I'll repeat that: created sick, and then ordered to be well. And over us, to supervise this, is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea. Greedy, exigent—exigent, I would say more than exigent—greedy for uncritical praise from dawn until dusk and swift to punish the original sins with which it so tenderly gifted us in the very first place. However, let no one say there's no cure: salvation is offered, redemption, indeed, is promised, at the low price of the surrender of your critical faculties. Religion, it might be said—it must be said, would have to admit, makes extraordinary claims but though I would maintain that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, rather daringly provides not even ordinary evidence for its extraordinary supernatural claims. Therefore, we might begin by asking, and I'm asking my opponent as well as you when you consider your voting, is it good for the world to appeal to our credulity and not to our skepticism? Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs? To appeal to our fear and to our guilt, is it good for the world? To our terror, our terror of death, is it good to appeal? To preach guilt and shame about the sexual act and the sexual relationship, is this good for the world? And asking yourself all the while, are these really religious responsibilities, as I maintain they are? To terrify children with the image of hell and eternal punishment, not just of themselves, but of their parents and those they love. Perhaps worst of all, to consider women an inferior creation, is that good for the world, and can you name me a religion that has not done that? To insist that we are created and not evolved in the face of all the evidence. To say that certain books of legend and myth, man-made and primitive, are revealed, not man-made code. Religion forces nice people to do unkind things and also makes intelligent people say stupid things. Handed a small baby for the first time, is it your first reaction to think, "Beautiful, almost perfect, now please hand me the sharp stone for its genitalia that I may do the work of the Lord"? No, it is—as the great physicist Steven Weinberg has very aptly put it, "In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things you'll need religion." Now, I've got now 1 minute and 57 seconds to say why I think this is very self-evident in our material world. Let me ask Tony again, because he's here, and because the place where he is seeking peace is the birthplace of monotheism, so you might think it was unusually filled with refulgence and love and peace. Everyone in the civilized world has roughly agreed, including the majority of Arabs and Jews and the international community, that there should be enough room for two states for two peoples in the same land, I think we have a rough agreement on that. Why can't we get it? The UN can't get it, the US can't get it, the Quartet can't get it, the PLO can't get it, the Israeli parliament can't get it, why can't they get it? Because the parties of God have a veto on it, and everybody knows that this is true. Because of the divine promises made about this territory, there will never be peacem there will never be compromise. There will instead be misery, shame and tyranny and people will kill each others' children for ancient books and caves and relics, and who is going to say this is good for the world? And that's just the example nearest to hand. Have you looked lately at the possibility that we used to discuss as children in fear, what will happen when Messianic fanatics get hold of an apocalyptic weapon? Well, we're about to find that out as we watch the Islamic republic of Iran and its party-of-God allies make a dress rehearsal for precisely this. Have you looked lately at the revival of czarism in Putin's Russia, where the black-cowled, black-coated leadership of Russian Orthodoxy is draped over an increasingly xenophobic, tyrannical, expansionist, and aggressive regime? Have you looked lately at the teaching in Africa and the consequences of it of a church that says, "AIDS may be wicked but not as wicked as condoms." That's exactly no seconds left, ladies and gentlemen. I have done my best. Believe me, I have more.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2XiylXbIc_8M9SnCj_kQAtK09llhrUAWLD-9MW5WxnzThv8CsnGaTOKI50lq4e4ZvEJJEF6P3rlilnhsiZtz3j-h9B4nVJbidheHD52VlUPVckX_lgCJfb16xZT5jHehw2lukrvZ10ps4/s1600/griffiths.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2XiylXbIc_8M9SnCj_kQAtK09llhrUAWLD-9MW5WxnzThv8CsnGaTOKI50lq4e4ZvEJJEF6P3rlilnhsiZtz3j-h9B4nVJbidheHD52VlUPVckX_lgCJfb16xZT5jHehw2lukrvZ10ps4/s320/griffiths.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544236142692035426" /></a>GRIFFITHS: Christopher, thank you for starting our debate. Mr. Blair, your opening remarks, please.<br /><br />BLAIR: Thank you. First of all, let me say it is a real pleasure to be with you all this evening, to be back in Toronto. It's a particular privilege and honor to be with Christopher in this debate. Let me first of all say that I do not regard the leader of North Korea as a religious icon, you will be delighted to know. I'm going to make—it's a biblical number, seven—seven points in my seven minutes. The first is this: it is undoubtedly true that people commit horrific acts of evil in the name of religion. It is also undoubtedly true that people do acts of extraordinary common good inspired by religion. Almost half of health care in Africa is delivered by faith-based organizations, saving millions of lives. A quarter of worldwide HIV/AIDS care is provided by Catholic organizations. There is the fantastic work of Muslim and Jewish relief organizations. There are in Canada thousands of religious organizations that care for the mentally ill or disabled or disadvantaged or destitute. And here in Toronto, barely one and a half miles from here, is a shelter run by covenant house, a Christian charity for homeless youth in Canada. So the proposition that religion is unadulterated poison is unsustainable. It can be destructive; it can also create a deep well of compassion, and frequently does. And the second is that people are inspired to do such good by what I would say is the true essence of faith, which is, along with doctrine and ritual particular to each faith, a basic belief common to all faiths in serving and loving God through serving and loving your fellow human beings. As witnessed by the life and teaching of Jesus, one of love, selflessness and sacrifice, the meaning of the Torah.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyaBA36ULxKUDMmmMvt4LTlFaF-1Oepq_jhKTw2ndc0i6-CJ5BAK8ocMdtqbl4zS0Cjdm85hMDUszf0wnM-N3Ihp7-ETmqA87P62Jxu8T_wD77XsXwlRpmkXgn-xgEfqf8C3ZCg1Jh49CE/s1600/blairhitchens.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyaBA36ULxKUDMmmMvt4LTlFaF-1Oepq_jhKTw2ndc0i6-CJ5BAK8ocMdtqbl4zS0Cjdm85hMDUszf0wnM-N3Ihp7-ETmqA87P62Jxu8T_wD77XsXwlRpmkXgn-xgEfqf8C3ZCg1Jh49CE/s320/blairhitchens.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544236783374591330" /></a> It was Rabbi Hillel who was once famously challenged by someone who said they would convert to religion if he could recite the whole of the Torah standing on one leg. He stood on one leg and said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is the Torah, the rest is commentary, now go and do it." The teaching of prophet Mohammed, saving one life is as if you're saving the whole of humanity; the Hindu searching after selflessness; the Buddhist concepts of karuna, mudita, and metta which all subjugate selfish desires to care for others seek insistence on respect for others of another faith. That, in my view, is the true face of faith. And the values derived from this essence offer to many people a benign, positive, and progressive framework by which to live our daily lives, stimulating the impulse to do good, disciplining the propensity to be selfish and bad. And faith, defined in this way, is not simply faith as solace in times of need, though it can be, nor a relic of unthinking tradition, still less a piece of superstition or an explanation of biology. Instead, it answers a profound spiritual yearning, something we feel and sense instinctively. This is a spiritual presence, bigger, more important, more meaningful than just us alone, that has its own power separate from our power, and that even as the world's marvels multiply, makes us kneel in humility, not swagger in pride. And that if faith is seen in this way, science and religion are not incompatible, destined to fight each other, until eventually the cool reason of science extinguishes the fanatical flames of religion, rather, science educates us as to how the physical world is and how it functions and faiths educates us as to the purpose to which such knowledge is put, the values that should guide its use, and the limits of what science and technology can do not to make our lives materially richer but rather richer in spirit. And so imagine indeed a world without religious faith, not just no place of worship, no prayer, no scripture, but no men or women who, because of their faith, dedicating their lives to others, showing forgiveness where otherwise they wouldn't, believing through their faith that even the weakest and most powerless have rights, and they have a duty to defend them. And yes, I agree, in a world without religion, the religious fanatics may be gone, but I ask you, would fanaticism be gone? And then realize that such an imagined vision of a world without religion is not in fact new. The twentieth century was a century scarred by visions that had precisely that imagining in their vision, and at their heart and gave us Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot. In this vision, obedience to the will of God was for the weak, it was the will of man that should dominate. So I do not deny for a moment that religion can be a force for evil, but I claim that where it is, it is based essentially on a perversion of faith and I assert that at least religion can also be a force for good, and where it is, that it's true to what I believe is the essence of faith. And I say that a world without religious faith would be spiritually, morally, and emotionally diminished. So I know very well that you can point, and quite rightly Christopher does, to examples of where people have used religion to do things that are terrible. And that have made the world a worse place. But I ask you not to judge all people of religious faith by those people, any more than we would judge politics by bad politicians, or indeed journalists by bad journalists. The question is, along with all the things that are wrong with religion, is there also something within it that helps the world to be better and people to do good? And I would submit there is. Thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Well Tony, your training in parliament, I can see, had you perfectly landing that right on the seven minute market. Ladies and gentlemen, we're moving into our rebuttal rounds and I'd like the audience to get engaged, to applaud when they hear something that the debaters say that they like, also to help me enforce our time limit. So when you see that clock ticking down, start applauding and that will move us through this in an orderly fashion. So Christopher, it's now your opportunity, in our first of two rebuttal rounds, to respond to Mr. Blair.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Do I have four, is that right?<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Two rounds of rebuttals. Each of you has the opportunity to go back and forth, and yes, you have four minutes for each speaker within each of those rounds, if that's not too confusing.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That sounds alright. I've got four minutes?<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah, good. Then hold your applause, for heaven's sake. Well now, in fairness, no one was arguing that religion should or will die out of the world, and all I'm arguing is that it would be better if there was a great deal more by way of an outbreak of secularism. Logically, if Tony is right, I would be slightly better off, not much, but slightly better off, being a Wahabi Muslim or a "Twelver" Shia Muslim or a Jehovah's witness than I am, wallowing as I do, in mere secularism. All I'm arguing, and really seriously, is what we need is a great deal more of one and a great deal less of the second. And I knew it would come up that we'd be told about charity, and I take this very seriously, because we know, ladies and gentlemen, as it happens, we're the first generation of people who do really, what the cure for poverty really is. It eluded people for a long, long time. The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it's called the empowerment of women. If you give women some control over the rate at which they reproduce, if you give them some say, take them off the animal cycle of reproduction to which nature and some doctrine—religious doctrine condemns them, and then if you'll throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit, the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty, but education, health, and optimism will increase. It doesn't matter; try it in Bangladesh, try it in Bolivia, it works—works all the time. Name me one religion that stands for that, or ever has. Wherever you look in the world and you try to remove the shackles of ignorance and disease stupidity from women, it is invariably the clericy that stands in the way, or in the case of—now, furthermore, if you are going to grant this to Catholic charities, say, which I would hope are doing a lot of work in Africa, if I was a member of a church that had preached that AIDS was not as bad as condoms, I'd be putting some conscience money into Africa too, I must say. But it won't bring—I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be funny. If I was trying to be funny, you mistook me. It won't bring back the millions of people who have died wretched deaths because of their teaching. That still goes on. I'd like to hear a word of apology from the religious about that, if it was on offer, after all, otherwise I'd be accused of judging them by the worst of them, and this isn't done, as Tony says so wrongly, in the name of religion, it's a direct precept, practice, and enforceable discipline of religion, is it not, sir, in this case? I think you'll find that it is. But if you're going to say, all right, the Mormons will tell you the same, "You may think it's a bit cracked to think Joseph Smith found another bible buried in upstate New York, but you should see our missionaries in action." I'm not impressed. I'd rather have no Mormons, no missionaries quite honestly, and no Joseph Smith. Do we grant to Hamas and to Hezbollah, both of whom will tell you, and incessantly do, "Look at our charitable work. Without us defending the poor of Gaza, the poor of Lebanon, where would they be? And they're right, they do a great deal of charitable work. It's nothing compared to the harm that they do, but it's a great deal of work all the same. I'm also familiar with the teachings of the great Rabbi Hillel. I even know where he plagiarized the story from (if he had access to the stuff). The injunction not to do to another what would be repulsive done to yourself is found in the <i>Analects</i> of Confucius, if you want to date it, but actually it's found in the heart of every person in this room. Everybody knows that much. We don't require divine permission to know right from wrong. We don't need tablets administered to us ten at a time in tablet form on pain of death to be able to have a moral argument. No, we have the reasoning and the moral suasion of Socrates and our own abilities. We don't need dictatorship to give us right from wrong, and that's my lot, thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: In the name of fairness and equity, Mr. Blair, I'm going to give you an additional 25 seconds for your first rebuttal.<br /><br />BLAIR: First of all, I don't think we should think that because you can point to examples of prejudice in the name of religion, that bigotry and prejudice and wrongdoing are wholly owned subsidiaries of religion. There are plenty of examples of prejudice against women, against gay people, against others that come from outside the world of religion. And the claim that I make is not that everything the church has done in Africa is right but let me tell you one thing it did do, and it did it whilst I was Prime Minister of the UK: the churches together formed a campaign for the cancellation of debt, they came together, they succeeded, and the first beneficiaries of the cancellation of debt were young girls going to school in Africa, because for the first time they had free primary education. So I agree that not everything the church or the religious communities have done around the world is right, but I do say at least accept that there are people doing great work, day in, day out, who genuinely are not prejudiced or bigoted, but are working with people who are afflicted by famine and disease and poverty and they are doing it inspired by their faith. And of course it's the case that not everybody—of course it's the case that you do not have to be a person of faith in order to do good work, I've never claimed that, I would never claim that. I know lots of people, many, many people, who are people not of faith at all, but who do fantastic and decent work for their communities and for the world. My claim is just very simple: there are nonetheless people who are inspired by their faith to do good. I mean, I think of people I met some time ago in South Africa, nuns who were looking after children that were born with HIV/AIDS. These are people who are working and living alongside and caring for people inspired by their faith. Is it possible for them to have done that without their religious faith? Of course, it's possible for them to have done it. But the fact is, that's what motivated them. So what I say to you is at least—look, what we shouldn't do is end up in a situation where we say, "Right, we've got six hospices here and one suicide bomber there, and how does it all equalize out?" That's not a very productive way of arguing this. And actually, I thought one of the most interesting things that Christopher said is that we're not going to drive religion out of the world, and that's true, we're not. And actually, I think for people of faith to have debates with those who are secularists is actually good and right and healthy and it's what we should be doing. I'm not claiming that everyone should congregate on Myspace, I'm simply claiming one very simple thing: that if we can't drive religion out of the world because many people of faith believe it and believe it very deeply, let's at least see how we do make religion a force for good, how we do encourage those people of faith who are trying to do good, and how we unite those against those who want to pervert religion and turn it into a badge of identity used in opposition to others. So I would simply finish by saying this: there are many situations where faith has done wrong, but there are many situations in which wrong has been done without religion playing any part in it at all. So let us not condemn all people of religious faith because of the bigotry or prejudice shown by some, and let us at least acknowledge that some good has come out of religion, and that we should celebrate.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Christopher, your second rebuttal, please.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh I have a second one?<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: You have a second one.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh my God—an amazing test of audience tolerance. Well alright, well how splendidly you notice we progress, ladies and gentlemen. Now it's okay, some religious people are sort of all right. I think I seem to be bargaining one of the greater statesmen of the recent past down a bit. Not necessarily opposed to that. Just to finish on the charity point, I once did a lot of work with a man called Sebasti&atild;o Salgado, some of you will know him, great man, great photographer. He was the UNICEF ambassador on polio questions. I went to Calcutta with him, elsewhere. Nearly got rid of polio, nearly got rid of polio, nearly made it join smallpox as a disease, a thing of the past, a filthy memory, except for so many religious groups in Bengal and elsewhere, Afghanistan, West Africa and so on, telling their children, "Don't go and take the drops, it's a conspiracy. It's against God. It's against God's design." (By the way, that argument isn't terribly new, when smallpox was a scourge, Timothy Dwight, the great divine who was the head of Yale, said taking Dr. Jenner's injection was an interference with God's design as well.) That's sort of, by the way—you need something like UNICEF to get major work done if you want to alleviate poverty and misery and disease, and for me, my money will always go to organizations like Medecins Sans Frontiers, like Oxfam, and many others, who, strangely enough, go out into the world, do good for their fellow creatures for its own sake. They don't take the Bible along, as people do to Haiti all the time, we keep catching them doing it. Their money is being spent flat out on proselytization. It's a function of the old thing that was hand in hand with imperialism. It's the missionary tradition. They can call it charity if they will, but it doesn't stand a second look. So much on the business of doing good, except perhaps to add, since I have you for some extra minutes, Mr. Blair and I at different times gave quite a lot of our years to the Labour Party and to the Labour movement, and if the promise of religion was true—had been true, right up until the late nineteenth century in, say, Britain, or North America or Canada, that good works are what's required and should be enough, and those who give charity should be honored, those who receive it should be grateful, two rather revolting ideas in one, I have to say, there would be no need for human and social and political action, we could rely on being innately good, which we know we can't rely upon, and which I never suggested that we could or should. So, now what would—and I'm intrigued now, so religion could be a good thing after all, sometimes, we think, is now the proposition. What would a religion have to do to get that far? Well, I think it would have to give up all supernatural claims. It would have to say no, you are not to do this under the threat of reward, heaven, or the terror of punishment, hell. No, we can't offer you miracles. Find me the church that will say, "Forget all that. Faith healing, no." It would have to give that up. It would have to give up the idea of an eternal, unalterable authority figure who is judge, jury, and executioner, against whom there could be no appeal and who wasn't finished with you even when you died. That's quite a lot for religion to give up, don't you think? But who would not say we would be better off without it if it was, or what Tony Blair would like it to be like it to be, an aspect of humanism, an aspect of compassion, an aspect of the realizations of human solidarity, the knowledge we are all in fact bound up with one another, that we have responsibilities one to another, and as I do when I give blood, partly because I don't lose the pint forever, I can always get it back, but that there's a sense of pleasure to be had in helping your fellow creature. I think that should be enough, thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Tony, it must feel like the House of Commons all over again.<br /><br />BLAIR: I don't know, so far they're a little politer actually.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Your final rebuttal, please.<br /><br />BLAIR: Yeah. It all depends, I guess, what your experience of religious people is. I mean, my experience of the people I was with last week in Africa, that include deeply religious people is not actually that they're doing what they're doing because of heaven and hell. They're doing it for love of their fellow human beings, and that's, I think, something very fine. What's more, that they believe that this love of their fellow human beings is bound up with their faith. So it's not something, you know—yes, of course, it is absolutely true, they might decide to do this, irrespective of the fact that they have religious faith, but their faith, they feel, is an impulse to do that good. And you know, I don't recognize the description of the work that they do in what Christopher said. In Sierra Leone, where I was, you have Christians and Muslims working together to deliver health care in that country. That's religion playing a positive role. They're working across the faith divide and doing it, because they again believe that their faith impels them to do that. When we look back in history, yes of course you can see plenty of examples of where religion has played a negative role. You can see great examples, for example in the abolition of slavery, where religious reformers joined with secular reformers in order to bring about the abolition of slavery. Let's get away from this idea that religion created poverty. You know, there are bad things that have happened in the world outside of religion. And when you look at the twentieth century and you see the great scars of political ideology, around views that had absolutely dramatically at their heart—fascism, the communism of Stalin—absolutely at their heart was the eradication of religion, and what I would say to you is, get rid of religion, but you're not going to get rid of fanaticism and you're not going to get rid of the wrong in the world. So the question is, how then do we make sense of religion having this vital part in the world today, since it is growing and not diminishing, how do we make sense of this? And this is where yes, there is an obligation on the people of faith to try and join across the faith divide with those of other faiths. That's reason for my foundation. We have people of different religious faiths, we've actually got a program where young people team up with each other of different faiths and work together in Africa on malaria, back in their own faith communities, and here in Canada. We have a schools program that allows schools to link up using the technology so that kids of different faiths can talk to each other across the world. And here's the thing, when they start to talk about their faith they don't actually talk in terms of heaven and hell and a God that's an executioner of those that do wrong, they talk in terms of their basic feeling that love of God can be expressed best through love of neighbor and actions in furtherance of the compassion and help needed by others. And this is—in 2007, you know, religious organizations in the US gave one and a half times the amount of aid that USAID did, not insignificant. So my point is very, very simple: you can list all the faults of religion, just as you can list the faults of the politicians, the journalists, and any other profession, but for people of faith, the reason why they try to do good, and when they do it, is because their faiths motivates them to do so and that is genuinely the proper face of faith.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Well gentlemen, thank you for a terrific start to this debate. The time has now come to involve you, the audience, here at Roy Thomson hall, those written questions have been coming in and some have been passed on to me and our folks in the control room. Also, we're going to bring on our online audience through questions that have been debated on our discussion boards and I'm going to take some live questions from some younger audience members here on the stage. And in that regard, Christopher, we're going to start with a question from you. There's a young woman right here who would like to address you personally. Tell the audience your name and your question, please.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Hi my name is Meg [indecipherable].<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Just hold on one second. We're going to get this microphone working. Is this microphone working? Try again.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Hello?<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: You go it.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Ok. My name is Meg [indecipherable]. I'm a recent graduate from the University of Toronto and my question's in regards to globalization. This century, globalization will bring together as never before nations and peoples divided by wealth, geography, politics and race. So my question is: instead of fearing faith, why not embrace the shared values of the world's major religions as a way of uniting humankind?<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Great question. Christopher? Unity out of faith or disunity?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Perfectly good question, but sounded—seemed to be phrased as a call for common humanism. I mean there's no—I didn't hear anyone say, "Wouldn't it be better if everyone at least joined some church or other?" Not a bit of it. Common humanism is, I think, not made particularly easier by the practice of religion and I'll tell you why: there's something about religion that is very often, at any rate, in its original monotheistic and Judaistic form, actually is, <i>ab initio</i> an expression of exclusivism. This is our God. This is the God who's made a covenant with our tribe. You find it all over the place. It isn't always as sectarian as foundational fundamentalist Judaism was and sometimes still is, but it's not unknown. I mean, it's always struck me as slightly absurd there'd be a special church for English people, although I can sort of see the point. It strikes me as positively sinister that Pope Benedict should want to restore the Catholic church to the claim it used to make, which is it is the one true church, and that all other forms of Christianity are, as he still puts it, defective and inadequate. How this helps to build your future world of co-operation and understanding is not known to me. If you tell me in the Balkans what your religion is, I can tell you what your nationality is. You're not a Catholic, you know less about Loyola than I do. But I know you're a Croat, and I know you're a Croat nationalist. Religion and, in fact any form of faith, because it is a surrender of reason, it's a surrender of reason in favor of faith, is a fantastic force multiplier, a tremendous intensifier—I was trying to say—of all things that are in fact divisive rather than inclusive and that's why its history is so stained with blood, not just of crimes against humanity, crimes against womanhood, crimes against reason and science, attacks upon medicine and enlightenment, all these appalling things that Tony kept defending himself from that I didn't even have time to bring up. No, but if you would just look at the way the Christians love each other in the wars of religion in Lebanon, or in former Yugoslavia, you will see that there is no conceivable way that by calling on the supernatural, you will achieve anything like your objective of a common humanism which is, I think you're quite right to say, our only chance of, I won't call it, salvation. Thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Tony, what I'd like you to do—there's another question on the stage, someone in a sense has the inverse question for you and it'd be a great opportunity for to respond to Hitchens at the same time. So let me go to Emily [Padden], a Trudeau scholar at Oxford University, who has a question for you, Mr. Blair.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Thank you very much. My research is in armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa and so the question I'd like to ask you Mr. Blair, if I may is: how do you argue that religion is a force for good in the world when the same faiths that bind peoples and groups also deepen divisions and exacerbate conflict?<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Great question.<br /><br />BLAIR: To which my answer is they can do, and there are very many examples of that, but there are also examples, let me give you one from the Northern Ireland peace process, where in the end people from Protestant and Catholic churches got together and actually the religious leaders of those two churches tried to bring about a situation where people reached out across the faith divide. And so, what I would say to you is this exclusivism is not—you know, this type of excluding other people because they're different—let's just nail the myth that this is solely the prerogative of religion. I'm afraid this happens in many, many different walks of life. It's not what true religion is about. True religion is not about excluding somebody because they're different, true religion is actually about embracing someone who is different. That is why, you know, in every major religion, this concept of love of neighbor, and Christopher is absolutely right, Confucius did indeed say exactly something similar to Rabbi Hillel, of course Jesus said love your neighbour as yourself. If you look at Hinduism, Buddhism, the religion of Islam, after the death of the prophet Mohammed, Islam was actually at the forefront of science, was at the forefront of introducing proper rights for women, for the first time, in that part of the world. So the point is this, and this is really where the debate comes to, Christopher says, "Well, humanism is enough," and what I say to that is: but for some people of faith, it isn't enough. They actually believe that there is indeed a different and higher power simply than humanity, and that is not about them thinking of heaven and hell in some sort of old-fashioned sense of trying to terrorize people into submission to religion, they actually think of it as about how you fulfill your purpose as a human being in the service of others. And so, you know, when we say, "Well, that could be done by humanism," yes, it could, but the fact is for many people, it's driven by faith, and so yes, it's true, you can find examples of where religion has deepened the divide in countries in sub-Saharan Africa. You can also find examples of where religion has tried to overcome those divides by preaching what is the true message of religion, which is one of human compassion and love.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Hitchens, let's have you come back on that because, not just Northern Ireland but Iraq, a war that you supported, religion played an important role arguably in the success of putting together post-invasion Iraq.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I only think we should do this because the two questions were in effect the same and both very well phrased, and because I never like to miss out a chance to congratulate someone on being humorous, if only unintentionally. It's very touching for Tony to say that he recently went to a meeting that bridged a religious divide in Northern Ireland. Well, where does the religious divide come from? 400 years and more, in my own country of birth, of people killing each others' children, depending on what kind of Christian they were, and sending each others' children in rhetoric to hell, and making Northern Ireland the place, the most remarkable in northern Europe for unemployment, for ignorance, for poverty and for, I would say, stupidity too. And for them now to say, "Maybe we might consider breaching this gap." Well, I should bloody well think so. But I don't see how. If they had listened to the atheist community in Northern Ireland, which is a real thing, and if they had listened to the secular movement in Northern Ireland, which is a real thing and I know many people who have suffered dreadfully from membership in it, not excluding being pulled out of a car by a man in a balaclava and being asked, "Are you Catholic or Protestant?" He said, "I'm Jewish atheist, actually." "Well are you a Protestant Jewish atheist or a Catholic Jewish atheist?" You laugh, but it's not so funny when the party of God has a gun in your ear at the same time. And that was in Britain, and still is, to some extent, until recently. Rwanda: do I say that there would be no quarrel between Hutu and Tutsi, people in Rwanda? Belgian colonialism made it worse, but there are no doubt innate ethnic differences, or there are felt to be in Rwanda. But the fact of the matter is Rwanda is the most Christian country in Africa. In fact, by one account—that's to say, numbers of people in relation to numbers of churches—it's the most Christian country in the world, and the Hutu power genocide, at any rate, was preached from the pulpits, actually the pulpits of the Catholic church, as many of the people we are still looking for wanted in that genocide are hiding in the Vatican along with a number of other people who should be given up to international justice, by the way, quite a number of people. So since Tony seems to like religious people best when they are largely non-practicing, but just basically faithful, I will grant him that much. I say it's not entirely the fault of religion that this happened in Rwanda, but when it's preached from the pulpit as it was in Northern Ireland and in Rwanda, it does tend to make it very, very much worse. Thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Tony, just briefly come back on that, because you were intimately involved in the search for peace in Northern Ireland and I presume you had a very different perspective of the role faith played in the resolution of that conflict.<br /><br />BLAIR: Yeah, and I now do work in Rwanda. First of all, I think it really would be bizarre to say that the conflict in Rwanda was a result of the Catholic church. I mean, Rwanda is a perfect indicator of what I'm saying, which is you can put aside religion, and still have the most terrible things happen. I mean, this was the worst genocide since the holocaust, it was committed on a tribal basis. Yes it's true there were members of the Catholic church who behaved badly in that context of Rwanda. There were also, by the way, members of the Catholic church and others of religious denomination who stood up and protected and died alongside people in Rwanda. So you know, you—and as for Northern Ireland, yes, of course, Protestant and Catholic, absolutely right, but you couldn't ignore the politics of the situation in Northern Ireland. It was to do with the relationship between Britain and Ireland going back over many, many centuries. So my point is very simple: of course religion has played a role and sometimes a very bad role in these situations, but not only religion. And what is at the heart of this is we wouldn't dream of condemning all of politics because politics had led to Hitler or Stalin or indeed what has happened in Rwanda. So let us not condemn the whole of religion or say that religion, when you look at it as a whole, is a force for bad because there are examples of where religion has had that impact. And so my—I think actually Rwanda and Northern Ireland are classic examples, even the Middle East peace process, I mean yes, I agree, you can look at all the religious issues there but let's not ignore the political issues either, and frankly at the moment the reason, and I can tell you this from first hand—well, but I can tell you from first hand experience, the reason we don't have an agreement at the moment between Palestinians and Israelis is not to do with the religious leaders on either side, it's a lot more to do with the political leaders, so it's my branch that has to take the blame for that. And therefore, what I would say is I actually think that yes, of course a lot of these conflicts have religious roots, I actually think it's possible for religious leaders to play a positive part in trying to resolve those, but in the end, it's for politics and religion to try and work out a way in which religion, in a world of globalization that is pushing people together, can play a positive rather than negative role, and if we concentrated on that, rather than trying to drive religion out, which is futile, to concentrate instead on how we actually get people of different faiths working together, learning from each other and living with each other, I think it would be a more productive mission. Thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Okay, let's—we like the applauding, so please continue that throughout the debate. Let's take a written question. My producers are telling me that we have a written question, we'll get that on the screen and Christopher this is for you to start with, interesting one: America is both one of the most religious countries in the world and also one of the most democratic and pluralistic, both now and arguably through much of its history. How do you explain that seeming paradox?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Relatively simply, the United States has uniquely a constitution that forbids the government to take sides in any religious matter, or to sponsor a church, or to adopt any form of faith itself. As a result of which, anyone who wants to practice their religion in America has to do it as a volunteer. It's what de Tocqueville wrote about so well in his <i>Democracy in America</i>. Ever since Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut during his tenure as president, saying—you'll be familiar with the phrase I'm sure: "Rest assured," because they had written to them out of their fear of persecution in Connecticut, "Rest assured that there will ever be a wall of separation between the church and the state in this country," and the maintenance of that wall, which people like me have to defend every day against those who want garbage taught in schools and pseudo science in the name of Christ and other atrocities. The maintenance of that wall is the guarantee of the democracy. By the way, for a bonus, can anyone tell me who the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut thought was persecuting them?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBERS: The Congregationalists.<br /><br />HITCHENS: The Congregationalists of Danbury, Connecticut, well done. (Also, that argues, by the way, for the existence of a very small but real fan base of mine somewhere in this room.) Yes, now, it doesn't seem to matter very much now but it mattered then. Give those Congregationalists enough power, as they did have in Connecticut, and just you see just how unfurry they look compared to how dare so they behave now that we've disciplined them. Thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Tony, let me come to you with that same question. Is it just a case of American exceptionalism, or is this balance between pluralism and faith that's been achieved in America something that you're either seeing in other parts of the world or a model that can be exported globally?<br /><br />BLAIR: Well I think what most people want to see is a situation where people of faith are able to speak in the public sphere but are not able to dictate, and that is a reasonable balance, and I think that most—you know, most people would accept.<br />But I think, you know, again what I would say about examples of where you get religious people that are fanatical in the views that they want to press on others, you know, fanaticism is not, as I say, it's not a wholly owned subsidiary of religion, I'm afraid. It can happen outside of religion too. So the question is, how do people of, if you like, good faith, who believe in pluralist democracy, how do we ensure that people who hold faith deeply are able to participate in society, and have the same ability to do that as everyone else without being kind of denigrated, but at the same time have to respect the fact that ultimately, democracy is about the will of the people and the will of the people as a whole. So I think that most people can get that balance right, and we are very lucky actually in our countries because we are in a situation where people of different faiths are free to practice their faith as they like and that is in my view an absolutely fundamental part of democracy, and it's something that people of religious faith have to be very clear about and stand up and do. And one of the reasons why for me I think it's—it's actually important for people of religious faith to have people like Christopher challenge us and say, "Ok, this is how we see religion, now you get out there and tell us how it's different and where it isn't different how you're going to make it so," and I think that's a positive and good thing. All I ask for is that where people of faith are speaking in the public sphere, then people accept that we have a right to do that, and that sometimes we do that actually because we believe in the things that we're saying, and we're not trying to subvert or change democracy. On the contrary, we simply want to be part of it, and our voice is a voice that has a right to be heard alongside the voice of others.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: I see Christopher writing furiously so I'm going to ask him to come back on that point.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I hadn't anything specially to add there, I think I would rather give another person a chance for a question.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Well, it's a question that was debated for you, Christopher, on munkdebates.com in a lead-up to this evening, on our discussion board, many people saying that religion provides a sense of community in modern societies where immersed in a consumer culture, more often than not, living alongside fellow citizens who are more maybe self-directed than other-directed. What do you say about the pure community function of religion? Isn't that a public good—a valid public good of religious belief?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Absolutely, I say good luck to it. The way I phrase it in my book, available at fine bookstores everywhere, is that I propose a pact with the faith, the faithful. I say—I'll take it again, I'll quote from the great Thomas Jefferson, I don't mind if my neighbor believes in 15 gods or in none, he neither by that breaks my leg nor picks my pocket. I would echo that and say that as long as you don't want your religion taught to my children in school, given a government subsidy, imposed on me by violence, any of these things, you are fine by me. I would prefer not even to know what it is that you do in that church of yours. In fact, if you force it on my attention, I will consider it a breach of that pact. Have your own bloody Christmas, and so on. Do your slaughtering, if possible, in an abattoir. And don't mutilate the genitals of your children. Because then I'm afraid it gets within the ambit of law. All right, don't you think that's reasonably pluralistic and humanitarian of me? I think it is. Why is it a vain hope on my part? Why is that? Has this pact ever been honored by the other side? Of course not. And it's a mystery to me, and I'll share it with you. If I believed that there was a savior who had been appointed or sent by—or a prophet—appointed or sent by a God who bore me in mind, and loved me, and wanted the best for me, if I believed that and that I possessed the means of grace and the hope of glory, to phrase it like that, I think, I don't know, I think I might be happy. They say it's the way to happiness. Why doesn't it make them happy? Don't you think it's a perfectly decent question? Why doesn't it? Because they won't be happy until you believe it too. And why is that? Because that's what their holy books tell them. Now, I'm sorry, it's enough with saying in the name of religion. Do these texts say that until every knee bows in the name of Jesus and so on, there will be no happiness? Of course it is what they say. It isn't just a private belief. It is rather, and I think always has been, and it's why I'm here, actually a threat to the idea of a peaceable community, and very often, as now, and frequently, a very palpable one. So I think that's the underlying energy that powers the friendly disagreement between Tony and myself.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Tony, would you like to come back on that topic of religion and community or move on to another question? Let's move on? Also on our website, big discussion around the topic of religion and its role in the invasion of Iraq and Mr. Blair, the question is for you, and it's about something that many people posted about something you said once about the interplay of religion and politics, and to quote you directly, you said, "What faith can do is not tell you what is right, but give you the strength to do it." The question being: what role did faith play in your most important decision as Prime Minister, the invasion of Iraq?<br /><br />BLAIR: We can nail this one pretty easily. It was not about religious faith. And, you know, one of the things that I sometimes say to people is, look, the thing about religion and religious faith is if you are a person of faith, it's part of your character, it defines you in many ways as a human being. It doesn't do the policy answers, I'm afraid. Ok? So as I used to say to people, you don't go into church and look heavenward and say to God, "Right, next year, the minimum wage, is it £6.50 or £7?" Unfortunately, He doesn't tell you the answer. And even on the major decisions that are to do with war and peace that I've taken, that they were decisions based on policy, and so they should be, and you may disagree with those decisions, but they were taken because I genuinely believed them to be right.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: So Christopher, the natural follow-on question to you is how did you square the circle, or maybe you didn't, between your support for the Iraq war and let's say the current then president, George W. Bush, in his very public evocation of faith in terms of his rhetoric around the invasion?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I don't remember, in fact I don't think you can point out to me any moment where George Bush said he was under divine order or had any divine warrant for the intervention in Iraq. In fact, I'm perfectly certain that...<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Well, he...<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...he might not have minded at some points giving that impression. But he wanted to give that impression about everything that he did. George Bush is someone who, as with his immediate predecessor, after various experiments in faith, ended up in his wife's church, most comfortable place for him to be. She's, after all, is the one who said to him, "If you take another drink, you scumbag, I'm leaving and taking the kids," which is his way of saying he found Jesus and gave up the bottle. We know this to be true. Now, and like a good Methodist—I was in Methodist school for many years myself—like a good Methodist, George Bush says the following: "I've done all I can with this argument and with this conflict. From now on, all is in God's hands." That's quite different, I think. It would have made him a perfectly good Muslim, as a matter of fact. A combination of fatalism with a slightly sinister feeling of being chosen. Anyway. No, what was—surely what's striking most to the eye of those who observe the debate on what Tony Blair and I agree to call teh liberation of Iraq is the unanimous opposition of the leadership of every single Christian church to it, including the president's own and the other Prime Minister's own. The Methodist church of the United States adamantly opposed, the Vatican adamantly opposed, as it had been to the liberation of Kuwait in 1991. Not the first time in the world that a sort of sickly Christian passivity has been preached in the face of fascist dictatorship, and of course I was very surprised by the number of liberal Jews who took the same about a regime that harbored genocidal thoughts towards them, and if it comes to that—but I'm not the arbiter of what's rational in the mind of the religious thinker given the number of Muslims put to the sword by Saddam Hussein's regime, quite extraordinary to see the extent to which Muslim fundamentalists flocked to his defense. But I don't expect integrity or consistency from those quarters. But those of us who worked with the people, with Iraqi intellectuals like Kanan Makiya, with the Kurdish leadership, the secular left opposition of the popular—excuse me, the patriotic union of Kurdistan, the Iraqi Communist Party, you have to give it credit for this, many feminists and other secularists who worked for many years to bring down Saddam Hussein are very proud of our solidarity with those comrades, those brothers and sisters. We are still in touch with them, we have nothing to apologize for. It's those who would have kept a cannibal and a Caligula and a professional sadist in power who have the explaining to do. Thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: I want to be conscious of our time and go to our two final onstage questions and I believe the first one is for Mr. Blair, a student at the Munk School of Global Affairs. Introduce yourself and ask your question of Mr. Blair.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Yes. Good evening, my name is Jonah [Cantor] and my question pertains to something that has come up earlier this evening. Religion on both sides is often seen as an obstacle to peace in the Middle East, and I was wondering what role you believe faith can play in a positive manner in helping to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians.<br /><br />BLAIR: Well, I remember a few months back I was in Jericho and when you go out from Jericho, they took me up to—we went to visit the Mount of Temptation, which is where I think they take all the politicians, and the guide that was showing us around—the Palestinian guide, suddenly stopped at one point, and he said, "This part of the world," he said, "Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, why did they all have to come here?" And I sort of said, "Well, supposing they hadn't, would everyone be fine?" He said, "Ah, probably not." But you know, the religious leadership can play a part in this, for example, I don't think you will get a resolution of the issue of Jerusalem unless—which is a sacred and holy city to all three Abrahamic faiths—unless people of faith are prepared to try and find common ground, so they are entitled to worship in the way that they wish. And it's correct that in both Israel and Palestine, you see examples of religious fundamentalism and people espousing and doing extreme things as a result of their religion, but I can also tell you that there are rabbis and people of the Muslim faith on the Palestinian side who are desperately trying to find common ground and ways of working together. And I think part of the issue and the reason indeed for me starting my faith foundation is that we can argue forever the degree to which what is happening in the Middle East is a result of religion or the result of politics, but one thing is absolutely clear, that without those of religious faith playing a positive and constructive role, it's going to be very difficult to reach peace. So my view again, and I think this is in a sense one of the debates that underlies everything we've been saying this evening, is if it is correct that you're not going to simply eliminate religion, you know, you're not going to drive religion out of the world, then let's work on how we make those people of different faiths, even though they believe that their own faith is the path, so they believe, to salvation, how they can work across the faith divide in order to produce respect and understanding and tolerance, because believe it or not, amongst all the examples of prejudice and bigotry that Christopher quite rightly draws attention to, there are also examples of people of deep religious faith, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, who are desperately trying to search for peace and with the right political will supporting that who would play a major part in achieving peace. So I agree that religion has to one degree created these problems, but actually people of different religious faiths working together can also be an important part of resolving these problems, and that's what we should do, and it's what we can do, and in respect of Jerusalem, it is absolutely imperative that we do do.<br /><br />HITCHENS: A visitor goes to the Western wall—anything he can do. A visitor goes to the Western wall, sees a man tearing at his beard, banging his head on the wall, shoving messages into it at a rate of knots, wailing and flailing, watches with fascination. When the guy finally breaks he says, "Excuse me, I couldn't help noticing you were being unusually devout in your addresses to the wall, to the divine. Do you mind if I ask you what you're praying for?" He said, "I was praying that there should be peace, that there should be mutual love and respect between all the peoples in this area." And he said, "What do you think?" says the visitor. He says, "Well, it's like talking to the wall." But there are people who think talking to walls is actually a form of divine worship, in this part [indecipherable] and it's another instance, not that I didn't bring it up laboriously myself, but I don't mind it again, of the difference between Tony and myself. When he says—when he uses his giveaway phrase "in the name of religion," rather than "as a direct consequence of scriptural authority," which is what I mean when I talk about this. No one's going to deny, are they, that there are awards of real estate made in the Bible by none other than Jehovah himself, that land is promised to human primates over other human primates, in response to a divine covenant. [Coughing] (Do excuse me. Sorry, this sometimes happens.) No, that can't be denied. When David Ben-Gurion was Prime Minister of what he still called a secular state he called in Yigael Yadin and Finkelstein and the other Israeli archaeologists, professional guys, and said, "Go out into the desert and dig up the title deeds to our state. You'll find our legitimate"—that was instruction to the department of archaeology. They went, after they conquered Sinai and West Bank. They went even further afield looking for some evidence Moses had ever been there. They didn't find any because there never has been and there never will be any. But you cannot say that the foundational cause, <i>casus belli</i> in this region, the idea that God intervenes in real estate and territorial disputes, isn't inscribed in the text itself. And not only in the Jewish text but thanks to a foolish decision taken in the early Christian centuries where it was decided not to dump the New Testament and to start again just with the Nazarene story—great Christian theologians like Marcian were in favor of that. Why do we want to bring the darkness and tyranny and terror and death and blood and cultism of the first books along with us? Surely we should start again? No, we're saddling ourselves with all that. So this is a responsibility for the Christian world too. And need I add that there is no good Muslim who does not say that Allah tells us we can never give up an inch of Muslim land and that once our mosques are built there can be no retreat. It would be a betrayal, it would lead you straight to hell. In other words, yes, yes, they gibber and jabber, all of them, the three religions. Yeah, yeah, you're quite right, God awards land, it's just you've got the wrong title. No. This is what I mean when I say religion is a real danger to the survival of civilization, and that it makes this banal regional and national dispute which, if reduced to its real proportions, is a nothingness, if it makes that, not just lethally insoluble, but is drawing in other contending parties who really wish, openly wish, for an apocalyptic conclusion to it, as also bodied forth in the same scriptural texts, in other words that it will be the death of us all, the end of humanity, the end of the world, the end of the whole suffering veil of tears, which is what they secretly want. This is a failure of the parties of God and it's not something that happens because people misinterpret the texts, it's because they believe in them, that's the problem. Thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Tony, would you like a quick rejoinder or can I move on to our final question for this session?<br /><br />BLAIR: If you like.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Well great, we have, I think, the perfect final question and it's from another student at the Munk School for Global Affairs, Dana Wagner. Where are you Dana? Here you are.<br /><br />WAGNER: A big part of this issue is our inability to stand in another's shoes with an open mind to understand a different world view. In this regard, can each of you tell us which of your opponent's arguments is the most convincing? Thank you.<br /><br />BLAIR: Right. Now this definitely never happened in the House of Commons. I think that the most convincing argument is, and the argument that people of faith have got to deal with, is actually the argument that Christopher's just made, which is that the bad that is done in the name of religion is intrinsically grounded in the scripture of religion. That is the single most difficult argument. And since I've said it's a really difficult argument, I suppose I better give an answer to it. My answer to it is this: that there is, of course, that debate that goes on within religion, which is the degree to which, as it were, you look at scripture abstracted from its time, you pick out individual parts of it, you use those in order to justify whatever view you like, or whether, as I tried to do in my opening, you actually say well what is the essence of that faith and what is the essence of scripture? And of course, then what you realize is that yes, of course, if you believe, as a Muslim that we should live our lives according to the seventh century, then you will end up with some very extreme positions, but actually there are masses of Muslims who completely reject that as a view of Islam, and instead say no, of course, the prophet back then was somebody who brought order and stability and actually, for example, even though we today would want equality for women and many again, despite what people say, many Muslims would agree with that as well, and many Muslim women obviously, back then, actually what He did was extraordinary for that time. And also when you look at Christianity, yes of course you can point to issues that of that time now seem very strange and outdated, but on the other hand, when you take Christianity as a whole and ask what it means, and they say, "Well what draws people to it?" You know, what is it that made me as a student come to Christianity? It wasn't to do with some of the things that Christopher has just been describing, and you know, I understand that's—there are those traditions within religion, I understand that, I accept that, I see how people look at certain parts of scripture and draw those conclusions from it, but it's not what it means to me, it's not the essence of it. The essence of it is through the life of Jesus Christ, is a life of love and selflessness and sacrifice and that's what it means to me. And so I think the most difficult thing for people of faith is to be able to explain scripture in a way that makes sense to people in the modern world, and one of the things that we have actually begun recently is a dialogue called the common word, which is about Muslims and Christians trying to come together and through scripture find a common basis of co-operation and mutual respect. So, you know, yes, it is a difficult argument, that is the most difficult argument, I agree, but I also think there is an answer to it, and I think one of the values actually of having a debate like this, and in a sense, having someone making that point as powerfully as Christopher has made it, is that it does force people of faith to recognize that we have to deal with this argument, to take it on, and to make sure that not just in what we are trying to do, but in how we interpret our faith, we are making sure that what I describe as the essence of faith, which is serving God through the love of others, is indeed reflected not just in what we do but in the doctrines and the practice of our religion.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Admirable question, thank you for it. The remark Tony made that I most agreed with this evening, I'll just hope that doesn't sound too minimal, was when he said that if religion was to disappear, things would by no means, as it were, automatically be okay. I mean, he phrased it better than that. But it would be what I regard as a necessary condition would certainly not be a sufficient one, at any rate religion won't disappear, but the hold it has on people's minds can be substantially broken and domesticated. He's quite right about that, of course. I hope I didn't seem at any point to have argued to the contrary. I come before you after all as a materialist. If we give up religion, we discover what actually we know already, whether we're religious or not, which is that we are somewhat imperfectly evolved primates on a very small planet in a very unimportant suburb of a solar system that is itself a negligible part of a very rapidly expanding and blowing apart cosmic phenomenon. These conclusions to me are a great deal more awe inspiring than what's contained in any burning bush or horse that flies overnight to Jerusalem or any other of that—a great deal more awe inspiring, as is any look through the Hubble telescope at what our real nature and future really is. So he was quite right to say that, and I would have been entirely wrong if I implied otherwise. I think I could say a couple of things for religion myself—would, in fact. First is what I call the apotropaic. We all have it: the desire not to be found to be claiming all the credit, a certain kind of modesty, you could almost say humility. People will therefore say they'll thank God when something happens that they are grateful for, or—there's no need to make this a religious thing. The Greeks had the concept of hubris as something to be avoided and criticized. But what the Greeks would also call the apotropaic, the view that not all the glory can be claimed by a load of primates like ourselves is a healthy reminder too. Second, the sense that there's something beyond the material, or if not beyond it, not entirely consistent materially with it, is, I think, a very important matter. What you could call the numinous or the transcendent, or at its best, I suppose, the ecstatic. I wouldn't trust anyone in this hall who didn't know what I was talking about. We know what we mean by it, when we think about certain kinds of music perhaps, certainly the relationship or the coincidence but sometimes very powerful between music and love. Landscape, certain kinds of artistic and creative work that appears not to have been done entirely by hand. Without this, we really would merely be primates. I think it's very important to appreciate the finesse of that, and I think religion has done a very good job of enshrining it in music and in architecture, not so much in painting in my opinion. And I think it's actually very important that we learn to distinguish the numinous in this way. I wrote a book about the Parthenon, I'll mention it briefly. I couldn't live without the Parthenon. I don't believe any civilized person could. If it was to be destroyed, you'd feel something much worse than the destruction of the first temple had occurred, it seems to me. But—and we would have lost an enormous amount of besides by way of our knowledge of symmetry and grace and harmony. But I don't care about the cult of Pallas Athena, it's gone. And as far as I know it's not to be missed. The Eleusinian mysteries have been demystified. The sacrifices, some of them human, that were made to those gods, are regrettable but have been blotted out and forgotten. And Athenian imperialism is also a thing of the past. What remains is the fantastic beauty and the faith that built it. The question is how to keep what is of value of this sort in art and in our own emotions and in our finer feelings the numinous, the transcendent, I will go as far as the ecstatic, and to distinguish it precisely from superstition and the supernatural which are designed to make us fearful and afraid and servile and which sometimes succeed only too well. Thank you.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Well it's time now for the final act in our debate, closing statements. We'll do that in the reverse order of our opening remarks. So Christopher, I'm going to call on you, again, to speak your closing remarks, please.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'm not ready.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I didn't know it was coming. And, Tony, what do you say, would you rather have another question? There are so many people who've got them.<br /><br />BLAIR: I'm...<br /><br />HITCHENS: [indecipherable] answer another question.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Let's take another question? Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: In other words, don't run away with the idea I've run out of stuff, ok? Yes, I'd rather be provoked if someone could do that.<br /><br />BLAIR: Sure.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Well let's do that. And I guess we'll give Christopher a pause here, a chance to drink and catch his breath and Tony, go to you on this—the whole question of, which has been at the center of this debate, on the rigidity or flexibility of religious doctrine. Your church, the Catholic Church, has just made a reversal of sorts on its policy around the use of condoms, allowed explicitly and only for the prevention of HIV/AIDS infection. Is that a positive? Is that an expression of flexibility or a critique of the decades of rigidity before this reversal?<br /><br />BLAIR: Well, I welcome it. But you know—I mean, I'm one of the billion, I think, lay Catholics, so I don't—and I think many, many Catholics have different views on the whole range of issues upon which there is teaching by the Church. I just wanted to pick up something, if I might, that Christopher said, because I thought his discussion of the transcendent was very interesting, actually. I mean, for those of us of religious faith we acknowledge and believe that there is a power higher and separate from human power and in a way what Christopher is saying is, "Well, I don't—I can't accept that but I do accept there is something transcendent in the human experience and something numinous, something even ecstatic." You see, for me the belief in a higher power and the fact that we should be obedient to the will of that power and not simply our own will, I don't regard that as putting me in a position of "servility," is not the word I would use. I would use the word "obligation" and, you know, when I—it is of course absolutely true that when I can point to any of the acts that I say are inspired by religious faith, you can say, "Well, they could have easily been inspired by humanism." But I think that for those of us that are of faith and do believe that there is something actually more than simply human power this does give you, I think, a humility. It's not all that can give you a humility but it does. I think, and I have witnessed this myself, I remember—actually again, to refer to Northern Ireland—when I met some of the people who were the relatives of those that dies in the Omagh bombing, which came actually after the Good Friday Agreement and was the worst terrorist attack in the history of Northern Ireland, and I went to visit the relatives of the victims and I remember a man saying to me and—that—who had lost his loved one in the bombing—saying to me, "You know, I have prayed about this and I want you to know that this terrible act should make you all the more determined to reach peace and to not stop your quest for peace." And it is completely true that of course he could have come to such an extraordinary and, I would say, transcendent view of forgiveness and compassion without religious faith but it was what led him to that. And so, I think you can't ignore the fact that for many of us, actually religious faith is what shapes us in this direction and not because we are servile or base our religious faith on superstition or contrary to reason, indeed, which is why I've never seen a contradiction between Darwin and being someone of religious faith. But we do genuinely believe that it impels us in a way that is different and more imperative in a sense than anything else in our lives and, you know, in a way we wouldn't be being true to ourselves unless we admitted that. So that doesn't mean to say that someone who has no religious faith couldn't be just as good a person and that is—I do not claim for an instant that anybody who is religious—of religious faith is in some way a superior or better person than someone who isn't, but I do say that religion can and does, in the lives of millions, actually hundreds of millions, in fact, billions of people, does give them an impulse to be better people than otherwise they would be.<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: We'd ask for your closing statement, five minutes. Your closing statement.<br /><br />HITCHENS Five minutes each?<br /><br />GRIFFITHS: Yep. So now onto our closing statements. Christopher, you will begin. You have five minutes on the clock.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think a way I might do it actually is by commenting on what Tony just said because he succeeded in doing what I had hoped I might get him to do earlier which is to allow me to drive him back onto the territory of metaphysics with which I began because we did need to transcend that and thus to get beyond questions like, "Well, are religious people good?" "Are they bad?" and other things that are very important. "Does religion make them behave better or worse?" and so forth. I'll give you and I'll challenge Tony on an example: I mentioned earlier our attachment to the Labour and socialist movement in our lifetimes. For a very long time we had in that movement a challenger, apparently from the left, the communist movement, which has only been dead a very short time now and actually hasn't died everywhere yet and which said it had a much more comprehensive and courageous and thoroughgoing answer than we did to the problems created by capitalism and imperialism and other things and really proposed a fighting solution. And if I was to point to you the number of heroic people who believed in that and the number of wonderful works of especially fiction, novels and essays written by people who believed in it—you could probably, all of you mention one of your own. If you were a Canadian—I hope they still teach about him in school, the great example of Norman Bethune, heroic doctor who went to volunteer in China during the civil war on the communist side, did amazing work, invented a form of battlefield blood transfusion, just one among many examples. It was the communists in many parts of Europe who barred the road to fascism in Spain and kept Madrid, for many years, from falling to Franco and Hitler and Mussolini. Ghandi may take credit for the Indian independence movement (too much in my view) but no one would deny the tremendous role played by the Indian communists in doing this, in helping to break the challenge—excuse me, break the hold of Great Britain on their country. As a matter of fact, some people find it embarrassing to concede this, but I don't, as a supporter of it myself, the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's party, at least half of its members of the central committee and executives were members of the communist party until quite recently, very probably including Mandela himself. There's no doubt about it, there was real heroism and dignity and humanism to those people but we opposed it. We said it wouldn't work. Why won't it work? It's not worth the sacrifice of freedom that it implies. It implies that these things only can be done if you'll place yourself under an infallible leadership, one that, once it's made the decision has made that decision and you are bound by it—you might conceivably notice where I'm going here. It's why many of the people, the brilliant intellectuals who did leave it, left it very often for as high reasons of principle as they joined it in the first place and the names of their books are legion and legendary. The best known is called <i>The God That Failed</i>, precisely because it was an attempt at a bogus form, a surrogate of, religion. But let no one say, and when the history of it comes to be written, no one will be able to say that it didn't represent some high points in human history. But I repeat, it wasn't worth it that the sacrifice of mental and intellectual and moral freedom and that was the purpose of my original set of questions on the metaphysical side. Are you—consider yourselves and consider this carefully, ladies and gentlemen, brothers, sisters, comrades, friends—are you yourselves willing for the sake of certain elements of the numinous, perhaps for a great record of good works, as it's proposed by Tony, are you willing to say that you give your allegiance to an ultimate redeemer, because you're not really religious if you don't believe that there is a divine supervision involved. You don't have to believe it intervenes all the time. If you don't believe that, you're already half way out the door, you don't need me. But are you willing to pay the price for a permanent supervisor? Are you willing to pay the price of believing in things that are supernatural, miracles, afterlives, angels? Are you willing to admit, perhaps this most of all, are you willing to admit that human beings can be the interpreter of this divine figure? Because a religion means that you will have to follow someone who is your religious leader. You can't, try as you may, follow Jesus of Nazareth. It can't be done. You can try and do it, it can't be done. You'll have to follow his vicar on earth, Pope Benedict XXVI as presently, the—his own claim, not mine—the apostolic succession, the vicar of Christ on earth. You have to say that this person has divine authority. I maintain that that, and what goes with it, is too much of a sacrifice of the mental and intellectual freedom that is essential to us, to be tolerated, and you gain everything by repudiating that and standing up to your own full height and you gain much more than you will by pretending that you're a member of a flock or in any other way any kind of sheep. Thank you.<br /><br />BLAIR: I've just—when Christopher was talking there about our times in the Labour Party together I was just recalling after we suffered our fourth election defeat in a row in the Labour Party, meeting a party member after the fourth defeat who said to me, "The people have now voted against us four times. What is wrong with them?" And you know, I would say that actually the example of communism shows that those that want to suppress freedom and that those that have a fanatical view of the way the world should work, those are not confined to the sphere of religious faith, I'm afraid. It is there in many, many different walks of life. So the question is, for me, this is not about how I, with a belief for me as a Christian, with the belief in Jesus Christ not how that makes me subject to oppression and servitude but, on the contrary, how that helps me find the best way of expressing the best of the human spirit. And it was actually Einstein who was not an atheist in fact, he believed in a supreme being, although he did not necessarily subscribe to organized religion, who said religion without science is blind, but he also went on to say science without religion is lame and I would say that, for me, faith is not about certainty. It is, in part, a reflection indeed of my own awareness of my own ignorance and, that though life's processes can be explained by science, nonetheless the meaning and purpose of life cannot be. And in that space, for me at least, lies not certainty in the scientific sense but a belief that is clear and insistent and I would say rational which is there is a higher power than human power and that higher power causes to lead better lives in accordance with a will more important than our own, not in order that we should be imprisoned by that superior will but, on the contrary, so that we can discipline and use our own will in furtherance of the things that represent the best in human beings and the best in humanity. So, I think this debate this evening has been a fascinating and I think deeply important debate about probably the single most important issue of the twenty-first century. I actually don't think the twenty-first century will be about fundamentalist political ideology. I accept it could be about fundamentalist, religious, or cultural ideology and the way that we avoid that is for those people of faith actually to be prepared to stand up and to debate those people who are of none and for those people who believe in a world of peaceful coexistence where people do cooperate together recognize that there are people with deeply held religious convictions and that those convictions impel them to be a part of that peaceful coexistence even though it is true, there are those who in the name of religion, and indeed as a consequence of religion, will sometimes do things that are horrific bad, evil, and, in my view, totally contrary to the true meaning of faith. So, I don't stand before you tonight and say that those of us of religious faith have always done right since that is plainly wrong, but I do say that throughout human history there have been examples of people inspired by faith that have actually, rather than contributed to the suppression of humanity, contributed to its liberation, spiritually, emotionally, and even materially and it is those people that I stand up for here with you tonight. Thank you.<hr>Read Hitchens' <a href=http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/12/13/author-christopher-hitchens-in-conversation/>response</a><br /><br />Read Christopher's brother Peter's <a href=http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/12/time-for-some-dialogue.html>response</a>HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com220tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-77581419114355027352010-11-26T11:47:00.018-05:002010-11-27T11:03:23.317-05:00Hitchens vs. Sharpton, New York Public Library<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Sharpton>Al Sharpton</a>: Is God Great?<br /><li>May 7, 2007, <a href=http://www.nypl.org/>The New York Public Library</a><br /><br />[Introductions by <a href=http://www.paulholdengraber.com/>Paul Holdengräber</a> and moderator <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Weisberg>Jacob Weisberg</a>]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw_sYKFgHalEtY95r8337zAtMxKgcQhKWm28y42ArkyDVVNzwyw3e69VE97iiiODbx4TJ2aSNg_5Hf4lQM-iCJJN0B8D_9C37DxITKz1Cf3cm63-eLcAcrnUnfTT3To9ISfaqdXsr6QeoY/s1600/weisberg.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 190px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw_sYKFgHalEtY95r8337zAtMxKgcQhKWm28y42ArkyDVVNzwyw3e69VE97iiiODbx4TJ2aSNg_5Hf4lQM-iCJJN0B8D_9C37DxITKz1Cf3cm63-eLcAcrnUnfTT3To9ISfaqdXsr6QeoY/s320/weisberg.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543565523042460178" /></a>WEISBERG: Christopher, I would like to start with you: what have you got against God?<br /><br />HITCHENS: [To Sharpton] Good grief, so it hadn’t really sunk in on me that as you were being ordained when I was nine, I was just getting out there completely. I was nine when I thought I saw through it when my biology teacher told me that God was so good as to have made vegetation green because it was the color most restful to our eyes. And I thought, “Mrs. Watts, this is nonsense.” I knew nothing about chlorophyll or photosynthesis, nothing about the theory of evolution, nothing about adaptation, nothing of the sort. I just knew she’d got everything all wrong. And, of course, the argument against faith, against religion, falls into two essential halves, not necessarily congruent, but I believe congruent: the first is it’s not true. Religion comes from the infancy of our species—I won’t say race because I don’t think our species is subdivided by races—infancy of our species when we didn’t know that the earth went around the sun, we didn’t know that germs caused disease, we didn’t know when we were told in Genesis you’re given dominion over all creatures that this did not include microorganisms, because we didn’t know they were there, so we didn’t know they had dominion over us. When diseases broke out it was blamed on wickedness, or sometimes on the Jews, or if it was by Jews on the Amalekites, or as you will. We didn’t know anything about the nature of the earth’s crust, how it was cooling, earthquakes, storms, all of this were a mystery. Well, we are, at least to that extent, a reasoning species. Even a conspiracy theory is often better than no theory at all. The mind searches for form, we’re now stuck with the forms that we found in our infancy, in our primitive, barbaric past. Well, that could be fine, still. No nation can be without mythology or myth or legend.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigBfKBVXyyImKrOcae4UFilSKSSKhQCI-pULPTROiHSfsTZ-1ODwBLY6Xs4BHaHEaHyEidsEMXs_hEOVjLKyzzDo3r8BdYAEdtiYDniz5YggpHnBrUel5pIgBpqSRqqQ4MJtF7eNYir2Im/s1600/hitchlookup.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigBfKBVXyyImKrOcae4UFilSKSSKhQCI-pULPTROiHSfsTZ-1ODwBLY6Xs4BHaHEaHyEidsEMXs_hEOVjLKyzzDo3r8BdYAEdtiYDniz5YggpHnBrUel5pIgBpqSRqqQ4MJtF7eNYir2Im/s320/hitchlookup.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543566220425067314" /></a> And there are people who say, “Well, it’s not exactly true. Virgins don’t conceive, ok, bushes don’t burn forever,”—although why that would be so impressive, I’ve never understood—“Dead men don’t walk, and so on and so forth. Ok, alright, it’s not really true. It does come from a rather fearful period of the Dark Ages. But, at least it’s nice to believe it. It teaches good precepts.” This, I think, is very radically untrue. I give in my book the example, which I’ll give you now, of a person very much influential on my youth, and I know on the Reverend’s too, Dr. Martin Luther King. My friend Taylor Branch’s book about Dr. King—I would rather call him doctor than reverend because, I’m sorry to say, I think it’s a higher title of honor—Taylor Branch’s trilogy about him is called <i>Parting the Waters</i>, <i>The Pillar of Fire</i>, and <i>At Jordan’s Edge</i>. And everybody literate here knows the story of Exodus and understands what Dr. King meant when he demanded that his people be free of bondage. But, if you think about it for a second, it’s a very good thing that the good doctor was only using this metaphorically. If he’d really been invoking the lessons of Genesis and Exodus, he would have been saying that his people had the right to kill anyone who stood in their way, to exterminate all other tribes, to mutilate their children’s genitalia, to make slaves of those they captured, to take the land and property of others, to engage in rather long and hideous and elaborate arguments about ox goring, and finally, which is the sentence that ends that—or the verse that ends that section of the book, should not suffer a witch to live (the warrant for witch burning). In other words, in these books there are the warrants for genocide, for slavery, for the torture of children for disobedience, for genital mutilation, for annexation, for rape and all the rest of it. It’s a very good thing that this is man-made. There are those who say that they wish they could believe and I suppose a decent atheist could say that, if only for a lack of evidence, he wishes he or she could. I can’t be among their number. I’m very glad it is not true that there is a permanent, unshakeable, unchallengeable celestial supervision, a divine North Korea in which no privacy, no liberty is possible from the moment of conception, not just until the moment of death but well after. I’ve been to North Korea and now I know what a prayerful state would look like. I know what it would be like to praise God from dawn until dusk. I’ve seen it happen. And it’s the most disgusting and depressing and and pointless soulless thing you can picture. But at least with North Korea you can die and you can leave. Christianity won’t let you do that because—I’ll mention another thing about the Old Testament: the Old Testament may have—and any Jews and Christians who like it may like this too—they may have genocide, rape, racism, and all the rest of the things I’ve mentioned, but it never mentions punishment of the dead. When you’re done, when you’re in the mass grave into which you’ve been thrown as an Amalekite, it’s over. Not until gentle Jesus, meek and mild is the concept of hell introduced. Eternal torture, eternal punishment for you and all your family for the smallest transgression. I have no hesitation in saying this is a wicked belief. I've also no hesitation in saying—and I musn't trespass on the Reverend’s time—that we don’t need it in two senses. One, it’s wicked and two, we have and always have had, a much superior tradition. We know that Democritus and Epicurus worked out in ancient Athens the world was made of atoms, that the gods did not exist and certainly took no interest in human affairs and would be foolish to do so and would be wicked if they did. We have the tradition that brings us through Galileo and Spinoza and Thomas Paine and Voltaire and Thomas Jeffesron and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, men of great wisdom and insight by all means struck by the awe-inspiring character of our universe, by all means open to devotional music and architecture and poetry, by all means aware of the transcendent. But look through the Hubble telescope if you want to see something that is awe inspiring and don’t look to blood-stained old myths. Now, “Why now? Why am I doing this now?” people ask. Well, I’ll tell you why now: because in the last few years it’s become impossible to turn a page of a newspaper without being, as the religious would say, "offended." In other words I don’t think I sound self-pitying if I say I’m offended that a cartoonist in a tiny democratic country in Scandinavia (Denmark) can’t do his job without a death threat and that no American magazine or newspaper would reprint those cartoons either to elucidate the question or in solidarity. I’m offended that civil society in Iraq is being destroyed, leveled by the parties of God. I’m offended that people in this country believe that they have the right to advocate the teaching of garbage to children under the fatuous name of Intelligent Design. I believe that we're—[After audience applause] Oh, I thought you’d never clap. Just as I believe that where religion ends philosophy begins, where alchemy ends chemistry begins, where astrology ends astronomy begins and now the people would say, “Well let’s give equal time to astrology in the schools.” It’s nonsense—dangerous and sinister nonsense. The Pope says, “AIDS may be bad, but condoms are much worse.” What kind of moral teaching is this? And how many people are going to die for such dogma? You see what I mean. So, I just—I’ll be very brief: and end to this, an end particularly to the cultural fringe that says that if someone can claim to be religious spokesman they are entitled to respect. [To Sharpton] I have to say it in your presence, sir: I think that the title Reverend is something people should be more concerned to live down than to live up to. Thank you.<br /><br />WEISBERG: We will get back to some of that. But Reverend Sharpton, in your rebuttal, would you take a moment to correct Christopher on his misconception that religion was somehow incidental to the Civil Rights movement?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnsDTjMcmfxzGdnYRm94Tnh6Py3D736LzuuYpfj50z3BuG88YLKSQ1Yvtir-IIazVTlpRfOwVm8I9CpHocvl0jzvtPEl-ZjlTfycd3LMhhV9jXTExvyBXcj6JHHK2w1cxr9aN_RwaRZVuN/s1600/sharpton.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnsDTjMcmfxzGdnYRm94Tnh6Py3D736LzuuYpfj50z3BuG88YLKSQ1Yvtir-IIazVTlpRfOwVm8I9CpHocvl0jzvtPEl-ZjlTfycd3LMhhV9jXTExvyBXcj6JHHK2w1cxr9aN_RwaRZVuN/s320/sharpton.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543566594783057666" /></a>SHARPTON: That’s all you want me to rebut? <br /><br />WEISBERG: No.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Feel free.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Cover that please.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Well, first of all, let me thank you for inviting me and—to have this debate. It is the first time in my long career that I was not assumed to be the devil in a debate. It’s an unusual place for me on this stage. So I couldn’t turn down representing God and the divine in a public encounter. But I think that several things in rebutting what brother Hitchens says—you don’t have a problem with living up or down to being brother, do you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Damn right.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I think that…<br /><br />HITCHENS: I take it kindly.<br /><br />SHARPTON: …you made a very interesting analysis of how people use or misuse God but you made no argument about God himself. And by attacking the “wicked” use of God does not at all address the existence of God or non-existence of God. We are sitting in a room that, because of lights, we assume that there is electricity in the building. Electricity can light up a room or burn it down. It does not mean electricity does not exist because it burns the building down or that it is inherently wicked. It is how people use it. So clearly people have misused God as they have misused other things that are possibly positive, but its existence is not in any way proven or disproven by you giving a long diatribe on those that have mishandled and misused God because there are many that you can cite that have acted in a way that shows the goodness of God. Your book <i>God is Not Great</i> could be refuted by many that feel He is great or She is great, whatever way you relate to God. Science, to me, does not wipe away the existence of God because science had to start somewhere. So to pick up mankind in its evolving state does not tell me where mankind began, how it became a long story of ordered steps. Well who ordered them? Why do things follow such a natural progression? Who set the progress? And, in fact, even in the term “wicked,” if there is no God, and if there is no supreme mechanism that governs the world, what makes right right and what makes wrong wrong? Why don’t we just go by whoever’s the strongest at any given period in history? Because nothing is wicked, because whoever’s in power at the time would determine what is wicked and what is not wicked because there’s no real moral code because there’s nobody to judge that. So at one hand we’re going to argue God doesn’t exist, on the hand we’re going to call people wicked. Wicked according to who and according to what? It would be based on whoever has the power at that time. So I think that the real thing that I’m interested in, Mr. Hitchens, is to really discuss the idea of God and the idea of a supreme being and how creatures and creation have just by some great coincidence, an unexplained scheme follows some order that just happened by itself. Something, some force, some overruling force had to set all of that pattern in and it continues thousands of years later. Can you give a million examples of where people have misused that, where they’ve distorted that, where in the name of God or North Korea or other tragedies have happened? Yes. In terms of the Civil Rights movement, it was absolutely fueled by a belief in God and a belief in right or wrong and had not there been this belief that there was a right and a wrong, the Civil Rights movement that you alluded to, or that you referred to, would not have existed because what made it wrong for people to be slaves? What made it wrong for humans to be treated unequally? Because there was nobody to say that they were all equal, it was whoever had the strength. But at the end what is refreshing is that you are a man of faith because any man that at this date still has faith that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has more faith than any religious person I know.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very well, that's a very generous response. Do you mind if I take it in reverse order? The belief that there are weapons of mass destruction, or rather the conviction that Saddam Hussein was interested in weapons of mass destruction, you could, I suppose, describe as an argument from design. In other words, he had them before, he’d known how to conceal them, he’d used them several times, he seems to be prepared to risk his entire political career on the idea of reacquiring them. I would say that was not a belief that had no evidence and I would say that anyone who treated him as if he was innocent on the subject would be a sap, actually (would be my short word for it). Second, on the Civil Rights movement, you—I expected you to be more assertive. I don't know what Dr. King's private convictions about religion were. I know that he studied Hegel, I know that he studied Marx. I know that among his very close entourage were a large number of secular socialists and communists, you know their names too. Samuel Levinson is probably the best known but—among the black civil rights leadership, Bayard Rustin, secular socialist, Philip Randolph, secular socialist, trade union leader, these were the building blocks for the march on Washington, as was Victor Reuther and many others. The belief that it is illegal as well as evil to keep black Americans in subjection does not require any supernatural endorsement. It had been proved repeatedly in law and in morality and in ethics and demonstrated in practice. The only thing that has always been consistently justified by the churches was initially slavery, the right to hold someone as a slave, biblically warranted, and the right to keep the races separate which is endorsed by a church that, just to give a contemporary example, one of the current candidates for the Republican nomination is a member of a church (the so-called "Mormon" Church of Latter-Day Saints) that until 1965 had it as an article of faith that the Bible separates the Sons of Ham and makes them lesser. Well, I don't have to discredit a text like that because I don't think it has any authority. So, in a sense, I return the question to you. Now, I didn't say that God was misused. I hope I didn't—I wasn't so poorly understood by everybody. I said that the idea of God is a dictatorial one to being with. The belief in a supreme, eternal, invigilating creator who knows what you think and what you do and cares about it and will reward or punish you and watches you while you sleep is, I think, a horrific belief, a man-made one fortunately. I'm very glad there's no evidence for it. Let me—in case I was misunderstood let me assert again: I think it's innately an awful belief. However, the cleverest theologian, and there have been some, has never been able to demonstrate that such a person exists. It's impossible to do so. It's not possible either for me to demonstrate conclusively that no such person exists. That cannot be done either. But one thing can be done: a person who claims not to know only that this person exists, a task beyond our brain, but to claim to know His or Her (I'll accept your correction, Reverend) mind, to say, "I know because I'm in holy orders what this entity wants you to do, what He wants you to eat, who He wants you to go to bed with and how He wants you to go to bed with them, what you may read, what associations in private you may form, what thoughts you may have," that person is out of the argument now, it seems to me. We know that no one knows that. So the claim made by the religious that they know God, they know His mind, that they can tell us what to do in His name is, I think, exploded. Further, it is not argued by my side at any rate nor by no one I know on it that the—our presence here on the planet is something that is susceptible to a smooth, logical, reasonable explanation. To the contrary, we are still very much in doubt as to precisely how we came to be human and to separate ourselves from some of our common ancestors. We also know that of the species that have been on this small planet on this tiny solar system since the beginning of measurable time of the number that have—were ever in existence, more than 98.9% have become extinct. A certain solipsism I think is required to believe that we, as the resulting species, are somehow the center of the created cosmos. This is not modesty, as the Christians call it. It's not humility. It's an unbelievably arrogant claim to make. But at least it makes up for the other claim we're supposed to put up with which is, "Well, yes, but we're also miserable sinners, conceived in filth and doomed to abject ourselves." Both of these positions are too extreme, too strenuous, too fanatical, and both of them reinforce each other in unpleasant ways and both should be outgrown by us. Voila.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Well I think you probably had a bad Sunday School teacher because a lot of what you're saying is based on dogma and has nothing to do with one's belief in a supreme being. You're discussing, again, religions, dogmas, denominations, not the existence or non-existence of God. I'm glad to hear you concede you can't prove He or She doesn't exist any more than you claim that those that believe—[Microphone buzz]<br /><br />WEISBERG: There He is now.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Are you going to claim that's God speaking on my behalf?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I hate it when that happens.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Or the devil, which you choose. But I think that, again, the basic core question of God goes way beyond any example, no matter how witty or humorous, of those that come in God's name because it is the dictates of denominations or organized religious groups that tell you what to eat and what to wear and who to sleep with and all of that. That has nothing to do with the existence of an order to the universe that is clear and evident, that science, I think, confirms that it evolved from somewhere. That's how I relate to God. To your point, however, since I wasn't assertive enough in the first going forward and I think—one guy said that the other night in Vegas and Mayweather got more assertive, he won the fight so watch out on that. I'll get a little more assertive. Dr. King's organization's, brother Hitchens, name was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, so there's no question that he himself saw that the basis of the movement was God-based. Did he have some socialists that did not believe in God that associated with the movement? Absolutely. But they joined SCLC's endeavors after SCLC was formed. In fact, SCLC was formed in 1957 in New Orleans before many of them that organized the march on Washington. When Bayard Rustin, who I knew, went down south, his problem was he debated a lot with the ministers there who was the core of that group, so to try and secularize the Civil Rights Movement is just totally inaccurate. It was a church-based, faith-based movement, there is no question about that. And Dr. King, way before he studied Hegel and the rest he grew up in Ebenezer Baptist Church, was an ordained minister, first went to Morehouse, then Crozer Theological Seminary, then went to Boston to study those that you have referred to so let's not reinvent Dr. King any more that we try to reduce God to some denominational convention. And as for the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don't worry about that. That's a temporary situation. But I think the core challenge that I would have is that I would say to you that if your argument is that there are those that have used religion, as in slavery, or as even today, to oppress people use religion to be unfair to people or have misinterpreted scriptures, you would get no debate from me. I think that is a fact of history and one that many of us have had to fight against. That still does not disqualify God any more than using anything in nature that is wrong—to say that one eats food that is poisoned does not mean one should therefore starve because food is inherently bad. That—I think you're confusing the misuse of religion with the existence of God. There are those that have no religious affiliations at all that believe in God. There are people that don't deal with organized church at all that still believe in God. So when you say God is not great let's not then debate organized religion is not great or some that have exploited organized religion is not great. You, in the title of your book—and I've had a chance to go through your book—attack God not those that express that they are therefore standing in God's place or representing God and your whole oratory about weapons of mass destruction and he thought he had it and all of that, when we found him he was in a rat trap with a 22 pistol. He knew he didn't have any weapons of mass destruction because no one, as one that comes out of the hood, no one that has atom bombs would just retreat with a 22 and wait under calvary.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Any order you like.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think I better stick to the reverse order. No, well that's why I—very good time to attack him was before he would get back what he lost by way of WMD. He didn't have any then and he wasn't going to get them back, either any more than he was going to improve his relations with Al Qaeda. They were as good as they were ever going to get and that was fine by me. Maybe an argument for another time but, believe me, I'm not reluctant to have it. Then we are of one mind, essentially, I mean, after all, I did not deny what's common knowledge that Dr. Martin Luther King was the Reverend Martin Luther King and was indeed at the Ebenezer Baptist Church.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I thought you said you don't know his [indecipherable].<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, no, I said I cannot say to you that I know that he was a believing Christian, no I cannot. I mean neither can you say that to me any more than, we seem to be of one mind on this too, that none of us can prove or disprove the existence of God. The differences between us—I don't say that I'm an ordained minister because I don't think I could push it that far. On the—since you're evidently an agnostic, it's a confession that I'm very welcome to have, not extracted from you, but heard you make. Now here's the question: you say these texts are misused, I say that they are not. The Old Testament says or does not say that Abraham was doing a noble thing by offering to sacrifice his son to prove himself loyal to God or to the voices he was hearing in his head? It says that was a noble thing for him to do, he was rewarded for it by a great posterity and a great long life. Offering to murder his son because of hearing voices in his head. This is not moral teaching to me. Is it not the case that the Old Testament says that the Amalekites must all be destrored down to the last child, every one among them, leave not one? Yes, it does say that. Bishop of Landaff in a debate with Thomas Paine said, "Well, when it says keep the women," as Paine had pointed out, he said, "I'm sure God din't mean just to keep them for immoral purposes." Well what does the Bishop of Landaff know about this? Kill all the men, kill all the children, and keep the virgins. I think I know what they had in mind. I don't think it's moral teaching. To this day there are nutbag settlers, some Israeli citizens, some of them American, some of them Israeli-Americans, trying to settle the West Bank in the name of this prophecy, throw other people off their land and establish a theocracy that will bring on the Messiah and, they hope, Armageddon and the end of the world. Well I think the United States Supreme Court should hear argument that not one American dime can be used constitutionally for that project, ok? It's high time, cut it off. These people mean to— these people mean us real harm and I'm not going to dilate about whether their Muslim brothers say about us when the—the Koran does not say that you may be killed for changing your religion but the <i>Hadith</i>, the so-called sayings of the prophet, which are taken just as seriously, do say that. So when someone says, "I'm a Muslim and I'm telling you, Mr. Rushdie, if you apostatize from this faith, you're dead," he's not misquoting the texts, sir, he's not. He's quoting them accurately. I think I'll phrase it as understatedly as I can: I think we can do without a lot of this.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Christopher.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Now, let me respond to this. I think again...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think enough already would cover a lot of this stuff.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Again, you are debating points I didn't make. I said—you keep confusing the existence of God, again, with religious denominational beliefs. I'm not debating...<br /><br />HITCHENS: They're not—are they separable?<br /><br />SHARPTON: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well fine.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Very much so. I think that you're quoting the Bible—if you said everything in the Bible you rejected you still have not established why a belief in God—maybe a belief in God through that vehicle may be your debate but you're not addressing God. You're talking Koran, Bibles, people's interpretation of God. That is not my debate. My debate with your book is that you're saying therefore since they did this to—well, since Abraham was going to murder his son, there is no God. That's like one plus two equals seven. I mean, we're not—so Abraham may have been incorrect, if that's your point, or what they did with the Amalcolmites or what's going on in the Middle East, what does that have to do with the existence of a universe that is set on a order that I believe was set by a supreme being that continues to evolve today that I think science has done a credible job in analyzing. Now you can debate which one of the Bibles, Korans, religious books may have had it right or interpreted it right but that does not address the central question. You, sir, did not attack the Christian church or the Muslim religion or the Pope, you attacked God and to attack God is a whole lot—you hit here and you debate here. Let's talk about God, let's not talk about those that came in His name and you have some maybe credible arguments against whether or not you felt that they were correct or incorrect and, again, I raise as I did in my opening statement: who decides what is wicked, what is right, what is ethical? If there's nothing there that governs humanity whatever is ethical is whatever we decide is ethical because we're in charge. It's all up to us.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ok, once again in reverse order if I may: religion gets its morality from us. I think it's very easy to demonstrate that. I'll do it from one of each of the two testaments.<br /><br />SHARPTON: You back on testaments. Why don't you right a book <i>Testaments are Not Great</i>?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I've spent a lot of time with my Bible, ok? My Bible, I do.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I told you you had a bad sunday school teacher.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Or the "Babel" as they call it in Dixie. I do. In the—there's a very famous parable in the New Testament where the alleged Jesus of Nazareth tells a story about a man from Samaria (we call it the good Samaritan) who, finding a fellow creature in enormous distress and pain, goes well out of His way to alleviate his suffering and to follow up to make sure that His sympathy hasn't been a waste of time, to do the aftercare if you like. We know one thing about this person from Samaria: he cannot have been a Christian. Jesus is telling this story about someone He's heard of who acted, as far as we know, from no other prompting other than elementary human solidarity. What other prompting do we need? Our species would not have survived, we wouldn't be met here if we didn't have, as well as many selfish instincts, the need, and often for our own sake, to be of use to others, to combine with them, to take an interest in them, to care for them, and to worry when they're in pain. No supernatural authority, as with the Civil Rights Movement, is required for this. Morality comes from us, religion claims to have invented it on our behalf. Then, ok, another example from the older testament: is it really to be believed that, until they got to the foot of Mt. Sinai, the followers of Moses believed that, up until then, adultery, murder, theft, and perjury were ok? They're suddenly told, "Oh hey, we got some new ideas for you." I don't think so. It's a bit of an insult to the ancient Jewish faith, of which Jacob and I are both rather disgraceful ornaments in our different ways. I think our ancestors were smarter than that and even if they weren't smarter, they wouldn't have got that far if they were under the contrary impression. The Golden Rule is something you don't have to teach a child. There's no need to say, "And if you don't follow this rule, you'll burn in hell forever." That's immoral teaching. Now I hope I've made myself clear. On the—but I'm wondering if I have because you face me, Reverend, with two very unwelcome thoughts: either I have been completely inarticulate in everything I've said this evening or you have misunderstood me.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Or both.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I prefer myself—or, these are not mutually exclusive. And I should've seen that coming.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Have faith, son, you can do better.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I thought I said with storm ground we cannot know if there was a creator whether of ourselves or of our cosmos. You may wish to assume one but that's the best you can do. The evidence is all that the cosmos evolved and the evidence that there was a single mind purposeful creator of it is nil. There's no evidence for that at all. By all means believe it as long as you don't try to make me believe it or teach it to my children.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Well, let me say that we've got...<br /><br />HITCHENS: On that I have to insist. That's not a difference of opinion.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I will meet you on common ground there, but I will say that many people, I among them, in our own lives have had experiences that make me believe that there is a God and make me believe that my seeking God and seeking the guidance of a supreme being is real to me. I'm not going by Moses, I'm not going by Peter, I'm not going by the man that you said was "allegedly" Jesus of Nazareth, I'm talking about in people's personal experiences with their interaction through their own faith with God can say that you or no one else can tell me that did not exist. If I was only sitting up here arguing with you over Scriptures, then you would have points that I would consider valid to this discussion, but I'm not here to defend Scriptures. I didn't write those Scriptures. I lived my life and in my life the existence of God has been confirmed to me in my own personal dealings and my own faith being vindicated and validated that had absolutely nothing to do with Scriptures or whether they were right or wrong and, again, I pose the question: when you raise the issue of morality, if there is no supervisory being, then what do we base morality on? Is it based on who has the might at any given time? Who's in power? What is morality based on if there is no order to the universe and therefore some being, some force that ordered it, then who determines what is right and wrong, what is moral and immoral? You use very religious terms interchangeably while you attack the idea of a God. There is nothing immoral if there is nothing in charge because everything becomes moral if, in fact, the species as we are is all there is. We'll determine—let's decide every four years what's moral. (Most Republicans do, but, I mean...) Let's do it in the sense of let's just say forget about that, we'll decide morality based on every period of time because there is nothing up there governing in any way. And you don't have to burn in hell to understand that life has certain guiding posts that has been set there well beyond your own being and I think to think that the whole world was waiting on one's birth, your birth or mine, or death, to set the framework of morality, I think that is very arrogant. It's also delusional, but it is very arrogant at best.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Again, in reverse order:...<br /><br />SHARPTON: Don't look for help from the referee, I'm over here.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I incline in your direction, sir. Said it before—very suggestive thing that you just said: if there was no one in charge, how would we know how to act morally? This is indeed, this is a very profound observation. It's argued by Smerdyakov in <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i>, he said, "Without God anything is permissible." Some people believe that. Some people believe that without the fear of divine total surveillance and supervision everyone would do exactly as they wished and we would all be wolves to each other. I think there's an enormous amount of evidence that that's not the case, that morality is innate in us, that solidarity is part of our self-interest in society as well as our own interest and very much to argue the contrary that when you see something otherwise surprising to you, such as a good person acting in a wicked manner, it's very often because they believe they're under divine orders to do so. Steven Weinberg puts it very well, he says, "Left to themselves, evil people will do evil things and good people will try and do good things. If you want a good person to do a wicked thing, that takes religion." For example—I simply do not believe—I do not believe that my Palestinian friends I've known now for years, think that to blow yourself up outside an orphanage is a moral act—or inside one is a moral act, or an old person's home in Netanya is a moral action, that anything in their nature makes them think this, but their Mullahs tell them that there is, that a person doing this is a hero. I do not think that any person looking at a newborn baby would think, "How wonderful, what a gift and now let's just start sawing away at its genitalia with a sharp stone." Who would give them that idea were it not the godly? And what kind of argument from design is this? Babies are not born beautiful, they're born ugly, they need to be sawn a bit because the handywork of God is such garbage. Well honestly, this is what I mean when I say that those who think there's any connection between ethics and religion have all their work still ahead of them and after thousands of years, still have it all ahead of them more and more. There.<br /><br />SHARPTON: So you do not believe, in your long and thorough research of history, that atheists ever did anything evil, it's only religious people that were driven by somebody representing God that made them do that and people that came in satanic ways, all of that is rubbish? Only religious people reading scriptures of some sort have done wicked things in the history of the world?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I should have raised that question myself and I realize also...<br /><br />SHARPTON: But you didn't, so I did, so let's...<br /><br />HITCHENS: But I've never yet been in one of these meetings where it didn't come up and—but I still owe you yet another answer. When you say you've had this confirming emotion in your own life, of course, I would not be so presumptuous as to challenge you. Indeed, I believe people when they say that they have experienced miracles. I believe that they think that they have. I think I'm obliged to credit them if it comes to that as long as they keep it to, if you like, if I can put it like this, modestly as I dare, to themselves. If I believed that I was saved because once a baby boy was born and, before mutilated, made the extraordinary discovery that he escaped the female birth canal, mother was a virgin (or at least that her birth canal was only one way) and that thus I was—a sorry thing, by the way, religions' distastes for these regions, don't you find? And something to put you on your guard: suppose I thought, ok, now I know that, that must prove his teachings are true, which it doesn't seem to me that they do, but suppose I did, and I'm going to be saved by it, I'd think that was a wonderful secret. It would make me happy. It should make me happy. It doesn't make people happy. They can't be happy until I believe it too. My children must be taught this stuff. So sir, no ma'am, no day, no way, no shape, no form. You keep your illusion private. And I hope it does make you happy and there's perhaps some reason why it would but then—no, we're told the Pope's authority to say you can't have a condom comes from his ability to certify a miracle, a disturbance in the natural order. I think it was David Hume who put it slightly vulgarly, this was again about the virgin birth I think: which is more likely, that the whole natural order is suspended or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie? There has to be an answer to this kind of question. As to the secular bad behavior, well, I used to be a believing Marxist and I've had this argument about Communism in different forms all my life and I really—there's a very—you confront me with an intensely serious question, though, actually, secular criminality on the political level wasn't really possible until pretty much the late eighteenth century because the religious monopoly on violence and cruelty and torture and slavery and so on was so intense. It has to be said that some of my non-believing forebearers seized the opportunity to behave in the same way, sure. There's no question about it. And I'll put it like this, to take the best known case: up until 1917 the czar of Russia was not just the ruler and owner of Russia and all the Russian people and everything in it, but he was also the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was considered by church and the people to be something a little more than divine—excuse me, a little more than human. Not as high as Hirohito, but a bit higher than the Pope in secular and temporal power. If you were Stalin you'd be crazy if you don't take advantage of a people who'd had centuries of indoctrination of that kind. Of course you would want to see if you couldn't replicate that and to see about reproducing it, emulating it, trading on it, taking advantage of it. You'd be nuts if you didn't do it. So the answer, I think, which is a very long process, will be a long, cultural process, is to try and move people up to a cultural and intellectual level where they above that kind of appeal, where they're not credulous, where they don't take things on faith, where they don't make gods or idols or images out of anybody including fellow human beings and that they learn the pleasures of thinking for themselves. How about that for a modest proposal?<br /><br />WEISBERG: I'd like to use my referee's power to ask you each a question before we open it to the audience for questions and Christopher, my question for you, taking up the cudgels a little bit for Reverend Sharpton: you keep coming back to various forms of biblical literalism. Reverend, somewhat to my surprise, has not defended anything in the Bible and asks, quite reasonably, what is your problem with deism? You've written about Paine, Jefferson, you write in your book about Einstein and Darwin, who are arguably deists in a way. What is, since you say yourself you can't prove God doesn't exist, what is your problem with faith divorced from religious text or literalism?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well religion is not the belief that there is a god, after all. Religion is the belief that God tells you what to do. So, if we have to talk about religion, we are not talking—theism believes in the existence of a creating being but it has no prescriptions for morality. You can't as—a theist cannot say, "I think that this universe is so well-designed that it implies a creator, therefore don't be going to bed with another member of the same sex." Theism—deism, excuse, did I say theism that time? Deism, excuse me, is therefore not a religion. This is a first for me, I've never yet met someone in holy orders who has said that the words of the holy books have nothing to do with God. I know there's a lot of laxity in the churches these days, and I've been trying to encourage it, but, I mean, it seems to me—I could have been pushing at a slightly more well-defended door. Jefferson, who could have been a great paleontologist, a great botanist—well was, in fact, all of these things, couldn't shake the feeling that the sheer order and beauty of it implied something. But he had these great discussions with his French counterparts: "How come the shells—the sea shells you find them so high up on the mountain tops? What is that?" He had no idea. He died after 1819. The great day in 1819 is the day that Mr. Lincoln is born and Mr. Darwin is born, same day. I know which one of them was the greater emancipator, too. Jefferson couldn't see as far, we just didn't have the horizon. Now can you hold to the deist belief if you choose, if you like, but the overwhelming evidence is that we do have an explanation for the origins of the species, ours and all others and that each new discovery made, in however remote a part of the earth's surface, in paleontology will confirm, or not confute, or not contradict, the body of knowledge that we have so painstakingly erected. So everything else added to that is a work of what the Church of England used to call supererogation. It's needless, it's unnecessary. Ockham's razor disposes painlessly of it.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Let me turn...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's gone. It's history.<br /><br />WEISBERG: To turn it to you, Reverend Sharpton, for a moment, I was expecting you to—I think you've very eloquently made a version of the argument from design, you have argued of an idea of spirituality, but you haven't defended the Bible at all. I mean, isn't that what you do from the pulpit?<br /><br />SHARPTON: Well maybe I read the wrong book.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Could be.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I did not get the book that Hitchens wrote, <i>The Bible is Not Great</i>. I didn't get a copy of the book that <i>Religion is Not Great</i>. He said God is not great and I have yet to, after several inquiries here tonight, get him to address that. And when I read his book and hear him talk he makes a case against everything other than God. Maybe the name of the book should've been <i>God is Not Great, I Don't Think</i> or <i>You Have the Right to Think He's Great if You Just Don't Tell Me</i>. That might have been a more appropriate title. But I'm waiting for him to establish that God, not King James, not Mohammed, not Jerry Falwell, God is not great. So to ask me to defend who I have no personal relationship with, no belief in, is—I'm in the wrong debate. I think that we can then agree that as long as I don't bother the sedate, scholarly world of Mr. Hitchens, then I can believe in my god and he's fine and I'm fine with that because I'm certainly not trying to convert Mr. Hitchens, I'm just trying to have him understand that he cannot impose upon me how I relate to God by quoting things that I may or may not believe anyway.<br /><br />WEISBERG: I'm afraid we're not going to have any conversions tonight and I wasn't expecting any, although, you never know if Christopher is going to start speaking in tongues before we're done. Let's take some questions from the audience. There is...<br /><br />[Holdengräber instructs those who are lining up where to find the microphones]<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Is it working? Thank you very much. Gentlemen thank you very much for the discussion. This question is for Mr. Hitchens. Based on your prior writings, based on, most recently, a <i>Time Out</i> interview with you in which you claim that the only time you ever prayed to God was for an erection, I'm going to ask you this question:...<br /><br />SHARPTON: Was that a miracle?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: The question, Mr. Hitchens, is should...<br /><br />HITCHENS: What people usually want to know is was the prayer answered?<br /><br />WEISBERG: And?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Not me, baby. Should we normal, sane Americans continue to be so bedazzled by a bespokes, off-cam superficialist who just wants the US to pick up the many disastrous pieces of the British Empire and whose understanding of God is much shorter than his penis?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't mind.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Assuming that that was not a question, let's try another one.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I thought is was. It sounded interrogative. I mean, I don't want anyone to think I'm dodging anything is all.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: It might be difficult for me to follow that one, but, correct me if I'm wrong in the beginning of the talk you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh we will, we will.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: ...you expressed antipathy towards deism in principle...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Slow down, I can't hear a word you're saying.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I can't either.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: I'm sorry. In the beginning of the talk you expressed antipathy towards deism in principle predicated upon this particular interpretation of God as a supreme dictator and judge, is that correct?<br /><br />HITCHENS: That would be correct, yes.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Now, if I could play devil's advocate for God for a moment, could you appreciate a god who watches us and our actions eagerly and with great interest because he created a world where everything is permitted?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, I can picture it but not without horror.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Hi Christopher, my name is Lynn [indecipherable]. I came from Toronto for this.<br /><br />HITCHENS: This isn't about my penis, is it?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: No. I wanted to ask you in light of the number of intellectuals and well-educated people and Templeton prize-winners that invoke the names of Richard Dawkins, you, and others who are speaking out and liberating us right now, are they deluded, dishonest, or emotionally dysfunctional? And may I also ask with regards to your book you mentioned that at age nine that you realized that you might have been an atheist but yet had two religious weddings, one Greek Orthodox and then Jewish, why did you do that? When my second wedding came along I went for the justice of the peace in a real estate office under a stuffed trout.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Now I got the problem: two failed marriages and one failed erection, you gave up on God.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You still don't know how that prayer was answered, Reverend. That's what you might call a premature ejaculation on your part.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Not if I had Mary to give me witness.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And I'm sorry, but I only have on ex-wife and not even she, in her most adamant moments, would describe our marriage as failed. I will say this, by the way, I hope I encourage anyone here who might be over in any difficulty, if you have a child with someone you really can never be divorced from them and she and I are very proud of our children and they are rather happy with us. It's a pity we couldn't get along better, but...Anyway, don't let me get too husky about this. On with the show, skipping lightly over the genitalia. Isaac Newton was a spiritualist, as far as we know. He seems to have believed in a number of weird and crackpotted theories. Joseph Priestley, the great Unitarian and rationalist and defender of the American Revolution, forced to flee from England to Philadelphia after the monarchists and Tories burned his laboratory, discoverer of oxygen, believed in the phlogiston theory, the most exploded theory that we know of. You'll find the coincidence or coexistence of superstition and mania of all kinds with great scientific achievements all over the place... [VIDEO EDIT] The [indecipherable] people who are real physicists, Fred Hoyle was actually one of them—the late Fred Hoyle, the man who believed in steady state and disbelieved what he contemptuously called the Big Bang, was also a man of odd, intermittent faith. It doesn't matter. What you could not do is say that your evidence as a physicist or a biologist supported your private religious beliefs. It would be a coincidence. Whereas if you're Richard Dawkins, the coherence between what you have found and what you have contributed to science and the extreme unlikelihood of the existence of any god is pretty striking. Hope that's clear.<br /><br />WEISBERG: [To the next audience member] Please.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: First of all, I have no interest in anyone's sex life, sorry. My question builds upon your response. Why do so many people seem to feel such a deep need to believe things which are obviously untrue: homeopathy, angels, UFOs, you name it, all the claptrap which fills endless magazines, television shows, etc.?<br /><br />WEISBERG: As I understood the question it was essentially why is there such a persistent need for faith?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: What's the appeal...<br /><br />WEISBERG: Why do so many people continue to believe if Christopher argues that the species has evolved beyond the need for it? Is that your question?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Well, not quite. What is the fundamental attraction of the illogical?<br /><br />SHARPTON: Is what?<br /><br />WEISBERG: Say it again?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: What is the fundamental attraction of the illogical?<br /><br />WEISBERG: Oh. Is it...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Of the illogical. Yeah, I understand.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Is it—are people drawn to religion because they're drawn to superstition and things that aren't logical?<br /><br />HITCHENS: [To Sharpton] Well, you first.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Let's go in reverse.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Alright then. There's a poem by Philip Larkin called <i>Church going</i> which I hope anyone here who has not read—that sentence is going nowhere—I hope anyone who hasn't read that poem will let me do them a favor and look it up for themselves before next—this time tomorrow, which would perfectly express my point of view. A wonderful statement by the greatest English poem of this period about the experience of visiting a church. Not wanting to be able to believe but not being able to dismiss the seriousness, the history, the tradition, the beauty of it. I couldn't do without the poems of George Herbert or John Dunne either, which have strictly devotional poems. I think you could fake being a devotional painter. You could be a painter who didn't believe in God and pretend you did for patronage. You couldn't fake being John Dunne or George Herbert. I couldn't do without their work. I couldn't do without gothic architecture or devotional music either. I wouldn't trust anyone who did, who had no feeling for this and people who don't know what the numinous and the transcendent feel like, who don't experience anything when combinations of landscape and music and poetry and also the melancholy of one's own life, the realization that we're going to die and that our children actually need us to do so, other melancholy reflections of this kind are, to that extent, not poetic, not human, not literary, not civilized. But the supernatural adds to this absolutely zero, it seems to me, and in some ways subtracts from its grandeur and its seriousness. So I'm one of those who Pascal is actually thinking about, or was thinking about, when we wrote. He wrote to the person who is so made that he cannot believe. There are millions of us, there always have been, there are now, there are going to be many more of us in the future. We're just a little bit fed up with being treated like freaks in American culture.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I, for my belief, do not believe that everyone believes in things that are illogical. I think that—and there are different theologians who approach it differently, I guess the closest—well not exactly where I am but Paul Tillich who talks about personal god would be going in the direction that I believe—I believe in my own experiences and my own relationship with God and that is not based on any illogical, unbelievable act. I do not believe things that are necessarily part of dogma and I think that [To Hitchens] Richard, if you or whoever has the right to disbelieve it without being a freak but I don't think that I am a freak that believes in illogical things because I believe that the reason the world operates in a certain order is because there is a supreme force that ordered it and I don't think that—I happen to agree with Richard that I think religion has been one of the most misused things in history but I don't think that has anything to do with the existence or the non-existence of God. I think that has something to do with man's misuse or use of what is absolutely there and that is a supreme being.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Thank you. We have a lot of questions. Let's get through as many as we can. Sir.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: I wonder if you both might comment on this. In an age when there is so much, as Mr. Hitchens would put it, wonderful secular knowledge that should disprove or replace the value or the importance of religion, all the modern knowledge that we have, why is it that in so much of the world religion is growing rapidly, in the global south particularly evangelical Christianity is growing at a tremendous rate and there are plenty of statistics to back that up. And even when people experience the most horrendous evil, they seem to turn in some strong ways towards religious belief. My broth-in-law is a US Air Force chaplain. He served two tours in Iraq. He's presently in Afghanistan. He ministers to men and women who have seen horrendous evil and experienced it firsthand and yet his services are overflowing, he's done many baptisms. Please help us understand at a time when the human race should have grown out of all of this, why is it growing so dramatically? Thank you.<br /><br />WEISBERG: [To Hitchens] Do you want the first go-about?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I am happy to yield to the...well, at the risk of being callous...<br /><br />SHARPTON: You?<br /><br />HITCHENS: (Can we assume that I've gone inaudible?) I don't think that we should be paying for chaplains. I don't think the US government should be employing any. James Madison's a coauthor of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom and of the First Amendment and therefore was very adamant on the point and very clear. There shouldn't be—it's flat out unconstitutional to pay or employ a chaplain to open the proceedings of Congress or to be in the armed forces. We can't have chaplains on our payroll. That's that. People who want to pray can't be stopped but they can do it—of all the solitary activities, apart for the search for—never mind—surely that's one that doesn't need a paid state mediator. It's a negation of the American Revolution. So, that first. Second, yes, modernity, involving as it does, a huge exchange of technology and population and innovation, in a very churning and vertiginous manner, of course means that a lot of lives have to be lived in a very insecure and risky way and it's not at all unlike our nature as a species to try and cling to stability, certainty, and consolation in those cases. It explains itself, it seems to me. What is notable, though, is it hasn't come up in thousands of years with any superior explanation to the old ones. It still is going back to myths that were discredited and exploded many years ago. And these, of course, turn out to be false consolations whereas the consolations of philosophy and of the aesthetic and of the beauty of science and of reason and so on, available to us all the time and really able to explain why things happen, why terrible wounds are inflicted in Afghanistan, and so forth. No, no, that won't do. Let's, like some absolute loser, find the person who Paley means who says—finds a watch on the beach and thinks, "I don't know what this is for but it seems to tick. It must be for something," but doesn't understand it. We find this wonderful truffle and open it and look at the chocolate and throw it away and then munch on the wrapper. I don't understand it but I'm one of those who are not made this way.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I think the core of your question—I think that the more mankind learns, the more mankind understands that it does not have all the answers and that's why people continue to reach and seek answers that is beyond what, even in this age, we've been able to discover. I think that is why. And I think that there's also the innate emptiness in mankind to always go back to the core of what made mankind in the first place and that, to me, is a supreme being. I think that answers the question of why I think the—and then—[Noticing Hitchens was choking]<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sorry.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I thought you got the Holy Ghost or something.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Just throwing myself around.<br /><br />SHARPTON: But I think that's why we see the rise of Evangelism. Whether or not I agree with the rise or not is another question. But I think the quest is inspired because of the increased knowledge has not answered the question of where it begins and what governs all of the things that, obviously, operate in some order and with some precision and I must say, at the risk of my sounding callous, it amazes me that it doesn't bother you that we spend two trillion dollars in a war we should've never been in, you just worry about paying the chaplains to pray over it?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah well, you see, I don't love our enemies and I don't love people who do love them. I hate our enemies and think they should be killed and I think that they want to kill me. And I think we can do it with half the budget or maybe twice but I'm absolutely sure that there should be no country that has a budget that can threaten ours and I'm not sentimental about the point. I wanted to have another whack at that very question...<br /><br />SHARPTON: So people that preach God and love should shut up and remain private but killers ought to just go and just kill people that they call their enemies. That's very ethical and [indecipherable].<br /><br />HITCHENS: The people who preach "Allahu akbar" had better find out that there's a stronger force than them and one that also has unalterable convictions and principles and that can also be offended and that they offend it at their peril. That's what I think. Now, to the last question, I just want to have one more run at it.<br /><br />SHARPTON: You already answered it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I know, but if you don't mind.<br /><br />SHARPTON: You trying it twice?<br /><br />HITCHENS: When I started hurling myself around like a shout-and-holler person, it was because I suddenly though of [indecipherable].<br /><br />SHARPTON: Ok, I understand. Well there is no right or wrong with you so go ahead, answer it three times.<br /><br />HITCHENS: The questions that they come and ask these chaplains are, "Why, why, why? Why does it happen that the nicest guy in my unit just took a round through the throat," you know, and, "I've just been to this village where all the children are being killed and where"—you can fill this in for yourself—"Why, why, why, why?" That's the question, isn't it? Well, have you ever heard of any spokesman of any religion give an answer to that question? They've had thousands of years to think about it. No, they haven't come up with a question at all, unless to say, as they used to, when it was a plague or a war or a tsunami, "Well it's probably a sign of sin. You're being punished." The Archbishop of Canterbury in England two years ago says he really worries how God could be so mean as to unleash a tidal wave towards Christmas time in Asia. You can't believe you're listening to this stuff. Now if you ask me, ok, I'll say—"Why did this happen? Why did the best guy I know get cancer of the throat or get mugged or slaughtered, or whatever it was?" I'll say, "Because we belong to an imperfectly evolved species where the adrenaline glands are too big, the prefrontal lobes are too small and we bear every sign of the stamp of our lowly origin and only by realizing the fact that we are mammals are we likely to be able to talk any sense about it." And if you say, "Well, why did that city fall down or be overcome by waves or that volcano kill all those children?" I'll say, "Well, hate to break it to you, but we live on a cooling planet whose crust hasn't quite settled yet. These are to be expected and there is no other explanation for them and don't believe anyone who says there is." Well, this is not perhaps perfect ethical instruction, but it does conform to the hippocratic injunction, <i>primum non nocere</i>, at least I'm not lying to these people. At least what I say can do them no harm and at least it cannot increase the illusions they already have and usually when you go to that village and ask, "Why are the children being killed?" it's because someone who believed in God thought that they had it coming.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Next.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Hi. Thank you. I'll be brief. The question of where to find morality, with or without God, which, I think, is certainly too large for either side of this debate to settle or resolve within the space of a few hours—you can't hear me? However, I think Mr. Hitchens has made a start and at least has offered a possibility of where we might find morality....<br /><br />WEISBERG: Could you, I'm sorry, just get to your question because we have lots of people waiting.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Ok, I'm sorry. Reverend Sharpton has resisted Mr. Hitchens' attacks on the institutions that were later claimed to relay God's will but expresses doubt as to how we can have morality without God so I'm wondering if criteria such as personal experience are all we have without the legislature of shared religious texts, how are we to move on from moral solipsism and actually find morality?<br /><br />SHARPTON: I think that the—well, it is Mr. Hitchens that says that we found morality in ourselves, that we know morality. I would argue that the reason you can find it within yourselves is because of a sense of God and a pattern in human character that was there. There's no scientific evidence offered by non-believers as why this morality would be there other than—what, what, it just evolved somewhere? That we would have this sense of morality? I don't that it has to be governed by organized religion, that's all.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: Hi. First of all I just want to say I'm writing a book and it's called <i>An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Religion Succeeds and Atheism Fails</i>, so I am an atheist but I defend religion. And my...<br /><br />WEISBERG: You're really splitting the difference here, huh?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: [After being told by an usher to ask his question] I know, I just lost it, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sounds like dialectical interference.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: My question is—to Christopher is how you can justify wanting to take something away from people that gives meaning to 95% of the American people replace it with something that gives meaning to just 5% of the American people?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ha, well, what an incredibly stupid question. First, I've said repeatedly that this stuff cannot be taken away from people. It is their favorite toy and it will remain so as long—as Freud said in <i>The Future of an Illusion</i> it will remain that way as long as we're afraid of death and have that problem which is I think likely to be quite a long time. Second, I hope I've made it clear that I'm perfectly happy for people to have these toys and to play with them at home and hug them to themselves and so on and share them with other people who come around and play with the toys, so that's absolutely fine. They are not to make me play with these toys. I will not play with the toys. Don't bring the toys to my house. Don't say my children must play with these toys. Don't say—my toys might be a condom, here we go again—are not allowed by their toys. I'm not going to have any of that. Enough with clerical and religious bullying and intimidation. Is that finally clear? Have I got that across? Thank you.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Next. Quick question.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: Yes. Mr. Sharpton, if morality comes from whatever God tells people to do or whatever God says is right and wrong...<br /><br />SHARPTON: I never said—I never said that.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: ...rather than the objective requirements of human life, then how is God any different than Stalin?<br /><br />SHARPTON: But I never said that. I think that—I think Mr. Hitchens said that God tells people this. I said that God—if there is no supreme being that sets a framework for the world that has a framework of right and wrong then what do we base it on? Do I think God calls the leaders of the church every morning and tells them what's right and wrong after they read <i>The New York Times</i>? No. I think that there is a framework based on what is right and wrong in humanity by the force that created humanity and that is not God sending you an email every day or revelation on a mountain. I did not say that. I think that was his concept of what had happened to some that had professed that, so I can't defend what I didn't say.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I am of one mind with the Reverend in saying that there has been no divine revelation. There could not be such a thing. But I'm a little disappointed in you.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I know you are.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Just a fraction disappointed.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I know you are.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But you can live with it. I can see that you can.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I'll try.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You're man enough, you're man enough to [indecipherable].<br /><br />SHARPTON: I'll try.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 9: If—this is a follow up I guess to the last question—but if you need God or religion or spirituality, whatever, to have morality then how do you explain the high crime rate in the US, which is the most religious industrial country in the world versus Japan and Sweden and other countries that are almost entirely secular?<br /><br />SHARPTON: Well, I think you confuse two things in your question. That there, first of all, is a distinct difference between spiritual and religious. You kind of intermingled the two. And I think that those that commit crimes, and I hate to disagree with Mr. Hitchens, are not all believers in God. I mean to say that that question is logical is to say that every criminal is a God-fearing person that commits crime. I have a feeling—I certainly don't have the data at my disposal as my good friend brother Hitchens—but I would suspect atheists commit crimes too.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I can absolutely vouch for that.<br /><br />SHARPTON: We're of one mind. We're coming together.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I mean, look, I dare say the question was supposed to helpful to my side but I don't it so for two reasons. One, it's too approximate. I mean, just as you hear people say—something I think is really fatuous—there are no atheists in foxholes. You've heard it. There are very few atheists on death row, either, but I wouldn't make that a case for my side. It's just not the way I argue. I do notice that Christians, or other believers, tend to say if a baby falls 25 floors and lands with a bounce on the lawn and is unharmed they attribute it to a divine intervention and if it falls two feet off a table and cracks its skull and dies they just say that's bad luck. I have noticed that tendency and this is, I think, a version of that. The burden of proof, in any case, is not on our team, if you will. We don't say disbelief in God will make you a better person or make you more moral. We are arguing against those who say that a belief in an unprovable supernatural will make you more moral. Now that we know is not true. That we know is not true because there's not just a lot of ordinary crime committed by the faithful but there's a lot of extraordinary crime such as suicide bombing and genital mutilation and many other things that's committed because of and only because of faith. I rest my case.<br /><br />SHARPTON: So the way to get the crime rate down would be to increase atheism and disbelief?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, there is no corollary, as I was careful, I think scrupulous in saying, there's no corollary of the atheists side to that.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Oh, ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Those who argue that religion is a source of morality have, as always, and as so far this evening, all their explaining still ahead of them and that's with 2,000 years of failure to chalk up. Pretty wet performance, isn't it?<br /><br />SHARPTON: I must say this—and I know some more questions—atheism has been here for thousands of years, too and I think that just as there is a lot going forward to look for answers from those of us that believe, those that have made thousands of years of careers and books in disbelief haven't answered much either.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Well if you think that Spinoza, say, or Democritus is just the equivalent of—I don't know who, did you say Paul Tillich?—I just think you're not comparing like with like. I think our tradition beats yours every time intellectually.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Of course you do.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And our tradition has no—we've never had to take anything back. We've never had to say, "Look, we were teaching the children that the world was flat for too long. We'll have to change this for now." Or we've never said you'll go to limbo if your child dies unbaptized. We've had nothing of this sort on our conscience and every discovery made by independent, corroborative, disinterested research tends to support what we suspected in the first place.<br /><br />SHARPTON: But I would argue that those of us that believe in our own relationships with God and believe prayers are answered does disbelief, that it's hard to lose something if you put nothing there but just argue against whatever's there is not there. So you start with a undue advantage.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That went straight past my bat.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I know.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Let's take—I want to take just two more questions. Sir, please.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 9: Mr. Hitchens, does man have an innate need for ceremony and ritual and if so, how does he satisfy it without religion?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I believe we do, for the most part, have an innate need for ceremony and ritual, yes. I think that that seems to be a finding of all anthropologists in all societies at all times. This doesn't mean that they have to take the form of, say, human sacrifice, thought some of the better and more elaborate ones have taken that form, or say the investiture of a monarch where one would be better off with a republic, and so forth. I mean, the knowledge of this needs or innatenesses is also an awareness that these impulses must be, so to say, domesticated, civilized. Actually, the best argument I know for religion, which is—perhaps I owe an apology to the gentleman I was rude to a few moments ago—which is, in a way, an atheist argument, is religion, though it's based on complete falsity and fantasy does at least give a form and a shape to people's atavistic and superstitious and barbaric and other worshiping tendencies. It domesticates and organizes them. That's what many people believe the Roman Catholic Church has been doing for a while and I would be prepared to concede that is it wasn't for the teachings on virginity, the denial of the right of contraception, and many other horror shows. They can put on a good ritual, I'll give you that but don't go believing that if you put a wafer on your tongue you're going to change the cosmos because you know, there's no truth to that at all.<br /><br />WEISBERG: We're honored to have Ayaan Hirsi Ali here this evening.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ah!<br /><br />WEISBERG: And I'm going to give here the honor of the last question.<br /><br />ALI: Yes, thank you, and I've become an atheist and if brother Sharpton answers my question I might go back to faith.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I got it here.<br /><br />WEISBERG: Glad there's at least one persuadable person here.<br /><br />ALI: Mr. Sharpton, you repeated many times tonight that you did not want to talk about religion, you wanted to talk about God. It is unfair, then, to ask you to give us the evidence if His existence. Is it, for instance, unreasonable for you to tell us if He or She or It created this world order, who created Him then?<br /><br />SHARPTON: Who created...<br /><br />ALI: God. I mean, what was before Him? <br /><br />SHARPTON: Well...<br /><br />ALI: Let me finish all of my question.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Oh, I though you only had one. This is a...<br /><br />ALI: Well, it's important.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Ok. It's a long conversion. Go ahead.<br /><br />ALI: And finally, isn't it odd that you carry a Christian title and that you refuse, even for once tonight, to defend the charge and the content of the Bible.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Because we are here to discuss Mr. Hitchens' book and Mr. Hitchens' book attacks God and I wanted him to defend his book. His book, unfortunately for your question, did not attack the Bible or Christianity and I would not want—well you have to read the book, it does when you get inside but I think that what you must—what I wanted to convey is that there are all kinds of people that relate to God other than the ways Mr. Hitchens may address a certain religion that I respect. You don't have to be a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist to believe in God or worship God. So that is not to defend against those that say that God does not exist because that would have reduced the debate to just part of the framework of the book. So that is why I wanted him to discuss with us his whole attack, not just his dogmatic attack, though he clearly does—and I do encourage people to buy the book, it's well-written. I don't believe what it says, but it's well-written.<br /><br />HITCHENS: [To Weisberg] Oh, that's a very nice [indecipherable].<br /><br />SHARPTON: He's a very eloquent and well-versed person.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well that's extremely handsome of you.<br /><br />SHARPTON: Oh, I know that. But in answer to your first question, I think that, again, to say that one does not exist because I cannot say for sure how it was brought into being—I'm sitting on this stage, you don't know how I was born. Answering God's not there because we don't know who God's father was or how God came into being I don't think deals with the existence that there is clearly confirmed by some of the scientific data in Mr. Hitchens' book that I, again, encourage you to get and get an autograph. Is that a ritual, when you sign an autograph?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, it is. It is.<br /><br />SHARPTON: I think that the existence of God...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's more like a sacrament, actually.<br /><br />SHARPTON: It's a sacrilege? <br /><br />HITCHENS: It's more like a sacrament.<br /><br />SHARPTON: It's a sacrament.<br /><br />HITCHENS: This is America, baby...<br /><br />SHARPTON: Don't put a wafer on your tongue when you get an autograph.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...I'm only going to be nice to people with receipts from now on. That's how moral I am.<br /><br />WEISBERG: I'm afraid we're ending the evening with no conversions but with a lot of eloquence and I want to—please join me in thanking both of our debaters.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-55323072178116138212010-11-26T10:24:00.010-05:002010-12-05T21:41:56.428-05:00Hitchens and Geiger, The Globe and Mail<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> interviewed by <a href=http://www.johngeiger.net/bio.html>John Geiger</a> (transcribed by Aleysha Haniff)<br /><li>November 26, 2010, <a href=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/>The Globe and Mail</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0rAmGYwko97cra-fnC92Mx8mCsh3KciuPzdJxMm3zmlxcAEJBmGV7gkYKg50gxMBYIVmsAp8DvxJ1Q8rRYT7Yc6C0JnMB7U2sxIy3u5JTR1V5EQkU1aSjUYdRggfWD9N2zC76_MO-q0ZX/s1600/geiger.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0rAmGYwko97cra-fnC92Mx8mCsh3KciuPzdJxMm3zmlxcAEJBmGV7gkYKg50gxMBYIVmsAp8DvxJ1Q8rRYT7Yc6C0JnMB7U2sxIy3u5JTR1V5EQkU1aSjUYdRggfWD9N2zC76_MO-q0ZX/s320/geiger.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543883333016376498" /></a>GEIGER: Thank you very much for speaking with <i>The Globe and Mail</i>. It’s a pleasure to meet you. When did you know you were a non-believer? Was there a moment you decided, "this is nonsense" and I’m thinking here of Mrs. [Jean] Watts.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes. Well to answer your first question the first bit of your question is the better half of it because it is more I think a matter of realizing that one isn't, for many of us at any rate, rather than as for some I know, having had beliefs or thought one had them and having them fall away or indeed, suddenly, find them not any longer tenable. I think [indecipherable] I must have been 10, I suppose. When I was a little boy, at a little boy’s boarding school in Devonshire, my country of birth. Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know. And it’s not just taught as a subject but Christianity is taught as true, as well as in scripture lessons. And our scripture teacher, Mrs. Watts, was also our nature teacher. So in a very beautiful way taught about birds, trees. I used to know a lot more about all that than I do now. And one day, Mrs. Watts, who was a modest old woman, I think overreached herself and tried to combine role of scripture and nature teaching. And said, "You notice boys, that God has made the vegetation and the trees and the grass very green, a lovely kind of green, which is the most restful color to our eyes. And imagine instead if they were orange, or puce, or magenta or something. So that shows that God is good." And I remember thinking, "I know nothing about chlorophyll, photosynthesis, let alone natural selection." But I remember thinking, "That's nonsense." That must be untrue. If either thing adapted to the other, it would have been our eyes to the vegetation, surely. And it’s one of those little proofs of a large thing ... Once you have a thought like that you essentially can’t unthink it. And I started to notice if I hadn't already, other things about the scriptures too that didn’t appeal. So, you couldn’t call that a conversion, exactly, or a revelation or a counter-revelation. It was more, as you implied with your first point, discovering this was meaningless to me as a way of thinking.<br /><br />GEIGER: Was that solidified at some point? Were you at university or was there some moment where you felt really an accumulation of these sorts of observations and you felt this is...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPY5aNT4HKAlQoTSV5DwY3fPf0XdiNkm42W8tcvrdHiE686LpdnIU8MKWfOZwYxrVxSCpsKwtloFmtaH6TgkvjUdHlqg5kCpQP9z0kT7ZEsfFJ4vQhcLVCW9u2OY7sZl9Fck_u9K2cp3pu/s1600/hitchenswindow.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPY5aNT4HKAlQoTSV5DwY3fPf0XdiNkm42W8tcvrdHiE686LpdnIU8MKWfOZwYxrVxSCpsKwtloFmtaH6TgkvjUdHlqg5kCpQP9z0kT7ZEsfFJ4vQhcLVCW9u2OY7sZl9Fck_u9K2cp3pu/s320/hitchenswindow.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5543884038719489554" /></a> HITCHENS: Well, I noticed as I grew up, I noticed other things about it. Also, I think in my schools days, I noticed it was a very powerful reinforcement tool for authority. They had the masters of the schools, also the man who conducted the service. Just as Her Majesty the Queen as well as being head of the state, was head of the Church of England. And so, I thought it was extremely convenient for certain kinds of traditional authority to be able to claim some sort of religious justification. And that also put me on my guard against it. I read Bertrand Russell’s famous book, <i>Why I am Not a Christian</i>, at around that time I would think, and found it fairly persuasive. But of course, for a good bit of time, I’m talking about I was born in 1949, I was in university in the 60s and so forth. It was a very political time, but religion wasn’t a huge subject. I mean, most people were, if religious, fairly mildly so as is the Anglican communion. What Shelley, in his famous essay, called the necessity of atheism, wasn’t something that troubled me very much. I just thought it was the more intelligent way to think. And I distrusted those who claimed divine authority. There may or may not be a creator, but there’s no human being who can speak in his or her name. So it’s more in the last few years, it seemed to be a matter of urgency to say the gains made by the Enlightenment, the permission to think about things without religious intimidation really need to be defended and need to be reasserted. That plus the enormous developments in the natural sciences, the amazing discoveries we’ve recently made about our own nature, through the human genome project, and about, we’re only grazing on the outer fringes of it, the nature and origins of the cosmos all seem to me to make the argument a lot clearer and more interesting and more pressing than it used to be. Hence the misleading term "new atheist" which is applied to people like myself. There’s nothing new about it except with the enormous new discoveries and the way that they’ve been opposed by some people of faith to say the least, and then the challenge of theocratic barbarism, being felt very immediately. I think that’s the one thing that combines me with my co-thinkers on this matter, those we disagree on quite a range of other things. <br /><br />GEIGER: Does a moral hierarchy exist on religions today? Are some a greater force for good in the world than others or are they essentially moral equivalents? As your book subtitle read, "God poisons everything."<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, should I start with the "poisons everything?" Perhaps I should. Ok, I’ll ask for trouble if I put on a provocative subtitle, but I mean by it, not of course it poisons Chinese food or tantric sex or Niagara falls or something but it does attack us in our deepest integrity. It says we wouldn’t know right from wrong if it wasn’t for divine permission. It immediately makes us, essentially, slaves. And it has to be opposed for that reason. And such a radical frontal attack on human dignity, it seems to me, that it does leach into everything. And it has the effect of making good people say and do wicked things. For example, a morally normal person when presented with a new baby would not set about its genitals with a sharp stone or a knife. He would have to think God needed that. No, it wouldn’t occur to him otherwise. It make intelligent people say stupid things, commits them to saying stupid things such as they are objects of a divine design. As well as being stupid, very conceited by the way. They claim believers to be so modest. That’s what I mean by the poison. And because of that, I do tend to think it applies in general. My younger daughter goes to a Quaker school in Washington, the same one as the president’s children. ... There was a time when the Quakers ran the most sadistic prisons in North America and were fond of excommunicating people for the smallest things such as supporting the American Revolution, for example. If they’d been more powerful, they might have been worse. ... any surrender of reason in favor of faith contains the same danger it seems to me. Fluctuates over time. Before, I’ve been asked in the 1930s what I thought was the most dangerous religion I almost certainly would have said Roman Catholicism because of its then pretty much undisguised alliance with the Fascist parties in Europe, for which it has not yet succeeded in apologizing enough, in my opinion. But has, least admitted it was true. It was very dangerous then. I now think obviously, or rather self-evidently, Wahabi fundamentalist Islam and its equivalents in messianic Shiism, the Shia equivalent of that Sunni theory, practice, are as dangerous especially because they could get a hold of weapons, or a weapon of mass destruction. So we would find out, with a little speculation, we used to have after lights out when we were young, what would really happen if a really wicked person got a hold of a nuclear bomb and now we’re going to find out. When the messianic meets the apocalyptic, watch out.<br /><br />GEIGER: So, in a highly globalized world, religious systems are very much in the mix. Can religion at least provide common values and ethical foundation. Obviously, there’s differences but is there some sort of root?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Religion can’t provide that. Moral values come from innate human solidarity. They’re the values we need, have needed to survive as a species. Knowing we have responsibilities to other people, for example, knowing that certain types of behavior are worse than antisocial. Religion, to an extent believes that, but it doesn’t always. It takes it from us. No, it couldn't provide it. All it could do is lay claim to it, a claim that I would deny. And because it’s not in the nature of faith to be really universal—it’s quite extraordinary the number of claims that are made by people of faith to be the holders of the only faith, It’s not enough for them to say they believe in God, or get values from it, they have to say God revealed to us. And the wars of religion alone would be enough to negate this claim. .... also to show what we already know, that religion is man-made. So it’s one of our artifacts, along with, fortunately with, genuine humanistic morality. And I think it’s essential to choose between the two.<br /><br />GEIGER: You write that your own particular atheism is very much a protestant atheism, that you, I guess it comes out of your own experience when you were young. But is there something peculiar to the King James Bible or to the Church of England practice of faith that you think inspired your journey.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No. All I mean by that is the kind of atheist I originally was, was someone who felt very taken by, or stricken by love for what some have called the authorized or the King James version of the Bible. ... I found that it didn’t answer, it didn’t answer morally, it didn’t answer philosophically. It was that that I cut my teeth on. Friends of mine who are a former Shia twelfth imam, believers for example, have had a totally different experience coming through to the other side. But I must say I recognize their dilemma. They were told to do it. Twelve imams, one of whom has gone missing, who is only waiting to return. I think that reminds me of something, almost certainly plagiarized from an original, not very persuasive script. But I think people have all to find their own way. What I do find is what the experience of unbelief in formal belief is remarkably similar. Very, very similar. So I deduce from that, that the original beliefs are probably very similar too. For all the outward discrepancy, the willingness on their part to make a cause of war. If you look at the number of Shia muslims who’ve been killed by Sunni Muslims in the last year, it vastly exceeds the number of casualties inflicted in the Iran, excuse me, the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts by the other side.<br /><br />GEIGER: Many people, I think, derive a pleasure value from religion in part because of the ceremony. Does ritual play a part in your own life? Is there some aspect of that that’s missing?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I say in the opening of <i>god is Not Great</i>, that one of the huge advantages or being a non-believer is that you don’t have to keep on reinforcing your non-belief by going to ceremonies. And in the keeping of company, sort of try to make it seem more true because it’s being affirmed in a crowd. Or by ritual, or by incantation of any sort. We don’t need that. And I can run into a non-believer who I haven’t known before and in a very short time discover roughly what we have in common. But we don’t have to keep reminding ourselves, hey, remember, keep the faith on this point. It’s absolutely what we don’t need. I don’t even belong to any atheist or secular group for example. I’m a little suspicious of people who do. Though I can understand how many of them feel isolated, especially in some parts of the United States. But I think the need for that reaffirmation is kind of a pathetic thing, even when it can have beautiful outcomes, as in certain celebrations ...<br /><br />If some people, nonetheless do find it comforting or consoling, I say I wish them joy with it. I just don’t want to have to hear about it. In other words, I don’t want at Christmas time, to know anything the government says or does, such as displays of Christmas trees or indeed, Santa Claus, or nativity scenes, or anything of this sort. ... I don’t want them teaching it in school. I don’t want them asking for government subsidies for it. I don’t want them saying it’s illegal to ridicule it. All of these things they do, all the time. I’d prefer not to have to know what these people think. Isn’t it enough for them that they have a God who loves them and will give them salvation? I mean, if I believed that, I’d be happy. They’re not happy. They won’t be happy until everyone else believes it too. And that’s surely a very bad sign and it’s a sign of intellectual and moral weakness.<br /><br />GEIGER: You don’t have a Christmas tree, I take it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sure, I do. As long as I’ve been a father, I’ve always had one. And I have Passover as well, in homage to another tradition of which I have a partial claim.<br /><br />GEIGER: Your mother was Jewish.<br /><br />HITCHENS: So is my wife. So was my grandmother. So is my daughter. Anyone who didn’t like or wanted to defame or threaten the Jewish people would be insulting my wife, my mother, my mother my late and much beloved mother in law, my granny. I don’t need to say anything for myself, surely.<br /><br />GEIGER: Can you name a theological work, a religious text or philosophical work that has had a profound influence on you? I guess, either way.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, Newman's <i>Apologia</i> is a very interesting, very absorbing book, I’d have to say. As is Augustine’s <i>City of God</i>. And there’s something else I thinking of what I can’t quite reach at the moment. Of course, in order to appreciate them one has to get through an enormous amount of self-obsession, self-importance. So much in fact, it gets in the way because you think what kind of humility is this? That they feel that every episode in their own lives is somehow a world-historical moment. Not to say cosmic. So I’ve tried, and it may as well be a failure of imagination on my part. Oh, of course, I should have mentioned <i>Pensées</i>, thoughts of Pascal, which are very ingenious. Written by a man of science, a great mathematician. A theorist .... And interestingly enough addressed, as he puts it, to the man who is so made that he cannot believe. Pascal knew that it’s not really true, that all people are naturally believers. It may be true of a large group of people in a lot of times and places but it’s equally true to say what some of us are constituted the other way. We can’t take this seriously, it’s gibberish to us. Or, worse. And Pascal understands this and is trying to speak directly and, well, that’s a nice change.<br /><br />GEIGER: Is there contemporary work?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Not that I know of. I’ve read because my little, our little, movement the "new atheists" are called, have generated a whole shelf of rebuttals and I feel obliged to read those.<br /><br />GEIGER: Including your brother.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Including, indeed, my baby brother. And I feel under some sense of obligation anyone nice enough to [indecipherable]. And look, how could it be otherwise. Religion is not going to come up with any new arguments. If you know the old ones, you know them. And I would presume to say I know them reasonably well. You don’t come up with anything... how could you? The most you could get now is what I would call a sort of parasitism. Those who used to be very dubious about the theory of evolution, if not hostile, now say, alright, alright! In fact, now we think about it, it is true. It’s so true and it’s so beautiful and it’s so intricate, so fascinating, it must have taken God to do it. Well, that’s not thinking at all. That’s just saying include us in. Same with the Big Man. Didn’t like it, now they love because they say it’s so awe-inspiring, it must be divine. Well, that’s not a new argument because it isn’t an argument.<br /><br />GEIGER: The concept of redemption is at the essence of Christianity. And even as an atheist, is there anything in that? Is there anything that you would seek redemption?<br /><br />HITCHENS: The desire for a second chance let’s say, or the desire perhaps to undo or make up for one’s shortcomings or let’s say sentence or crimes is or should be so strong. It is for that reason that, you see, that I think religion is so dangerous because it offers a full solution to a real problem. And it comes out in Christianity in the most deplorable way, which is the idea of vicarious atonement, You can indeed be redeemed as long as you’re willing to have someone else take responsibility for your own sins. That’s not responsible, that’s actually scapegoating. It’s loading the guilt of the tribe onto a sacrificial figure. I think that’s actually immoral. But it certainly answers a deeply-filled need.<hr>From <a href=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/interview-christopher-hitchens-on-not-believing/article1817478/page1/>The Globe and Mail</a>HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-81695149928261483692010-11-22T21:00:00.032-05:002010-12-05T00:16:32.850-05:00Hitchens vs. Wolpe, New Center for Arts and Culture<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wolpe>Rabbi David Wolpe</a>: The Great God Debate<br /><li>March 23, 2010, <a href=http://www.ncacboston.org/>New Center for Arts and Culture</a>, Boston, MA<br /><br />[Introduction by NPR's <a href=http://www.onpointradio.org/about-on-point/tom-ashbrook>Tom Ashbrook</a>]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlnZ3FinhktnNIuG9eq6ak2Z-RUuOLEbo417TP6HbyvtuYVp_Q7NE6arkjs3do-LxnY6NKL280lJH0vNbZAM2fSln6Z2mBqN2OMbO_cwTw-pvOSifjzC5rBWJhqR9RTm1RKiQxUKCxo16a/s1600/ashbrook.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlnZ3FinhktnNIuG9eq6ak2Z-RUuOLEbo417TP6HbyvtuYVp_Q7NE6arkjs3do-LxnY6NKL280lJH0vNbZAM2fSln6Z2mBqN2OMbO_cwTw-pvOSifjzC5rBWJhqR9RTm1RKiQxUKCxo16a/s320/ashbrook.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542862547515003954" /></a>ASHBROOK: I made a mistake with my third child: I waited until she could speak to have her baptized and when—baptism, you know, water on head—and when the preacher, you know, got the water with the droplets and began to put it on her head and he said it was in the name of God and she said, “What is God?” Let’s just do it, let’s just start with the simplicity of a child. What is God, Rabbi?<br /><br />WOLPE: Well, it depends who you’re answering. If you’re answering a two-year-old, you answer one way, but if you answer—discussing it with an adult, you begin with a recognition, which actually the entire debate should be framed with, of human limitation. In the following sense, when you were two years old, could you imagine what it’s like to be an adult? Of course not. A two-year-old has no idea what an adult is like. And yet we make definitive statements about God all the time when in every religion that I know of the distance between God and human beings is infinitely greater than the distance between an adult and a two-year-old. So, when I say, as I’m going to in a second—I’m not going to avoid your question—but understand that I say it against the background of a religious recognition of our own inability to understand that which is infinitely greater than ourselves. My thumbnail definition of what God is is that God is the source of everything that exists and God is someone, something with whom a human being can have a relationship and that you can lead your life in alignment with a godly purpose.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidkpqwH3TZM3S1fbdE8Qzz3ktxOTuXPNtNu244S98wgzbBzc5ynRKcj8KtXB8JaYTCv7x3KRlSLe8yjCRSFsw9h6ZNcZMyhLOteUXW6vl_v6U4FkN4ZyoOgUfBiAiElyDBwP8AahXWxJl5/s1600/wolpe.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 190px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidkpqwH3TZM3S1fbdE8Qzz3ktxOTuXPNtNu244S98wgzbBzc5ynRKcj8KtXB8JaYTCv7x3KRlSLe8yjCRSFsw9h6ZNcZMyhLOteUXW6vl_v6U4FkN4ZyoOgUfBiAiElyDBwP8AahXWxJl5/s320/wolpe.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542560956228274258" /></a> But any definition that is greater than that is, in some ways, to introduce God, which is, by the way, the title of Christopher’s book is exactly right. God is not great, because to say God is great or God is something is to put a definition on God, which we know from classical Jewish philosophy you ought not to do. So, in fact, Christopher is exactly right and we can wrap it up right now. <br /><br />ASHBROOK: Thank you very much for coming, it’s been a wonderful evening. Apologies perhaps to Muslims in the audience who say, “God is great” all the time. We’ll circle back.<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Chris Hedges, to you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: If you don’t mind…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: …answer my daughter's question, maybe you’ll warn her off.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjre99JqNIJvY0CykvjyptwkS2FIHisC7iIx7fYZFzhmZaaxNTUPGI8F5hPw6BONbh7JVB3vYoTg35RPWXU0frzO9otVTFHXl-PfDolJUf10-aD8xvjW1ysZHiD6Uk1wS1eIkF6G7sGl_U2/s1600/hitchcasual.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjre99JqNIJvY0CykvjyptwkS2FIHisC7iIx7fYZFzhmZaaxNTUPGI8F5hPw6BONbh7JVB3vYoTg35RPWXU0frzO9otVTFHXl-PfDolJUf10-aD8xvjW1ysZHiD6Uk1wS1eIkF6G7sGl_U2/s320/hitchcasual.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542560842832311298" /></a>HITCHENS: If you don’t mind, it would be Christopher, and Hitchens.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Yes, sir.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Chris Hedges is a horrible…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Hedges, did I say Hedges?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes you did.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Forgive me.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Chris Hedges is a horrible apologist for liberation theology.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Christopher Hitchens.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That’s better.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Too many guests, too little time.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sorry, I exist too, if you see what I mean.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: May as well start by establishing that ontological claim.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, Friederich Nietzsche famously said that God was dead and Sigmund Freud can be rendered as having said that God was dad. And I think both of them were probably right. The concept of God is, like everything else in our vocabulary, man-made. It’s an invention of human beings. Unless you take the view that God made us, in which case there’d be a lot to explain: how many—why did we, in that case, make so many gods? It does seem to be much, very much more probable that men and women made many gods than any one god made all men and women and the rest of creation. And, as well as being man-made, it’s fear-made. It is the unexpressed, or partial expressed, wish for a protector, a parent, someone who will never desert you, someone who will do, in a way, your thinking for you, especially on questions of moral philosophy. At its best it’s that, it’s a wish to be loved more than you probably deserve. And at its worst it’s the underdeveloped part of the human psyche that leads to totalitarianism, that wants to worship and that wants a boss, that wants a celestial dictatorship and that’s the bit that’s now threatening to destroy our secular civilization. And so you’re quite right to start where you do. It used to be believed—I mean, the number of gods now is infinite and a new god is created almost every day by some cult or other—but it used to be that there was a belief that gods were in the trees, in the woods, in the springs, in the sea, in the clouds and so forth (polytheism of a kind). Then, something a bit more polytheistic like Olympus where there was at least a location for the divine, but it was multi-faceted. And then monotheism, getting it down to one. So I regard this as progress of a sort because they’re getting nearer the true figure all the time. <br /><br />WOLPE: I actually…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Rabbi, yes. Progess, maybe.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Which, by the way, is why the Vatican, in it’s old days, was very upset by the concept of zero, didn’t like zero at all, the most important number of all, the number without which you can’t do anything, which wasn’t there in Roman numerals.<br /><br />WOLPE: No, it was invented in Islamic civilization, actually.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And unfortunately also struck them as a sinister import from—<i>impartimus infidelium</i>, from pagan lands, but also the trouble—the concept of zero was very troubling for theism and must be and does indeed remain so. It’s one of the many, many ways in which theism is not compatible with the scientific world view.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Rabbi Wolpe, may I ask you…<br /><br />WOLPE: I just want to point out, without even taking issue with the incorrect statements that he made, I want you to…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Why would you…<br /><br />WOLPE: I want you to understand—wait, wait, wait, I want you to understand the progress of the argument that you just heard because it’s important that people do this all the time and at least you should be aware of it whether you accept it or not. Very often when people argue with you, especially when they argue about religion, they attribute their own beliefs to logic and your belief to psychology. So religious people believe in something because they need to be loved, or they need a crutch or they’re weak. But I believe what I believe because it’s true and scientific. And I just want you to be aware that you cannot actually disprove someone’s belief by impugning an unworthy motive to it. You actually have to disprove the belief. So don’t let Christopher pull the psychological wool over your eyes. You can actually be just as worthy or unworthy of love, just as tough-minded, just as thoughtful, just as deep, and still believe in God as most human beings have throughout all of human history as if you are Christopher Hitchens.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Christopher, are you a trickster?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I don’t think that—you couldn’t accuse that of being an incorrect statement, he would accuse it of being an incomplete one. I didn’t give all the reasons why people believe in God. After all, you did write a whole book that argues that the belief in God can be very useful to people in times of crisis, did you not? I mean that’s…<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes, but I never said that was why you shouldn’t believe in God.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, and I don’t think it is the reason why many people do.<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But remember there are two questions—I better now say, lest I be accused of not having exhausting the entire subject in my first response—I’d better say there are at least two questions. One is this: is there a god, a creator, a prime mover, an uncaused cause, whatever you like to call it? And this was the question answered at a certain point not very long ago in our history by the deists—people like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and many others who said that the order of the universe seemed to suggest that it couldn’t just have been random, that there may have been a designer but that the designer didn’t take any part in human affairs. And that, in the late seventeenth, early eighteenth centuries—sorry, late eighteenth, early nineteenth centuries—was probably a very intelligent position to hold. It was pre-Einstein, pre-Darwin. It was probably as far as you were likely to get with philosophical speculation. But believing that there might be a cause or a mover or a creator is one thing but believing that there is a supervising, intervening entity who cares who wins the war, who cares who you sleep with and in what way, who cares what you eat and on what day, and—in other words, who makes you the center of the whole cosmos, is another thing altogether. So people who say, “I believe in God, I’m a deist,” have all their work in front of them before they can say that they are really religious.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Are you prepared to be a deist?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: No divine mover, even at the whatever, the origin?<br /><br />HITCHENS: There’s nothing in the natural, cosmic order, or—that’s the macro level—or the mirco level, that’s to say the constituent of our own DNA and the things that we have in common with the other animals and indeed other forms of life, like plants, but isn’t susceptible to a much better explanation.<br /><br />WOLPE: Well, here's—I'm…<br /><br />HITCHENS: In other words, as the great physicist Laplace said when he demonstrated his working model (his orrery, as it’s called) of the solar system to the emperor and Napoleon said, “Well I see there’s no God in this system,” and Laplace said, “Well, Your Majesty, it works without that assumption.”<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Rabbi, I don’t want to play God…<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: …but to give form to this…<br /><br />WOLPE: Sure.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: It’s 2010. You said you think of God as the source of all. In the year BCE 2010 why it should be the source of all to divinity, what about science? And you’ve just said…<br /><br />WOLPE: Sorry, that’s exactly what I was going to address is the—first of all, there are two separate ways of thinking about this, both—and I’ll offer them both briefly and you can decide if both or neither is congenial to you. One is that of course you can’t equate God and proof for God and discussion of God with a demonstration in a laboratory. That’s never been the case. The idea is different, to shift it differently which is this: I would ask you this question instead: deep down, do you believe that the universe is constituted only by stuff, by material? Or is there a mystery at the heart of things? Do you believe that you are purely synapses or is there something immaterial and eternal about you and those you love? Do you believe that things like love are just an epiphenomena of the way evolution has put us all together or do you think there is something that in the fact that immaterial things like ideas and love and consciousness have such a profound influence on our lives that lead you to believe that the intangible can be at least as real or more real than the tangible. If that way of looking at the world appeals to you or speaks to you, then you understand that Laplace, in order to explain how the heavens go, may not need the hypothesis of God, but that in order to explain why there is something rather than nothing, why there is a deeper meaning to life than stuff alone that that’s something that speaks to you and lets you understand that God is real. That’s part one. Wait, wait, wait. Part two is there are in fact things that are suggestive of something greater in even the scientific world, which is why, by the way, in the American Academy of Science more than half consistently, and this has been true over the last 100 years, 51, 52% of scientists say that they believe in God and that is the fact that everything exists rather than nothing, that consciousness, which is still inexplicable to human beings is real, that I make sounds, which is immaterial, and it touches you in some way that it makes you want to change things. The way of looking at the world even from what we can see and touch and feel suggests that there's something greater than know and now, go right ahead.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I can’t paraphrase him properly, but you really ought to get a hold of—it’s easy to find on Google—a lecture given by Lawrence Krauss, who I regard as the greatest living physicist, and it’s about the quantum and it’s about a whole universe from nothing. It’s exactly how you get from nothing to something, in fact quite a lot of things. One means by which this happens is the following: every second that we’re speaking a star the size of our sun or bigger goes out, blows up or goes out. That’s been the case every single second since the first moment of the Big Bang. It’s a lot. That’ll be a lot of suns going out as we speak. And there’s a lot of annihilation, isn’t it? It’s a lot of destruction. It’s on a—it’s rather what you might call almost a wasteful scale. It does have the positive outcome though that we are all constituted of those materials. We are made of star dust. Now I find that a rather more majestic and wonderful and even beautiful idea than, say, the idea of the burning bush. A bit more impressive, gives you more to think about.<br /><br />WOLPE: Are they mutually exclusive? Are they mutually exclusive? Did God make you of star dust?<br /><br />HITCHENS: One has the virtue of being true and provable and studyable, which the other doesn’t. And I do think that the verifiability of something is a virtue.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Are we simply material?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes. We don’t have bodies, we are bodies. Until 50,000 years ago there were four other kinds of biped, humanoid, not unlike us, still living on the planet, died leaving no descendents. We’re the only survivors of those people, that family. We're the last—we don’t know if they had gods or not.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: So you think you’re inexplicable?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No religion invented appears to have known that these creatures even existed because the religious are forced to believe that the only really significant event that happened in the human story happened about 3,000 years ago.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Are the mysteries inexplicable? Are we just waiting to understand them?<br /> <br />WOLPE: That’s not true. That’s factually not true.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Now, all of this massive Big Bang cosmological churning and destruction and annihiliation—which is paralleled, by the way on our own earth where 99% of all species that have already been on the planet have ever gone extinct, leaving no descendants. All of this could be part of a plan. There’s no way an atheist can prove it’s not. But it’s some plan, isn’t it, with mass destruction, pitiless extermination, annihilation going on all the time and all of this set in motion on a scale that’s absolutely beyond our imagination in order that the Pope can tell people not to jerk off. This is stupid.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Rabbi?<br /><br />WOLPE: Yeah, right. No, I think here…<br /><br />HITCHENS: This is—it’s childish to be [indecipherable].<br /><br />WOLPE: I can care—we've reached actually—we’ve reached an area of agreement. I, too, repudiate that statement, by the Pope, and I’m happy to do it publically.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I’m—we’ll leave it right there.<br /><br />WOLPE: No, no, no, no, no, wait just a second, hold on. The—first of all it’s just not true that religions don’t actually acknowledge very important things that happened before their own founding. Just read the beginning of the Bible, which goes back far beyond the founding of the Bible. But, more important than that, there are actually things that if you are material you can’t give an accounting of. For example, you might not believe that you have free will. You might think that everything you do was predetermined from the beginning of the Big Bang and (just the fact, by the way, that all the universe, physics tells us, came from something tinier than the head of a pin, is, to me, there is no other word than miraculous for it, but nonetheless) you might believe that all—that everything you did, the words tonight, the fact that those flowers would be orange on the table, that was all predetermined from the beginning of time. But if you believe that you actually make a choice, that human beings have free will, then I ask you how you account for that? You didn’t pick your birth, your genetics, you didn’t pick your environment. So from the very beginning all of that was predetermined for you and unless there is something immaterial about you that allows you to choose, then everything human beings do is already set from the beginning of time. I don’t understand how you get free will if you don’t have God.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Christopher.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It’s pathetic, I’m sorry to say, to say of the cosmological and the genetic that these are deterministic processes. They’re not at all. They’re full of extraordinary randomness and in the genetic case of mutation—Stephen Jay Gould, the great paleontologist, wrote a book which I recommend to you called <i>The Burgess Shale</i>, which is—it’s the side of a mountain in Canada, in the Canadian Rockies, that sheared off so you can read—you can see the inside of a mountain. You can see it as if you were looking at a blackboard and you can see the growth and development of the species. And you realize it’s not a tree, it’s more like a bush. There are various branches that go off and go nowhere and there are others that succeed and different kinds of failure and different kinds of mutation. His most exciting thought, most revolutionary thought is this: if you could, so to speak, put all of that onto a tape and rewind it and then press play again, there’s no certainty it would come out the same way. In fact, there’s every reason to believe that it would not. So there’s nothing predetermined. There’s nothing deterministic about this at all. Thanks to our understanding of our genetics, which are also not predetermined because they’re the result of random mutation and natural selection as everyone now knows. That’s why we can have, sad to say for the kosher, but we can have skin transplants and organ transplants from pigs, who are much closer to us than we used to think. We can also sequence the DNA of viruses and learn how to immunize ourselves from it. It works, in other words. But yes, it can be tampered with, it can be engineered for good as well as for ill. There’s nothing deterministic about it at all. It’s much more exciting, it’s much more interesting, it’s much more rewarding, it’s verifiable. And yes, there are elements, I was trying to say, the miraculous, the awe-inspiring, the tragic, the majestic in this that there simply are not in the incantations of Genesis where the supposed authors claim to know the divinity, the creator, on personal terms. This is nonsense. It’s for children.<br /><br />WOLPE: First of all, it is interesting—I mean, Stephen Gould who was, by the way, very sympathetic to religion, and wrote a book called <i>Rocks of Ages</i> which I also recommend to you where he said that religion and science don’t overlap.<br /><br />HITCHENS: They sure don’t.<br /><br />WOLPE: One second. If you read his book on the Burgess Shale he does say if you rewind then you assume if you push play again you would get a different result and that’s certainly true unless the result was intended. But, more important than that: yes, there’s randomness in the system. Nobody would argue that there isn’t randomness in the system, but randomness isn’t free will. Randomness is getting a result you don’t expect. The question is how do you get a directed choice, which isn’t random? I choose right now to pick this glass up. Now how did I make that choice if I’m purely a product of my DNA and my environment? Then it’s not a choice, then it was programmed in, then it’s instinct. And the whole point that religion’s always made about instinct would that human beings can rise above it. Unlike animals, which are the same at age two as they are at age ten as they are at age fifteen, a human being grows and changes and chooses. That’s the basis of religious [indecipherable].<br /><br />ASHBROOK: I have to say to me it doesn’t seem a matter of religion that I can choose to pick up this glass. That seems to me to be well within what could develop on a purely scientific basis.<br /><br />WOLPE: How? How?<br /><br />ASHBROOK: I’m not a scientist but it doesn’t seem like a mystery of God to me personally.<br /><br />WOLPE: Oh sure it is. Well no—but seriously, where does the element of free choice come from?<br /><br />ASHBROOK: I could be purely instinctual and put my head in a stream and drink and choose to do that.<br /><br />WOLPE: But that—now, wait, wait, when you say “choose,” where does the choice come from any more than my—[picking up a glass of water] than the choice of this glass to fall down? Where do you get a choice as opposed to a complex interaction of DNA and environment, neither of which you chose?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Again, piling on completely unnecessary assumptions, and also inviting a question that will make you uncomfortable.<br /><br />WOLPE: Go ahead.<br /><br />HITCHENS: If you say that, “No, it’s because God has given you free will,” I have to ask you how do you know that?<br /><br />WOLPE: Well, are you assuming that we have free will?<br /><br />HITCHENS: One who…<br /><br />WOLPE: Are you assuming that we have free will?<br /><br />HITCHENS: If you answer my question…<br /><br />WOLPE: Then give me another source.<br /><br />HITCHENS: If you answer my question with another question…<br /><br />WOLPE: Give me another source.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …I’ll still answer it…<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I will still answer it…<br /><br />WOLPE: Thank you.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …even though your question is an answer to mine—not an answer, a response to mine.<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: The view I take about free will is that of course we have free will, because we have no choice but to have it.<br /><br />WOLPE: No, that’s a quip, not an answer.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I was and still am, to some extent, a dialectical materialist and I also think there are some ironies in the universe as well as in history. But to say, “Of course we have free will, the boss says we’ve got it,” is to make a mockery of the whole concept and it’s also to invite the question what kind of tyranny is this that you want? You want an all-supervising, all-deciding person. I asked you first, what sources of information so you have about this person’s existence that I don’t have, that are denied to me? I’d like to know. And second, why do you want it? Why do you want to arrive at a terminus of unfreedom where there is a celestial authority upon whom all things depend and from which all things flow? Why do you want that and how on earth do you know that there’s any case to be made for its existence?<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Yes, please, that’s a good question.<br /><br />WOLPE: I don’t think it’s a terminus of unfreedom.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think you’re only free when you’ve declared against it, frankly. That’s the beginning of freedom is the emancipation...<br /><br />WOLPE: Is that the coda to the question?<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...from the tyranny of theocracy, yes.<br /><br />WOLPE: I actually think that the whole point that I was making was that a belief in a god who creates you is what gives you free will and that without it you have to fall into a determinism. And, by the way, you may think that science gives it to you, but every scientist I’ve asked on this question, including David Barash, who’s an evolutionary biologist says that it is—Steven Pinker had the same reaction—is that it is more or less a commonplace of modern science that determinism is the only world view that’s consistent with an understanding of the way science works. So, you may be able to find it in science, but I haven’t met a scientist yet who’s been able to account for it. Now, putting that aside...<br /><br />ASHBROOK: But not every scientist is a believer.<br /><br />WOLPE: No, of course not. I’m saying that…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Almost no scientist is.<br /><br />WOLPE: … those who don’t use determinism as their philosophical assumption. But let me answer his question, too, which is therefore, I assume that as a religious person you’re granted freedom. That’s the whole point, is you do make choices.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Once you’ve said “granted”… <br /><br />WOLPE: Better choices, better…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Once you’ve said “granted,” you’ve made my point.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: And he’s English, he knows about [indecipherable].<br /><br />WOLPE: Well, you’re granted—you’re granted…<br /><br />HITCHENS: “Thank you for making me free,” what’s that? <br /><br />WOLPE: No, you’re granted freedom—so you’re granted freedom by the evolutionary process, I’m granted freedom by a creator. Either way, what you—either way you have to be…<br /><br />HITCHENS: I’m not granted all sorts of freedom. I mean…<br /><br />WOLPE: Right.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Of course scientists are right to that—to this extent. There are—Einstein says, “The miraculous things about the laws of nature is they’re never suspended.” That’s what so amazing about them, is they’re immutable. Religion claims that, on occasions, the laws of nature are suspended in order to prove what they wouldn’t otherwise prove.<br /><br />WOLPE: It depends who you ask. Not Maimonides. It depends who you ask in religion.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Is there a fundamental contradiction in your mind, Rabbi, between Jewish teaching and evolution?<br /><br />WOLPE: No.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: None at all?<br /><br />WOLPE: Certainly not. Nope. None.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: But evolution, as we learn it, doesn’t require a deity.<br /><br />WOLPE: No. Well, it depends what you mean by “require a deity.” It’s just like saying that building this stage doesn’t require a deity. The question isn’t whether the discovery of the mechanism by which God made the world requires God, it just requires the discovery of the mechanism by which God made the world. But it also doesn’t outlaw God or make God impossible or make it, in fact, less plausible.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: What’s the difference to your mind between mystery and incomprehension?<br /><br />WOLPE: Incomprehension?<br /><br />ASHBROOK: In other words, will we solve…<br /><br />WOLPE: Incomprehension describes my reaction to the question.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Oh, great. America’s Rabbi thinks my questions incomprehensible.<br /><br />WOLPE: I’m not sure I understand, tell me again.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Well…<br /><br />WOLPE: In other words…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Science progressively made a lot of things comprehensible.<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes. Mystery means those things that by the very nature of the world are unfigureoutable no matter how bright we are, no matter how hard we work at it.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: How do you know that they’re unfigureoutable?<br /><br />WOLPE: Well, you’re asking…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: I prefer that over incomprehensible.<br /><br />WOLPE: You’re asking me to know in a way that I’m not willing to concede is the proper way to describe religious conviction. It’s like saying to me, “How do you know that love exists?” or “How do you know that another human being is beautiful?” or “How do you know that”—I don’t know—“that these lights are a pageant of gorgeous colors?” The answer is you don’t know it. Some things you have as the deepest conviction of your soul and there are things that make sense of the world in ways that nothing else makes sense of the world but if you ask me do I know that God exists the way I know that that glass is on the table then I say you’re putting in an empirical, scientific framework which is exactly the framework that religious people want to keep religion out of because [indecipherable].<br /><br />ASHBROOK: But I want to [indecipherable]—how do you know the mystery won’t be solved one day?<br /><br />WOLPE: Because it’s not a mystery of a question that’s solvable. It’s like saying, “How do you know the mystery won’t be solved that you have an ineradicable sense that the world is wondrous?” I don’t know how you would even think about solving such a mystery.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: If I could understand it and still find it wondrous, Christopher, what about you, if it’s not God…<br /><br />WOLPE: Oh, I…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: …is it all soluble?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well first…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: One day?<br /><br />HITCHENS: …you’re right that science has made many things more comprehensible to us and it’s explained things that religion used to take credit for. In other words, now we know there’s a germ theory of disease. Diseases are not curses or revenge from heaven. Same with earthquakes and so on. The stuff they used to teach us, and many of them still do is nonsense—evil nonsense as well as ignorant nonsense. But, it’s also taught us, just in my lifetime, an enormous amount more about how little we know. We’re much, much more ignorant…<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …than people who lived before Galileo. Because we have now an increasingly large idea...<br /><br />WOLPE: Of how ignorant...<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...of the fantastic expanse of the unknown. That’s precisely the moment at which to say that skepticism is what’s necessary, inquiry, debate, doubt. Where’s faith in this? Where’s the usefulness of faith there? There’s no use to it at all. Socrates, who, as far as I know, existed, but may well not have done, it doesn’t matter to me. No one will insult me if they say, “Socrates, your great hero, didn’t exist.” Try it on a Muslim, try it on a Christian that their prophets didn’t exist, or tell people that Moses is a myth. They start hurling themselves about making menacing noises very often. Socrates said you’re only educated when you’ve understood how ignorant you are. And you’re only going to even find that out by doubting everything all the time. There’s all the difference in the world between that outlook and that mentality…<br /><br />WOLPE: Now…<br /><br />HITCHENS: …and the mentality of faith. And second, on metaphysics, which you, I noticed, take refuge in several times already this evening like, “What is love,” “Is something poetic or is it prosaic?” Very good questions, but metaphysical ones. Those who say, “God exists and intervenes in the world,” in other words, those who say there is a religious god, the god of religion, are saying that redemption is unoffered to human beings, that salvation is unoffered to them, and that if they reject the offer they can be in really big trouble. Now don’t start talking on [indecipherable] like this or, if you don’t mind, to a debate partner like me as if religion was a private matter because everybody knows that if it was there wouldn’t be anything to argue about. It's precisely because it claims to be a total solution, a complete solution to all problems, available on pain of death, sometimes, in some forms, but available to you if you’ll only have enough faith. Well we just found out that faith is probably the most overrated of the virtues and the one most—least useful to use in the real dilemmas that we actually have to face.<br /><br />WOLPE: There are so many things to unpack in that statement that I’ll just pick on two or three. First, being interestingly that Socrates, whether he existed or not, according to Plato, at least, believed in the gods and even in an afterlife so he didn’t doubt everything, but…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Gods, maybe.<br /><br />WOLPE: Wait, no, wait, wait, wait, didn’t interrupt you. But, I want you to know, and you should know this in particular…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Couldn’t think of anything to say.<br /><br />WOLPE: I didn’t interrupt you twice.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sorry.<br /><br />WOLPE: But I want you to know…<br /><br />HITCHENS: You weren’t quick enough.<br /><br />WOLPE: It may be true that part of it was speed but I also think it's because civility is a very religious virtue. So the…<br /><br />HITCHENS: I could’ve said that.<br /><br />WOLPE: The Jewish tradition actually doesn’t tell you that everyone must do this in the world. Rather, it prescribes goodness and that’s what it is that religion is supposed to bring into the world. Now can you point to examples of religious wickedness? Of course you can. But that’s clearly what Judaism asks of people. The first obligation that you have is goodness and that’s why when you talk about religion as though it is inherently totalitarian, it tells you you must act this way it makes two mistakes. First of all, it doesn’t see religion as evolving as anything else does, when in fact the Judaism of thousands of years ago ought to be, must be, should be, is expected to be different than the Judaism of today.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Still has ten commandments.<br /><br />HITCHENS: None of which mention goodness.<br /><br />WOLPE: Alright, guys, guys, guys, you have to let me finish my statement, ok?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ok.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Please.<br /><br />WOLPE: Thank you.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You’re welcome.<br /><br />WOLPE: I feel a little bit between a sandwich here, but—and the second part of it is, if you say that faith does nothing for you, as Christopher repeats over and over again, it’s very hard to explain why it is that millions and millions of people all over the world and throughout history have felt that faith deepens their life, gives them meaning, increases their goodness, and why it is, for example, in America that people of faith give more to charity, vote more in elections, volunteer more, help more. Do you know what the largest aid organization is—aid and development organization is in the United States? It’s not CARE, it’s not Save the Children, it’s One World, which is a Christian organization out of Seattle, which not only gives millions and millions and millions of dollars across the world but sends people all over the world to the most beleaguered, helpless places and they do it because they believe they’re called to do it by God. It’s just not true that having faith makes no difference in this world. It makes a tremendous difference and the vast majority of that difference, not all of it, but the vast majority of that difference is for goodness.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: [To Hitchens] Let me put a question in if you'd be so good. The Rabbi feels in a sandwich and I don’t mean for you to feel in a sandwich. Let me put this to you.<br /><br />HITCHENS: [indecipherable]<br /><br />WOLPE: Oh, that’s ok.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Christopher, what about the solace of faith? Some of the most religious people I know ended up there…<br /><br />WOLPE: Oh this is a softball. I want a hard question.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: No, I mean I…<br /><br />WOLPE: I know what he’s going to say to this…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Well, maybe, but he’s been called…<br /><br />WOLPE: …you hard-minded, hard-hearted, non-needer of solace.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Yes. Worse, you’re a misanthrope because you’re not sympathetic to peoples’ need for religion.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I say in my book, available in fine bookstores everywhere, that as long as I don’t have to hear about it, I don’t mind what people believe. If they say, “Well, thanks to Joseph Smith and his gold plates I have real faith now and I've got a family and I have friends and I have a real system and so on,” and I say, fine, fine, just don’t come to my front door with it. Don’t ask for a tax break for it. Don’t ask my children to be taught it in the schools.<br /><br />WOLPE: Did you sign up tonight thinking you wouldn’t hear about it?<br /><br />HITCHENS: And I ask them a question—I ask the question in the book, people think they have a personal relationship with a creator and they’re the possessors of a wonderful secret and it must feel—I’ve never felt it, I presume it feels great. Why doesn’t it make them happy? They’re not happy. They can’t be happy until everyone else believes it too. They go out and proselytize, very often—and here's—I can’t let your last answer go—very often in the guise of charity. You notice how often religion, rather than ask the questions that I put like how do you know there’s a god, what evidence do you have for it? Which you say, “Well, lots of good people do good things because they’re religious.” Well let’s take the most recent impressing case. Richard Dawkins and I and a few others, in response to the Haiti earthquake, set up an emergency charity for people of non-belief to give to because so many charitable organization are, in fact, proselytizing groups. So, we raised about two million in a weekend and all that money goes straight—and, by the way—thank you. If you go to Richard’s website you can find out more about how to donate to this because it’s permanent, it’s going to stay into being. All that money went straight to Doctors Without Borders, of course, and the International Red Cross which, though it has a cross isn’t a religious organization. Both of these organizations are already in Haiti, they’re proven. None of the money goes to support any missionary activity. None. And the Scientologists and all the others who turned up in Haiti, and the other that turned up in Haiti to kidnap babies to convert them to their faith and there are Catholics who turned up and said, standing in the ruins of their own cathedral with a quarter-of-a-million Haitians buried under the rubble, “God spoke here today and you should listen to his message.” Don’t tell me that’s good. Don’t tell me that’s good. That’s wicked. It’s proselytizing. It’s proselytizing with the helpless, using them as objects of charity and conversion. It’s lying to people. <br /><br />ASHBROOK: But there’s also a lot of [indecipherable]…<br /><br />HITCHENS: It’s wrong to lie.<br /><br />WOLPE: But…<br /><br />HITCHENS: It’s wrong to lie to people. And it’s giving them false hopes and false explanations for their plight. Now, we’re not guilty of any of that. And now I’ll ask you another question: where in the Decalogue does the word “goodness” appear? Where? It’s a good swathe of Exodus for you. Where in Exodus does the word “goodness” appear? Where, in this commandment-rich territory does the word “goodness” or the enjoinment to be good occur? [To Wolpe] This should be a softball for you.<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok. First of all, it tells you what you ought not to do. It says love your neighbor as yourself. In the book of Leviticus—I mean, I’m allowed to move to Leviticus from Exodus, right?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes. Yes, that’s fair.<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes, ok. Thank you, I appreciate that. It says you should pursue justice. Justice you shall pursue. It says over and over and over again—and also, by the way, I, you know, no tradition, at least certainly not the Jewish tradition and I’m not aware of any other tradition, is only the Bible. Judaism is a long exegetical tradition and it says several times in the Talmud that the one purpose of the mitzvot is <i>letzharef et habriyot</i>, which means "to refine human character." It’s clear that Judaism is directed around goodness. It’s repeated over and over again. The whole system and framework of mitzvot is to get people to treat each other decently and if you say, which you do, that people use authority (governmental authority, religious authority, military authority, poltical authority) to do bad things, my answer is of course they do. Any time you set up a structure of authority, people will do bad things—churches, other things.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That isn’t what I said.<br /><br />WOLPE: But that—yes, of course it is. So what you say is—what you heard is: when religion does good things it doesn’t count because sometimes they want people to believe what they believe, when it does bad things it’s because of religion. When you make everything good that religion does invalid and everything bad that religion does representative that’s called arguing in bad faith which is ironic for someone who has none.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: It seems a fair question.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, it’s not—I mean, as I know you know, that isn’t at all what I said. I don’t say bad things are done in the name of religion or by authorities, I say it’s religion itself that is the problem. I go out of my way to make clear that I don’t take refuge in any other position. Now, in Leviticus and in Exodus if you're a neighbor, you better not—and you—this person, you’re supposed to love him—this person had better not be an Amalekite, a Midianite, a Moabite, better not be a…<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Better not be a witch…<br /><br />WOLPE: Yep.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …the desctruction of whom is enjoined.<br /><br />WOLPE: Right.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Better not be a homosexual, the stoning of whom is enjoined. Better not be a slave, the terms of enslavement of which are all laid out. Now, these are primitive, tribal, agricultural—(most of the commandments, by the way in the Decalogue, are addressed to the property-owning classes. "Here’s what you can’t do with your servants." "Here your servants must also obey this commandment." Why are the commandments addressed only to people who have staff? Why are the women—rather a large objection I would have thought—why are women counted as part of the animal and chattel that’s disposable by these holders of property?) It’s—couldn’t it be any more obvious that this is a man-made phenomenon and at a time when people were not at their best and full of fear and ignorance and greed and covetousness of other people’s property?<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Can we be faithful and not be trapped by history, not all of its elements are attractive?<br /><br />WOLPE: Well, it’s not only that but as Christopher knows very well I assume that the Bible was put together by human beings and that the Jewish tradition is a long, evolving tradition as are other traditions in which the dross of history is gradually refined in the same way that you would not expect someone 3,000 years ago to be able to understand the sort of arguments that you’re making tonight. People change, there’s an evolutionary process also, not only to biology, but to sociology, to ideology, all of those things and that’s why the question is very much does religion make people better and can these systems refine themselves and can they get rid of the stuff that’s bad in religion? I think that to assume that you can cherry-pick the things and the statements in religion that are negative and those things are necessarily enduring contradicts the history of every tradition I know.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well “cherry-picking” is an odd word to use for something that’s thrust upon you. I’ve got no choice but to study the Decalogue.<br /><br />WOLPE: No, actually, it’s not…<br /><br />HITCHENS: I point out it says it suggests to property owners and enjoins them to keep women as property…<br /><br />WOLPE: So are you…<br /><br />HITCHENS: …and they say, “Oh, you’re cherry-picking, you’re nitpicking.” I’m not.<br /><br />WOLPE: So are you in favor of theft, murder, and adultery? Do you think those are good things?<br /><br />HITCHENS: There’s now—here’s exactly the nub of my question:<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: If what you say is true…<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …not that I—and I’ve never said, I wouldn’t—I couldn’t be interpreted as having said no religious person can do a good thing.<br /><br />WOLPE: No, I didn’t say that. Right.<br /><br />HITCHENS: If what you say is true, this should be true and you should find it easy to point it out:<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: There must be something, not that they can do or do but that I cannot do that’s a good thing. Either a moral statement made or a moral or ethical statement performed that a person of faith could perform that I cannot. <br /><br />WOLPE: That...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You must be able to identify that…<br /><br />WOLPE: No actually…<br /><br />HITCHENS: …if your point is to have any force at all.<br /><br />WOLPE: How could you—how, how can one human being do something that another human being can’t do physically? Physically, of course, you could do anything that I could do but I can say lots of things you don’t do.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I said a moral or ethical.<br /><br />WOLPE: I can say lots of things you don’t do, not that you can’t do. You probably don’t do, as I do, bless your child on a Friday night. You probably don’t create great works of art based on religion. You probably don’t go half way across the world feeling that you’re motivated and called by a god who tells you to help other human beings. I mean, all those things are things that religion motivates people to do, not that you can’t do them, but that people generally don’t do them if they’re not motivated by religion.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh come on, get real. I mean, pronouncing an incantation…<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Isn’t a moral action.<br /><br />WOLPE: Of course it is.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it isn’t.<br /><br />WOLPE: It’s only not a moral action if you don’t feel the enormous...<br /><br />HICHENS: It can subjectively be [indecipherable]—it's not a moral...<br /><br />WOLPE: If you don’t—it's only not a moral—hey, hey…<br /><br />HITCHENS: And anyway, it is something I could do.<br /><br />WOLPE: It's not—of course you can and I encourage you to do it. It’s only not a moral action...<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Maybe one day.<br /><br />WOLPE: ...if you don’t feel the unique expression of love when it takes place in an atmosphere of sanctity that is not the same as saying to a child, “I love you.” I have to tell you, some of you knew my father who passed away in May who was a rabbi. When I think of the most powerful and intimate moments that I had with my father it was when he put his hands on my head and blessed me on a Friday night. Now, he would not have done that were he not religious and it wasn’t the same as when he kissed me goodnight and said, “I love you,” because there is an element in which religious people dwell, it’s called a world of sanctity that you can’t invoke and can’t dwell in if you don’t believe that that realm exists.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Christopher…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Do you—well, wait. [To Wolpe] First, I’m sorry for your loss…<br /><br />WOLPE: Oh, thank you.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …as the Irish say, sorry for your trouble. Second, I’m still going to have to insist, I don’t think anyone in the audience can consider that’s an answer to my challenge.<br /><br />WOLPE: Of course it is.<br /><br />HITCHENS: One has to say a moral or ethical statement or action that an unbeliever could not perform…<br /><br />WOLPE: But “could not” means that you’re physically incapable of it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No.<br /><br />WOLPE: And I'm willing to concede...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, if it’s goodness it would be morally capable…<br /><br />WOLPE: ...right here you can do everything I can do.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, let’s not go that far.<br /><br />WOLPE: Of course you can. Of course you can.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well then, ok, alright.<br /><br />WOLPE: You have to say “wouldn’t do,” you can’t say “can’t do.”<br /><br />HITCHENS: Since you won’t answer it I’ll just leave the question to the audience.<br /><br />WOLPE: I did.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: If anyone can come up to me and say, “Here’s a moral thing you couldn’t do”—not don’t do but could not do—“that only a religious person could do,” I’d be very interested to hear of it. No one’s been able to come up with any point.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Let me ask a second…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Second, there’s a brief corollary: think of a wicked thing done or an evil thing said that is done precisely because of faith. You’ve already thought of one.<br /><br />WOLPE: But any that someone who doesn't have faith couldn't do? Wait, tell me something that someone who doesn't have faith could not do.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I didn’t say that.<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok. But that’s exactly the point.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No it’s not.<br /><br />WOLPE: A human being can do certain things whether they’re believers or not. They have the physical ability. Believing something doesn’t give you a new physical ability.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It still doesn’t—so to you it’s not a problem that the suicide murder community, the genital mutilation community, these are all faith-based communities?<br /><br />WOLPE: Do you want me to answer that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: And while we’re on the subject of charity, who doesn’t hear Hamas saying, “The reason we’re loved by our people is because we provide social services. We help the needy. We’re the only people who come out and do that.” Which is, by the way, I’m horrified to have to say, is true. But do you excuse them for that because they are charitable?<br /><br />WOLPE: Of course not.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Do you not think that they bless they’re children a whole lot?<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes, and I think that’s a beautiful thing that they do.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I bet you can—I’ve heard them do it.<br /><br />WOLPE: Right. I don’t think there’s…<br /><br />HITCHENS: You try being a Muslim child and not be blessed the entire time. That’s part of the authority that they claim. They claim to own these people.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: But Christopher, I want to ask…<br /><br />HITCHENS: This is all faith-based.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Who steps up to—you don’t like any of the language but life has a lot of despair. People fall into despair. Who steps up to save them? I don’t mean in Christian terms necessarily at all, but who steps up to reach out to those people? And for society as a whole, if you don’t have the teaching of religion, what will offer a kind of moral construct? I don’t see it in schools. I don’t—union halls are gone. Who’s going to give people a structure of meaning?<br /><br />WOLPE: I live in such a world, it’s called Hollywood.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Hollywood, exactly. I mean, what—it may have blemishes, it may be deeply flawed, it may be fatally flawed you would say, but I mean, what’s the substitute? What’s the structure for moral teaching and save the despairing?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think despair is quite a good starting point myself. I mean I think it’s very good to know that we’re born into a losing struggle. I think that the stoicism that comes from that and the reflection that comes from that is very useful. I’m not very impressed by people who say, “Well, I wish it wasn’t true so I’ll try and act as if it isn’t.” It is true. Everything is governed by entropy and decline and annihilation and disaster and you’re born into a losing struggle and because you’re a mammal primate, a primate mammal, you know you are and you know you’re going to die and there’ll be a lot of struggle and pain along the way. I don’t want a world without anxiety and grief and pain and struggle. I can’t get it.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: No one’s saying you can’t have that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But those who offer it to me, I spurn the gift. I don’t want what you want. I don’t want the feeling of an eternal love and peace. Love and peace, very, very overrated in my view. One reason—one of the many reasons—I should despise all religions equally, and I do in a way—<br /><br />WOLPE: [To Ashbrook] I want to say something.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...but one way in which I prefer Judaism to its rivals is that the emphasis is more on justice than on love. <br /><br />WOLPE: I want to go [indecipherable]. [To Hitchens] Why is that not misanthropic of you, that attitude?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Misanthropic? It doesn’t mean I have to hate people.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Well, it’s tough [indecipherable]. It’s hard [indecipherable].<br /><br />HITCHENS: It means I respect them enough not to offer them false consolation.<br /><br />WOLPE: I do think it’s important…<br /><br />HITCHENS: The realm of illusion will not help you to cure this condition.<br /><br />WOLPE: I do think it’s important to say that part of this—part of this is based in temperament, part of it is based in life experience. I spend a lot of my time at the bedside of people who are dying, with parents who lost children, with husbands who lost wives, and wives who lost husbands. The sense of community that is created by religion, the sense that life is meaningful even if it’s short, all of that, it’s not trivial, it’s not cheap consolation, it’s not illusion, it goes to the depths of questions that human beings ask themselves and I know that you can make a clever remark about the cheap selling of religious consolation but, you know what, the remark is melted by the heat of human anguish when you’re standing by the grave of a child who died and the mother is saying a prayer and that brings her some measure of comfort because she really does believe that this world, in some sense, is meaningful and is not nihilistic and is not empty and is not foolish and, although I can’t prove to you in an empirical sense that in fact the world is meaningful, at that moment, even as I question it, it seems to me the deepest instinct of my soul.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Gosh. Well, if you’ll pardon me, I won’t share any of my griefs with you. But I’ve never had one or had any—know anyone who’s had the faintest consolation from religion and indeed being told, as the Christians tell them, that they’re off to a better place and so on, I think is positively wicked thing to do. I think lying to the dying for a living—what self-respecting person can do that? And once you've faced...<br /><br />WOLPE: And you know it’s a lie because—I just—just tell me how you know it’s a lie since you assert it again and again.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because the person saying it cannot possibly know it to be true.<br /><br />WOLPE: And therefore it’s a lie?<br /><br />HITCHENS: They don’t have access to information that was denied to me.<br /><br />WOLPE: Even if they believe it it’s a lie?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, yes, it’s a lie.<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: But how do we create, for those who aren’t able or don’t desire to walk around in despair or to walk around in irony, in a world that brings [indecipherable]…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Try it, try it.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Try it, fine. But I think it’s manifestly clear lots of people don’t choose that. So, what does atheism offer?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it offers the chance of living without illusion, which I think—it says philosophy and literature will do a great deal more for you. They're much more—there’s a lot more morality in them. There’s a lot more ethical discussion in Dostoyevsky, say, than in any of the holy books. Or George Eliot…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: But who will present them in our society—real society, who will present them in a way…<br /><br />WOLPE: There is. There is.<br /><br />HITCHENS: For now I’m presenting. For now I’m presenting. I can’t do…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: You’re going to be very busy.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I can only appear in my own person here. I'd even say, to some extent, this works for me. Irony, I think, is tremendously useful, as is philosophy, especially the philosophy of Spinoza, especially in times of anguish. And the realization that there’s no false consolation can actually cheer you up. Once you face the fact that you’re born into a losing struggle things immediately appear a great deal more manageable in some ways. And of the remarks against this made, not one of these remarks couldn’t have been made by a devout member of the Muslim brotherhood. And what I want to ask him is this: if anything of what he says is true, is he really saying that he would prefer me not to be myself, not to be an unbeliever and someone who believes in irony and the unillusioned world, but I’d be morally better off if I was a Wahabi Muslim, for example, or a Roman Catholic.<br /><br />WOLPE: Is me asking—is “he” me? Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I mean, according to you, I would be a better person if I was a person of faith.<br /><br />WOLPE: No, no, no, don’t answer the question. You asked me the question...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Alright.<br /><br />WOLPE: ...you’re not allowed to answer it for me.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You imply. I want to know if you really mean that.<br /><br />WOLPE: Actually, I never said that you were automatically better off if you believe than if you didn’t believe. I think Christopher is very useful in the world because he forces religious people—I mean, he’s useful for many, many reasons, obviously, to the world but he also forces religious people to think seriously about their faith and and as I understand the god that I believe in and the god that Judaism presents, the first and primary demand is not belief, the first and primary demand is goodness. That’s exactly what characterizes Judaism and therefore if you say to me, “I’m a good person but I don’t believe. Is it better that I would be a miserable person who believed?” All I have to do is look at the sources and say, "Obviously not." Obviously it’s better for you to be who you are and to promote goodness in the world. That’s exactly—[HEBREW] is what the Jewish tradition teaches (to make the world better under the sovereignty of God) But notice the first clause in that is to make the world better. So if you do that, that’s the primary demand of any faith I think is worth its salt.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: May we turn, on that point, to what Barry [indecipherable] as an acute concern, that is, violence. And the question of whether violence is integral to religion or exceptional and an offense to religion, or both, or all three? [To Wolpe] Violence and religion.<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok, so, I’m going to try to abbreviate this. There are two things to remember. First of all, most religious conflicts are not about religion. What you find is religions will fight when there’s land, when there’s power, when there’s resources, where there’s water, when there’s money. It’s very rare for a religious group—not inconceivable—very rare for a religious group to say, “Hey guess what? There’s someone half way across the world who believes differently, let’s go get them, alright? It’s the people who live next door to us who are other than us. We should get them and by the way, along the way we’re going to take their land and we’re going to take their riches and we’re going to take this." And that’s because—and if you look in the <i>Encyclopedia of War</i>, which is probably not something that you peruse in your leisure hours, but if you do, you will see that it identified 1763 wars since the beginning of time. 123 of them are identified as religious wars. When you take religion out of a society, you don’t get a more peaceful society. We look at the twentieth century, it was a like a laboratory for that: Stalinism, Maoism, Nazism, Cambodia, North Korea versus South Korea, on and on and on and on. The fact is the record of extracting religion is very poor. And the final point is this, which is: if you ask why religious people fight, the answer is clear: It’s because they’re people. I have a colleague, not a rabbi, but a psychologist in Los Angeles who studies bullying. Do you know at what age bullying is most prominent? Think to yourself what age and then I’ll tell you the answer. By far, the answer is preschool. Because we’re not born all sweetness and light. It’s why it’s so much hard work to get a kid to be good, alright? Parents don’t have to say to their child, “Why don’t you share a little bit less, you know? Because you’re—really—you're too selfless. You’re too kind.” Instead it’s very hard work to get people to do well. What religions are known for is their attempts to make something straight of the crooked nature of human beings and they fail again and again and again exactly as you would expect if you know human nature. But that doesn’t mean that the attempt to do it makes people worse. Quite the opposite, at least according to the evidence of history.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, violence—there’s no mystery about violence. Violence arises because we are primates, imperfectly evolved. Our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenaline glands are too big. There are various other deformities of this kind, sexual organs designed by committee, all the rest of it. And we’re greedy…<br /><br />WOLPE: We’re back to politics, I guess.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …and fearful and—but—and covetous of other people’s property. And also, surprisingly, it’s probably our biggest defect given that the reason we’re so successful is there’s almost no genetic difference between us. If we were dogs we’d all be the same breed, fantastically little variation. But we’re incredibly prone to tribalism and ethnic and racial—what Freud calls the narcissism of small differences. So of course if a tribe, let’s say, that's calling itself the children of Israel, for the sake of argument, decides they should kill all the other tribes that get in its way, take their women as slaves, butcher their men, take their land, take their cattle and so battle this way across to Caanan and take every elses land and burn down their—that’s going to happen whether there’s a god or not or whether there’s religion or not but it'll happen very much more intensely if they believe they have the mandate from heaven to do so. It’s a terrific force multiplier. I think there would have been a quarrel between the Hutu and the Tutsi of Rwanda, say, once Belgian colonialism had established that there were these two different character groups (types, tribes)—but a terrific force multiplier that the Catholic church was as strong as it was in Rwanda, the most Christian country in Africa, made it infinitely worse. What makes the Isreal-Palestine two-state solution ungettable? Because there’s a chunk of people on both sides who say they have God in their corner and God gave only their group the land and they can negate the votes of everybody else including the whole of the international community, by the way, just because of their faith. Northern Ireland is the same. There wouldn't have been a Republican nationalist dispute. It’s infinitely worse because of religion. So I think that the possible—the corollary I’d like to hope would be that the less religion there was the less violence there would be but I can’t in good Darwinian conscience say that. But I think the more that people refuse orders that were divine, as for example, to take the preposterous allegation that the Rabbi makes that the wars of the twentieth century were secular wars: the belt buckle worn by every soldier in the Nazi army that says, “Gott mit uns” (God on our side) I don’t think that was a help, do you? Things were bad enough as they were. On page 70, I think it is, of <i>Mein Kampf</i> Hitler says that "in taking on the filthy virus of Judaism I know I’m doing the work of the Lord and I’m called, I’m summoned by the Lord to do this work," a book—one of the very few books that the Vatican didn't ban in that period, by the way. And I don’t think that was a help, either. So I’d say, on the whole, we’d be better off without the belief either in a supreme dictator, because that leads to violence, or the idea that God takes sides in our pathetic, mammalian disputes. Thank you.<br /><br />WOLPE: I want to just add as a coda to this: when you say that we shouldn’t take orders, I just want to remind you of a long history, for example, the abolition of slavery was almost entirely the work of people who believed they were taking orders from something higher than societal orders. Wilberforce in England, here, you know Beecher and John Brown and so on, they believed they were doing God’s work...<br /><br />HITCHENS: So did the slave owners.<br /><br />WOLPE: ...by abolishing slavery and it’s interesting that the opposition to slavery was a Christian movement but the idea is it’s not an issue of who you take orders from, it’s an issue of the orders you take. That’s the issue and it comes down, in part, to the kind of religion you practice, not whether you practice religion.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Comrades, I just—I’m sorry…<br /><br />WOLPE: Comrades? What kind of orders you take, when it comes down to it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Brothers and sisters.<br /><br />WOLPE: That’s better.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Comrades, friends: I suppose it is somewhat to the credit of some Christians that in the waning decades of thousands of years of slavery that were biblically mandated, some of them belated joined things like the American Anti-Slavery Society, stars of which were Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, non-believers, right? Whereas to the last day of the confederacy, the flag of the confederacy said “Deo vindice” (God on our side) and every justification for that slavery came from the Bible where indeed it’s not hard to find it.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: We’re going to take questions from the audience…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Not hard to find it at all.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: …in about one minute. There are microphones. If you have questions make your way and we will take them very shortly. As we begin to do that, may I ask, Christopher Hitchens, you’ve debated Rabbi David Wolpe on this subject, you’ve debated the Reverend Al Sharpton.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: What’s the difference between these debates?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well the Reverend Al Sharpton is another case of the damage done to society by religion because once it was agreed by the rest of America that black people are best led by preachers and once it was agreed to write out of the Civil Rights record the heroic black secularists like Bayard Rustin and the great black union leader Philip Randolph (who actually organized, with the help of the United Automobile Workers, the march on Washington), once all that had been forgotten and we decide, “Yeah, black people, they really love their preachers,” then once Dr. King is gone then it’s one succession of junk demagogues after another, all of them given the mantle because they’re in holy orders. There’s no fraudulance you can’t get away with in this country if you can get the word reverend put in front of your name.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Questions from the audience. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Sharpton’s a very conspicuous example of that.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: We’ll begin right here. Madame, your question.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Sir.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Sir. I can’t see, I'm sorry, the light—Hedges, Hitchens, madame, sir.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Mr. Hedges.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: I’m going to come up there and beat you up, man.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Later.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Ok. It seems to me that, you know, most religions deal with operational aspects of life such as human capital development, that is the accumulation of literacy and technology, economic development, mental and physical well-being, and public service, which deals with charity and those kinds of things.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: These are the work of religion, you’re saying?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Yes, that they profess this, yes. And that all faiths profess these things and since they do, it seems to me that it’s not so much their profession that causes the negative externalities between people who profess these things but it's the labels that they take hold such as—I think Mr. Hitchens alluded to the fact that people say things about their faith that they actually don't practice or believe and so I’m saying that should we just abandon these labels and stop calling ourselves Jews, Christians or Muslisms or whatever and deal with the operational facts of life which deal with, again, human capital, you know, literacy, economic development, mental and physical well-being, and public service and charity, helping others without the labels?<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Rabbi?<br /><br />WOLPE: If I understand your question correctly, I would say this: the largest organized groups of charities in the world over and over and over again all around the world organize themselves around religious groups. I don’t think that that’s a mistake and I don’t think that that’s a coincidence so that in fact if you disband the idea that we’re doing this as a religious group you will, in one stroke, undo a great deal of the good that happens in the world. So no, I think that communities which, by the way, without religions I don’t know where you get communities, where young and old sit together in common purpose. It’s very rare, especially in our atomized society, if you disband that I think you get trouble.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Christopher, without community, without the labels?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Implied in what David says is that a person exists who would say, “Now that I don’t believe in God I’ll stop giving money to charity. I don’t care any more.” I don’t know—I don't think there is such a person and if that were so it would be a very strange religion that they’d been professing, wouldn't it?<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Who will organize good works in the absence of religion?<br /><br />WOLPE: Why is it—not only that but why is it that in survey after survey religious people do give more...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'll tell you.<br /><br />WOLPE: ...and religious people watch less television and have—use drugs less and use alcohol less. It has social utility.<br /><br />HITCHENS: This is what religion is down to. It’s very impressive to me.<br /><br />WOLPE: Ok, good.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It’s very often the first thing, when debating with Catholics, they always change the subject to charity right away. With Jews it’s usually a little later.<br /><br />WOLPE: You just said that they…<br /><br />HITCHENS: And with Muslims it’s…<br /><br />WOLPE: It’s at the very end.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …it’s all the time because what else can they—they don’t want to defend their faith…<br /><br />WOLPE: But you just said the opposite. You just said that if you didn’t believe you wouldn't do it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: They don’t want to defend their faith, they don’t want to say—they feel uneasy talking about redemption, salvation, all these kinds of things, but look at the good work we’ve—if you talked to the Mormons they’ll say, “You may not think much of Joseph Smith,” and I say you got that right, “but, boy you should see our missionaries in Peru.”<br /><br />ASHBROOK: The government will do the work if religion does not?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Excuse me what has this got to do with the existence of God or the validity of religious claims? It has nothing to do with it. It’s always introduced as a time-wasting tactic. Nothing to do with it.<br /><br />WOLPE: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, don’t applaud that. But, all of you who applauded I just want to ask you this: if Christopher says to me, “God doesn’t exist,” and I say, “But we do good things,” he’s got a point. But his previous comment was people who don’t believe in religion do good things. In response I say—in response to the question people who believe in religion do good things to a greater extent and then he says, ‘Well why aren’t you talking about whether God exists?” You made an argument against the social utility of religion, I then made an argument for the social utility of religion and you turned theological on me.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Excuse me, I have not conceded that it is to a greater extent. Let me give you an example: with the great Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, whose wonderful work on the primary producers of the third world you ought to be familiar, the great—one of the great photographers, he’s the ambassador as the UNICEF cause of the United Nations Children’s Fund for the eradication of polio. I went with him all over Bengal. We got it down to the point where except for a few bits of Afghanistan and El Salvador, polio was almost gone from the world, it could go with small pox. Not a small thing, done by UNICEF, a secular organization and we nearly got—a date was announced where we were pretty sure it would be gone and it spread back because largely Muslim groups in Nigeria and also in parts of Bengal and Afghanistan told people, “Don’t go get your children inoculated. It’s a plot by scientists and Jews and others to sterilize Mulisms.” And that, plus the Hajj, plus the wonderful devotional habit of going to Mecca all the time and taking all your own diseases with you has meant that polio is back all the way across Africa now. So I’m not going to have it said that in order to do good you’ve got to be more religious than someone who…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: It’s going to be complicated but I want to get another question if I may, sir.<br /><br />HITCHENS: All the practical evidence is the other way and it's nothing to do with the claims of faith. Nothing.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Sir.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Thank you, thank you. First, comment to Mr. Hitchens: thank you for a very well-argued book.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh…<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: You and I are in violent agreement.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Appreciate it.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Second, it seems to me—not to talk about religion and faith for the moment but the question as to whether God exists, let’s not duck that one. It seems to me that to discuss that subject, one needs to have some scientific knowledge. [Video edit] My question is very simply to Rabbi Wolpe—and please take a second to think about it—my question is—and I’ve asked this of priests, reverends, and rabbis many times…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: We’re ready.<br /><br />HITCHENS: We’re braced.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: My question is: if no one ever explained God to you, not in writing, not aurally, would you have figured it out? Thank you.<br /><br />WOLPE: So first of all, I think that it’s important to understand that the idea that there’s an inbuilt opposition between scientific knowledge and belief is contradicted by some very prominent scientists, including Francis Collins, who’s the head of the Human Genome Project who wrote a book in favor of God, Owen Gingerich, who’s an astrophysicist at Harvard who wrote a book talking about his belief in God. I always find it interesting that people assume that the expertise that they have is necessary in order to make the assertion that someone else makes and if they don’t have it then they can’t speak about it. I grew up in a home where one of my brothers is a PhD in bioethics and the other one is a PhD in developmental biology. They talk science all the time. I think for a lay person I have a reasonably good grasp of some sciences and I would say absolutely I can make the assertion that God exists precisely because the criteria that is used for a scientific assertion is not used for a religious assertion. Nobody asks a—in the same way that you make philosophical statements that are not subject to scientific criteria. If you ask yourself what does the world look like to something that’s not human, to a bat, to an ant, the answer is we can’t possibly know that because we can’t unknow what we know and we can’t look at the world through different eyes. So if you ask me would I have come to this belief if it wasn’t explained to me, my only evidence to answer that is yes, human beings did and either it was explained to them by God, which is what I assume, or you would come to it naturally. So yeah, I think that I would come to it naturally but can I prove that to you? No. It’s precisely one of the many examples of unprovable questions that we nonetheless we can feel deeply about.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER X: My point though is that early on…<br /><br />WOLPE: Is this a debate or is this a conversation?<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Let me put it to Christopher, do you assume that everything one day will be solved scientifically? Does it matter to you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, all that science is going to do is keep on teaching us how little we know and multiplying the distance between our own attainments and our desire to master these matters. Many of these questions will remain undecidable which is the way I like them. Religion and science can coexist in the same person, that’s true and I know Francis Collins. He writes brilliantly on the genome but if you’ve read C. S. Lewis you don’t need to read him on religion, it’s unbelievably naïve. Sir Isaac Newton was an alchemist, a very strong if rather superstitious Christian, thought the Pope was the antichrist (might have been on to something there), but a very weird—full of very weird beliefs and thought if you knew the measurements of the old temple you’d know more than if you understood gravity. Alfred Russel Wallace, who did most of Darwin’s work for him, was a spiritualist who would go to table rapping sessions listening to burblings from the beyond. Joseph Priestley was a Unitarian and believed in the phlogiston theory.<br /><br />WOLPE: Shouldn’t that be a [indecipherable]?<br /><br />HITCHENS: But it’s really only until—I would say it’s only until Albert Einstein—not until I mean—Albert Einstein, I mean, that you get a scientist who’s also essentially a philosopher of pure mind. That’s the great breakthrough and now you can have private beliefs and be a scientific person but no one says my science helps to vindicate my religion, no one says that anymore. That’s not doable.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: I want to get to more questions please.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Yes, I have a question for both of you regarding the existence of universal morality. My question for Mr. Hitchens, is there one and if so where does it come from? And my question for the rabbi is if there is one and it's, for example, in the 613 mitzvot how do you personally pick and choose which ones to follow because I noticed, you know, you’re not wearing tzitzit and so many other prescriptions so if it's universally…<br /><br />WOLPE: I might be. It might be under my shirt.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Well, there are—I won’t go there. But, generally speaking can you be a good Jew and not follow the 613 if that is the prescription for universal morality?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, the most commonly taken universal absolute moral statement is what’s sometimes called the Golden Rule which, well, Rabbi Hillel says, “Don’t do to another person what would be repulsive to you.” Others say, “Do as you would be done by,” just putting it another way. It’s in the <i>Analects</i> of Confucius, it’s—very few societies don’t have it, so I think that’s what we’d have to take as the nearest to an absolute. It’s obviously subject to various relativities, alas. For one thing, it’s only really as good as the person saying it. Should I not do to Charles Manson what I don’t want him to do to me? Well, if you see what I mean. I mean, should we say, “Don’t lets do to Charles Manson what we wouldn’t want done to ourselves”? Obviously not. It’s just like the contradiction between the Old and the New Testaments. The Old Testament says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth which would lead to a very eyeless and toothless world. And then the Nazarene says you can’t condemn anyone unless you can cast the first stone. (Actually that bit was knitted into the Bible quite late and it was most certainly a fabrication. But it’s believed in by many Christians who, you know, as you know will believe practically anything, but...) If you can’t condemn anyone without being yourself without sin then we can’t even arrest Charles Manson unless we were sinless ourselves. So these moral absolutes are actually more full of moral relativism than you might think and they certainly—the reason people want there to be absolutes is this: they want there to be an absolute authority who can give them to you because wouldn’t that save you from all the trouble of thinking out ethics for yourself, which is where I started. Why not take that chance? More enjoyable, less subject to appalling commandments to stone witches and murder homosexuals…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: And all the rest. Rabbi, universal morality? And if there is, which…<br /><br />WOLPE: The—I’m not sure that Christopher said whether he believes in a universal morality, but yes, someone who believes in God assumes that there is a universal morality but also assumes that it’s very hard—and it’s not that the 613 mitzvot instantiate universal morality and moral reasoning, as far as I know, certainly in other traditions, but obviously in Judaism, is an essential part of the Jewish tradition. It’s not that you get out of thinking by being part of the Jewish tradition. In fact, questioning, reasoning, wondering, thinking, objecting, is an essential part of Judaism and anyone who studies Talmud knows that it’s filled with objections and questions but the assumption is that there actually is a right and a wrong in any given case. If all human beings are evolved primates, there’s not a right and a wrong, there’s a better and a worse, there’s a more powerful and less powerful. Nietzsche was exactly right: if God is dead then power is all that matters because ultimately there isn’t a right and a wrong, there’s something that promotes your interest and something that negates your interest but I don’t believe that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Excuse me, do you or do you not believe that human beings are evolved primates.<br /><br />WOLPE: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But you say [indecipherable]…<br /><br />WOLPE: But I also believe—I said if all they are is evolved primates as opposed to evolved primates who have a spark of the eternal in them, which I believe we do.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Question.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Two questions for Mr. Hitchens. The first one is I was taught by a physics professor that if you go back to the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe, in the first one-to-the-sixty-first to the first second the entire universe is in a tiny amount of space and at that size space and time can cross. And his point was that the whole universe came into existence out of a hiccup in the space-time warp and therefore it’s just kind of a big accident that we were here. And so my question is the same one that I posed to him that day: why is there a space-time warp? Which leads me to the second question which is wouldn’t it make more sense that there would be nothing? There is—should be no universe, there should be no space-time warp, there should be none of us and unless we’re hooked into The Matrix right now we seem to be here and so…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Should we take that as an argument for God, is that what your saying?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: For something. There’s a great mystery at the core of the universe. Then why are we here is the second question to argue those in.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Ok, thank you very much.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well again, I’d commend to you someone who’s much more expert on this subject, I started by mentioning Lawrence Krauss’ lecture on a whole universe from nothing but where’s the grandeur, where’ the divinity in the hiccup? And who produces the hiccupper? All you get from this is an infinite regression. Who creates this creator? Who—it gets you nowhere. And again, if you do make the assumption which I can’t dispute or certainly cannot refute that there is a first cause or an uncaused cause, it still doesn’t mean that there’s a god who takes sides, answers prayers, enjoins moral [indecipherable]…<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: I didn’t ask about that, no.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, but I mean—so I’m afraid you only—you compel me to somewhat to repeat myself.<br /><br />WOLPE: Can I ask a quick question about what you just said?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />WOLPE: If it’s an assumption that you can’t refute, which I understand—I think everybody here would say you can’t prove that there’s not a god, that doesn’t mean that there is one—but if it’s an assumption that you can’t refute, why is it that when someone says, “I believe that it is true,” do you say that they are lying?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I didn’t say that they’re lying.<br /><br />WOLPE: You said to me when someone stands—when you lie…<br /><br />HITCHENS: I say someone who goes to tell a child that if they don’t behave well they’ll go to hell is lying.<br /><br />WOLPE: That’s wasn’t the example that we used.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Someone who goes to the deathbed of a dying person…<br /><br />WOLPE: …and says that I believe that there’s another world other than this one…<br /><br />HITCHENS: …and says, “You’re going to a better place,” is, I think, a charlatan, a neauseating charlatan.<br /><br />WOLPE: I’ll let it…<br /><br />[Video edit]<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: ...and the question is whether religious people at the highest level have a better understanding of themselves than people who claim to be atheists and in particular we can ask the question is Mr. Hitchens himself really as great an atheist as he claims?<br /><br />WOLPE: He’s pretty good. Yeah, he’s pretty good.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Mr. Hitchens are you a closet believer?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, a point of agreement between the rabbi and myself is that the human species—mammalian, primate, so on, that it undoubtedly is, and made out of the dust of exploded suns—does have a need for, I would say, the transcendent, would be one word, the numinous, even the ecstatic, wouldn’t trust anyone who hadn’t felt this and it has obviously to do with landscape, light, music, love, and I think also a permanent awareness of the transience of all things and the melancholy that invests all this so that it isn’t just gaping happily at a sunset while listening to music. You’re doing that knowing that it can’t last for very long, very important part of the awareness. People who didn’t have this would, I think, be beyond autistic. But there’s no need for the supernatural in this at all. There’s no supernatural dimension of which this gives you a share. And yes, of course, for poetry and literature we are rather stuck with the pathetic fallacy, if you know what I mean, the pathetic fallacy is giving human attributes to material things, so we’re tempted to do that too.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Rabbi, can religions be saved?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Just on the word “evil” though: I personally find it’s a word you absolutely have to have. I decided this in Iraq, as a matter of fact, after I’d seen the—Saddam Hussein’s attempt with chemicals weapons to destroy the Kurdish people of northern [indecipherable] and seen the, as it were, the stench of evil and I thought there’s something else you can say about Saddam Hussein: psychopathic dictator, mass murderer, genocidalist, “bad guy” as some people used to call him, things of this kind, wasn’t up to it. There was a surplus value to totalitarianism, a sort of a numinous bit, a shimmer around it that meant that “evil” is a word we could not do without.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: [To Wolpe] Do you see in he who speaks up for the numinous the possibility of belief? Do you smell a potential person of faith in Hitchens or no way [indecipherable]?<br /><br />WOLPE: I think, no, I mean—to be perfectly honest and not to make a cheap joke about it, I think that Christopher is a person of tremendous, impressive faith. Not the faith that I have at all but faith in justice, faith in goodness, I mean what he’s done with much of his life is, I think, really awe-inspiring. That doesn’t mean for a minute that I think he’s being dishonest about his lack of faith in the things that I believe, but does he have faith in a different sense, absolutely.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: [To audience] Can we do more? Yes?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Mr. Hitchens, you are likely the world’s most charming, roguish, and enlightened atheist and I love you for that but as a Sufi Muslim I’m very ruffled by the title of your book. Of all the titles you likely had at your disposal did you have to settle for the literal negation of “Allahu akbar”?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Thank you for that question. Thank you. It’s a very good question and I’m glad. I wanted to go back to it. Why?<br /><br />HITCHENS: The—as I said, I think that all religions are wrong in the same way in that they privilege faith over reason but they’re not all equally bad in the same way all the time. I mean if I had been writing in the 1930s I would certainly have said that the Roman Catholic Church was the most dangerous religion in the world because of its open alliance with fascism and anti-Semitism, which—the damage from that our culture has never recovered from and never will but at the moment it’s very clear to me that most toxic form that religion takes is the Islamic form, the horrible idea of wanting to end up with Sharia, with a religion-governed state (a state of religious law) and that the best means of getting there is jihad (holy war) and that Muslims have a special right to feel aggrieved enough to demand this, I think is absolute obscene wickedness and I think their religion is nonsense and…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: But the entirety? In its entirety?<br /><br />HITCHENS: In its entirety. The idea that God speaks to some illiterate merchant warlord in Arabia and he’s able to write this down perfectly and it contains the answers to all human—don’t waste my time, it’s bullshit.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: But you’re saying the same thing…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Also that God speaks—the archangel Gabriel speaks only Arabic, it seems, is crap.<br /><br />WOLPE: [To audience member] I just want to say in retrospect you were very civil, actually. I don’t know what I was thinking.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Is this the same characterization of all religions, you think?<br /><br />HITCHENS: And this is—wait—actually no because remember, Islam makes one very important claim for itself. All religions claim to be revealed truth, that they are all founded by divine revelation, but Islam rather dangerously says, “Ours is the last and final one. There can’t be any more after this. This is God’s last word.” Now that’s straight away a temptation to violence and intolerance and if you note, it’s a temptation they seem quite willing to fall for.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Rabbi, do you have any…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Second, I had another motive, which is this: if you remember Dick Gregory, the older comrades here will, great black comedian and civil rights activist, when he came to write his memoir he called it <i>Nigger</i>.<br /><br />WOLPE: Right.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It upset a lot of people, including his old mum who called him and said, “Why are you doing this?” and he says, “Momma, every time you hear that word again, they’re selling my book.” So every “Allahu akbar” reminds people that we’re in a very serious struggle with a very depraved religion and that there are…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: With our—even for our Sufi friend you give no quota?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Look, he believes in the prophecy of Mohammed, I'm sorry to say I think he’s being at best conned. Yeah.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Our time is ticking down. With respect, if I may be the protocol guy, sorry.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: I want to go back to your answer to the question just before this because I think—and particularly I want to interrogate you, Rabbi because you—in your earlier discussion and your answer to a couple of the questions you seem to suggest that if there is something beyond the material that’s evidence for God or it—and then on the question of whether there can be moral behavior, one can have a reason to act morally you say that only, you know, that requires the existence of God, if God doesn’t exist you don’t believe in God, you don’t have reasons to behave morally but then I think in your answer—so I think that’s where it was until your answer to the question before last and at that point you seem to grant that the gentlemen sitting to your left actually did have reasons to act morally even though he does not believe in God…<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Yes, that’s right.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: …and I’m trying to figure out…<br /><br />WOLPE: I’ll explain. The difference is not whether people in their own minds have compelling reasons to act morally. The question is if you don’t believe in God and you say, “You know what, I’m going to”—why would you do good in secret, as Balzac put it, perhaps only believers in God do good in secret. Now, obviously that’s not true but you understand the ideology behind it which is if you don’t believe that there’s a universal moral code that comes from beyond us and that human beings make up what’s right and what’s wrong why is it that I as a human being can’t decide this is right for me even though I know it’s going to be wrong for anyone else? In other words, the standard that arises only from human beings is easily broken by human beings whereas if you think that goodness is woven into the fabric of the universe, which is what a believer says, then it’s always wrong at all times in all places whether someone’s watching or their not watching, whether you’re a believer or not a believer, that’s always true and that’s the distinction I was trying to get at.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I was very struck—because this is the core question, so we might as well revisit it. I was very struck this week reading—I’m sure you saw it—the Pope’s brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, who runs the choir school in Regensburg. He’s discovered recently there’s been some unpleasantness at the school of which he was the steward for about twenty or thirty years. He said he didn’t know about any of that and surely claims not to have taken any part in it but he did say he used to smack the boys around quite a lot, he said, until Bavarian law changed and made it illegal for teachers to hit children. Well I don’t want to be told any more that without religious people we wouldn’t know what morality was. He didn’t know this until the secular law intervened and taught him how to behave. Now, wait, wait, wait, what is the whole racket of The Church in this protecting itself from it saying they were all ordered don’t go near the courts, don’t go near the police, we’ll sort this out among ourselves and they say they’re the people who prevent us from succumbing to moral relativism? I’m not hearing it from them. I’m sorry, it’s insulting to be talked to in that way. The great recent governer of this state, Mr. Romney, wants to be president. Ok, there’s a constitutional issue here: Mormons are supposed to say that their prophet, as they call their leader, his word is sovereign over any one else’s, including the Constitution of the United States. So Romney has to say, and finally people did force him to answer the question, “Well, do you think that about your prophet?” He said, “No, the Constitution takes precedence in all cases.” Fine, so to the extent that he’s an acceptable person is to the extent he’s not a Mormon. The discipline of secularism is necessary to civilize these superstitions. I hope very few of you begin your day by thanking God that you’re not a female or a <i>goy</i>, for example.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Our time is short, we’re going to swing it around for just a little bit. Yes, back here.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: This is for Mr. Wolpe. At the start of your talk you said that this was scientific but you spent the rest of the talk backpedaling from that. But my real question is about free will: you say that you cannot get free will from a deterministic system. I can create the pseudo-random number generatorthat you cannot distinguish from randomness no matter how long you look at it.<br /><br />WOLPE: Right.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: It’ll take longer than the life of the universe.<br /><br />WOLPE: Right.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: So where did you get...<br /><br />WOLPE: That gives you randomness, that doesn’t give give you intentional free will and I never said…<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: But if you use that…<br /><br />WOLPE: I didn’t say at the beginning, by the way, that my belief was scientific. I said that the system is scientific.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: But if you use that as an output it’s deterministic but it gives you a random result that you can use for free will.<br /><br />WOLPE: Right.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: Now, where did your deity get free will, if it has it? If it doesn’t have it, it’s not much of a deity. If it does have free will, either it got it itself, why can’t we do it? Or some other deity gave your deity free will, which gives you an infinite regress.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: This is your last question, I’m afraid.<br /><br />WOLPE: The answer is that there is no analogy between this deity and between human beings. Just like when someone says, “Who gave birth to God?” that’s a misconceiving of the religious concept of God which is that God has always existed and God isn’t a biological creature, therefore God doesn’t get free will the way human beings get free will. The objection and the problem with human beings getting free will is that if we’re purely biological how does that [indecipherable] chemical free will get into us? And a random generator doesn’t give you free will, even if it gave you random numbers. That’s quite different from actually choosing to do something or to do something else.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Who do you think in our society is winning this debate? The atheists, the New Atheists? The religious? Where’s the center of gravity going? And this will be the last question, I’m afraid.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think a very large number of people don’t—and I say this based on experience debating in a large number of churches and synagogues—go there for some of the reasons the Rabbi gives: community, Tocquevillian reasons, you might say, American communties, self-help, often they run a school, this kind of thing. They don’t really believe the holy books. They don’t think they have been specially noticed by God or can expect any special favors from Him. But they see, as it were, no harm in it. And there’s a great deal of schism among those who do believe, an enormous amount of schism, so when people say in opinion polls that—or when you read that 90% of American believe in the virgin birth and in Satan and so forth I don’t believe it at all. I don’t believe it. And I don’t believe that people have doubts about it would tell someone who rang them up in their kitchen on the telephone either. I think that underneath this there’s a huge crust of doubt and a great resentment against American theocrats. They—if you want to know how to piss of an American Protestant in the south say, “Are you one of those Jerry Falwell people?” They hate that, rightly.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: You think you’re winning, then?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well no, I think that the supposed religious monolithic nature of America is grossly overstated. It doesn’t describe reality. And it is certainly true, as one of the questioners mentioned, that the number of those who say, not that they’re atheists, we’re still a very small minority, but those who say they have no faith and no allegiance to any church has doubled in the last few years and that’s according to a decent opinion survey, the Pew one, not a random poll.<br /><br />WOLPE: Right.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Rabbi, where do you see the center of gravity?<br /><br />HITCHENS: And it’ll double again.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Toward you? Toward Christopher? Somewhere else?<br /><br />WOLPE: I’m not—I mean, I don’t have a sociological expertise. I can’t tell you in terms of statistics where it’s going. This is what I would say: I think that there are lots of reasons why organized religion has trouble, many of them have been enumerated by Christopher and there are various other reasons as well but I actually think that the impulse to piety and the sense of something greater than ourselves is deeply implanted in human beings and will never go away and in that sense, although people will find different expressions for their religious belief, I feel quite confident that actually most people will continue to be religious in the sense of believing that in fact life isn’t an empty, howling wilderness the way that Christopher describes it but that there is something deep, lasting, eternal, meaningful about you, about those you love and about the world that we live in.<br /><br />ASHBROOK: Rabbi David Wolpe, Christopher Hitchens, you’re a great audience, thank you very much.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-13934184127053178092010-11-09T17:16:00.028-05:002010-12-05T09:52:04.810-05:00Hitchens vs. Turek, Virginia Commonwealth University<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://www.frankturek.com/bio.asp>Frank Turek</a>: Does God Exist?<br /><li>September 8, 2008, <a href=”http://www.vcu.edu/”>Virginia Commonwealth University</a><br /><br />[Introduction by Dean <a href=http://www.honors.vcu.edu/community/facstaff/hulsey.html>Timothy Hulsey</a>]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdtn3LhNUOO7PEHDm9kpY6dUsv0DsP9Z2bCZTPcEe3-X9eRXMcyUE0UvBcfHsU-G-5-NbNg4i-bIUALYzmM5IKspBT9OB8VxZk8mK2P76LqpfPBnoEA-dSKKKUk5Zv78jPOZtmLAO5tgrI/s1600/Turek.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdtn3LhNUOO7PEHDm9kpY6dUsv0DsP9Z2bCZTPcEe3-X9eRXMcyUE0UvBcfHsU-G-5-NbNg4i-bIUALYzmM5IKspBT9OB8VxZk8mK2P76LqpfPBnoEA-dSKKKUk5Zv78jPOZtmLAO5tgrI/s320/Turek.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537980589535838530" /></a>TUREK: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.<br /><br />AUDIENCE: Good evening.<br /><br />TUREK: My name is Frank Turek. Before I get started let me ask you this: how many of you have heard me before or this is your first time? How many of you are here tonight? How many do not respond to surveys? [To Hulsey] 3 out of 10 don’t respond to surveys, Dean. This is my first formal debate so give me a little grace if I can’t cram everything I want to say into 20 minutes. I will say, however, I’ve had many informal debates, most of them with my wife and I have not fared very well there. I will say, however, that she is probably the perfect sparring partner for Christopher Hitchens because her nickname at our house is Nails and Nails is the type of woman that if she ain’t happy, ain’t nobody in the house happy so hopefully I’m prepared for a very formidable opponent in Christopher Hitchens and I do want to say that I very much like Christopher Hitchens. I’ve been following him for many years. I’m kind of a political junkie so I’ve seen him around quite a bit and I appreciate his charm and his wit and I agree with him on a lot of things, obviously not the issue of God, that would make a very boring debate. But I will say that I went up to Christopher just about a half hour ago and I shook his hand and I said, "Christopher, I’m actually a fan,” and he smiled and he said, “The night is young.” I want to thank The United Secular Alliance. I want to thank Daniel Pendergrast. Where’s Daniel, are you here Daniel? He was my contact here. I also want to thank Dean Timothy Hulsey and I also want to thank, of course, Christopher for doing this debate. I think it’s impossible not to like Christopher and as I mentioned I do. He’s carrying the cross for atheism and he carries it very well. Tonight I’m going to carry the cross for theism and I want to point out that I think we’re both trying to explain the world around us. We both have the burden of proof to explain why reality is the way it is. I have to show how reality is best explained by theism and Christopher has to explain why reality is best explained by atheism and I think we should follow the evidence where it leads. I think that the evidence we see all around us and within us leads to a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal, powerful, intelligent, moral creator (i.e. what we would call a theistic god). And this creator created this universe and the life within us—or the life within it I should say. Now I’m going to try and summarize my 450-page book, at least the first 200 pages of it, in the next 20 minutes (or next 18 minutes at this point now) and that is an impossible task. That would be about 20 pages a minute. Actually, probably I can do it because I’m originally from New Jersey. See, I speak at 150 words a minute with gusts to 350, so if I go a little quick and you want to see more of the evidence please get the book <i>I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist</i> and I want to point out that all the proceeds from the sale of this book will go to feed needy children; mine, ok? See, I’ve got three sons. The oldest two are in college right now so I need a little help and one of them is sitting right over here. Alright, Christopher, on page 282 of <i>god is Not Great</i>, available at fine bookstores everywhere, says this: “Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.” I think that is exactly wrong. I think due to the telescope and the microscope, we are seeing evidence that leads directly to God. I’m going to give you three major arguments for this and then I’m going to give you four more that are a result, I think, of a theistic world view. I’m going to spend most of my time on the three and then I’ll just mention the last four. The three are: the cosmological argument from the beginning of the universe, the next one is the teleological argument from the design of the universe and the design of life and the third is the moral argument. Let’s start with the cosmological argument, and this is basically the argument from the Big Bang, that the universe had a beginning. If it had a beginning, it must have had a beginner. Now, for some reasons Christians are afraid of the Big Bang. I’m not afraid of the Big Bang, I believe in the Big Bang. I just think I know who banged it. Now, the evidence for the Big Bang is good. I’m going to give you evidence in an acronym: SURGE. S, U, R, G, E. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it because even Christopher, in his book on page 65, says, “The Big Bang is the accepted origin of the universe.” S stands for the second law of thermodynamics, that the universe is running down. As that sun is up there, it is burning out. Ultimately we will go to heat death, as Christopher has said in his book, “Well, if the universe is eternal, that sun would’ve burned out a long time ago but since the sun is still up there and we still have energy here, the universe must have had a beginning.” The second law of thermodynamics also says that ordered things go towards disorder. It affects this school. We have to paint the walls. We have to put gas in our car. The second law of thermodynamics also affects us as human beings. When you get older, the second law of thermodynamics is seen by the fact that we all get dresser disease (that’s when our chest falls into our drawers, see?). That’s the second law of thermodynamics. The U in SURGE is the fact that the universe is expanding, discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1929. Hubble deduced that if the universe is expanding, if you watched everything in reverse, you would see it collapse back to a point mathematically and logically to nothing. So the universe exploded into being out of nothing. The G stands for the great galaxy—I'm sorry, the R stands for the radiation echo, discovered by accident by Penzias and Wilson, two scientists working at Bell labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. They discovered basically the radiation afterglow or the remnant heat from the initial Big Bang explosion. The heat is still out there, it’s just a couple of degree above absolute zero. Now good theories predict future discoveries and they said if the radiation afterglow was out there and the Big Bang really did occur, we ought to find very fine temperature variations among the radiation afterglow so they sent up a satellite in 1989 to circle the earth, it’s called the COBE space satellite to measure this radiation afterglow and for three years they found nothing until they tuned their instruments just a little bit more precisely and found that there were temperature variations in the radiation afterglow and they were down to one part in 100,000. George Smoot, the leader of the expedition said, “If you’re religious, it’s like looking at God.” Stephen Hawking said this is the greatest discovery of cosmology, perhaps the greatest discovery of all time. Those temperature variations allowed galaxies to ultimately form so we could ultimately be here. The E in SURGE stands for Einstein’s theory of general relativity which says time, space, and matter are co-relative. You can’t have space without time, you can’t have time without space and matter and in effect it says that the universe came into existence with space and time together. In other words, once there was no time, once there was no space, once there was no matter and then bang, out of nothing the universe exploded into being. What is nothing? Aristotle had a good definition of nothing. He said, “Nothing is what rocks dream about.” Nothing. There was no thing. There was not positive and negative energy, as Isaac Asimov has said. There was not a vacuum. There was not swirling mathematical points at Dr. Atkins has said from Oxford. There was nothing, what rocks dream about. Which means that the universe exploded into being, all space, all matter, all time out of nothing and several scientists have pointed this out. Stephen Hawking said almost everyone now believes that the universe and time itself had a beginning at the Big Bang. Agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow, the man who sits in Edwin Hubble’s chair (or who did until February when he died) he was an agnostic. He sat at Mount Wilson and looked through Hubble’s telescope. He wrote a book in 1978 called <i>God and the Astronomers</i> and here’s what Jastrow wrote, or here’s what he said, actually, in an interview. He said, “Astronomers now have found they’ve painted themselves into a corner because they have proven by their own methods that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth and they have found that all this has happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I and anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact. Why is an agnostic astronomer saying supernatural forces at work? Why couldn’t nature have created the universe? Because there was no nature, there was nothing, what rocks dream about and then the entire space-time continuum leapt into existence. If it’s not a natural cause, by definition it must be a supernatural cause, something beyond the natural. In fact, Arthur Eddington, the contemporary of Einstein who was an expert in general relativity, said, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.” So the cosmological argument leaves us with one question: either no one created something out of nothing or someone created something out of nothing. The atheistic view is no one created something out of nothing. The theistic view is someone created something out of nothing. Which view is more reasonable? I think Julie Andrews had it right: nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could. That’s the cosmological argument. The teleological argument: the design argument actually had two arguments contained within it. It is the argument from design and there are dozens of factors about the universe that are precisely designed for the existence of the universe and life. So not only did the universe explode into being out of nothing, it did so with incredible precision. Stephen Hawking has noted that the universe would not exist if there was a decrease in the expansion rate one second after the Big Bang by only one part in one hundred thousand million million.” This lead Hawking to conclude, “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way except as an act of God who intended to create beings like us. Not only is it designed in terms of its expansion but the gravitational force is so precise if you change the gravitational force by one part in ten to the forty, nothing would exist. What's one part in ten to the forty? Stretch a tape measure across the entire known universe. Set gravity at one inch anywhere on that tape measure. If you move gravity—the force of gravity one inch in either direction, we don’t exist. There’s also factors about our universe and particularly our solar system that cannot be explained unless there is a designer behind it. For example, the earth rotation, 24 hours just right. If it was a little bit more or a little bit less we wouldn’t be here. The axial tilt, 23 and ½ degrees, just right. Change that and we’re not here. The—Jupiter being in its current orbit. If Jupiter wasn’t there, we’d be bombarded with space material. Why? Because Jupiter acts as a cosmic vacuum cleaner, it attracts all of the cosmic space junk to it rather than us. There are a number of factors I don’t have time to get into, but Arno Penzias, the man who codiscovered the R in SURGE (the radiation afterglow) said this: “Astronomy leads us to a unique event: a universe which was created out of nothing one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the right conditions required to permit life and one which has an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.” A friend of Christopher, atheist Steven Weinberg, who is an atheist, put it this way: “Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values. So not only is the universe precisely tweaked—and by the way, there would be no life unless the universe was precisely finely tuned, as I just mentioned, but life itself is designed. Let me take you to your breakfast table for just a second. Suppose you wanted to have a bowl of alphabet cereal. You’re a teenager and you come downstairs and have a bowl of alphabet cereal and you see the alphabet cereal’s knocked over and the letters from the alphabet cereal are spelled out on the placemat and it spells, “Take out the garbage, mom.” What are you going to assume, cat knocked the box over? Earthquake shook the house? Or are you going to say, “No, that’s intelligent design from an intelligent being.” Or let’s say you’re laying out on the beach and you see in the clouds, “Drink Coke.” What are you going to assume, unusual cloud formation? No, you’re going to say there has to be a sky writer up there, even if you didn’t see him. Why? Because messages only come from minds. Well it turns out there’s a message in all life called DNA, we all know about it. All life has a message. I have DNA, you have DNA, a banana has DNA. In Darwin’s day it was not known how incredibly complex simple—so called simple life is. And they thought that maybe simple life could come together without intelligent intervention and ultimately natural selection could take over. It’s the theory of macroevolution, I’m sure you’ve heard of it, from the goo to you, via the zoo. From the infantile to the reptile to the crocodile to the gentile, that’s the theory of macroevolution. The problem is is that now we know that this intelligent life couldn’t have come together by natural laws because we now know that the simplest life has the amount of specified complexity or information in it, in terms of DNA, of a thousand complete sets of <i>Encyclopedia Brittanica</i>. Now, who’s that according to? Not a Christian, not a theist, that’s according to Richard Dawkins, from his book <i>Blind Watchmaker</i>, I think it’s page 116. Now to believe that that resulted by natural law is like believing that the Library of Congress resulted from an explosion in a printing shop. See, I don’t have enough faith to believe that. So life appears to be designed. In fact, Antony Flew, who was a atheist, a very prominent atheist, but recently became a theist, or at least a deist as a result of this evidence said, “It is impossible for evolution to account for the fact that one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the <i>Encyclopedia Brittanica</i> put together. It now seems to me that the findings of more than 50 years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument from design." How am I doing on time, Dean? Five minutes, ok thank you. Design is so prevalent that even people like Francis Crick, the codiscoverer of DNA, Sir Fred Hoyle, who coined the term “Big Bang” in a derisive way, are now, or were, proponents of panspermia, seeds everywhere, in other words, that life got deposited here by aliens, which is just kind of a backhanded way of saying that there’s no way we know how life came by natural causes here. There must be aliens out there that brought it here, which, of course, just puts the question off one more step: where did the aliens come from, right? There’s a lot more on the design argument but I’m running out of time here. Let me just give you one quote from Chandra Wickramasinghe who is a student of Sir Fred Hoyle. He said, “The emergence of life from a primordial soup on earth is merely an article of faith.” Sir Fred Hoyle said, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggest that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics as well as chemistry and biology and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” So cosmological argument, teleological argument, now let’s move on to the moral argument. If there is no God you can’t say that decapitating a man on a bus is objectively morally wrong. That’s just your opinion. As Dostoyevsky said, “If there is no God, everything is permitted.” Now I want to be very clear here: I’m not saying that atheists can’t know morality, they do. I’m not saying that atheists can’t be moral, they can. I’m not saying that believing in God makes you more moral. As Christopher has pointed out and, as I say, I agree with much of what he writes here, I’m not saying that religious people are necessarily better than atheists. That’s not the argument. The argument is is that there’s no way to say that a given act is moral or immoral unless there’s a standard beyond humanity. It’s not just my opinion, it’s not just Christopher’s opinion or Mother Teresa’s or Hitler’s, there is a standard beyond everybody that defines what is right. That standard is God’s very nature. Since objective moral laws exist, there must be an objective moral law giver. You say, “No, there doesn’t need to be any moral law giver.” If there’s a prescription there must be a prescriber. If you go to the pharmacist and you say, “Here, I’d like you to fill this prescription,” and the pharmacist says, “Who prescribed it?” and you go, “Nobody,” are you going to get your prescription? No. Now, again, there’s a lot more on the moral argument, maybe we can talk about it a little bit during the Q & A, but what can learn from these three arguments for God? We can learn from the cosmological argument that this being must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. Why? Because it created space, time, and material. It must also be powerful. Why? Because it created out of nothing. Must be personal, why? Because you can’t go from a state of non-existence to a state of existence without making a choice and only personal beings make choices. Impersonal forces do not. It must be intelligent. Why? Because it created in such a highly-designed, razor’s edge way. It must be moral. Why? Due to the moral argument. And of course, it must be a creator. These attributes are the attributes of what the Bible would call “God.” Let me sum up what agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow said after going through evidence like this. He said, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason,” and remember, he’s the agnostic, “the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mounts of ignorance, he’s about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls himself over the final rock, he’s greeted by a band of theologians who’ve been sitting there for centuries.” [To Hulsey] Two more minutes? Take three, thank you sir. Those are the three main arguments. Now I’d like to say there’s four additional truths about the universe that are better explained by theism than by atheism. First of all, reason and the laws of logic. Christopher’s a self-described materialist but if atheism is true we have no grounds to know it because reason and thoughts are just chemical reactions in the brain. How can you have—even Einstein believed this. Einstein was a determinist. How can you trust what Christopher says if it’s just chemical reactions going on in his brain and chemical reactions in our brain? See, chemical don’t reason, they react. Now, I’m not saying there’s no connection between our thinking and chemicals, there is, but if it’s nothing but chemicals, how can we trust them? Even Darwin recognized this, it’s called Darwin’s doubt. He said, “If we are just the product materially of primates, why should I even trust anything, much less my theory of natural selection?” The next major reason is the laws of mathematics. Science depends on the notion that the universe is rational and mathematical at all levels. But how does rationality and mathematics arise from randomness? How do they come from matter? Rationality and mathematics are the product of mind, not matter. So you’ve got reason and the laws of logic, the laws of mathematics, and, number seven (or, seven in my list here, three in the addition) human freedom and the ability to make choices. Christopher is somebody who is very concerned about human freedom as I am, but again, if we are just molecules in motion, how do we have human freedom? William Provine from Cornell, he’s a materialist, a Darwinist, he points out that we don’t have any human freedom if all we are is molecules in motion. Now, Christopher ought not scold anybody for being a snake-handling, Bible-thumping, funny mentalist preacher because according to his own world view, that person is that way because these are just chemicals going on in his brain. Neither could you say that Hitler had done anything wrong if it’s just chemicals going on in his brain. I mean, what is the murder molecule? How much does justice weigh? These are questions that have no answer in a materialistic world view, but that is Christopher’s world view. It seems to me that it makes much more sense to say that reason and laws of logic and mathematics and human freedom come from a great mind that granted us these immaterial realities. The final argument is consciousness. Do you know that a heap of sand and a human brain have the same elements? Why are some carbon-based molecules conscious and some are not? Materialists have no answer for this. Daniel Dennett, another person who would agree with Christopher on many things, he’s a materialist, says that consciousness is an illusion because he’s a materialist. You’re not really witnessing this right now, it's just an illusion. Now one wonders if he was conscious when he wrote this. But again, there is no explanation for this in an atheistic world view. Now I have a couple other arguments on the bench but I don’t have time to get to them. Let me sum up in one minute. We need to take all of this data into context, not just one argument but all of them. What is the best explanation? Christopher has to explain these eight truths about the universe from an atheistic perspective. He must explain how the universe arose from nothing, how extreme fine-tuning and design arose from chaos, how life arose from non-life, how morality arose from materials, how reason and the laws of logic arose from matter, how mind arose from mud, how mathematics arose from molecules, how human freedom arose from blind repetitive forces and how consciousness arose from chemicals. If he can’t give evidence to explain these truths about reality from an atheistic perspective, if he’s just going to state unsupported speculative possibilities that rely on faith, then I think theism is a more reasonable world view. Thank you for your attention, I appreciate it.<br /><br />HULSEY: Thank you, Dr. Turek. We’ll now have 20 minutes from Mr. Hitchens in his opening statement.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitVXkK_vsG8HPMdDQpYtY9dTDHe8N51VBdt1COcQAmqNev0cOdqAF20u5afHY6_X0YMccBWj2UHwnlpMiaYr3cg_BkCbsaehn2HLpTRjX1qDd8OQAw3FfyjjT8pPtaallCX2QBCkNvAeTj/s1600/HitchTeeth.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitVXkK_vsG8HPMdDQpYtY9dTDHe8N51VBdt1COcQAmqNev0cOdqAF20u5afHY6_X0YMccBWj2UHwnlpMiaYr3cg_BkCbsaehn2HLpTRjX1qDd8OQAw3FfyjjT8pPtaallCX2QBCkNvAeTj/s320/HitchTeeth.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537980056419099522" /></a>HITCHENS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for coming. Thank you, Dr. Turek for that very spirited opening to the evening. I should say first it’s a great honor to be in the capital of the great state of Virginia. I’m, in a small way, a biographer of Thomas Jefferson and his memorial, as you know, omitted the mention of his presidencies and vice presidencies and preferred to focus on his work at the university and his authorship of the Virginia statute on religious freedom which is the embryo and basis of the first amendment to our Constitution which makes this the only country in the world that has ever decided that God and constitutional matters should be separated and it’s in defense partly of that civilizational impulse that I rise this evening to satirize the idea that we’re here by somebody else’s permission and owe that person an explanation, which is what it is to be a theist if not a deist, at any rate. I almost never watch television and I’m usually glad that I don’t, but now I’m glad that I—sometimes I’m forced by my daughter to watch <i>Family Guy</i> because you may have possibly seen the moment when the chubby father comes down in the morning and looks at his cereal in the bowl, accepting one of your more sophisticated challenges, and he says, "Look at this, it say oo-oo-oo-oo-oo," and his daughter says, “Those are Cheerios, dad.” But I accept the ontological challenge and I accept it in this way: the answer to the question with which we confront ourselves tonight, or are confronted, if you prefer, does god exist, is to me, yes, it does. It must do. It must do because it is so real to those who believe in it. There are people of whom it may be said that for them God does exist, I’ve become perfectly persuaded to this by now. There is no form of persuasion that would make me ascent to this proposition. Some of us are born—we’re born, too—in an answer to Blaise Pascal’s own problem, the one that made him write his <i>Pens&eecute;es</i> and address them to those who are so made that they cannot believe. Those of us to whom almost everything that Dr. Turek just said would be the mere equivalent of white noise. I suppose it’s my job this evening to explain ontologically how that is the case. Perhaps I’ll do it by force of example. Recently, very recently, in fact as little ago in time as last year, the Vatican announced that limbo, the destination of the unbaptized child soul, no longer exists. There is no such place. St. Augustine was in error, it appears, in sending so many children, at least the souls of so many unbaptized children to this destination for so long. Among the comments that I heard about this, one of the mildest, actually, was that of a woman raised in the Catholic faith whose child had died before baptism could take place who had for many years believed that that’s where her unbaptized child had gone and she said, “They can’t tell me that place doesn’t exist. It’s been as real to me as anything possibly could be for so long. They’ve no right to tell me now that this no longer exists.” Ontologically, limbo exists for those who believe in it just as God does. I’m not here to deny that. It’s only a few decades now since the rival church of Rome, the Church of England, announced really no one actually goes to hell. It could be that after you die you’re forbidden God’s grace, but there’s no real place of eternal, unending, infinite torture and torment with which those who claim the grace of God and the redemption of Jesus made a living for so many years and how do they make their living? By lying to children. Think of it: hundreds and hundreds of years of people proudly earning their keep by lying to children and terrifying them and saying that because they could do that they’re morally superior to us. Reason, common sense, decency, ordinary decency rebels against this kind of mind-forged manacle, how ever charmingly or humorously it’s expressed. But hell exists in the minds of several people I’ve spoken to just today on this campus in the intervals of other conversations. For them it’s real, and I don’t say that it’s not. What I want to show is that it can, if it does exist, nonetheless be abolished, like many other mind-forged manacles and man-made tyrannies that confront us. And in fact, that this belief in a supreme and unalterable tyranny is the oldest enemy of our species, the oldest enemy of our intellectual freedom and our moral autonomy and must be met and must challenged and must be overthrown. I want to argue for nothing less than that. It’s actually rather wonderful, isn’t it, that religious authorities used to say they were infallible. Say—just take the last the Pope, just the last. I know I’m not talking with a Catholic apologist this evening, but nonetheless “The Church,” when people say "The Church," they know which one they mean, they mean the one in Rome. The one where when Stephen Hawking was invited and was asked at the conference on The Church and science if there’s anything he’d like to see in Rome while he was there. He said he’d like to see the records of the trial of Galileo. (Don’t please be invoking Mr. Hawking by the way as if he was a deist.) The last Pope, just in the last decade of his tenure apologized. He said, “We were wrong about the Jewish question. We probably shouldn’t have said for so long the Jews were responsible for the murder of Christ. We were probably wrong in forced conversion of the peoples of the Indies,” as they were thought of (the isthmus and the southern cone of our hemisphere). “We were certainly wrong—we owe an apology to Muslims for the atrocities of the crusades. We owe an apology to the Eastern Orthodox churches for the incredible butchery to which they, our fellow Christians, were subjected by us, The Roman Catholic Church. And we probably owe an apology to the Protestants for saying so many awful things about them and torturing and burning and killing them, too. So having now said that we were completely wrong and completely cruel and completely sadistic and completely violent and retarded human civilization for that many centuries in that many countries and continents, we quit and now we can go back to being infallible all over again.” There are people who, on faith, will accept being spoken to in that tone of voice and in that way but I, ladies and gentlemen, am not one of them and I don’t think there’s any form of persuasion that should allow you to be spoken to as if you were serfs or slaves either. Proceeding with the ontology with which I began, the Aquinas point that if you can conceive of something, whether it’s a ghost, a phantasm or a deity, if you can conceive of something it is, in some sense, real if it’s real in your mind and showing with the obvious fallacy that has always attended that, is it nonetheless possible for an atheist to say—a proclaimed atheist to say, as I do—proclaim myself to be—that God positively can be said not to exist? No. It’s a very common misunderstanding about my fraternity, sorority. I’ll just take a moment to clear it up. The atheist says no persuasive argument for the existence of God has ever been advanced or adduced without convincing rebuttal. No argument in favor stands or has been found to stand the test of argument and evidence. We cannot say that we know that there could be no such entity. Among other things, we’re too reverent of the extraordinary time of discovery, innovation, pushing back of the frontiers of knowledge and understanding that’s taken place just in our own time to make any such remark. But, by saying this we say, I think, quite a lot. There is no valid or coherent or consistent argument that would not work, if it comes to that, for the existence of any God. Now, I noticed it was by a slight work of elision, a bit of tap dancing there that Dr. Turek went from being a deist to a theist, and then from being a theist to a Christian. Now I know he does not believe in the existence of the sun god Ra. I’m practically certain he doesn’t believe in the existence of Zeus. If you’ll pick up a copy of my portable atheist, a selection of the finest writings by non-believers down the years, and just turn to the three pages where Menken—H.L. Menken lists the easiest-to-name 3,000 gods that used to be worshiped and are no longer accepted to exist by anybody. You’ll spare me the trouble of reading them out. No, he thinks he doesn’t just know, Dr. Turek, that there is a god, he knows which one is the right one, from a potentially infinite list. Actually, from a list that’s as long as the number of people there are or have ever been in the human species because if you ever argue with a theist or a deist, as I do every day, you’ll find they all believe in a god of their very own. Indeed they often say a personal god. Indeed they often say a personal savior. So out of what are we reifying a concept that applies to all of us? Out of nothing but wish thinking and nonsense and fear and ignorance and above all—and I’m not quitting on this point—servility. Everyone in this room is an atheist. Everyone can name a god in which they do no believe. Let them advance the case that the one in which they believe is the superior one. Let Dr. Turek be the first person I’ve ever met to do that convincingly this evening and I will show him due respect. I don’t think the task can actually be undertaken. Now, the same tap dancing hopes you will not notice deism and theism are quite different things. The deist argument says that there is so much order apparent in nature and in the cosmos and in the universe that it might be unwise to assume that such order has no one interested in ordering or designing it. That assumption might be an unsafe one. The philosopher Paley and his natural theology said design implies a designer. He came up with that very famous image of the watch. If you come across a watch if you’re a primitive tribesperson in the Sahara, you may not know what it’s for, but you know that it’s not a rock or a vegetable. You know it has purpose and someone made it that way. Until quite recently, that was the default position of most intelligent people, including Mr. Jefferson who, despite his intermittent atheism, in my judgment, was a theist—I’m so sorry, was a deist, was a deist. He would debate—among the many skills he had was a very advanced level of paleontology. He would debate with the greatest paleontologists of his time, the Compte de Buffon. How comes it—how can it be that we find sea shells so high on the mountains in Virginia. How can this be? Not even the most intelligent people of that day—and it's very recent, it’s an instant in historical time—had any idea how that could be. There isn’t anyone in this room who wasn’t educated and brought up knowing exactly how that is. It’s just a shame that Jefferson and many other intelligent and humane and well-educated and literate people just couldn’t see that far. He wasn’t to know that Darwin was born in his day on the same day, actually in 1809 as Abraham Lincoln, the very same day the two great emancipators. (Darwin, in my judgment, the greater of the two.) Now we know—we know this proposition to be true, the proposition that was ridiculed so pathetically, I have to say, I thought, by Dr. Turek. There is no explanation for the origins of our species, for the origins of our cosmos, for the origins of our globe itself, there’s not one explanation left which requires the existence of a <i>deus ex machina</i>. In every case we have a better or sufficient explanation. I think that assertion of mine will stand any challenge this evening. I’m looking forward to hearing some more of them. Of course Darwin used creationist images. He actually set out to vindicate Paley’s theology, thought he could do it by his study (taxonomical study of nature). Einstein used God images when he spoke of the extraordinary majesty of the cosmos. It’s in us. It’s in our vocabulary. It’s hard-wired in us, you might say to use images of awe-inspiring, godly, Mozartean, you might say or even Shakespearean images when talking about these things but when we come to the actually analysis of them we find that we don’t need the prime mover at all and that most of the prime mover explanations, if not all of them have been positively misleading so that the deist may propose a designer and I may not be able to show you convincingly that there may not be such a person but the theist has all their work still ahead of them. From this designer, how do we get to the designer who answers prayers? Did you hear a thing, I mean, just a phrase, even an implication, even a suggestion from anything my opponent said that you could, by an argument from design, prove answered prayers? Or prove that someone born of a virgin was therefore the son of a god? Or could prove that resurrections occur and that by people being tortured to death thousands of years ago, we are now redeemed, that we are vicariously forgiven, our own offenses by human sacrifice? How does deism help you to that? It doesn’t. It quite simply doesn’t and cannot and the attempt to build from one to the other is a conjuring trick of a very vulgar, I think, kind. We live in the childhood of our species so when Stephen Hawking says that if we could understand the event horizon that surrounds the black hole we would, in some sense, know the mind of God, he proves that our vocabulary is still that of our infancy. He makes no concession to the idea of a theist or theocratic dispensation. I better ask now how I’m doing for time. Good, not sure I’m going to need all that. But I’d like to try and reply and fight on my feet when I can and I made some notes about what Dr. Turek had said and I feel that they were challenges to me that I would be ignoble if I didn’t respond to. The first and, I thought, frankly the most egregious was this: I find it extraordinary that it can be said on a university campus, in this year of grace, that without God, humans are capable of doing anything, that there is no moral restraint upon us if we don’t concur in the idea that we are the property and creation of a supreme being. I’m making the assumption that all of you check in now and then with some sort kind news outlet and have a view of what’s going on in the rest of the world. Isn’t it as plain as could be that those who commit the most callous, the most cruel, the most brutal, the most indiscriminate atrocities of all do so precisely because they believe they have divine permission? Shall I answer my own question? Shall I insult you by adding more? Who can’t think of an example of this kind? Let me put the question in another form than I’ve put it in now. Every forum from Youtube to C-Span to the wireless to the print to the radio to the television and in innumerable forums to those who say that without God there can be no morality, you are to ask yourself two questions: you are to name a moral action undertaken or a moral and ethical statement made by a believer (I dare say you can do it). You are then to say that you cannot imagine a non-believer making this moral statement or undertaking this moral action. Can you think—can you now think—can any of you think—you don’t have to answer, you have all night and you have my email and I’ve done this with everyone from the Archbishop of Canterbury to even lower people. You name me the ethical or moral statement that a believe can make and a non-believer cannot and there’s a prize and I’ll tell you about that later. Now there’s a second question: think of something wicked that only a believer would be likely to do or something wicked that only a believer would be likely to say. You’ve already thought of it. The suicide bombing community is entirely religious. The genital mutilation community is entirely religious. I wouldn’t say that the child abuse community is entirely religious, I wouldn’t, but it’s bidding to be entirely religious. It operates on the old Latin slogan, “No child’s behind left.” How dare anybody—how dare anyone who speaks for religion say of us, the secular and the non-believers that we are the immoral ones. It is itself a wicked thing to say, itself and absolutely indefensible thing to say. No, the decapitation on the bus is going to be done by someone who thinks God is telling him to do it. Smerdyakov is actually the stupidest character in Dostoyevksy’s novel and he’s the one who makes this proposition. Everyone has to understand, everyone has to understand that it is those who feel that the divine is prompting them, who feel they are permitted anything and everything and it is though those who are the leading, the most salient, most violent and vicious opponents that the values and civilization that Thomas Jefferson stood for and promulgated. Just on the question of fine tuning, I have a number of responses. We have to postpone some of the naturalistic questions for later when I know they’ll come up again. You mentioned Edwin Hubble and the way that he saw the red-light shift and saw that the universe was not just expanding, but expanding very fast, away from itself, that the Big Bang had not stopped. Lawrence Krauss, great physicist, probably the next Nobel Prize winner for—has noticed that most peoples’ assumption was wrong, that though this expansion was taking place, it was thought, the rate of speed of expansion must surely be declining. People still think in Newtonian terms in this way. No, says Krauss. He’s pointed out and now it’s agreed by all. No, the Hubble rate of the red-light shift is increasing. The universe is dissipating itself at high speed and the speed is getting greater. What does this mean? Well, it answers the question of why is there something instead of nothing? Because now we have something. We’re all here because there’s something, and nothing is coming right for us. Very soon a physicist wouldn’t be able to tell the Big Bang had ever taken place, so far sprung apart will the whole system be. And meanwhile, look in the sky at night and you can see the Andromeda galaxy headed straight for us on a direct collision course. Who designed that? Who made it certain that every other planet in our solar system is either too hot or too cold to support life, as is most of our own planet, and that in just one tiny, irrelevant solar system already condemned to heat death and implosion. Some design, wouldn’t you say? But these are just the paltering, minor objections that I have to the theistic world view. The main one is the one with which I began. Religion—theism, not deism, theism, I underline—theism says that all our manifold problems (what is the good, how shall we live it, how shall we know it, how to explain suffering, how to confront the possibility of our own molecular irrelevance, all these question that must disturb and detain us all) can be solves by referring them upward to a totalitarian judgment, to an absolutist monarch (the other thing that the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom was supposed to rebut, repudiate, disown).<br /><br />HULSEY: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: [To Hulsey] I promise you, 30 seconds. There is no totalitarian solution to these problems. There is no big brother in the sky. It is a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us, waking and sleeping, who knows our thoughts, who can convict us of thought crime, who can—thought crime, just for what we think, who can judge us while we sleep for things that might occur to us in our dreams, who can create us sick, as apparently we are, and then order us on pain of eternal torture to be well again. To demand this, to wish this to be true it to wish to live as an abject slave. It is a wonderful thing, it is a wonderful thing, in my submission, that we now have enough information, enough intelligence, and I hope, enough intellectual and moral courage to say that this ghastly proposition is founded on a lie and to celebrate that fact and I invite you to join me in doing so. Thank you.<br /><br />HULSEY: Thank you Mr. Hitchens. We now have five minutes of rebuttal from Dr. Turek.<br /><br />TUREK: In fairness to Christopher, that statement—obviously was his opening statement—was not meant to rebut my statement but now my statement is to rebut his and I want to point out that most of what Christopher just said there is pretty much complaints about religion and religious people and has no impact on whether or not God exists. Religious people can be the worst people that ever lived. That says nothing about whether or not God exists. People can do evil, that doesn’t mean the parents don’t exist. Children can do evil, it doesn’t mean the parents don’t exist. My kids do evil but I’m still here. I do evil, my dad’s still here [gesturing towards the audience] in fact, he’s sitting right there. What does that prove whether or not God exists? Let me try and go down some of the things Christopher said. Yes, I am an atheist when it comes to Zeus but Zeus is not spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, moral, personal, intelligent creator that I hopefully, at least I thought I gave evidence for and maybe Christopher will come back to my statements on that later. I don’t believe in Zeus because I don’t think there’s any evidence for Zeus but I think there’s evidence for the theistic God. Deism—I didn’t make the direct shift to theism, I probably should’ve been more explicit. I think it’s obvious there’s a theistic God because life came several billion years after the creation. That is not a deistic concept, that is a theistic concept. I didn’t say anything about Christianity. Even though I am a Christian, I don’t have time to defend Christianity here. I’d love to debate Christopher on the issue of Christianity in the future and I’ll publicly offer that right now. If he wants to debate whether or not the New Testament documents are reliable and tell us really what happened, what Jesus came and said and did, I’d be happy to do it. But when I mentioned before I have a couple arguments on the bench—I’ve got almost a full baseball team of arguments here. I’ve got a couple arguments on the bench—it’s the resurrection is one of them and I don’t have time to get to that here, so I’m not backing up the Christian God here, I’m backing up a theistic God even though personally I do believe in a Christian god. He claimed Darwin was the great emancipator and that—he went on to talk about atrocities and I think he, again, missed my point. As I said before I’m not saying atheists can’t be moral. Christopher, what he says in his book, again, much of it is true. Religious people have done awful things. In fact, Christianity predicts we’ll be hypocrites. That’s what The Church is, it’s full of hypocrites. Whenever anybody says, “I don’t want to go to church, there are too many hypocrites down there,” I always say, “Come on down pal, we got room for one more.” That’s what The Church is, we’re all fallen, we’re all sinners, that’s why we need a savior because we can’t do and Christopher said, “Well, how can you command somebody to be well when they have no capacity to be well?” Well, we were well in the beginning and—I’m going into Christian theology here, I understand, I’ll just try and answer the point—we were well in the beginning but then we messed up so God, the great physician, came back to save us. That’s Christian theology. Again, I don’t have time to support it, I’m just pointing out that is the theology. Now Christopher talked about atrocities, but again, on the atheistic world view—here’s the main point—how do you define what an atrocity is? Who defines it? Who has the authority to define what an atrocity is? The carbon atom? The benzene molecule? I’m not saying you have to believe in God to be moral. I’m not saying that only religious people are moral. I’m not saying atheists can’t be moral. I’m not saying atheists don’t know morality. I’m saying there’s no way to justify what is right and what is wrong unless there's some authority that provides it. What is the authority? In a materialistic world view there is no authority. The carbon atom has no moral authority over you. And it seems that Christopher goes on and on about how he does not want to be under any some kind of divine totalitarianism. That is a moral rejection of God. Where does he come up with this immoral totalitarianism? His world view does not afford immorality because his world view does not afford morality. He has to borrow from the Christian world view in order to argue against it. In fact, he has to sit in God’s lap to slap His face. Where does he get morality from? Where does he get reason from? Where does he get mathematics from? Where does he get consciousness from? Where does the universe—he said there are explanations for where the universe came from, atheistic. I’d love to hear them. I haven’t heard one yet. How does something come from nothing with extreme fine tuning? What is the explanation for that? He said there are arguments for the beginning of life that are naturalistic. Not according to the people who are studying the matter. How about Francis Crick? If I could find his quote here...Francis Crick said, “Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I swear I will never write another one because there’s too much speculation running after too few facts. Marc Kirschner of Harvard and John C Gerhart of Berkeley said, “Everything about evolution before the bacteria-like life forms is sheer conjecture.” Biochemist Klaus Dose admits that after almost 30 years of research into the origin of life has led to “a better perception of immensity of the problem of the origin of life on earth rather than its solution. At present, all the discussions on the principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.” Now I’m not saying that this is a default position, that it must be God. I’m not saying that I just lack a natural explanation for the origin of life. I’m saying that specified complexity, information, the DNA structure that we all have is evidence for an intelligent being. Because information only comes from minds. The laws of ink and paper did not create <i>god is Not Great</i>. There was a mind behind it that brought it into existence. And there’s a mind behind DNA. What is the atheistic explanation for DNA? What is the atheistic explanation for information? What is the atheistic explanation for all of these nine things I mentioned? [To Hulsey] How much time to I have? I have none. Survey said, “Sit down.” [To Hitchens] Yes, sir.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well I think I’ll just invite Dr. Turek to do the following: make available to us on a sheet of paper, which I’m sure he has, the thesaurus of quotations that he’s found from this and that, scientists and physicists and natural scientists and so forth, and you’ll find when you read them, when you look at them—I was writing them down as he went through them—all of these are statements of uncertainty. All of them. They’re statements of all we know is how little we know. That’s been, for many years, my definition of an educated person, someone who knows enough to know how ignorant they are. It’s actually is the only—it’s not my own original definition, it comes from the Greek, but it’s the only definition that works and no one working and toiling in the field of science could possibly say anything less or more of themselves, especially at a time like this, but, there you have it right away. The theistic and deistic explanation has to be based on a certainty that there is a supervising and, if you want to be a theist, a caring and intervening creator who manages these matters and there hasn’t been a single sentence so far from Dr. Turek in support of that proposition. Let me give you an example. If you—do you—the event horizon of Stephen Hawking that I just mentioned—I’ll take the cosmological one, just to begin with—the event horizon is the lip of the black hole. It’s where the—suppose you could travel towards a black hole and see it and see the lip of it and notice it before you went in and over and down, that’s what’s known as the event horizon if it exists. Hawking had a gravely ill colleague in Cambridge who said if he knew he was definitely going to die, that’s the way he’d like to go, falling into the event horizon lip of the black hole because in theory you’d be able to see the past and the future and time, except you wouldn’t have quite enough “time” to do so. But, that would be a grand way to check out if you were a physicist. “Turn away from this,” says the—”turn away from that—these incredible, majestic, awe-inspiring thoughts,” say the theists. “Think about the burning bush instead. Think about the trivial miracles witnessed by sheep herding peasants in Bronze Age Palestine and think about the death that they feel that we should incur for their sins.” It was stated by Dr. Turek that the sins of these people, the transgressions of these people and the debt they owe their creator bind all of us as sinners. What a shame we’re not perfect. What a shame there’s nothing we can do about it. What a shame we’re created already in prison and have to earn our emancipation. I tell you again, this is servility to the ultimate power. Now, there are people in this audience much better equipped than I to say that there is so far nothing in our natural world—to move away from the cosmological—there is nothing in our natural world, the globe we live on, that cannot be explained by random mutation combined with evolution by natural selection. Nothing works without that assumption. Everything works with it. There are lots of things that remain to be decided. But it’s not a theory, or not just one. It does work, it is operational. It does not require a prime mover. Ockham’s razor says we should dispose of unnecessary, needless assumptions and that’s what I propose we do in this case. I’ll put it another way: how long would you say <i>Homo sapiens</i> has been on the planet? Francis—not Crick, excuse me, the author of the—[To Hulsey and Turek] the supervisor of the human genome project…<br /><br />TUREK: Collins.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …Collins, my new best friend and occasional debating enemy, thinks not more than half a million years. Richard Dawkins thinks it could be as much as three quarters of a million. I can sink the number actually, if you like. We know that we left—the species left Africa about 75,000 years ago, having probably shrunk down to about two or three thousand people as a result of a terrible climactic disturbance, probably from Indonesia, probably from a predecessor of Krakatoa, which meant that we were this close to joining the 99.8% of all species every living on the surface of this planet who became extinct. Some design, by the way. Profuse creation of millions and millions and millions of life forms all to be wiped out with not even anyone to testify to their previous existence. We nearly joined that lot, managed to get out of it just in time. Let’s call it—I don't want Francis’ million or half a million or Richard Dawkins’ 75,000, whichever way—just give me that amount of time. Suppose we’ve only been around for 75,000 years. Monotheism (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) shows up, what, four or five thousand years ago at the most. So if you give me my most microscopically small assumption of human existence, for at least 70,000 years heaven watches as the human species is born, dies, usually of its teeth, usually at about 20, usually its infants having about a 9, 10, 2% chance of living. You can—I don’t have to draw you a picture—watches this with indifference. Thousands and thousands of generations, miserable, illiterate, starving, hungry. To say nothing of the wars they’ll fight with each other, to say nothing of the cruelties they will inflict as well as the ones they will suffer just from existence and only three or four, perhaps five thousand years ago heaven decides it's enough of that, it’s time for an intervention, and the best way to do it would be in the most primitive part of the Middle East. Not in China where people can read and have looked at telescopes. No, in the most primitive part of the Middle East basically by offering human sacrifice to them. This is a doctrine that cannot be believed by anyone who studied anything scientific, anything historical, anything archaeological, anything paleological, anything biological. No, can’t be believed by anyone. It can be only be believed by someone who wants to be a play thing and a slave of a pitiless, totalitarian power. How glad we should be that the evidence for this ghastly entity is nil. Good. Thanks.<br /><br />HULSEY: I’m going to stay out of the way and let them ask questions of each other and the way that we’ve scheduled is a minute to ask and five to answer. We’ll try to stay to that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That’s very generous.<br /><br />HULSEY: If you, Dr. Turek, would like to go first since you had already posed some questions to Mr. Hitchens. We will start there.<br /><br />HITCHENS: How many times do we do that?<br /><br />HULSEY: Three times, so you get three a piece.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Wouldn’t—could I just propose, unless you really have three that you’re dying to—I don’t have three I’m trying to duck, but that seems a long time for the audience to have to wait, it seems to me. Could we do two, maybe, and get to their questions?<br /><br />TUREK: I have six.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You have six? I’m your witness then.<br /><br />HULSEY: So three was right. Dr. Turek?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ok.<br /><br />TUREK: Christopher, what is your explanation for the beginning of time, space, and matter out of nothing?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, we don’t know—I remember being asked by one of my children once when they said, “Well, what was there at the Big Bang?” and I said, “Well you have to imagine,”—this shows how poverty-stricken our own vocabulary is and I suspect how poverty-stricken our own capacity is. In other words, I think there are some things not that we don’t understand or know but that we cannot so we’re reduced to sort of primitive images—but I said, “Suppose you picture all of matter, the whole matter, condensed into”—I got this from Hawking, I think, or one of his colleagues—”condensed into something like a very small, dense, black suitcase of the kind you see people carrying money in crime films and it’s about to fly open. That’s what you’d have to be able to—and everything that’s ever going to be is inside that.” That was the best I could do and I don’t think many people could do, if I do say so myself, that much better. But I was completely unhorsed because the kid said, “Well, what was outside the suitcase?” and I thought well, I can’t—I can’t do that and I don’t know anyone who can. And that, in a way, would be my whole point. I don’t have to know, you do. You’re the one who says you know, not me.<br /><br />TUREK: Is it…<br /><br />HITCHENS: The theist or the deist say, “Oh, come one, we know this is only possible with an author. It’s only possible with a creator. It’s only possible with a master and commander. It’s only possibly with a dictator.” You’re welcome, I don’t need five minutes.<br /><br />TUREK: Is it fair to say, though, that if the creation was out of nothing, and that’s the common view today, that the being that brought it into existence—the cause, whatever it was…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Don’t say being. What ground do you have to say being?<br /><br />TUREK: Because to go from a state of non-existence to a state of existence you need to make a choice.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No you don’t.<br /><br />TUREK: You don’t?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No you do not.<br /><br />TUREK: How does something…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Where are you getting this choice from?<br /><br />TUREK: The choice—how does a—first of all, there was no nature, there was nothing. So if there was nothing, how do you get something from nothing without a cause?<br /><br />HITCHENS: How do you get—I can answer the same question in the way I did before—how do you get so much nothing from something? You look into the night sky if you’re in, say, the Carmel peninsula—you can’t do it from many parts of Virginia now, but you are in certain parts of California, as I was just recently—you can look into the night sky and see the universe is blowing up and bursting into flames every night of the week, several times. They had something and it’s all nothing now. Who’s the author of that? Who mandated that? Who’s the creator of that? Who’s the dictator who demands that sacrifice?<br /><br />TUREK: The fact that things…<br /><br />HITCHENS: You’re making a rod for your own back here.<br /><br />TUREK: No, the facts that things go out of existence, Christopher, doesn’t mean that they’re not designed. The typewriter is out of existence right now, thankfully. But the typewriter's designed. So the fact that the universe is going to heat death doesn’t mean that it didn’t have a designer at the beginning and, of course, religious people believe that somebody’s going to intervene to stop it before it does go. And even if…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, they do?<br /><br />TUREK: Even if it doesn’t…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Wait, wait, wait, wait…<br /><br />TUREK: Even if no—hold on…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sorry…<br /><br />TUREK: Even if nobody intervenes, it [inaudible] goes to heat death.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Do the religious among you—excuse me—did the religious among you, ladies and gentlemen, to understand, I did not, that there will be an intervention to make an exception in our case, that this will not happen to our cosmos, that God will prevent the heat death of...?<br /><br />TUREK: That’s the Christian view, and it's [inaudible]...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I had no idea. I had no idea. It’s...<br /><br />TUREK: A new heaven and a new earth will be created. Genesis is paradise lost, Revelation is paradise restored.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Have it your way. It sounds fatuous to me, I’ve got to say.<br /><br />TUREK: Again, how do you get something from nothing?<br /><br />HITCHENS: You—I’m not the one who has to answer the question. Excuse me, you’re the one who has to answer it. You’re the one who claims to know. You say there was a creation moment and a creator. I want to know why you’re changing the subject...<br /><br />TUREK: I'm not changing the subject...<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...and saying to me how do I not know this when you’re the one who has all the information.<br /><br />TUREK: Information...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I also want to know—no, I also want to know this: I want to know what sources you have that are not available to me. How do you know that an intervention will occur to prevent the entropy and implosion and destruction of our solar system?<br /><br />TUREK: If you want to go to our second debate I’ll provide that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well it’s...<br /><br />TUREK: But what I’m saying...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Is this an artificial separation?<br /><br />TUREK: Let’s say there’s no intervention, we go to heat death. Does that mean the universe was not created and not designed?<br /><br />HITCHENS: It doesn’t entail that belief, no. But it makes it...<br /><br />TUREK: Ok, so what’s your point?<br /><br />HITCHENS: It makes it seem a very capricious designer. Shall we say—rather, as I said, it’s an old verse of Fulke Greville's: "Created sick, commanded to be well." Why would people be told, “Ok, I can create you but I’m going to create you with original sin, misery, shame, death of children, disease and so on, just to see if you can pass a test that would mean I might not send you to hell. I don’t say that that didn’t happen. I say that I’m very glad that the evidence for it is very scanty. And I accuse those of who do believe it, and I can’t have been surely misunderstood on this point, of having—harboring a very sinister desire to live in a totalitarian system. <br /><br />TUREK: How do you define sinister?<br /><br />HULSEY: Let get—let’s—Mr. Hitchens...<br /><br />HITCHENS: The desire to be a slave.<br /><br />TUREK: Is that...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Masochism.<br /><br />TUREK: Is that chemicals in your brain...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I regard masochism...<br /><br />TUREK: ...or is there something beyond you that...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I’ll say that I think masochism is a sinister and creepy impulse, yes.<br /><br />HULSEY: Mr. Hitchens...<br /><br />[Interlude where Hulsey sees to it that Dr. Turek’s microphone is turned up]<br /><br />HULSEY: Mr. Hitchens, a question for Dr. Turek.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Alright. I won’t take a minute to ask. In the—I don’t just support and try and help out those who dissent from the ridiculous belief of Christianity, the horrible idea of vicarious redemption. In other words, the idea that by watching another person suffer, an innocent person suffer, that you could be freed, not just from your debts or your sins, but your responsibilities. You could cast your sins on a scapegoat. I don’t just oppose that disgusting belief, I oppose it for the Judaism from which it’s plagiarized and the Islam that plagiarizes from it and I give publicity and exposure whenever I can to those who were brave enough in old times to oppose this nightmarish belief. And one of the great opponents of the Islamic totalitarianism in ancient Persia was the great Omar Khayyam, perhaps the greatest poet of all Persia, whose <i>Rubaiyat</i> is known at least to some of you and my favorite verse of this comes from the Robert [Bagalian] translation and it takes the form of a question—the quatrain is in the form of a question. It says, “And do you think that onto such as you, a maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew, God gave a secret and denied it me? Well, well, what matters it? Believe that too.” This magnificent astronomer and scientist and physician and humanist of Persia who opposed the cruel, sadistic, verminous, ignorant Mullahs of his day, I borrow the question: what is your authority for saying that you know something that I don’t?<br /><br />TUREK: Christopher, I’m giving a probability argument. As you said before, you can’t disprove the existence of God. And you can’t prove beyond any doubt that there's a God. I’m giving probability. I’m giving cosmological, teleological, moral, consciousness, reason, mathematics, all of those things I listed before. It’s open, the evidence is open to everybody and this is related to your 70,000 years point that you just made there. From a Christian perspective, God has always had a revelation, even before Christ. It talks about the fact that God has always had a witness. There's three witnesses. There is creation; everyone has creation. There’s conscience; everyone has conscience and there’s Christ. Now Christ, it’s true, only came 2,000 years ago but His...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And has to come again.<br /><br />TUREK: ...sacrifice of aontement—excuse me—His sacrifice of atonement is retroactive to everybody who lived before Him. So He’s always had a witness.<br /><br />HITCHENS: How convenient.<br /><br />TUREK: It is quite convenient and that is the very nature of God, you’re absolutely correct.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I got him to say it. You see, if we were only discussing ontological questions that would be all very well and it could be quite amusing. I could say that you require a higher degree of standard of proof for your proposition than I perhaps do for mine and you'd probably accept that, and so forth, and we could go back and forth. We’d be paltering again with the essence of the matter which is this: that the difference between the theist and the deist is as follows: the deist says it make not make some kind of sense without a designer. The theist says, “When I tell you what to do, Christopher, I have God on my side.” The deist says he can tell what God wants of me, what length I should shave off the end of my penis, if I’m a boy or have a male child, or off the clitoris if it’s a female child. He knows to the exactitude what the proportions of that should be, what the diet should be, what the dietary laws ought to be, who I should sleep with and in what position and various other—you can—and since God doesn’t ever directly appear and say, “Do it this way,” it’s done for Him, and this is really convenient, by human representatives who claim to act in His name. So that’s why I think your standard of proof should be a great deal higher because if you—the reason this point is important to you is because it would mean real power in the only world that actually exists, which is the material world, of you over me. And you wonder why I’m not keen.<br /><br />TUREK: Ok. The material world is all that exists. That thought that you just mentioned, Christopher—the material world that all that exists—is that thought material, and if it is, why is it true?<br /><br />HITCHENS: That sounds like casuistry to me but I certainly think that everything that I am capable of thinking, saying, feeling, and so forth, does depend on my continued existence as a, what should we say, a mass of molecules, or...Yeah I—shoot me in the head and I can’t go on like this. And I won’t be coming back to bother you, either.<br /><br />TUREK: [To Hulsey] Question?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Nor am I going anywhere after that’s happened.<br /><br />TUREK: Christopher...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And I don’t wish it otherwise, by the way. I don’t wish otherwise. Sir.<br /><br />TUREK: God gives you what you desire.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Would that that were the case.<br /><br />TUREK: I have a, bear with me, a relatively long question here. After admitting that an unborn child is a human being, you write on page 221—and thankfully you say in the book that it’s nonsense that an unborn child is not a human being, you admit that the unborn child is—you say this, and I quote, “There may be circumstances in which it is not desirable to carry a fetus to full term.” You then go on to advocate termination of pregnancy if birth control fails. Here’s my question: why is it that according to you when God plays God by taking a life prematurely, in the Old Testament for example, it is a moral outrage but when you play God by taking a life prematurely through abortion it is a moral right?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it’s a false distinction. I mean, I don’t—that’s not what I say. I mean, I say that the great abortive agent is, I’d say, nature. I don’t say God. Of course, God does not decide that so many pregnancies are not carried to full term. Nature knows, in the case of our species, as with every other mammal and primate, that some fetuses are not going to make it and flushes them out. That’s just a brute fact. We wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t the case because we are, as you know, adapted biologically to an environment which we’ve abandoned, The Savana. That’s why we have appendices that are designed for grass eaters. You know all this, it’s all very well-knowable. You can’t be having of sickly, half-baked childre nand get away from the predators. So nature is the great abortive agent. I certainly don’t blame God for it. I do, as a humanist, believe that the concept “unborn child" is a real one and I think the concept is underlined by all the recent findings of embryology about the early viability of a well-conceived human baby, one that isn’t going to be critically deformed, or even some that are will be able to survive outside the womb earlier and earlier and earlier and I see that date only being pushed back and I feel the responsibility to consider the occupant of the womb as a candidate member of society in the future and thus to say that it cannot be only the responsibility of the woman to decide upon it, that it’s a social question and an ethical and a moral one and I say this as someone who has no supernatural belief. So, your question ought to have been this: how do I have any ethical opinions since I don’t believe that I’m created and I don’t believe I’m going to heaven?<br /><br />TUREK: I prefer the first question, if you don’t mind.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Right, but ok, but I mean—isn’t it entailed by it? Have I—well I appeal to the audience, have I not answered the question about the termination of pregnancy? <br /><br />[Several audience members raise doubt]<br /><br />HITCHENS: Which bit have I not answered? You’d better prompt me, then.<br /><br />TUREK: I’ll read it again: why is it that, according to you, when God plays God by taking a life prematurely...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well I didn’t—it isn’t according to me. I don’t say God does that.<br /><br />TUREK: You...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Nature does that.<br /><br />TUREK: In your book, which is right over here, you have an entire chapter about the atrocities in the Old Testament.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />TUREK: And the atrocities have to do with God commanding genocide and those things. And you obviously have a problem with that, as many people should. So my question again is why, according to you, when God plays God by taking a life prematurely in the Old Testament is it a moral outrage but when you play God by taking a life prematurely through an abortion it is a moral right?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well once again, I’m sorry if my work so obscure. I don’t say that I have a moral right to terminate a pregnancy. I have given all the reasons that I think hedge that question ethically and morally very sternly, very stringently. And in any case it’s not like saying that every living child of the Amalekites should be destroyed and an injunction by God to Moses to say he’s been too merciful and he spared too many children and enslaved too few women and didn’t make the genocide complete. I’m sorry I’ve never been accused of and I expect not to be, if I’m lucky enough in my life, of any such thing. And the idea there’s a moral equivalence between the two or handling the really difficult question of an unviable fetus and what should be done about it isn’t a moral equivalence at all.<br /><br />TUREK: So do you want to say that all unborn life is, like you say in the book, is a human being and therefore you should not kill it? Is that what you want to say to get out of this dilemma? Or what is it you want to say?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, but I think—no, but I think the presumption—I’ve long said that the presumption is that the unborn entity has a right on its side and that every effort should be made to see if it can be preserved and I think that’s an ethical imperative. What I do say in the book is I think The Roman Catholic Church makes this argument immoral when it could be a moral one by saying that contraception is not going to be allowed, by saying that contraception is the moral equivalent of abortion. In other words to say that contraception is also murder, which is a nonsensical and disproportionate position. I quote some serious Catholics in my book—William F. Buckley the late is one, [indecipherable] is another one—by saying if The Church says that contraception and abortion are morally the same, it degrades the opposition to abortion. And by making absurd arguments, as it has in the past, Aquinas believed every single sperm contained a micro embryo inside it and thus that, if you like, I hope I don’t offend anyone, handjobs are genocide. As for blow jobs, don’t start. That an ectopic pregnancy, in others words, a direct threat to the life of the mother, a Fallopian tube pregnancy is, instead of a direct threat to the life of the mother and an obvious no-starter for a human embryo, because that’s going anyway, is someone who should be allowed to vote. This is nonsense. It’s casuistry. It’s immoral. It’s superstition and it prevents people from thinking seriously about matters that humanism can decide for itself, for heaven’s sake, without any supernatural intervention.<br /><br />TUREK: Your question, sir.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, well, since I apparently I answered your last question with a question of my own I’ll make it my question to you. I’m very keen to know how it is that you, in a sense, that you dare to say that without a belief in religion I would have no source for ethical or moral [indecipherable].<br /><br />TUREK: That’s not what I’m saying.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You seem to hint at it.<br /><br />TUREK: No.<br /><br />HITCHENS: [To the audience] Did he not?<br /><br />TUREK: Oh, I’m not saying you don’t know morality, Christopher, I’m saying you can’t justify morality without a being beyond yourself.<br /><br />HITCHENS: So that—just if I—ok, good. So that if I say that for me it’s enough to be willing to love my fellow man and perhaps hope that my fellow man or woman will give me some of the same consideration in return and that, after all, the Samaritan, of whom we’ve all heard, was the only one to help after the priests and Levites had passed by and the Samaritan also, though he’s talked of by Jesus, can’t have been a Christian because he appears in a story told by Jesus so there can’t be any Christianity before that. Somehow he knew the moral thing to do was to help his fellow person without religious instruction.<br /><br />TUREK: Yes, that’s right.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And that that’s actually the whole point of the parable, though it’s not the way it’s usually told.<br /><br />TUREK: And that’s what Christianity teaches: you know morality, it’s written on your heart. You don’t need the Scripture to know right from wrong.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And this was only available to us 2,000 year ago?<br /><br />TUREK: No, you’ve known it from the beginning of time. Conscience has been on humanity forever. That’s the point.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You’ll have to let me press you a little bit on that. I mean, William Hewitt Gladstone spent a huge amount of his life—and he was a great scholar of Latin and Greek—showing that every one of the Greek Socratic and other moral precepts, all they were were just prefigurations of Christianity. This was the best the Greeks could do before Jesus arrived.<br /><br />TUREK: No, no, no, no. I don't mean that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: They couldn’t face the idea that these solidarities and moralities and understandings are innate in people and don’t require divine permission. I just have to ask you, if you can do it plainly, which side do you come down on, do you think we need divine permission to act humanly to each other?<br /><br />TUREK: No, it has nothing to do with permission, it has to do with the ontological category known as morality. Where does morality come from? Does it come from the benzene molecule? The carbon molecule? The oxygen molecule? In your world view where does it come from?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Suppose that we were having this discussion before the existence of molecules was understood.<br /><br />TUREK: That’s irrelevant.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it’s not because the discussion about where does the good come from was being conducted before Lucretius developed the atomic theory, before Democritus and Epicurus, I should better say, understood that the whole world was made up of atoms and molecules. Before that was known, people were arguing why do we behave one way to our fellows and we call it good and another way and we call it wicked?<br /><br />TUREK: Because it’s written on..<br /><br />HITCHENS: The molecular—I don’t think you can build in a molecular distraction to that.<br /><br />TUREK: That’s—it’s—?I don’t have the molecular problem, you do. You’re a materialist. I’m trying to ask you where does morality come from in a materialistic world view?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, did I not just acquit myself of that charge and say that the argument preceeds the knowledge of the atomic and molecular structure.<br /><br />TUREK: No, it doesn’t.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Not that I think, by the way, that the atomic and molecular structure is irrelevant and it could be that we might find out that there are, who knows, pheremones or this or other phenomena that do have an influence on our moral conditioning. There still wouldn’t, to a morally normal person, relieve them of the responsibility of saying that I feel I know what's right. I feel some things my children don’t need to be told, they already know.<br /><br />TUREK: Let me interject here and just ask the question in another way.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Whereas to tell a child, “You go to this church which means you’ll go to heaven but your little playmates don’t go to that church and therefore will go to hell,” seems to me to be an unpleasant thing to be saying.<br /><br />TUREK: Yes, that is.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Maybe I’m in a minority.<br /><br />TUREK: That could be an unpleasant thing but how do you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Actually, an evil thing to be saying...<br /><br />TUREK: Let’s call it evil, Christopher...<br /><br />HITCHENS: That’s something only a religious person would dream of saying.<br /><br />TUREK: Let’s call it evil. Where does evil come from...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Religion. And morality—to answer your next question, morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.<br /><br />TUREK: Humanism according to who, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, who?<br /><br />HITCHENS: You’re saying that Hitler was a humanist?<br /><br />TUREK: Just—Hitchens.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I’ve lived to hear it said.<br /><br />TUREK: Hitchens.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And in Virginia. Hitler was a Catholic.<br /><br />TUREK: A human. A human. A human.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Hitler was a Catholic, so was Mussolini.<br /><br />TUREK: Give me a—how does morality exist if it’s just my opinion against your opinion and there’s no standard beyond?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Both of them had an official political concordat with the Catholic churches. Both of them wanted the worship of themselves as well as of God.<br /><br />TUREK: So I suppose no evil comes from atheism?<br /><br />HITCHENS: And their third main ally, Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan, not content just to be theocratic, was himself a god. So anyone who says that fascism and Nazism were secular is an ignoramus...<br /><br />TUREK: Why is it wrong...<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...on a gigantic scale.<br /><br />TUREK: Alright, ok. I’m asking an ontological question, I’m not asking...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I’m not going to be called a Hitlerite because I’m a humanist...<br /><br />TUREK: I’m not asking a sociological question.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...let’s get that clear.<br /><br />TUREK: Alright. Let me ask the question another way. This is my last question. If God does not exist why do all people have a fixed moral obligation to love and not murder? How do molecules in motion have any authority to tell you how to behave? When you do something wrong, whose standard are you breaking, who are you displeasing? The carbon atom? The benzene molecule? Who?<br /><br />HITCHENS: This question’s been asked—Socrates answered it like this, when he was on trial for his life (accused of blasphemy, by the way): he said that he had an inner daimon, was the way he put it, not a demon, but a daimon, an inner spirit, an inner critic, a conscience would be one way of putting it, and that he knew enough to know, even when he was making the best speech of his life, that if he was making a point that was somehow dishonest or incomplete or shady, the daimon would tell him, “Yeah that was clever, but you shouldn’t have tried it.” He knew. Any person of average moral equipment has the same knowledge. I hope you’ll—if you don’t I’m very sorry for you. Adam Smith called it the internal witness who we all have to have a conversation with all the time. It’s been—C. S. Lewis decided to call it conscience and to attribute it to the divine but he didn’t improve on what Adam Smith said in <i>The Theory of Moral Sentiments</i> or what Adam Smith said when standing trial for his own life. It’s been sometimes colloquially defined as why do people behave well when nobody’s looking? I don’t believe there’s anyone in this hall who doesn’t know what I mean by that. Why, when it won’t do you any good when you decide, “I could’ve kept that wallet I found in the back of the cab seat, but I’m not, I’m going to turn it in and see—find its real possessor.” There are those people to whom those thoughts do not occur, who are deaf to that idea, who only think of themselves, who wouldn’t worry about the internal daimon or censor or companion and there are, of course, people who only get pleasure from being unpleasant to other people and inflicting cruelty on them. The first group we call the sociopathic and the second group we call the psychopathic. My only—they occur in nature and in society. My only problem is with those who think we’re all made in the image of God, the one explanation that absolutely doesn’t work at all, that gets you no where, that explains nothing.<br /><br />TUREK: Christopher, it’s your turn to ask.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh really?<br /><br />TUREK: Yes, sir.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well my question is this: would anyone in the audience like to join this conversation?<br /><br />HULSEY: We actually have question if you’re ready to move along.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah, I am.<br /><br />HULSEY: There are a couple of questions—a lot—several similar questions that boil down to a couple of questions for each of you and one that I’ll end with that I think is an important one to address to both of you. Since you gave your turn away, Mr. Hitchens, I’ll ask you first. "If," the questioner asks, “If God does not exist then what is the purpose of life?”<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I can only answer for myself. What cheers me up? I suppose mainly gloating over the misfortunes of other people. I guess that...<br /><br />TUREK: And you say evil comes from religion, huh?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I guess that has to be—yeah, mainly crowing over the miseries of others. It doesn’t always work but it never completely fails. And then there’s irony. There’s irony and—which is the gin in the Campari, you know, the cream in the coffee. Sex can have diminishing returns but it’s amazing. No, that’s pretty much it, then it’s clear onto the grave.<br /><br />HULSEY: Dr. Turek?<br /><br />TUREK: Yes. [To Hulsey] You want me to answer that or not? Somebody else, ok.<br /><br />HULSEY: If Christianity is true, then why aren’t the differences that Jesus makes in the lives of Christians more powerful or evident than the impact other religions make on their adherents?<br /><br />TUREK: I don’t know if I accept the premise of the question.<br /><br />HULSEY: Well, the questioner adds, Ghandi was every bit as influential as any Christian.<br /><br />TUREK: Yeah, that’s true and that’s one of the problems with Christianity. The biggest problem with Christianity is Christians. I admit it.<br /><br />HULSEY: But the questioner’s asking a more central question which is if this is the truth...<br /><br />TUREK: Yes.<br /><br />HULSEY: ...why doesn’t that truth, by the weight of its infinite being cause its adherents to behave in a way that we can all notice?<br /><br />TUREK: Well, I think you can notice it in several Christians. I think Christians for years have been the ones that have built hospitals and cared for the poor and cared for the weak and the sick. So I think it does make a difference. My problem, which is part of the problem that the questioner is asking, is why doesn’t it have this effect on everyone? And I’ll throw a little Christian theology in here: the problem isn’t that we don’t have all the Holy Spirit we do, we just don’t allow all the Holy Spirit to do what it should do. It’s our problem, we are fallen human beings and that’s why Christ had to come because we are fallen human beings.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And has to come again because He didn’t get it right the first time. I agree with you that the grammar of the question is wrong but for a different reason. I don’t see what’s moral about Christian preaching. For example, apart from the horrible idea of vicarious redemption—I’ll say it again in case I missed you the first time what I mean by that—I could pay your debt, even if I didn’t know you. If I was a friend I could say, “You’re in debt? I’ll pay.” In extreme cases people have been known to say, “I’ll serve your sentence in prison. I’ll do that for you.” What I cannot do is relieve you of your responsibility. I can’t say, “Throw your sins on me, they’ll melt away.” Immoral. People are not allowed to be, you're not entitled to be relieved of your responsibilities. And vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is a very primitive and horrible scapegoating idea that belongs to the barbaric period of human history.<br /><br />TUREK: So all pardons are immoral?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Completely it's own—no, not all pardons, I didn’t say that. I said vicarious redemption is an immoral doctrine. It’s also immoral of the Nazarene to say, “Take no thought for the morrow. Not to clothe, not to eat, not to invest, leave your family, leave your children, leave everything, give up the world, no investment, no thrift, no thought for the future, just follow me.” That’s only moral if you are a sure believer in the idea that the world is about to come to an end, which was the case with this apocalyptic [indecipherable].<br /><br />TUREK: I guess you never read the parable of the talents, huh?<br /><br />HITCHENS: He said the prophecy is that the world is coming to an end real soon. There’s no point in caring about it or anything else. That’s not a moral preachment to me at all. There are many other ways in which I fail to see any bad behavior can ever be described as unchristian. And of course it’s completely laughable to say Christians build hospitals. Just as many Christians have bombed hospitals that have built them and as many Muslims have built hospitals as Christians have and as many Babylonians have built great buildings as Christians have. If that’s the best you can do, that’s the best you can do.<br /><br />HULSEY: One of the questioners repeats a point from Dr. Turek’s opening statement that apparently he or she feels you did not address Mr. Hitchens...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ah.<br /><br />HULSEY: ...about the irreducible complexity of DNA and is it possible for such structures to have formed by chance?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, there are two—I have two responses to that. One is what would she have said before she knew about DNA?<br /><br />TUREK: What does that have to do with anything? It existed prior to anyone knowing about them.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, that’s right.<br /><br />TUREK: Gravity existed before we knew about it, Christopher.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That’s correct.<br /><br />TUREK: You need an explanation for it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That’s correct, and Christianity thought it could explain everything and then it found out more things...<br /><br />TUREK: No, not everything.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Wait, it’s a very simple—same as your point about molecules that I said that these arguments predate Epicurus, Lucretius and the atomic theory. Christianity used to say it can explain everything. All you need to know is that there’s an all-powerful, all-loving, all-intervening, all-knowing, omniscient god. Ok, well then wait, wouldn’t DNA explain more? Ah, well that only shows that God's even cleverer than we thought. So it’s an infinitely expanding tautology. There are many—there are some Christians who accept, in fact it was actually a Catholic physicist at The Univerity of Louvain in Belgium, who first came up with the idea of what we now call the Big Bang. And most popes, not all, most popes have accepted it. Some thought of it as a challenge to Christianity. The Pope Leo, who he went to—I can’t think of the scientist's name for a second, maybe someone here can help me—he went to the pope and said, “Looks like this is how things started,” and the pope said, “If you like, I'll make it dogma that every Catholic has to believe it,” and he said, “That would slightly be missing the point Your Holiness.”<br /><br />TUREK: Christopher, what does this have to do with the origin of DNA.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, because it is true to say that religion, as Stephen Jay Gould said, that religion and science belong to non-overlapping magisteria. I think these magistria are, in many ways, incompatible and in many ways irreconcilable but it is no more true to say that the existence of the complexity of DNA shows that God was more ingenious than we thought than it is to say that it necessarily shows by its self-revealing ingenuity that we don’t need the hypothesis of God. Both of these positions would be, in my opinion, somewhat reductionist, though I would have to say that I think the second one is more persuasive and more elegant.<br /><br />TUREK: No, Gould is wrong...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Will that do?<br /><br />TUREK: Christians, or religious people—religion is trying to find out what—how the universe began and so is science. They’re not...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, religion says it does know, excuse me.<br /><br />TUREK: It’s trying—it tries to find it...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Religion is not a process of scientific inquiry. Religion is an affirmation of faith. It says it already knows.<br /><br />TUREK: I am a religious person, Christopher...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It says it already knows.<br /><br />TUREK: ...and I will use the evidence to try and point out that the universe exploded into being out of nothing.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And you have scientific evidence for the view that an intervention will occur to prevent the implosion and [indecipherable]...<br /><br />TUREK: No, forget that. Let’s start at the beginning.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I can’t forget it.<br /><br />TUREK: Let’s start at the beginning. That’s for debate two.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It’s the only thing you’ve said all evening that I’m going to remember.<br /><br />HULSEY: Gentlemen.<br /><br />TUREK: That’s for debate two.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, no. I mean, don’t say...<br /><br />TUREK: You—what—here—ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Look, do yourself and your faith the honor of saying it’s faith.<br /><br />TUREK: No, no, no. The argument would be...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Don’t say it’s science based. You won’t get away with it.<br /><br />TUREK: The argument would be, Christopher, is that if the universe exploded into being out of nothing then miracles are possible because the greatest miracle of all has already occurred. The question is...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No.<br /><br />TUREK: ...have miracles occurred in the first century?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, because a miracle—a miracle is a...<br /><br />TUREK: That requires another debate whereby we have to look at the hictorical evidence and see. And if it is true that Jesus really did come and say and do the things that the New Testament writer said He did then whatever He teaches is true because if He rose from the dead He was God. If He taught that there will be an intervention then there will be. That’s the argument, I don’t have time to support it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very good. Now, gosh—a sentence or two from David Hume on miracles would clear all of this up.<br /><br />AUDIENCE: [Informing Hitchens his mircophone has fallen off]<br /><br />HITCHENS: A sentence of two from David Hume would correct what you said. A miracle is defined not as part of the natural order but as a suspension of the natural order.<br /><br />TUREK: No, an intervention, not a suspension.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You can’t say of the Big Bang, which is the foundation of the natural order, that it’s a suspension of what it starts. You may not do that. However, if you meet someone in the street who you yesterday saw executed, you can say either that an extraordinary miracle has occurred or that you are under a very grave misapprehension and David Hume’s logic on this, I think, is quite irrefutable. He says, “What is more likely, that the laws of nature have been suspended in your favor, and in a way that you approve, or that you’ve made a mistake?” And in each case you must—and especially if you didn’t see it yourself and you’re hearing it from someone who says that they did. I would go further and say the following: I’ll grant you that it would possible to track the pregnancy of the woman Mary who’s mentioned about three times in the Bible and to show there was no male intervention in her life at all but yet she delivered herself of a healthy baby boy. I can say—I don’t say that’s impossible. Parthenogenesis is not completely unthinkable. It does not prove that his paternity is divine and it wouldn’t prove that any of his moral teachings were thereby correct. Nor, if I was to see him executed one day and see him walking the streets the next, would that show that his father was God or his mother was a virgin or that his teachings were true, especially given the commonplace nature of resurrection at that time and place. After all, Lazarus was raised, never said a word about it. The daughter of Jairus was raised, didn’t say a thing about what she’d been through. And the Gospels tell us that at the time of the crucifixion all the graves in Jerusalem opened and their occupants wandered around the streets to greet people. So it seems resurrection was something of a banality at the time. Not all of those people clearly were divinely conceived. So I’ll give you all the miracles and you’ll still be left exactly where you are now, holding an empty sack.<br /><br />TUREK: No, Christopher, you have to look at each miracle in light of the evidence and the context. Hume was wrong because his premise, that was wrong, was the one that said the evidence for the regular is always greater than that for the rare. It’s not—from Hume’s own world view—if Hume was here to today he wouldn’t even believe in the Big Bang because it only happened once. It’s not a regular event, it happened once. He wouldn’t believe in the spontaneous generation of life, which is what a materialist must believe because it only happened once. He wouldn’t believe in his own birth because it happened only once. He would be able to believe in the whole history of our solar system because it only happened once. You don’t need regular events to know whether or not something happened. Singular events happen all the time. This debate will never happen again [to the audience] yet you’re here to witness it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: There’s a—I mean, I’m just going to put my—repose my trust in the audience here. There’s an obvious difference between a singularity and a miracle. And I—I mean, I think it would be embarrassing to try and explain it. It would be patronizing to...<br /><br />HULSEY: Dr. Turek, a member of the audience takes issue with your claim that objective morality necessarily relies in an absolute deity, asking instead what about empathy, for which there are apparently significant biological bases?<br /><br />TUREK: I didn’t hear that, what?<br /><br />HULSEY: What about empathy...<br /><br />TUREK: Empathy. <br /><br />HULSEY: ...for which there are fairly well established biological bases, a very human emotion, cannot empathy lead to morality?<br /><br />TUREK: Is it right to be empathetic, that’s the question. I’m not saying there’s no chemical connection between morality and—or, for morality I should say. Certainly they’re going to be linked, there are chemicals going on. The question is, what is the standard that makes empathy or love right? What is the chemical composition of love? What is the—how much does justice weigh?<br /><br />HULSEY: Well...<br /><br />TUREK: These are all things that make no sense in a materialistic world view.<br /><br />HULSEY: Well, but that’s not entirely true. Let’s say for example that cognitive neuroscientists are able to determine with scientific levels of precision that in fact certain neurochemical and cognitive events always—essentially always co-occur with the experience of empathy.<br /><br />TUREK: But that wouldn’t mean that empathy’s right. See, there may be chemical compositions that cause that guy to chop that guy’s head off on the Canadian bus. That wouldn’t make it right. The question is what makes something right? In a materialist world view there’s nothing that can make something right or wrong. As David Hume has said, “You cannot get an ought from an is.”<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I’m happy to agree with that. I think that’s true. But I have to add only that there are—we've all—some of us have been lucky enough to see it or meet people who’ve done it and all of us have read about it—there are people who will, when a grenade is lobbed through the window throw themselves onto it before it can blow up. It does happen. There are people who die under torture without giving away the whereabouts of their comrades. There are people who go do bomb disposal work and sit diffusing a huge device. They know that at any minute—it does happen. It’s always happened. It’s common to every known human society, it’s a part of every heroic narrative of every known society that's ever been. Those who do it are honored. They are “sung” as we say (in the times when there was no literate—no literal record) and it doesn’t require divine sanction or permission. It is, we’re proud to say, if not innate in us (we’d be too humble to say that), it’s innate in our species. It’s something we can all aspire to.<br /><br />TUREK: Yes, you know it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: We do not get it from Big Brother. If we did that would degrade it. It would mean it wasn’t heroic, it wasn’t brave, it wasn’t individual, it wasn’t exemplary—didn't deserve anything.<br /><br />TUREK: Why are these things good?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, because it would be in the hope either of a reward from Big Brother or for fear of punishment from it. It would abolish morality.<br /><br />TUREK: Christopher...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It destroys ethics. It means the individual example is dust. How many more times do I have to say this?<br /><br />TUREK: Christopher, you’ve already abolished morality by your materialistic world view. There’s no such thing as morality if you’re just a bunch of chemicals.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Wait a second, I—[responding to audience applause] It’s ok, I already know some people will clap at anything. Are you—do you mean to say that the human—that the body of a mammal or primate is not a chemical composition?<br /><br />TUREK: No, it is.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh good.<br /><br />TUREK: I’m questioning where you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Why do act as if this has only just been discovered and as if it’s a theological point?<br /><br />TUREK: Because you apparently haven’t discovered that morality...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I say that in spite of—No, I would rather say that in spite of the fact that I am a primate—or, notwithstanding, perhaps I’d better say, that I am a primate, nonetheless I’m capable of thinking about heroism, self-sacrifice, example and so forth.<br /><br />TUREK: Why are all those things good? Why are they good?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Don’t turn to me and say, “How can you say that and be a primate?”<br /><br />TUREK: Why are they good?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I’m a primate. I can’t alter the fact that I’m a primate. I can conceal it better than some people can.<br /><br />TUREK: Why are they good?<br /><br />HITCHENS: That’s the best I can do.<br /><br />TUREK: Why is bravery, heroism...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You’re a primate as well and you’ll agree, both of us, that it shows, ok?<br /><br />HULSEY: Let’s finish with this, which is the fundamental question and I think deserves a serious answer. The writer says, “Gentlemen, I venture to say that no one"—“no one” is two words, by the way—"no one came into this room without already deciding who he or she agrees with and no one with leave with a different mind set. What would it take for each of you, what evidence would you need, upon what basis would you make a decision to change your mind fundamentally about the question that we gathered here to discuss this evening?<br /><br />TUREK: Great question. Well, Christianity would be refuted by somehow discovering the body of Christ. Theism might be—I don’t know how you could refute theism, if all the scientific evidence somehow changed. If—I don’t know how you deal with the morality issue, if the fine tuning didn’t occur, if we could find—if the universe it eternal it wouldn’t need a cause but all the scientific evidence seems to suggest the universe is eternal so it needs a cause and the cause must be immaterial, spaceless, timeless but if all that changed that might be—at least get me to doubt theism. Sir?<br /><br />HITCHENS: In most of the debates—I wish I had though of this this evening, actually—[Interrupted by audience reminding him to keep his microphone closer] In most of the debates I’ve taken part in, and I wish I had thought of it this evening too, we took a vote before the debate, including registering the undecided and then had one and the end, just to see—basically to see where the undecided had gone and I was always surprised by how many people had come or at least were willing to consider themselves as having come with an open mind. I—my view is this: very few people have that much difficulty thinking of themselves as objects of a divine plan. The great advantage religion has is our own solipsism. It’s the same as people who don’t really believe in astrology but they’ll take a quick peek to see what’s happening to Taurus today and if it says, “Well, might be a good time for a flutter on the stock exchange,” not to think, “Hang on, the planets don’t really move to determine my investments, but maybe, you know...It’s not impossible it could all be about me.” I think about it quite a lot actually because I have the same birthday as Thomas Jefferson, April the thirteenth, except that I don’t because he was born under the old calendar and I think though it says on his tomb he was born on the thirteenth of April, he was actually born on something like the twenty-fifth of April, under the old calendar. I’ve often wondered how the horoscope people manage the transition, the time when everyone had to change which star sign they were. I dare say it got done easily enough. Religion works for most people because to have—people, in a sense, horribly do want it to be true, that they are supervised, that God looks out for them, that they might be rewarded or that they might be punished. It has this terrible, servile advantage. That’s why I consider it to be morally superior to be an atheist, to say I would rather live without that ghastly master-slave mentality.<br /><br />HULSEY: And there’s no evidence or event that can change your commitment to that belief?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I could only say that if there was—I’m very relieved to find, having studied what I think of as the best evidence and arguments from physicists, biologists, paleontologists, students of mythology, history, archaeology and so on, very relieved to find that there’s no evidence for it at all. If I thought it was true, I would consider myself condemned to live under a tyranny and I’ve spent my entire life repudiating that idea and helping, I hope, others to think the same. But, there is not a chance, of course, there isn’t a single chance that anyone will find that, hey, after all, we can definitely know that a virgin conceived or that a condemned felon walked again and it’s quite absurd for anyone to argue in scientific terms as if any of that is even thinkable. What I don’t understand—I suppose I should close by—is why anybody should be so contemptuous, I suppose is the word, or insecure about their own faith as not to call it that. Did you hear him say at any point this evening, “This is my faith. I believe it inspite of the evidence to the contrary. I lay my life on it. I believe I’m redeemed by it. I think I will live eternally because"—no, he has no confidence to say anything like that. Instead he tried to mix it up in an area in scientific inquiry where he’s no more competent than, hey, even I am. And that is where he made his big mistake. Thanks.<br /><br />HULSEY: Gentlemen, what did we decide, five minutes to close?<br /><br />TUREK: Five to ten? Seven maybe?<br /><br />HULSEY: [To Hitchens] Since Dr. Turek went first in the opening, would you mind going first now?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I thought I just wrapped.<br /><br />HULSEY: You can call it a wrap unless you’d like five more minutes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Gosh. When asked what I think the most erotic words in the language I sometimes think—[realizing he’s off microphone] when asked what I think are the most erotic words in the language, I sometimes think slowly, “captive audience.” No, you know what? If I hadn’t made my case by now, brothers and sisters, I don’t think I will make it in the next five. I ask you to excuse me. If anyone thinks that there’s a question, having—who’s heard me, that thinks there’s a question that I answered poorly or inadequately, or badly or failed to answer at all and would like to challenge me I'd happily give them five minutes but I have, so to say, shot my bolt otherwise. Is there anyone who would like to challenge me? Yes? [To audience member] Please.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER: If there is no God, why do you spend your whole life trying to convince people that there isn't? Why don't you just stay home?<br /><br />TUREK: [To Hulsey] Can you repeat that?<br /><br />HULSEY: Yes, the question is if there is no God, why spend your life and career trying to refute that? Why don’t you just leave it alone and stay home? Fair enough?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well it’s not my—it isn’t my whole career, for one thing. It’s become a major preoccupation of my life though in the last eight or nine years, especially since September 11, 2001 to try and help generate an opposition to theocracy and its depredations. That is now probably my main political preoccupation, to help people in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Israel resist those who sincerely want to encompass the destruction of civilization and sincerely believe they have God on their side in wanting to do so. A thing—maybe I will take a few minutes just to say something that I find repulsive about, especially monotheistic, Messianic religion. With a large part of itself, it quite clearly wants us all to die. It wants this world to come to an end. You can tell the yearning for things to be over. Whenever you read any of its real texts or listen to any of its real, authentic spokemen, not the sort of pathetic apologists who sometimes masquerade for it, those who talk—there was a famous spokesmen for this in Virginia until recently, about the rapture say that those of us who have chosen rightly will be gathered to the arms of Jesus, leaving all of the rest of you behind. If we’re in a car, it’s your lookout, that car won’t have a driver anymore. If you’re a pilot, that’s your lookout, that plane will crash. We will be with Jesus and the rest of you can go straight to hell. The eschatological element that is inseparable from Christianity—if you don’t believe that there is to be an apocalypse, there is going to be an end, a separation of the sheep and the goats, a condemnatioan, a final one, then you’re not really a believer, and their contempt for things of this world shows through all of them. It’s well put in an old rhyme from an English exclusive bretheren sect. It says that, “We are the pure and chosen few and all the rest are damned. There’s room enough in hell for you, we don’t want heaven crammed.” You can tell it when you see the extreme Muslims talk. They cannot wait, they cannot wait for death and destruction to overtake and overwhelm the world. They can’t wait for, what I would call without ambiguity, a final solution. When you look at the Israeli settlers, paid for often by American tax dollars, deciding that if they can steal enough land from other people and get all the Jews into the promised land and all the non-Jews out of it then finally the Jewish people will be worthy of the return of the Messiah and there are Christians in this country who consider it their job to help this happen so that Armageddon can occur so that the painful business of living as humans and studying civilization and trying to acquire learning and knowledge and health and medicine and to push back—can all be scrapped and the cult of death can take over. That, to me, is a hideous thing in eschatological terms and end time terms on its own, hateful idea, hateful practice and a hateful theory but very much to be opposed in our daily lives where there are people who sincerely mean it, who want to ruin the good relations that could exist between different peoples, nations, races, countries, tribes, ethnicities, who say—who openly say they love death more than we love life and who are betting that with God on their side, they’re right about that. So when I say, as the subtitle of my book, that I think religion poisons everything, I’m not just doing what publishers like and coming up with a provocative subtitle, I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity. It says we can’t be moral without Big Brother, without a totalitarian permission. It means we can’t be good to one another, it means we can't think without this. We must be afraid, we must also be forced to love someone who we fear, the essence of sado-masochism and the essence of abjection, the essence of the master-slave relationship and that knows that death is coming and can’t wait to bring it on. I say this is evil. And though I do, some nights, stay at home, I enjoy more the nights when I go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and ultimate stupidity. Thank you.<br /><br />HULSEY: Dr. Turek, your close.<br /><br />TUREK: First of all I want to thank everyone, I know it’s been a long night and I enjoy listening to Christopher even if I don’t agree with him and I want to thank Christopher for being here and putting so much effort into this debate. Let me just clean up a few things that I wasn’t able to respond to before and that is this issue of design where Christopher seems to say because things are going to oblivion, it wasn’t designed. Well, first of all, design in a world constrained by physical constraints can only be optimal if you know the purpose of the designer. Stephen Jay Gould had a book years ago called <i>Panda’s Thumb</i> where he complained that the panda’s thumbs was not as good as our thumb. It only seemed to enable the panda to strip bamboo. Well maybe that’s all the panda was supposed to do is strip bamboo. You can’t say it’s a sub-optimal design unless you know what the purpose of the designer was. My car is not designed perfectly but it’s still designed. So, just because you find faults in design doesn’t mean there is no design and you wouldn’t be able to find a fault unless you knew what the purpose of the designer was. Let me now summarize Christopher’s book and as I read Christopher’s book it seems to me he’s making two statements. The first statement is there is no God and I hate Him. After all, Christopher defines himself as an anti-theist, not an atheist, but an anti-theist. And that’s why he couldn’t even respond to the question, “What might change your mind?” Nothing is going to change Christopher’s mind. His mind is made up.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER: He’s narrow-minded.<br /><br />TUREK: The second—he’s narrow-minded, yes. The second major point he makes is since religious people do evil things, God doesn’t exist. That is a non sequitor in logic. We all do evil things, that doesn’t mean our parents don’t exist. Just because people do evil things doesn’t mean that all religion is false. And Christopher bunches all religions together and makes no distinctions that need to be made. I am with you, Christopher, on your opposition of radical Islam. I am with you. I am with you politically on more things than you will know because I think many religions are false and there are many false beliefs. In fact, may religious people—here’s the points Christopher makes, and he’s right about many of these things: many religious people have behaved terribly. Many religious beliefs are false and can’t be justified. You don’t need to believe in God to know right from wrong. You don’t need the Bible or any other religious book to know basic right and wrong; morality predates scripture. I agree with all that and that in fact is the Christian view as well. And unless someone outside of the universe intervenes or laws of nature change this incredibly fine-tuned universe will go to oblivion. I agree with all that. But none of these things are arguments against the existence God. God could still exist even if all of Christopher’s assertions and complaints are true. Let me also point out that religion does not poison everything. Everything poisons religion. I poison religion. Regrettably, I poison religion because I don’t live up to the pure words of Christ. And that’s why Christ had to come because none of us live up to it but we know what the standards are because there’s a standard beyond ourselves. Christopher has identified how religious people poison religion, how they act immorally. You know, that’s what Jesus and the prophets did and why Jesus came. Christopher is so charming and he is so persuasive, he is like an Old Testament prophet. He is, and he is calling the church to morality. He can’t define what that is, but he’s calling them to it. He’s not calling them to the Christian morality necessarily, he’s calling them to his own morality but what he points out are some of the very things Jesus points out. Many people in the church are following tradition rather than the words of Christ. Many people in the church are doing evil things. Jesus condemned the people who were the most religious because they were the furthest away from God and Christopher is to be commended for that because many of them are. But unlike Jesus, who appealed to God’s standard of morality, Christopher’s atheism affords him no objective moral standard by which to judge anything wrong including all the sins of religious people: circumcision, sexual restrictions, suicide bombing, etc. He has to borrow objective morality from the theistic world view in order to argue against it. He has to assume God in order to deny Him. He has to sit in God’s lap in order to slap His face. He also has to borrow aspects of a theistic world view in order to even get his world view off the ground. He has to borrow the universe (which is a pretty big issue) he has to borrow fine-tuning, life, reason, math, human freedom, and consciousness. Notice he never addressed any of those things. Where do those come from in an atheistic world view? Christopher, in the last chapter of his book, talks about we need to get away from all this religious stuff and we need to go to Enlightenment values. What are Enlightenment values? Well, here are—is what Christopher says on the last page of his book: “Very importantly the divorce between the sexual life and fear, the sexual life and disease and the sexual life and tyranny can now at last be tempted on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse.” It appears that Christopher is rebelling against the church lady here. He doesn’t like the restrictions on sexuality. Is it true that if Jesus said sleep with anybody you want, Christopher would be a Christian? I don’t know. But that is what he’s rebelling against. Now he talks about the divine dictatorship. He says that he rebels, as he just pointed out, against the divine dictatorship because he’s an anti-theist. But let me ask this question: why must everyone submit to his dictatorship, the dictatorship of Christopher Hitchens? He’s telling everyone to live up—or to give up their sacred text and to live according to renewed Enlightenment values—values that apparently he gets to choose. Christopher, in effect, wants to replace God. He wants his values—he wants you to adopt Enlightenment values. Christopher never answered the questions and the evidence that I brought up. I think this is a theistic universe because all time, all space, and all matter exploded out of nothing; number two, it did so with incredible precision and extreme fine-tuning; we saw that life seems to be the result of intelligence; four, we saw that there are objective, immaterial moral values out there (and Christopher’s big on immorality, I’m with him on that); number five, we saw that immaterial realities such as reason and the laws of logic exist and have no way to be explained (there’s no way to explain those by materialism); that the laws of mathematics, number six, exist and they help us investigate and measure this orderly universe; number seven, that people are not mere chemicals but are free to make choices; and number eight, and finally that we are conscious beings and we cannot explain ourselves by mere chemicals. We’re something beyond chemicals but atheism only has a world view that says all that exists are chemicals. Because Christopher and his atheist friends have not been able to explain any of these realities from an atheistic perspective, they have instead relied on speculation and faith. I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist. Now there’s one more other point: Christopher may think that there is no God and He hates him, but God thinks there is a Christopher Hitchens and God loves him.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-2891969878366375912010-10-30T22:33:00.006-04:002011-05-24T15:13:18.715-04:00Hitchens vs. D'Souza, Notre Dame University<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://www.dineshdsouza.com/>Dinesh D'Souza</a>: Is Religion the Problem?<br /><li>April 7, 2010, <a href=http://al.nd.edu/news/15001-leading-atheist-to-debate-catholic-scholar-at-notre-dame/>University of Notre Dame</a>, South Bend, Indiana, United States<br /><br />[Introduction by moderator and Notre Dame Professor of Philosophy <a href=http://www.nd.edu/~mrea/>Michael Rea</a>]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXHav7b_M_aJzyi810yKZWMujWYQCR9e9-EDwRzKAZ1X4If2SOly0wDAmBkrmdFNusj46Nunv-KIcQiO29n6s-4daDX1uSy0kimL-niLXDlWTYYFcRY7ZgfJ6Y4sIkkhWK6yukkcULc1lm/s1600/hitchcartoon.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 212px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXHav7b_M_aJzyi810yKZWMujWYQCR9e9-EDwRzKAZ1X4If2SOly0wDAmBkrmdFNusj46Nunv-KIcQiO29n6s-4daDX1uSy0kimL-niLXDlWTYYFcRY7ZgfJ6Y4sIkkhWK6yukkcULc1lm/s320/hitchcartoon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529755175572983666" /></a>HITCHENS: Thank you professor, very generous introduction. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. My first duty, which is also a pleasure, is to thank the University of Notre Dame for inviting me onto its terrain. And Mr. O'Duffey, in particular, in an institution that's also identified, I believe, with the great history and people of Ireland, for taking the revenge of arranging for English weather to greet me. Now, I could—I've been given fifteen minutes, which isn't that much, but I could do it, in a way, in two, like this, as a proposition: When Getrude Stein was dying—some of you will know this story—she asked, as her last hour approached: "Well, what is the answer?" And when no one around her bed spoke she rephrased and said, "Well in that case, what is the question?" And I'm speaking tonight—we are speaking tonight—we've met tonight at an institution of higher learning, and the greatest obligation that you have is to keep an open mind and to realize that, in our present state, human society, we're more and more overborn by how little we know, and how little we know about more and more, or, if you like, how much more we know, but how much less we know as we find out how much more and more there is to know. In these circumstances, which I believe to be undeniable, the only respectable intellectual position is one of doubt, skepticism, reservation and free—and I'd stress free and unfettered inquiry, in that lies, as it has always lain, our only hope. So you should beware always of those who say that these questions have already been decided. In particular, to those who'll tell you that they've been decided by reservation—excuse me, by revelation, that there are a handed-down commandments and precepts that predate, in a sense, ourselves and that the answers are already available if only we could see them and that the obligation upon ourselves to debate ethical and moral and historical and other questions is thereby dissolved. It seems to me that is the one position—it's what I call the faith position—that has to be discarded first. So, thank you for your attention and I'm done, except that it seems that I have a reputation for demagogy to live up to. When I come to a place like this I read the local paper (the <i>Campus Observer</i>, in this case) and I was sorry to see that Dinesh and I are not considered up to the standards of Father Richard McBrien, whose exacting standards, I dare say, are out of our reach. And I was also sorry to see myself and others represented in other papers, and in particular by a distinguished cleric in St. Peters on Good Friday, who made a speech through which His Holiness the Pope sat in silence, Father Cantalamessa, saying that people like myself are part of a pogrom, a persecution comparable only to that of the Jews with the church in mind. This is the first I've ever been accused of being part of a pogrom or a persecution, but as long as it's going on I'll also add that it's the only pogrom that I've ever heard of that's led by small, deaf and dumb children whose cries for justice have been ignored and while that is the definition of the pogrom I'll continue to support it because I think it demonstrates very clearly the moral superiority of the secular concept of justice and law over Canon Law and religious law, with its sickly emphasis on self-exculpation in the guise of forgiveness and redemption. That's not the only reason why religion is a problem: it's a problem principally because it is man-made. Because, to an extent, it is true as the church used to preach when it had more confidence, that we are, in some sense, originally sinful and guilty. If you want to prove that, you only have to look at the many religions that people have constructed to see that they are indeed the product of an imperfectly-evolved primate species, about half a chromosome away from a chimpanzee, with a prefrontal lobe that's too small, an adrenaline gland that's too big and various other evolutionary deformities about which we're finding out ever more; a species that is predatory, a man is a wolf to man, <i>Homo-homini lupus</i>, as has well been said, a species that's very fearful of itself and others and of the natural order and, above all, very, very willing, despite its protestations of religious modesty, to be convinced that the operations of the cosmos and the universe are all operating with us in mind. Make up your mind whether you want to be modest or not, but don't say that you were made out of dust, or if you're a woman out of a bit of rib, or if you're a Muslim out of a clot of blood and you're an abject sinner, born into guilt but add, "Nonetheless, let's cheer up: the whole universe it still designed with you in mind." This is not modesty or humility, it's a man-made false consolation, in my judgment, and it does great moral damage. It warps—it begins by warping what we might call our moral sense of proportion. I wish that was all that could be said, though I think that's the most important thing. I ought to say why I think it ought to be credited and I ought to add that my colleagues Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have been very generous in this respect. This debate would be uninteresting if religion was one-dimensional. Religion was our first attempt to make sense of our surroundings. It was our first attempt and cosmology, for example, to make sense of what goes on in the heavens. It was our first attempt and what I care about the most, the study of literature and literary criticism. It gave us texts to deliberate and even to debate about even if some of those texts were held to be the word of God and beyond review and beyond criticism, nonetheless the idea is introduced and it had never been introduced before. It's our first attempt at health care, in one way. If you go to the shaman or the witchdoctor or you make the right propitiations, the right sacrifices and you really believe in it you do have a better chance of recovery. Everybody knows it's a medical fact: morale is an ingredient in health and it was our first attempt at that, too. It was our first very bad attempt at human solidarity because it was tribe-based but nonetheless it taught that there were virtues in sticking together. And it was our first attempt, I would say, also—this is not an exhaustive list—at psychiatric care and dealing with the terrible loneliness of the human condition, at what happens when the individual spirit looks out, shivering, into the enormous void of the cosmos and contemplates its own extinction and deals with the awful fear of death. This was the first attempt to apply any balm to that awful question. But, as Charles Darwin says of our own evident kinship with lower mammals and lower forms of life, "We bear," as he puts it in the <i>Origins of Species</i>, "We bear always the ineffaceable stamp of our lowly origin." I'll repeat it, "the ineffaceable stamp of our lowly origin." Religion does the same thing. It quite clearly shows that it's the first, the most primitive, the most crude, and the most deluded attempt to make sense. It is the worst attempt, but partly because it was the first. So the credit can be divided in that way. And the worst thing it did for us was to offer us certainty, to say, "These are truths that are unalterable; they're handed down from on high; we only have to learn God's will and how to obey it in order to free ourselves from these dilemmas." That's probably the worst advice of all. Heinrich Heine says that if you're in a dark wood on a dark night and you don't know where you are and that you've never been through this territory before you may be well advised to hire as a guide the local mad, blind old man who can feel his way through the forest because he can do something you can't. But when the dawn breaks and the light comes, you would be silly if you continued to operate with this guide, this blind, mad old man, who was doing his best with the first attempt. To give you just two very contemporary examples: to have a germ theory of disease relieves you of the idea that plagues are punishments. That's what the church used to preach, that plagues come because the Jews have poisoned the wells, as the church very often preached, or that the Jews even exist and are themselves a plague, as the church used to preach when it felt strong enough and also was morally weak enough and had such little evidence. You can free yourself from the idea that diseases are punishments or visitations. If you study plate tectonics you won't do what the Archbishop of Haiti did the other day speaking to his sorrowing people after his predecessor had been buried in the ruins of the cathedral at Port-au-Prince along with a quarter of a million other unfortunate Haitians whose lives were miserable enough as it was, and to say, with the Cardinal Archbishop of New York standing right next to him that God had something to say to Haiti and this is the way he chose to say it. If you study plate tectonics and a few other things you will free yourself of this appalling burden from our superstitious, fearful, primate past. And I suggest, again, to an institution of higher learning, that's a responsibility we all have to take on. If we reflect—some people say the great Stephen Jay Gould, who I admired very much, from whom we all learned a great deal about evolutionary biology, used to say, rather leniently I think, that, "Well, these are non-overlapping magisteria, the material world, the scientific world and the faith world." I think "non-overlapping" is too soft. I think it's more a question, increasingly, of it being a matter of incompatibility, or perhaps better to say, irreconcilability. Just if you reflect on a few things I'll have time, I hope, to mention. My timer, by the way, isn't running so I'm under your discipline, Professor. You'll give me...<br /><br />MODERATOR: Four and a half minutes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very good. When we reflect that the rate of the expansion of our universe is increasing—it was thought until Hubble that we knew it was expanding but that surely Newton would teach us that the rate would diminish. No, the rate is increasing, the Big Bang is speeding up. We can see the end of it coming increasingly clearly. And while we wait for that we can see the galaxy of Andromeda moving nearer towards the collision that's coming with us, you can see it in the night sky. This is the object of a design, you think? What kind of designer, in that case? To say that this must have an origin and now we know how it's going to end, why ask why there's something rather than nothing when you can see the nothingness coming only replaces the question. Faith is of no use in deciding it. And that's on the macro level. From the macro to the micro: 99.8% of all species ever created, if you insist, on the face of this planet have already become extinct, leaving no descendants. I might add that of that number, three of four branches of our own family, <i>Homo sapiens</i>—branches of it, the Cromagnans, the Neanderthals, who were living with us until about 50,000 years ago, who had tools, who made art, who decorated graves, who clearly had a religion, who must have had a god, who must have abandoned them, who must have let them go, they're no longer with us, we don't know what their last cries were like. And our own species was down to about 10,000 in Africa before we finally got out of there, unforsaken this time or so far. To move from the macro, in other words, to the micro: our own solar system is only half way through it allotted span before it blows up and as Sir Martin Ryle, the great Astronomer Royal and Professor of Cosmology at Cambridge, and incidentally a believing Anglican says, "By the time there are creatures on the earth who look as the sun expires they will not be human. It will not be humans who see this happen if our planet lives that long. The creatures that watch it happen will be as far different from us as we are from amoebae and bacteria." Faced with these amazing, overarching, titanic, I would say awe-inspiring facts—like the fact that ever since the Big Bang every single second a star the size of ours has blown up. While I've been talking, once every second a star the size of our sun has gone out—faced with these amazing, indisputable facts, can you be brought to believe that the main events in human history, the crucial ones, happened 3,000 to 2,000 years ago in illiterate, desert Arabia and Palestine? And that it was at that moment only that the heavens decided it was time to intervene and that by those interventions we can ask for salvation? Can you be brought to believe this? I stand before as someone who quite simply cannot and who refuses, furthermore, to be told that if I don't believe it that I wouldn't have any source for ethics or morality. Please don't pile the insulting onto the irrational and tell me that if I don't accept these sacrifices in the desert, I have no reason to tell right from wrong.<br /><br />MODERATOR: One minute. <br /><br />HITCHENS: One minute, good. Then I'll have to prune and you'll be the losers, but I'll have a—there's a rebuttal coming. Alright, look at the contemporary religious scene. I return to religion as well as faith and belief: Israeli settlers are stealing other people's land in the hope of bringing on the Messiah and a terrible war. On the alternative side, as it thinks of itself, the Islamic jihadists are preparing a war without end, a faith-based war based on the repulsive tactic of suicide murder and all of these people that they have a divine warrant, a holy book, and the direct word of God on there side. We used to worry when I was young, what will happen when a maniac gets hold of a nuclear weapon? We're about to discover what happens when that happens: the Islamic republic of Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon and by illegal means that flout every possible international law and treaty. Meanwhile in Russia, the authoritarian, chauvinistic, expansionist regime of Vladimir Putin is increasingly decked in clerical garb by the Russian orthodox church, with its traditional allegiance to czarism, serfdom and the rest of it and Dinesh would have to argue—I'll close on this—Dinesh would have to argue that surely that's better than there be a mass outbreak of secularism in Russia and Iran and Israel and Saudi Arabia and I would call that a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> and I'll leave you with it and I'll be back. Thanks. <br /><br />REA: And now Dinesh D’Souza.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLiXwuIwx0hQqjkKbwEekr0bojkBpoFVbQA0bsKB7Nfb8v1bmDg0qf3EHsYoUXvdaKR58-qXsriMToLwa_koAnHMZhFEh0Ztk5Y296D0YGsC0gYMZEnwIjYUoo1KJkZV3aYZAhjmxyax-/s1600/dsouzafrog.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLiXwuIwx0hQqjkKbwEekr0bojkBpoFVbQA0bsKB7Nfb8v1bmDg0qf3EHsYoUXvdaKR58-qXsriMToLwa_koAnHMZhFEh0Ztk5Y296D0YGsC0gYMZEnwIjYUoo1KJkZV3aYZAhjmxyax-/s320/dsouzafrog.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529755336557590754" /></a>D'SOUZA: Thank you very much. I’m delighted to be here. It's—wow, this is a beautiful auditorium, quite an event. I understand that tickets were very—I almost didn’t get in myself. I have been listening with some interest to Christopher Hitchens. Listening to him I feel a little bit like Winston Churchill during the Boer War. He said, “It is always exhilarating to be shot at without result.” And I say this because even if everything that Christopher Hitchens says is true, he has hardly demonstrated religion to be a very serious problem at all. He seems to say religion is built into human nature; it’s an evolutionary development; that man has been searching for explanations since he has set foot on the planet; religion supplied functional explanations; now, perhaps, we have better ones. Even if all this were true—I’m going to dispute and show it’s not true—but even if it were true, this would hardly be a damning indictment of religion. Science itself has developed in the same way: it’s been an explanation, it’s gotten better over time. But what I want to do is meet Christopher on his own ground. He says we should be doubters, and I’m going to be a doubter. He says we should be skeptics and I endorse that completely. In this debate at no time will I make any arguments that appeal to Revelation, Scripture, or Authority. I’ll make arguments based on reason alone. And I want to engage the argument on Hitchens’ own ground by—not by making the easy argument for the utility of religion (it’s good for us, it makes practical sense, it’s consoling, that’s all true) I’m going to actually make an argument for the truth of religion. And the argument I’m going to make—well, I call it the presuppositional argument but it’s an argument that requires a little bit of explanation. Imagine if you’re a detective and you approach a crime scene and all the evidence points to a suspect but it turns out he couldn’t have done it. Why? Because the body was dumped in one location and he was in a completely different location. And then it hits you as a detective, “Wait a minute, perhaps the guy had an accomplice.” Now, you don’t know that he did. But the assumption that he did suddenly makes sense of all the other facts that were previously mysterious. Suddenly you see how the crime was committed to its very detail. If this seems like a little bit of an unusual way to argue, I want to emphasize that this is precisely the way in which scientists argue when faced with new phenomena. For example, scientists looking at galaxies out there have noticed that the galaxies hang together and yet when you measure the amount of matter in them there’s not enough gravity to hold the galaxies together, they should be flying apart. And so scientists presuppose that there is some other form of matter (they call it dark matter) that must be there exercising a gravitational force so even though we can’t see the dark matter (it’s detectable by no instrument) it explains what we do see. The presupposition of dark matter clarifies the matter that is in front of us. Now what I’m going to try to do is adduce some puzzling facts about life and then ask whether the presupposition of God explains those facts—explains those facts better than any rival explanation. Christopher Hitchens has spent a lot of time telling us about evolution, and evolution as an effort to explain the presence of life on the planet. But of course evolution does not explain the presence of life on the planet. Darwin knew that. Evolution merely explains the transition between one life form and another. That’s very different from accounting for life itself. Consider, for example, the primordial cell. If you read Franklin Harold’s book <i>The Way of the Cell</i> (this is a biologist at University of Colorado in Boulder) he describes the cell as a kind of supercomputer. It is of a level of complexity—even Richard Dawkins, in his work, describes the cell as a kind of digital computer. Now the cell can't have evolved because evolution presupposes the cell. Evolution requires a cell that already has the built-in capacity to reproduce itself. So how did we get a cell? The very idea that random molecules in a warm pond through a bolt of lightning assembled a cell would be akin to saying a bolt of lightning in a warm pond could assemble an automobile or a skyscraper. It’s preposterous. Richard Dawkins knows it’s preposterous and, therefore, when asked, “How did we get life originally?” he said, “Well, maybe Aliens brought it from another planet.” It’s ridiculous, but it’s, in a way, the best explanation he could come up with other than Intelligent Design. So there we go, we have the mystery of the cell. But evolution raises further puzzles because evolution depends upon a universe structured in a certain way. Evolution depends on a sun that’s eight light-minutes away. Evolution depends on the constants of nature. If I were to pick up a pen and drop it, it would fall at a known acceleration to the ground, gravity. The universe has a whole bunch of these constants, hundreds of them. Scientists have asked what if these constants, on which evolution depends, what if these constants were changed just a little bit? What if the speed of light were a little slower or a little faster? This question is addressed by Stephen Hawking in his book <i>A Brief History of Time</i>. He says that if you change these constants of nature at all (and he’s talking about the rate of expansion of the universe) he says if you change that, not 10% or 1%, but one part in a hundred thousandth millionth million, we would have no universe, we would have no life, not just <i>Homo sapiens</i>, no complex life would have evolved anywhere. In other words our very existence here is dependent upon the fine-tuning of a set of constants in nature. We’re not talking about just on earth, but the entire universe. This argument, that is sometimes called the anthropic principle of the fine-tuned universe, this has put modern atheism completely on the defensive. Why should the universe be structured in precisely this way and no other way? What is the best explanation? Is there an atheist explanation? I’d like to hear it. Let’s move on in thinking about evolution because evolution cannot explain the depth of human evil. What I mean by this is simply this: evolution presumes cruelty, evolution presumes harshness but it is a harshness tempered by necessity. Think of a lion: it wants to eat the antelope because it’s hungry. But have you ever heard of a lion that wants to wipe every antelope off of the face of the earth? No. So how do you explain this human evil that far outruns necessity and reaches depths that seem almost unfathomable. Evolution cannot account for rationality because evolution says we are programmed in the world to survive and reproduce. Our minds are organs of survival. They are not organs of truth. So if we believe in rationality we require something outside of evolution to account for that. Evolution can’t even account for morality. And this requires a little bit of explanation. So think of a couple of morals facts. And I’m not talking about heroic deeds of greatness, think of simple things: getting up to give your seat to an old lady in a bus; donating blood; there’s a famine in Haiti, you volunteer your time or you write a check. Now, if we are evolved primates who are programmed to survive and reproduce, why would we do these things? There’s a whole literature on this and basically, it comes down to this: the advocates of evolution say, “Well, evolution is a form of extended selfishness. If a mother jumps into a burning car to save her two children, that’s because she and her children have the same genes.” So what seems like an altruistic and noble deed is actually merely a cunning strategy on the part of the mom to make sure her genes make it into the next generation. (We’re not talking about her Levi’s, we’re talking about her genetic inheritance.) Or, evolution appeals to what can be called reciprocal advantage. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. A business man may be nice to a customer, not because he thinks he’s a great guy, but because he wants him to come into the store again. But these two common evolutionary strategies to explain morality don’t explain the three examples I gave at all. I’m in a bus, the old lady hobbles in. She’s not a relative, she isn’t grandma, so genetic kinship doesn’t come into it and neither does reciprocal advantage. I don’t say, “Well, you know, I think I’ll give her my seat because next week I want her seat.” No, you give up your seat because you’re a nice guy. You give up blood because you want to do a good thing. You donate your time to help strangers who are genetically unrelated to you and can’t reciprocate your favors. These are the simple facts of morality in the world and what is the evolutionary explanation for them? There is none, or if there is one, I would like to hear it. So in debating these issues very often it’s very easy to knock the burden of proof onto the theist and say, “You explain everything.” But no, in the world we’re not in a position where there’s only one explanation contending, there are rival explanations. There is a theist explanation (the God explanation) and there is a non-theist, or atheist explanation. We have to weigh the two against each other. My contention is that the atheist explanation flounders when confronted with all these facts: the complexity of the cell, the fine-tuning of the universe, the fact of morality, the depth of human evil, the reality of morality in the world. What about the God explanation? Seems obvious to me it does one heck of a lot better. Why do we have a cell that shows the structure of complexity? Because the cell has been intelligently design perhaps by an intelligent designer. Why does the universe show complexity and rationality? Well, those are the characteristics of the creator who made it that way. Why are there depths of human evil? Because our lives are a cosmic drama in which good and evil are in constant struggle (the Christian story). Why is there morality in the world? Why do we all feel, even when it works against our advantage, a moral law within us? Well that’s because there is a moral lawgiver who gave it to us. So when we put it all together, the presupposition of God—God is invisible, I concede that, we can’t see Him. But if we posit Him, all these mysterious facts—suddenly the lights come on. It provides an explanation—now, again, with any presuppositional argument there may be a better alternative explanation and so I put the ball into Christopher Hitchens’ court to say if you can explain these facts better than I can, I will happily, as a skeptic, concede to your point of view. GIve me a better explanation for these facts. I leave you with this thought: ultimately, we know that belief is good for us. If it was a primitive explanation of 3,000 years ago, why would it be the case that religion hasn’t disappeared 3,000 years ago? Why is it the case that we’re actually seeing religious revivals around the world? Why is the fact of religious experience—it’s almost as if you go to a village and 95% of those people in the village say, “We know this guy named Bill. Why? Because we interact with him, we relate to him, we have experience of him.” Five guys say, “We’ve never met Bill,” and three of them say, “There is no Bill. The other 95% are making him up.” Now, which is more likely? Is it likely that the 3% are right and the 95% are lying or hallucinating? Or, is it more likely that the 95% are right and the other 3% just don’t know the guy. When you look at the fact of religious experience in the world today, to simply write it off as a primitive explanation of why ancient man couldn’t explain the thunder seems idiotically unrelated to the fact that religion serves current needs and current wants. So religion is not the problem. God is not the problem. God is, in fact, the answer to the problem. Thank you. <br /><br />HITCHENS: I never hear Dinesh doing that without thinking what a wonderful Muslim he would make. You try telling a hundred people in Saudi Arabia that you don’t think the Prophet Mohammed really heard those voices. You’re going to be really outvoted. And yes, Dinesh, I have noticed there are religious revivals going on, pay a lot of attention to them. I don’t find them as welcome, perhaps, as you do. And on your detective hypothesis, don’t you think there’s something to be said for considering unfalsifiability when constructing a hypothesis? For example, Albert Einstein staked his reputation. He said, “If I’m wrong about this, then there will not be an eclipse at a certain time of day and month and year off the west coast of Africa and I will look a fool. But if I’m right there will be one," and people [inaudible] gathered thinking, “He can’t be that smart,” and he was. Professor J. B. S. Haldane used to be asked, “Well, what would shake your faith in evolution?” This was when it was much more controversial than it is now and I’m impressed to find that Dinesh believes in Intelligent Design which really does require, I would think, a leap of faith, but there it is. Haldane said, “Well, show me rabbits’ bone in the Jurassic layer and I’ll give up.” Now can you think of any religious spokesman you’ve ever heard who would tell you in advance what would disprove their hypothesis? Of course you can’t, because it’s unfalsifiable. And we were all taught, weren’t we, by Professor Karl Popper, that unfalsifiability in a theory is a test not of its strength, but of its weakness. You can’t beat it. The Church used to say, “No, God didn’t allow evolution. Instead He hid the bones in the rocks to test our faith.” That didn’t work out too well. So now they say, “Ah, now they know about it, it proves how incredibly clever He was all along.” It’s an infinitely elastic airbag. And there’s no argument that I can bring or that anyone can bring against it, and that’s what should make you suspicious. Then a question for Dinesh (I know I’m supposed to be answering them as well as asking them, but it does intrigue me when I debate with religious people) he announced, I have his words, he was going to talk without reference to Revelation, Scripture, or Scriptural Authority. Now, why ask yourselves then—I'll ask you, why is that? Why do I never come up against someone who says, “I’ll tell you why I’m religious: because I think that Jesus of Nazareth is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father except by Him and if you’ll believe on this you’ll be given eternal life.” I’d be impressed if people would sometimes say that. Why do the religious people so often feel they must say, “No we don’t—well that’s all sort of metaphorical.” In what sense are they then religious? You’ll notice that Dinesh talked about the operations of the divine and the creator only in the observable natural order. That’s what used to be called the deist position. It was the position held by skeptics like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson by the end of the eighteenth century. It was as far as anyone could see before Darwin and before Einstein. There appeared to be evidence of design in the universe. But there was no evidence of divine intervention in it, very important point. The deist may say, and I would have to say, it cannot be disproved that there was a first cause and it was godly. That cannot be disproved, it can only be argued that there’s no evidence for it. But the deist, having established that position, if they have, has all their work still ahead of them to show there is a god who cares about us, even knows we exist, takes sides in our little tribal wars, cares who we sleep with and in what position, cares what we eat and on what day of the week, arbitrates matters of this kind. That’s the conceited, that’s the endless human wish to believe that we have parents who want to look out for us and help us not to grow up or get out of the way. And so it surprises me that there are no professions of real religious faith ever made on these occasions. Now, I suppose I should then say what my own method in this is, since I was challenged on that point. Take the two figures of Jesus of Nazareth and Socrates. I believe Jesus of Nazareth operates on the fringe of mythology and prehistory. I don’t think it’s absolutely certainly established there is such a person or that He made those pronouncements or that He was the son of God or the son of a virgin or any of these things. And I would likewise have to concede that we only know of the work of Socrates through secondhand sources, in the same way, second or thirdhand. Quite impressive ones in some cases, from Plato’s <i>Apology</i>, but it can't be demonstrated to me that Socrates ever walked the streets of Athens.<br /><br />REA: That’s five minutes.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: How many?<br /> <br />REA. That’s five minutes.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: That’s five. Just quickly then: if it could shown to a believing Christian the grave of Jesus opened and the body of him found and the resurrection disproved—if that could be archaeologically done for the sake of argument—it would presumably be a disaster for you. You’d have to think, “Then we’re alone. Then how are we going to know right from wrong? What can we do?” I maintain with Socrates that on the contrary, the moral problems and ethical problems and other dilemmas that we have would be exactly the same as they are: what are our duties to each other? How can we build the just city? How should we think? How can we face the possibility of our loneliness? How can we do right? These questions would remain exactly as they are and as they do. And so all that is necessary is to transcend the superstitious, transcend the mythical, and accept the responsibility, take it on ourselves that no one can do this for us. And I would hope that in a great university, that thought might carry the day. Thank you. <br /> <br />D’SOUZA: Somewhat like the mosquito in the nudist colony I’m trying to decide where to begin. I might begin by noting that in my opening statement I offered a bit of a challenge to Christopher Hitchens. I mentioned anomalous features of the world as it is and of the evolutionary explanation and offered to him the chance to offer a rival theories that might do better than the God explanation. I just want to note that he has offered none. Instead, what he has offered is the idea that science is based on verifiability but religion not. This I think is, in fact, not true and he said no one’s ever given him an example of it and I’m about to give him two: the ancient Hebrews asserted (uniquely by the way, of all religions) that God made the universe out of nothing. Now, incidentally, the idea that God or gods made the universe is a very old idea, but in every other religion God or gods fashioned the universe out of some other stuff. God is a kind of carpenter, he took the stuff of the universe and He made life and He made man. But the Hebrews said, “No, there was nothing and then there was a universe.” And I want to suggest that modern science has proved this to be 100% correct. If you go to an introductory physics class at Notre Dame you will learn that, as a direct consequence of the Big Bang, not only did the universe have a beginning, not only did all the matter have a beginning, but space and time also has a beginning. In other words, first there was nothing, no space, no time, and then there was a universe with space and time. Suddenly the Christian concept of eternity, of a god being outside of space and time, which for centuries was scientifically unintelligible is now not only coherent, but riding along side the most cutting-edge discoveries in modern physics and modern astronomy. The ancient Hebrews in the Old Testament predicts the people of Israel, after being dispersed, would return; there would be, if you will, a reuniting of the state of Israel. Until the 1940s this was a possibility historically so preposterous that if someone had actually suggested it, they would meet with derisive laughter. And yet it has, in fact, happened, just as the Bible said it would. Now, these are not scientific theories. If you talk to the ancient Hebrews and say, “How do you know that there was nothing and there was a universe?” They didn’t do any scientific experiments. They basically said, “God told me.” But I’m saying that if you look at that as a prophecy or as a factual claim about the world, we now know 2,000 years later that it is, in its essence, correct. The reason that I can’t go on like this is because religion addresses different types of question than scientific questions. Here are three. Here we are, flung into the world. One question we have is, “What’s the purpose of our life?” or “Why are we here?” or “Where are we going? What happens to us after we die?” Here are the scientific answers to those three questions: “Don’t have a clue,” “Don’t have a clue,” and “Don’t have a clue.” We are no closer to answering those questions scientifically than we were since the time of the Babylonians. So what is wrong in looking to religion to supply explanations in a domain where science is utterly inert, inarticulate, and, in fact, mute? You can’t just say that if you understand the ballistics of plate tectonics, you understand purpose. It would be as if my dad took me on his knee and gave me a spanking and Christopher Hitchens goes, “Don’t think he’s angry with you only if you understood the ballistics of the cane, you would have a full explanation of what’s going on.” Or on the other hand if I put of pot of tea on the kettle and began to boil it, Hitchens can’t say that, “Well if I tell you about the”—if you say, “What’s going on here?” Well, the scientific explanation is that water, when heated, the molecules expand, the temperature rises. But there’s another explanation: Dinesh wants to have a cup of tea. So explanations work at more than one level. And finally Christopher asks, “Why argue this way?” Well we know about presenting the case the other way. In fact, you get it in church or you get it in synagogue or you get it every Sunday, the argument from the Bible, the argument from authority. I know it’s a useless argument to use in a secular setting especially when debating with an atheist. If I say I believe in Jesus because the Book of Matthew says this or the Gospel of Luke says that, he’s going to say, “Well, who cares what the Gospel of Luke says? I don’t accept the authority of the Bible to adjudicate the matter.” So we are at a state of culture….<br /> <br />REA: That’s five minutes.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: …in which we have to use rational arguments if we are trying to communicate in secular venues. So here we are at a university. What could be more appropriate than to address these arguments in the vocabulary of reason? Christopher wants me to fling the Bible at him so that he can then claim the high ground of science and reason. What flummoxes him is when I use science and reason itself to torpedo his arguments. That’s when you get him going down on his knees and praying for some more quotations from Scripture. Thank you very much.<br /> <br />REA [After explaining how they will take audience questions and after warning the audience to keep their questions pithy]: As I understand it, the basic argument that Christopher Hitchens is giving—I haven’t seen the text—but as I understand it the argument can be summed up roughly like this: religion gives explanations, science gives better explanations, our job is to go with the best explanations, so we ought to go in for science all the time and set religion aside as superstition. D’ Souza wants to address this on Hitchens’ turf, so I’m going to start by asking a question of D’Souza. It looked like your goal was to show that theistic explanations are in fact better than scientific explanations. As I saw it, what you in fact said showed that scientific explanations are often problematic, incomplete, and gappy, but I don’t think you showed that theistic explanations are better and just to pick a couple of examples: so, for example, you talked about the fine tuning argument, so here’s a case where maybe belief in God explains certain features of the universe better than atheistic theories would but of course one wonders if the world is superintended by a perfectly good god, whence the Holocaust, whence all manner of horrendous evil and suffering so all of the sudden it looks like the appeal to God to explain features of the universe, it’s not clear that theism’s winning. Take morality too, right? On the one hand, sure we maybe can understand where moral laws come from if there’s a divine lawgiver. On the other hand, Christianity has a doctrine of original sin, Christianity has other things that confound our moral intuitions, right? So, again, it’s not clear that theism wins.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: Wow, that’s a lot to chew on. Look, the standards that I’m appealing to are, in a way, very intuitive. We have currently a major scientific project to look for life on other planets. Now, truth of it is, if we were to get information that on, let’s say, the moon Europa, we found hieroglyphics, some interesting architectural structures, some apparent roving vehicles, this would settle the argument. Right away we would conclude (as long as we didn’t put them there) that there must be some other forms of life that have done that. If someone came along and said, “Molecules of sand assembled themselves into all this,” this would be an explanation, but a stupid one compared to the inference to intelligent design. So, in fact, the scientists say that even if we get radio signals in Morse Code that they would be adequate to predict intelligent life elsewhere. So, my point is let’s supply the reasonable standard. If we see a fine-tuned universe, what’s more likely, someone fine-tuned it, or it fine-tuned itself? Could the universe have created itself out of nothing? Is there some alternative explanation for the data at hand? No. So I’m simply saying let’s go with the best explanation. By the way my argument isn’t eternal. If twenty years from now you had a scientific explanation that was better, that said, “Hey, we figured it all out,” I would go with that. I would have to drop this argument. I’m saying that in the current mode of knowledge and thinking this is a successful explanation. You can’t change the subject and say, “Well, now explain the Holocaust.” That requires a different set of rebuttals. I would say the Holocaust is the product of free will. God didn’t do the Holocaust, Hitler did, the Nazis did. To try to deflect blame to God for human action voluntarily undertaken is to minimize the human capacity for evil. But whether or not that argument works, it has nothing to do with the design argument. And, finally, morality, very briefly: again, if evolution could adequately account for morality—let’s remember that the atheist premise is that we are evolved creatures in the world and that’s it. So evolution has to do a lot of work. It has to explain the human desire to give blood to strangers. If it can’t do that, then it fails as an adequate explanation for a very important form of human behavior, morality, that is seen in every culture known to man. It requires explanation. I have an alternative explanation: that in human beings there are two parts. We are evolutionary creatures in the world (that explains why we desire sex and we desire food to survive, to reproduce) but then I have this other thing inside of me, what Adam Smith calls the impartial spectator, and that’s another voice. And it’s in me but it’s not of me. In fact, it’s often stopping me from doing what I want to do. It’s blocking my self-interest. Where does that come from? How does evolution account for that? So I’m saying that the God hypothesis casts more light on that subject, the hypothesis of a moral lawgiver. In fact, even the hypothesis of a life to come, you may say a final court, in which our moral deeds will be adjudicated, explains why we act the way we do now. Otherwise, our own behavior is incomprehensible to us. That’s the strength of the presuppositional argument.<br /> <br />REA: Do you want to comment on this or just take my question for you?<br /> <br />HITCHENS: I think—well, both. I’ll stand up for your question and see if I can do both. But I know people are impatient to get to the next segment. Bring it on.<br /> <br />REA: My question for you is very quick. Your argument seems to rest on the idea that religion is an explanatory enterprise and that the warrant for believing the doctrines of a particular religion comes from their explanatory value. Why would you think that?<br /> <br />HITCHENS: Well, because of religion’s own very large claims. And because—something I didn’t have time to go into—because not all these religions can be simultaneously true. I mean, there are enormous numbers of competing religions, it’s another reason that it’s obvious to me that they’re man-made. It’s what you would expect if it was man-made: there’d be lots of religions with incompatible claims and theologies and that this would lead to further quarrelling. Either one of them is completely true, as the Roman Church used to say, it was the one true church, some of its members still do, or all of them are false, or all of them are true, which, of course, can’t be true. Now to Dinesh and the matter of anomalies and the question of <i>ex nihilo</i>: half the time when I debate it’s people saying nothing can come from nothing, you can’t get something from nothing, so since there is something, someone must have wanted there to be something (not I think a very impressive syllogism). I can’t do it all this evening, but it’s very easy for anyone to go and see Professor Lawrence Krauss deliver his brilliant lecture online called “A Whole Universe From Nothing” which explains to you how indeed you can get very large numbers of things from nothing with the proper understanding of quantum theory and then tonight Dinesh says, “Really there was nothing and the Hebrews were so clever that they knew that and therefore they must have been right about God as well.” This is ridiculous. The ancient Hebrews also thought that God made man and women out of nothing, or out of dust and clay, whereas we have an exact knowledge, or an increasingly exact knowledge of precisely the genetic materials in common with other creatures from which we were assembled. And then not content with that, he says biblical prophecy is true in respect to Palestine. This is an extraordinary thing and you were right to mention the Holocaust. If it’s true that God wanted the Jews to get back to Palestine, then it must have been true that he wanted their exile to be ended (the <i>Galut</i> as it’s known to Zionism, the exile, the wandering) and we know how that wandering was ended: by Christian Europe throwing living Jewish babies into furnaces. Well that must be part of the plan then, musn’t it? And some rabbis used to claim that, by the way. They used to claim that the Holocaust was punishment for exile. And then people started to desert the synagogue, so they shut up about it until the ’67 war. And then when the Israeli army got the Wailing Wall back they said, “Ah, we shouldn’t have spoken so quickly. Actually, this was what God always had in mind: the conquest by Jews of Palestinians.” Well you see how brilliantly that’s worked out. I don’t think it’s wise or moral or decent to try and detect the finger of God in human quarrels. I think the enterprise is futile and it incidentally shows the absurdity of all arguments from design. Thank you.<br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Thank you both for coming tonight. I’m wondering if either or both of you can acknowledge—or rather I’d like to hear your feelings on the possibility of your thoughts and your theories on religion, or lack of a god being simply a product of your environment. Or to phrase another way: if you were born to a different family, in a different place, perhaps with a different skin color, Christopher, would you still be an atheist and Dinesh, would you still be (I’m assuming) Christian, a believer in religion, or could the roles be completely reversed and are your theories and thoughts based strictly on your upbringing?<br /> <br />HITCHENS: Well, was it to me first? Well in that case I can start with a compliment to Dinesh because in one of his books he tells the story of asking his father in India, “Daddy, everyone around here seems to be Hindu, with quite a few Muslims. Why are we Christians?” And his father said, “Because, Dinesh, my lad, the Portuguese inquisition got to this part of India first,” which is, in fact, the full and complete explanation for that.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: Actually…<br /> <br />HITCHENS: So, you can tell Dinesh is well brought up in this respect and he’s made the most of it. Obviously in my case, this does not apply because—I mean, obviously if you ask someone in Buffalo, “Why’d you go to the Roman Catholic church?” he’ll say, “Because my parents were from [Posnac].” It’s the overwhelmingly probable explanation. “Why’d you go to a Greek Orthodox church?” “My parents were born in Thessaloniki.” Of course this is true. But there are a lot of people who convert. In fact, quite a large number of Muslims on their way out of Islam embrace Christianity, which is a very risky thing to do. It must be something they care a lot about and I think one should take seriously. And there was relatively easy for me, being born in England and emigrating to America, to leave the Church of England behind. That, believe me, is no sweat. Our great religious poet—our great Christian poet George Herbert refers to the “sweet mediocrity of our native church.“ What do you get if you cross an Anglican with a Jehovah’s Witness? Someone who comes to door and bothers you for no particular reason. So, enough from me.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: Well, I think we have an environmental explanation for Christopher’s skepticism: he was raised in a religion that was based on the family values of Henry VIII. Enough said. <br /> <br />HITCHENS: That’s right.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: Now, with regard to the Indian explanation, his explanation is true but incomplete. And here’s the point: my grandfather did say that to me and I began to read Indian history, and I realized that a handful of Portuguese missionaries, inquisitorial or not, would have a pretty hard time converting hundreds of thousands of people. And Indian historians who look at it have a better explanation: it’s called the caste system. See, if you were born into the Hindu caste system, and you were one of the guys on the lower rungs of the ladder, to put it somewhat bluntly, you were screwed. It didn’t matter what merit you had, you couldn’t rise up and neither could your children. So along come these greedy missionaries and maybe they had swords, but the truth of it is a lot of Indians were very eager to get out of the caste system. They didn’t need the swords. They rushed into the arms of the missionaries because they promised something that the Hindus couldn’t: universal brotherhood. It wasn’t always practiced, but even the idea of it, the principle of it was hugely appealing and that’s why there were mass conversions, not only to Christianity, but also to Islam, which makes a similar promise. So this is the historical landscape. A final point about this is that we’re committing here what could be called a genetic fallacy. We do it with religion, we can always can see the fallacy if we apply it to any other area. For example, it is very probable there are more people who believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution who come from Oxford, England than who come from Oxford, Mississippi. It’s probably equally true that there are more people who believe in Einstein’s theory of relativity who come from New York than who come from New Guinea. What does this say about whether Einstein’s theory is correct or no? Nothing. The origins of your ideas have no bearing on whether they’re true or not. So, wherever Christopher and I got our ideologies or our religious convictions, you should weigh our arguments on the merits. Thank you.<br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Mr. D’Souza, you mentioned that you would only speak basically in secular terms, in terms of defending your faith without appealing to Revelation or anything of that sort. Do you feel that there is an advantage for the world population at large for religious people to be required to defend their faith in such a venue or do you feel that we would be better off if you had the luxury of only defending your faith within congregations of the faithful and without counterpart skeptics to demand that sort of intellectual line?<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: I’ve argued that I think Christians need to learn to be bilingual. And by that I mean to speak, perhaps, two languages: a Christian language at home, or in church, and a more secular language in the public square. Not because we want to wear two faces, but because we want to make our arguments accessible to people who may not share our assumptions. And so, a lot of times if someone says, you know, “What do you think about gay marriage?” the Christian opens up to the Book of Leviticus not recognizing that the person he’s talking to does not recognize the authority of Leviticus to decide the matter. So it becomes a futile enterprise, two ships in the night. The only way to have debate is to meet on some common ground and in that sense, I think, in a democratic society the common ground of reason is a perfectly appropriate language for democratic discourse. So what we’re doing here is a secular, intellectual enterprise. If was speaking, as I sometimes do, in a megachurch or at a Catholic event, I might speak in a little different language but that’s because I’m speaking to an audience with different assumptions. <br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: I’m Ian…<br /><br />REA: [Cutting off the next audience member to offer Hitchens a chance to respond] I’m sorry…<br /> <br />HITCHENS: No, no, it was for Dinesh.<br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: I’m Ian from the Michiana Skeptics. My question is for Dinesh. (Christopher, you kind of addressed this already.) It’s on the issue of spontaneous generation. Dinesh, you used the analogy with the jet being spontaneously put together by a thunderstorm, you know, in a junkyard of sorts. I was wondering how you defend the argument that it’s more likely a creator did this when even though it’s unlikely that, say, you know, something would’ve randomly created a cell or a molecule over time. But still in the infinite expanse of things, in the vast amount of time that the universe has existed some miniscule probability that this could’ve all come about versus this blatant argument that it must have been this because it’s improbably and there is no real backing for the reverse argument. How do you, you know, how do you counteract this? And also, if you had have anything to add to this, Christopher?<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: It is true that one can always, by rerigging the assumptions, create new probabilities. So for example, there are many physicists who have computed that if you look at all the particles of matter in the entire universe, the chance of them randomly assembling to a produce a cell is essentially zero. However, you can increase that probability by adding universes and there are many cosmologists who say, “Well, what if there are a thousand universes? Or an infinity of universes? Then, in the infinity of time”—that’s a problematic statement in itself—”but with an infinity of universes, an infinity of transactions, even improbable events do occur.” The problem with that is, you can call it not only a scandalous violation of Ockham’s razor, it’s essentially syllogistic promiscuity. Because what is the evidence that there is even one other universe other than our own? Empirically, none. You’re essentially making up universes to account for the anomalies of the universe we have. So, which is more likely? It’s almost as if the atheist who’s tried to abolish one invisible god has to fabricate an infinity of invisible universes. I mean, I’d like to believe that but frankly I don’t have that much faith. <br /> <br />HITCHENS: The person violating the principle of William of Ockham here, I think though, Dinesh, is you. I mean, everyone remembers what Laplace said to Napoleon when he produced his—he was the greatest scientist of his day—his orrery, the solar system as viewed from the outside, never been done before in model form and the Emperor said, “Well, there doesn’t seem to be any God in this apparatus,” and Laplace said, “Well, Your Majesty, it happens to operate perfectly well without that assumption.” So it does. Dinesh asked earlier and I should have taken him up on it, isn’t it the case that the three questions where are we from? where are we going? and why are we here? there are three “nopes” from our side. That’s not true at all. It was incredible that he alleged it. To the question of where are we from, both in the macro and the micro term, where did we come from, the cosmological, the Big Bang and the micro, the unraveling of the human string of DNA and our kinship with other animals and indeed other forms of non-animal life. We are enormously to a greater extent well-informed about our origins and what we don’t know we don’t claim to know—very important. My admitting that I don’t know exactly how it began is not at all the same as Dinesh’s admission that he doesn’t know either because he feels he has to know, because if it’s not a matter of faith and not a matter of God he can’t say he believes in it a little bit, it must be a real belief to be genuine, and it must have some explanatory value. And he doesn’t hold it very strongly and it doesn’t explain anything for which we have better explanations. Likewise about where we’re going: we have a very good idea now of the time and the place, if you like—the time anyway when our universe and sun and indeed the cosmos will come to an end. Dinesh might say, “Well then if you look at the Bible it proves right all those who said the end of the world is at hand. There’s biblical authority, it just proves me right all along.” Yes, except that they said that by repenting you could prevent this outcome, which you cannot, ladies and gentlemen, ok? As to why are we here, good question, to which there’s so far no good answer and I suggest you keep the argument about that open and sharpen the questions and consider the infinite possible variety of answers and train your mind that way. Don’t say you already know why you’re here, that someone wants you to be here, that you’re fathered, that you’re protected, that it’s all part of a divine plan. You can’t know that and you shouldn’t say it. There.<br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: I want to get back to the basics of this debate and Professor D’Souza, you touched on this a little bit using the free will argument. I want to know ho you can reconcile your statement that belief is a good thing when so many lives have been lost due to the differing opinions of religious views.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: That is a—that is true, although historically greatly overstated. The Inquisition: when I was a student at Dartmouth, if you had asked me how many people were killed in the Inquisition, I would’ve said hundreds of thousands, maybe millions; horrible blot on Western history. Truth of it is, these things are carefully studied. Henry Kamen has a multi-volume study of the Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was the worst and over 350 years the number of people killed in the Inquisition was fewer than 2,000. Now, 2,000 people, 350 years, it works out to about five guys a year, not normally considered a world historical crime. Now, is that 2,000 too many? Yes. But my point is that while the atheists are often crying crocodile tears over the crimes of religion—crimes that, by the way, often occurred 500 or 1,000 years ago—what about the vastly greater crimes of atheist regimes committed in our own lifetime in the last century and they’re still going on. If you take Hitler, Stalin, and Mao alone, the three of them, collectively in the space of a few decades killed close to 100 million people. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. What about Ceausescu, Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot? Pol Pot, he’s a junior-league atheist. Normally you don’t even name the guy, but his Khmer Rouge regime in Indochina following the Vietnam War kills about two million in about three years. Two million. Even Bin Laden in his wildest dreams doesn’t even come close. So I’m all for looking at the historical record, but let’s look at it fairly and not blame religion for crimes when there are vastly greater and more recent crimes committed by atheist regimes. Let’s look at all sides of the ledger.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: There’s a factual and a theoretical comment to be made on that. First, I think you’re flat our wrong on the Inquisition, not that the numbers game is crucial, but the Inquisition in the Americas caused Father Bartolomeo de las Casas to convene a great meeting at the University of Salamanca to consider whether the Christian world should ever have gone as conquistadors because the genocidal price paid by the people of old Columbia, pre-Columbia, was so high. Slavery, burning, torture—no one knows the numbers are but they’re horrifying. Second, the Thirty Years War has to be considered a war of religion and we don’t know how many were killed there either but the retarding of civilization was absolutely gigantic as well as the appalling harvest of innocent population. Third, at the beginning of the First World War (a clash of empires) all the leaders were, in a sense, theocrats. The Ottoman Empire was a theocracy by definition; Kaiser Wilhelm II was the head of the Protestant Church in Germany; the czar of Russia was the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia; the King Emperor of Britain, George V, was the head of the Church of England, as you say, rightly founded on the family values of Henry VIII. Civilization has not recovered from the retarding process of that war either. In fact, we never will get over what happened in that war, and those are wars of religion. Just to stay with the point of fact and on the secular, the allegation that the other killers are secular: of the first one you mentioned, Adolph Hitler, it has to be said that—I can almost give you the page reference of <i>Mein Kampf</i>, where he says that his desire to slaughter the Jews is because of his fealty to the work of the Lord. He regards it as a holy cause, that’s in <i>Mein Kampf</i>. Maybe he doesn’t have the authority to say that, but you can’t call him secular. On the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it read, “Gott mit Uns”. Every single one of them, “God on our side” just as the confederacy had <i>Deo Vindice</i> as its official motto in the Civil War for slavery. It’s been calculated by the Catholic historian Paul Johnson that up to one-third of the SS were confessing Catholics. If you change the word “fascism” —if you take it out of the history of the 1930s, just remove it, pretend it doesn’t exist, call it a propaganda word, insert instead “extreme Christian right wing”, you don’t have to alter a thing about the spread of fascism from Portugal through Spain across to Croatia, to Slovakia where the head of the Nazi puppet regime was a priest in Holy Orders, Father Tiso. Vishy, Austria, you know the story, or if you don’t you should or anyone here who considers themselves a Catholic should know that. This is not, I’m sorry to say ladies and gentlemen, secularism. Of the others, I would actually say Pol Pot had a very extreme idea of the restoration of the old Buddhist authority known as the Angkor, but let me not quarrel too much. What was wrong with these heroic mass murderers? That they all thought they could bring about an ultimate history. They all thought that, with them, history would be consummated; history would, in fact, come to an end. They were Messianic. The whole problem to begin with is the idea that human beings can be perfected by force or by faith, or by conquest, or by inquisition. That can take an explicitly religious form or just another messianic form but it reinforces the point I began with: take nothing for certain, don’t believe in any absolutism, don’t believe in any totalitarianism, don’t ask for any supreme leader in the sky, or on earth for that way lies madness and torture and murder and always will.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: May I answer briefly, just given the nature of the topic? Let me say very briefly, first of all, las Casas was not protesting the work of the Inquisition, he was protesting the work of the conquistadors. There’s a big difference between the Spaniards who came for greed and gold and to take slaves and the church, which sent missionaries. The missionaries were on the side of the Indians and convened the debate at Salamanca at which the Pope decided that the Indians have souls and that the conquest should be stopped. Never in human history, by the way, has a ruler ordered a conquest stopped for moral reasons and it was the missionaries who made that argument. So, factually it is not true that the deaths of the Indians, most of which, by the way, were through malaria and other diseases to which they had no immunities, but it had nothing to do with the missionaries. It was driven by the greed of the conquistadors. The Thirty Years War: look at the history of the Thirty Years War and you’ll see—look at the alliances: if they broke down neatly in Catholic versus Protestant, you could say that it was a religious war, but they didn’t. Catholic France began to ally with the Protestants the moment that the Protestants began to lose. Right away you see the territorial wars over power and land are now being presented as wars of religion. Was World War I a religious war? That would make every war a religious war. World War II was a religious war. In other words, just because France is Catholic and England is Protestant doesn’t make it a religious war if they’re fighting over territory. Hitler: now here we have to be a little careful because in <i>Mein Kampf</i>…<br /> <br />HITCHENS: Yes, we do.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: …Hitler has a long section on propaganda in which he say do not be afraid to lie to make your case. There is a book edited by the distinguished historian Hugh Trevor-Roper called <i>Hitler’s Table Talk</i>. It gives detailed accounts assembled by Martin Bormann himself of Hitler’s views on a wide range of subjects. Hitler hated Christianity. He was not a religious believer. He might have been some sort of a teutonic pagan. He might have believed a weird form of ancient polytheism, but no recognizable form of monotheism and he detested Christianity.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: Not so.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: And “doing the Lord’s work” was tactical: he wanted the support of the Bavarian Catholics and the Lutheran Protestants and so he invented what he called the Aryan Christ, the Christ who comes back to avenge himself on the Jews. The churches didn’t go for it, so this is a complex history, I’ve written about it myself. The bottom line of it is, my point isn’t that Hitler was an atheist…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Good.<br /><br />D’SOUZA: …but that the twentieth century saw secular regimes which tried to get rid of traditional religion and morality and establish a new man and a new utopia, the secular paradise and look what it brought us: an ocean of blood, a mountain of bodies. So for this reason I’m concluding that it is this effort to enforce secular utopia, and not religion, that is responsible for the mass murders of history.<br /> <br />REA [To Hitchens]: You can reply quickly if you like and then we’ll go back to.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I’ll be very quick.<br /><br />REA: I’m going to let the questions go about eight minutes over time…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh good.<br /><br />REA: …because we started late and then we’ll wrap up.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: No, I should be quick. In that case, Dinesh, you gracefully withdraw the allegation that National Socialism and fascism were secular or atheistic and I’m grateful for your generosity. Second, that people change sides in religious wars for opportunist reasons doesn’t particularly surprise me. You can spend a lot of time telling a Protestant in Northern Ireland, who has a picture of King William painted on the side of his house, that when King William fought the Battle of the Boyne, his ally was the Pope. The Protestant sort of knows this—the Ulster Protestant—but he doesn’t really believe it’s true; happens to be true. Of course it’s opportunistic. Why is it opportunistic? Because religion is man-made, as I began by saying. It’s what you would expect if religion was the creation of aggressive, fearful primates. It’s exactly what you would expect and the same would be true of its non-religious attempts to create paradise. Because it’s asking too much of people and it leads to fanaticism and torture and murder and war, so all you’ve succeeded in doing is replacing the question. No, there’s no teleology; no, there’s no eschatology; no, there’s no ultimate history; no, there’s no redemption; no, there are no supreme leaders here or anywhere else. Thank you.<br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: Thank you both for the though-provoking ideas you’ve presented. I have questions about the scientific things that you mentioned. One was sort of raised earlier. You mentioned the cell as this complex thing as if it is theorized that it arose spontaneously, and I may be out-of-date, but I remember reading theories at some points about more chemical molecules that began reproducing much before any actual cells and wouldn’t that be an explanation of earlier life? And the second one has to do with the perfectly tuned universe and whether the logic of saying that life exists that fits this perfectly tuned universe is an indication of that somehow divinely created fits with the idea that there’s evolution and that if the universe is tuned in a certain way that the only possibility of life with that tuning is life as it exists now and perhaps it would be presumptuous of us to say that if it were tuned differently there wouldn’t be some other way that different forms of life would have arisen.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: Let me address those points in sequence. With regard to the cell, Darwin speculated that it might have come about in a warm pond. In the 1950s there were some experiments that generated some amino acids and there was a lot of excitement thinking that there might be a way to recreate in the laboratory the ingredients of life. Those experiments haven’t gone anywhere but more importantly that in the real world wasn’t a laboratory. If you could recreate the ingredients in a laboratory using all the laboratory apparatus it doesn’t mean it happened. You have to show that it happened that way in nature. So, the point I’m simply saying is that based on current knowledge—and all arguments have to be based on what we know now. We’re all open to new ideas in the future. There is currently no good explanation. And all I’m saying is that in any other sphere of life—if I was walking down and I looked in an alley and I see a head rolling around, I conclude that somebody committed suicide or somebody killed someone. It’s a reasonable inference from the data. You could say, “Well, that’s a rather presumptuous conclusion. There might have been natural ways in which the head detached itself from&mdash there could be, but what’s the most plausible under the circumstances? Normally, when we see intelligent activity&mdash what is science but an effort to excavate intelligence out of nature? The reason we need Newton and Einstein is because intelligence is hidden in nature. E=mc<sup>2</sup> doesn’t jump out at you. You got to test nature and pull it out. So if nature is an embodiment, a network of intelligent systems, isn’t the most reasonable explanation that intelligence put it there? If we need intelligence to get it out, how’d it get there in the first place? This seems to me nothing more than to be a direct inference from the facts. Now, I want to then say a word about Larry Krauss, who was mentioned earlier (the physicist, the universe coming out of nothing). There’s a lot of verbal jugglery that’s going into all of this. Imagine if I were to try to show the following: money comes out of nothing. Proof? All assets will be counted as “plus”; all liabilities will be counted as “minus”; the pluses and minus cancel out. We have money, but there’s a zero on the balance sheet. Money comes out of nothing. You would say this is a little bit slight-of-hand. Basically what’s going on today is what physicists like Krauss do is they identify all energy as positive but all gravitational energy as negative. They presume that the total amount of positive and negative energy cancels out and therefore the universe came out of nothing. It didn’t really come out of nothing, there’s a whole lot of energy there, but by defining one kind of energy as plus and another kind of energy as minus, presto, they cancel out and you’ve got&mdash so what I’m getting at here is that I want to show the acrobatics to which modern atheism has to go. This, by the way, is not science. Krauss is trying to make an atheist argument in an atheist venue drawing on science. But I’m saying look at the lengths to which the guy has to go to try to defy the normal operations of reason to tell us not only a molecule but an entire universe&mdash wow&mdash popped out of absolutely nothing. You can believe if it you want to, but it sure does take a lot of credulity.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: I’ll try and be terse but&mdash First, I earnestly entreat you, ladies and gentlemen, to watch Professor Krauss’ lecture for yourself and not accept that [perdoded] version of it. On the nothing question as it touches on ourselves: as it happens, it’s rather more marvelous than almost anything in any holy book. All the elements from which we and our surroundings are made are from exploded stars, from the stars that blow up and die at the rate of one every second and have been doing that since the Big Bang. Isn’t it rather magical to think we’re all made out of stardust. “Never mind,” as Professor Krauss said, “never mind the martyrs, stars had to die so that we could live.” This is a very essential reflection to be having and it dwarfs the religious explanations. You didn’t notice Dinesh that the gentlemen asked at the end, “Couldn’t it have turned out another way?” which I think was possibly the crux of his question. I’d recommend another study to you. Professor Stephen Jay Gould, who I mentioned flaterringly earlier, despite my disagreement with him about the non-overlapping magisteria, did a marvelous paleontological book called <i>The Burgess Shale</i>. This is a half of mountain that has fallen away in the Canadian Rockies, revealing the whole interior core of a great mountain. So you—and you can read of, as if on a screen the—it’s more like a bush, actually, than a tree—all the little tendrils of evolution of reptiles, birds, plants and so on, as they sprout up, branch up, and so on. And many of stop, nothing happened to them. They were quite promising but they went nowhere. And it doesn’t go up like a tree, it goes all over the place like a bush. “Well,” says Professor Gould, “it’s one of the most unsettling vertiginous thoughts I’ve ever heard from a paleontologist. Suppose that we could—which, in a way we can, rewind this, as if onto a tape—get the Burgess Shale, get the outlines, rewind it, play it again. There’s absolutely no certainty it would come out the same way, that all those branches would go off and diverge and die out or flourish in the way in the way that they do—as they did. It’s completely governed by uncertainty.<br /> <br />REA: Christopher, we…<br /> <br />HITCHENS: Any number of conceivable outcomes up with which evolution could have come, it’s another version of our selfishness, our self-regard, I might say, our solipsism, that we cannot uneasily convince ourselves that all of this happened so that the Pope could condemn masturbation, say.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: A brief—if I could a very brief rebuttal: we’re now plumbing into the depths here a little bit. I do want to point out that Gould’s thesis (rewind the tape of life and it would come out differently) which is by now a few decades old, is challenged by the world’s leading expert on the Burgess Shale, Simon Conway Morris, a paleontologist in England and also by Christian de Duve, a Nobel Laureate in chemistry, and their argument is no, thath essentially Gould had it wrong. Gould was guessing that every evolutionary pathway would cut very differently but the latest evidence is that that’s not so. Consider the evolution of the eye. For a long time, in a sense, 6,000-year creationists would say, “How could the eye evolve?” Turns out that the eye has evolved multiple times and it’s evolved in similar ways. That is telling us that evolution is not this random thicket, it tends to converge to solutions that are similar, even when faced with different kinds of organisms and different kinds of problems. So, I recommend to you not only Conway Morris and de Duve, but also a book called <i>Rare Earth</i> by a paleontologist Brownlee which basically looks at why we haven’t found life on other planets, <i>Rare Earth</i>. And the conclusion is that conditions for life to exist are so particular that it’s actually reasonable to expect that life exists only here, only on this planet. It seems almost incredible, but when you think about it it actually makes sense. Consider this: our life is completely dependent on the sun. The sun is eight…<br /> <br />REA: This is more than brief.<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: Oh, you’re right. I’m being carried away. So I’ll stop here and we’ll go to the next question.<br /> <br />REA [to Hitchens]: Do you have a very brief reply?<br /> <br />HITCHENS: It’s so nice that—and how much we’ve progressed. No one now argues against the evolution of the eye. Now the argument of the evolution of the eye is completely conceded, and then it’s used against Stephen Jay Gould. The thing to read there is Richard Dawkins’ chapter on the multiple evolutions of the eye including the fish who have four is to be found in <i>Climbing to Mount Improbable</i> to which I also recommend you. As for—I agree that it’s overwhelmingly likely that our planet is the only one that supports life. Certainly we know in our own little suburb of the solar system that all the other planets don’t support life. They’re either much too hot or much too cold as are large tracks of our planet and we have every reason to know now that we live on a climatic knife edge and in the meantime, our sun is preparing to blow up and become a red dwarf. I ask you, whose design is that?<br /> <br />REA: We will take one more question. I’m going to ask each of our speakers to let their reply to this question also double as their closing remarks.<br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Now I feel bad, it better be a good one.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: Choose well.<br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Ok…<br /> <br />HITCHENS: Tread softly for you tread on our dreams.<br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: My question is for Mr. Dinesh: You talked before about the improbability of a lot of things and given the improbability, the necessary meaning of certain things, so because it’s so—because of the improbability of life in some circumstances, because of the uniqueness of life here that this implies something. How would you respond to the thought that maybe there doesn’t have to be any meaning, that, say, as existentialists would say, there’s no inherent meaning, but we can create our own meaning, so, I guess my question is why must some inherent purpose or some trajectory? Why can’t things have just happened, albeit it very improbably?<br /> <br />D’SOUZA: I think that you misunderstand my argument if it is an inference to meaning. I’m not saying, “We have improbable events, we’ve got to figure out some kind of meaning.” No, I’m making inference to a cause. David Hume, the great skeptic, said, “There is no event that occurs without a cause.” Now true, in the weird world of the quantum we can find exceptions to that rule but quantum effects cancel out when you come to macroscopic objects and whenever you hear someone say, “Consciousness? I really don’t know what that is but perhaps it’s a quantum thing,” he’s basically saying he doesn’t know. The quantum is invoked to explain things that are unexplained. Here’s my point, here’s the argument tightened up: everything that has a beginning, all material objects that have a beginning have a cause. The universe is a material object that has a beginning. The universe has a cause. The cause could be natural or supernatural. The cause cannot be natural, because nature can’t cause itself (unless Professor Krauss is right). Since the cause can’t be natural, it’s more believable that a supernatural being and moreover a supernatural being with a lot of power and a lot of knowledge, and a lot of concern for us because life is the outcome of this process. These are reasonable inferences to a cause. I mentioned earlier the three big questions. Christopher said science had provided answers and he restated all my three questions, so none of them were my original questions. So for example, when I said, “Where are we going?” my point was, what happens after we die? Is there life after death? We don’t know. The atheist doesn’t know, the believer doesn’t know. The atheist who says there isn’t, just like the believer who says there is, is making a leap of faith. Christopher avoided the question by changing it to “Will the universe come to an end? Will the sun blow up?” That wasn’t my point. My point is what comes—what happens to us after we die? That is unknown. Science has no insight on that question. And here’s a final thought: very often we use evolution as a catch-all explanation, but we don’t subject evolution to the critical scrutiny that we subject religion. For example, Christopher invoked earlier, and it’s been repeatedly invoked, Freud’s idea that we invent the afterlife because we want to live forever. We’re upset with life, we have suffering, we have death, we imagine another world that’s better, no suffering, no death: heaven. Now, the only problem with this is, first of all, is that religions not only posit heaven, they also posit hell. And if you’re going to make up another world to compensate for the difficulties of this one it’s very odd you would make up hell. Hell’s a lot worse than diabetes, or even death, because death is just turning off the computer. But there’s an evolutionary argument against this that has now discredited the Freudian explanation and what is that? Evolution says that we are creatures programmed to survive and reproduce. It is very costly for us to invent schemes that are not true and to invest costly resources, especially for primitive man, to give money to priests to build cathedrals and pyramids, to invest in the next life. Evolution ruthlessly punishes that kind of extravagance. And that’s why this Freudian theory, which was very fashionable 60 years ago has fallen into disrepute among scholars. It makes no evolutionary sense. So the bottom line I’m getting at here is, in a debate like this—I’ve been very pleased with this debate, I think it has been actually at a higher level than a lot of debates on this kind of a topic and even some of our debates. I think we’ve been able to raise it to another level. Ultimately I think I want to show that the believer’s position, no less than the atheist’s, is an attempt to grapple with the facts, to make sense of the data, to illuminate rationally the world that we live in. Faith is not a substitute for reason. Faith only kicks in when reason comes to an end. When there are explanations and they stop. I date my wife for three years, I then want to decide if I should propose. I put in reason, I try to see where it goes. But then I say, “What is life going to be with her for the next 50 years?” And there’s no way to know. I can say, “Well, I’m going to be an agnostic. I’m going to wait for the data to come in.” Well, if I do that, she’ll marry someone else so we’ll both be dead. The data will never be in. At some point, rational knowledge has to give way to practical action and faith is the bridge between limited, always limited human knowledge, and the inevitability and necessity of human action. That, ultimately, is something that knowledge can teach us. Thank you very much.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: Well, if I’m not mistaken that was a “meaning of life” question though, wasn’t it? Whence forth meaning? Good, a good way of winding up, if you like.<br /> <br />AUDIENCE MEMBER [From the back of the hall]: Forty-two!<br /> <br />REA: <i>The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy</i>.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: I missed something there. It went passed my bat. And slightly put me off my stroke as well, just a second. Where was I? Yes, meaning. But before I go to that, just a two things on Dinesh in his last remarks. I don’t think it can fairly be said in front of an audience like this that the refusal to take a faith-based position which has no evidence—in other words, a belief that there is an afterlife or a belief that there is a supreme being—if I say, “I don’t believe it because there’s no evidence for it,” it isn’t even casuistry to say that that is, on my part, a faith-based statement. It’s instead a refusal of faith and a refusal to use it as a method of reasoning. So, it’s not comparing like with like at all. Second, not just completely to defend Sigmund Freud, Dinesh is right in criticizing Freud’s <i>Future of an Illusion</i> to the extent that when people are subject to wish thinking, we might expect them to be purely hedonistic, only to want the best, to say, “Let’s imagine a comforting future while we are about it, is something that will cheer us all up.” As a matter of fact we’re not as nice as all that. We don’t want everyone going to hell—excuse me, we don’t want everyone going to heaven. As the old English sect used to say, “We are the pure and chosen few and all the rest are damned. There’s room enough in hell for you, we don’t want heaven crammed.” And the great existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre said that hell is other people, but actually what many people mean is hell is for other people and they have just a strong a wish thought that other people suffer eternally as they have the thought and the wish for themselves that they should be in paradise. You can see it very explicitly when you see other versions of the paradise myth like the Muslim one, or early Christian versions where part of the pleasure of being in heaven was knowing that other people were burning forever. And that’s what you’d expect from a predatory, fearful, partly-evolved, primate species that was making up a religious story about itself. It sounds exactly as you would expect it to do. Alright, well believing in none of that, in fact thinking it’s an evil and futile belief, people have the nerve to ask me, “Well, if you don’t believe in heaven or hell, what gives you life meaning?” Do you not detect a slight insult as well as a slight irrationality to that question? You mean I’d have much more meaning in my life if I thought that I would die and I’d be given one chance, or would have been given, while I was alive, one chance, that if I’d make a mistake, I’d be condemned eternally, that that was the kind of judge I’d be facing. And in the mean time, it would advisable to live my life in propitiation of this supernatural dictator. That would lend more meaning to my life, than my view counter to Pascal, <i>contre</i> Pascal, that if there’s any such church, I’ll be able to say, “At least I never faked belief in you in order to win your approbation, sir,” (or ma’am, as the case may be) and if you are as reported, you have detected my thoughts, and at least I wasn’t a hypocrite. Pascal says, “No, at least pretend you believe, it’s win-win.” This is corrupt reasoning. It’s the reasoning of the huckster and it lends no meaning to life at all. Still, why do I care? For example, why do I care? Why do I care about Rwanda? Why do care about my Iranian friends fighting theocracy? Why do I give up my own time to them? Well I’ll tell you why, and I say it, I suppose, at the risk of embarrassment: it gives me great pleasure to do so. I like to that I’m—since we only have one life to live that I can help people make it free as best I can and assist them in their real struggle for liberty, which in its most essential form is the struggle against theocracy, which is the original form that dictatorship and violation of human rights actually takes. I enjoy doing it and I enjoy the sort of people it makes me come in contact with. And I like giving blood. (Passively, I mean.) I don’t like spilling it but I don’t mind having it run off me in a pint because, strangely enough, it’s a pleasurable sensation. And you know that someone else is getting a pint of blood and you aren’t losing one because with a strong cup of tea or bloody Mary, you’ll get it back—or both, you’ll get it back. So it used to appeal to me in my old socialist days, it’s the perfect model for human solidarity. It’s in your interest to do it. Someone else benefits, you don’t lose and if like me you have a rare blood group, you hope that other people do the same thing so there’s enough blood when your own turn comes. And it’s an all-around agreeable experience and it’s not like being fearful of judgment. It’s much more meaningful than that. I think it’s often believed of people like myself there’s something joyless in our view. Where is the role in the atheist world, the unbelieving world, for the numinous or the ecstatic or the transcendent? Well, come on, those of us who can appreciate poetry and music and love and friendship and solidarity are not to be treated as if we have no imagination, as if we have no moral or emotional pulse, as if we don’t feel things at nightfall when music plays and friends are around, as if we don’t get great pleasure. When we meet, we don’t meet to repeat incantations we’ve had dinned into us since childhood. We don’t feel so insecure that we must incant and recite and go through routine and ritual. We meet to discuss our differences and to discuss the challenges to our world view…<br /> <br />REA: Coming to a close.<br /> <br />HITCHENS: ...from people like Dinesh. We try and use the method of the Socratic dialogue even when its conclusions are unwelcome to ourselves and though, therefore I can’t recommend atheism as morally superior, I can say that at least it faces the consequences of its belief with a certain stoicism. We might wish for eternal life but we’re not going to award it to ourselves as a prize for work we haven’t yet done. So my closing recommendation is: why not try the stoical and Socratic life for yourself? Why not examine more close the tradition, the great tradition that we have, from Lucretius and Democritus that goes through Galileo, Spinoza, Voltaire, Einstein, Russell, and many others. A tradition, I think, much greater than the fearful and the propitiatory and the ritualistic. I’ve been enormously grateful for your kindness for having me here. I want to thank you again. Good night.<br /> <br />REA: Thank you all for coming.<br /><hr><br /><br /><li>See Professor Lawrence Krauss' lecture "A Universe From Nothing"<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7ImvlS8PLIo?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7ImvlS8PLIo?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-18833804691890646932010-10-25T13:11:00.021-04:002010-11-25T15:00:50.450-05:00Hitchens vs. Hitchens, Pew Center<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hitchens>Peter Hitchens</a>: Can Civilization Survive Without God?<br /><li>October 12, 2010, <a href=http://pewforum.org/>Pew Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life</a><br /><br />[Read full transcript <a href=http://pewforum.org/Belief-in-God/Can-Civilization-Survive-Without-God-.aspx>here</a> and watch video highlights <a href=http://features.pewforum.org/multimedia/#video>here</a>]<br /><br />BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY: If I could just follow up with one thing. You have—there's been a fairly public discussion of the fact that you have sometimes been offended but sometimes warmed by the fact that people are praying for you or thinking of you. I'm wondering if—I mean, I'd like to ask you to elaborate on that last statement about your contempt because in my reading of what you've said recently it seemed as if—that perhaps you were cheered a little bit or warmed by some expressions of belief.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7aUqX8z8F1V6hC2XqHHnol58KeN5F0AeGTPeUeK5C8_Kct1UNYocoQgHkX8PAUL8fje9IniVJDn37TohPdZ8U02lcPoWhq_mEnc7HFmL50c5UZeyk_KTqcKknMhaLajtspT5kzawN8UJ9/s1600/hitchensc.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7aUqX8z8F1V6hC2XqHHnol58KeN5F0AeGTPeUeK5C8_Kct1UNYocoQgHkX8PAUL8fje9IniVJDn37TohPdZ8U02lcPoWhq_mEnc7HFmL50c5UZeyk_KTqcKknMhaLajtspT5kzawN8UJ9/s320/hitchensc.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5532044141008442226" /></a>CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, you have the floor and you're insisting, so I'll—in spite of my reluctance—obviously expression of solidarity are very welcome and very touching to me and—in whatever form they take. I do resent, always have resented the idea that it should be—in some way be assumed that now you may be—now that you may be terrified, say, or miserable, or as it might be depressed, surely now would be a perfect time for you to abandon the principles of a lifetime. I've always thought this to be rather a repulsive mode of approach and there's a disgusting history of people either attempting to inflict deathbed conversions on people like Thomas Paine in their extremity or making up lies about it afterwards as they did about Charles Darwin and many others. That I find wholly contemptible. But it's only vestigially implied in my case. Surely I ought to think more about these things now than I would anyway? No, not at all. I've already thought about them a great deal, thanks all the same.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ6i1WNcL0Tt2rFZFcc2v_dH0eqILtx22nsz-S_iq8E1XVCkp0JoWD7DV8v0F9z7kn2Wb8C3RILQ-_QK8KtP7AdZgKxPisQt7jgPvvQP4oUzp8HmpMvsq0_xnlZJEsU49uPr2JucvHlxRn/s1600/hitchensp.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ6i1WNcL0Tt2rFZFcc2v_dH0eqILtx22nsz-S_iq8E1XVCkp0JoWD7DV8v0F9z7kn2Wb8C3RILQ-_QK8KtP7AdZgKxPisQt7jgPvvQP4oUzp8HmpMvsq0_xnlZJEsU49uPr2JucvHlxRn/s320/hitchensp.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5532044273552950130" /></a>PETER HITCHENS: Speaking for the religious side of the argument, I also think it would be quite grotesque to imagine that someone would have to get cancer to see the merits of religion. It's an absurd idea, I don't know why anyone imagines that it should be so.<br /><br />CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: [On morality] I think that we're probably doomed to some kind of relativism, or perhaps better say, approximation. I mean, who's going to tell me, "Here's a law that's absolutely true and will hold good for all time, and it's been proclaimed scripturally"? Well we might say, "Thou shalt not kill." I mean, it would be probably inevitable we'd have to start with that. But it doesn't say, "Thou shalt not kill," it says, "Thou shalt do no murder," and everybody knows that there's a real difficulty in deciding when killing is murder and that the situational ethics of this are very complicated but are common to all times and places. Different standards prevail at different times and places but that argument is an open-ended one and will remain so. I'm rather glad, as a matter of fact, from the point of both moral and intellectual and ethical exercise that you can't just tell someone one thing and that that's right and that's true for all time, there's nothing to argue about. That's why I object to the idea of commandments in the first place. Morality is not learned by orders, ok? It's acquired by experience, by moral suasion and by comparing and contrasting different ways of resolving these questions. There are thought crimes in the Ten Commandments. You're told you shouldn't even envy someone else's prosperity or property. Well, from a socialist point of view, that says, you know, you've got to just lump it if people are better off than you and from a capitalist and free enterprise point of view it says it's basically a crime to emulate—this whole spur of emulation and innovation is possibly a sin. And anyway, it's in the same list as murder as a crime, something you're thinking. Well I don't think that's an absolute moral truth at all. To the contrary, I think we'd be better off without it. So...<br /><br />MODERATOR: Ok.<br /><br />CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: ...where do we get it? It's perfectly obvious that we happen to be, as other primates are, capable of and needing to make decisions about our common welfare as well as about our own ambition. We happen to be stuck with that.<br /><br />MODERATOR: We have about four more people I want to get in before we close. But Peter, you want to speak to that quickly? And then, I'm going to—I want everyone to be concise.<br /><br />PETER HITCHENS: Quickly, yes. The question of conscience, or what Sally referred to as the hard-wiring of the brain seems to me to be one of the most fascinating unexplored subjects in this matter and it seems to me to be very, very hard to come up with an atheistic explanation of conscience any more than you could have a compass without a magnetic north. If morality evolves then morality changes. Then the things of which we most strongly disapprove now could be things which are permitted later, in which case it's not really morality as far as I'm concerned. And who's evolving it? Under what—I love that advertisement they put, maybe it didn't happen here: "Microsoft Office has evolved," by which they meant we've gone back and tried to make it a bit better than it was and a bit more like what Apple does. That doesn't seem to me to be evolution...<br /><br />CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Nor me.<br /><br />PETER HITCHENS: ...as generally understood. But the word does seem to have a remarkable number of meanings. But if it evolves then it alters, and if it alters, it's not morality and therefore we can't rely upon it and if the magnetic north kept shifting then it would be very difficult to steer your boat or your plane across the Atlantic.<br /><br />QUESTIONER: Well gentlemen, do you need religion to be moral?<br /><br />PETER HITCHENS: Yeah, absolutely I do.<br /><br />QUESTIONER: Christopher?<br /><br />PETER HITCHENS: Morality is what you do when you think nobody's looking.<br /><br />MODERATOR: Let me [inaudible]...<br /><br />PETER HITCHENS: And there's lots of things I would do if I didn't believe in God, yeah.<br /><br /><a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/13/hitchens-brothers-square-off-in-debate-over-god-in-civilization/">Read more at CNN</a>HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-9553691560696842432010-08-13T19:23:00.009-04:002010-11-25T15:58:40.427-05:00Hitchens and C. P. Farley: god is Not Great<li><a href=http://www.powells.com/staffpicks/employee/picks_farley.html>C.P. Farley</a>'s interview with <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a>: <i>god is Not Great</i><br /><li>Date unknown, <a href=http://www.powells.com/>Powells.com</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgV6MwKGOmlFhZePpwUVf96PnV4KL4uUYigg1-kdZ7SLhQ4Pk2HGYRk2HLWR4NkZnX5NF_QRFdyqeCIcJ-zF4Vp3XbPJfkZrCbwT4JYyLtQofpW7QMgdpG2gIkdwCEQp3OuXWdAlrLm8Lj/s1600/farley.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 120px; height: 101px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgV6MwKGOmlFhZePpwUVf96PnV4KL4uUYigg1-kdZ7SLhQ4Pk2HGYRk2HLWR4NkZnX5NF_QRFdyqeCIcJ-zF4Vp3XbPJfkZrCbwT4JYyLtQofpW7QMgdpG2gIkdwCEQp3OuXWdAlrLm8Lj/s320/farley.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505041315485528210" /></a>FARLEY: Your book is one of several that have come out recently that argue against religion.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's true. Books like this have been doing better than they might have done a few years ago. I think it's because people have had enough of religious bullying: the Danish cartoons, the way the parties of God are behaving in Iraq and elsewhere, the attempt to teach garbage to our children under the stupid pretext of Intelligent Design, believing that AIDS is bad, but condoms are worse — I think people have had enough of all that stuff. But then, some really excellent and important individuals like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins have decided that it's time to get out there and combat this. And it's sort of working. I am, luckily, riding their wave, or their coattails.<br /><br />FARLEY: What effect do you think these books are having?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxte-15WfHwvp7-klSq5Xe9oooWoX0mbg59Vedx4n_wR5SArHRjNWD2RZBuNw0zV5Q7iBJ8v5h__kMOLVgsTKtNSXaWCqUmDPzd3dzHuYiu8xL20qFKP7f5irAW4i6-1Szz612GrXGF4hw/s1600/hitchstare.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 193px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxte-15WfHwvp7-klSq5Xe9oooWoX0mbg59Vedx4n_wR5SArHRjNWD2RZBuNw0zV5Q7iBJ8v5h__kMOLVgsTKtNSXaWCqUmDPzd3dzHuYiu8xL20qFKP7f5irAW4i6-1Szz612GrXGF4hw/s320/hitchstare.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505043088250677234" /></a>HITCHENS: Well, the other day, for example, in London, Dawkins and I and a moral philosopher, a brilliant guy called Anthony Grayling who's also written an atheist book, were asked to debate three spokesmen of the other side. And the debate had to be moved from its original venue, which is pretty big, to the largest hall in London. They couldn't accommodate all the people who wanted to get in. They were paying to come, too. Quite extraordinary. There is something in the air about this now. People realize that they thought that the essentially secular values of the Enlightenment were fairly safe, that they wouldn't have to do anything to earn them or to defend them. They just luckily inherited what people had done before. No. In fact, we're going to have to fight for them ourselves. Good. I'm glad. I think it's a good thing.<br /><br />FARLEY: Do you see the same climate here in the United States as you do in England?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Definitely. I mean, Richard Dawkins's book has sold 180,000 in hardback, I think. This book was launched, by me anyway, at the Arkansas literary festival in Little Rock a couple of weekends ago, and it pulled in, if I say it myself, a very very full house of very enthusiastic people. On a Sunday! And I'm going to spend a lot of time in Dixie on a book tour. I asked the publisher to arrange it that way. And we've issued a charge. We've got three or four debates with local religious figures. So we're going to test this proposition that everyone in this country is a credulous believer. I don't think it's true. I'm not sure how confident even the believers are in what they believe. So, we're going to give them a run for it, anyway. It's no merit of mine, I don't think, that the book is number four on Amazon before it's published. People are willing now to push back a bit.<br /><br />FARLEY: Yes, people are a little fed up. The rise of fundamentalism in this country has been going on for some time now. But I think it took the opposition awhile to get frightened and angry enough to push back.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Indeed. I'm pretty sure that's what's going on.<br /><br />FARLEY: It seems to me that you are arguing not so much against religion as you are against people who believe in a certain kind of truth, truth with a capital T, truth that can't be questioned or doubted, truth that requires faith despite evidence...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes. The target is faith, really, the willingness of people to believe something without reason or without evidence. And not just anything, either, but the most important things. In other words, they claim to have the authority of the divine to tell people what to eat, what to read, how to have sex. They don't just say God exists, something that not even the most brilliant theologian has ever been able to demonstrate, but that they know his mind. They know what he wants me to have for lunch, or not, or, what book to have on the shelf, or with whom to go to bed. It's preposterous. If it was a belief in astrology, say, which is based on the same mentality as religion, that the heavens were arranged with you in mind, I wouldn't care. If someone believes that the most important thing about them is that they're a Capricorn, that can't do me any harm. As Thomas Jefferson says, that neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. He didn't care if there were one god or a hundred gods. But, he was wrong in saying that that was true of all religions. Because the people who do believe think they have the right to tell me what to do — with threats behind it. And that I won't have. I refuse to be talked to in that tone of voice.<br /><br />FARLEY: Which is how you are able to describe the secular totalitarian governments of the twentieth century as essentially religious?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't think it casuistry to do this. Because if you are, say, Joseph Stalin, and you have taken power in a country where until very recently the Czar, the hereditary ruler, was also the head of the church and was believed by millions and millions of people to be quasi-divine, you'd be really stupid if you didn't try to exploit that belief and try as far as possible to emulate it. You'd know it was there to be called upon. And, of course, in the case of fascism, fascism is practically another word for Catholicism, for those decades. Hitlerism was a pagan, quasi-Christian movement. And imperial Japanese fascism was actually led by a person who was a god. Not even a pope, but a god himself, for crying out loud. It's very obvious that Chinese communism is in some ways an emulation of Confucian and imperial methods. So, the task of the atheist is essentially to move people into a position of skepticism where they wouldn't fall for anything like that either. No country has ever suffered from adopting the views of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Bertrand Russell, Baruch Spinoza, etc. No one's ever said, Ha, it was only when they started to think like that that they started to build concentration camps. It's never happened. Never will, either.<br /><br />FARLEY: I thought it interesting that you wrapped Buddhism up in all this because at one point you suggest, quite rightly, that Buddhism isn't really a religion.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, but it's a faith.<br /><br />FARLEY: Is it?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, Sam Harris and I disagree very much on this, and he may possibly be right. We haven't had the full-out discussion yet. He is a sort of Buddhist. And he's definitely an atheist. What I'm saying is that it's still an appeal to the transcendent — it's a surrender of the mind.<br /><br />FARLEY: In my experience, Buddhism teaches deep skepticism, that you shouldn't trust anything you don't experience for yourself.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, but you're supposed to be the subjective judge of what you're experiencing, are you not? Look, it doesn't seem to me, given what I write about its past, that it can be as innocuous as so many people believe. I failed to mention, I meant to, in my list of things that Buddhism or Buddhists have been responsible for, that it's also the case that the Burmese dictatorship is a Buddhist one. It spends a great deal of the national product building stupas. But I know that some people will think I'm piling on a bit there. That's the only thing in the book so far that I've run into that I might have to consider rewriting. I am going to have a proper dialogue with Sam Harris on this because he is a very serious guy and he thinks I'm in error here. I'm not closed-minded. When I'm talking about Buddhism I don't feel the same sense of urgency as I do when I'm talking about Islam, say. So I'm happy to concede that.<br /><br />FARLEY: I'll let Sam Harris take it from there, then. One thing you don't discuss directly is mythology. Many people consider religions myths, not literal truths. Most of the scholars who have studied this subject — whether they're psychologists, or anthropologists, or whatever — they tend to conclude not only that all human societies have mythologies, but that we are hardwired for myth. Even more, that a human society must have a functioning mythology to be healthy. Do you agree?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, I mean, it's very very hard to disagree with that, because the evidence is that we are myth-making creatures, and legend-building creatures.<br /><br />FARLEY: So, I guess the question is, if you are opposed to a world-view based on faith, what would a healthy mythology look like?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I have to say that I think, because again nothing should be, as it were, taken on trust, I would be dubious about whatever the prevailing mythology was. But I think there could be a reasonably healthy one. Actually, there's an example I kick myself for not putting in the book. Everyone knows the story of William Tell. And in Switzerland that's what they teach the children. It's the foundational myth of the national hero and so forth. But there's a recent work being published that suggests that there really was no such person. It was quite a shock in Switzerland. You know, you're going to leave us with some of our illusions, surely? The William Tell story is not a bad one. It's a perfectly healthy national myth to have. People shouldn't mind terribly calling it a myth. The danger is when they don't think it's mythical. As with, say, Israeli archaeology, as I do discuss. They concluded that the story of the Exodus is all nonsense. It's all made up. Some people would find it had real world consequences to admit that — which it does have. The English believe in King Arthur, but it is not quite the same. People know it is partly fantasy. And, again, I think it is fairly harmless. The idea that the United States was a new birth of freedom and so forth is, I think, a partial truth.<br /><br />FARLEY: But also a myth?<br /><br />HITCHENS: There are many many mythical elements to it. It involves remembering a lot of things, and forgetting a lot of things.<br /><br />FARLEY: But doesn't this myth have harmful effects as well as positive effects?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, anything that's nationalist can turn toxic at any minute, of course, even if its ostensible claims are noble ones. Very much so, yeah. I think it's always right to be on guard about this because it's only a short step to the suggestion that almost all nations do have that God has a special providence for them. And, I find I'm even more on my guard when that starts to come up. It wouldn't be for me to say how healthy my life was, but I don't think I lead it with anything approaching a mythological faith. For me, it's enough that Shakespeare ever lived. I would, actually, be upset to find — well, I wouldn't be upset to find that the Earl of Oxford wrote all those plays. What would shake me was to find out that it all wasn't written by one person, that several of the plays had different authors. Then somehow the achievement is diminished. It wouldn't diminish the standing of the plays, but I would get the blues if that was true. But I'm absolutely willing to read the evidence without prejudice if it's ever presented to me. My proposal for the United Kingdom when it becomes a republic and disestablishes the Church of England, which we're long overdue to do (I say we, though I've actually just become an American citizen), is that we change Westminster Abbey from what it is now, a sort of bone yard for kings with a thing called Poet's Corner, where Auden and Wilde and Kipling and so on are, and we make that, instead, the centerpiece. We make it a temple of our national letters, and that of Ireland and Wales and Scotland as well. That would be worth showing to school children, and it would be worth showing to tourists. You could be proud of it.<br /><br />FARLEY: Speaking of mythologists, that was Joseph Campbell's conclusion, that traditional cultural mythologies that are believed by entire societies, like Jesus and the resurrection and so forth, are being replaced by the individual mythologies as expressed by individual artists. That mythical stories were being replaced by singular artistic visions.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I'd like to think that's the way things are going. Unfortunately, it has the corollary, what we vulgarly call celebrity culture, which I don't like either, because it has the effect of not exactly deifying but elevating mediocre human individuals into something like cult status. That, I don't trust. There are lots of secular forms of worship, and propitiation I don't like.<br /><br />FARLEY: Like Marilyn Monroe, who in the end is more like a cultural archetype than a human being.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Particularly her, as it happens. Partly because I used to worry that I was gay or something when I was young, not that that would be such a terrible thing. I could not see what was sexually attractive about her.<br /><br />FARLEY: Well, I'm gay and I get it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, good, well, I've since found that many many gay people think she's absolute heaven. Like Elizabeth Taylor. I wouldn't fuck Elizabeth Taylor with your dick. Then Briget Bardot came along and I realized I was all right.<br /><br />FARLEY: So, your sensibilities, at least with women, are more European, then. Yet, you chose to move to the United States.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I did. I had to come here to become a writer. I think I now understand why it was I always wanted to come to the United States. And it's to do with the other ambition that I always had and couldn't explain, wanting to become a writer. In some way, the two impulses were closely connected, I now realize, because I only really started to develop as a writer when I came here.<br /><br />FARLEY: Do you have any idea why that is?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, any more than I have an idea why it is that I never wanted to do anything else, wouldn't be able to do anything else: it chose me.<br /><br />FARLEY: Actually this question of Europe and the United States interested me. If the topic is religion, and you're an atheist, it seems that Europe in many ways exemplifies your ideal much better than the United States. Europe is much more of a secular culture.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, no, I really don't think so. For example, in Britain the queen is head of the church as well as head of the state. Religious instruction and worship in the schools is legally mandatory. Subsidies are paid now to provide for separate schools for Muslims, which would be unthinkable in the United States. In Germany you have to pay a tithe, a portion of your taxes to a church. You can choose which one it is, but it's extremely difficult to opt out of paying to one at all. It would be quite false not to say that France is a Catholic country. The government appoints the bishops. It also appoints the Muslim imams. It can hire and fire them. This is a disgraceful state of affairs. The United States constitution is the only ever written, and the only one extant, which explicitly separates the church from the state and says that the government can not take a side in religious matters. That's why, when I took my oath of citizenship, I arranged to take it at Thomas Jefferson's memorial in Washington, partly because I'm his biographer, but also because we have the same birthday. April thirteenth, that's the day we did it. His Virginia statute on religious freedom is the basis of the first amendment, and that's what I'm in the business of defending. And, so far, we win, because the most recent challenge to it, this absurd so-called intelligent design movement, the only really intelligent thing about it is that it's managed to get people to call it intelligent design, instead of what it is, just brute creationism. Well, even in Oklahoma and in Texas and in the most conservative county in Pennsylvania where the courts have heard this, they've flung it out, dismissed it, and told the legal system to stop bothering with this tripe. But that's not what most Europeans think of the United States. Indeed, it's not what many American liberals think of the United States, either.<br /><br />FARLEY: Explain.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, they think the place is saturated with fundamentalism, when this is absolutely not true. People like Falwell and Robertson are clown figures, in fact. They're just waiting to be even more exposed than they are.<br /><br />FARLEY: Well, they're very powerful.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No they're not. They're absolutely not.<br /><br />FARLEY: One hundred and fifty lawyers from Pat Robertson's fourth tier law school were hired by the Bush administration.<br /><br />HITCHENS: They were, yeah, but it doesn't show. It absolutely doesn't show. Has there been a single school prayer uttered? No. Nor will there be. If they won on a thing like that, it would be the end of them. The reason these guys are prominent is because they keep losing. Because they can represent themselves as a persecuted minority, which is in fact how they do sell themselves. When they were really powerful in the twenties, they were able to change the constitution. They were able to ban alcohol and ban the teaching of evolution. Now they only demand equal time, you notice, and they can't even get that. But their two big victories of the twentieth century, Prohibition and the Scopes verdict, were the end of them. Not even in the long term, but in the fairly short and middle term, they totally discredited themselves. They'll never get that position back. But even if they did, just suppose they could elect, or impose themselves upon an administration such as to mandate school prayer, ban abortion, and a couple other things, you know exactly what would happen.<br /><br />FARLEY: If Roe v. Wade were ever overturned, it would be a huge blow to the Republican Party.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes. So, in my experience the people who bang the drum all the time about the Christian Right, so called, are essentially fundraisers for the Democratic party trying to frighten Jews into giving money. These people are not within a million miles of getting their hands on the levers of power. And, if they did, it would be the end of them. So, I think it's a scare tactic. By the way, this very often comes from people who have nothing to say about someone like the so-called reverend Al Sharpton. Or the appalling religiosity of Barack Obama. Did you read the New York Times on Monday?<br /><br />FARLEY: I didn't.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, have a look at the crap church he is involved with in Chicago. Sinister, ethnic-based, cult thing. And this guru he's got. If it was a Republican doing this we'd all be absolutely surging to and fro. They get a free pass. And all this nonsense of Dr. King's dream, and so on, that I attack as well. As if you need a dream to say that African Americans should have civil rights. It's a very material fact, that had already been proved by black secularists. There's no need for a preacher to get involved in this.<br /><br />FARLEY: You also argued that Dr. King's arguments were not at their core religious, and that's why they succeeded.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes. One of the reasons I admire him so much, apart from his exceptional moral and physical courage, is that it is precisely because he didn't invoke Exodus that he can be defended. I don't think that's very often pointed out, is it? And the left in this country is saturated with religiosity, like nonsense like Liberation Theology and so forth. And that to me is just as bad, in some cases worse.<br /><br />FARLEY: Worse than...?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Than a harmless clown like Falwell, who is hopelessly overblown.<br /><br />FARLEY: Or Al Sharpton?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, Al Sharpton is a racist and a hooligan and a thug and a liar. But he gets treated with exaggerated respect.<br /><br />FARLEY: He does get a lot of air time.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I am at present listed to debate him next Monday at the New York Public Library. But I don't think he'll show up. I have a feeling on the night he won't be there.<br /><br />FARLEY: I was also struck in the book: a number of times you use the word "evil." To my mind that is a fundamentally theological or cosmological word, which to me feels at odds with your premise.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, it is, too. It is a contradiction in me. I acknowledge it. But I find the word is necessary. I've written about this at greater length if you're interested.<br /><br />FARLEY: Where?<br /><br />HITCHENS: In my little book about Iraq. It was a collection of my Slate columns on my arguments about the war. And it's called A Long Short War. You may even have it in the store. It's a little pamphlet, really. And, one of the essays in there is about the question of evil. I say that people laugh when the president uses the word evil, as if he's being morally simplistic. But when people explain their decision to once again swallow their vomit and vote for the Democratic Party they always say it's the lesser evil, don't they? So if you put the word lesser in front of it people seem to be able to use the word. But I quote Robert Fisk, one of the president's most intense critics. He went into Kuwait just after the Iraqi army had been expelled from there, in '91. He said that, walking around the place and seeing what had happened in the time they occupied it, you couldn't shake the idea that something very evil had occurred. And I was very impressed that Fisk would do that. I said I thought I knew exactly what he meant. It's not just a matter of cruelty for its own sake, it's a matter of cruelty that's going to destroy you, too. Cruelty for its own sake is pretty easy to understand as a source of pleasure. But, people who pursue it so that it kills them, too. The surplus value of fascism is evil, I would say. We need a word for it. If it wasn't the word evil, it would be another word that meant the same thing. There has to be such a term. Our universe would be incomplete without it.<br /><br />FARLEY: Evil, as opposed to mental illness.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very much so, because that is to reduce it, and try and tame it. The Greeks used to call the furies the eumenides, which means the "kindly ones" in Greek. They thought if they gave then a nice name they might not hear. You could say it under your breath, you could mention them, but they were so awful, so terrifying, that you couldn't call them by their real name. I think that's a very strong human tendency. And certainly psychoanalysis's disposal of the problem of evil doesn't work. Or, it doesn't work for me. I actually feel that I've once or twice met genuinely evil people, and I've seen the work of evil in the world.<br /><br />FARLEY: To "see the work of evil in the world." Once again, that sounds very cosmological to me.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You're right. I admit that it appears to.<br /><br />FARLEY: And I'm curious how that fits in with your opposition to faith.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It isn't an article of faith. It's a conviction, not without evidence. And I'd have to introduce you to the people concerned or show you what I saw in Northern Iraq, or a couple of things like that. But I would be able to fight in my corner, all the time knowing that to a certain extent it contradicts my rationalism. But I just defy anyone to get by without the word. And nobody does, and nobody can, and there must be a reason. If you talk about Satan or the devil or hell or any of these things, that's different. I think anyone who believes in that is a fool. Or, if not a fool, then easily fooled — and too easily frightened. But, I don't know any thinking person who manages to get by without recourse to a word like evil or wicked. There must be, therefore, a reason for that. But, when I've done my best there's still a sort of ten percent around the thing that I haven't accounted for. I do appreciate that.<br /><br />FARLEY: I would like to talk a bit about Iraq. I don't want to talk about why you believe the war was justified. You've covered that elsewhere. But I'm very curious, if you are standing against religion and for secularism, it seems that your stand on Iraq has put you in league or in alliance with many people who are on the opposite side of that argument. The president framed the war in terms of good and evil, and many religious people bought it on those terms. Meanwhile, you have made yourself very unpopular with huge swathes of the secular left. And I just find that a very curious position for you to be in.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, but I think the ironies are more at their expense than they are mine. One, it is the people who are on the left who refer to the parties of god and the jihadist murderers in Iraq as "the resistance," not me. And it's been the left that has been euphemizing Islamism since before 9/11, thinking of it as a protest of unjust conditions, which is exactly what it isn't. It's the creator of unjust conditions. It doesn't come from poverty and unemployment, it's the creator of poverty and unemployment and injustice. So, I've had a long quarrel with the left on this point, for their softness on religion, this version of it, for a long time. Second, the faction that advocated for the liberation of Iraq, apart from the Iraqi left and the Kurdish left, was, in American terms, the so-called neo-conservatives, who are renowned, among other things for — it's often a bit overstated — but for their relationship with Leo Strauss, who was a very very firm atheist. In particular, he had contempt for Christianity, as did the other best-known right wing thinker in the country, Ayn Rand. The fundamentalists are not particularly high on the war in Iraq. They're prepared to follow the president if he does something like this, for the most part. And I quote a couple of them who even thought there might be a few biblical prophecies involved about Babylon and so forth, garbage like that. But this doesn't get you out of your difficulty, because it happens to be the case that the issue of Darfur has been kept alive in this country most of all by the Christians, as has the issue of human trafficking and slavery in parts of Africa. So, if you brought up the issue of Darfur, it wouldn't really be fair of me to say that now you've put yourself in the fundamentalist camp, now would it?<br /><br />FARLEY: No.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very well, then. I think those are all the answers I was going to give on that point. But the thing I want to emphasize the most is that the Iraqi Arab and Kurdish secular left is the main object of my solidarity. And they were of one mind in getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Whereas all the religious people in the world seem to want to keep him in power. I mean all the Muslim nut bags seem to be willing to fight to keep him there.<br /><br />FARLEY: Isn't the objection from secular people that by deposing Saddam we are setting the preconditions for a Shiite state, a theocracy, similar to the one in Iran? Isn't that the concern?<br /><br />HITCHENS: It is a concern, yes. But this is what you might call a prisoner's dilemma because the fear of Khomeini was what put the United States government in the camp of Saddam Hussein in the first place. And it is, unfortunately, the case in the material world that if you weaken Iraq you strengthen Iran, and vice versa. What I think it's not completely quixotic to hope is that if you could get anything even remotely resembling a Shiite democracy in Iraq — it wouldn't be exclusively Shia, because, for example, the Kurds, who are approximately one fifth of the country, are all Sunni, but a recognition that Iraq is majority Shia, which it is — actually, it could lead to a situation where they were friendlier with Iran, where there would never be another war between the two countries, and where some of the democratic ideas that are washing around Iraq would become part of the Iranian conversation too. And indeed there are some reasons to think that is happening. I've interviewed anti-regime imams in Iran, including Khomeini's grandson, Said Khomeini, who want to overthrow the theocracy there and who've been very encouraged by what they unfailingly call the liberation of Iraq. So there's another dialectic at work in the longer run, we hope. And even if it doesn't happen any time soon, I think it's thinkable. It's certainly the side I'm on. So I feel I know what I'm doing.<br /><br />FARLEY: I think much of the distrust of this venture stems from a deep mistrust of Bush, much of which is tied to his overt religiosity and his ties to the religious right. So I also found interesting in the book how you downplayed the left's distrust of Bush's religiosity. People are very protective of the secular foundation of this country and fear that Bush is eroding that. You disagree?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I think it's overstated and sometimes misstated. The president does not say that he was born again. Only Jimmy Carter of our presidents ever said that, a man who is now on the left widely adored.<br /><br />FARLEY: But Bush has used all the language of the born again, in code, perhaps.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, he's not. Nor does he say that he's on a mission from God. He's very careful not to do that. And he's considered, as you know, to be a great disappointment by the fundamentalists, and not without reason. He is a fool, who thinks that the word faith is automatically a compliment. He said that's why he trusted Vladimir Putin, for example, because he wore a crucifix. Even he, dumb as he is, must regret having said that. And clearly he bids for the votes of people who are religious bigots. I would criticize him for all that. I just don't want it to be overstated or misunderstood. It's certainly not because of his religion that he decided to take out Saddam Hussein. The American policy in Afghanistan and Iraq depends very largely on the emergence of secular forces. That's obvious to everyone on the right, that our only friends are the seculars in these countries. Progress is measured by secularization. That is an irony I can absolutely live with. And it's at the expense of the believers in both countries. It's not a matter of people's subjective opinion of things. It's what they're actually doing. Bush is a disaster as president. And I don't think anyone doubts that I think that. But I don't think as a religious nut bag he's in the same class as Jimmy Carter, who's now being praised all over the liberal world as a peacemaker and all this sort of thing. In his book he writes that the problem with Israel is that it's too secular. Good grief! Bush is not even in the same class as a religious hypocrite in the matter of piety as Bill Clinton, with his prayer breakfasts and carrying the Bible all the time. What I think of it is, you call it the left standing by secularism. I call it trying to preserve their comfort zone, by thinking that religion is only a problem on the right. That is simply a mistake. It's a false picture of reality.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-68715904424186443192010-08-13T19:16:00.011-04:002010-11-25T14:59:11.407-05:00Hitchens and Cohen: They Call Me Christopher<li>From <a href=http://paulamarantzcohen.com/>Paula Marantz Cohen</a>'s interview with <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a>: <i>Hitch-22</i><br /><li>Date unknown, <a href=http://www.drexel.edu/>Drexel University</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyOX4CJv6vA71Juu2UzW1KsVtbgjC09a4vRaZEUV9uM6AgmhIj0WNFOb2Ra3Tt8wxVumk8f0o5mxxOSadvNd9LIWTzwpoAKGtZYnAjm5pWLs6OIQ7C0TmTKOz0qP05u__HQvUD1mshWvGa/s1600/cohen.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 174px; height: 169px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyOX4CJv6vA71Juu2UzW1KsVtbgjC09a4vRaZEUV9uM6AgmhIj0WNFOb2Ra3Tt8wxVumk8f0o5mxxOSadvNd9LIWTzwpoAKGtZYnAjm5pWLs6OIQ7C0TmTKOz0qP05u__HQvUD1mshWvGa/s320/cohen.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505047044927926034" /></a>COHEN: Christopher Hitchens, welcome to the Drexel interview.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Thanks for having me.<br /><br />COHEN: I say Christopher...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, please.<br /><br />COHEN: ...because I know that you prefer to be called Christopher and not Chris and you mention in the memoir the fact that early in your career at Oxford the Marxists with whom you were involved called you Chris and the tutors and the more elite faculty at Oxford called you Christopher and I wonder if your preference doesn't suggest an underlying political loyalty from the very beginning.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqXvnBUOCW_kntTfOQaqOfFZwjvBYvR4RXjdem-qnhA2sL-6_ehORwwvuUiXSWpld-02VEAbF4_cTk13sfNj5C51xUUNXoHRR8fc2lXACO3X-w0AjWPngN0u-uH36BjqqnnSmX-69y_8wP/s1600/younghitch.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqXvnBUOCW_kntTfOQaqOfFZwjvBYvR4RXjdem-qnhA2sL-6_ehORwwvuUiXSWpld-02VEAbF4_cTk13sfNj5C51xUUNXoHRR8fc2lXACO3X-w0AjWPngN0u-uH36BjqqnnSmX-69y_8wP/s320/younghitch.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505047582167906818" /></a>HITCHENS: The loyalty, alas, is less complicated than that: it was to my mother and to her social aspirations. She called me Christopher because she thought it was a nice name. She thought to shorten it to Chris—to circumcise it or amputate it—was a crime and especially since my second name begins with H, and in England everything depends on the aspirate, and people who drop them are crude, the next thing that happens if you are called Chris and your name is Hitchens is Chris Hitchens and that she would have thought would be unforgivably lower class.<br /><br />COHEN: Your upbringing was middle class—lower middle class would you say? I don't know if those [indecipherable].<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ah, well no one in England puts themselves in the lower, lower middle class; they always want to saw lower or maybe upper-middle, or just middle. My father's family was quite working class. They came from a tough district in the Portsmouth dockyards where my grandfather rose to be a school teacher in a rather hard school. My father got out of it by moving into the navy, going off to sea. He wouldn't have sounded like me at all, they wouldn't have spoken like this and my mother's family came from a Jewish background in Liverpool (again, by no means the forcing house of the British bourgeoisie) and both of them had sort of social aspirations, my mother particularly. And these were projected—is the word, I suppose—onto your humble servant because I was the first-born and the proof that you've moved into the middle class proper in England is very simple: at least the first-born son has to go to a private school...<br /><br />COHEN: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...and then to a university... <br /><br />COHEN: Ok, I wanna...<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...which no one in my family had done before. So, I was always acutely aware of the tiniest social nuances. George Orwell says about the English that they're all branded on the tongue from the moment they're born. It still is amazingly true.<br /><br />COHEN: So the accent.<br /><br />HITCHENS: The accent and the avoidance of certain commonplace expressions as well.<br /><br />COHEN: Interesting.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And above all holding on to the H's.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-88177961646489281922010-08-10T21:33:00.016-04:002010-11-25T14:58:25.278-05:00Hitchens vs. Kresta, Ave Maria Radio<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Kresta>Al Kresta</a>: <i>god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything</i><br /><li>April 6, 2009, <a href=http://www.avemariaradio.net/christian-radio-host.php/Al-Kresta/>Ave Maria Radio</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy4nAH6tJUbGUEhbR7JtS-IRfJFdLEvfhSS9r28To5XAQiQy3EOmv9zx6ZeRpGUnNXeGur0q1_3MR21VWsmx3z9yRkLlSDY_LwiY89JwHo_dpFJyjbLbTOAVHjpMvdDXmjgGk7fnmb4dNe/s1600/kresta.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy4nAH6tJUbGUEhbR7JtS-IRfJFdLEvfhSS9r28To5XAQiQy3EOmv9zx6ZeRpGUnNXeGur0q1_3MR21VWsmx3z9yRkLlSDY_LwiY89JwHo_dpFJyjbLbTOAVHjpMvdDXmjgGk7fnmb4dNe/s320/kresta.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491622283387998002" /></a>KRESTA: Good afternoon, I'm Al Kresta. Joining me right now, Mr. Christopher Hitchens, noted writer and journalist, well over ten books to his credit as well as multiple articles and pamphlets. I think it's fair to say that most of his work, or at least his most recent work, has presupposed the non-existence of God. And recently he's made quite a specialty of cutting through, undermining, ripping the mask off religion in all of its guises and claiming that God is simply not as advertised. Christopher, it's good to have you with me.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's very nice of you to invite me.<br /><br />KRESTA: <i>god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything</i>. Really? Crocheting? Italian food?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Aerobic dancing.<br /><br />KRESTA: Aerobic dancing.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Tantric sex, chess...<br /><br />KRESTA: You don't believe that.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNlgNyo77NEJG6f9b8b9QsP2L2QjptkTQEP7BYlSUlpZj7fq7sm2jrT4y2aeQUUZbzy4hCqrN31h3L9k_9mIR8Z9Zrqndtuezp4GqvN5AW9WJZmNAPL6Nagf_Pi3NSzTPj_nAU-BZSJXy/s1600/hitchlebanon.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNlgNyo77NEJG6f9b8b9QsP2L2QjptkTQEP7BYlSUlpZj7fq7sm2jrT4y2aeQUUZbzy4hCqrN31h3L9k_9mIR8Z9Zrqndtuezp4GqvN5AW9WJZmNAPL6Nagf_Pi3NSzTPj_nAU-BZSJXy/s320/hitchlebanon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491621325484742210" /></a>HITCHENS: Yeah, the lot. Because it poisons the well, you see. I mean, it begins by saying that we're such pathetic, guilty serfs and worms that without supernatural permission from a dictator, we can't—we wouldn't be able to tell right from wrong. So everything we might like to do, from chess to tantric sex, is overshadowed by this simple fact of religion trying to say, "You're not worthy. You are not worthy."<br /><br />KRESTA: We'll come back to that, we'll come back to that. Because I know, for some reason, that is a central part of your thesis.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's also a very snappy subtitle.<br /><br />KRESTA: Yeah I know, publishers tend to assign subtitles.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I assigned it.<br /><br />KRESTA: You got that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's designed to make people—it's precisely designed to make people ask the question that you just did.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, and that's the answer you want to give, that the best you can do is to say, "Well, I simply mean it poisons the well. Italian food is fine whether or not God exists."<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes. But better still when you've emancipated yourself from the idea that He does.<br /><br />KRESTA: You believe that emancipation from religion is the greatest emancipation of all?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think it's the <i>sine qua non</i>. I think it's the necessary emancipation, the one on which all others are predicated. Yeah, you can't be free if you're constantly afraid that you're not pleasing someone who can't be pleased.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Someone whose verdicts can't be disputed and someone whose reign is forever. It's a big brother, the ultimate totalitarianism. And you can't be responsible...<br /><br />KRESTA: I know that you want to get to the totalitarian god which, really, we will get to because that's—that and vicarious redemption...<br /><br />HITCHENS: My impression was we just arrived there.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, because—look, you wrote a book. You put something on the table. I'm looking at it. I'm going in the direction I want to go on it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You ask the questions.<br /><br />KRESTA: You got the chance in writing the book.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You ask the questions.<br /><br />KRESTA: So let's come back to this question of religion. What do you mean by "religion" because you throw in there voodoo, the Pope, fear-ridden peasants of Antiquity, suicide bombers, Martin Luther King, Jr., you even throw Joseph Stalin and snake handlers and Marian apparitions in there.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah.<br /><br />KRESTA: And you take the massive field of religion and you dismiss it <i>in toto</i>. This would be like somebody taking the field of paleontology, dismissing that <i>in toto</i> because it's had numerous false starts or misleading hypotheses or...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh no, it wouldn't be like that at all.<br /><br />KRESTA: ...corrupt practitioners or outright fossil frauds. I mean, why not write a book, something like: <i>Animals are Not Great: How Zoology Poisons Everything</i>?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because it wouldn't be comparing like with like.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, tell me why.<br /><br />HITCHENS: By the way, thank you for your attention to the book, I mean you obviously have taken care. I mean all of those examples have one thing in common, whereas the Piltdown fraud and the work of Stephen Jay Gould have nothing in common, that one of them is the negation of the other. Religion—all of these, from stupid Marian apparitions to voodoo to Scientology to Mormonism all have the same thing in common which is a claim to a supernatural revelation or authority. And I make the simple observation that there isn't a supernatural dimension to which appeals can be made, that no primate can claim to be better than other primates because they're acting with divine authority, they are able to interpret God's will and that the natural world is wonderful enough. So I'm afraid the comparisons you made won't stand up.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, the natural world <i>is</i> wonderful enough in that it's a created world and that's where you and I disagree. But you gotta make...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You'd have to agree that even if you could—even if it could be proven that it wasn't created, which I admit it cannot be proven, can't be absolutely, conclusively demonstrated, but suppose it could, you wouldn't find it any less wonderful, would you?<br /><br />KRESTA: No. I would find its <i>end</i> less wonderful and we can come back to that later.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ah, the end.<br /><br />KRESTA: Yes, because that's critical.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes it is.<br /><br />KRESTA: Because aims and teleology are important. You even believe that, right?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very much so.<br /><br />KRESTA: Ok, good. We'll come back to it then. But you have to do a lot of special pleading in the book. I mean, Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, a Baptist pastor, who is quite explicit about his Christian motivation and the Sermon on the Mount and deriving his non-violence from Ghandi, you've gotta write him off as motivated more by humanistic or secular considerations. And Stalin, who was an explicit atheist and governed according to that militant atheism, you've got to write off as religious. How do you do that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well in reverse order: Stalin, who was a seminarian of the Orthodox Church, I don't believe ever was an atheist. He certainly always kept the Orthodox Church on his side. He always maintained and appointed—helped appoint bishops. He always appealed to the Orthodox Church as far a possible also he tried to emulate the czar in claiming to be more than merely a material leader, a leader with miraculous powers who was supposed to be thanked for all the benefits he brought to the people, who could detect heresy hunts and witch hunts, who replicated all the apparatus of czarism and Russian Orthodoxy and you will now—you laugh, but...<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, you're taking—you're taking...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You laugh, but I direct you to a recent, very important article (you can get it off the website of the <i>Weekly Standard</i>) about the way the same church has just become (the Russian Orthodox Church) the official church of Vladimir Putin's new dictatorship in Russia. That's fairly well known. What people don't know is it's producing new icons to appeal to the extreme authoritarian nationalism and chauvinism of the Putin regime and these icons show Joseph Stalin—Russian Orthodox icons shows Stalin with a halo around his head. You can buy them. They're selling them.<br /><br />KRESTA: You know, from a Christian...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I mean, Stalinism—no, I have no distinction in describing Stalinism as a religion.<br /><br />KRESTA: From a Christian point of view—yes, that's exactly right and this is what we fear when you in fact take God out of the equation, when you do not believe that there's a...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You're accusing the Russian Orthodox Church of taking God out of the equation?<br /><br />KRESTA: Whoah, whoah, whoah—not when you believe that there's not a legitimate higher being then, of course, you end up with God surrogates. That's what Stalin did. Stalin created the state as a surrogate.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Excuse me, are you accusing the Russian Orthodox Church of taking God out of the equation? They're the ones who produced these icons.<br /><br />KRESTA: No, we're not talking about the icons, we're talking about Stalin, we're talk about Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist pastor who you write off as a humanist and Stalin, who's an atheist (you deny that, but most people would agree that he's an atheist)...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Maybe most people would but most people know less about is than I do. Have we finished with Stalin because it's—he's now the property of the Russian Orthodox Church so if you want him a secular figure you're entitled to try.<br /><br />KRESTA: Let me get this—I want to make sure I have this on the record, Christopher:<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />KRESTA: You're saying that Stalin is not a secular figure.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Absolutely. I'm saying Stalinism is, and was, a religion and is now recognized as such by the Russian Orthodox Church.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, we'll come back—we won't be able to come to that today.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Alright, but I think it might be something interesting for your listeners to follow up on. They'll find that I'm right. Now on the case of Dr. King what I say is that...<br /><br />KRESTA: I'm sure that's not true, but go ahead.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I assure you that it is. In the case of Dr. King what I say is that nothing that he argued for, in other words, the emancipation of black Americans, had not been argued earlier and better by black secular forces, that his model was actually not the Sermon on the Mount, it was more the Exodus story and I said what a good thing it was he wasn't really using the Exodus story because that would've entitled his tribe, in the search for its promised land, to kill everyone who got in its way, exterminate them, enslave them, and destroy their property, as the Exodus story does entitle them to do, though, as we're also fortunate enough to know now, the Exodus story is wholly made up, and...<br /><br />KRESTA: No, in fact we don't know that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...thankfully for humanity, never took place.<br /><br />KRESTA: Egyptologists like Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier have not come to accept the Exodus story.<br /><br />HITCHENS: The ones with the strongest archaeological motive for believing it (the Israeli archaeologists) have concluded that there's no evidence that it ever happened at all.<br /><br />KRESTA: No, this is—again, you're...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's not mentioned anywhere in the records of the Pharaonic empire.<br /><br />KRESTA: No...<br /><br />HITCHENS: We'll see. I mean, there's no—shall we say there's absolutely no evidence to say that it did, which, in my opinion, means that it's probably—it's fair enough to say that it didn't.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, you've got [indecipherable]...<br /><br />HITCHENS: That doesn't affect the Dr. King story.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, it does because you're making the claim that King drew upon the Exodus story which has no historical foundation. Now, why is that significant to you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because I think it's good of him that he only drew upon it, so to speak, metaphorically, not literally, that he says it's a story of a peoples' passage and journey to liberation. That's fine. But if he had followed what the story actually says, the massacre of the Canaanites, the Amalekites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, and so on and so on, it wouldn't be the pretty story that we now teach to school children about the civil rights movement. More important to me is this: that the march on Washington, the original one, the original idea was during the Roosevelt administration and for the subsequent ones, was the work of A. Philip Randolph, the great black trade union leader and secularist and Bayard Rustin, the great black organizer and socialist—secular socialist. These people have been <i>completely</i> written out of the American record. They're not taught at all, tremendous though their story was.<br /><br />KRESTA: No, that's not true. I know—you and I both knew the Bayard Rustin story.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You may know...<br /><br />KRESTA: Their stories show up in the biographies all the time.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You may know about them but you'll have to admit that they're not any longer given the credit...<br /><br />KRESTA: They don't occupy the same place in the public imagination as King. And one of the reasons he occupies such a place in the American imagination is, in fact, because of his spiritual motivation. That is something that the American people resonate with and...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, that's had one very bad consequence that I point to.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, let me put it this way: You're the one who's making the more eccentric claim here. The fact is that people as different as Plato and Bono and Denzel and George Washington have believed in some kind of higher power or divinity. You can take a look at these people and their heterodoxy, you can take a look at their orthodoxy and their piety or their impiety but what you're going to find is, whether you're dealing with Dante or Babe Ruth or Harriet Beecher Stowe or George W. Bush, you're going to find that all of them believe that they are not the measure of all things and they don't believe that the world is the <i>end</i> of all things and that's the reason—one of the reasons King has resonance with the American people. You have to put yourself in the position of denying what virtually everybody has some inkling of. You put yourself in the position of being the blind man at the aurora borealis or something. But you're somehow not able to see or hear what obviously most of the human race has picked up on. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Now, any fair-minded person who reads my section on Dr. King—I'm not quite done with him yet—will see that I give him more, perhaps than you, if by way of his due in praise. But I simply say that there's no need for any spiritual assumption to call for what he called for. What he called for had not only been called for before but the groundwork for it had been laid before by people who were not ministers and didn't use religious rhetoric. I had a corollary—not a corollary but a consequence to this, the widespread acceptance of his piety and spirituality which is that ever since then, any black clergyman who can—any fraud, who can put the word "reverend" in front of his name, from Jackson to Sharpton, has been accepted, usually as much by white media as by actual black Americans, as being the successor to King because they must be, they claim to be spiritual. This has done enormous damage to black America and to society in general. It leads to people like Jeremiah Wright.<br /><br />KRESTA: Yeah, we...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And if you're going to accept the one you have to accept the other.<br /><br />KRESTA: No.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And why didn't you mention any of the nutcases and frauds and evil people who also believe that man wasn't the measure of all things and that the supernatural was the critical one.<br /><br />KRESTA: Because I believe that human beings are flawed, because I think human beings come in all kinds of packages, and because I don't think you can take a field like religion and just assume that it is a twisted, distorted field. I just—I think that is making the kind of generalization—your book is full of these overstatements and I know—I can only assume that you intended it that way. But let me ask you this, because on the same...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You're sounding very peevish suddenly.<br /><br />KRESTA: I don't mean to be peevish...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Almost querulous.<br /><br />KRESTA: Look, you—this question comes from <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i>...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />KRESTA: ...and you ask it, and I'm not going to read the whole thing, but let me ask you this:<br /><br />HITCHENS: I believe I know the question.<br /><br />KRESTA: (Yes, I think you do.) If you could build a society which you—which would give people supreme happiness and peace but had to achieve it by torturing just one little child, would you, Christopher Hitchens, do that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: My answer to the question is "no," and my other answer to the question also is I wish that a refusal like that was as easy. I mean, it's a very graphic way, that's why I put it in the book, of suggesting ends and means. It's like the question that Ian Forrester asked at one point: If you had to choose between betraying your country and your friends, which would you do? You never get the choice, as a matter of fact.<br /><br />KRESTA: But it does illustrate...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's a good way of training the mind up to a point (this sort of speculation) but it tends to break down because in the real world conditions like that don't obtain and choices like that are not as, unfortunately, clear-cut.<br /><br />KRESTA: I know, but the best way we prepare for the real world is through these thought experiments.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />KRESTA: So...<br /><br />HITCHENS: If you thought you could save all future children from being tortured by torturing only just one, how quickly would you say, "Ok, I'd never do that." I mean, you might end up saying, "Ok, bring on the pincers. Where's the little girl?" But you probably wouldn't.<br /><br />KRESTA: No.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And then the question is, "Well, should you?"<br /><br />KRESTA: Yeah. But these are the questions you want to have...<br /><br />HITCHENS: The real question is are there such things as moral absolutes?<br /><br />KRESTA: ...these are the questions you want to have thought through before you're faced with this kind of moral dilemma, right? Because in the middle of—it's like...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It can be good to have some dress rehearsals but very often these things come up unheralded.<br /><br />KRESTA: Yeah, life has that quality, I agree. So, let me ask you this then: Do you believe in universal moral truths that are objectively known? Because it seems to me that's what you're appealing to.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, I'm willing to debate it until the cows come home and, "I'm not sure," is the answer to that. I mean I'll give you my favorite example, which is the one that most people accept most willingly, is the so-called Golden Rule that seems to have occurred in all societies and it certainly predates Jesus and it's in Rabbi Hillel and it's in <i>The Analects of Confucius</i> in some form: Don't do to another person what you would find repulsive to be done to yourself. It's universally intelligible and, you know, rather nice but fatally flawed because it's only as good as the person saying. In other words, I shouldn't want done to Charles Manson anything I wouldn't want done to myself? Excuse me, that's nonsense. Surely some people deserve harsh treatment that I don't feel I deserve myself. They chose—ok, let's take some other biblical rules: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Everyone sees the fatal flaw in that: the world would end up blind and toothless. On the other hand, in the New Testament it says only if you're without sin should you should be casting any stones. (That verse turns out to be added to the Bible very much later than the Gospel in which it appears but still it's an immoral—it could be an immoral injunction because, by that standard, you wouldn't be able to arrest Charles Manson because you would yourself have been a sinner.)<br /><br />KRESTA: Yes but do you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: So what I'm saying is—as well as doing a bit of thought experiment for our benefit and the benefit of the audience—religion doesn't get you any nearer to moral, objective absolute...<br /><br />KRESTA: No, I disagree.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...than secular speculations on morality and law can do.<br /><br />KRESTA: I disagree because having Manson executed—you're believing that the basis for morality is self-interest, and...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, no, I don't say that.<br /><br />KRESTA: ...consequently somebody like Manson would not want to be executed. So, we wouldn't be able to say, "Let's do onto Manson as we would do onto ourselves," because if we were Charles Manson, we wouldn't want to be executed.<br /><br />HICHENS: Don't be so sure...<br /><br />KRESTA: But we have appeals to justice here. Justice transcends my self-interest.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, that's completely incoherent, I'm sorry. First, I don't say that morality is based on self-interest, I say it's based on human solidarity.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, so did Richard Wagner, by the way.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That's a nexus of mutually. It's not—of course it has the element of self-interest that says, "I hope that if I act as if I'm a brother or sister of someone and have duties and responsibilities, that they'll do the same for me." That's not just self-interest, though. The second is, don't be at all so sure that people like Manson don't want to be punished. I don't know about executed, but when he turned up for his parole hearing the first time he was given one, he took care to cut a swastika into the middle of his forehead as if to say to the parole board, "I don't think I'm quite ready to be let out yet."<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, I—look...<br /><br />HITCHENS: He seems to want to be punished.<br /><br />KRESTA: So what should we do? So should we punish him?<br /><br />HITCHENS: A lot of sadists do.<br /><br />KRESTA: Should we punish him and would punishing him be a violation of the Golden Rule?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it wouldn't, but the Golden Rule...<br /><br />KRESTA: But that's what you started out saying, that the Golden Rule is incoherent, it gives us no way of applying these things.<br /><br />HITCHENS: The Golden Rule is of no help in deciding this question.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well how is it not?<br /><br />HITCHENS: There is a way of deciding the question because you say, "I'll tell you one thing I know about Manson: I want him to be where he can't get near me or anyone I know."<br /><br />KRESTA: We're in agreement on that. Let's...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Good.<br /><br />KRESTA: You mentioned—let's go to—so the question to you was, "Do you believe in universal moral truths that are objectively known?" and your answer to that is, "Well, I'd like to debate that until the cows come home"...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah, and I've given you—your listeners now know <i>how</i> I think about this and not what I think. So, that's much more useful to know, I think.<br /><br />KRESTA: Let me take it to the next step: How do you ground the objectivity of moral truths without reference to God?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well how do you ground them with reference to God? It doesn't make it any easier if you refer it upward to a supernatural authority. You may be told, "Here's morality, it's obedience to my will."<br /><br />KRESTA: No, I'm not...<br /><br />HITCHENS: That's the religious definition, is obedience to God's will.<br /><br />KRESTA: No.<br /><br />HITCHENS: What if God tell you to go fly a plane into a skyscraper?<br /><br />KRESTA: No. You just—you do this throughout the book.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah.<br /><br />KRESTA: And on the one hand I know that you got—you know, some of your best friends are Christians and yet you misrepresent your best friends' thinking on these matters. You know full well that Catholic moral teaching doesn't believe in this kind of "God will's decrees it, therefore it's good." You understand Catholic moral teaching believes that God created a good creation and that even those who don't believe in God can know moral truths and they can behave morally without believing in God. You know that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'm sorry, I don't like the tone of voice there. I don't need Catholic permission to be told I can be a good person even if I'm not one of them. What an insufferable way to talk.<br /><br />KRESTA: But you're critiquing...<br /><br />HITCHENS: How dare they talk like that.<br /><br />KRESTA: You're distorting Catholic teaching, Christopher.<br /><br />HITCHENS: How dare they talk like that.<br /><br />KRESTA: No, you're distorting Catholic teaching.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I'm just telling you that what you've just told me it is, which I'm perfectly well aware of, is an appalling piece of patronization.<br /><br />KRESTA: It's certainly not.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Excuse me, yes I do know right from wrong without permission from them.<br /><br />KRESTA: You know, that was the point.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And there's things that they think immoral that I wouldn't do under any temptation. (The wicked things that they think should be done.)<br /><br />KRESTA: The question is how to ground the objectivity of moral truth without reference to God.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, and that remains a question whether there's a supernatural dimension or not. It's simply no—it doesn't add—you've advanced the argument not by one inch by saying, "Yes, you can ground it objectively if you submit to the idea of the divine." No, you haven't gotten anywhere near being objective by saying that.<br /><br />KRESTA: Well, the problem—you agree it's a serious problem?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I do, and it would be a serious problem for—it remains a serious problem whether you accept the existence of an intervening deity or not. The argument doesn't stop which ever of us wins that round. It goes on all the time: what are we to do, what are our duties to each other?<br /><br />KRESTA: Ok, so let me bring it back: What is your basis for determining moral truth? Or, actually, not only what is the basis for your determining moral truth but how can you demonstrate that those moral truths are objectively true?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I can't demonstrate...<br /><br />KRESTA: Because you want me to obey those rules.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think that I would want to say is that I think there are certain injunction—moral injunctions that are universally valid. In other words, no society has ever been found, and this is true of society well before monotheism took root and spread, where things like murder and perjury and theft are other than condemned. That seems to be a common thing. Then there are other things you barely need to prohibit such as incest or cannibalism because societies or individuals that practice them simply will die out, they will destroy themselves. So there seems to be quite enough going on in the material world to establish a basis for human solidarity and for the prohibition of certain offenses quite without any reference to the supernatural. It satisfies me. It isn't completely satisfactory. It's a way of beginning and continuing the argument. You want to close the argument as if forever to say, "Now I know how to ground this,"...<br /><br />KRESTA: No what I want to say is you gotta have a ground...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Do societies with religious courts have a different experience of justice?<br /><br />KRESTA: If you don't have a ground for your—I mean, claiming that there's an objective basis for morality then what you leave it to is you leave it for the—each individual to decide this themselves. And it seems to me—or various societies themselves.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No you don't, because...<br /><br />KRESTA: You end up where Richard Rorty ended up.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No you don't, because...<br /><br />KRESTA: When he was asked if it was a good idea to exterminate nine million European Jews and then get the gypsies and homosexuals and Russians, he says, "Of course it wasn't a good idea." He said, "Well how would you justify not doing it if it was the free consensus of the German people?" And he said, "I don't know. I have no objection to offer." You're not comfortable with that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, certainly not. And anyway, it's not a matter of—you would never get to the stage where everyone would just do as they like because if that was the consequence you and I would not be having this conversation. If the human species was able to act like that it wouldn't be—we'd be another species. It's because everyone is constrained by their duties and responsibilities imposed by—called for by human solidarity that this occurs whether you're told to by God or not, and...<br /><br />KRESTA: Richard Wagner...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I know that because it occurs to me and I don't believe in God.<br /><br />KRESTA: Right, I understand. You don't have to believe in God to know...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I must add to your Rorty question that the mass exterminations in Europe were conducted by believing Christians.<br /><br />KRESTA: Yeah, well...<br /><br />HITCHENS: They were.<br /><br />KRESTA: Look, you're not going to tell me Himmler was a believing Christian.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'm not sure—I don't know if he was or not.<br /><br />KRESTA: Where do you get...<br /><br />HITCHENS: In Paul Johnson's <i>History of Christianity</i>, which you wouldn't describe as an anti-Christian book...<br /><br />KRESTA: Very straightforward book...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Forty percent, I think he said, of the Waffen-SS, were confessing, believing Catholics.<br /><br />KRESTA: You could also—the resistence to Nazism was also very strong among believing Christians.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It was strongest among believing Communists, as a matter of fact.<br /><br />KRESTA: Where do you get...<br /><br />HITCHENS: That's a [indecipherable] historical fact.<br /><br />KRESTA: Where do you get the conviction that the human race would be better off without religion? Because in every place that we've seen militant atheism get political power, we've seen that the state becomes ultimate. That's something you don't want to see and that vacuum left by atheism leads to a deification of the state. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I gave you my answer to that in the case of the religion of Stalinism. <br /><br />KRESTA: Gentlemen, I'm very sorry for the interruption. Mr. Kresta, we do have to move on. We have our next station waiting [indecipherable].<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh I'm sorry about that.<br /><br />KRESTA: Christopher, thanks. Appreciate the time.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I only just got my trousers off and then I had to stop.<br /><br />KRESTA: I know. I wanted to get to your assertion that the existence of Jesus is highly questionable. Some other day we'll take to that one.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, He isn't very questionable.<br /><br />KRESTA: Oh, well your book says it is. I'm Al Kresta.<br /><br /><hr><br />August 8, 2009: Kresta responds <a href=http://archive.avemariaradio.net/2009/04/kpm_20090408_2.mp3>here</a>HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-17034241581507250992010-08-03T19:44:00.018-04:002010-12-05T21:25:21.492-05:00Hitchens' Limericks from Australia<li>Several choice limericks from <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Morrow>Julian Morrow</a>'s interview with <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> at the Sydney Writers' Festival<br /><li>May 22, 2010, <a href=http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/sydneytownhall/>Sydney Town Hall</a>, Sydney, Australia<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgstLQviG3l2ez4LCfzR_kD0qnyj7wL8tzunllDJk3i8hz4_xG5RUd5Um5VgV4DjSv9qJqSeFLUtu7JwjvFlrmvkWru1JSWz0f4OkyNl92q3mj31m-O3ENt4PsQQ7hB1KMP9UlNDC7RS-0u/s1600/morrow.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgstLQviG3l2ez4LCfzR_kD0qnyj7wL8tzunllDJk3i8hz4_xG5RUd5Um5VgV4DjSv9qJqSeFLUtu7JwjvFlrmvkWru1JSWz0f4OkyNl92q3mj31m-O3ENt4PsQQ7hB1KMP9UlNDC7RS-0u/s320/morrow.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501707169189254130" /></a>MORROW: I would like you to give us one and your dirtiest limerick to conclude, if possible.<br /><br />HITCHENS: They tend to be clerical, the really dirty ones.<br /><br /><i>There was a young fellow of kings<br />Whose mind was upon higher things.<br />But his real desire<br />Was a boy in the choir<br />With an ass like a jelly on springs.</i><br /><br />That's not very dirty, though, but it gives you an idea. It's a curtain raiser for the anti-clerical. <br /><br /><i>The bishop of central Japan<br />Used to roger himself with a fan.<br />And when taxed with these acts,<br />He replied, "It contracts,<br />And expands, rather more than a man!"</i><br /><br />But see, you can do it with almost no dirty words. That's the key thing, I think, is to keep it filthy but not smutty.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgPXz6Dv29MNr7mTmZmgz-rLFjAZp4-1blxINo8X1hgzyUwQR9JaZIUwZOi0mjzITQi73EdOWuww4ty9Q6VPO4YqUnG4SB05k6HtYGDBIyrc53DuegIKYoSjk6vDT_HruN9EtLeWFkge1T/s1600/hitchensmorrow.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgPXz6Dv29MNr7mTmZmgz-rLFjAZp4-1blxINo8X1hgzyUwQR9JaZIUwZOi0mjzITQi73EdOWuww4ty9Q6VPO4YqUnG4SB05k6HtYGDBIyrc53DuegIKYoSjk6vDT_HruN9EtLeWFkge1T/s320/hitchensmorrow.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501707341022736898" /></a><i>A vice both obscene and unsavory<br />Holds the bishop of barking and slavery.<br />With lascivious howls<br />He deflowers young owls<br />That he lures to an underground aviary.</i><br /><br />MORROW: Well...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And, well ok, you want one dirty one then. Because these are suggestive, shall we say, but not...<br /><br /><i>It is said of the bishop of Birmingham<br />That he fucks little boys while confirming 'em.<br />They kneel on their hassock,<br />He lifts up his cassock<br />And pumps his Episcopal sperm in 'em.</i>HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-1248041068098166592010-08-03T15:27:00.022-04:002010-11-25T16:00:20.999-05:00Hitchens vs. Wilson, post-King's College Debate Interview<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> and <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Wilson_(theologian)>Douglas Wilson</a>: Post-debate interview with David Sessions and Alisa Harris, editors of <a href=http://www.patrolmag.com><i>Patrol Magazine</i></a><br /><li>October 29, 2008, <a href="http://www.tkc.edu">The King's College</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVktmvKz0xHuRA-jkKMJjU-vTNt3_d0IXlCkwNpuSoZkBF3-tLaotox6yaBItuVj8zbdM5m4h-ggzGAIasibIlxYgUF-dz6tBdC1JWXXWXQJo0em1ctKl5oq8-eFNOI4YYYRNJXKWqOsSg/s1600/hitchenswhatever.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVktmvKz0xHuRA-jkKMJjU-vTNt3_d0IXlCkwNpuSoZkBF3-tLaotox6yaBItuVj8zbdM5m4h-ggzGAIasibIlxYgUF-dz6tBdC1JWXXWXQJo0em1ctKl5oq8-eFNOI4YYYRNJXKWqOsSg/s320/hitchenswhatever.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501704853411618034" /></a>HITCHENS: It's a pleasure for me to debate with someone who quite literally is a Christian, in other words, is a Bible-believing, takes it all, as it were—I hope you wouldn't mind my saying—literally, because I very often find in debates with the religious that, as I did at a Templeton event which some of your students came to recently, I was debating a Catholic...<br /><br />SESSIONS: Yeah, I was at [indecipherable]...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I was debating a Catholic Monsignor. Well you saw, he really wouldn't stick up for his faith at all.<br /><br />SESSIONS: Right.<br /><br />HITCHENS: He was as close to being secular as you could be so I couldn't attack what I know Catholic doctrine to be because he wouldn't stick up for it. <br /><br />SESSIONS: Right, it seemed [indecipherable]...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Whereas with Douglas Wilson there's no such problem; he's the real deal. So that is relatively uncommon for me to find someone who would do that.<br /><br />SESSIONS: So who would you say is the most formidable Christian you've ever discussed with? Where does Douglas [indecipherable]?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, pretty high. This is only our first, we haven't done a formal set piece debate yet, this is more like a town hall. But of others who I've debated with, Dinesh D'Souza, who I debated with under auspices of The King's as a matter of fact, the New York Society for Ethical Culture a while back, is very good. He's very learned and he has a much better understanding of the atheist position. He could, I'm sure, if he was asked to do it for a wager, he could probably make an atheist speech that would persuade you. About that I'm not so sure with Douglas Wilson, that he understands what my position is. I actually got some indication today that he doesn't. But believe me, as we travel around in the next couple of days he bloody well is going to find out.<br /><br />SESSIONS: Just to sort of revisit that question, that morality question: It's obviously, to the Christian audience, it's something that really sticks with them.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />SESSIONS: They have to have an answer on it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sure.<br /><br />SESSIONS: You seem like a little bit more ok with saying, "Well, it's ok if we aren't sure about that," or "We're"—it doesn't seem like it's as crucial a definition for you. Is that correct, or...?<br /><br />HITCHENS: The fact that our species, and not only our species (by the way because other animals manifest it too), does demonstrate concern for others above and beyond ourselves. That's commonly thought to be what morality consists of is caring about other people or other creatures. Other creatures do it and we do too. There is no mystery about this in my view; it is not a gift from God. To call it that is to make an uninteresting claim. What does that prove if it's true? It would seem to me to have the implication that there's no need to strive for morality since it comes, as it were, free from Paradise. I don't think it does. So—but if you take my materialist explanation for its origins then there's nothing left unexplained; that would explain all the, what otherwise are ridiculous inconsistencies. How come that we're made in the image of God but that we're only partly moral? Ok, that's a mystery for you. It's a pain that you've invented for yourselves that you could do without. Just forget it. You don't have to worry about that anymore. So it's a pointless, sterile proposition.<br /><br />[VIDEO EDIT]<br /><br />HARRIS: Ok, Dr. Wilson my first question is if you had to pick one argument for the existence of God, what do you think would be the most strongest argument and the most persuasive argument and which argument would be the weakest for the existence of God?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqtKug81jlbQZUR80-8F3w1d91CciUaqvEvzeh9_DejQdBtL9CAGgTOPbA0j4XQYTkAP__Nv_FgQC0O2RiJglNxq-Rj9s2fxQo2SpCvqMUKZ8jMoFIpo1TYTBt3azoh3CaN4DZWE6Xbdnc/s1600/WilsonHand.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqtKug81jlbQZUR80-8F3w1d91CciUaqvEvzeh9_DejQdBtL9CAGgTOPbA0j4XQYTkAP__Nv_FgQC0O2RiJglNxq-Rj9s2fxQo2SpCvqMUKZ8jMoFIpo1TYTBt3azoh3CaN4DZWE6Xbdnc/s320/WilsonHand.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501705009600145474" /></a>WILSON: For the existence of—I guess I would object to the supposition that's in that because I believe everyone knows the existence of God innately already and so the best—if that's true, then what's the best argument given the suppression of that truth that will persuade people to stop repressing that? I would say the most persuasive is the resurrection of Christ from the dead. So many apologists speak as though the resurrection needs to be proven but the New Testament speaks of the resurrection as the proof.<br /><br />HARRIS: Ok.<br /><br />WILSON: Jesus is the God. He was declared with power to be the son of God by His resurrection from the dead as it says in Roman 1:4 or in Acts 17, God is given proof of this to all men by raising Jesus from the dead. So in the New Testament, the resurrection is the proof and so I would say that's the declaration from that is what's caused the church to grow in advance. Now most people are not principled atheists, so the resurrection is far more compelling to them than it is to someone like Christopher Hitchens.<br /><br />HARRIS: Principled? What do you mean by principled?<br /><br />WILSON: Where they would say, "I deny the existence of God and here are my reasons." <br /><br />HARRIS: Ok.<br /><br />WILSON: Most people don't get that far. They just don't think about it.<br /><br />HARRIS: They don't think about it.<br /><br />WILSON: Right. And so when trouble arises in their life and they want gospel or good news you preach the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and that's compelling. Jesus said when He's lifted up on the cross He would lift all men, He'd draw all men to himself. Well that's compelling. It's not a traditional logical argument, but it's convincing. <br /><br />HARRIS: Kind of along those lines, do you think debates about the existence of God, debates about morality, do you think they are debates that interest most Americans or are they of interest to academics and theologians?<br /><br />WILSON: No, I think there has to be a very broad interest in this given how the books by the latest wave militant atheists are selling. Dawkins is a bestseller; Hitchens is a bestseller; Sam Harris is a bestseller. And then on the Christian side the responses have gotten a lot of attention and response and debates like this draw people. It's a big draw. So I think it's very much on America's mind. <br /><br />HARRIS: Yeah, more so than it has been, or...?<br /><br />WILSON: Yes, I'd say more.<br /><br />HARRIS: And what would be the reasons for that?<br /><br />WILSON: This is my own theory, but I believe that—I attribute the latest wave of atheist fervor (militant atheism) to panic. It's starting to strike them that conservative evangelical Christianity might actually win, that the secular progressive agenda might not sustain itself and I think they're upset at that and they've decided to counterattack. In previous generations in previous eras, Christians would be patronized, you know, the secular elitist people would pat us on our head: "You believe in God and that's fine, just, you know, be a good little boy." Now, religion poisons everything. It's a very militant, anti-theist position, not just, "I don't believe it myself."<br /><br />HARRIS: So you would credit it with the growth of the writings with the influence of Christianity?<br /><br />WILSON: Yes, very much so. And it's striking that two out of the three leaders, Dawkins and Hitchens, are European, or they're English. You know, American Christians see America as, you know, sliding into a secular perdition, but to Europeans we're a raving, right-wing, puritan, you know. And so they come over and they go, "Yikes!" that's part of what I think causes them to react the way that they do.<br /><br />HARRIS: Another question: You have a classical education and teach at a classical school so you're aware of the classical arguments for the existence of God. Are there new arguments for the existence of God or are there—have most of them been outlined and put forth years ago?<br /><br />WILSON: Most of the traditional arguments were outlined by Thomas Aquinas and summarized and there are—some of them are kinda fishy, like the ontological argument. Some are pretty standard: the cosmological argument or the teleological argument. Arguments from design are pretty standard and are still serviceable in a lot of ways. But one of the things that I do in my debates with atheists is I argue presuppositionally and that is a form of argumentation established by Cornelius van Till in the last century, in the twentieth century and that really is a new argument for God's existence, a new argument for the integrity of the Christian faith. So the presuppositional argument or the transcendental argument for God's existence which is everybody has to assume God in order to affirm or deny him.<br /><br />HARRIS: Ok, and did that come up, the presuppositionalist argument, did that come up in today's debate?<br /><br />WILSON: Yes. When I kept asking him, "By what standard, where are you standing when you make the claims that you do? You're borrowing from the Christian faith in order to attack the Christian faith." So all the illustrations of you're getting into our car and driving it were a form of presuppositional argumentation.<br /><br /><hr width=50%><br /><li><a href=http://www.patrolmag.com/times/914/christopher-hitchens-vs-douglas-wilson>Read more at <i>Patrol Mag</i></a><br /><li><a href=http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/119-12.0.html>More Hitch/Wilson</a><br /><li>The debate with the Catholic Monsignor to which Hitch referred in the opening paragraph can be seen <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZTbLuw2AV0>here</a>HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-90061458968210955892010-07-29T14:07:00.055-04:002012-04-07T16:28:16.112-04:00Hitchens vs. Wilson, The King's College<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Wilson_%28theologian%29>Douglas Wilson</a>: Is Christianity Good For the World?<br /><li>October 29, 2008, <a href=http://www.tkc.edu>The King's College</a><br /><br />[Moderator <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Olasky>Dr. Marvin Olasky</a> introduces Hitchens and Wilson]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkP6Np0LD_3CP3bnbKS-XJiB-N29AQI5UVuRTiKOhMYL8C2ls4ubWfu4cotGHBGjIx9l188tuJ0Yks_TebIxNbc-GTuV1Qunp8f0o8UJD4ODxFuq12_yAXvvyOKwSBc4mMMaDgVd5DVVk_/s1600/olasky.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkP6Np0LD_3CP3bnbKS-XJiB-N29AQI5UVuRTiKOhMYL8C2ls4ubWfu4cotGHBGjIx9l188tuJ0Yks_TebIxNbc-GTuV1Qunp8f0o8UJD4ODxFuq12_yAXvvyOKwSBc4mMMaDgVd5DVVk_/s320/olasky.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499457648212415346" /></a>OLASKY: Doug, let's start with you [indecipherable]. In two minutes, tell us why Christianity is good for the world.<br /><br />WILSON: There are two levels where that question can be addressed. One would be the level that I would, as a Christian minister, address it: It's good for the world because it's the truth of the Gospel for the world. Now, there are many who would answer it on another level, sort of a more pragmatic approach where they would say, "Religion, generally, is good for the world as a form of social control and it gives people comfort and consolation and keeps them from doing terrible, bad things to one another." The problem with that, as Christopher will hasten to inform you is that it often is the occasion for wars and conflicts between differing religions. So I want to defend not religion as a generic good for the world as a social control, but rather that the Christian faith, because Jesus is the Christ of God, is good for the world. The Christian Gospel is nothing if not the message that Jesus Christ is the last Adam—the word "Adam" means "mankind" in Hebrew. So when we're told—when the apostle Paul tells us that Jesus is the last Adam, he's saying Jesus is the ultimate mankind, the final mankind. We have the option of growing up into—mature as human beings in Christ and there's no other option, there's no other way. Now if that truth claim, if that claim is true—objectively true, then it has to be good for the world by definition; it's the salvation of the world. Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. How would that not be good? Of course, if the claim is false, if Jesus was delusional or a charlatan, then, of course, Christianity is no more good for the world than any other widely-circulated lie.<br /><br />OLASKY: Ok. Chris, why is Christianity bad for the world?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5eLyZkT56UvG4Rj3NkNov-r0nSBdpW2_1PZDpcF0J90ZgQQAt2ag6c8ywMiIkDEVCyuH8El7nDLqT6eyNraabzIK0Go56kb6OeHZIcsSpsJ2Mz8RdMe2wLPKS1hC8tZCzt0SqeAweb-yt/s1600/hitchenswilsonarmwrestle.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5eLyZkT56UvG4Rj3NkNov-r0nSBdpW2_1PZDpcF0J90ZgQQAt2ag6c8ywMiIkDEVCyuH8El7nDLqT6eyNraabzIK0Go56kb6OeHZIcsSpsJ2Mz8RdMe2wLPKS1hC8tZCzt0SqeAweb-yt/s320/hitchenswilsonarmwrestle.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499457915836610418" /></a>HITCHENS: First, because it's based on a fantastic illusion. Let's say that the consensus is that our species, we being the higher primates, <i>Homo sapiens</i>, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says it may be 100,000; Richard Dawkins thinks maybe quarter of a million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be Christian you have to believe that for 98,000 years our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25, dying of their teeth, famine, struggle, indigenous war, suffering, misery, all of that. For 98,000 heaven watches it with complete indifference and then 2,000 years ago thinks, "That's enough of that, we should—it's time to intervene. The best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Not—don't let's appear to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization, let's go the desert and have another revelation there." This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am glad this is the case? (To get to the point of—the wrongness in the other sense of Christianity) Because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, that is the one of vicarious redemption: You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay our debt if I love you; I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much, I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away because I can't abolish your responsibility and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish thinking and I don't think wish thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important of all, the word "love." By making love compulsory, by saying you must love. You must love your neighbor as yourself, something you can't actually do. We'll always fall short so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear, that is to say a supreme being, an eternal father. Someone of whom you must be afraid but who you must love him too. If you fail in this duty, you're, again, a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy and that brings me to the final objection and I'll condense it, Dr. Olasky, which is this is a totalitarian system. If there was a god who could do these things and demand these things of us and who was eternal and unchanging, we would be living under a dictatorship from which there was no appeal and one that could never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round—and I could say more—it's an excellent thing that there's absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.<br /><br />OLASKY: Ok Doug, are you a thinking person or are you left speechless by Chris' assault?<br /><br />WILSON: I give up.<br /><br />HITCHENS: [To Olasky] Christopher. Would you mind calling me Christopher? I'm sorry, it's only because it's my name.<br /><br />WILSON: Alright.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Thank you.<br /><br />WILSON: Here, I think, is the central difficulty of Christopher's critique of the Christian faith: You notice that he is not critiquing the Christian faith by appealing to a standard that overarches all human beings and that is obligatory for all of us. When he says things like, "Substitutionary atonement is immoral," well, by what standard? Who says? What do you mean "immoral"? What world view considers it to be immoral and why is that world view in charge of the Christian world view? All ultimate truth claims are, to use post-modern jargon, "totalized": You can't talk about everything without talking about everything and what Christopher has to do, in order to critique the Christian faith, is he has to borrow ethical standards from the Christian faith and run a <i>reductio</i> where he says, "According to the standards that you adopt as Christians, here, let me climb into that— let me climb into the Christian car and see if I can drive it into a tree." That's what he's doing. But he doesn't have any car to drive of his own. Why—substitutionary atonement is immoral. How come? Who says?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very well.<br /><br />OLASKY: Chris, yes, are you a car thief?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Now, here we are. I haven't known Douglas Wilson for very long, but he does strike me as a very sweet and decent and generous and humane person and thus he obviously doesn't know how insulting, how rude he's just been. Not just to me...<br /><br />WILSON: Oh, I think I do.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Not just to me—not just to your humble servant the carjacker, but to you also, ladies and gentlemen. I think it's a fantastically rude thing to say that if it wasn't for Christianity, I and you wouldn't know right from wrong. It's an extraordinary thing to say. The awareness of the difference between right and wrong is innate in human beings and it can be found and noticed, being observed and enforced and upheld in societies where Christianity has never yet penetrated. To say that no one—let me give an example from the Old Testament: (The story, as you know, the wandering in the Sinai and the wandering in the desert is all made up, it's a Jewish foundational myth but) the Ten Commandments, four or five of which do actually contain moral injunctions, some of them are nonsensical, some of them are theocratic, some of them are self-contradictory, but the ones that say, on the whole, "Avoid murder, theft, and perjury," are, I would consider, sound and I would dare say every in this room would without necessarily having to be told. Are we to assume that my mother's ancestors, the ancient Jewish people, got all the way to Mount Sinai under the impression that murder, theft, and perjury were all ok? And only when told from on high, "Stop with that!" suddenly thought maybe they are such bad ideas after all. Of course not. There couldn't have been a Jewish society or enough Jewish solidarity to get them that far if they, for one thing, if they thought these things were fine until God says that they are. This is not how morality is formed at all. To the contrary, as far as I can tell, religion gets its morality from humans. It's a feedback loop and then it says—tells them to think of things that aren't sins as if they were. For example, coveting your neighbor's goods, a perfectly healthy thing to do. The ambition of jealousy and emulation is a necessary spur to innovation and to progress. Then described, quite ludicrously, as a sin and you're made to feel guilty about it when you shouldn't. That's the irrational superimposition on ordinary human solidarity and morality that is attempted by all religion, not just Christianity.<br /><br />WILSON: There's two things. One: Notice that the core of what Christopher acknowledged, that the ancient Jews had a quite healthy and robust respect for certain decencies that are pervasive in all societies, particularly religious societies, means that it must be the case that religion does not poison everything, contrary to the thesis of your recent book. Now, you want to go on...<br /><br />HITCHENS: To the contrary. I said they had those things without being told by God. <br /><br />WILSON: Right, but then having had them, and when religion came along, religion needs to have poisoned it, if religion poisons everything. But the point is that if they already had them because they're human, not because they were religious and religion screws everything up, then why didn't it screw up "Do not murder," "Do not lie," "Do not perjure"? Why didn't it mess that up? Now here's the thing that I want to—have point something out. I'm quite willing to be direct with Christopher if I think it calls for it, but I don't want to be unintentionally rude to him. (Oscar Wilde defined a gentleman as someone who never insults someone else accidentally.) Notice that Christopher said that morality is innate but notice that that's coming from an evolutionist where everything's up for grabs. In an evolutionary world view, everything's on the table. All kinds of things are innate. These used to be innate in our makeup, back before we were human beings, when we were another kind of critter, there were innate things that disappeared. So, why can't our innate morality evolve right along with the rest of us? The other thing is, and this is very important to note, I did not say that Christopher does not know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. If you read his book—read his book on <i>god is Not Great</i>, or if you read virtually anything else he writes, it's very, very clear that he has an acute sense of right and wrong, up and down, righteousness, unrighteous. He would have made a very good puritan in...(You're welcome.) And to wrap it up, there's a difference between knowing the difference between good and evil and being able to give an accounting of it. My challenge is not that he doesn't know right and wrong, he does, but how can you account for it, given an evolutionary time and chance universe?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Just to go back to that episode in Sinai: I say that the knowledge that murder, theft, and perjury should be avoided was already present in Jewish and every other known society before the injunctions come from heaven and these injunctions, these are the religious ones, the ones that only God could tell you: Well, you've got to circumcise your children, you have to mutilate your children's genitals; you have to avoid eating pigs; you have to be prepared—in fact you are enjoined to slay the Amalekites down to the last child and only keep a few young women alive for purposes better imagined than described, and do the same to the Mideonites and others—genocide is made a holy obligation. That's the added bit, that's what religion adds to morality. It negates it, in other words. The Golden Rule, so called, the one that any--most children don't have to be taught (in other words, don't treat other people as you wouldn't want to be treated yourself, or more positively, treat others as you would wish them to treat you) certainly appears in <i>The Analects</i> of Confucius, a very long time ago. Most people would not say Confucionism was really a religion. It also appears—it's been beautifully expressed by Rabbi Hillel, a Babylonian rabbi. Christianity adds absolutely nothing, in other words, to our awareness of the difference between good and evil but does shift a lot of good things into the evil side and a lot of evil things into the good side and ends up in a universe of howling moral confusion.<br /><br />WILSON: Let me seize this opportunity to agree with Christopher on something, and that is if you take C. S. Lewis' book <i>The Abolition of Man</i>, in the appendix, or in the back of the book, he has a compilation of ethical injunctions from around the world, different religions, different periods of history, which he calls the Tao. And he's doing this to illustrate—to make Christopher's point which is that you—the Christian faith does not bring fundamentally into the world a new consciousness of right and wrong. What comes into the world is gospel, not good advice, but good news. So the problem is not that didn't know the difference between right and wrong. We did, and constantly do, we speak to others in terms of it. The problem is that we don't live up to the standards that we affirm, whatever religion it is, if it's The Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism or whatever way you have. Men and women are sinners and they fail to obtain that standard and what Christ offers and what Christianity offers is forgiveness of sin, which is what Christopher began by saying is an impossibility. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Well let me rush to seize the outstretched paw there. And, while we're on the subject of Lewis—one of my least favorite authors—Lewis does make a very, very important observation, I would call it a concession as a matter of fact, where he says there's one tone of voice he can't stand hearing, and you hear it a lot, it was very much present in the work of a great hero of mine, his biographer I am, Thomas Jefferson, say Christianity may not be theologically true but Jesus was a wonderful, morally exemplary human being with extremely lovely preachments that deserve attention whether you believe in the Gospel or not. C. S. Lewis quite rightly says that's absolutely ridiculous. That's the one thing you cannot say, because if this man was not the son of God then the things that He was saying were absolutely immoral, some of them wicked or mad. They make no sense or they make sense only as injunctions to do evil. As for example: Take no thought for the morrow, care not to clothe or to eat, don't worry about your family, leave your family, who cares about your children, don't invest, don't grow, don't sew, there's no point. It's all coming to an end very soon. The kingdom of God is coming, which he thought would be in the lifetime of his disciples. Then it does make sense, of course. Who cares then? But otherwise it would be an immoral preachment. So I think we've already made quite a lot of progress in that I think in front of most audiences, this one's probably more qualified on the matter—in front of most audiences, morality is talked about as if it was what innate and what was common to us and religion is judged by whether it is moral or not where as, as Doug Wilson points out, that's not true. <br /><br />OLASKY: In several minutes we'll begin taking questions from the floor so you can line up in the aisles as things occur to you—thoughts and questions occur to you. Doug?<br /><br />WILSON: We're back to our disagreement because C. S. Lewis is one of my favorite writers and I believe he had a talent for going right to the nub of the matter and at least one this one, we agree: Jesus was either the son of God, the Lord of heaven and earth or He was a nutcase or He was an evil, evil man. Let's not have any nonsense about Him being a great moral prophet. He was out of His head if He—if He didn't have the authority to say the things that He said then He had no right or business saying them.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That works for me. No, let's bring it on.<br /><br />OLASKY: Bring it on, yes. So, questioners can begin lining up as they choose to do so. But let me ask Christopher a question here: Are there any good things that Christians have done?<br /><br />HITCHENS: That Christians have done? I'm sure. Yes, I know people who I regard as nicer than myself who do what they do, it seems to me, because they are Christian. I like to think they would do it—they'd be that way if there had never been any Christianity and I think there's every possibility that that is so. I can't deny that they give me the impression and they say to themselves that this is because of their faith.<br /><br />OLASKY: Doug, are there bad things that Christians have done, that Christianity is in some way responsible for?<br /><br />WILSON: I don't believe that there are things you can say Christianity is responsible for except in the sense that your math class is responsible for the wrong answers that you got on the test. You wouldn't be getting those wrong answers if you had been enrolled in the class. So in that case, the math class is responsible for your failing the math class. But the math instructor, the math curriculum, the laws of mathematics are not responsible for you getting it wrong. Those are errors or deviances from the norm. But, on a practical level, as a pastor—I've been a pastor for over thirty years and I can tell you that there are all sorts of unique, interesting religious pathologies that show up in people in a religious context that don't show up elsewhere. In a secular world you're get secular pathologies and in a religious you're going to get religious pathologies and that's what pastors and people who are charged with the care of souls, have to deal with all the time. So yes, there's a unique kind of Christian screwed-up-ness that can occur but that has to do with us not obeying what the Bible says to do, not following God the way we ought to follow Him.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That, I have to say I think there's a slight element of casuistry there in that, you say if an immoral thing was done by a Christian that would mean—because the person was a Christian—that would mean because it was immoral it couldn't have been Christian by definition. So, that's a little too convenient, isn't it?<br /><br />WILSON: It's very convenient.<br /><br />HITCHENS: For example, the injunction to spread the news of Christianity, to prosthelytize, has in the hands of, perhaps not of your church but, shall I say the Roman Catholic Church, led to appalling crimes being committed which the Church itself is said to have apologized for.<br /><br />WILSON: Yes, there are many things for which...<br /><br />HITCHENS: They can't say they didn't do this for Jesus or in the name of God.<br /><br />WILSON: Correct. But they can say that, because they bear His name, in the baptism and by profession and they did wicked acts in His name, they have an obligation to repent, to turn away from it. So, the issue is if the question is simply can an atheist do good things and can a Christian do bad things the answer is certainly of course. That's absolutely the case. What I'm saying is that the Christian who does evil things and wants to tenaciously cling to it can't justify his rebellion and sin in terms of Scripture. He can't justify what he's doing from the foundational assumptions of his faith and vice versa. I don't believe the atheist can give an accounting of morality.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, you see, this is the difficulty that I'll have to bring up now. You, I think, are not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, but if you were one you would believe his Holiness the Pope is the vicar of Christ on earth and is chosen by God for that job so and order given by the Pope does rather commit a Catholic to say that, "I'm doing this for Christianity." So when they say that all Jews are collectively responsible for the murder of Christ, as they did until 1964, that's in the name of God as far as anyone can tell. Now if, as I suspect, you don't believe that, what I want to know is how do you know that you're a better Christian than the Pope? The Pope, by the way, thinks you're going straight to hell because there's only one true faith and you're not part of it. So this is all part—one of the worst things about Christianity, it seems to me, is how much its adherents love each other. There's not the least of the wickedness that's imposed on the world is religious warfare between Christians about interpretations of essentially uninterpretable because nonsensical and irrational and contradictory Scriptures.<br /><br />WILSON: You just climbed into the Christian car again and drove it into a tree.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I don't think so. I found it in the ditch and decided to leave it right there where it belongs.<br /><br />OLASKY: Ok, let's get out of the ditch by going to a question.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: I guess for Mr. Hitchens: One of the distinctives of the Abrahamic theistic faiths surely is the doctrine of creation <i>ex nihilo</i>, which is probably stated most simply by Aristotle (who's certainly no theist in the sense that the Christian would speak of it in this argument) from the impossibility of an infinite chain of causation that the chain of material causation we experience as becoming has to terminate somewhere in an immovable mover, an uncaused causing that is the fount of all being. So you don't have that option, it seems, so how do you account for being as such, what is your ontology?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, isn't the danger of what you just proposed that of an infinite regression in that who's going to cause this cause, where does this being come from? Who created this creator? I've never known anyone who can get past the infinite regression objection to that. And in any case if you were to advance that theory successfully—if you were to say to me, or if you were to get me to say, "I can't answer that. I can't disprove it. It could be true." All you would've done was establish the possibility that deism was a reasonable position to hold. Which, I would say that until Darwin and Einstein it probably was. It was the sort of thing that an intelligent person might have to end up believing because the orders and rhythms of the nature and the cosmos don't seem very likely to be accidental. But if you've established deism you've got all your work still ahead of you to be a theist. You have to show that this god, this person who went to all this trouble with physics, cares who you sleep with or how or whether you should eat a pig or not or what day you should observe as holy. Now, I don't see how you get from your uncaused cause to that, to the idea that we are divinely created, supervised by someone who cares for us. That's something for which there can never be made any evidence. You either have to believe that or not. And as I'm sure Pastor Wilson will confirm you have to have faith in order to believe it to begin with, so...<br /><br />WILSON: And it's not that you can never have...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And some of us, I'm afraid, there's no help for this. As Pascal described us: We are so made, we are so constituted that we cannot believe.<br /><br />WILSON: Yes...<br /><br />HITCHENS: We can't. A lot of humans are created that way.<br /><br />WILSON: Some can't, some...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And we presume we're also in the image of God.<br /><br />WILSON: Some can't and some won't. When you say that there's this infinite regress going back, either you have an endless chain of material of causality, which has struck many thinking theologians and philosophers as absurd, as something untenable because you've got each element in the contingent chain is dependent on the previous contingent thing, and so it seems reasonable and it seemed reasonable to many to postulate a necessary being that is not part of that chain. And I don't think that's a compelling argument for God's existence but having accepted God's existence on other grounds, it's not that I believe that the cosmological argument proves God's existence but I do believe that God's existence proves the cosmological argument. I think it's true.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ah.<br /><br />OLASKY: Let's go to another question.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: This question's for Mr. Wilson: Mr. Hitchens pointed out a interesting surface flaw of Christianity and that is that we believe that, even with the most conservative estimates there's at least 4,000 years of human history before Christ [Hitchens laughs] and if you believe that—notice I say at least, but—if you believe that Christ is the redeemer than all those people, by necessity, went to hell. How can you assert that a religion who says that that many people went to hell for seemingly no reason, even though they might have been good or bad, is good for the world?<br /><br />WILSON: Here's the structure of the argument first: If you assume, or quietly assume that mankind is basically good, basically innocent, basically minding their own business, not doing anything wrong and we don't know about Jesus because God withheld that information from us and then God comes in many thousands of years later and says, "Ha ha! You didn't know about Jesus. I'm going to throw you into hell for your ignorance which I placed upon you," then yes, the objection is a very strong one. But that's not the way it works. The human race is in rebellion against God; the human race is fallen into sin. So if I develop a cure for cancer and I go and offer it to a bunch of people in a cancer ward and half of them take it and half of them don't and those who take it are cured, those who died don't die of not taking medicine, they died of cancer, alright? The cancer's the thing that killed them not not knowing about the medicine, not not taking the medicine, the thing that kills them is the cancer. The thing that kills people, the thing that caused the death and suffering before the advent of Christ was the existence of sin, rebellion, self-centeredness, me-first-ism, that's what causes the problem. Christ is the solution; Christ is not the problem. Christ is the savior; Christ is not the disease. Sin is the disease. Self-absorption is the disease.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Can I have a comment? Your question has also occurred with considerable force to early Christian thinkers who don't try and explain it away as Pastor Wilson has just done (or just, rather failed to do). But you said, "No, there has to be an answer to that." Also, what about the people who live now in Borneo, say, who've never met a Christian, never heard of the Bible, don't know the Jesus story? What about them, are they condemned by their ignorance? There is indeed a term invented by, I think Ignatius of Loyola called "invincible ignorance" to cover this. (It's a form of innocence.) It means it's not your fault, you couldn't have heard the Good News. In the Apostle's Creed it is said of Jesus that after suffering under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, he descended into hell, you'll remember that. Well I've heard it argued by some Christians that He went to hell in order to retrospectively recruit all those who had been boiling there awaiting His arrival. Seems to me this is a fantastically cruel way of explaining things but at least it does square the circle that otherwise cannot be squared, believe you me.<br /><br />WILSON: Just a quick item: The Greek for that word in the Apostle's Creed is "Hades" not "hell" so when people think of hell they usually think of Final Judgment, lake of fire. "Hades" is the Greek word for the Hebrew "Sheol," the place of the dead not necessarily torment, so that's just a quick...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sure, but I'm only saying that these people—it's a place of confinement I think we might add. Certainly is [indecipherable] in that—no, indeed, I mean, there is no hell; it's a detail worth pointing out. There is no hell in the Old Testament. [Audience laughter] There's no hell in the Old Testament. There's no mention of it. Once God is finished with you, once all the Amalekite children have been killed, that's the end of them. There's no punishment of the dead. It's only with gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who says, "If you don't listen to my meek and mild message you can be—depart into everlasting fire. You've always got that option if you don't like my meek and mild stuff." So yes, I think it's very—it's not a matter of pedantry at all. The difference between hell, Hades, infinite, eternal punishment and not is very important. One of Christianity's specifically horrible contributions to human mythology and delusion is the idea, the terrifying idea that you could be tortured forever. <br /><br />WILSON: Horrible by what standard?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Horrible by—well, good question. <br /><br />WILSON: Yeah, I know.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No. Horrible, well—shall I say—let me ask anyone here who <i>doesn't</i> think it's a horrible idea to put up their hand. So it doesn't seem to require much explanation, does it, as a horrible idea?<br /><br />WILSON: Well...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Do you feel you need a standard to keep your hand down at the moment? Or did I just say something that was so morally self-evident?<br /><br />WILSON: No, there's a difference between an emotional reaction to something—every person...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, I think they're using their heads, Douglas.<br /><br />WILSON: No, t here's a difference between an emotional reaction, which all of us have, everybody with natural affection thinks it's a terrible idea to think of people perishing eternally. That's not the issue. The issue is: How do you give an accounting of what is good and what is bad? When you say—if the universe is, on your accounting, time and chance acting on matter, if all the universe is is matter in motion, what do you mean "horrible"? What do you mean by "horrible idea"? Who cares?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Why do we care? Very good point. (Or, a very good question.) I ask myself a lot why that is. I think it is because I am one of the higher primates.<br /><br />WILSON: But that's not a rallying cry.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it appears to be—no, it's not much of a rallying cry but it has the merit of being true. It appears to be part of the equipment, intellectual and moral equivalent, of our primate species that it does have the need to help its fellow creatures as well as to torture, kill, rape, enslave, and exploit them. It does have a feeling, a quite strong one, that there's a human need to help and that you might need help yourself someday so be nice to your neighbor so why not?<br /><br />WILSON: How...how does it sort out?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Not everyone has this. There are quite a lot of people, also presumably made in the image of God, I think a superfluous assumption to be making, but, also made in the image of God, according to you, who were born sociopathic; they don't care about other people; they can't be made to; they just won't and don't. They're a problem for the rest of us. And then there are people who are born psychopathic who positively need to see others suffer...<br /><br />WILSON: If our species...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And have a bad time.<br /><br />WILSON: If our species has within it these seeds of a gregarious, lend-a-helping-hand-and-we-have-a-herd instinct and we want to help out, we have that instinct and we also have the instinct to go to war and fight and do all these terrible things that we do, I've got instinct A and instinct B: What is it that tells you which one is right?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Same as you, I would say.<br /><br />WILSON: God?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No. No, you knew all that before you'd ever read the Bible. <br /><br />WILSON: Well, I knew all that but how...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You knew that well before anyone ever introduced you to Christianity. Don't tell me you didn't or I'll have to be seriously alarmed about what you were like as a little boy.<br /><br />WILSON: Well that would be good to do, to see us...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, come on.<br /><br />WILSON: Here's the issue: Of course, I can feel a certain way before I can give an accounting of it, but what I'm asking for is, given your premises, given your assumptions, given what you say the universe is, given all that, how do you give an accounting of which way you go? Now I know—I've read enough of your stuff and seen enough to know that you and I would agree on any number of things. If we're going around New York and we see someone in trouble, we would have the same instinct, we'd would want to help; we'd want to step in and do that. I know that that's true of you. What I can't get from you is a reason for that choice, given your assumptions.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I just don't think that the idea that there's a creator who supervises you and watches over you and intervenes in your life is a good or sufficient explanation of any of this, that's all.<br /><br />WILSON: I know that you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's a burdensome assumption that makes—well, in that case, where are all the psychopaths and sociopaths coming from? They're all made in the image of God as well. <br /><br />WILSON: Sure, I know what assumption you don't think works...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Why would God want to do that—make someone innately wicked and a menace to their neighbors from the moment they were born, because of the way they are?<br /><br />WILSON: I know that you don't think works. What I'm trying to get is what you think does work. What does account for this instinct A, instinct B...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it's observable in other species, as you know. We're not the only primates who have families and solidarity and look out for each other and so on. There are other species as well.<br /><br />WILSON: And other species go to war; other species' mothers eat their young...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, that's right.<br /><br />WILSON: Other species—how do I sort this out?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, random mutation and natural selection produce quite a lot of discrepant results. There are no results that cannot be explained by random mutation combined with natural selection. Whereas, if you add a supernatural dimension, you explain everything and nothing. Something that explains everything doesn't explain very much. That's the notorious disadvantage of it. I like to give blood, for example. I positively enjoy doing it. When Dr. Olasky and I both used to be Marxists and one of the great things about the socialist instinct, I used to think, was people have a human need to help (there's a great book about blood donation called <i>The Gift Relationship</i>). The British National Health Service is not allowed to pay for blood. You can't buy it or sell it but it never runs out of it. There are always enough people to give. I positively enjoy it and also have a very rare blood group (AB negative). I might need a blood donation myself one day. It's in my interest that the blood donor habit is kept up and I don't lose a pint when I give blood; I get it back after about an hour after a nice strong cup of tea. So I've given someone a pint of blood and I haven't lost one. Very nice—it gives me pleasure. Do I have to explain why that's so? No. If I said it gives me pleasure because it puts me in well with my Lord and supreme celestial dictator, I think you might think less of me, perhaps than you—I was about to say than you already do—than you would if I had just left it where I had just left it. Now do you see?<br /><br />WILSON: The problem is, Christopher gets pleasure from giving blood. Other people in the world get pleasure from taking it.<br /><br />OLAKSY: My wife and I, when we give blood, do it in seats right next to each other and we have a race, so we get great pleasure out of that. So let's...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And I take and place bets on that and I get great pleasure out of that too.<br /><br />OLASKY: Next question.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: This is for Mr. Hitchens but I'd love for Mr. Wilson to respond as well: You stated earlier that Christianity perverted the notion of love by making it compulsory. My question, I guess, is: As a Christian, my Trinitarianism instinct is to understand the Father's love for the Son and the Son's love for the Spirit, etc., etc., as the model for the world and as something that—as love as an act of transcendence. Obviously, in your account that's not there, that's absent. So what is the place for love in your account? Is it simply a biochemical reaction? Is it something we just do? Is it one of those random genetic mutations that we talked about? How do we account for love? What is it? Is it important and is it something that really defines us as humans or is it something that's accidental?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it's central to the self-definition of the human. People who can't feel that emotion, I think, we are entitled to describe in some way less than human. There are three ways in which I think Christianity gets this wrong: One is by making an injunction that's much too strenuous. You're not just to be good to neighbor and treat them as you would wish them to treat you, you must love them as yourself. In other words, you must be self-abnegating. I think that's unhealthy. You are not, in fact, ever going to succeed in doing that. You might find one person you love as much as yourself or even more in your life and you're very lucky if you do, there's a wonderful feeling, but it can't be enforced on you. We can't be told that's what you must do, that spoils the point of it. And it has another disadvantage which is because it's too strenuous and it can't be lived up to. In fact, you're always guilty; you've always fallen short. So organized masochism, another unpleasant feature, it seems to me, of Christianity: contempt for one's own self-respect and integrity is enjoined. Then there's the compulsory love: You must love someone, the Supreme Father, who you must also fear—you're also told you ought to fear. Actually, that is many people's relationship to their fathers. But that means that the divine doesn't improve on what the human mammalian family has already discovered for itself. And then the third, perhaps the most immoral of all, is the injunction to love your enemies. That I will not do. I know who my enemies are. At the moment the most deadly ones are Islamist theocrats with a homicidal and genocidal agenda. I'm not going to love them. You go love them if you want; don't love them on my behalf. I'll get on with killing them and destroying them, erasing them and you can love them. But the idea that you ought to love them is not a moral idea at all. It's a wicked idea and I hope it doesn't take hold, especially on any of you seemingly serious, decent, young people. What a disgusting order to love those people.<br /><br />WILSON: Here's the...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Destroy them.<br /><br />WILSON: A couple of responses here: One is on the compulsory nature of love commanded, God commanding us to love: (I saw a great t-shirt once that said, "Gravity: It's not just a good idea, it's the law." Well, gravity is just the way things are, and this was implied in the question.) God the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and the Spirit and the Father and Son love one another eternally. It's simply the way God is. So when we are told—commanded to love God (the first Commandment is to Love God with all our hearts, sould, mind, and strength and the second is to love our neighbors as ourselves), what God is doing is requiring us to conform ourselves to the nature of ultimate reality. He's inviting us to cease rebelling against that reality, which is what self-centeredness does. Now, of course Christopher's quite right that we can't do this apart from God's grace, apart from His enabling and if we try on our own it's simply going to be perpetual condemnation because we're never going to be good enough. That's why we need to be forgiven. On the second point, having to do with loving our enemies, I want to say that loving your enemies is not inconsistent with fighting them and it is not inconsistent with doing what is necessary to love your own family, love your own people and protect and defend them. I will say that peace is going to come to the Middle East, I believe, sooner as a result of Christian missionaries going there, preaching the Gospel, loving people who are their enemies. God destroys his enemies two ways—you said destroy them, these people are out to do vile things you said to destroy them—I can echo that I can say, "Amen," but God destroys enemies two ways: God destroys enemies by taking them out the traditional way and God also destroys enemies by transforming them into friends. That destroys an enemy too.<br /><br />HITCHENS: The Irish foreign minister was making a speech to the United Nations during the debate on the Arab-Israeli war in 1967 and urged them to settle their dispute in a Christian fashion. I'll never forget it. Now, just—that's an observation. I have a question for you: I've only known you today and I've heard you now, maybe seven or eight times just in the last ten minutes, say what God wants us to do about quite a lot of things, quite important ones. Here's my question for you: How do you know that God wants us to do them? See, I wouldn't be able to begin a sentence by saying, "I know what God wants." I wouldn't. And to you it seems to be second nature. I insist on knowing: How do you make a claim that I couldn't make? How do you know something that as far I know nobody could know: the mind of God? I need an answer to this question.<br /><br />WILSON: You shall have it shortly.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very good.<br /><br />WILSON: Here's the thing: You don't know what God wants us to do but you do apparently know what the blind evolutionary process wants us to do.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No I don't.<br /><br />WILSON: Well, you want us to love—higher primates to love one another and not do awful things and live up to our...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'm not ordering them to do so.<br /><br />WILSON: So it's not bad if they don't?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I didn't say that.<br /><br />WILSON: Ok, so you are saying it is bad.<br /><br />HITCHENS: By what standard by the way?<br /><br />WILSON: Well, that was a good question that I didn't get an answer for earlier. Now the reason...<br /><br />HITCHENS: That's why it's a good question because to me the answer isn't as obvious as it is to you.<br /><br />WILSON: Now let me answer the question you posed to me.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, why not?<br /><br />WILSON: I believe, as a Christian minister, I get up week after week on the Lord's day to preach and I'll read from Scripture and I'll say before I read, "These are the words of God," and give you God's word. I'll read the text and then exposit the text so I have no business or authority going, as the Apostle Paul says in Corinthians, "We're to learn how not to go beyond what is written." So God is there, as Francis Schaeffer put it in his book title, <i>He is There and He is Not Silent</i>. So, the Christian faith believes in a God who reveals Himself. God reveals Himself in Creation, He reveals Himself in the incarnation of the word of God, Jesus, and He reveals Himself in His inscripturated word. So, I need to stick close to what God has revealed to us in Scripture and that's how I—so if I say, "God wants us to do thus and such," and you say, "How do you know that?" what I would do is I'd give you a chapter and verse. I'd say, "Well, here's where He told us to do that." <br /><br />HITCHENS: Must be very handy; you can just assume what you have to prove. <br /><br />WILSON: It is very handy. And you're assuming—assuming what you need to prove on ultimate questions is inescapable. So, if you say you depend on reason as your ultimate court of appeal and I can say, "Oh? Give me a reason for that." Well, you're assuming—when you give me reason for that, you're assuming what you need to prove. If I asked for a reason for your trust in reason, you wouldn't say, "Oh, thank you, I will have a jelly doughnut." You're going to appeal to reason and that's just like me opening my Bible and pointing to a scriptural text.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Not just like.<br /><br />WILSON: We're finite beings and so every finite being has to have an axiomatic starting point. You have one, I have one.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Right. <br /><br />WILSON: As an unbeliever, your axiomatic starting point is one of unbelief; mine is one of faith.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But if this scripture was the Koran, does everything you say still hold?<br /><br />WILSON: No.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Why not? How do you know they've got the wrong god?<br /><br />WILSON: That's a great question and it's what Greg Bahnsen referred to as "the impossibility of the contrary." Basically there are about five world views available. Most variants are denominational differences between, you know, within those world views. You've got Trinitarianism and Unitarianism and Pantheism and Naturalism and Dualism. And everything that you can shake out will fit under one of those categories. So if someone said, "I belong to a Unitarian faith like Islam, and there's one God and Muhammed is his prophet," does this work? Well, among those five world views, what you have is a demolition derby, a last-man-standing approach where, ok, if each faith—if each one of these faiths has A, B, C, that's their fundamental assertion then you reason downstream, given those premises, reason downstream from those. If one column says, "I assert B," and then you get to a logical consequence of that which is not B, C, not C, D, not D, and the only one that doesn't do that is the Christian faith, which is, I'm convinced, is the case then that's the last man standing; that's the demolition derby, or as Dr. Greg Bahnson said, "the impossibility of the contrary." You can't just say, "I have my presuppositions and I can do as a Muslim what you did as a Christian, or I can do as a Naturalist what you did as a Christian," you can't really do that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: If you were born in Saudi Arabia, then, would you be better off being an atheist than a Muslim?<br /><br />WILSON: Say that again.<br /><br />HITCHENS: If a soul, a person, is born in Saudi Arabia, would that person, in your judgment, be wiser to be an atheist than to become a Muslim?<br /><br />WILSON: You know, that's a hard question to answer. But I would honestly say that it would be better for that person to be an atheist in that setting. Not because atheism is the truth, but because that means that he's at least on a pilgrimage. He's at least stepped away from that which is the dominant, controlling form of thought, which is erroneous. And if he wants his moving he might keep moving until he finds Christ.<br /><br />OLASKY: Next question.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Uh, yes this question is for Mr. Hitchens but also, I guess, for Mr. Wilson as well. I'm a big fan of your columns on <i>Slate</i> and I definitely read them every hour as my—as soon as they come out—as some of my roommates and professors can attest...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Thank you.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: And, we've kind of touched on this, I guess, in the periphery of this argument but (and I know I'm simplifying things), but one of the reasons that you often argue that Saddam Hussein needed to be taken out, for a lack of a better word, is the "crimes" he perpetrated against, you know, the Kurds, and against his own people. Another cause you're very passionate about is—and I'm going to mispronounce her name—Ms. Hirsaan Ali...is that...?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Right. I guess what I'm asking is: Those crimes that were perpetrated by Saddam Hussein and towards Ms. Ali, couldn't it be argued that Saddam had, through evolutionary means, gotten to a position of power where he was stronger and is up to him to survive—I guess what I'm saying is you often refer to moral arguments for the Iraq war. Couldn't it be argued that if survival of the fittest holds true that there really wasn't a moral argument for the Iraq war, we could maybe take him out because we're a stronger entity, the US, but, I guess—this is basically what we've been talking about the last 20 minutes or so, but...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, if I have understood you correctly, what you're really asking me is would I think it made sense to describe to the Saddam Hussein regime as evil? Well, I wrote a long essay and it's in a little book of mine called <i>The Long Short War: A Postponed Liberation of Iraq</i>, about that very question. How would one derive such a term as "evil"? I personally believe I've witnessed the operations of radical evil in the world, in fact in northern Iran. It's something to do with the smell that's given off by genocide but also by torture. In other words, by being crueler than you need to be to stay in power, by being cruel for its own sake. This sort of surplus value of dictatorship and torture and genocide. The exorbitant bit, the evil part, the part that isn't necessary for the job to be done. It's purely a celebration of horror for its own sake. That's the nearest—that surplus value element to it is the nearest I've been able to get and I can promise you that if you were a person of ordinary morality as we all are, you would know it too when you saw it. By what standard, I'm about to be asked? You would know that too. You'd know what standard you were using when you had that reaction, believe me. Did we only take out Saddam Hussein because we could? No, because there's no regime we couldn't take out if we wanted to. And there are many regimes we wish we could. In Burma, for example, or Zimbabwe (a Buddhist dictatorship in Burma, a Catholic dictatorship in Zimbabwe)—never mind, just teasing. But we don't because there are actually certain norms of secular international law that have to be breached—at least one of four have to be breached before a state can be said to have sacrificed its sovereignty and laid itself open to intervention.<br /><br />OLASKY: We're not going to get deep into the questions of the Iraq war today, but certainly the question of evil. [To Wilson] Do you want...?<br /><br />WILSON: Yes. One of the things that I would say quickly in response to it is this: I agree with Christopher that we would react in similar ways, if not identical ways, to many things that manifest themselves around the globe. When I've read Christopher, I really appreciate it, for example his review for example of Pat Buchanan's book in <i>Newsweek</i> some months ago, and what I appreciated was that he wasn't just blowing smoke in the general direction in these international situations. He knew something about them. And when he assess this being done to this group to that group, has the stench of death about it, it's evil and it's wrong, I'm not arguing that. We agree. When you—the stench of genocide, the stench of torture, those sorts of things—that's bad business. Here's the problem: Suppose Christopher, in one of his journalistic jaunts, goes to interview a dictator on his deathbed, alright? The dictator has got a vast trail of injustice behind him and, if Christopher is right, no justice in front of him, right? He's lived to be 85 years old, he's going to die and he's going to go into oblivion just like every other bit of protoplasm, alright? Identical. And this dictator, who did all these things that Christopher rightly disapproves of, chuckles to himself and says, "You know, I'm like Frank Sinatra: I did it my way and got away with it too, you know? I kept myself in power, the US never came and took me out, I lived to a ripe old age, I got away with it," and laughs quietly to himself. Now what can Christopher say to him that would refute him, that would answer him? Now he did get away with it. There's vast injustice behind him and no justice in front of him. And how do you maintain your own sense of personal indignation at these evils when you believe that's the way the universe is? Christopher thinks that the universe doesn't care about this stuff. Genocide is just like so much foam on the sea, that's all it is. John Lennon said, "Imagine: Above Auschwitz only sky. Imagine there's no heaven above us, no hell below." Above Buchenwald, only sky. Above every horror that Christopher's ever written about, only sky. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, that's sad but true. The universe doesn't care—doesn't know, as a matter or fact, this is going on. The heavens don't notice it. They're not even indifferent.<br /><br />WILSON: And if the universe doesn't care, why do you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: They're not even indifferent, they're unaware. I can't make them be aware. I might, like you, wished that they were aware, and that God would punish or prevent these things, but He doesn't and I can't make myself believe something because it might be nice to believe it (a big difference between us). Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Spanish Falange Fascist Party, very active chap in his life, was asked of by the priests who, of course, always surround dictators on their deathbeds, holding up crosses and offering them absolution, if they'll say—everything you've ever done will be forgiven if you will just now say that you'll accept Jesus as your personal savior (how about that for an immoral action, by the way?). Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera was asked to forgive all of his enemies. And as he was slipping away he said, "I have no enemies; I killed them all."<br /><br />OLASKY: So...<br /><br />HITCHENS: That's why I'm in favor of getting rid of Saddam Hussein when he's in his prime. That's the short answer to your question.<br /><br />OLASkY: So do you wish Christianity were true?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I don't. I don't think that the problems and miseries and strugglings and sufferings of humanity can be resolved by referring them to a supernatural totalitarian, unanswerable, unchallengeable authority. I don't think there's a totalitarian solution to our many, many woes and sufferings. I just don't and I'm glad to think there is such a solution available.<br /><br />WILSON: And I cannot see...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, and I do not think that stars move in their courses and can be moved to pity by the sufferings of my fellow creatures. They don't know we're here; evolution doesn't know we're here.<br /><br />WILSON: And I cannot...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It won't notice when we've gone.<br /><br />WILSON: And I cannot see why, if ultimately reality does not and cannot know or care, why any subset of reality should know or care.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, we've seen one of the tortures that's inflicted on us by existence is that we are, most of us, condemned to care.<br /><br />WILSON: That's just...<br /><br />HITCHENS: We do feel the sufferings of others...<br /><br />WILSON: That's just a chemical...<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...as well as our own.<br /><br />WILSON: That's a chemical reaction. That's all it is is a chemical reaction.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It still hurts.<br /><br />WILSON: Hurts you. <br /><br />HITCHENS: It does.<br /><br />WILSON: Why should we care about...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Then insult is added to injury: You're told that these sufferings are sent by God, that they can be ennobling to us, that they're sent as a test.<br /><br />[BREAK]<br /><br />WILSON: I know you denounce things, you praise things and I agree with you in many of the instances where you do. I'm just pointing out you don't have a foundation under that very nice house of yours.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You talk as if—you really do talk as if I advocate for evolution, that I say I wish evolution was true, that it's not an opinion of mine or a conclusion of mine, it's a desire or a piece of propaganda on my part. Convinced as I am that all the evidence suggests that the cosmos began with a big bang, the universe is expanding very fast, and that the rate of expansion is increasing, and that the galaxy Andromeda is headed on a direct collision course with our own so that we know now—we know, we can watch it in the sky, we can watch it through a telescope, that the something we have now will very soon be nothing. I know that to be true. You say, "Well then, where does your morality come from?" and I say, "Wait a minute: First of all, is this true or is it not?" What about the evidence? Now, just about the origin of our own tiny species, never mind the cosmos, all the evidence—absolutely all of it says that we are here because of the operations of random mutation and natural selection. There is no other satisfactory explanation for our presence here. You say, "Well, that just means we're animals." Well, what if it's true? What if it's true? What if all the evidence is in its favor? Then it's not my opinion, it's not my propaganda. I can't make myself believe something that's in direct contradiction to all the known facts.<br /><br />WILSON: Then you should embrace the consequences of what you affirm.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, do I not seem to do so?<br /><br />WILSON: No. No, because you can't account for morality.<br /><br />HITCHENS: [Exasperated sigh]<br /><br />WILSON: Given what you just described, you can't account for it and you persist in hanging on to it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: The need for our species of solidarity and for survival is a perfectly good explanation.<br /><br />WILSON: No, killing other races off is another way to survive. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Sure, well that's often enjoined, as you know, is enjoined in the Bible. The destruction of other races is necessary for the children of Israel to get to the stolen property that they've been awarded in Sinai.<br /><br />WILSON: So what problem do you have with that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I object to being told that it's a moral preachment, that's all.<br /><br />WILSON: Basically...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't like being told it's God's will. I can see why one tribe of Bronze Age bandits might want to kill and take the property and the young ladies of another tribe, I can see that. But to invent a story that says God gave them permission to do it, I think is wicked.<br /><br />WILSON: So you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And stupid too, actually.<br /><br />WILSON: So...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And aesthetically, somehow, not pleasing. Let me add—now, where do aesthetics come from if we're just primates? I don't know, exactly. But there is—we have enough surplus in our cortexes to allow for art and music and indeed love. Just as well, I often think. But I don't regard it as a divine gift. And there's absolutely no evidence that it is.<br /><br />OLASKY: This back and forth has been very instructive. We have a lot of people wanting to ask questions. So, questions now and then we'll just have one answer, one answer...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, sorry.<br /><br />OLASKY: And then move on to the next question, but this has been very good. Emily?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: My question is similar to what Mr. Wilson was just asking. It's for you, Mr. Hitchens. Assuming, as you said, that evolution has created everything that is, and that random mutation and natural selection produce mixed results, you know, competing instincts towards generosity and love as well as toward genocide and war and domination, and if you, as you say, you don't know where aesthetics come from, you don't appear to want to be pinned down on where objective morality comes from...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, objective morality is from human solidarity, the need for survival. We couldn't be having this conversation if we were not moral animals. We wouldn't have gotten this far. We wouldn't have evolved language. <br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Or civilization. So...I know I've said this before.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: Ok, competing—given the fact of competing human solidarities (definitions of morality), why should anyone listen when you say, "Such-and-such an action is wrong; a nation should follow such-and-such a course." What is your justification for persuading people to believe certain things?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Only slightly better than my saying they should listen to me because I'm doing God's will. Slightly, but measurably superior to that. And less arrogant. Considerably less arrogant. <br /><br />WILSON: I want to point out...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And aesthetically more pleasing. <br /><br />WILSON: I want to point out very quickly and hit it and run away, and that is: The evolutionary advantage is not conferred simply by human solidarity. Evolutionary advantage is also conferred by destroying your enemies, ok?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Absolutely.<br /><br />WILSON: Now, you can't have—just emphasize the one. So, genetic propagation (preserving your little corner of the gene pool) is a tribal thing. You can't just assume that enemies will only be martians or aliens. So, this means that evolution means conflict within the human species.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes. Where does that come from, by the way? That's God's will as well. Evil is God's will too.<br /><br />WILSON: We're sinners.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well that's—isn't that a little trite or tautologist?<br /><br />WILSON: Very true.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Of course it would have to be the case because we're all sinners.<br /><br />WILSON: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because that's how we've been made by God. This isn't very much nutrition, I don't think. It's not very satisfying; doesn't tell you very much. I mean, I know the Devil was once in heaven as a co-ruler and there was a falling out but I've never thought that was a terrifically good explanation of the Problem of Evil either.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Anyway, my question is for Mr. Hitchens: (First of all, I'd like to thank both of you for showing up and doing this for us. I don't think anyone else has thanked you for that yet, so...I'll be the first to do so.)<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, please it's my pleasure, but thank you.<br /><br />WILSON: You're welcome. <br /><br />HITCHENS: No, very decent of you.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: My question is: If your view of morality is that it is innate within humans and is simply a natural process, a natural accumulation of events, then isn't your statement that genocide is wrong in the Old Testament and evil and utterly despicable and yet you just told us that you'd like to kill those who wish to kill you. You wish to, you know—radical Muslims, radical Christians, whatever. My question is: Couldn't morality—if morality is evolving, would you agree to that, morality is evolving, that it is—since humans are evolving and morality is found within humans, then by essence morality would be evolving. Would you agree with that statement?<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's the slightly—it's what Macaulay called the Whig Interpretation of history, that there is an improvement over time in our compassion, that we include more and more people and award more and more rights. But yes, I find I can't say I don't believe that.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: My question, then, is: <br /><br />HITCHENS: There are some terrible backslidings. I mean, Fascism is worse, much worse than anything that went before it. And many, many huge improvements occurred before that colossal reaction set in. So it's unwise to just accept the Whig Interpretation, that it's a—evolution is a fairly straight line.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Well, yes, of course. I mean, evolution you obviously have some backsliding with it, it's pretty obvious from scientific...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Our brains are in fact getting bigger, but very slowly.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: But, I guess my question is then: Would you support eugenics in order to continue the good health and prosperity of the human race, a thing that is generally looked down upon in today's society but for the good of mankind, I mean, you know, there's a reason Down Syndrome babies—babies with Down Syndrome has declined precipitously and that is because people don't want to have to take care of them. So, would it be acceptable to say, "Well look, for the good of mankind, in order to survive, why don't we kill off X amount of people?"<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, fortunately, nature does most of that for us. I mean, most abortions take place spontaneously in the womb. Nature knows this one isn't going to work out. It's called miscarriage, it happens all the time. If we're adapted, as you know, our bodies are adapted to life on the African Savanna, adapted to an environment that we fled from, but if there had been humans with two or three lolling-headed, disabled babies on that Savanna, to take care of, they wouldn't have survived. Everyone would've been killed by the predators. So on the whole, nature takes care of this for us. I'm not in favor of exterminating the unfit, no. I hope I didn't say anything that would lead you to the contrary impression. And if you ask me, "Isn't that just because of some compassion that I couldn't explain the origin of?" The answer is actually "No," or "Not entirely." There would be a utilitarian explanation as well. As when we encounter a terrifying new disease like AIDS, you learn a great deal from combating it. You improve your game in medicine and in research. If you treat every human being, however disabled, mentally or physically they are, as if they're worth the full value, you gain experiences that are well worth having for the betterment of the species in general.<br /><br />WILSON: If I could just tack one thing on, just a general observation: The atheistic process of evolution means that terms like "backsliding" is incoherent. Progress is incoherent, there's no such thing as progress, there's no such thing as backsliding. All you have is change. If there is no judgment, is no God, is no standard, is no righteousness, then my perennial question is, "By what standard?"<br /><br />HITCHENS: Only on the fantastic assumption that you can't have morality without religion. A case you haven't even advanced one argument for yet.<br /><br />WILSON: Morality is subject to evolution just like everything else is.<br /><br />OLASKY: We're going to evolve to the next question.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well that's certainly true. Religion is subject to evolution as well. Most religions no longer believe half of what they used to preach. I would actually say that was progress.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: Alright, my question is for both gentlemen (and this is because I'm noting an area of ambiguity). So, Mr. Wilson first. My question is: What is sin and how are sin and God—how are they related in a metaphysical sense? And Mr. Hitchens, I'd love to hear you comment on this as well.<br /><br />WILSON: Well, the Apostle John tells us that sin is lawlessness; the Westminster catechism says that sin is any lack of conformity to the law of God. The law of God, in its turn, is simply an inscripturated summary of God's character, what God is like. So ultimately, I would say that sin is being unlike God in certain character—love, holiness, those sorts of things. So sin is lawlessness or not being like God or Christ.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because I don't avoid all terms of that value judgment doesn't mean that I embrace all of them either. I think sin is probably one you can do without. Wrongdoing I can understand; evil, I've told you, I think is important because it's the surplus value, the cruelty and horror for its own sake, self-endangering, self-destructive, suicidal as well as horrible, in other words. Crime, of course, can be understood and to call something a crime is a pretty severe condemnation. The word "sin," as you've just heard, is completely incoherent because it's failing to do God's will which means you must know what God's will is which, by definition, no primate can. And, I'm afraid, Douglas has yet again failed to inform us of how he knows something that we don't. By what right—<i>quo warranto</i>—by what right, he says, he knows what God's mind is. I'm going to have to repeat this question and I can tell you that at the end of this session the question will still be an open one.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: I would also like to thank both of you gentlemen for coming. This has been wonderful.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's a pleasure.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: My question is for you, Mr. Hitchens. I was wondering—it's on a much less scholarly level, I guess, but—in your personal life and in the people that you've come across, and I'm sure you've debated some interesting people and just, you know, in passing we all—we meet different people and get to understand different life experiences: What would your opinion be on someone who, or on a lot of people maybe who have grown up and maybe not believed in any God or have been devout, you know, non-believers, if that makes sense, or believers in a different religion, and have come across the Bible or have, in some fashion that is not necessarily being prosthelytized, as you talked about, or not necessarily growing up in a Christian home, they have decided to convert to Christianity, and in doing so have put themselves in a position where maybe their potential wealth gain or potential influence in society would be diminished but they feel that the returns for that are greater on a higher level? I guess, how do you feel about that and what would you do if a supernatural experience occurred to you, if you had said, "You know what, God, if you would show up right now and do this and you did it," I mean, how would you react to that? Would you commit yourself to an asylum? Or would you just ask more questions?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ok. To the hypothetical person or persons you mentioned, my answer would be I wish them all the best of luck. And if it works for them I'm very happy for them. I just don't want them trying to teach that Bible in the school attended by my daughter or to try and legislate from that book in the common law of the United States or to try and have a supernatural intervention taught in science class. I won't have any of that. Aside from that, we can coexist. (I make that demand of all religions, by the way.) And incidentally you'd have to grant it to all religions of you thought that someone's life could be improved by reading a holy book, and that they'd then be less materialistic and a nicer person and so on. Well then—you know, it's said, and I believe it may well be true that Louis Farrakhan's racist, crack-pot, cult organization gets young black men off drugs and jail—maybe it does—by handing them the Wahabi Quran. Well, what have you proved there? Nothing, absolutely nothing at all. But as long as they don't try to hurt me with it, I'm fine. Now as to the likelihood that I'd have a revelation (I keep being told that that's what I'm secretly looking for, that I couldn't be like this if I wasn't some kind of a seeker. It's very irritating. That's like being told you may not believe in Jesus but He believes in you. A fantastically annoying thing to have said.)<br /><br />WILSON: I can assure you that He doesn't.<br /><br />[Audience gasp]<br /><br />HITCHENS: David Hume—I suppose you've all read David Hume on miracles. If you haven't, you must. It's the most elegant philosophizing on the question of miraculous apparition that has yet been. He says if something appears to have happened that is not consistent with the laws of nature (the laws of nature have been suspended), there are two contingencies: Either that the laws of nature have been suspended (in your favor) or that you're under a misapprehension. Which is the likeliest? It's always likeliest that you're always under a misapprehension. And if you're hearing about this from someone who claims to have seen it and you were though getting it second hand the odds that it's a misapprehension that's being spread are exponential increased. So if I heard voices telling me to do something and that this was on behalf of a deity, I would check myself in, of course, and I hope that you would, if you saw someone in the street raving and saying—let's not say raving, that would be to prejudice it—but if someone came up to you and said, "You know, I'm on a mission from God today and I've got various things I've got to do and I hope you'll help me do them because God's will has to be done through me," why is it you edge away from people like that rather than towards them, if they're on the same bus as you? What saving instinct makes you say, "I'm going to move to another seat now," rather than say, "Ooh, I wish you'd share!" Why is that? You know very well why it is.<br /><br />WILSON: I'd like to tack on...<br /><br />HITCHENS: People who say they are doing God's work are to be distrusted.<br /><br />WILSON: I'd like to tack on a quick agreement: I agree with Christopher that I don't believe that creationism has any place in public schools; I don't believe that prayer has any place in public schools; I don't believe that the teaching of one religion over another has any place in the public schools but, of course, that's because I don't believe that kids ought to be in public schools. I don't believe—[Audience laughter]—I don't think lockers ought to be, I don't believe that textbooks ought to be...[video cuts out]<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 9: This question is for Mr. Hitchens: Again and again, throughout this debate you've said that morality is innate to mankind and Pastor Wilson, I feel you've argued on his terms on that particular point. How would you respond to the argument that this innate morality is actually evidence of God because throughout no society have we really seen a lack of morality destroy the society. Every single person throughout our history has had this morality. How would you respond to that, that this is an obvious evidence that God created this morality with an emphasis—not Christianity that has taught us these ethics, it's that when God created you, yourself, he built in this moral code, so that's how you would be?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, to that hypothesis I would say that it was unfalsifiable and those of you should know if a proposition can be described as unfalsifiable it falls as by definition weak, or unsustainable. I couldn't possibly disprove that, in other words. There would be no way of proving that that wasn't so, which means it's a hopeless proposition. It would also leave—but suppose it to be true, then you'd have to ask, "Well, which other authority is instilling us with the temptation, in some cases the need, to rape, steal, perjure, kill, and so forth. Is that coming from the same great imprinter or another one? Is there, in fact, spiritual warfare going on between demons and angels going on all around us that we can't quite see?" That's also an unfalsifiable proposition. It could be true, there's just no evidence for it and I must say, old-fashioned, call me if you will, that when there's no evidence for a proposition, my inclination is to doubt it. There, I've said it. <br /><br />OLASKY: Next.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 10: This is a question for Mr. Wilson. Allow me to read a passage from the text. This is on page 17 of your introduction. You say, "The issue of thanksgiving is really central to the whole debate about the existence of God. On the one hand, if there is no God, there is no need to thank anyone. We're here as a result of a long chain of impersonal processes grinding their way down to a brief moment in time. If there is a God, then every breath, every movement, every sight and sound is sheer, unadulterated gift. And as our mothers taught us when you give presents like this, the only appropriate response is to thank them." I am not thankful and I think that you want to be thankful and so you're inventing God as wish fulfillment (I'm taking here Mr. Hitchens' argument). Please respond to how your feeling thankful necessitates God. I think that you can very easily say that you're inventing a god because you want to feel thankful.<br /><br />WILSON: Yes. The counterargument to this would be that it's simply a particular manifestation of wish fulfillment so that you would like there to be someone to thank and so you do. The difficulty with that is when you look at the vast array of cool stuff that exists around us, there seems to me to be, as one scientist put it, "It looks as though the universe is a put-up job." Everywhere you go there's something really fantastic going on and it's not as though there's just one or two things where, if I find an object, a brightly colored rock in the forest, if I'm an unbeliever and I'm walking along and I find a rock and I don't know if I should thank anyone for that one rock. But suppose it's 17 trillion beautiful things, glorious things? It begins to look like a divine conspiracy and at a certain point, a refusal to give thanks looks like willful stubbornness. So I want to argue that in Romans I, Paul says the fundamental problem that men have is they refuse to honor God as God and refuse to give Him thanks. So I believe that thanksgiving is at the heart of our difficulty in seeing.<br /><br />OLASKY: Let's move—another question.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Can I just say something on this question, because it goes very strongly to my point about the totalitarian character of religion: What sort of person wants His subjects, who He created, He made, to reward Him by incessantly—and remember it says everlastingly, evermore praising God and saying, "Holy, holy, holy." And then always thanking and never stopping. It seems a rather capricious and tyrannical demand, doesn't it to you? Doesn't it to me? I've actually been—I used to wonder when I was a kid, they say well—I could work out what hell might be like very easily, everyone can. Convincing accounts of heaven are harder to come by unless you look in the Quran, but the Christian one seem to offer everlasting praise and I remember thinking, "What would that be like?" I mean, after the first week of saying, "Thank you," at the top of my voice wouldn't things start to seem a little subject to diminishing returns, possibly even for the person listening to them, as well? We'd never want to hear anything from you but that? That's all that's demanded of me. I've been to North Korea, I've seen a state where that's what people have to do. They have to worship and thank all day, all the time. Everything they get is from the infinite love and generosity of the Dear Leader and the Great Leader who, by the way, are a father and son reincarnation which would make North Korea just one short of trinity, in case that detail interests you at all. You know, there is one reason I'd have in my own life to wish sometimes to say, "Thank God," and, in a sense, to wish I could mean it, and the word for it is "apotropaic." An apotropaic is the gesture you make to avoid hubris, in other words, so that if your book is a best-seller you don't just say, "Hey, I must be a better write than I thought!" You want to be able to say, "It's nice to think that not everything is done by hand." And so, the idea of thanking is a good way of indulging the apotropaic. But don't go taking it too literally, or condemning yourself to a life of groveling, an infinity of groveling because that would be caving into the sado-masochistic, totalitarian core of religious faith. <br /><br />WILSON: North Korea is an atheistic state, by the way.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it isn't, it's the most religious state on the planet.<br /><br />WILSON: Yeah. That's what I said.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: Mr. Hitchens, I don't mean to be rude but you seem to have this wide-eyed...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I have a very thick skin.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: Alright, excellent. You seem to have this wide-eyed, mystical view of human metasolidarity as moral absolute and I dare say the [indecipherable] would be proud, but why should this human metasolidarity as moral absolute, why shouldn't I believe that there are A) competing solidarities, why can't I believe that? and B) why can't I believe that what you're doing is basically just a power play upon all of us and that, really, morality is simply your preference that you are commanding of all of us?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I have to say you're not—it's not rude at all as phrased, but it was rude of you not to be paying attention earlier. (And you didn't do yourself any favors, either.) I didn't say, "Look at how superbly moral we primates are." I said the morality we do have is innate in us and it's a necessary condition for survival as a species, I didn't saying how wonderful it was. Nor do I say how wonderful it is that we're also programmed to rape, steal, cheat, and lie, and I don't blame any celestial deity for that either because it's because we are animals, not sinners, animals, poorly evolved primate species that these things are innate in us. It doesn't need to look for a supernatural explanation. How could I prove this all wasn't a power play on my part? I couldn't. What was your other question? There was a closing one.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: Well the other question was on competing solidarities. You've talked about the solidarity we have with each other. Why don't we just have competing solidarities?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, we do.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: I mean, there's brotherhood amongst—solidarity amongst thieves.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Surely, and among Fascists, very much so. And in particular among Communists. It's what they actually call it: brotherhood. I don't see how that represents any kind of challenge to anything I've said. Our species is divided into sub-groups and tribes. I don't think we are subdivided by race; I think we're all the same race, but there are different ethnicities and tribalisms and certainly a very large number of solidarities. The attempt made by the Bible to define these is the most laughable one.<br /><br />WILSON: It's a challenge to your position. It's a challenge...<br /><br />HITCHENS: The Sons of Ham and the Sons of Noah and all the rest that were in there and the belief held by many Christians for a very long time, and by some of the Mormon persuasion to this very day, that black people are a special creation not quite human and condemned to be that color before they were born. None of this, as you'll see, means that religion can shed any light on this stuff at all.<br /><br />WILSON: It's a challenge...<br /><br />HITCHENS: All of these things can be discussed as if there was no supernatural dimension and as problems they remain exactly the way they would be if there was no supernatural dimension.<br /><br />WILSON: It's a challenge to your position because if our values and our decisions and our code arises from our solidarity, if there are competing solidarities, you don't know what to do.<br /><br />OLASKY: Last quick question.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: Professor Hitchens...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It doesn't undermine my position at all if there's no instruction to what to do there. When human interests and human rights—interpretations of right—collide, that doesn't condemn my position at all. It's what you would expect of an evolved, primate species. It's Hegel's definition of tragedy as a conflict between two rights. These things will occur. You can't resolve them by referring them upward to a celestial totalitarianism. You will get no help from that quarter. <br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: Professor Hitchens...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sir.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: If I can step into your car for a moment. Would not extinction be a great mercy for the human race as it would be an end to these meaningless chemical reactions that are as likely to cause pain as pleasure, that apparently aren't leading toward any great conclusion or justice or redemption? Why should I not undertake a campaign to exterminate the human race and call myself a liberator of the human race from the pain and suffering that has marked its progress through history?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well you're asking, excuse me, you're addressing your question to the wrong person. It's not I who looks forward to the end of the world and to the apocalypse and to the last days. It's not I who says that my belief can't wait for that to happen, that that'll be the happy day when the trumpet shall sound and we shall be changed. I don't look forward to that at all. <br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: But why not?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ask someone who believes any of this. <br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: But I'm asking, "Why not?" since your world is without hope and without...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because with the short life that I have been given by evolution and natural selection, I'm not going to be pushed around by theocrats in the short time I do have.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: So are you thankful to evolution and natural selection for the short time you've been given?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah. I have been—here I am. There's no getting around it. I don't attribute my presence here, as some so arrogantly do, to a divine plan. I don't think I'm the object of a divine plan. Do I look to you as I'm the object of a divine plan?<br /><br />WILSON: Absolutely.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Thought not. Whereas—but the explanation that I'm here because of the laws of operation, the laws of biology is perfectly satisfying to me and it doesn't leave anything unexplained. It doesn't mean everything is explained, however, that would be reductionist. But I don't look forward—no, I don't look forward to the destruction of the world. I don't look forward to the end of the world at all. It's those who believe in divine creation and divine dispensation who look forward to that. You should be asking them, and perhaps yourself, why that is. I do think religion does conceal a death wish, not very carefully either.<br /><br />WILSON: At the very least, the end of the world on Christopher's terms would be the cessation of all pain and there is something you could look forward to in that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah, but when Buddhists and other say, you know, if only I would join their—I'd cease to suffer from pain and struggle and anxiety and so on and I say, "I don't believe you can give that to me, I don't." But if you could, I wouldn't think it was worth the having. I like conflict; I like anxiety; I like struggle; I like combat; I like all these things; they make life worth living for me. I don't want there to be permanent peace and tranquility and banality. I don't want it at all, ok?<br /><br />WILSON: But that's what you're going to get.<br /><br />HITCHENS: By the way, what does the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?<br /><br />OLASKY: What?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Make me one with everything. <br /><br />WILSON: What does the Buddhist say to the Christian?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, wait...<br /><br />WILSON: I'm going to get in my karma and run over your dogma.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Wait, sir. The other shoe has to fall. So the hot dog vendor gives him his slathered dog with everything and the Buddhist hands over 20 bucks, starts to munch, waits for a bit, ketchup on his saffron robes, and nothing happens. And he says to the hot dog vendor, "What about my change?" And the vendor says, "Change comes only from within."<br /><br />OLASKY: On that enlightening note, we must cease this struggle. Please join me in thanking both of our [indecipherable].HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-55204619527638094362010-07-26T22:22:00.012-04:002010-11-25T14:52:35.955-05:00Hitchens in Brisbane<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYX4fZ4t5rRUUdkg4Nx-qCSWkIPZl8s_fnyLMJCb9DDnrqV0UNOEYYflkk-2MYNfIs4ZEJhtx0WnRPuslkYvcPcy4mjfIuJpE1UZ2QOBiWxs-ortRuU8TEhPDxpvzyoSRMljSAYp5SaLzI/s1600/cell.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYX4fZ4t5rRUUdkg4Nx-qCSWkIPZl8s_fnyLMJCb9DDnrqV0UNOEYYflkk-2MYNfIs4ZEJhtx0WnRPuslkYvcPcy4mjfIuJpE1UZ2QOBiWxs-ortRuU8TEhPDxpvzyoSRMljSAYp5SaLzI/s320/cell.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498416308975560882" /></a><br />After searching Hitchens on Hulu.com, I found a few videos unavailable on Youtube. One stood out: <a href=http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/lifestyle/essentials/hitchens-interviewed-creationists-are-losing-1498687.html>Hitchens' brief interview with <i>The Brisbane Times</i></a> (May 24, 2010) in which he promotes his memoir, <i>Hitch-22</i>. Hitch offers a few crumbs about his forthcoming book on the Ten Commandments, with its thesis: "The whole concept of having a commandment needs to be investigated ... moral reasoning and ethical debate are what's required, not orders from on high."<br /><br />Hitchens insists that morality cannot be naïvely reduced to a Bronze-Aged Kindergarten lesson. How we figure right and wrong is, like <i>Homo sapiens</i>, a slowly evolving merry-go-round of trial and error. I'm particularly hopeful for a panel, November 4, in New York City focusing on the relevance of the Ten Commandments.<br /><br />Every time a believer finishes crowing about objectively grounding morality through the precious decalogue, I can't help but roll my eyes and ask, "Perhaps, but why would a god design creatures that needed commandments in the first place?" As Hitch likes to quote Fulke Greville, we are created sick and commanded to be well.<br /><br />I'll leave you with the tastiest of Hitch's revised commandments: <a href=http://www.dailyhitchens.com/2010/03/christopher-hitchens-on-ten.html>Turn off that fucking cell phone.</a> (You can have <i>no idea</i> how unimportant your call is to us.)HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-88679907009728749252010-07-26T19:53:00.009-04:002010-11-25T14:50:26.330-05:00Hitchens vs. Roberts, Hugh Hewitt Show<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://www.markdroberts.com/>Dr. Mark Roberts</a>: The Great God Debate.<br /><li>June 6, 2007, <a href=http://hughhewitt.com/blog/>Hugh Hewitt Show</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo5pOwnJNTy4FRYy_fHK0au6CXyOm5Cnob2egzaAD-nujl2vAT-W13h6gTm-YR7alowvLNQMaXZrghOjp1Eo4Cye9YJD5jqS_0lFBJQjgz3RtGOx1bngYZANAruqSJwGE8gKj_iYZkPM86/s1600/hewitt.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo5pOwnJNTy4FRYy_fHK0au6CXyOm5Cnob2egzaAD-nujl2vAT-W13h6gTm-YR7alowvLNQMaXZrghOjp1Eo4Cye9YJD5jqS_0lFBJQjgz3RtGOx1bngYZANAruqSJwGE8gKj_iYZkPM86/s320/hewitt.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498365976669026514" /></a>HEWITT: Morning, glory to you and grace, America. It's Hugh Hewitt. Welcome to a special edition of <i>The Hugh Hewitt Show</i>, "The Great God Debate," a three-hour exchange of views between Christopher Hitchens and Dr. Mark Roberts. Christopher Hitchens, a graduate of Oxford, of course, long time journalist, <i>Vanity Fair</i> columnist, author of many books and collections of essays, including a biography of Thomas Jefferson, <i>Thomas Jefferson: Author of America</i>, and most recently, <i>god Is Not Great</i>, last week, the number-one-selling non-fiction book in America. Dr. Roberts, frequent guest on this program, is a graduate of Harvard College and also received his PhD from Harvard. He is a pastor, a professor, a blogger, and the author of six books. His latest is available this week, in fact, <i>Can We Trust The Gospels?</i> Gentlemen, welcome to you both. Christopher, good to have you back on.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOEj82LdVUZEiDPR1-qcBsy1-gPpshFg3LEdmC8VJH49A3XSbmcmuRDPrXAGxybwmzIDOA0PodmB-fHBWCRNJCGhtsQVXhxi_vu7q7789KRl-kFbo9_yk3OvRvSToAzSZO5u5uoAsFFDOM/s1600/hitchens.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 91px; height: 122px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOEj82LdVUZEiDPR1-qcBsy1-gPpshFg3LEdmC8VJH49A3XSbmcmuRDPrXAGxybwmzIDOA0PodmB-fHBWCRNJCGhtsQVXhxi_vu7q7789KRl-kFbo9_yk3OvRvSToAzSZO5u5uoAsFFDOM/s320/hitchens.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498366349212187138" /></a>HITCHENS: Very nice of you to have me back.<br /><br />HEWITT: And Mark, good to have you back as well.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Thank you, and Christopher, it's nice to meet you electronically.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Thank you for saying so.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Ly40Qt4LH59S3eS8DZjp-clBE2vGcCaNYnrAZ8r0TH3BEAXKgRIHTwCKl2njZ7vtd1fPNdmQBdzn-V7kWBFG-ZToFLsjQ-bY2gR9H1W8d3SXAjAJSemGxhAUWW8e9TlwwVn1TpGA4fc3/s1600/roberts.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Ly40Qt4LH59S3eS8DZjp-clBE2vGcCaNYnrAZ8r0TH3BEAXKgRIHTwCKl2njZ7vtd1fPNdmQBdzn-V7kWBFG-ZToFLsjQ-bY2gR9H1W8d3SXAjAJSemGxhAUWW8e9TlwwVn1TpGA4fc3/s320/roberts.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498366599087529266" /></a>HEWITT: I set up this debate with the help of my Internet friends by suggesting I would be offering propositions to you both, and then having you comment on each of them as we go forth and then cross comment. In the course of fifteen segments, I hope to get through at least a dozen of these. Many are drawn from Christopher Hitchens' new book, some are drawn from my having read Mark's manuscript, although that's not available yet to Christopher, so I'm going to minimize that a little bit. I want to begin, though, by asking a question of Christopher Hitchens and Mark Roberts that comes from Christopher's brother, Peter, in <i>The Daily Telegraph</i> this week, where he writes, "Where is Christopher's certain knowledge of what is right and wrong supposed to have come from?" Christopher Hitchens, how do you respond to your brother?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it's the most commonly asked question of unbelievers, or perhaps I should say atheists, and I regard it, though you put it very politely, as a slightly insulting one. But the suggestion that you make is that if I don't respect a celestial dictatorship that's unalterable, nothing is going to prevent me from lying, cheating, raping, thieving, and so on. Well, I can't exactly tell you why I don't do those things, or why I enjoy, say, going to give blood, which I do. After all, I don't really lose a pint, but somebody gains one, and I have a rare blood group, and I might need some blood one day myself, so it seems an all-around very satisfying transaction. In a sense, do I need to say much more than that?<br /><br />HEWITT: Dr. Roberts, does he?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, on one hand, no. I think there are certainly moral, good people who believe all kinds of things, including atheism. In fact, I have sometimes said that I sometimes believe Christians kind of rely on God and need God here because they actually are not as good people as folk who not believers, and somehow, we need a little extra help. I think there's—the problem is not that there aren't atheists and others who are moral and live morally, I think the problem would come if somebody who disagreed on a matter of ethics, and said, "Well, I understand that you, Christopher, believe I shouldn't, you know, shoot this innocent person." But in my view, I think I should shoot this innocent person. I'm not sure how, and I'd be interested, how would you say to that person at that point, "No, you, shouldn't, and here's why you shouldn't."<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I think I would probably be capable of giving some good reasons. I think for one thing, it would be an outrage to their conscience. Let's don't consider the interest of the other person for a moment. And after all, some people do need to be shot, but you stipulated innocence. Well, it would be an outrage to your conscience if for some reason, we do—we are aware of doing ill or doing good. The test I apply in my book, a fairly good, pragmatic, American test, is what do you do when no one's looking? The fact is someone is looking. You have an internal conversation with yourself where you don't want to look or feel bad. I don't think this comes from God. I think it comes as part of our evolution. Darwin points out, and others have noticed since, that there are animals who behave ethically to one another. They have solidarity; they have family groups; they seem able to feel sympathy; they certainly come to each other's aid, in the case of some of the higher mammals. I think our morality evolved, and I don't believe that my Jewish ancestors thought that perjury and murder and theft were okay until they got to Mount Sinai and were told no dice. But there's another insulting, if I may say this, implication to the question, which is that those who do subscribe to the idea of an all-seeing permanent surveillance from a celestial dictatorship are therefore going to behave well. Now, there's absolutely no evidence for that proposition at all. And some of the things that are enjoined by the Ten Commandments, such as not envying other people's property, which in my view, is a great spur to innovation, as well as the thought it's impossible not to have, actually don't lead to moral preachments, nor do commandments to mutilate the genitals seem to me to be moral preachments, nor does the idea of terrifying children with stories of hell appear to me to be moral. There's a great deal of wickedness that's attributable purely to religious belief. Morally normal people wouldn't do these things if they didn't think God was desiring them to do so.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts…<br /><br />HITCHENS: So I return the question in that form.<br /><br />ROBERTS: So then, for you, our morality is something that has come by way of evolutionary process? Did I get that correctly?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, it's necessary for human society to evolve, that to be certain, and it's found in all societies, whichever god they worship, or whichever cult they practice, that courage is respected, cowardice is not, murder is forbidden, theft is very much frowned upon. There are different sexual morays, not very, very widely different. The incest taboo seems to be very common, so does the one on cannibalism. I mean, the societies that don't follow those teachings, or rather follow—[inaudible] teaching, I mean, societies that violate those laws tend to die out of horrible diseases or of in-breeding.<br /><br />HEWITT: But I would pose the question to you both: Child exposure, common in the ancient world, still common in some societies, practiced widely in China today, is not considered immoral in those societies, but does it offend your conscience, Christopher, given that you're concerned about, you've reference a couple of cruelties to children?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, it does, and I have to say it rather startles me to think of a society where that wouldn't be the case.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I agree with you on that. I think my point would be that you have perhaps explained why we are moral, namely that it comes from evolution. I don't know that you've provided an adequate explanation for why we <i>should</i> act morally if indeed we don't agree on what morality is, the case of infant exposure would be a good one.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well...<br /><br />ROBERTS: But my point would be further: It's an interesting example, because in my Church, and you know, mostly, I'm a pastor. In my Church, we're very involved with a group in China of Christian people who are there quite precisely to save young children, usually girls, who have been left exposed and to die. And in this case, it isn't just a humanist impulse or conscience, but it's a very specific response to the view that they are precious in the eyes of God, and that we are called to reach out to those who are lowly. So at least in some cases, the ones that I'm most familiar with, we have a rationale for being moral, and examples of people being moral, quite specifically because of their, in this case, Christian conviction.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very well, and I wish great luck to your friends, and there are many other Christians I know who do marvelous work in North Korea, for example, where the people are trying to escape from a prison slave state there, and also for keeping the issue of Darfur in front of the public. I think the Evangelical movement deserves a great deal of credit. But here's my challenge, which you don't have to answer now, but let's say I'd love an answer by the end of our discussion. You have to name a moral action taken or a moral statement uttered by a person of faith that could not be taken or uttered by a non-believer. I haven't yet found anyone who can answer me that. There's a perfectly good secular reason for opposing especially the exposure of girl—it's often worse than exposure, by the way, in China. I mean, they bury alive all the stifling girl babies. I mean, it will in the end mean there aren't enough women. There's every reason why the Chinese are going to discover—I mean, alarming—I wrote this in <i>Vanity Fair</i> once, that an officially communist society will very soon have no word for brother or sister, let alone uncle or aunt. And that, as they say, will not stand. It has to change. They'll discover that they've ruined their own demography, as well as to having done, in the meantime, things that are revoltingly cruel. But when you talk about innocent children, remember, it is surely the Scripture that tells us that children are born in original sin, and are insensate.<br /><br />HEWITT: A minute to the break.<br /><br />ROBERTS: I've never read that insensate part in my Bible before, but maybe I missed it. No, my point would be that Christopher, you would explain the fact of human conscience in light of evolution. That may well be true. I would actually say something I know you don't believe—but you and I can differ on all kinds of things—that your innate morality is in fact quite a real remnant of your having been created by a moral god, and that one of the reasons that your arguments work, appeal to common conscience and stuff like that, is that we have in fact embedded within us something more than the accident of evolution, but something that God has in fact given, however twisted it might be. And so I think on the religious side of things, I can at least make a stronger case not only for why we should be moral, namely that there is a God who knows all things, and says this is a good way to live, but I can even explain why atheists are in fact moral, and that is they're created in God's image.<br /><br />HEWITT: My first proposition, gentlemen, on what science and scientists tell us about God, that many fine scientists believe in God does not prove God exists, and that many fine scientists do not believe in God does not prove that God does not exist. Two illustrations: Dr. Francis Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project, he declared at the National Prayer Breakfast on the first of February of this year that, "I can't identify a single conflict between what I know as a rigorous scientist and what I know as a believer," and he condemned the increasingly shrill voices around us who argue that the scientific and spiritual worldviews are incompatible. "I am here this morning to tell you that these are different ways of finding truth, and are not only compatible, but they are wondrously complementary." There's also a new Walter Isaacson biography of Einstein, quotes many, many passages of the great physicist, including one that reads, "I am not an atheist," said Einstein. "The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows something must have written those books. It does not know how." Christopher Hitchens, is my first proposition correct?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I actually don't think it is. I think that science has provided us with explanations for things that religion used to think it did explain. I think that has to be simply conceded, not just about the origin of the cosmos, but by the origin of species, including our own, and the commonality, as shown by the Genome Project, between ourselves and other animals, and indeed other vegetables—no, not other vegetables, I mean, plant life. Our DNA is extraordinary in demonstrating that, and it simply abolishes the need to think about a prime mover.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts…<br /><br />HITCHENS: You can—in other words, it's an optional belief. Dr. Collins is absolutely welcome to say he believes in God, and even though he can't seem to argue that as well as he does elsewhere, that he's a Christian. But it's, as I say in my book, it's an optional belief now. It's been optional ever since Laplace, when demonstrating the workings of the universe, was asked, "Well, there doesn't seem to be a God in this design of yours," he said, "Well, it actually operates perfectly well without that assumption." So you can make it if you want, but it's completely superfluous. It can't be integral to it; it doesn't explain anything. Einstein did say he was not an atheist, but he went on to say that he had no belief whatever in a personal God. He was a Spinozist, which is a very exact way of saying that you do not believe that God intervenes in human affairs.<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes, and that is quoted repeatedly.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And if you don't believe that God intervenes in human affairs then I think you're not a Christian, because a theist may very well say, "Well, the order of the universe seems to imply some kind of authorship," but that's as far as one can go. Religion means you have to say you know what God wants, and what is in His mind. For example, I don't understand why my partner in this discussion has such a modest job, if he knows as much as to know that God gave me a conscience. I mean, if he has sources of information as extraordinary as that, he should be much better known than he is.<br /><br />HEWITT: I think that Einstein goes on to say that he's almost a Calvinist. He's a determinist. He quotes at length that way. Mark Roberts, my proposition was, though, that the number of scientists agreeing or disagreeing on either side does not tell us anything, actually, given the multiplicity of views on this. Science has not proven or disproven God.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, there would be several points to make. One is that though the majority of scientists do not have religious faith, according, actually, to a very fascinating recent study by a group of sociologists, about 40% of university scientists in this country have some kind of religious faith, about 60% don't, about half of those are atheist, half of those are agnostic, which is kind of fascinating. Part of what the study found, though, is that the correlation is very strong not between what people believe as scientists, but how they were raised. In other words, those who were raised in atheistic homes continued to be atheistic, those who were raised in religious homes continued to be religious. And that seems better to explain the nature of their faith or non-faith. But I would go back to something, and actually, it's quoted, Christopher quotes it in his book by one of my professors at Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould, who spoke of religion and science in terms of non-overlapping magisteria, that is to say that science offers explanations of a certain sort, religions offers explanations of a certain sort. I would agree with Christopher's assertion that when religion tries to make scientific explanation, it makes a mess of things. I would want to go further and say when science tries to go the other way, it makes a mess of things, and that what we have is different ways of explaining behavior, different ways of explaining reality. I would argue that both can have validity. For example, consider my love for my children. I think it's real to talk about my feelings of love for my children. They are quite real. A materialist might say no, that's simply a biochemical or molecular event happening in your brain. Well, I happen to believe it is a biochemical molecular event happening in my brain. But I also believe that my love for my children has a reality that that kind of scientific approach can't get at. And so we need different ways to deal with reality. Science is extraordinarily helpful, but I think there's also a place for religion to fill in the blanks that science can never fill in.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Could I just add one tiny thing?<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I obviously want everyone to go and rush out and buy my book, but there is another book by Professor Victor Stenger that's recently been published called <i>God, the Failed Hypothesis</i>. He's a much better scientist than I am, probably not as good, though, as Professor Stephen Jay Gould, celebrated atheist. (I very much envy you having had him as a professor.) Here's an example of what I mean, then. And since we mentioned Einstein, what Einstein says is that the miraculous thing about the universe is that there aren't any miracles in it; that the beautiful thing about science, and particularly about physics, is its extraordinary regularity, symmetry, beauty, predictability and so on. So that's the extraordinary thing, that miracles do not occur, because this natural order is never disturbed. Now there, it seems to me as a pretty flat contradiction. Who really would be a Christian if it didn't claim—if Christianity didn't claim that miracles could be worked by faith?<br /><br />HEWITT: Now I am reading from Walter Isaacson's biography on page 384. Einstein said, "Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature, and you will find that behind all the discernable laws and connection, there remains something subtle and tangible and inexplicable, a veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend, is my religion. To that extent, in fact, I am religious." I think that contradicts, Christopher Hitchens, what you just said.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, no it doesn't at all, because do the religious say that these things cannot be explained? They do not. They say there is a God, and we know what He wants.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts?<br /><br />HITCHENS: They make a claim they cannot conceivably sustain, and when challenged on it, they say well, of course you can't believe it if you don't have faith. This is irritating. It's the exact negation of what Einstein just said.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I would have to agree with Christopher Hitchens that religious people can sometimes be irritating, having dealt with many of them and being one myself. I think what I would want to say is that we can look at the wonder of Creation, or that's perhaps begging the question, of the universe as it is, and we can get to the point of saying either that's all there is, and it is wonderful, or we can get to the point of saying there must be something beyond this, some sort of God, can't be proved, but one can't say that it doesn't matter whether there is that God or not.<br /><br />HEWITT: This proposition, number two, goes to you first, Dr. Roberts: All religions have done cruel things at some times, and some religions have been all, well, cruel almost continuously. But neither fact proves that all religions are cruel, or that some religions do not reject cruelty at least in theory all the time. True or false?<br /><br />ROBERTS: True. You want me to elaborate?<br /><br />HEWITT: Yeah.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Yeah, one of the things that is certainly true, and Christopher Hitchens is an incredible collector of things that religious people have done that are terrible. And I've got to say, having read his book now twice, carefully, that about half the time, I'm reading it, and I'm saying, "Wow, this is really bad," and I agree completely with his moral outrage. So I certainly believe that religions and religious people have done a lot of bad in the world. I don't think one can conclude from that that therefore religion necessarily poisons everything, or always poisons everything. That seems to me to be taking many steps forward in the debate without sufficient evidence. One would need to make a much stronger case. So I think I'm very happy with the view that religion, especially when mixed in with other things, can make matters much worse, and historically, religious people have done some terrible things in the guise of religion.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher Hitchens?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, no, I'm afraid I think that the crimes of religion are innate in it. And the reason why I think it's wicked <i>ab initio</i> is this: First, as I have said, it depends upon the worship of an absolute and unchangeable power. It's simplicity totalitarian. Second, it degrades our human self-respect by saying that we wouldn't act morally if it were not for the fear of this celestial dictatorship, and it degrades the idea that we could do the right thing for its own sake. And then third, it seems to me absolutely invariably to based on sexual repression, and out of fear and disgust, robbing the sexual act, the most important thing that we do. And the misery and the violence that comes from that seems to me inevitable, and to be laid not at the door of those who misuse religion, but at the door of those who interpret it correctly.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I—again, there's too much to address here, but let me kind of go for the middle of that, that religion claims we wouldn't act morally without fear. This is one of the places where as I've read your book, Christopher, I sometimes wonder if you and I live in alternative universes. I've been a Christian for fifty years, I've been a pastor for twenty plus years; I've preached; I've told my congregation many things that I think they are to do morally. Never once, never once have I played the fear card, not one time ever, nor the reward in Heaven card. For me, the justifications for moral behavior have to do with the nature of God and God's love, God's call to love, a response in gratitude to what God has done for us in Christ, and so forth and so on. I realize that you don't believe that those things happen to be true, but what is certainly true is that at least in the part of the religious world in which I live and where I'm a pastor, I have never done that which you say all religions must do, so I'm mystified.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well now, well, I mean, I get this at every stop. You know, I've been debating this up and down the country with men of faith, and women, too, for some weeks. And I've realized that I'd have to write a different book for each one of them because you cannot make the assumption that people actually do subscribe to what the scriptural texts actually say. But if you're telling me that Christianity does not say that there's an eternal punishment for sinners, then I'm very happy to find that you're not, to that extent, a believer.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I think actually, Christianity believes that there's eternal punishment for all people, but God is gracious, and therefore, we don't have that problem. But the eternal punishment, then, isn't the motivation. We're all stuck. That's part of where original sin, if one believes in that, and that's a pretty slippery doctrine, comes in.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well of course I don't believe in original sin. It's a preposterous idea, and a wicked one, too.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, all I'm saying is that if we believe that, then that is—it's completely irrelevant to our behavior, how we act, because we're all going to hell anyway. So…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well actually, if you think that this is only a brief veil of tears, and a preparation for a later life, what does it really matter what does happen here?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, it matters if our being on earth is a part of God's work of restoring the brokenness of Creation. And then what we do is extraordinarily important.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, that's incredibly cruel. As I open my book by saying that's telling people they've been created sick, and then ordering them to be well.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher Hitchens, proposition number 3: On page 114 of your book, you write, "The existence of Jesus is highly questionable." Can you back that up?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sure.<br /><br />HEWITT: Please do.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, there doesn't exist a shard of convincing evidence that He ever did. The Gospels were written a great deal after the events they purport to describe. And they contradict each other on every important aspect of the life story. I actually do think there must have been such a person, but it's only by a process of induction that is not flattering to the myth. In other words, the fabrication of the story of Bethlehem is designed to fulfill an ancient prophecy, and because that's where it's supposed to happen and all this, so that an invention has to be made of a tax by Caesar Augustus and a census and all this, and that explains why the Holy Family is in that place instead. Well, if the thing had been invented out of whole cloth, then they would just have had Him born there, and have done with it. But the fact that all this fabrication has to be made to make it come right suggests that there was someone born in that—roughly that area at around that time who was a preacher of some sort. But there isn't a trustworthy word—I'm probably, if I'm not trespassing on the territory of my partner here—there isn't a trustworthy word, as you know from reading Bart Ehrman and others, in any of the Gospels that you could remotely say was historical evidence.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, yeah, I guess you and I are going to have to disagree on this one, too. But let me say a couple things: First is the Gospels in the New Testament are not the earliest witness to the existence of Jesus. That would be in the letters of Paul, which are quite a bit earlier than the Gospels, and independent from them. And those letters actually refer to earlier oral traditions. So in fact, we have certainly evidence outside of the Gospel that's earlier. The other thing…<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's all hearsay, though.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, in that it is spoken of—what do you mean by hearsay?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I mean it's not—there's nothing attested by anyone you could reasonably describe as a reliable witness, in anything you could reasonably describe as a reliable form.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I don't know what you've…<br /><br />HITCHENS: Except for the counterintuitive evidence that—there's so much fabrication, that it would seem needless if there hadn't been a real person to be telling these fibs about.<br /><br />ROBERTS: No, it's interesting. Your argument on Bethlehem is the kind of argument, actually, that I make in my book, in that when you really look at the evidence, it's obvious that it wasn't fabricated or they would have done so much of a better job. My point is simply that the Gospels are not the earliest witness. There also are some non-Christian witnesses from around the end of the first century: the Jewish historian Josephus; the Roman historian Tacitus; Suetonius in all likelihood refers to Jesus, though calling him Crestus. So we have from a time not too far from the Gospels evidence of Jesus outside of Christianity. But the other point I would simply want to make: I think you said that the Gospels themselves contradict themselves on almost every point that matters, or something—did I get that right?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah, sure.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, this is going to be a nice moment to promo my book, but I put in, I think it's a list of thirty three places in which the four Gospels agree, and I would say that many of those things are in fact the main points, and quite astounding. For example, the four Gospels agree that the earliest witnesses to the Resurrection are women. They're doing this in a culture that doesn't accept the testimony of women in a law court, that almost surely would never have been fabricated. It would have been ridiculous to do so. So the fact that all four Gospels agree on such a thing is in fact very important. The fact that the Gospels agree on the fact that Jesus recruited his disciples in a culture in which rabbis didn't recruit but had disciples come to them, et cetera, et cetera. I could go through the whole list. I won't do that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I don't say at every point, but I mean I'm, annoyingly, I'm just for once in a hotel that doesn't have a Gideon Bible. But...<br /><br />ROBERTS: It's an atheist hotel. That's your problem.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I just invite anyone listening to this to read any—actually they'd better quickly read all four of the accounts of either the birth or the death, and see if they can make them agree.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, isn't it—the interesting thing is if they all agreed, I think the critics of the New Testament would say, "A-ha, collusion!" In fact, there was an effort in the second century among Christians to try and get them to sort of be one coherent account. Interestingly enough, the early Church rejected that in favor of what one would say was before more independent witnesses (although a couple of the Gospels are probably relying on each other). Folk who have worked this through, and I would be one of them, have found ways to see, yes, there are differences in the telling of the story, but to suggest that they're somehow wild contradictions makes me again wonder if you and I are living in parallel universes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I mean, you force me to press you. I mean, do you think that at the time of the crucifixion, the graves in the greater Jerusalem area opened and many of the dead came out and walked the streets? That's one account.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's not sustained, but you do think that happened?<br /><br />ROBERTS: It's in Matthew's Gospel.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />ROBERTS: As a believer, I think it happens. If I put on my historian hat, I say, "This is one Gospel, one witness to this." This makes it again, now speaking as a historian, historically unlikely. As a believer, I believe it. What I'm talking about is…<br /><br />HITCHENS: I find it absolutely flabbergasting, because among other things, that surely degrades the idea of resurrection by making it commonplace.<br /><br />ROBERTS: It degrades the idea of resurrection…<br /><br />HITCHENS: If it can happen to—if just the graves had opened and anyone can get up and walk around, what's so special about the proposed resurrection of the Nazarene?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, you know, it's even worse than that, because Christian theology holds that every person will be resurrected, so we've thoroughly degraded it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, while you are making things up, why not throw that in?<br /><br />HEWITT: Can I ask, though, was the account in Matthew contradicted by the other Gospels?<br /><br />ROBERTS: There's no contradiction. All I'm saying is...<br /><br />HEWITT: That's what I was…<br /><br />ROBERTS: When there's one testimony to something that otherwise we would consider to be unlikely, if you simply look at that from a historical point of view, you'd say that's unlikely. Now I happen to believe that it happened, but I believe that it happened because as I have studied the Gospel of Matthew, I find Matthew to be a reliable historical witness to what happened in that time. So on that ground, I'd argue for it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No one, whether Tacitus nor Joesphus or any other chronicler of the period seems to think there was an earthquake.<br /><br />HEWITT: I turn to Bart Ehrman. He figures prominently in Christopher Hitchens' book; he figures prominently in Mark Roberts' book. Christopher Hitchens, what do you find so appealing about Bart Ehrman?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I find—it's what Bertrand Russell used to call the argument of evidence against interest, or as my friend, you probably know him, John O'Sullivan says…<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: He says if the Pope says he believes in God, he's only doing his job. If he says he doesn't believe in God, he may be onto something. Bart Ehrman did the best a man could do to keep up his belief, and he appears to have been—I hope I, again, don't trespass into my partner's field of expertise—but to have been quite a renowned scholar of the Gospels, in several languages, in the believing Christian community. I'm right, am I not, in saying this?<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts?<br /><br />ROBERTS: He is a well-regarded scholar.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And he came to the conclusion that it was mythical?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, when he was a young man.<br /><br />HITCHENS: [inaudible] Most of the stories, including some of the ones that I used to most enjoy contemplating when I was being taught the Bible at school, are inserted even later than one had, so to say, feared.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Mark Roberts?<br /><br />ROBERTS: I think you're talking there about the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Yes, he points out that that particular story is not found in the earliest of the copies, the manuscripts of the Gospel of John that we have. The thing is that that has been well known for centuries to any and every scholar and most Christians, because if you open up your Bible, you'll find out that in most copies of the Bible, that story is in brackets anyway. That's old, old news. I don't know why in particular that's relevant.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, it isn't particularly relevant. It's just it was the one that struck me, because it used to be one of my favorite stories. That's all.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Ah. Well…<br /><br />HITCHENS: But I mean, the totality of Dr. Ehrman's work, the book is called <i>Misquoting Jesus</i>.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Yes.<br /><br />HEWITT: And your estimate of <i>Misquoting Jesus</i>?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I can't wait to read your reply to it, because I've tried and failed to find someone who will take the book on from a Christian point of view, so perhaps I've now found one.<br /><br />HEWITT: Oh, you have.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, you may not be persuaded, but in fact, the second chapter of my book looks at the textual and manuscript background for the Gospels. And in that, I try to lay out much of what Ehrman does. And by the way, I need to say, much of his scholarship is quite fine, though he has been a person who has been opposing Christianity for thirty years. So I don't know that he's necessarily objective in all things, nor am I. But he is a fine scholar.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Excuse me?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Huh?<br /><br />HITCHENS: He's been an opponent of Christianity for thirty years?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Yes. He lost his faith. He admits to have lost, losing his faith in graduate school. He's an atheist. And he has been arguing as an atheist now for over thirty years, and writing books opposing orthodox Christian faith.<br /><br />HITCHENS: My understanding was very different from that. I'm going to have to check.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Oh, it's quite true. There's a place in which he himself talks about losing his faith, and yet still celebrating Christmas rather sadly.<br /><br />HEWITT: This hour—in the third hour of today's show we're going to go back the general question of religion and morality. This hour, though, I'm going into the tall grass of the New Testament, and I want to begin with some propositions that Christopher Hitchens puts into his book, in the discussion of the New Testament, particularly that H. L. Mencken and Thomas Paine's view of the New Testament, "a helter-skelter accumulation of more or less discordant documents, some of them probably have respectable origin, but others palpably apocryphal, have been," and this is the key, "born out by later biblical scholarship, much of it first embarked upon to show that the texts are still relevant." Dr. Roberts, I'm going to start with you. Is Mr. Hitchens correct that much of Biblical scholarship has come to believe the New Testament to be an accumulation of more or less discordant documents, many of them apocryphal?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Not most of New Testament scholarship, but a substantial segment of it. Really the segment that I spent a lot of time in when I was in grad school at Harvard has tended greatly to emphasize the discordant nature or the disagreements among New Testament writers. There is a whole other sort of world of New Testament scholarship that has continued to see that there's quite a bit of commonality. I think the truth is that it's quite a bit in the middle. There are a great diversity of perspectives on Jesus and what He means. There's a difference of opinion on a number of issues within the New Testament, and yet the New Testament is quite unified in its central message in understanding who Jesus is, and what God was doing in Jesus.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher Hitchens, when you write that the Gospels, "cannot agree on the mythical elements, they disagree wildly about the Sermon on the Mount, the anointing of Jesus, the treachery of Judas and Peter's haunting denial, most astonishingly they cannot converge on a common account of the crucifixion or the resurrection. Thus, the one interpretation that we simply have to discard is the one that claims divine warrant for all of them." Are you considering that if an account is not replicated, it is thereby undermined? Or are you just talking about direct conflicts between accounts?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I suppose I'd rest my case on the statement that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. If we were going to be asked to believe that the laws of nature are suspended and that virgins give birth and that dead people walk again, we want to be sure that we're getting pretty impressive testimony. And this falls short of being testimony, really, at all.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts?<br /><br />ROBERTS: I don't understand that last comment. Why is it not testimony?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it's hearsay.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, it...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's hearsay from a very backward, illiterate society. And usually, passed on by people with a very strong interest in getting it believed.<br /><br />ROBERTS: You've just made the important point and I appreciate you're doing it. It was an illiterate society. It was an oral society. One of the things that scholars have studied at great length in the last twenty years, in fact, it's one of the live issues that academic meetings of New Testament scholars is the nature of oral communities. And what they discover is that there is actually quite a bit of discipline and order within oral communities in terms of hearing, remembering and passing on information. And in fact, you might be interested in a book recently published by Richard Bauckham, who is a professor at St. Andrews in Scotland, on the Gospels having been written by eyewitness and the eyewitness account. Because they were an illiterate society, then it wasn't hearsay in the way ours is. These were people who were disciplined in remembering and accurately passing on stories. And so the fact of it being that society is one of the things that makes it reasonable to trust that the oral traditions passed on the context of this community are in fact believable.<br /><br />HEWITT: Now Christopher Hitchens, one of the arguments that Dr. Roberts makes in his book, and again, you haven't had a chance to read it, yet, is that if we use one standard to assess historical documents and accounts of history, just one standard, that the Christian standard, or the Christian evidences are far stronger than anything similar, whether Thucydides or Heroides or Josephus or Tacitus, that the distance and time between the autograph and the manuscripts that reproduce it much, much smaller, the number of copies much, much higher, and that any consistent approach to history would elevate the Christian account above almost any other account of any other ancient occurrence.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't know that I'm really qualified enough to pronounce on that. I mean, there is a big argument, for example, about whether Homer ever existed, or whether it's the work of many hands. There's no agreement, really, about the authorship of the plays of Shakespeare, though it seems fairly certain they all were written by one person. That's much closer to us.<br /><br />HEWITT: But I recall in your book…<br /><br />HITCHENS: The likelihood that this—Shakespeare doesn't say you have to believe things that would otherwise be completely unbelievable on unsupported oral testimony. I say in my book, for example, it doesn't matter to me that we only have second-hand evidence for the existence of Socrates. We can't say for certain there was such a person. His teachings and his methods remain with us, and we call them Socratic. That's just—that's quite enough for me. But I'm not telling you, or anyone else, that if you don't agree with me about Socrates, you're going to go to hell, or if you do, you're going to go to Heaven, and your sins will be forgiven you.<br /><br />HEWITT: But in your account of Socrates which I found compelling…<br /><br />HITCHENS: [inaudble] Extraordinary claims are made that are not verifiable, but extraordinary demands are made in their name upon us, which hold that because of this, there are things we mustn't do and things we must.<br /><br />HEWITT: Well, Socrates would make the demand upon…<br /><br />HITCHENS: And we also have to believe—excuse me, it's—these are only the micro parts of what's unbelievable. To me, the essentially unbelievable thing is this: What should be agree on for the lifespan of <i>Homo sapiens</i> now? We know pretty much how long we've been on the planet. Dr. Roberts, what's your view of that?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Will you say again? I missed…<br /><br />HITCHENS: What's your view of how long <i>Homo sapiens</i> has been on the planet? Our species?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Oh, a long time, much longer than 6,000 years, let's put it that way.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, I mean, I think it's—there isn't an absolute certainty, but let's say—except for the absolute literalists who think that's the age of the earth—well over 150,000 years.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Okay.<br /><br />HITCHENS: In the course of which time enormous numbers of people are born, don't live frightfully long, die, usually of their teeth, or by violence of some others, or in childbirth, or of nameless diseases that they can't identify because they don't know about the germ theater of disease, and so on. And it goes on and on like that. And only about 6,000 years ago does heaven decide to intervene in remote parts of the Middle East. Now I find that unbelievable on its face. I don't just think it isn't true, I cannot see how anybody could believe that, or wish it to be true.<br /><br />HEWITT: Dr. Roberts?<br /><br />ROBERTS: You know, let's—one of the things—you quote Socrates in your book, and you like Socrates. I like Socrates, too. And one of the things you say of Socrates, all he really knew, he said, was the extent of his own ignorance. And then you add to me, this is still the definition of an educated person, which comes close to being a compliment to me, though you don't know me well. I've often said—I've been quoted in saying that I knew much more when I was twenty than when I'm fifty, and by the time I'm seventy, who knows what I'll know. There is a great deal about what I believe to be God's work in the world, that eclipses my understanding, and sometimes, quite frankly, bugs me, and I will take that up with God on many an occasion and in all kinds of ways. If I were God, do I think I would do things differently? Yes, I would. But I have, myself as a Christian, come to the place of saying I am not God, that's probably a good thing for the universe, and where I find God's ways mystifying, I'm going to pursue what is true, I'm going to seek to know what is true, and at the same time, I'm going to be satisfied with my own ignorance.<br /><br />HEWITT: But I want to go back to the—somehow, we got away from the idea that the accounts of Socrates are much more thinly sourced than the accounts of Christ, but you are willing to go with the teachings of Socrates, even though they recommend some frankly ill-advised decisions with regards to the city and the state, and his own survival.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, no, no. I'm sorry, I'm not an endorser of—I mean, I'm not, there's no such thing as a Socratist, but I admire his method of argument.<br /><br />HEWITT: Okay, but as to just the simple historical fact, when it comes to the source materials that Dr. Roberts claimed, antiquity, multiplicity, trustworthy scholarly methodology and quantity and quality of textually ambiguous passages, the accounts of Christ stand up better than any other historical account, Christopher Hitchens. I don't know how you can argue with that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I don't know how you can assert it, because you're not comparing like with like.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, what Hugh is talking about there is the manuscript evidence for the Gospels. And I think on that ground, we're in pretty good shape. But something needs to be said, and I think I would agree with you, I wish there was better evidence for Christ. I do indeed. It would be convenient and helpful in a number of ways. If all we had to go on, we who are Christian, was the Gospel record, I think we could have confidence, but we would miss a lot. There is so much more for Christians that accounts for why we are Christian than that alone, and that needs to be thrown into the mix, I think.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher Hitchens, I was struck in your book—and by the way, I hope you realize this is one of these interviews, I've heard you a few times, both the guest and the host have actually read your book closely.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, that's incredibly decent of you.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Twice.<br /><br />HEWITT: So...<br /><br />ROBERTS: Every word, twice.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I do very much appreciate, and I'm very sorry I can't return the compliment to Dr. Roberts, but I shall.<br /><br />HEWITT: Okay, now I was struck when out of the middle of nowhere come the Gnostic Gospels into your account, because it seemed to me unnecessary to anything that you were trying to prove. Why did you bring up the Gnostic Gospels? What point do you think they play in your narrative of discrediting religion?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, because I was going on—I was clearing the ground for what I wanted later to say about the Koran, about the way in which a text is given authority by pruning the stuff, the garbage out of it, the discrepant bits, the contradictory bits, and so forth, making certain things canonical, discarding others, and because I was very fascinated by what I'd read about the Gospel of Judas.<br /><br />HEWITT: In the book you write, "For a long time, there was incandescent debate over which of the Gospels should be regarded as divinely inspired. Some argued for these and some for others, and many a life was horribly lost on those propositions. Nobody dared say they were all man ascribed, long after the supposed drama was over and the revelation of St. John seemed to have been squeezed into the canon because of its author's rather ordinary name." Mark Roberts, you're a scholar of the Gnostic Gospels, and did you find the account compelling? Or did it clear the way for the subsequent point made?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, you know, it reminded me of things that one can read from certain scholars. It actually didn't remind me of what somebody who's actually studied the Gnostic Gospels would much think about them. For one thing, the Gnostic Gospels almost have nothing that has to do with the actual life of Jesus. They're filled with all kinds of theology which if you believe it, you would believe to be quite inspired, and if you don't, you'd believe it to be quite silly. But they have virtually nothing to say about the historical life of Jesus. And so in that regard, they're just not terribly helpful. Plus they were written at least, or on average, at any rate, a century later than the Biblical Gospels, so the Gnostic Gospels don't really help us much at all, if our desire is to know something of Jesus. They're fascinating in and of themselves, but more…<br /><br />HITCHENS: The gospel of Judas has a lot about Jesus in it.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, but you actually read that, and I appreciate that. You gave almost a page to it. But what it tells us about Jesus is, it has absolutely nothing to do with what He did. It has some sayings of Jesus, and in language that almost 100% certain is nothing Jesus Himself would have actually said, because it sounds nothing like what a first-century Jew would say.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it did surely—it answers a question that is raised necessarily by the accepted account of the last Passover, which is this: Why is Judas considered to be a bad person when he's only doing God's will?<br /><br />ROBERTS: I agree with you there. It answers that, because for the Gnostic, the physical body is bad and evil, and in the gospel of Judas, Judas is the one who is going to get rid of the physical body of Jesus. And so for the Gnostics, Judas is the hero. He got rid of the body so that the real Christ, non-physical Christ, could sort of be set free. And that's why Judas is the hero. It does exonerate him. I'm not sure it does it in a way that has much historical persuasiveness to it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, you certainly have me there. I don't think it's historical at all.<br /><br />HEWITT: So…<br /><br />HITCHENS: I mean, I think it's another fabrication, but still, it makes a mystery a little less mysterious.<br /><br />HEWITT: But was…<br /><br />HITCHENS: I mean, why do you think, I'll put the question to you this way: I know you're not a Catholic, but the Church of Rome waited until 1965, twenty years after the end of the final solution in Europe, to acquit the Jewish people of the charge of deicide, not some Jews, but all Jews. Why do you think it took them so long?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I think there, I'd want to take a page out of your book and say that human beings are insufficiently rational.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But it had been dogma preached very fervently for a long, long time in the name of someone who claims—you don't support his claim, I don't know on what basis you don't—to hold the keys of St. Peter, and who shares a lot of your beliefs. Now I think I do know why, because we—if these events, or some version of it did occur, the certainty is that there a lot of Jews around. And if they're told that they're absolved of responsibility, then it becomes extremely difficult to say to the rest of the human race you were responsible for Calvary as well. That's why they couldn't let them go. That's why this massive injustice was committed, not as an aberration of Christianity, but as part of its central teaching, for the greater part of its existence, and hasn't been sincerely, in my view, repudiated.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well then, that is lacking. All I can say is on this count, I am with you completely that the anti-Judaism of much of Christian history is extraordinarily inconsistent with what Christianity ought to be. And you'll get no defense from me. You and I are of common mind in thinking that's terrible. I'd go the step further to say that it's also terrible history, because when you look carefully at the Gospel records, you discover that the vast majority of the Jews were in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus' death, were abhorred by it. They were upset by it.<br /><br />HEWITT: And is it inconsistent, Dr. Roberts, with the teachings of Jesus and the explanation of those teachings of Paul?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Oh, extraordinarily so. So it's one thing—I mean, there is definitely a problem, and I will agree that this a problem for Christians, that so many Christians have both thought things we ought not to have thought, and done things we ought not to have done. And obviously that's even more disturbing to me as a Christian, because I have a certain brotherhood and sisterhood with some of these folk. It's a terrible mark on our record.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it ought to be said, and I add it, that Maimonides, the great Jewish sage, thought it was one of the best day's work the Jewish people had ever done, that the elders did exactly the right thing by putting to death this ghastly heretic and imposter.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, that didn't help much, did it?<br /><br />HITCHENS: But, but, but, so I mean, I've no sympathy with Judaism, either. But it is said, is it not, that the Jews called for his blood to be on their heads and on their descendents to the remotest generation, and echo of the preamble to the Ten Commandments where it is said that the sins of the fathers will be visited on their children. I do not regard this as moral preaching. Do you?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Uh...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Is it right to say that the sins of the father shall be visited on their children, and their children's children? Is it moral to say that, let alone truthful?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I think it's certainly truthful. Whether it's moral depends on what sins and the way in which it's visited. I mean, I think it's certainly truthful that my children, unfortunately, are going to carry on some of my own sins. Now I don't think that's moral. I don't break it. I think that there are situations in which it may well be moral.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, no. That's not correct. They may go on sinning; they're doomed to, apparently. But they've got to suffer for yours?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I think that is…<br /><br />HITCHENS: And their children's children are going to be held responsible for your sins? That's what it says.<br /><br />ROBERTS: I think that it is true that they will continue to suffer from my sin. I think the question of when it is moral for that to happen is not one that I could give a yes/no answer to.<br /><br />HEWITT: I'm tempted to turn the page, but I don't want to, because it's the hardest part of Christopher Hitchens' book, Dr. Mark Roberts, is when he goes to the Old Testament, and he finds some awful things: the murder of innocents, the slaying of enemies, the destruction of children, every one, down to the last person in the city. And he presents this as an indictment of the Judeo-Christian ethic. Is he right to do so?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Let me say that I also find that to be one of the hardest things about believing the Bible to be God's word. There are things in it that I find intuitively contrary to what seems to me to be right and wrong, and some of the things that he mentions are things I myself struggle with. My response is two-fold. First of all: I have been greatly helped by listening especially to Jewish writers and rabbis talk about some of that material because there's a lot of it that I don't get as a Christian and people who live within that tradition are able to make much more sense of it than I. That's number one. The second thing I need to say, though, is that all of that has to be seen in two contexts. Number one, in the context of the culture of that time in history, and many of the things that we see as quite, perhaps, bizarre, or irrational end up making a lot more sense when we understand that culture and the time. For me, the larger point is that what the Old Testament gives us is, you might say, the beginning and the first chapters of the larger story of God's work with us, of God's Creation, of the brokenness of the world, of God's effort to mend the world through a very unusual process, that is by entering into relationship with a people and using people to help fix the world. Now there's a part of me that thinks God wasn't—I wonder sometimes why God gave us the ability to mess it up in the first place. That seems sometimes peculiar. If I were God, I don't know that I would do that. But God, I assume, knows what's best. But secondly, the idea that He's going to use people to bring about the mending of it, and so it's the larger story of the Old Testament that is for me what's most important, in light of which, then, a lot of the things that seem curious, unexplainable, even offensive, can make sense.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher Hitchens, and one of the things that left me...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You're not going to go on and tell me that there is historical authority for the events described in the New Testament—I mean, sorry, the Old Testament.<br /><br />ROBERTS: I think there is…<br /><br />HITCHENS: You're surely not going to do that.<br /><br />HEWITT: Well, you did. You said there was a kingdom of David and you said that there was quite a lot of evidence for the later Israeli or Jewish kingdom.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, there is, but…<br /><br />HEWITT: But not for Moses.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But it was a very much smaller kingdom than was thought, a very much more modestly sized and no evidence whatsoever for the captivity and the exile and the wandering.<br /><br />HEWITT: But that was actually one of the parts, I thought, was a little thin for you, Christopher, because the Jewish archaeological experts that you refer to have not been given access to the same places where their studies have been able to produce the evidences of David.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, but they had the strongest motive in the places where they could dig, for doing this, and the Sinai's been gone over with a fine tooth comb by now, by a lot of other very highly qualified archeologists and there just is no evidence for it at all.<br /><br />HEWITT: And as those of us involved in the discussion of WMD are like to say, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ah, no, but with WMD, you can use the argument from design because you were dealing with a regime that had possessed, and had used, and had a record of concealment of WMD, so there's a very fair induction to be made in that case. Please, sir, that wasn't very [inaudible]...<br /><br />HEWITT: So Mark Roberts, what do you say to his response?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, the further we go back into ancient history…<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, look. I have a question.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Yeah, sure.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sorry—why does it matter to you to want to adopt these texts—these horrible texts as your own? Why don't you just let it go? Why don't you just say it's a pity that St. Paul, in talking, I think, to the Galatians, says, you know, we adopt all these books and these prophecies as our own because we think they were vindicated? Why—how does that make human life better?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, it...<br /><br />HITCHENS: How does it help us to be ethical? Why impose this extraordinary strain on yourself? You're never going to be able to prove it, and you should be relieved.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Never be able to prove the historicity…<br /><br />HITCHENS: That there's any authenticity, let alone any morality in these horrible old Jewish texts. Why bother—why adopt them when you could discard them?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say there's no morality in them, but I would agree with your assertion. The further you go back in history, the harder and harder it is to come up with the kind of evidence you talk about. So you know, you can find an evidence of an ancient Jericho, and some scholars think they haven't got evidence that a wall fell over there. But that still is minimal to the kind of confirmation that one could get from much more recent kinds of evidence.<br /><br />HEWITT: Dr. Roberts, as we went to break, Christopher Hitchens has said, "Why not just toss it off? You know, get rid of the Old Testament, or the Jewish scriptures, and you'll be much more—Jefferson could get along with Jesus. Why not just leave it at that?"<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I would agree it would make certain things easier. Interestingly, this was a great debate within second-century Christianity, because there was man named Marcian who had been apparently an orthodox Christian, and then pretty much decided the Old Testament was much as Christopher Hitchens believes it to be, and he just cut it off, and he went into the New Testament, and he took out all the Old Testament references. And there was a major argument within the early Church as to whether one needs, in fact, to hang onto the Old Testament or not. The reasons I would give intellectually are that the Old Testament are—it's the soil out of which the New Testament was grown. And you need the soil to grow the plant. The personal side of that, I think of a friend of mine named Gary, who grew up as an orthodox Jew. Some years ago, Gary became a Christian. And as I had been with him as his pastor, one of the things that astounded me almost initially was how much he, having his Jewish background, was able to get and to live the Christian life so much better than people who are Americans not coming out of a Jewish background. For example, Americans who become Christians tend to be incredibly individualistic. Gary intuitively got the fact that being a Christian is about being a member of a community. And so I would argue that it's his closeness to the soil that enables him to be a better believer.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher Hitchens, do you admire the work of Walker Percy?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I've read a little, not a great deal. It didn't encourage me to go on to the end.<br /><br />HEWITT: I bring him up because he was asked once why he was a believer and he said, "I'll stop believing when someone can explain to me the Jews." And now there is a similar passage in your book by a different person, and in fact, there is that extraordinary story of a people formed by that account, as horrific as it is at some points, and as you say, evidence-free in some others, but evidence-filled in others. Does it not strike you that that is an extraordinary story to have come to the full circle, back in Jerusalem, where they are, were it not for the Divine Hand upon that people?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I mean, as someone who has some Jewish ancestry, and a Jewish daughter, and who is indeed very impressed by the survival of the Jewish people, and very committed to it, I can't agree with you, no, because if there's been a supervising hand, it's been an extremely brutal one. It's the reason I think why so many Jews, I think probably the majority now, are non-believers, are secular in one form or another, or atheist, and why the Jewish contribution to atheism has been so extraordinary, from Spinoza to Einstein.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts, does that—go ahead.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But there have been—I'll tell you something: The rabbi, after the end of the Second World War, the revelation of the Final Solution, the shoah, the rabbis went rather quiet. They hadn't got anything much to say about how this had happened, or whether God really had done it as a punishment for the exile. The rabbis who did think would've rather kept it to themselves. That's why this constitution of the state of Israel is as secular as it is. After the 1967 war, which is forty years ago, as you know, this week, a number of rabbis did start to get up and say, "A-ha, now we see the Finger of God! The Holocaust was all meant so this could happen, so that we could establish rule over Arabs." Well, I can't imagine anything more evil being said, or stupid, I have to say.<br /><br />HEWITT: Well, I don't agree with it, either. I don't, in fact, attribute to God the Holocaust.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, then don't, please, don't say that God is behind all these things.<br /><br />HEWITT: No, I...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Why insult your deity by making him responsible for...<br /><br />HEWITT: I don't think he's responsible. I think there is free will in the universe, and that explains how come the Nazis, pagans that they were, went about their vicious ideology, and wiped out six million people, but that's not my point. My point…<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, no. [inaudible] of the S.S. were confessing Catholics.<br /><br />HEWITT: I agree. I know that and it's in your book, but paganism—Hitler was not a Christian. Hitler was not a believer in other than Hitler's own…<br /><br />HITCHENS: He never repudiated his Church, Hitler.<br /><br />HEWITT: His Church repudiated him.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it did not because The Roman Church issued instructions that his birthday was to be celebrated from the pulpit every year until the very end, as you know.<br /><br />HEWITT: I will simply stand by the point that Hitler is not a Christian and I don't believe—you make that argument in that book, even.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I don't say he was a Christian in my book. I say that he didn't repudiate it and he certainly took great care to get the support of the churches. But he wanted to replace everything with Aryan blood myths and the worship of himself, that is certainly true.<br /><br />HEWITT: But we've run into one of his central points, Mark, which is...<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I want to make a—I just want to say that I think one of the great ways in which—now Christopher, you may not like this, but in which Christopher Hitchens is a friend, a kind of a friend to the Church and to Christians. He forces us to deal with things that are hard things about faith. And as much as I'd rather not have to think about them, I am one that is in fact committed to finding the truth, to challenging the things I believe. And I think one of the things Christians need to do is to wrestle much more faithfully and honestly than we sometimes have with some of the sorry parts of our history and the challenging parts of our theology, because I believe that that kind of wrestling leads us more to the truth. Now it may very well not lead us to the exact same truth that we began with, so be it. But I think that the questions that are being asked here, and the challenge to Christians to think, to use our brains, to be rational, to examine, to be unafraid of difficult questions, I actually see that as a service, and in that sense, I appreciate the challenge, even though I come to places where I say, "I'm not exactly sure how to meet it at this point."<br /><br />HEWITT: Well, there's a magician's trick in it, though, and the magician's trick is, for example, Christopher Hitchens, when you say why would God allow Pius XI to die, and Pius XII to replace him, when the former is pro-Jew and anti-Hitler, and the latter is pro-Hitler and anti-Jew? And it's the magician's trick is that God's not involved in that, as He, as you want us—as you want your reader to believe Christians believe He is involved in that, and it's not a fair portrait of Pius XII.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, no it's not harsh enough. I agree. But it is, you probably don't believe...<br /><br />HEWITT: No, I don't.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But it is believed by Catholics that God picks his vicar of Christ on Earth.<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes, yes He does, and sometimes…<br /><br />HITCHENS: And it is, therefore—of course I think it's a nonsensical belief, but if it be true, then at the very eve of the Second World War, He decided to appoint a vicar of Christ who was pro-Hitler. That's a lot to swallow, isn't it? I don't hold God responsible for these things, bear in mind. I'm not insulting Him, as you do. I'm not saying that He takes responsibility in these, and I don't think there's any such person. I free myself from this incredibly strenuous, impossible belief. {inaubdible] But you saddle yourselves.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts, before we go to the third hour, one of the things I found inexplicable about Christopher's book is that he wants readers who are not familiar with Christians to believe that everything is determinism and that God is in fact a puppet master running it, and free will is the part that I found so missing from this. Your comment?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, two things. One is yes, that gets undersold, and so it's as if God is responsible for everything and I don't know that that's fair to the Christian understanding of God. The second thing that I found missing in the book was an understanding that the world is not the way God meant it to be. I mean, if you go to the—well, the argument from design, and finding a watch on the beach. The watch we find is a broken watch. It doesn't work right. It doesn't keep time the way it was meant to. And so much of what happens in this world—Christians believe in anyway—is not what God intends, both because of human freedom, and because the world itself is broken. We also believe that God is in the business of putting the world back together, and that in fact that we're a part of that business and that's part of why we're here in the world. But minus that freedom, and minus the understanding of the brokenness of the world, God gets blamed for a lot of things like the so-called acts of God in my insurance contract that I'm not really sure are acts of God so much as acts of nature.<br /><br />HEWITT: And Christopher Hitchens, I want to be fair to you. That is what you attribute to God as sort of the puppet master.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, no, no. Actually, I'm sorry to have to say, and it is—I will say for the first and only time—I think you completely misrepresented what I write, and also what I think. I say it's childish to blame God for things going wrong. It's idiotic. If there was such a person, I'd have more respect for His majesty than to say He owes me an explanation. You know, if there's a God, why have I got cancer? What a silly question. It would be, I wouldn't have any idea why He would want that. I would just have to accept it. But I mean, I don't, I do not go in for this game at all, and I don't know why anybody does.<br /><br />HEWITT: I know you don't, but I believe that the picture...<br /><br />HITCHENS: But I mean, I am a bit astounded to find that we don't think that God designed us and the universe after all, or that if He did, He did it with such tremendous cruel ineptitude. I mean, again, it's not my problem. I don't think this way. As for free will, I think we have it, but I think we have no choice but to have it.<br /><br />HEWITT: What I was saying is not that you believe it, but that the portrait you put in of Christians is that they believe Christ is, or that God is in fact in charge of everything.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, they invite these kind of—I mean, after all, did you not just say to me that if I contemplated the history of the Jews, I would have to see that God was planning everything for them? Well, I say that if you say that, then you've just accepted on behalf of a deity whose mind you appear to know—how, you don't say—an enormous responsibility.<br /><br />HEWITT: No, you see in history an unfolding of a reconstruction effort that Mark Roberts was referring to, not one driven forward in every detail, but one in which that mystery of free will is allowed to operate.<br /><br />[BREAK]<br /><br />HEWITT: I want to get to one of the big questions: the impact of religion on the twentieth century. Has it been a net positive or a net negative for human civilization, Christopher Hitchens?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Why just this century? I'm sorry if I'm being dense.<br /><br />HEWITT: I'm just asking because now, we know more, we understand more, we have the benefit of better theology, better learning, and growth as human beings in the twentieth century. How'd we do as religious people versus non-religious?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, when I think about the twentieth century, I suppose I think of so many of its unanticipatable horrors. I mean, we behaved worse in the last century, probably as a species, than we ever had before. And you know what examples I'm alluding to, I suppose. And the implication of religion in all of these was pretty, pretty gross. I'm thinking—I have a long chapter in my book about the role of the Church, for example, in supporting the rise of fascism.<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't think they're ever going to be able to—I frankly don't think Christianity's ever going to be able to live that down.<br /><br />HEWITT: Of course, we do have the neo-pagan Nazis, we have the atheist Stalin, we have the atheist Mao, we have the atheist Cuba, we have the atheist North Korea...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it's not—I have a long chapter on that objection, too. In fact, this ought to come up now, oughtn't it? (I mean, secular criminality.)<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I say in my book that's—if the axis of fascism, almost entirely a Catholic movement, all the way from Spain to Croatia to Slovakia, concordat between the Vatican and Hitler that lasts until the very end, and continues to shelter Nazi wanted war criminals after it's over and help them to establish other dictatorships in South America; the Japanese, led by someone who actually was a god, not just a godly person, but a god himself, according to those who believed in him, who no doubt thought he was the fount of all ethics in Japan and that there would be rape and pillage if people stopped believing in him. Turning to Stalinism: Look, in 1917 in Russia, when the regime falls, millions of Russians for hundreds of years have been told that the head of their government is a person just a little below God. He's the czar, the absolute ruler and owner of a country. He's also the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. That's the inculcation of servility, incredulity in the huge, uneducated population. If you're Josef Stalin—who studied as a seminary student, by the way, for most of his life—you shouldn't be in the dictatorship business if you can't exploit a reservoir of servility and incredulity like that. He replicates it perfectly. There's an inquisition; there are show trials to expose heretics; there are miracle (Lysenko's biology); there's the constant worship of the leader. Everything comes from the top; everyone has to say thank you all the time for the great benefits. It's a replication of the same thing. And by the way, the Russian Orthodox Church continues to support him, which it did. If you want to point out to me a society that went into famine and dictatorship and mass murder and war and torture as a result of adopting the principals of Lucretius and Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine, then we'd have a level playing field.<br /><br />HEWITT: Dr. Roberts, did you find persuasive Mr. Hitchens' approach to the twentieth century where in fact he redefined all of the atheist regimes into being neo-religious regimes?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I must admit that did feel like that was a bit of special pleading, because it seems to be evidence contrary to his main thesis that religion poisons everything. Something poisons everything. I think we could be agreed in that. But to say that it's religion, I think, isn't getting the full nature of the poisoning, if you will. It seems to me that we can look for something else. And actually, I found within <i>god is Not Great</i> a quote that I rather like, actually. It said past and present religious atrocities have occurred not because we are evil, but because it is a fact of nature that the human species is biologically only partly rational. Now to me, the partly rational doesn't quite get it, but I think Christopher Hitchens himself if moving toward an explanation that sees the problems in this world as not necessarily stemming from religion. Religion, when it gets messed up with totalitarianism, when it gets messed up with partial rationality, religion can be turned to bad uses, absolutely. Irreligious people the same. There is plenty of sin to go around on all side and so then we begin to ask what is the deeper problem with human nature, and can we get at that somehow? And I think blaming religion, especially for Stalinism and Mao and stuff, seems to be twisting the definition of religion out of any kind of normal definition—dictionary mode.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher Hitchens, when you brought up the Rwandan horror, and frankly educated me on the Catholic connection there, which I did not know and found horrifying, I thought it was not fair, though, to leave out John Paul II's efforts to bring down, successfully, along with Thatcher and Reagan, the Soviet Union, that if you're going to indict religion, it may have poisoned many things, but it certainly didn't poison Poland. It freed Poland.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, well, I think you'll find, I hope you'll find, I'm sure you'll find, that I do say…<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...that I thought that John Paul II was an extraordinary human being.<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes, but...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And in that respect, and in others too, though terrible things to be laid to his charge, as well. By any standards, he was a great mammal. This might be the time to reiterate my earlier challenge, because we still have some time left. I still want to be informed of a moral preachment, or a moral action made by a believer that couldn't be made by an unbeliever.<br /><br />HEWITT: I'm not sure that I know one.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because otherwise, you see, religion becomes optional. You can have a nice Pope, you can have a nasty Pope. You can have an honest priest, you can have a dishonest priest. You can have a fraudulent Church or a frugal and scrupulous one. But it's just, it could just as well be a private belief. Now that's unfortunately not really possible in religious terms, is it, because you have to believe there is a supernatural power to which you owe some duty. You make yourselves believe this. I still can't understand why you'd want to.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, you know, let me say that there is a struggle for believers who are open-minded and seek the truth, and I don't deny it. But let me try to answer your question with an action that I consider to be one of the most moral that I do as a human being, though you and I might disagree on that, and that is the action, I did it last night. When my son was going to bed, I got next to him and I prayed for him. I doubt an atheist could do that. To me, that is one of the most moral of things I do as a human being.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Gosh. Well, I mean, I think it does as much good as aerobic dancing would do, frankly. I don't mean to be rude, but I don't see, I don't see that it's a moral action. You also seem to suggest that in some way by not praying for my children, I'm not as moral as you are.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Hardly.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'm not sure you meant to say that.<br /><br />ROBERTS: No, let me be clear. I did not mean…<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's not really an answer to my challenge, is it?<br /><br />ROBERTS: No, you can do many other moral deeds. You might get with your children in the evening, and tell them how much you love them, and that would be absolutely fantastic. All I'm saying is that you asked for a moral action that I could do that an atheist could not do with integrity. And for me, praying for my children before they go to bed is one of the most important things in my life, and I believe it to be highly moral, and I doubt that an atheist could do that in good conscience. So...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't say, please don't misunderstand me, I wouldn't dream of saying that it was an immoral action. But I must tell you what I think, which is that it is an irrelevant one. I mean, it isn't of itself a good thing, and it isn't an action, either.<br /><br />HEWITT: Well, that brings us to one of my propositions: The vast majority of people listening disagree with you on that, Christopher, and atheists have always been with us, they always argue passionately, you better than most, now, with a fine book that is entertaining. But on the other hand, Rick Warren's <i>The Purpose Driven Life</i> has sold 20 million copies, the Church in China's exploding, Africa's alive with Evangelical fervor, the Catholic Church in South America is thriving. And so by any objective measure...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Islam is sweeping all before it as well, so it's a great time to be faith based.<br /><br />HEWITT: Atheists—ut atheists have failed again. With all of the arguments that you've always been able to martial, it just doesn't work. Why is that, do you suppose?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I say in the book that religious belief is ineradicable. It's innate—it's not innate in all of us. There are a certain number of people who always have been born and always will be, who now have to be taken seriously and can't be silenced and burned and imprisoned and tortured anymore, for whom it isn't possible to believe, of who I am, as you can see, one. But it is still—it's a belief I have to resist, sometimes. You know, if we were sitting together and a huge, rusting fridge fell out of the sky and hit only you and left me alone, I would sort of think that was a bit of luck, though it would be a vile thing to think, wouldn't it?<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I couldn't stop myself. And we're afraid of death, and we seek for passions where none exist. One of the most awful things in the Bible, I used to think when I was a child, was "seek and ye shall find." Of course you will if you seek—if you look for a pattern and you hope there's a God, and you don't want to die, and you hope an exception will be made in your own case. You're very likely to become vulnerable to religion. But I mean, you have to allow me to be unimpressed.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts, we got a minute to the break.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Christopher, have you read N. T. Wright's book <i>Simply Christian</i>?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I've not.<br /><br />ROBERTS: You know, even before you read mine...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It sounds like a very sickly title, I must say.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, it's okay.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's like <i>Mere Christianity</i>. I hate that sort of pseudo-modesty that Christians sometimes have.<br /><br />ROBERTS: I appreciate that. You may not like the book, but it would be helpful in a couple of ways, because I think it would help you to get what Christians believe to be the larger purpose and story, and it might also help to explain whey there is this yearning in us for God because we happen to believe God put it there.<br /><br />HEWITT: I want to go now to the Anthropic Principle, because a number of people asked me to bring this up in the course of preparing for this. Mark Daniels wrote, "It requires greater blind faith to believe that the universe has just happened into existence than to believe an intelligent being created it." I was written to about Robert Rood and James Trefil, astronomers who believe that when you look at the twenty unique characteristics of the globe, that it could only have been fulfilled in—actually, it should never have happened, even in the trillion universes and the 100 billion stars, and each of them so magnificent as the Creation, and so delicately balanced. And I go to the Bill Bryson book <i>A Short History of Nearly Everything</i>, that when you're done reading brief cosmological history, Christopher Hitchens, it really does take an extraordinary amount of indifference to accident to come to the conclusion that we're just here because of an accident.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it doesn't involve believing just in an accident. I mean, there was an extraordinary event that brought the universe into being, which the word Big Bang, originally invented by Professor Fred Hoyle, was originally designed to scorn that idea, to make it sound silly. But in fact, it's now pretty much accepted. I just have to refer you again, I think, to Victor Stenger's book, which has a much closer engagement than mine does with the sciences. It seems to me, though, that the really unbelievable thing, the thing that cannot be believed, is that we on this very tiny speck of a planet in a solar system that has otherwise only dead planets, and the death of which we can all anticipate almost to the hour (the heat death of our known universe), that it's on the very, very edge of a whirling, unimaginable space with other galaxies, that we are the point of all this creation. It's just not possible for me, at any rate, to believe that.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts, when my correspondents point out that the Earth being fit for habitat requires the number of stars in the planetary system, the parent star birth date, the parent star age, the parent star distance, the parent star mass, surface gravity, axial tilt, all these other things, does that increase or decrease your belief?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, to the extent that I understand it, and I need to confess that I am quite limited in my understanding of that kind of science, it certainly increases...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, that makes two of us.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, it increases my belief.<br /><br />HEWITT: Well, I've got it down.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Okay, so at least somebody here knows what it is.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You can't possibly say that you derive your faith from it, can you?<br /><br />HEWITT: No.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because Christianity comes from a time when people thought the sky was bowl and they had no idea that the earth was round, or that it revolved around the sun instead of the sun around it. Indeed, Christianity threatened with torture and death anyone who tried to investigate the subjects you've just been presenting us with.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Yes, in not one of the happy chapters in our history. I mean, let me point to another book that I found to be quite helpful. It's by Owen Gingrich. Owen Gingrich is an astrophysicist at Harvard. He actually taught there when I was a student there, though I didn't take a class from him. We would eat lunch in the same place. He wrote a book called <i>God's Universe</i>. It's Harvard University Press, it's a fairly small book, talking about how he as an astrophysicist is also a man of faith, a Christian, and how that makes sense. And he says a couple of things I think you can find interesting. One is that when he looks at the utter unlikelihood of human existence, that that does increase his faith that there is some sort of a god behind all of this, but also, and this is where I think it's interesting in terms of Christopher Hitchens' recent comment, he chides himself from thinking that we're the whole purpose, that it's human beings are the whole purpose of it. He says as a Christian who needs to be humbled before God and as a scientist, there may well be other life in other places. To me, it's instructive, because it shows how a great man of science, who's scientific understanding vastly, vastly exceeds my own, actually allows him to be more convinced in his religious faith no less, and to do it in a very rational and sane and open to science way, that I find very appealing. I think one of the things I would want to say myself is that the extent to which in the history of the relationship between religion and science, Christianity has often opposed scientific inquiry. Much of that I find very grievous, and would agree with Christopher Hitchens that that was a sorry thing.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You see, suppose that you could infer a Creator who's interested—sorry, suppose you could infer a Creator or an intelligence from these calculations, which is a hypothesis that so far when tested has proved to be inadequate. But suppose, let me grant it to you. All your work is still ahead of you. That doesn't suggest in the smallest degree that He's interested in what happens to you or me.<br /><br />HEWITT: I think that's correct, and you would have to look for evidences of His plan revealed to humankind.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, and I just think our cranial capacity isn't up to that.<br /><br />ROBERTS: No, I would agree with you that, that gets us to a place…<br /><br />HITCHENS: So why claim to know things you can't possibly know? I keep asking you, I will keep asking you: Why do you impose this extraordinary burden on yourself?<br /><br />HEWITT: Because you found those evidences, I would say.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, because...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, you better—you should publicize them better. They haven't penetrated yet.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Yes. I would say that what you're saying is, "Why hang onto these things that are hard to believe and defend?" And my answer is that I have to be intellectually honest and try to be faithful as a thinker, that I simply can't lop off of my faith those things that I find inconvenient or difficult to understand; that it's a matter of—and you say, "Well then, why hold onto the faith in the first place?" Because the faith in the first place, to me, makes ultimately the most sense of all things, and because of something that I realize that you would have a hard time agreeing with, but what I would also say is my experience of God. I realize you don't think I've had an experience of God, but I...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, no. I think you have.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Really?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I wouldn't dream of doubting that you think you have. But I don't think you could make it real to anybody else.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, as a—all I can say is as a pastor, I...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't think that people who report seeing UFO's and so on are lying. I think they did. I think they really do think they saw them. I just do not think we're being visited by such craft.<br /><br />ROBERTS: My experience, and again, this gets to my particular experience as a pastor, is that it's not an easy thing at all to help somebody else to experience God as reality, but that if I am as faithful to the truth as I can be, if I seek to live it out as faithfully as I can, that actually, that can help people come to experience God in a genuine way as well. If I didn't believe that, I sure as heck wouldn't be doing what I'm doing.<br /><br />HEWITT: And Christopher Hitchens, you believe people are deluding themselves when they believe they have experienced God?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well actually, I was a friend of a bishop of the Church of England, a very decent and gentle man called Hugh Montefiore, who converted from Judaism to become a Christian, who became a very senior figure in the Anglican Church, because of a personal visit that he had from Jesus Christ when he was one of the few Jews at a Protestant boarding school. And he wrote a book also saying that the conditions for life on this planet seem to be so extraordinary, that the knife edge balance on which we live, that it testifies to the divine, and I don't—I can't say that old Bishop Hugh was lying when he said he'd had a personal visit from Jesus. It did change his life. He acted for the rest of his life as if it had happened.<br /><br />HEWITT: On that point, we will return, because that's very interesting. Is that in the book, Christopher? It's not in the book, is it?<br /><br />HITCHENS: What?<br /><br />HEWITT: You didn't include that in the book, did you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I probably should have done.<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's a very interesting book that he wrote, but he's worth Googling.<br /><br />HEWITT: I now bring up a point sent to me by Randy Elrod who blogs at Ethos. He wanted this proposition to be put out there: An understanding of the existence of something greater than ourselves gives us the ability, as Dostoyevsky states in <i>The Brothers</i>, to not only live, but to live for something definite. Without a firm notion of what he is living for, man will not accept life and will rather destroy himself rather than remain on earth. And of course, he is one of the great Christian mystics, Christopher Hitchens, but do you believe that man absolutely must have some understanding of something larger than himself, meaning God, or that it becomes meaningless and insane?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I think we do probably need something on the order of the transcendent in our lives and I think humanism fulfills these needs, incidentally. I mean, if you say that for you, as for me, the beauties of science, the consolations of philosophy, the study of literature as the source of ethical and moral questions—that's enough for most people's lifetimes. And to turn away from this, and to say, "Well, I'd rather go for the ancient texts that come from the childhood of our species," is first, I think, to refuse a wonderful offer, and second, it makes it impossibly arrogant for the questioner to assume that that'll make you behave better. I mean, surely, he knows that many people are absolutely convinced that there's a God greater than themselves, are convinced that that God is telling them to do evil. The example you just gave of people who have personal experiences that must be considered valid must be valid for everybody in that case. In that case, it is true that the archangel Gabriel told the prophet Mohammed what to do. It was—it seems to have been very convincing to him and to many other people. Do you accept the validity of that or not?<br /><br />HEWITT: No, I don't, and that...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Do you accept that Louis Farrakhan can get people off drugs by faith?<br /><br />HEWITT: No, I don't. And that's why Mark Roberts, this is his biggest challenge.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Are you impressed? Well, how do you accept it for one and reject it for another?<br /><br />HEWITT: You have to—Mark Roberts, I'll leave that question to you, because it's a question of choosing between many competing claims as to divine guidance.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, this is where Christopher Hitchens and I would, though, I think, end up in different places, agree that one of the things we desperately need is open-mindedness, clear thinking, the ability to ask difficult questions, to test our own hypotheses. You got to study with Karl Popper, I understand, and that would be the thing I envy of you, having studied philosophy of science in my undergraduate days, and Popper was rather a hero there, that we need to—I don't take at all every testimony at face value as true. I think we've got to examine it, look to see if it's true, test it. I believe that in my own way.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, how, there's no standard for doing that, though, is there? It's the most subjective possible thing, and actually, you don't get terribly reassured, do you, if someone comes up to you in the street and says I'm on a mission from God and He's given me some instructions. Why does that not delight you if someone comes up and does that?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, because I happen to believe that sometimes people are on a mission from God, and sometimes they think they are and they're not, and it's not necessarily a good thing.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah well, I'd love to be with you the next time someone says that—comes up to both of us and says they're hearing voices and it's God. You're going to throw your arms around him and say, "You, too? What luck!"<br /><br />HEWITT: But generally...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't think so. I don't know why I don't think so, but I just don't.<br /><br />ROBERTS: I actually spend quite a bit of time with people who have claims for various kinds of religious experiences and what I do is I listen to them. I try as best I can with the tools I have and the understanding I have to discern the extent to which what they are saying is true or not, and you're right. You've said is that a difficult thing to do? Is there some absolute standard? I don't believe there is. But I do believe...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, there isn't. You couldn't believe—it wouldn't be a matter of belief, would it? It would have to have something to do with proof.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, yeah, so...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Just a tiny little bit, a smidgeon of evidence here and there wouldn't kill, would it? There isn't any, that's the thing.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's just, you can't, you don't judge people by what they think of themselves. You'd be a immoral if you did.<br /><br />HEWITT: You do judge them by how they live, though.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You'd be failing them by not saying, "Look, I'm really sorry, man, but I think you're in trouble and you need help."<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, that is actually—I have said that to different kind of people, because of course, schizophrenics also believe that have religious experiences when in fact...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Indeed they do.<br /><br />ROBERTS: ...they desperately need help.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts, early in the show you said that Christopher Hitchens does not seem to inhabit the same universe you do when it comes to the religious people that you know. And the conversation we just had about people walking up and talking to—reminded me of that comment, because that's not really how religious people live in my experience. It's not—and they're not poisoned. They're out doing good things and living extraordinarily humble but service-filled lives. And I think maybe that's where the disconnect comes between the portrait we get out of <i>god is Not Great</i> and your portrait.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, I think if one looks at the things that religious people have done throughout history, and even throughout the world today that are not good, one comes up with a certain view of what religion must be that's very different from the average experience. And here, I can't speak for all religions. I can speak for what I know; I can speak for myself and my congregation of people whose faith in God is a prime motivator of goodness. I think of recently some folk from our Church went down to an orphanage in Mexico and some of the folks fix bicycles and some of the folks worked on teeth, because we have a couple dentists in the Church. And they did that not just because they're good humanists, they did that because they're Christians and they feel that that is what they are to do for their faith, in their response to God. Now as I look at that, it is very hard for me to see how that poisoned anything. It seems to me that that greatly enriched something, and helped people's lives. And so I guess I'm willing to say that sometimes religion poisons things. I am looking for the side that says and sometimes it doesn't.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very well. Well, since you've both been kind enough to read my book, you—I don't expect you'll remember every bit of it—but you will grant me that I spend some time describing my encounters in Northern Uganda with people who are...<br /><br />HEWITT: Yes.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...there in a selfless way, trying to repair the damage done by...<br /><br />HEWITT: The Lord's Army.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...the horrible religious...<br /><br />HEWITT: Yup.<br /><br />HITCHENS: …Christian group called the Lord's Resistance Army. And I say, "Well, which of you is really the faithful one?" I mean, to me, it doesn't matter because there are very large numbers of people who do that kind of work all over the world and I've met them, and can introduce you to them, who do so for its own sake, for the sake of their fellow men, for their brothers and sisters. And they don't demand any divine warrant, and they're not suspected of proselytization, either.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher, question for you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Now, so any—it's like in my original challenge. You have to name an ethical action that an atheist couldn't take.<br /><br />HEWITT: But I have a question for you.<br /><br />HITCHENS: There are millions of unbelievers who do charitable work. I don't say charity poisons everything. But in order to say that confronted with, say, AIDS in Africa, that that's bad, though P.S., it might be God's punishment...<br /><br />HEWITT: A question for you, though.<br /><br />HITCHENS: So I mean, and B) though AIDS is bad, with condoms are worse, and must be forbidden, for a really foolish, wicked thing like that, you need to be a person of faith.<br /><br />HEWITT: You have read the Gospels, so you know what Jesus teaches, and you then go to Uganda and you see what the Lord's Army was taught and you see what the people trying to repair the Lord's Army is taught. Which group is acting in conformance with the actual teachings of Jesus as you read them?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I would say—I'd have to say both.<br /><br />HEWITT: How could the Lord's Army be acting in...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'd have to say both. Well, the Lord's Resistance Army says that nothing will be okay in Uganda until everyone agrees with the Ten Commandments.<br /><br />HEWITT: Jesus does not teach that. Mark Roberts, does he?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, Jesus doesn't, no.<br /><br />HEWITT: That's what I asked.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But Moses does.<br /><br />HEWITT: I was asking in the teachings...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And you adopt Moses as one of your heroes.<br /><br />HEWITT: I was asking as you assess the teachings of Jesus and those two camps in Uganda, one is teaching Christ's love, and one is not. That's why I'm saying.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Who comes to bring not peace but a sword?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well...<br /><br />HEWITT: Touché.<br /><br />ROBERTS: But in its context, one has to understand what that means, and it's not quite fair to throw that. Who's the one who said that his followers are to be known by their love? And that's the more consistent and more easily understood of...<br /><br />HITCHENS: So we need divine permission for love? Excuse me?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Excuse me?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Who needs divine permission for love?<br /><br />ROBERTS: I don't know that any of us need permission, but it certainly helps...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Or to be told to love? Isn't it rather odd to be told to love? It's always seemed bizarre to me.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, you know, from my point of view, it's extraordinarily helpful, because I...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ordered to love, I don't, it's—something is cranky there.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, we need to understand and appreciate...<br /><br />HITCHENS: And ordered to love others as much as you love yourself and your loved ones. That's, by the way, making an impossible commandment of people—making a command that can't be met. Therefore, you can always accuse people of falling short of it, you can always find them guilty.<br /><br />ROBERTS: I could accuse you of recently listening to one of my sermons because I agree it's an impossible commandment. The good news for Christians is that God helps us, and that's what we believe: to live that which we on our own could not.<br /><br />HITCHENS: So you think all this is directed at you?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Excuse me?<br /><br />HITCHENS: You think all this is directed at you? You think the universe is designed with you in mind?<br /><br />ROBERTS: No, I think the universe is...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Incredibly—in the guise of modesty, that seems to me an extraordinarily arrogant statement.<br /><br />ROBERTS: I don't know that I've ever thought that or believed it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, will you promise me to think about it at least once?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Yes. I believe that the universe is designed with much greater things than me in mind, and that God has enlisted me to help in His work of bringing the universe back into order. Is that a...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Gosh. Well, I must say, you have a very high opinion of yourself.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think you're a pretty decent chap also.<br /><br />ROBERTS: If in...<br /><br />HITCHENS: But I think that's a very, very extreme idea.<br /><br />ROBERTS: If thirty years ago, an American man was drafted into the army, I don't know that that person would rightly think he had a high opinion of himself.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh, so you're conscripted into this?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, we use called, but conscripted...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I mean, I just never know with which proposition I am arguing.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Conscripted, if you wish; called is usually what we prefer.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Uh-huh. Onward Christian soldiers. Well, that has a wonderful history.<br /><br />HEWITT: We're rapidly coming to the conclusion of this. Mark Roberts, did you have any questions for Christopher Hitchens?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, only in that the harder parts of your book for me were the places where you rather ridicule people of faith. Now sometimes, you ridicule people of faith that I also agree with you are thinking and doing things that are virtually worthy of ridicule. But I wondered why you do that when it seems like you're going to lose the opportunity to influence some of the very people you would want to influence.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ah, well, it's just the way I am. I mean, I'm a polemicist, if you like, and one has to get people's attention first of all.<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well okay, that's fair.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And that may sound to you, as it somewhat slightly sounds to me, as a vulgar answer, but it is the truth, right? One can't write a book saying, "God is not that brilliant."<br /><br />HEWITT: I guess you couldn't.<br /><br />ROBERTS: No, I appreciate that. That is a good answer. The only thing I would say is that I think some of what is good in your book will get lost because it's hard to be told that I'm stupid.<br /><br />HEWITT: Thank you to Christopher Hitchens and Mark Roberts for spending so much time with us today on the "Great God Debate." Christopher Hitchens, any final thought here?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, yes. I might have had another one, but I can't let Dr. Roberts' last observation go uncommented upon. I most certainly do not say that he's stupid and I say in my book that many people of high intelligence and fervent conscience have been devout believers. I say that I think the belief is stupid and unfounded and false and potentially, latently, always wicked, because it is both servile in one way, and arrogant in another. And that's why I dare to say that it's, <i>ab initio</i>, a poison. But I certainly do not say of people who have faith that they are dumb. Isaac Newton was practically a spiritualist. Alfred Russel Wallace, who did a lot of Darwin's work for him, had weird, supernatural beliefs as well. These things are compatible with high intelligence and great morality. But we would be better off if we left them behind.<br /><br />HEWITT: Mark Roberts, your concluding thought?<br /><br />ROBERTS: Well, perhaps I took it too personally the line that says, "Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago," given that two days ago, I stood up and spoke words that I'd hoped were intelligible, noble and inspiring.<br /><br />ROBERTS: But let me say something. I think this is important to say, and I haven't said it: One of the great things I appreciate in Christopher Hitchens is he is a man of high morals, and I think any Christian or other religious person who doubts or denies that misses the point, and I share with him much of his outrage at evil in the world. I share, I admire his willingness to do things like provide a sanctuary for Salman Rushdie, or to speak out against certain features of Islam in a day when it is risky to do so. I share his outrage over many of the abuses, for example, the abuse of children within the Church, and probably even feel it more deeply because I'm a part of at least that larger Church. One of the things I appreciate about Christopher Hitchens in his writing is his moral stance. The thing that I believe is that if one has a faith basis for morality, in fact, there is even greater warrant. One can make greater arguments for saying that others must join in them. I realize that he disagrees with that, but I am grateful that he hasn't fallen into some swamp of relativism. And in fact, there's a high moral calling that I think all people, religious, non-religious, ought to take seriously and be challenged by, and I need to say that I appreciate that in him and in his book.<br /><br />HEWITT: Christopher Hitchens, always a pleasure. We look forward to talking, continued good luck in your book tour. And Mark Roberts, thank you, sir, continued good luck with the launch of <i>Can The Gospels Be Trusted?</i> I'll be back tomorrow America on the next edition of <i>The Hugh Hewitt Show</i>.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-56333919690150639612010-07-21T16:45:00.034-04:002011-07-06T22:17:28.878-04:00Hitchens vs. Craig, Biola University<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_william_lane_craig>Dr. William Lane Craig</a>: Does God Exist?<br /><li>April 4, 2009, <a href=http://www.biola.edu/>Biola University</a><br /><br />[<a href=http://www.biola.edu/academics/sas/apologetics/faculty/>Dr. Craig J. Hazen</a> introduces moderator <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Hewitt>Hugh Hewitt</a>, who outlines the rules for the debate and introduces Hitchens and Craig]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1r_kjr3Yb2r4EpVoAvbey0A1MDOSWWLIjobWAIl2cKWbKBF8m6pF0rq21zONpH-HKSL5qMFsiAXx7WnIGAHMqG79kxzRkIjoy2Xg6XnxFNjUpAdhPouJXg_Wq_ANt7UZo7UjqN__Nnl5U/s1600/craig.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 135px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1r_kjr3Yb2r4EpVoAvbey0A1MDOSWWLIjobWAIl2cKWbKBF8m6pF0rq21zONpH-HKSL5qMFsiAXx7WnIGAHMqG79kxzRkIjoy2Xg6XnxFNjUpAdhPouJXg_Wq_ANt7UZo7UjqN__Nnl5U/s320/craig.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490494592732374130" /></a>CRAIG: Good evening. I am very excited to be participating in this debate tonight. Jan and I used to sit in those very bleachers right over there watching our son John run up and down this court as a forward on the Biola Eagles, and so I feel like I'm playing on the home court tonight. And I want to commend Mr. Hitchens for his willingness to come into this den of lambs and to defend his views tonight. On the other hand, if I know Biola students, I suspect that a good many of you, when you came in tonight, said to yourself, "I'm going to check my own views at the door and I'm going to assess the arguments as objectively as possible." I welcome that challenge. You see, the question of God's existence is of interest not only to religion but also to philosophy. Now, Mr. Hitchens has made it clear that he despises and disdains religion but presumably he is not so contemptuous of philosophy. Therefore, as a professional philosopher, I'm going to approach tonight's question philosophically, from the standpoint of reason and argument. I'm convinced that there are better arguments for theism than for atheism. So in tonight's debate I'm going to defend two basic contentions: First, that there's no good argument that atheism is true and secondly that there are good arguments that theism is true. Now, notice carefully the circumscribed limits of those contentions. We're not here tonight to debate the social impact of religion, or Old Testament ethics, or biblical inerrancy, all interesting and important topics, no doubt, but not the subject of tonight's debate which is the existence of God. Consider then my first contention that there's no good argument that atheism is true. Atheists have tried for centuries to disprove the existence of God but no one's ever been able to come up with a successful argument. So, rather than attack straw men at this point I'll just wait to hear Mr. Hitchens present his arguments against God's existence and then I'll respond to them in my next speech. In the meantime let's turn to my second main contention that there are good arguments that theism is true. On your program insert I outline some of those arguments. Number one, the cosmological argument: The question of why anything at all exists is the most profound question of philosophy. The philosopher Derek Parfit says, "No question is more sublime than why there is a universe, why there is anything rather than nothing." Typically atheists have answered this question by saying that the universe is just eternal and uncaused. But there are good reasons, both philosophically and scientifically, to think that the universe began to exist. Philosophically, the idea of an infinite past seems absurd. Just think about it: If the universe never began to exist, that means that the number of past events in the history of the universe is infinite. But mathematicians recognize that the existence of an actually infinite number of things leads to self-contradictions. For example, what is infinity minus infinity? Well, mathematically you get self-contradictory answers. This shows that infinity is just an idea in your mind, not something that exists in reality. David Hilbert, perhaps the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century, wrote, "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature, nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea." But that entails that since past events are not just ideas but are real, the number of past events must be finite, therefore the series of past events can't go back forever. Rather, the universe must have begun to exist. This conclusion has been confirmed by remarkable discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics. In one of the most startling developments of modern science we now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning about thirteen billion years ago in a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang. What makes the Big Bang so startling is that it represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing, for all matter and energy, even physical space and time themselves, came into being at the Big Bang. As the physicist P. C. W. Davies explains, "The coming into being of the universe, as discussed in modern science, is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization upon a previous incoherent state but literally the coming into being of all physical things from nothing." Now, this puts the atheist in a very awkward position. As Anthony Kenny of Oxford University urges, "A proponent of the Big Bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came <i>from</i> nothing and <i>by</i> nothing." But surely that doesn't make sense. Out of nothing, nothing comes. So why does the universe exist, instead of just nothing, where did it come from? There must have been a cause which brought the universe into being. Now as the cause of space and time, this being must be an uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial being of unfathomable power. Moreover, it must be personal as well. Why? Because the cause must be beyond space and time, therefore it cannot be physical or material. Now there are only two kinds of things that fit that description: either an abstract object, like numbers, or else a personal mind. But abstract objects can't cause anything. Therefore it follows that the cause of the universe is a transcendent, intelligent mind. Thus the cosmological argument gives us a personal creator of the universe. Two, the teleological argument: In recent decades scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the initial conditions of the Big Bang were fine tuned for the existence of intelligent life with a precision and delicacy that literally defied human comprehension. This fine tuning is of two sorts: first, when the laws of nature are expressed as mathematical equations, you find appearing in them certain constants like the gravitational constant. These constants are not determined by the laws of nature. The laws of nature are consistent with a wide range of values for these constants. Second, in addition to these constants there are certain arbitrary quantities put in as initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate. For example, the amount of entropy or the balance between matter and antimatter in the universe. Now all of these constants and quantities fall into an extraordinarily narrow range of life-permitting values. Were these constants or quantities to be altered by less than a hair's breath, the balance would be destroyed and life would not exist. To give just one example: The atomic weak force, if it were altered by as little as one part out of 10 to the 100th power would not have permitted a life-permitting universe. Now there are three possible explanations of this remarkable fine tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. Now it can't be due to physical necessity because the constants and quantities are independent of the laws of nature. In fact string theory predicts that there are around 10 to the 500th power different possible universes consistent with nature's laws. So could the fine tuning be due to chance? Well, the problem with this alternative is that the odds against the fine tunings occurring by accident are so incomprehensibly great that they cannot be reasonably faced. The probability that all the constants and quantities would fall by chance alone into the infinitesimal life-permitting range is vanishingly small. We now know that life-prohibiting universes are vastly more probable than any life-permitting universe. So if the universe were the product of chance, the odds are overwhelming that it would be life-prohibiting. In order to rescue the alternative of chance, its proponents have therefore been forced to resort to a radical metaphysical hypothesis. Namely, that there exists an infinite number of randomly ordered, undetectable universes composing a sort of world ensemble or multiverse of which our universe is but a part. Somewhere in this infinite world ensemble finely tuned universes will appear by chance alone and we happen to be one such world. Now wholly apart from the fact that there's no independent evidence that such a world ensemble even exists, the hypothesis faces a devastating objection, namely, if our universe is just a random member of an infinite world ensemble then it is overwhelmingly more probably that we should be observing a much different universe than what we in fact observe. Roger Penrose has calculated that it is inconceivably more probable that our solar system should suddenly form through a random collision of particles than that a finely tuned universe should exist. Penrose calls it "utter chicken feed" by comparison. So, if our universe were just a random member of a world ensemble it is inconceivably more probable we should be observing an orderly region no larger than our solar system. Observable universes like those are simply much more plenteous in the world ensemble than finely tuned worlds like ours and therefore ought to be observed by us. Since we do not have such observations that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On atheism, at least, then it is highly probable that there is no world ensemble. The fine tuning of the universe is therefore plausibly due neither to physical necessity nor to chance. It therefore follows logically that the best explanation is design. Thus the teleological argument gives us an intelligent designer of the cosmos. Three, the moral argument: If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist. By objective moral values I mean moral values which are valid and binding whether we believe in them or not. Many theists and atheists agree that if God does not exist then moral values are not objective in this way. Michael Ruse, a noted philosopher of science, explains, "The position of the modern evolutionist is that morality is a biological adaptation, no less than our hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when someone says, 'love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and any deeper meaning is illusory." Like Professor Ruse I just don't see any reason to think that in the absence of God, the morality which has emerged among these imperfectly evolved primates we call <i>Homo sapiens</i> is objective, and here Mr. Hitchens seems to agree with me. He says moral values are just innate predispositions, ingrained into us by evolution. Such predispositions, he says, are inevitable for any animal endowed with social instincts. On the atheistic view then an action like rape is not socially advantageous and so in the course of human development has become taboo, but that does absolutely nothing to prove that rape is really morally wrong. On the atheistic view there's nothing really wrong with raping someone. But the problem is that objective values do exist and deep down we all know it. In moral experience we apprehend a realm of objective moral goods and evils. Actions like rape, cruelty, and child abuse aren't just socially unacceptable behavior, they're moral abominations. Some things, at least, are really wrong. Similarly love, equality, and self-sacrifice are really good. But then it follows logically and necessarily that God exists. Number four, the resurrection of Jesus: The historical person Jesus of Nazareth was a remarkable individual. Historians have reached something of a consensus that the historical Jesus came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority, the authority to stand and speak in God's place. He claimed that in Himself the Kingdom of God had come and as visible demonstrations of this fact He carried out a ministry of miracle working and exorcisms. But the supreme confirmation of His claim was His resurrection from the dead. If Jesus did rise from the dead than it would seem that we have a divine miracle on our hands and thus evidence for the existence of God. Now most people probably think that the resurrection of Jesus is something you just believe in, by faith or not. But there are actually three established facts recognized by the majority of New Testament historians today which I believe are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus. Fact number one: On the Sunday after His crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was discovered empty by a group of His women followers. According to Jakob Kremer, an Austrian specialist, by far most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb. Fact number two: On separate occasions different individuals in groups experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death. According to the prominent New Testament critic Gerd Lüdemann, it may be taken as historically certain that the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ. These appearances were witnessed not only by believers but also by unbelievers, skeptics, and even enemies. Fact number three: The original disciples suddenly came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite having every predisposition to the contrary. Jews had no belief in a dying, much less rising Messiah. And Jewish beliefs about the afterlife prohibited anyone's rising from the dead before the resurrection at the end of the world. Nevertheless the original disciples came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief. N. T. Wright, an eminent New Testament scholar concludes, "That is why as a historian I cannot explain the rise of early Chritianity unless Jesus rose again leaving an empty tomb behind him." Attempts to explain away these three great facts like the disciples stole the body or Jesus wasn't really dead have been universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. The simple fact is that there just is no plausible, naturalistic explanation of these facts. And therefore it seems to me the Christian is amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and was who he claimed to be. But that entails that God exists. Finally, number five, the immediate experience of God: This isn't really an argument for God's existence, rather it's the claim that you can know that God exists wholly apart from argument, simply by immediately experiencing him. Philosophers call beliefs like these "properly basic beliefs." They aren't based on other beliefs rather they're part of the foundation of a person's system of beliefs. Other properly basic beliefs include the belief in the reality of the external world, the belief in the existence of the past and the presence of other minds like your own. When you think about it none of these beliefs can be proved. But, although these sorts of beliefs are basic for us that doesn't mean they're arbitrary. Rather they're grounded in the sense that they're formed in the context of certain experiences. In the experiential context of seeing and hearing and feeling things I naturally form the belief in a world of physical objects. And thus my beliefs are not arbitrary but appropriately grounded in experience. They're not merely basic but properly basic. In the same way, belief in God is, for those who know him, a properly basic belief grounded in our experience of God. Now, if this is right there's a danger that arguments for God's existence could actually distract your attention from God himself. If you're sincerely seeking God then God will make his existence evident to you. We mustn't so concentrate on the external arguments that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking to our own hearts. For those who listen, God becomes an immediate reality in their lives. So, in conclusion then we've seen five good arguments to think that God exists. If Mr. Hitchens wants us to believe instead that God does not exist, then he must first tear down all five of the arguments that I presented and then in their place erect a case of his own to prove that God does not exist. Unless and until he does that I think that theism is the more plausible world view.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5hNinx6Io5NgGmCpOS67CoX3GmOAl5gyM_dXZJ2GKUZcHnpxEHtIH0xEulcmK9JXnq-ER5O4pjh2T2UNDuiErAwKkfpyyoqf5sYZTtEhz5CMVcQ7ForOPSpDX7iSfOMa7dSxdCeFw2FlK/s1600/hitchbeardlean.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 135px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5hNinx6Io5NgGmCpOS67CoX3GmOAl5gyM_dXZJ2GKUZcHnpxEHtIH0xEulcmK9JXnq-ER5O4pjh2T2UNDuiErAwKkfpyyoqf5sYZTtEhz5CMVcQ7ForOPSpDX7iSfOMa7dSxdCeFw2FlK/s320/hitchbeardlean.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490494994318352626" /></a>HITCHENS: Well, am I audible? Am I audible to all? Yes. Well, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades, friends, thanks for coming out, as Senator Larry Craig actually did say at his press conference. Thank you, Mr. Hewitt and Dr. Craig for being among the very many, very, very many Christians who have so generously and hospitably and warmly taken me up on the challenge I issued when I started my little book tour and welcomed me to your places to have this most important of all discussions. I can't express my gratitude enough. And thanks to the very nice young ladies who I ran into at The Elephant Bar this afternoon where I hadn't expected a posse of Biola students to be on staff, but where I thought, "God, they're everywhere now!" Now, what I have discovered in voyaging around this country and others in this debate and debating with Hindus, with Muslims, with Jews, with Christians of all stripes, is that the arguments are all essentially the same for belief in the supernatural, for belief in faith, for belief in God, but that there are very interesting and noteworthy discrepancies between them and one that I want to call attention to at the beginning of this evening is between those like my friend Doug Wilson with whom I've now done a book of argument about Christian apologetics, who would call himself a presuppositionalist, in other words, for whom really it's only necessary to discover the workings of God's will in the cosmos and to assume that the truth of Christianity is already proven and what are called—they include Dr. Craig with great honor and respect in this—the evidentialists. Now, I want to begin by saying that this distinction strikes me first as a very charming distinction and second as false, or perhaps as a distinction without a difference. Well, why do I say charming? Because I think it's rather sweet that people of faith also think they ought to have some evidence and I think it's progress of a kind. After all, if we had been having this debate in the mid-nineteenth century, Professor Craig or his equivalent would have known little or probably nothing about the laws of physics and biology, maybe even less than I know now, which is, to say, quite a lot in it's way. And they would have grounded themselves, or he would have grounded himself, on faith, on Scripture, on revelation, on the prospect of salvation, on the means of grace, and the hope of glory and perhaps on Paley's natural theology. Paley, who had the same rooms, or had had the same rooms later occupied by Charles Darwin in Cambridge with its watchmaker theory of design that I know I don't have to expound to you but which briefly suggests that if an aborigine is walking along a beach and finds a gold watch ticking he knows not what it's for or where it came from or who made it but he knows it's not a rock, he knows it's not a vegetable, he knows it must have had a designer. The Paley analogy held for most Christians for many years because they were willing to make the assumption that we were mechanisms and that, therefore, there must be a watchmaker. But now that it's been—here's where the presuppositionalist-versus-evidentialist dichotomy begins to kick in—now it's been rather painstakingly and elaborately demonstrated to the satisfaction of most people, I don't want to just use arguments from authority, but it's not very much contested any more, that we are not designed as creatures, but that we evolved by a rather laborious combination of random mutation and natural selection into the species that we are today. It is, of course, open to the faithful to say that all this was, now that they come to know it, now that it becomes available to everybody, now that they think about it, and now that they've stopped opposing it or trying ban it, then they can say, "Ah, actually, on second thought the evolution was all part of the design." Well, as you will recognize, ladies and gentlemen, there are some arguments I can't be expected to refute or rebut because there's no way around that argument. I mean, if everything, including evolution, which isn't a design, is nonetheless part of a divine design than all the advantage goes to the person who's willing to believe that. That cannot be disproved but it does seem to be a very poor, very weak argument because the test of a good argument is that it is falsifiable not that it's unfalsifiable. So this I would therefore—this tactic, or this style of argument, which we've had some evidence of this evening, I would rebaptize or when I dare say rechristen it as retrospective evidentialism. In other words everything can, in due time, if you have enough faith, be made to fit. And you too are all quite free to believe that a sentient creator deliberately, consciously put himself—a being, put himself or herself or itself to the trouble of going through huge epochs of birth and death of species over eons of time in which 99%—in the course of which at least 99.9% of all species, all life forms, ever to have appeared on earth have become extinct, as we nearly did as a species ourselves. I invite you to look up the very alarming and beautiful and brilliant account by the National Geographic's coordinator of the genome project. (By the way you should send in your little sample from the inside of you cheek and have your African ancestry traced. It's absolutely fascinating to follow the mitochondreal DNA that we all have in common and that we have in common with other species, other primates, and other life forms and find out where in Africa you came from.) But there came a time, probably about 180,000 years ago, when, due to a terrible climatic event, probably in Indonesia, an appalling global warming crisis occurred and the estimate is that the number of humans in Africa went down to between forty and thirty thousand. This close, this close—think about fine tuning—this close to joining every other species that had gone extinct. And that's our Exodus story is that somehow we don't know how because it's not written in any Scripture, it's not told in any book, it's not part of any superstitious narrative but somehow we escaped from Africa to cooler latitudes was made, but that's how close it was. You have to be able to imagine that all this mass extinction and death and randomness is the will of a being. You are absolutely free to believe that if you wish. And all of this should happen so that one very imperfect race of evolved primates should have the opportunity to become Christians or to turn up at this gym tonight, that all of that was done with us in view. It's a curious kind of solipsism, it's a curious kind of self-centeredness. I was always brought up to believe that Christians were modest and humble, they comported themselves with due humility. This, there's a certain arrogance to this assumption all of this—all of this extraordinary development was all about us and we were the intended and the desired result and everything else was in the discard. The tremendous wastefulness of it, the tremendous cruelty of it, the tremendous caprice of it, the tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it, never mind at least we're here and we can be people of faith. It doesn't work me, I have to simply say that and I think there may be questions of psychology involved in this as well. Believe it if you can, I can't stop you. Believe it if you like, you're welcome. It's obviously impossible, as I said before, to disprove and it equally obviously helps you to believe it if, as we all are, you're in the happy position of knowing the outcome, in other words we are here. But there's a fallacy lurking in there somewhere too, is there not? Now it's often said, it was said tonight, and Dr. Craig said it in print, that atheists think they can prove the nonexistence of God. This, in fact, very slightly but crucially misrepresents what we've always said. There's nothing new about the New Atheists, it's just we're recent, there's nothing particularly—Dr. Victor Stenger, a great scientist, has written a book called <i>The Failed Hypothesis</i>, which he says he thinks that science can now license the claim that there definitely is no God, but he's unique in that, and I think very bold and courageous. Here's what we argue: We argue quite simply that there's no plausible or convincing reason, certainly no evidential one, to believe that there is such an entity, and that all observable phenomena, including the cosmological one to which I'm coming, are explicable without the hypothesis. You don't need the assumption. And this objection itself, our school falls into at least two, perhaps three sections. There's no such thing, no such word though there should be, as "adeism" or as being an "adeist" but there if was one I would say that's what I was. I don't believe that we are here as the result of a design or that by making the appropriate propitiations and adopting the appropriate postures and following the appropriate rituals we can overcome death I don't believe that and for <i>a priori</i> reasons don't. If there was such a force, which I cannot prove by definition that there was not, if there was an entity that was responsible for the beginning of the cosmos, and that also happened to be busily engineering the very laborious product—production of life on our little planet, it still wouldn't prove that this entity cared about us, answered prayers, cared what church we went to, or whether we went to one at all, cared who we had sex with or in what position or by what means, cared what we ate or on what day, cared whether we lived or died. There's no reason at all why this entity isn't completely indifferent to us. That you cannot get from deism to theism except by a series of extraordinarily generous, to yourself, assumptions. The deist has all his work still ahead of him to show that it leads to revelation, to redemption, to salvation or to suspensions of the natural order in which hitherto you'd be putting all of your faith—all your evidence is on scientific and natural evidence or, why not, for a change of pace for a change of taste say, "Yes, but sometimes this same natural order, which is so miraculous in observation, no question about it, is so impressive in its favoring the conditions for life in some ways, but its randomly suspended when miracles are required." So with caprice and contempt these laws turn out to be not so important after all as long as the truth of religion can be proved by their being rendered inoperative. This is having it both ways in the most promiscuous and exorbitant manner, in my submission. Bear in mind also that these are not precisely the differences, between Dr. Craig and myself I mean, morally or intellectually equivalent claims. After all, Dr. Craig, to win this argument, has to believe and prove to certainty. He's not just saying there might be a God because he has to say that there must be one otherwise we couldn't be here and there couldn't be morality. It's not a contingency for him. I have to say that I appear as a skeptic who believes that doubt is the great engine, the great fuel of all inquiry, all discovery, and all innovation and that I doubt these things. The disadvantage, it seems to me, in the argument goes to the person who says, "No, I know, I know it it must be true, it is true." We're too early in the study of physics and biology, it seems to me, to be dealing in certainties of that kind especially when the stakes are so high. It seems to me, to put it in a condensed form: extraordinary claims, such as the existence of a divine power with a son who cares enough to come and redeem us, extraordinary claims require truly extraordinary evidence. I don't think any of the evidence we heard from Dr. Craig, brilliantly marshalled as it was, was extraordinary enough to justify the extreme claims that are being made, backed by it. "Hypocrisy," said La Rochefoucauld, "is the compliment that vice pays to virtue." Retrospective evidentialism strikes me in something of the same sort of light. It's a concession made to the need for fact. Maybe we better have some evidence to along with our faith. But look what Dr. Craig says in his book. He says—I'll quote directly—he says, "Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter." (He adds not vice-versa but a good editor would've told you you don't have to put the vice-versa in, it's clear enough as it is.) I'll say it again, "Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter." That's not evidentialism, that's just faith. It's <i>a priori</i> belief. It's rephrased in another edition. It says, "Therefore the role of rational argumentation in knowing Christianity to be true is the role of a servant. A person knows Christianity is true because the Holy Spirit tells him it is true. And while argument and evidence can be used to support this conclusion they cannot legitimately overrule it." Now, then he goes on to say the Bible says all men are without excuse: "Even those who are given no reason to believe, and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve, have no excuse but because the ultimate reason they do not believe is that they have deliberately rejected God's Holy Spirit." That would have to be me. But you see where this lands you, ladies and gentlemen, with the Christian apologetic: You're told you're a miserable sinner, who is without excuse; you've disappointed your God who made you and you've been so ungrateful as to rebel; you're contemptible; your wormlike; but you can take heart, the whole universe was designed with just you in mind. These two claims are not just mutually exclusive but I think they're intended to compensate each other's cruelty and, ultimately, absurdity. In other words, evidence is an occasional convenience. "Seek and ye shall find," I remember being told that in church many a time as a young lad. "Seek and ye shall find." I thought it was a sinister injunction because it's all too likely to be true. We are pattern-seeking mammals and primates. If we can't get good evidence we'll go for junk evidence. If we can't get a real theory we'll go with a conspiracy theory. You see it all the time. Religion's great strength is that it was the first of our attempts to explain reality, to make those patterns take some kind of form. It deserves credit. It was our first attempt at astronomy; our first attempt at cosmology; in some ways our first attempt at medicine; our first attempt at literature; our first attempt at philosophy. Good, while there was nothing else it had many functional uses of mankind. Never mind that they didn't know that germs caused disease, maybe evil spirits caused disease, maybe disease is a punishment; never mind that they believed in astrology rather than astronomy (even Thomas Aquinas believed in astrology); never mind that they believed in devils; never mind that things like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tidal waves were thought of as punishments, not as natural occurrences on the cooling crust of a planet. The pattern seeking has gone too far and it's gone, I think, much too far with what was until recently thought of as Christianity's greatest failure—greatest of all failures: cosmology, the one thing Christianity knew nothing about and taught the most abject nonsense about. For most of its lifetime Christianity taught that the earth itself was the center of the universe and we had been given exclusive dominion as a species over it; could not have been more wrong. How are we going to square the new cosmology, the fantastic new discoveries in physics with the old dogmas? Well, one is the idea of this fine tuning about which I've only left myself three and a half minutes. I'll have to refer some of this to later in the discussion. This is essentially another form of pattern seeking on the basis of extremely limited evidence. Most physicists are very uncertain, as they have every right to be, in fact I would say for physicists as they have the duty to be, at the moment, extremely uncertain about the spatio-temporal dimensions of the original episode, the Big Bang at it's sometimes called. We're in the very very early stages of this inquiry we hardly know what we don't know about the origins of the universe. We're viewing it from an unimaginable distance, not just an unimaginable distance in space, perched on a tiny rock on an extremely small suburb of a fairly minor galaxy, trying to look, to discern our origins, but also at a very unbelievable distance in time and we claim the right to say, "Ah, we can see the finger of God in this process." It's an extraordinarily arrogant assumption. It either deserves a Nobel Prize in physics, which it hasn't yet got I notice (I don't know any physicists who believes these assumptions are necessary), or it deserves a charge of hubris. Let me make three tiny quick objections to it as it stands (and I'm no more a physicist than most of you are). I'll make these lay objections. One: Was there pre-existing material for this extra-spatio-temporal being to work with or did he just will it into existence, the <i>ex nihilo</i>? Who designed the designer? Don't you run the risk with the presumption of a god and a designer and an originator of asking, "Well, where does that come from, where does that come from?" and locking yourself into an infinite regress? Why are there so many shooting stars, collapsed suns, failed galaxies we can see? We can see with the aid of a telescope, some we can see with the naked eye the utter failure, the total destruction of gigantic unimaginable sweeps of outer space. Is this fine tuning, or is it extremely random, capricious, cruel, mysterious, and incompetent? And, have you thought of the nothingness that's coming? We know we have something now and we speculate about what it might have come from and there's a real question about <i>ex nihilo</i>, but <i>nihilo</i> is coming to us. In the night sky you can already see the Andromeda galaxy, it's heading straight for ours on a collision course. Is that part of a design? Was it fine tuned to do that? We know that from the red light shift of the Hubble telescope, or rather Edwin Hubble's original discovery, the universe is expanding away from itself at a tremendous rate. It was thought that rate would go down for Newtonian reasons. No, it's recently been proved by Professor Lawrence Krauss the rate of expansion is increasing. Everything's exploding away even faster. Nothingness is certainly coming. Who designed that? That's all if before these things happen we don't have the destruction of our own little solar system in which already there's only one planet where anything like life can possibly be supported. All the other planets are too hot or too cold to support any life at all and the sun is due to swell up, burn us to a crisp, boil our oceans, and die as we've seen all the other suns do in the night sky. This is not fine tuning, ladies and gentlemen, and if it's the work of a designer then there's an indictment to which that designer may have to be subjected. I'm out of time, I'm very grateful for your kindness and hospitality. Thank you.<br /><br />HEWITT: Dr. Craig, a twelve minute rebuttal.<br /><br />CRAIG: You'll remember that in my opening speech I said I would defend two basic contentions in tonight's debate. First, that there's no good argument that atheism is true. Now far from being a point of contention tonight, as far as I understood Mr. Hitchens' last speech, he would agree with that first statement that there is no good argument that atheism is true. He says, "I simply don't have any positive reason to believe in God," but he doesn't really give an argument against God's existence. Indeed he seems to suggest that's impossible. But notice that doesn't prove atheism, that just leaves you with agnosticism, namely, you don't know if there's a god or not. So, at best, you're left merely with agnosticism. We don't see any good reason to think that atheism is true. Now he did makes some remarks about the theory of evolution which at least insinuated that this was somehow incompatible with theism. And I have two points to make about this. First, I think that the theory of biological evolution is simply irrelevant to the truth of Christian theism. Genesis I admits all manner of different interpretations and one is by no means committed to six-day creationism. Howard van Till, who is a professor at Calvin College, writes, "Is the concept of special creation required of all persons who trust in the creator God of Scripture? Most Christians in my acquaintance who are engaged with either scientific or biblical scholarship have concluded that the special creationists' picture of the world's formation is not a necessary component of Christian belief, nor is this a retreat caused by modern science." Saint Augustin in the AD 300s, in his commentary on Genesis, pointed out that the days don't need to be taken literally nor need the creation be a few thousand years ago. Indeed he suggested that God made the world with certain special potencies that would gradually unfold over time and develop. This interpretation came 1500 years before Darwin so that it is not a forced retreat in the face of modern science. So any doubts that I would have about the theory of biological evolution would be not biblical but rather scientific, namely, what it imagines is fantastically improbable. Barrow and Tipler, two physicists in their book <i>The Anthropic Cosmological Principle</i> list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would occur the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and incinerated the earth. And they calculate the probability of the evolution of the human genome to be somewhere between four to the negative 180th power to the 110,000th power and four to the negative 360th power to the 110,000th power. So, if evolution did occur on this planet it was literally a miracle, and therefore evidence for the existence of God. So I don't think this is an argument for atheism, quite the contrary, it really provides good grounds for thinking that God superintended the process of biological development. So the Christian can be open to the evidence to follow it where it leads. By contrast, as Alvin Plantinga has said, "For the naturalist, evolution is the only game in town. No matter how fantastic the odds, no matter how improbable, it's got to be true because there is no intelligent creator and designer." So in one sense you've got to feel a little sorry for the atheist. He can't really follow the evidence where it leads, his presuppositions determine the outcome. By contrast, if there is a fine tuner and creator of the universe then already in the initial conditions of the Big Bang you have an elaborately designed universe that permits the evolution and existence of intelligent life and I think evolution simply layers on more improbability. Now Mr. Hitchens says, "But why did God wait so long, all that waste during this time?" Well, that sort of concern with efficiency is only of importance to someone with either limited time or limited resources or both, but in the case of God, He has both unlimited resources and unlimited time and therefore it's simply not important to do this in a quick way. Well now Mr. Hitchens says, "But why did God wait so long before he sent Christ? Human beings have existed for thousands of years on this planet before Christ's coming." Well, what's really crucial here is not the time involved rather it's the population of the world. The population reference bureau estimates that the number of people who have ever lived on this planet is about 105 billion people. Only 2% of them were born prior to the advent of Christ. Erik Kreps of the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research says, "God's timing couldn't have been more perfect. Christ showed up just before the exponential explosion in the world's population." The Bible says in the fullness of time God sent forth His son and when Christ came the nation of Israel had been prepared; the Roman peace dominated the Mediterranean world; it was an age of literacy and learning; the stage was set for the advent of God's son into the world and think that in God's providential plan for human history we see the wisdom of God in orchestrating the development of human life and then in bringing Christ into the world in the fullness of time. So I don't see that there are any good grounds here for thinking that this provides reason for atheism. Now what about my arguments for theism? Mr. Hitchens had some general remarks here: He says it's difficult to get from deism to theism. Now I want to point out that's a false use of these terms, this is simply confused. Deism is a type of theism. Theism is the broad world view that God exists. Deism is a specific kind of theism that says God has not revealed himself directly in the world. Now my arguments are a cumulative case for Christian theism. They add up to the belief in the God that has been revealed by Jesus of Nazareth. Now Mr. Hitchens says, "But you must prove this with certainty." Not at all, I am not claiming these argument demonstrate Christian theism with certainty. I'm saying this is the best explanation of the data when you compare it with other competing hypotheses. I think it's more probable than not. He quotes me as to saying, "The Holy Spirit's witness is the basis for knowing Christianity to be true," and I affirm that. I think the fundamental way in which we know Christianity is true is through the objective inner witness of God's Holy Spirit. (What I called the immediate knowledge of God himself in my fifth point.) On the basis of that we have a properly basic belief in the existence of God and the truth of Christianity. But when it comes to showing someone else that what we know through the witness of the Holy Spirit is true here we appeal to argument and evidence as I've done tonight. And the arguments and evidence that I've appealed to are largely deductive arguments. This isn't retrospective evidentialism, these are deductive arguments. If the premises are true, than you cannot deny the conclusions on pain of irrationality because the conclusions follow with logical necessity from the premises. So the only way to deny the conclusion is you've got to show me which of the premises are false. That's why you've got that program insert with the premises in your program for these arguments. Mr. Hitchens needs to identify which premises of the argument he rejects as false if he is to reject the conclusions. Now with respect to my cosmological argument, notice that he didn't dispute whatever begins to exist has a cause, nor did he dispute the philosophical and scientific arguments for the beginning of the universe. All he asked was the question, "Was there pre-existent material?" The anwers is no, there was not. As Barrow and Tipler point out, "At this singularity, space and time came into existence. Literally nothing existed before the singularity. So if the universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation <i>ex nihilo</i>, that is, out of nothing." And this isn't talking religion, folks, this is talking contemporary cosmology. So, the first argument, it seems to me, is unrefuted. What about the fine tuning argument? Here he said, "Well, scientists are terribly uncertain about the fine tuning argument." Well, I think that's simply not the case. Sir Martin Ryse, the Astronomer Royal of Great Britain has said, "The laws governing our universe appear to be finely tuned for our existence. Everywhere you look there are yet more examples. Wherever physicists look they see examples of fine tuning." Ernan McMullen, philosopher of science, says, "It seems safe to say that later theory, no matter how different it may be, will turn up approximately the same amount of numbers and the numerous constraints that have to be imposed on these numbers seem both too specific and too numerous to evaporate entirely." So that it's very unlikely that this fine tuning is going to vanish or be explained away. Now, Mr. Hitchens responds, "But we're headed towards nothingness, we're ultimately going to be doomed and therefore the universe is not designed." Well now, this is not a very powerful objection. The temporal duration of something is irrelevant to whether it's been designed. The products of human intelligence and engineering like computers and automobiles will eventually decay and cease to exist but that doesn't mean they weren't designed. I think the real objection that he's getting at here is why would God create mankind only to have it go extinct? But of course, you see, on the Christian view that's false, that is an atheistic assumption. On the Christian view life does not end at the grave and God has given assurance of this by raising Jesus from the dead. So the objection simply has no purchase against Christian theism. So it seems to me that the fine tuning argument is also unrefuted. What about the moral argument? We saw that without God there are no objective moral values, Mr. Hitchens agrees with this and yet he himself affirms over and over again moral statements like the moral reprobation of religious intolerance and violence in the name of religion. So he does affirm objective values but without any basis for it. What I can offer him as a theist is a transcendent basis for the objective moral values and duties that we both want to affirm. Fourthly, the resurrection of Jesus: Again, there was no response to this. Let me simply quote N. T. Wright in his recent study of the resurrection. He says that, "The empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus have a historical probability so high as to be virtually certain, like the death of Augustus in AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. So we are on very solid ground in affirming these three facts that I mentioned in my opening speech and I can't think of any better explanation than the ones that the eye witnesses gave, namely that God raised Jesus from the dead. Finally, the immediate experience of God: Unless Mr. Hitchens can show that I'm psychologically deranged or delusional, it seems to me I'm perfectly rational on the basis of my immediate experience of God to believe that God exists and that therefore this, for me, is a properly basic belief. So I think all of these arguments stand intact despite his reputation. We've seen no argument for atheism so clearly the weight of the evidence falls on the side of the scale for Christian theism tonight.<br /><br />HITCHENS: There is a terminological problem here which may conceal more than just terminological difficulty: The proposition that atheism is true is a misstatement of what I have to prove and what we believe. There's an argument among some of us as to whether that we need the word at all. In other words, I don't have a special name for my unbelief in tooth fairies, say, or witches, or in Santa Claus. I just don't think that they're there. I don't have to prove "atoothfairyism"; I don't have to prove "asantaclausism"; I don't have to prove "awitchism." It's just, I have to say, I think that those who do believe these things have never been able to make a plausible or intelligible case for doing so. That's not agnosticism because it seems to me that if you don't think that there is any evidence you're wrong to take refuge in saying you're neutral. You ought to have the courage to answer the question which one is regularly asked, "Are you an atheist or not?" Yes, I will say, I am. You can't tell anything else about me. You can't tell anything else about what I think, about what I believe, about what my politics are or my other convictions. It's just that I don't believe in the existence of a supernatural dimension. I've never been shown any evidence that any process observable to us cannot be explained by more satisfactory and more convincing means. The great physicist Laplace, when showing his working model of the solar system to the Emperor Napoleon, was asked, "Well, you're model seems to have no room for God in it, for a deity," and he said, "Well, Your Majesty, it still all operates without that assumption." Now, here's what you would have to believe if you thought that this was all designed (Dr. Craig gave a slight parody of what I think about this): It could be true, but you'd have to imagine, let's say the human species has been—<i>Homo sapiens</i> has been with us, some people say as long as quarter of a million years, some say 200-, some say 100,000. Francis Collins and Richard Dawkins oscillate about this. It's not a very big argument. I'll just take 100,000 if you like. You have to imagine that human beings are born, well actually most of them, a good number of them aren't born, they die in childbirth or don't long outlive it. They're born into a terrifying world of the unknown, everything is a mystery to them, everything from disease to volcanic eruptions. Everything is—life expectancy for the first—I don't know—many, many tens of thousands of years would be lucky to be in the twenties, probably dying agonizingly of their teeth, poorly evolved as the teeth are and from other inheritances from being primates such as the appendix that we don't need, such as the fact that our genitalia appear to be designed by a committee, other short comings of the species, exaggerated by scarcity, by war, by famine, by competition and so on and for 98,000 years or so heaven watches this with complete indifference and then&mdash[to an audience member whose cell phone has gone off]we know where your children go to school, by the way—heaven watches this with total indifference and then with 2,000 years to go on the clock thinks, "Actually, it's time we intervened. We can't go on like this, why don't we have someone tortured to death in Bronze Age Palestine? That should teach them; that should give them a chance at redemption." You're free to believe that, but I think the designer who thought of doing it that way is a very, or was a very cruel, capricious, random, bungling, and incompetent one. The news of this—Dr. Craig talks as if, "Ok, but since then they'll be more people born so it might have been a good time in terms of population growth," well, there are a huge number of people who still haven't even heard of this idea. The news hasn't penetrated to them, or where it has, it's been brought to them by people who Dr. Craig doesn't think of as Christians, such as Mormons, for example, and it's taught to them in many discrepant and competitive and indeed incompatible and violently irreconcilable ways. And there's been a lot of argument in the church and the churches all this time about, well, "Ok, what is the answer to that? What about all the people who never could've heard the good news or who never will hear it or still haven't been reached by it and who've died not knowing about it? What happens to them? How can they be saved?" Well the argument is that it's all somehow made retrospective. And as, with so many of these arguments, I just comment on these, well how convenient. Becuase if you're willing to make assumptions of this kind then really evidence is only ancillary to what you are advancing. Now I didn't have to chance—Oh, and just on Mr. Wright, sorry I scrawled a little note to myself—in your first round, Doctor, you said that N. T. Wright, who is an impressive person, says that no explanation of the success of Christianity is possible that doesn't rest on the terms of its being true, in other words Wright says, "It was so successful, it must have been that the people were so strongly motivated to believe it, that it must have been true." I regard that as a very, very unsafe assumption. Or, if it is a safe one, then it must surely apply to Islam and to Mormonism. I mean, these are two very, very, very fast growing religions; have people prepared to sacrifice enormously for it; have ancestors who were absolutely determined of the truth of it at the time and who made extraordinary conquests in its name. If you're going to grant this for one religion it seems to me you have to be willing, not just willing, you may indeed be compelled to make this concession for all of them and that, I think, would be not just an unsafe assumption but for most of you here a distinctly unwelcome one. Now, I didn't get the chance, because I outtalked myself, I'm sorry for it, to get to the moral dimension and I'm interested in the fact that "objective" morality is the one that Dr. Craig chooses. Usually the arguments about morality are whether the morality as, so to say, "absolute," or whether it's "relative." As to objectivity I think it's a very good compromise word by the way and I'm very happy to accept it. But the problem with morality is this, in respect of religion: You can't prove that anyone behaves any better if they refer to this problem upward to a supreme dictator of a celestial kind. There are two questions that I've asked in public and I'll try them again because I try them on every audience. They're very simple ones: First, you have to name for me—challenges, let's say, rather than questions—you have to name for me an ethical action or an ethical statement or moral action or moral statement made or undertaken by a believer that I couldn't undertake or say, I couldn't state or do. I haven't yet had an example pointed out of that to me. In other words, that a person of faith would have an advantage by being able to call upon divine sanction. Whereas if I ask you to think of a wicked act undertaken by someone in the name of God or because of their faith or a wicked statement made, you wouldn't have that much difficulty, I think, in coming up with an example right away. The genital mutilation community, for example, is almost exclusively religious; the suicide bombing community is almost exclusively religious; there are injunctions for genecide in the Old Testament; there are injunctions, warrants for slavery and racism in the Old Testament too. There's simply no way of deriving morality and ethics from the supernatural. When we come to the question of the absolute, well, the most often cited one is the Golden Rule, the one that almost everyone feels they have in common. The injunction not to do to others as you wouldn't want them to do to you. This doesn't in fact come from the Sermon on the Mount or from Christianity, or it doesn't originate with it. It's certainly adumbrated by Rabbi Hillel, a Babylonian rabbi, and it's to be found in <i>The Analects of Confucious</i>, too. But it has, since we're talking about objective, relative, and absolute, a crucial weakness in it, unfortunately: We'd like to be able to follow it but it's really only as good as the person uttering it. In others words, if I say I won't treat you as I don't want you to treat me, what am I to do when confronted with Charles Manson? I want him treated in a way that I wouldn't want to be treated myself. Anything else would surely be completely relativistic. So the argument isn't at all advanced by saying that I couldn't know any of this; I couldn't have any moral promptings; I couldn't decide for myself if I see a pregnant woman being kicked in the stomach that, because she's pregnant, that's obviously worse than if it was just a regular woman being kicked in the stomach. This is part of my patrimony as a human being, it's part of the essential emotional solidarity that I need to have with my fellow creatures to make us realize that we are brothers and sisters, one with another. We are dependent upon one another; we have duties; we have expectations of one another and that if we didn't have these, and try to fulfill them, we couldn't have gotten as far as we have. We couldn't have evolved as a species; we couldn't have ever had a society. There's never been a society found where rape and murder and perjury are not condemned. These moral discoveries long—or absolutes, if you want to call them that—long predate the arrival of anything recognizable as monotheism. It's a bit like the argument of free will. People say, "Well, how do you have free will? Do you think you do have it?" Well, it's a very, very difficult subject indeed. Some religions say you don't in effect have it, that all is determined by heaven, you're really only a play thing in a larger game. I take that to be that some of the point of Calvinism. There are some schools of Islam also that say, "It is only as Allah wills." There's no will of yours really involved as long as you're willing to make the prostration and the obedience. So the connection between religion and free will isn't as simple and easy as some people think it is. But I would say, yes, I think we have free will. When asked why I think so, I would have to take refuge in philosophical irony and say, "Because I don't think we have any choice but to have free will." Well at least I know at this point that I'm being ironic and that some of the irony is at my own expense and it's a risk I have to be willing to run. But the Christian answer is, "Of course you have free will, the boss insists upon it." This somewhat degrades the freedom and redefines the idea of will and it seems to me also that there's something degrading in the idea that saying that morality is derived in the same way; that it comes from on high; that we, ourselves, are not good enough; that we don't have the dignity; we don't have the self respect; we don't have the character to know a right action or a right statement when we see it or when we want to perform it. It's this servile element in religion—it's not strictly speaking the subject of our debate this evening, I know, but I'm damned if I completely forgo it—it's the idea that, buried in the religious impulse, is actually the wish to be unfree, is the wish for an immovable, unchangeable, celestial authority, a kind of heavenly North Korea that will take our decisions away from us and commit us only to worship and praise and thank a Great Leader and his son, the Dear Leader, forever and ever and ever. I'm so glad that there's no evidence that this is true. Thank you. <br /><br />HEWITT: We now enter the period of cross examination which, trial like, allows the questioner to pose and the answerer only to answer and not to repeat the question or to dodge. Six minutes of questions begin to Dr. Craig followed by six minutes of questions to Mr. Hitchens. Dr Craig, your questions for Mr. Hitchens.<br /><br />CRAIG: Alright, let's talk first about whether there are any good arguments to think that atheism is true. Now, it seems to me that you're rather ambivalent here, that you say—you redefine atheism to mean a sort of "ah"-theism or "non"-theism.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That's what it means.<br /><br />CRAIG: But, how do you distinguish then the different varieties of nontheism, for example what is normally called atheism, agnosticism, or the view of verificationists that the statement "God exists" is simply meaningless?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I mean, there are different schools of atheism as you say, but there's no claim I know how to make that says atheism is true because atheism is the statement that a certain proposition isn't true. So I wish you'd get this bit right because—there you go again. I've just devoted a little time to this. I said it is not, in itself, a belief or a system, it simply says you can by get by better, probably, we think, without the assumption and that no one who wants you to worship a god has ever been able to come up with a good enough reason to make you to do it. <br /><br />CRAIG: Now, so the point it though, that on your definition of "ah"-theism or nontheism, it really embodies a diversity of views such as agnosticism, what is normally called atheism, or this verificationism. Now, which of those do you hold to within this umbrella of "ah"-theism? Are you an atheist who asserts the proposition "God does not exist" or do you simply withhold belief in God in the way that the agnostic does?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Right. On some days I'm a great—[responding to audience laughter] no, I'm not going to do you that much of a favor—on some days I'm a great admirer of Thomas Huxley who had the great debate with Bishop Wilberforce in Oxford at the Natural History Museum about Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century, who was known as Darwin's bulldog (we would now say Darwin's pitbull) and who completely trounced the good bishop. But, I can't thank him for inventing the term "agnostic" and I can't thank him for some of his social Darwinist positions either, some of which are rather unattractive.<br /><br />CRAIG: I need an answer to this...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, because I think agnosticism is evasive. To me, yes, if you talk about the power of the Holy Spirit and so forth, to me that is meaningless, it's, to me, I'm sorry, I've tried, it's white noise. It's like saying, "There is only one God and Allah is his messenger." It's gibberish to me.<br /><br />CRAIG: What is [inaudbile]...<br /><br />HITCHENS: There are many of us, I'm sorry there are just many of us to whom, of whom this is the case. It may be true, it is true that religion...<br /><br />CRAIG: Ok Mr. Hitchens, I've gotta press you here because time is [inaudible]...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Feel free...press away.<br /><br />CRAIG: What is your view exactly? Do you affirm God does not exist or do you simply withhold belief?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think once I have said that I've never seen any persuasive evidence for the existence in something, and I've made real attempts to study the evidence presented and the arguments presented, that I will go as far as to say, have the nerve to say, that it does not therefore exist except in the minds of its...<br /><br />CRAIG: Alright, so...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Except in the Henry Jamesian subject of sense that you say of it being so real to some people in their own minds that it counts as a force in the world.<br /><br />CRAIG: Alright, that it's objective. Ok, so you do affirm then that God does not exist. Now, what I want to know and and do you have any justification for that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: [Thinking his microphone has come undone] I think I've come unwired.<br /><br />CRAIG: You're still—you're fine.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You sure?<br /><br />CRAIG: Do you have any arguments leading to the conclusion that God does not exist?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well I would rather, I think—I'm wondering if I'm boring anybody now. I would rather say—I'd rather state it in reverse and say I find all the arguments in favor to be fallacious or unconvincing. And I'd have to add, though this isn't my reason for not believing in it, that I would be very depressed if it was true. That's quite a different thing. I don't say of atheism that it's at all morally superior, that would be very risky. I wouldn't admit that it was at all morally inferior either, but we can at least be acquitted on the charge of wishful thinking. We don't particularly...<br /><br />CRAIG: I wonder—I wonder if that's the case. Would you agree that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, you know, I'm not sure that I would agree. <br /><br />CRAIG: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I mean, I think...<br /><br />CRAIG: Let's turn to the moral argument and talk about that a little bit. I think you've misunderstood the moral argument [inaudible]...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Given the stakes, Doctor—sorry—given the stakes, I mean you're not saying, we're not talking about unicorns or tooth fairies or leprechauns here, we're talking about an authority that would give other humans beings the right to tell me what to do in the name of God. So, for a claim like that if there's no evidence for it it seems to me a very—not a small question. <br /><br />CRAIG: No, it's certainly not a small question, but I wonder...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because you're making a very, very, very large claim. Your evidence had better be absolutely magnificent, it seems to me, and it's the lack of magnificence I think that began to strike me first. <br /><br />HEWITT: One final question, Doctor.<br /><br />CRAIG: Ok, well let's go to the moral argument. It seems to me there that you've misunderstood the argument, in that we're looking for an objective foundation for the moral values and duties that we want—we both I think want to affirm. It's not a matter of whether or not we can know what is right and wrong, or that we need God to tell us what is right and wrong, it's rather that we need to have some sort of an objective foundation for right and wrong. Wouldn't you agree on your view it's simply the socio-biological spinoffs of the evolutionary process and that therefore these do not provide any sort of objective foundation for moral values and duties?<br /><br />HITCHENS: That could be true, yes. It could well be true.<br /><br />CRAIG: Ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah. I don't want to be too much of a reductionist, but it's entirely possible that it is purely evolutionary and functional. One wants to think that there's a bit more to one's love for the fellow creature than that. But it doesn't add one iota of weight or moral gravity to the argument to say that's because I don't believe in a supernatural being. It's a <i>non sequitur</i>. <br /><br />HEWITT: Mr. Hitchens, your questions for Dr. Craig.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ah, well, I'd like to know first: You said that the career of Jesus of Nazareth involved a ministry of miracles and exorcisms. When you say "exorcism," do you mean that you believe in devils too?<br /><br />CRAIG: What I meant there was that most historians agree that Jesus of Nazareth practiced miracle working and he practiced exorcisms. I'm not committing myself, nor are historians committing themselves, to the reality of demons but they are saying that Jesus did practice exorcism and he practiced healing. <br /><br />HITCHENS: So you believe that Jesus of Nazareth caused devils to leave the body of a madman and go into a flock of pigs that hurled themselves down the Gadarene slopes into the sea?<br /><br />CRAIG: Do I believe that's historical? Yes. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Right. That would be sorcery, wouldn't it though?<br /><br />CRAIG: No, it would be an illustration of Jesus' ability to command even the forces of darkness and therefore an illustration of the sort of divine authority that he was able to command and exercise. This, as I say, is illustrative of this unprecedented sense of divine authority that Jesus of Nazareth had that he even could command the forces of darkness and that they would obey. So, whether you think he was a genuine exorcist or that he merely believed himself to be an exorcist, what is historically undeniable is that he had this radical sense of divine authority which he expressed by miracle working and exorcisms.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Right. And do you believe he was born of a virgin?<br /><br />CRAIG: Yes, I believe that as a Christian. I couldn't claim to prove that historically, that's not part of my case tonight. But as a Christian I believe that. <br /><br />HITCHENS: And I know you believe in the resurrection but...<br /><br />CRAIG: Yes, <i>that</i> I think we have good evidence.<br /><br />HITCHENS: As a matter of biblical, what shall we call it, consistency, it's said in one of the Gospels that at the time of the crucifixion all the graves of Jerusalem were opened and all the tenants of the graves walked the streets and greeted their old friends. It makes resurrection sound rather commonplace in the greater Jerusalem area.<br /><br />CRAIG: That's in the Gospel of Matthew and that's actually attached to a crucifixion narrative where...<br /><br />HITCHENS: That's what I said, it says at the time of the crucifixion.<br /><br />CRAIG: Yes, that's right, at the time of the crucifixion it says that there were appearances of Old Testament saints in Jerusalem at the time. This is part of Matthew's description of the crucifixion scene.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I mean, do you believe that?<br /><br />CRAIG: I don't know whether Matthew intends this to be apocalyptic imagery or whether he means this to be taken literally. I've not studied it in any depth and I'm open minded about it. I'm willing to be convinced one way or the other.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You see the reason I'm pressing you is this: Because, I mean, we know from Scripture that Pharoahs' magicians could produce miracles. In the end, Aaron could outproduce them, but what I'm suggesting to you is even if the laws of nature can be suspended and great miracles can be performed, it doesn't prove the truth of the doctrine of the person who's performing them. Would you not agree to that?<br /><br />CRAIG: Not necessarily, I think that's right. <br /><br />HITCHENS: So somebody could be casting out devils from pigs and that wouldn't prove he was the son of God?<br /><br />CRAIG: I think that's right. In fact, there were Jewish exorcists. The only point that I was trying to make there that this was illustrative of the kind of divine authority that Jesus claimed, especially since He didn't cast them out...<br /><br />HITCHENS: But if...<br /><br />CRAIG: ...in God's name or He didn't perform miracles by praying to God, He would do them in His own authority, so that Jesus exercised an authority that was simply unheard of at that time and, for which He was eventually crucified because it was thought to be blasphemous. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, it was though to be blasphemous to have claimed to be the Messiah, to be exact. I mean, the people who got the closest look at him, the Jewish Sanhedrin, thought that his claims were not genuine so, remember, if you resting anything on eye witnesses, the ones who we definitely know were there thought he was bogus. But ok, I think I've got a rough idea—asuming you make that assumption of his pre-existing divinity, that it's a presuppositionalist case, I can see what you're driving it.<br /><br />CRAIG: Well no, I'm not a presuppositionalist.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I've got another question for you which is this: How many religions in the world do you believe to be false?<br /><br />CRAIG: I don't know how many religions in the world there are, so I couldn't...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, could you name—[audience laughter]—Fair enough, I'll see if I can't narrow that down. That was a clumsily asked question, I admit. Do you regard any of the world's religions to be false?<br /><br />CRAIG: Excuse me?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Do you regard any of the world's religions to be false preaching?<br /><br />CRAIG: Yes, I think, yeah, certainly.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Would you name one, then?<br /><br />CRAIG: Islam. <br /><br />HITCHENS: That's quite a lot. <br /><br />CRAIG: Pardon me?<br /><br />HITCHENS: That's quite a lot.<br /><br />CRAIG: Yes. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Do you, therefore—do you think it's moral to preach false religion?<br /><br />CRAIG: No. <br /><br />HITCHENS: So religion is responsible for quite a lot of wickedness in the world right there?<br /><br />CRAIG: Certainly.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Right.<br /><br />CRAIG: I'd be happy to concede that. I would agree with that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: So if I was a baby being born in Saudi Arabia today, would you rather I was me, or a Wahabi Muslim?<br /><br />CRAIG: Would I be—you rather be what?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Would you rather it was me (it was an atheist baby) or a Wahabi baby?<br /><br />CRAIG: I don't have any preference as to whether you would...<br /><br />HITCHENS: As bad as that, ok. Are there any—I'm sorry, I've only got a few seconds and it's a serious question, I shouldn't squander it—are there any Christian denomenations you regard as false?<br /><br />CRAIG: Certainly. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Could I know what they are?<br /><br />CRAIG: Well, I'm not a Calvinist, for example. I think that certain tenets of Reformed Theology are incorrect. I would be more in Wesleyan camp myself. But, these are differences among brethren. these are not difference on which we need to put one another into some sort of a cage. So, within the Christian camp, there's a large diversity of perspectives. I'm sure there are views that I hold that are probably false but I'm trying my best to get my theology straight, trying to do the best job but I think all of us would recognize that none of us agree on every point of Christian doctrine, on every dot and tittle. <br /><br />HEWITT: Before Mr. Hitchens succeeds in launching another series of religious wars among Christians let's get to the responses, seven minutes each. Dr. Craig, it is your seven minutes.<br /><br />CRAIG: Ok. Well, I think it's very evident that in tonight's debate, we've not heard any good reasons to think that what is normally called atheism is true, that is to say the belief that God does <i>not</i> exist. Mr. Hitchens withholds belief in God but he's unable to give us any argument to think that God does not exist which is what is called positive atheism. Now he does mention that the human species has been here for 100,000 years but I've already responded to that: What's crucial there is not the number of years, it's the population and only 2% of the population of the earth has existed before Christ. And during that time God is not indifferent to the lot of those people, rather he is preparing humanity, preparing the world for the advent of Christ so that in the fullness of time Christ would come into the world. And those people who lived apart from Christ, God cared for them as well and provided for them. The Bible says, "Ever since the creation of the world, God's invisible nature, namely His eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." Paul says that, "From one man God made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth and He determined the time set for them in the exact places that they should live. He did this so men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, for He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being." So that those who lived before Christ were covered by the death of Christ, they were covered by his atoning sacrifice and God will judge them on the basis of the information that they had in their response to general revelation. Similar to those who haven't heard the Gospel yet today, they will be judged on the basis of the information that they do have and how they respond to that. And aren't you glad that you don't have to judge them? You can leave this up to the hands of a just and holy and merciful God who will judge people on the basis of how they respond to the revelation that they do have. So we've not heard any argument tonight that God does not exist. Now, by contrast, I've given five arguments to show that Christian theism is true. First, we saw the cosmological argument. Mr. Hitchens has not disagreed with either of the premises of this argument and so we have good grounds to believe in the personal creator of the universe. As for the teleological argument, again he didn't respond to what I said in my last speech with respect to the fine tuning being well established in science and that the fact that we're going towards nothingness as he puts it, is an atheistic assumption, not a Christian assumption and therefore doesn't do anything to disprove design. Now what about the moral argument? Here he says that, "You have to prove that people would behave better if they believed in God." That's not the argument, I hope that's clear to everyone. The argument is that without God as a transcendent foundation for moral values, we're simply lost in socio-cultural relativism. Who are you to judge that the Nazi ethic was wrong? Who are you to judge that the ethic of ancient Hinduism was wrong? Who are you to judge that the Africana apartheid is wrong? This is all just the result of socio-cultural evolution and there is no transcendent objective standard apart from God and that's what God delivers for us. Now Mr. Hitchens says, "Name one moral action that an unbeliever could not take." Well, that's trivially easy. If God exists there are all kinds of moral duties that we have that the unbeliever cannot recognize. At the panel discussion last week in Dallas, when Mr. Hitchens demanded that someone name such an action, a pastor on the panel immediately piped up, "How about tithing?" Well, leave it to a pastor to think of that, but—clearly, that's an action that only a believer would take. Even more fundamentally, what about the first and greatest commandment? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your mind." That is an action that only a believer can take, no unbeliever can discharge even this most fundamental of moral duties. But, in any case, all of this is beside the point with respect to the moral argument. The point is that on atheism there are no moral obligations for anybody to fulfill. In nature, whatever <i>is</i> is right and Mr. Hitchens is unable to provide any sort of objective foundation for moral values. Massimo Pigliucci is a philosopher of biology. This is what he has to say: He says on atheism, "There is no such thing as objective morality. Morality in human cultures has evolved and what is moral for you might not be moral for the guy next door and certainly is not moral for the guy across the ocean. And what makes you think that your personal morality is the one and everybody else is wrong? What we call homicide or rape," he said, "is very, very common among different kinds of animals. Lions, for example, commit infanticide on a regular basis. Now, are these kinds of acts to be condoned? I don't even know what that means because the lion doesn't understand what morality is. Morality," he says, "is an invention of human beings." It's just a convention that human beings have adopted to live together. But it has no objectivity. And that's what I offer Mr. Hitchens tonight, is a solid, transcendent foundation for the moral values that I think he so desperately wants to affirm. What about the resurrection of Jesus? Here he misunderstood N. T. Wright's argument. N. T. Wright's argument is not that the success of Christianity means that it's true, that would apply to Islam and Mormonism, rather, N. T. Wright's argument is that the origin of the disciples' belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead is so unjewish, it is so uncharacteristic, that you have to explain what would bring them to adopt so radical a mutation of Jewish belief as belief in a dying Messiah and a rising Messiah and he says the only thing he can think of that would explain this is the empty tomb and the <i>post mortem</i> appearances of Jesus and that's why Wright concludes that these have a certainty that is comparable to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. So you've gotta get the argument right if you're going to deal with it and, in fact, I think the only explanation of these facts is the one that the disciples gave that God raised Jesus from the dead. Finally, the immediate experience of God has remained untouched. God is real to me. And unless I'm delusion, I'm perfectly within my rational rights to believe in God on the basis of this experience just as I believe in the reality of the external world or the reality of the past on the basis of my experience. So I think in sum, we've got five good reasons for believing that Christianity is true, no reason to think atheism is true and therefore I think Christianity is clearly the more rational world view.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think it's—you'll correct me if I'm wrong—it's Tertilian, isn't it, who says something like, it's variously translated "credo quia absurdum"? That the very improbability of the thing, the very unlikelihood of it, the unlikelihood that anyone would fabricate such a thing, for example, that a Jew could be brought to believe something so extraordinary, is testimony to its truth. I'm sure there can't be anyone here who doesn't thinks that's a little too easy, a little too facile. I myself, for example, have followed the career of a woman known vulgarly in the media as "Mother Teresa," an Albanian named Agnes Bojaxhiu, a Catholic fanatic operating in the greater Calcutta area, and I watched every stage of her career as a candidate for, and then the recipient of, beatification and shortly, canonization. The canonization will require, as the Vatican demands, the attestation of a miracle performed by her posthumous intercession. And the miracle's already been announced, a woman in Bengal, fortunately already a devout Catholic, by pressing a medal of Mother Teresa to her stomach, made a tumor go away, or so she says. All the witnesses to this have since recanted, all the doctors have given a much better explanation of how she was cured of the swelling and the growth and what the medicines were and so forth, but they're still stuck with it. They have to go ahead with this process because—which will lead to countless, untold suffering in India because it will appear to license the bogus charlatanry of shaman, medicine and intercessary medicine rather than the real thing. All of this will have to be gone through, this awful display, in the name of faith. And I just happened to have watched it at every stage and I can tell you it's depressingly easy to get a religious rumor started. You can count on an enormous amount of pre-existing credulity among illiterate, frightened, ill-educated populations. There isn't a literate, written-down, properly attested witness of any real sort in the Gospels. It is, and you may as well admit it, and stick to it because it's what you're good at, it involves an act of faith. Second, on the matter of my moral question: Yes, it's true that Doug Wilson said that tithing was something I couldn't do, but then not just—I'm not moving the goal posts here—I don't think I'd regard giving all my money to the New Saint Andrews church as a moral act. The only challenge that I've had so far that I really couldn't get out of—I should share it with you—was I was told well you couldn't do this: You couldn't say, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." No, but nor could you as people of faith, you wouldn't dare. It would be blasphemy to do it. There's only one person who can do that even on your account so, with respect, ladies and gentlemen, I think both my challenges stand. It hasn't been shown that I couldn't be a moral person despite my unbelief and it has certainly not been demonstrated that unbelief with guarantee you against—excuse me that the belief will—I'll say it again—that unbelief will ensure you against wickedness. You mentioned things like apartheid and Nazism. Well, let me just run it by you. Partly this often comes up because people say, "What about the crimes and wickedness of the secular world?" The apartheid system in South Africa was actually a creation of the Dutch Reformed Church. It was justified theologically as the giving of a promised land to one Christian religious tribe in which everyone else was supposed to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. It wasn't until the Dutch Reformed Church, under pressure, agreed to drop their racist preachments of many years that the apartheid system could be dismantled. The dictatorship in Greece in 1967 to '74 was proclaimed by the Greek Orthodox Church as a "Greece for Christian Greeks." The Russian Orthodox Church at present, maybe this is one of the churches you don't recognize as Christian, I don't know, but it's currently become the body guard of the Vladimir Putin dictatorship in Russia. They are now producing, the Russian Orthodox Church, actual icons with halos around them of Joseph Stalin for distribution to extreme Russian nationalists and chauvinists for whom the church has become the spiritual sword and butler. In Nazi Germany prayers were said every year on the Führer's birthday by order of the churches for his survival and well being. The first concordat signed by Hitler and by Mussolini, in both cases, was with the Vatican. If you take out the word "facist" from any account of the 1920s and '30s, any reputable historical account, and you insert the words "Christian right wing," or actually "Catholic right wing," you don't have to change a word of the rest of the sentence. And the third member of the axis, the Japanese empire, was led by someone who actually claimed he was himself a god and to whom everyone in Japan was a serf and had to admit his god had indivinity and it was said to all of them, "Where would we know without the Emperor? How would we know what to do? How would we know what a right action was? Without him there would be screwing in the streets. There would be chaos, no one would know their bearings. Without our god, we would be rudderless." Many Japanese people, in fact, it is pitiful to report, still actually believe that. Now, I want to say, in other words, that religion is the outcome of unresolved contradictions in the material world, that if you make the assumption that it's man-made then very few things are mysterious to you; if you make the assumption that religion is man-made then you would know why—it would be obvious to you why there are so many religions; when you make the assumption that it's man-made you will understand why it is that religion has been such a disappointment to our species that despite enumerable revivals, enumerable attempts again to preach the truth, enumerable attempts to convert the heathen, enumerable attempt to send missionaries all around the world, that the same problems remain with us. That nothing is resolved by this. That we—if all religions died out or all were admitted to be false instead of, as all believers will tell you, only some of them are false, in other words, we're faced with the preposterous proposition that religion—either all of them true, or none of them true, or only one exclusive preachment is true. And none of these seem, to me, coherent and all of these seem to be the outcome of a man-made cult. Assume that all of them were discredited at the same time, all of our problems would be exactly what they are now: How do we live with one another? Where, indeed, do morals and ethics come from? What are our duties to one another? How shall we build the just city? How shall we practice love? How shall we deal with the baser, what Darwin called the "lowly stamp of our original origins," which comes, not from a pact with the devil, or an original sin, but from our evolution as well? All these questions, ladies and gentlemen, would remain exactly the same. Emancipate yourself from the idea of a celestial dictatorship and you've taken the first step to becoming free. Thank you. <br /><br />HEWITT: Dr. Craig, your closing argument. Five minutes.<br /><br />CRAIG: In my final speech I'd like to try to draw together some of the threads of this debate and see if we can come to some conclusions. First, have we seen any good arguments tonight to think that God does not exist? No, I don't think we have. We've heard attacks upon religion, Christianity impugned, God impugned, Mother Teresa impugned, but we haven't heard any arguments that God does not exist. Mr. Hitchens seems to fail to recognize that atheism is itself a world view and it claims alone to be true and all the other religions of the world false. It is no more tolerant than Christianity, with respect to these other views. He asserts that he alone has the true world view: atheism. The only problem is he doesn't have any arguments for this world view, he just asserts it. So it seems to me that if you're going to have a world view and champion it tonight you've got to come to a debate prepared to give some arguments and we haven't heard any. He did have an argument about evolution but when I explained that it actually turned out to be supportive of theism, evolution actually provides evidence for the existence of a designer of the universe, so we've not heard any good arguments to think that atheism is true. Now, I've presented five reasons to think that theism is true and this is what God, or the god hypothesis does give you: He asks, "What does it give us?" It explains a broad range of human experience, philosophical, ethical, scientific, historical, experiential. I find the attraction of the god hypothesis is that it is so powerful in making sense of the way the world is. For example, the god hypothesis explains the origins of the universe. Mr. Hitchens has completed dropped this point in tonight's debate. When we saw that in fact scientific and philosophical evidence points to a beginning of the universe out of nothing and therefore to a transcendent, personal creator of the cosmos. The teleological argument: The fine tuning that is established in the initial conditions of the universe, not to speak of in the biological complexity that then ensued. And again, Mr. Hitchens has dropped that in the course of the debate tonight. So we have a creator and an intelligent designer of the cosmos. Thirdly, the moral argument: We saw that without God there are no objective moral values. And here Mr. Hitchens has consistently distorted the argument. He's portrayed the argument as, "How would we know moral values if we didn't believe in God? We don't need to believe in a tyrant in order to define moral values. Unbelief doesn't produce wickedness." That is all irrelevant. The point is that there is no foundation on a naturalistic world view for the moral values and duties that we both want to affirm and he agrees with that. This is what he says and I quote, he says, "Our innate predisposition to both good and wicked behavior is precisely what one would expect to find of a recently evolved species that is half a chromosome away from chimpanzees. Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on. As Darwin put it, any animal, whatever endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral censor conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed as in man." That is the socio-biological explanation for morality. The problem is that that moral sense that develops in pig societies, chimpanzees, baboons, and <i>Homo sapiens</i> is illusory on atheism because there are no objective moral duties or values that we have to fulfill and that's what the theist can offer Mr. Hitchens. And so, I want to invite Mr. Hitchens to think about becoming a Christian tonight. Honestly, if he is a man of good will who will follow the evidence where it leads—all of the evidence tonight has been on one side of the scale and he wants to affirm objective moral values so why not adopt theism? The resurrection of Jesus has gone unrefuted. The argument is not that it's too improbable to be false, the argument is that you need a historically sufficient explanation to explain why the disciples came to believe this and there isn't one apart from the empty tomb and appearances. It's not a matter of rumor because the empty tomb was public knowledge in Jerusalem. It would impossible for Christianity to flourish in Jerusalem in the face of an occupied tomb. Finally, the immediate experience of God: If there's anyone watching or listening to the debate tonight who hasn't found God in a personal experiential way then I want to invite you as well to think about becoming a Christian. I became a Christian as a junior in high school and it changed my entire life and I believe that if you'll look into it honestly with an open mind and an open heart that it can change your life as well. <br /><br />HEWITT: Mr. Hitchens has yielded his time and therefore we move to questions and we are directing those questions to students tonight. I want to repeat something Dr. Hazen said: There are stupid questions. I want to ad to it we are uninterested in your opinions. Only your questions matter to us. I don't know where the microphone is can we hear the first question? Each participant will answer every question. <br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Dr. Craig, Mr. Hitchens, thank you so much. It's been great listening to you both. My question is for Mr. Hitchens: Mr. Hitchens, in your book <i>god is Not Great</i>, you say that, "There are four irreducible objections to religious faith." The third being that religious faith "is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression." So here's my question for you: Is it good that the Bible prohibits humans from having sex with animals, or is that an example of dangerous sexual repression?<br /><br />HITCHENS: The allusion I was making was not to the man-made, in the ordinary sense nature of religion, that you can tell from studying some of its codes that it's—humans have inventing it. That's why so many of the injunctions in the Old Testament are as you quite rightly say, concerned with agriculture, shall we put it delicately?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: So...<br /><br />HITCHENS: But, it's more that it's man-made, it's designed to keep women in subordination.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: But, could you answer the question?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Do you think the Bible is right to prohibit humans from having sex with animals?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't know of any good advice about having sex with animals—in favor of it, I mean to say. Look, there are things that if people do, incest is one and cannibalism is another, if you do them, you'll die out. A society that permitted it would—there were societies in New Guinea that did practice cannibalism and there's a terrible disease that you get called Kuru if you do it and it seems to me, if you like, there are some rules that are self-enforcing. That's not what I—when I was talking about sexual repression, I was talking about the enormous number of prohibitions on sex between men and women and on the evident fear of female sexuality and the superstitious dread, for example, of female menstrual blood, things of this kind. <br /><br />HEWITT: Dr. Craig, your assessment of that question and answer.<br /><br />CRAIG: Well, I think the question illustrates that, apart from God, whatever is in nature is right. There is no thing barred in nature if there is no sort of objective moral code. So, the question is a good one because it illustrates that here is a guideline for sexual expression that is very good for human beings and not something that's meant to be repressive or harmful to human beings. In fact, the studies I've seen says that religious people have more fun with sex than people who are not religious and it's actually shows that they are more sexually satisfied in marriage and so forth. So I think the question makes a good point. <br /><br />HITCHENS: I think I have to have another bite at this—[audience laughter]—this tempting cherry. You see, if it's true that, as I think it is, that nature is pretty indifferent, pretty callous, pretty random, then who is the designer? Many people say, concerning the ban on homosexuality, for example, in the Old Testament, they'll say, "Well, homosexuality is against God's law and against Nature's law." Well, in that case, why does Nature see to it that so many people are born homosexual? Or, if you want to rephrase it, why does God have so many of his children preferring sex with their own gender? It doesn't help—it doesn't—in clarifying and elucidating this. It doesn't help to assume a supernatural authority. Whereas, if you look at the reasons given by Maimonides and the other sages for the practice of circumcision, it is precisely to dull and to blunt the sensation of an organ which I don't think even—well, I'll leave it there. <br /><br />HEWITT: Our next question.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's explicitly designed, in other words, to reduce sexual pleasure, make it more of a painful duty than a celebration. Well you asked for it. <br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: I don't want to misrepresent myself I was a student here and graduated—[audience laughter upon noticing he's middle-aged]—somewhat by the skin of my teeth. Mr. Hitchens you stated that—some of your most strongly stated arguments are that the results of religion (violence, death, destruction, the motivation being religion) discredit those who would promote a belief in God. However, I think there's an imbalance there in that the nuclear bomb was created by physicists and is the most demonstrable violence perpetrated on mankind. So I wonder how you respond to that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, physics isn't an ideology. Physics isn't a belief system. It's a science. <br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Well that, I think, that would be subjective.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I mean you could—any more than Marie Curie discovering radium makes her practice morally different. I mean, it's not comparing like with like. What I'm talking about are specific religious injunctions to do evil. To mutilate the genitalia of children, for example. To take the pastor, Douglas Wilson, who Dr. Craig was just mentioning, with whom I've crossed swords several times this year, and recently in Dallas: I happened to be mentioning to him about the commandment to exterminate the Amalekites in one of our debates and he said that commandment is still valid. If there were any Amalekites it would be his job to make sure they were all put to the sword and some of the virgins left over for slavery, purposes better imagined perhaps than described. I think this is a very serious problem. I'm not taking refuge in the common place that sometimes religious people behave badly and that that would discredit religion, that would be a very soft option. I'm saying that there are specific biblical, scriptural injunctions to do evil.<br /><br />HEWITT: Dr. Craig in that regards, those who are announced atheists who have done evil in the world particularly in the last twentieth century—the Marxists, the Trotskyites, the Stalinists—have they done more damage in your view and more evil than Christians?<br /><br />CRAIG: Well, this is a debate, Hugh, that I don't want to get into because I think it's irrelevant. I, as a philosopher, and I mean this, am interested in the truth of these world views more than I'm interested in the social impact. And you cannot judge the truth of a world view by its social impact, that's just irrelevant. Bertrand Russell, in his essay "Why I'm Not a Christian" understood this. Russell said you cannot assess the truth of a world view by seeing whether it's good for society or not. Now the irony was when Russell wrote that back in the '20s he was trying to refute those who said that you should be believe in Christianity because it's so socially beneficial to society. It was just the mirror image of Christopher Hitchens' argument, saying you shouldn't believe in it because it's so socially detrimental to human culture. But I think Russell's point cuts both ways because it's a valid point: You can't assess the truth of a world view by arguing about its cultural and social impact. There are true ideas that may have had negative social impact and therefore we have to deal with the truth of these, the arguments for and against them and not get into arguments about has Marxism or Chinese Communism been responsible for more deaths than theism in the twentieth century.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I completely concur with what you say there. I mean, I just wanted to say that I think those commandments are injunctions to do evil but I would much prefer to say that the tribe that thought it was hearing these instructions from God, to kill all of its rivals, exterminate all its rivals for the Holy Land, might possibly have had, I think it's overwhelmingly probable it <i>did</i> have, the need to seek and claim divine approval for the war of greedy extermination, annexation, and racist conquests it was going to undertake anyway. In other words, I don't think there was an authority issuing that commandment whether it was morally good or otherwise, as a matter of the truth. But I would add, and I think the concession is very well worth having, that there is absolutely no proof at all that Christianity makes people behave better.<br /><br />CRAIG: Wait a minute, I didn't concede that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Even thought that's irrelevant to whether it's true.<br /><br />CRAIG: I said I wasn't going to argue that, because it's irrelevant but by no means did I concede that. And I do appreciate as well the way you framed the issue the about the Canaanites. I think you're quite right in saying that this is not an issue about whether or not God exists rather this is a question about biblical inerrancy. Did these ancient Israelites get it right in thinking that God had commanded them to do these things or did they, in their nationalistic fervor, think God is on our side and do something which, in fact, they weren't commanded to do by God? So that this isn't an issue between atheism and theism this is an issue about biblical inspiration and inerrancy and that's an important issue but it's not one that is on the floor tonight. <br /><br />HEWITT: Our next student question.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Hi, my question is mainly directed at Mr. Hitchens. Christian theism, as with all theisms that claim a revelation say that the purpose of human existence is to serve God, and Dr. Craig might want to expound on that in some way. But Mr. Hitchens, as an atheist with no transcendent being giving you a reason for existence what then is the best way to live life or what is motivation for living life or what is the purpose of your existence without a transcendent being telling you what to do?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well I find it—you see this is where I find it hard to accept the grammar of your question. It's as if, if I was only willing to concede the supernatural—you want to say transcendent, I want to say supernatural—then my life would have purpose. I think that's a complete <i>non sequitur</i>. To me, at any rate, I'll have to just make the confession. This is as real to me subjectively as any William Jamesian apprehension of the divine. I don't get your point at all.<br /><br />HEWITT: Dr. Craig, one of the written questions says, and I think it is consistent with the question from the audience: "You've written that life without God is absurd, but I know unbelievers who are living fulfilling moral lives. In what way is their life absurd?"<br /><br />CRAIG: Ah. Ok, let me respond to that and to the question here that was asked. I would say that the purpose of life, for which God has created us, is not to serve God. Remember, Jesus said, "I have not called you servants, I have called you friends." And I think the Westminster Confession gets it right when it says the purpose of human existence is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. God is the fulfillment of human existence. It is in fellowship eternally with God, the source of infinite goodness and love, that the true fulfillment of human existence and freedom is to be found. Now, when I say that, apart from theism, life is meaningless, I mean <i>objectively</i> meaningless. This is the same distinction that we're talking about with regard to moral values. I'm saying that on atheism, there is there is no objective purpose to human existence. As Mr. Hitchens recognizes, eventually the universe will grow cold, dilute, dark, and dead as it runs down toward maximum entropy and heat death and all human existence and life will be extinguished on an atheistic view of the future of the universe. There is no purpose for which the universe exists; the litter of a dead universe will just expand into the endless darkness forever, a universe in ruins. Now, of course one can still live one's life as an illusion, thinking, "Well, the purpose of life is to, say, hit forty home runs and steal forty bases every year, you know, in the major leagues," and you draw the meaning of your existence from that but that's not really the meaning of your existence, that's just a subjective illusion. In fact, your existence on atheism is objectively meaningless. So that's the distinction that I was making. Again, it's between objective and mere subjective illusion. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I think it has it exactly the wrong way around. You see, as I was beginning to say earlier, we didn't have time in the question period, I wouldn't say that atheism was morally inferior, I wouldn't concede that for a second. I don't want to make a claim for its superiority either, but there may be a slight edge here: We don't believe anything that could be called wishful. In other words, we don't particularly welcome the idea of the annihilation either of ourselves, as individuals—the party will go one, we will have left and we're not coming back—or of the entropic heat death of the universe. We don't like the idea, but there's a good deal of evidence to suggest that is what's gonna happen. And there's very, very little evidence to suggest that I'll see you all again in some theme park, one nice and one nasty experience. There's absolutely no evidence for that at all. So I'm willing to accept on the evidence conclusions that may be unwelcome to me. I'm sorry if I sound as if I'm spelling that out, but I will. Now you want to know what makes my life meaningful? Generally speaking it's been struggling myself to be free and, if I can say it without immodesty—Mr. Hewitt kindly said it for me, too flattteringly beforehand—trying to help others to be free too. That's what given a lot of meaning to my life and does still. Solidarity with those who want to be as free as I am, partly by luck and partly by my own efforts and the efforts of others. Well one obstacle to liberty, and that's why I mentioned it and gave so many examples of it in history and in the present day, is the poisonous role played by fellow primates of mine who think they can tell me what to do in the name of God because God's told them that they have this power. So, that's one thing I'd like to be shot of right here in the here in now. And my suspicion is, if you really ask the religious whether they want power and what's the world they care about, the next one or this one, it'll be this one every time, because they too know perfectly well that this is the only life we've got. <br /><br />CRAIG: Yeah, I don't think that's true. It seems to me that, on the basis of the resurrection of Jesus that we have grounds for the hope of immortality. This is the foundation upon which the Christian hope is predicated. So, again, it gets back to whether or not one has good grounds for thinking that Jesus was who he claimed to be and that God raised him from the dead because if he did, then there is hope of immortality.<br /><br />HITCHENS: But then, I return your question to me—I return it to you in a different form: If there's going to be a resurrection, an ingathering, if in the end all the injustices will be canceled, all tears dried, all the other promises kept, then why do you care what happens in this brief veil of tears? Why do the churches want power in the here and now? Why do they want to legislate like things for abortion or sexuality or morality? Why bother? I mean, isn't it just as much the case, as Dostoyevsky says about atheism, that without God all things are possible, that with God all things are thinkable to?<br /><br />CRAIG: Not at all. As Dostoyevsky said, if there is no immortality, all things are permitted, he said, because it all ends up the same, it all comes out in the wash the same. But, if there is a God who exists, who loves human beings and has created them in his image and endowed them with intrinsic moral value and unalienable rights, then you have every reason to treasure other persons as ends in themselves. And the desire of pro-life persons to champion the lives of the unborn or the lives of the dying isn't a power grab, Mr. Hitchens, it's because they genuinely care about the lives of innocent human beings that they believe are being wantonly destroyed. So it's a very positive motivation.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Agreed, agreed, but there are perfectly good humanist motives for doing all those things and if you want to have a reason for caring about the survival and health and well being of others, the idea that you might depend on them for the only life you've got, and they on you for solidarity, is just as good an explanation for right action.<br /><br />CRAIG: Now don't you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: <i>Par contre</i>, if people think God is telling them what to do, or they have God on their side, what will they not do? That's what I meant by the reverse of the Dostoyevsky question. What crime will not be committed? What offense to justice and to reason will not be, is not regularly committed by people who are convinced that it is God's will that they do that? It's with God that all is possible.<br /><br />CRAIG: If they commit such atrocities it is because they only act inconsistently with their world view rather than in line with it.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Tell that to...<br /><br />CRAIG: Jesus would not have been a guard at Auschwitz or someone who would take away the human rights of another person. You need to ask what kinds of actions are sanctioned by a world view? And on atheism, as Dostoyevsky said, it seems everything is permitted. Humanism, without God as a basis for humanism, is just a form of speciesism (a bias in favor of your own species). I think Christianity affirms the real basis for humanism.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Auschwitz is the outcome of centuries in which the Christian Church announced—believed that the Jewish people had called for the blood of Jesus of Nazareth to be on their head for every generation. It's only in one verse in the Bible, I know, but it happens to be the verse the Church picked up on. I don't say Jesus would have been a guard there, that's not the point, the point is that this is not an abberation of religion, it is a scriptural injunction as is the one to kill the Amalekites... <br /><br />CRAIG: No, there's no scriptural...<br /><br />HITCHENS: As is the one to mutilate the genitals of children. <br /><br />CRAIG: It is—the issue <i>is</i> would Jesus have been a guard at Auschwitz because insofar as people who claim to be his followers were guards at Auschwitz, they were acting inconsistently and in defiance of the ethic of Jesus of Nazareth.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well you should tell that to the Vatican. I mean we know—Paul Johnson and his very friendly history of Christianity says that, up to 50 to 60% of the Waffen-SS were practicing, confessing Catholics in good standing. No one was ever threatened with discipline by the church with excommunication, for example, for taking part in the Final Solution. The only Nazi ever excommunicated by the church was Joseph Goebbels and, if you like, I'll tell you why... <br /><br />HEWITT: To the student.<br /><br />HITCHENS: His wife was a divorced Protestant.<br /><br />HEWITT: He was going to tell us anyway. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Excuse, excuse me, Christianity does have some standards. <br /><br />HEWITT: Next student.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: Hi, I'd just like to thank both you guys for being here and in the interest of fairness, I know I'm playing devil's advocate here, pun intended, but I think since almost all the questions are going to be directed towards Mr. Hitchens I think we should have on for Dr. Craig.<br /><br />HITCHENS: They're all for both of us.<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: For Dr. Craig, what do you think about Epicurus' argument that if God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, if He knows about kids in Africa, like, that are born with, like, AIDS, what do you think about Him suggesting—like Him not intervening and Him not changing that fact. That's a question that I've always struggled with so I'm just wondering, like, could you expand on that and I'd also like your input on it.<br /><br />CRAIG: Yeah. The Problem of Evil and Suffering has been greatly discussed by philosophers and I think there's been genuine progress made in this century on this problem. I think it's important to distinguish between the intellectual problem of suffering and the emotional problem of suffering because these are quite different from each other. In terms of the intellectual problem of suffering, I think that there you need to ask yourself is the atheist claiming, as Epicurus did, that the existence of God is logically incompatible with the evil and suffering in the world? If that's what the atheist is claiming then he's got to be presupposing some kind of hidden assumptions that would bring out that contradiction and make it explicit because these statements are not explicitly contradictory. The problem is no philosopher in the history of the world has ever been able to identify what those hidden assumptions would be that would bring out the contradiction and make it explicit. On the contrary, you can actually prove that these are logically compatible with each other by adding a third proposition, namely, that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil in the world. As long as that statement is even possibly true, it's proves that there's no logical incompatibility between God and the suffering in the world. So the atheist would have to show that it is logically impossible for God to have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil and suffering in the world and no atheist has ever been able to do that. So, that the logical version of this problem, I think, is widely recognized to have failed. Those atheists who still press the problem therefore press it as a probablistic argument. They try to say that, given the evil in the world, it's improbable that God exists, not impossible but improbable. Well, again, the difficulty there is that the atheist has to claim that if God did exist then it is improbable that he would permit the evil and suffering in the world. And how could the atheist possibly know that? How could the atheist know that God would not, if He existed, permit the evil and suffering in the world. Maybe He's got good reasons for it. Maybe, like in Christian theism, God's purpose for human history is to bring the maximum number of people freely into his kingdom to find salvation and eternal life and how do we know that that wouldn't require a world that is simply suffused with natural and moral suffering. It might be that only in a world like that the maximum number of people would freely come to know God and find salvation. So the atheist would have to show that there is a possible world that's feasible for God which God could've created that would have just as much salvation and eternal life and knowledge of God as the actual world but with less suffering. And how could the atheist prove such a thing? It's sheer speculation. So the problem is that, as an argument, the Problem of Evil makes probability judgements which are very, very ambitious and which we are simply not in a position to make with any kind of confidence. Now, I recognize that that philosophical response to the question doesn't deal with the emotional problem of evil and I think that for most people, this isn't really a philosophical problem, it's an emotional problem. They just don't like a god who would permit suffering and pain in the world so they turn their backs on him. What does Christianity have to say to this problem? Well, I think it has a lot to say. It tells us that God is not some sort of an impersonal ground of being or an indifferent tyrant who folds his arms and watches the world suffer. Rather, He is a god who enters into human history in the person of Jesus Christ and what does He do? He suffers. On the cross, Christ bore a suffering of which we can form no conception. Even though He was innocent, He bore the penalty of the sins of the whole world. None of us can comprehend what He suffered. And I think when we contemplate the cross of Christ and His love for us and what He was willing to undergo for us, it puts the problem of suffering in an entirely different perspective. It means, I think, that we can bear the suffering that God calls upon us to endure in this life with courage and with optimism for an eternal life of unending joy beyond the grave because of what Christ has done for us and He will give us, I think, the courage and the strength to get through the suffering that God calls upon us to bear in this life. So, whether it's an emotional issue or intellectual issue I think ultimately Christian theism can make sense out of the suffering and evil in the world. <br /><br />HEWITT: As the clock winds down I reserve the last question for myself, Mr. Hitchens.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Just on the devil's advocate point, when the Vatican asked me to testify against Mother Teresa, I discovered, which I did, I discovered that the office of devil's advocate has been abolished now. So, I come before you as the only person ever to have represented the devil <i>pro bono</i>.<br /><br />HEWITT: Last question.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah, now, I'm not one of—I was very intrigued by that reply and largely agree with it. If I was a believer, I would not feel God owed me an explanation. I'm not one of those atheists who thinks you can go around saying—complaining—if you make the assumption that there is a deity then all things are possible, you just have to be able to make that assumption. At our debate in Dallas the other day I mentioned the case of Fräulein Fritzl, the Austrian woman who was imprisoned in a dungeon by her father for quarter of a century and incestuously raped and tortured and kept in the dark with her children for 25 years and I thought—I asked people to imagine how she must have beseeched him, how she must have begged him, and how the children must have, and how they must have prayed, and how those prayers went unanswered, and those beggings and beseechments went unanswered for 25 years and Douglas Wilson's reply to me was, "God will cancel all that and all those tears will be dried," and I said well if you're capable of believing that then obviously what that woman went through and what her children went through was perfectly worth while and her father was all that time, without knowing it, and apparently not particularly wishing it, an instrument of the divine will and as I have said to you before this evening, had occasion to say, you're perfectly free to believe that if you wish. <br /><br />HEWITT: To conclude...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I do.<br /><br />HEWITT: You could, Mr. Hitchens—you've got 4,000 people here, tens of thousands more watching—you could do the same exchange at Wheaton, at Westmont, at Azusa Pacific, at Point Loma, at Notre Dame, at every great Christian university in the United States, why do you think so many people come out to see debates with accomplished people like Dr. Craig and you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's a time for this great question to come up again. I think there are two reasons for it: one is the emergence of a very aggressive theocratic challenge in various parts of the world. We are about to see a long-feared nightmare come true: The acquisition of apocalyptic weaponry by a Messianic regime in Tehran which is already enslaving and ruining a formerly great civilization. We see the forces of Al Qaeda and related jihadists ruining the societies of Iraq, of Afghanistan, Pakistan. We see Jewish settlers stealing other people's land in the name of God in the hope that this will bring on a Messianic combat and the return of the Messiah. And even in our own country we're not free from people who want to have stultifying nonsense taught to our children in school and in science class. So, there's that, it's in the news all the time. And then there's the existence of a very small group, of which I'm very proud to be a part, that says it's time to take a stand against theocratic bullying and is willing to go anywhere to debate these matters and put these great questions to the proof. So, and thank you for giving me the chance. <br /><br />CRAIG: I would answer the question somewhat differently. I think that what we're seeing is the fruit of modernity. In the Enlightenment, The Church and The Monarchy were thrown off in the name of free thought and unshackled human inquiry. And the thought was that once mankind was freed from the shackles and bondage of religion that this would produce a sort of humanistic utopia. And instead I think what we've come to see is the fruit of the naturalistic world view is that mankind is reduced to meaninglessness, valuelessness, and purposelessness and that therefore the question of God's existence has become all the more poignant in our age because we're beginning to question, I think, the fruit of modernity and questioning scientific naturalism. I'm privileged to be part of a revolution in Christian philosophy that has been going on over the last half century that has literally transformed the face of Anglo-American philosophy. As the scientific, naturalistic, atheistic world view has been challenged, in the name of reason and philosophy, and the theistic world view reasserted and I believe that we're seeing a tremendous groundswell of interest among laypeople as this revolution is beginning to filter down to the man in the street. So I would see us as beginning to question the assumptions of modernity and the bitter fruits of modernity that have been so evident in the twentieth century and I'm hoping that this will lead to a tremendous renaissance in Christian thinking and Christian faith. <br /><br />HEWITT: To wrap up then, five quick observations and some instructions. Number one: No good society prohibits debates such as this one. Number two: Only confident faith welcomes them. Only extraordinary universities stage them and only very accomplished scholars and intellectuals can make them interesting and entertaining. Please join me in welcoming and thanking our panelists. Both men—they did agree on one thing, which is that N. T. Wright is a very impressive man, I think Christopher Hitchens said, and therefore to the viewing audience who might not know who N. T. Wright I would recommend, on Mr. Hitchens' strong recommendation, that you get and read his books. I also want to tell you that I'm going to ask you to stay in your seats as our panelists exist stage right. There's a book signing and I want to ask you if you have book to stand in line if you don't, please don't and to recognize Mr. Hitchens has a five o'clock flight in the morning. So, get your book signed, he loves to do that, but please don't ask him about his third cousin that you once met in Melbourne. Just let them get to talking about the book so gentlemen I'm going to let you enter stage left here and I'll hold them for a second. Thank you very much. Stay there so they can get around back. Finally, I want to thank Dr. Craig Hazen, Torrey Honors Institute, and everyone at Biola for coming out this evening. Have a safe, productive trip home. Good night. <br /><br /><hr width=50%><br /><li>Order the DVD of this debate <a href="http://www.biola.edu/academics/sas/apologetics/debate/orderthedvd/">here</a>HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com75tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-48466204498211642312010-07-20T23:35:00.016-04:002010-11-25T14:48:31.502-05:00Hitchens vs. Boteach, 92nd Y<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://www.shmuley.com/site/about/>Rabbi Schmuley Boteach</a>: Does God exist?<br /><li>January 30, 2008, <a href=http://www.92y.org/>92nd St. Y</a>.<br /><br />[Moderator <a href=http://www.jtsa.edu/x1373.xml?ID_NUM=100180>Dr. Neil Gillman</a> outlines the rules of the debate and introduces Hitchens and Boteach]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQv3uqnccVFIZntqA_H7Yek5xYDuxwZ2Ej9oifzlNY_3erG_nFPwHfi-9-i87HsBUejujanrljI-xaQUKR-uTlUo7ymxpowcYiBuR_ElvdzvJYVW3Xl557YdQhbrYc3yySX_o5xTvjiLKW/s1600/hitchenssmokingcoat.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQv3uqnccVFIZntqA_H7Yek5xYDuxwZ2Ej9oifzlNY_3erG_nFPwHfi-9-i87HsBUejujanrljI-xaQUKR-uTlUo7ymxpowcYiBuR_ElvdzvJYVW3Xl557YdQhbrYc3yySX_o5xTvjiLKW/s320/hitchenssmokingcoat.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490591299217419266" /></a>HITCHENS: Shalom. Thank you very much for coming ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Rabbi, for a very generous introduction. I don't know how I'm going to fill up fifteen minutes. After all, the burden of proof is not with me. But I can probably make a—[audience applause]—that <i>is</i> going to take some time, making the case. But I think I can probably make a fist of it. I prefer to argue, and I do in my book, that the belief in a supreme being or creator is actually a pernicious belief. It does great moral and intellectual damage to our poorly evolved primate species and I'm hoping that we will, in the course of this evening, get to the point about the ill effect of religion but I'm not going to duck the obligation imposed upon me by the motion before us which is to give the reasons why we're so lucky as to be furnished with so little evidence for such a horrible proposition. And falsity, after all, is a subdivision of perniciousness. Religion, however, does stand—having started in that pejorative manner—does, in a way, stand to our credit. We are, after all, imperfectly evolved primate mammals though we are, and aware of our kinship with other such creatures, we do have the gift of pattern seeking in our minds and we will pursue this gift often at our own expense, but at a great hazard and often with great ingenuity. That has a plus side and a minus side. It often means—it very often means, you will have observed it in your own lives and those of others—that we prefer junk explanation to no explanaition at all, or a conspiracy theory to no theory and religion takes its place in our evolution in this precise manner. It's the first and worst explanation we came up with. It's the best we could do when we didn't know we lived on a cooling planet with big fissures in its crust; when we didn't know there were microorganisms that had power over us, we didn't have dominion over them, to the contrary; when we didn't know we lived on a spherical planet; we didn't know we revolved around other spherical bodies. Everything was terrifying, new, mysterious, and often lethal. It was our first attempt at philosophy in that way; first attempt at cosmology; first attempt at geography, biology, all the rest of it; a hopeless attempt belonging to the bawling, fearful, ignorant childhood of our species but very necessary, and it possesses still the advantage of having come first. The terrible advantage over the mind and ever learning that it possesses is its originality and the history of human emancipation is the struggle to get away from this terrifying, foolish, ignorant first try. And I can see we have still some distance to travel but we have made a start. Now, you can argue it because it's still here. We know a little bit, of course. We don't now think that the Aztecs were really on to something. We don't think that all faith-based is better than none. We don't think you need to wrench a living heart out of a chest cavity to make the sun come up every day. We've been through the list of gods, it's in my edited collection, <i>The Portable Atheist</i>, Mencken actually drew up a list of very nearly 10,000 gods who used to be worshipped and aren't any more. As my friend Richard Dawkins says, everyone's an atheist. Nobody believes in the sun god Ra any more; nobody believes in Quetzalcoatl any more; nobody believes in Juno and Venus any more. You're all atheists as far as that's concerned and you look with pity on those who support, or ever did, such cults. All we say is, "Make it consistent. Just go one god more and you're nearly there." Peter Devries puts it—Peter Devries, poor guy, brilliant novelist and great essayist, poor guy was brought up Dutch Reformed in Illinois, says in his wonderful discussion of religion, <i>Slouching Towards Kalamazoo</i> it's called, I recommend it: People used to be polytheistic (they believed in many, many, many gods). Then, for some reason, they decided to narrow it down to one. They're getting nearer to the true figure all the time. This is the struggle I want to invite you to join, ladies and gentlemen. The easiest way I think to clear your mind of such remaining illusions as you may possess or labor under, is the following: The great words of Laplace, the first person to develop what's called the [?], a model of how the cosmos and the universe would look as if it was viewed for the first time from the outside. The circulation of the heavenly bodies and the planets and he showed it to the Emperor Napoleon who wanted to know how this great genius, the only rival to Newton in his time, Laplace, had managed this, and he demonstrated to the Emperor how it worked and the Emperor said, "But there's no God in this machine," and Laplace said, "Well, it works very well, your Highness, without that assumption." Not just science but our own other reflections have told us there is nothing remaining to be explained that could be only be explained by the existence of a supreme being, creator, or first cause. The universe, and our lives too, all operate exactly as you would expect them to if there was no such thing. Why does the delusion persist? Well we might get to that. I think it has a lot to do with wish thinking and not wishing only for desirable things either, such as the survival of death, but also wishing for things that are less desirable such as the triumph of ourselves over others with God on our side, having made a special covenant with, say, just one tribe in Bronze Age Palestine, the most reactionary idea probably ever invented by the religious. But you'll see analogies of it everywhere God is discussed. Or the need for a terrifying, supreme dictator. Nietzsche is said to have said that God is dead; Freud is said to have said God is dad. Others clearly believe that we would be better off, in fact we wouldn't have any ideas of our own, if he couldn't submit to a celestial totalitarianism, a final, unaswerable authority in the heavens. This is wish thinking, but of a very unpleasant kind. It shows, again, how poorly we have evolved ourselves from the fearful primate and mammalian speices that first crawled out of the mire. Now, there are global and cosmic versions of this—I have time I think, a few minutes remaining to deal with them both. Start with the cosmic, why not? There are, I think, it's four thousand billion observable galaxies now? Anyone who claims to know a lot about all of these has sources of information denied to me but we know a little bit about them and a lot more than we used to do. And Edwin Hubble noticed, rather famously, a few decades ago, that they're all moving away from each other rather rapidly (that's what's called the Red Light problem, or observation). Very rapidly indeed, in fact. Now, this has very important implications because it was thought until nine years ago that, because of gravitational factors, that rate of expansion would surely by now be slowing, they'd still be expanding, moving away from each other fast, but less fast all the time. No, the rate is going up, the speed is increasing. Lawrence Krauss has a wonderful piece in the upcoming <i>Scientific American</i> on this absolutely crucial point. It means that within measurable time there will be no signs left in the observable universe that the Big Bang ever occured at all. Everything will have disappeared out of sight, there'll be no markers, nothing to take to take observations from. I mention this because it's often said that, "How can something come out of nothing?" It's the clever, clever question every religious deamgogue and businessman always begins by asking you. Well, we known we've got a bit of something in this universe and we know nothingness is coming. So, some design, huh? Nothingness is not just innate, programmed, it's the next big thing, and we at least had some somethingness. As if, to make assurance doubly sure, the Andromeda galaxy is headed directly—directly in a collision course with our own. Measurably, it's already filling the sky can be seen with the naked eye. In five billion, which is to say fucking soon, ladies and gentlemen, it's on us and if it hasn't happened before then, our sun goes into a red giant, then a red dwarf, we become a crisp. That'll be nothingness programmed instead of somethingness. Some design, huh? Well, let's move then while you ponder that to the tiny suburb in which we actually do know we live, this little corner, just our solar system. Every other rock in our solar system is completely inhospitable to life, either too hot or too cold, as is most of our planet, which as we know—have good cause to know is on a knife edge of climatic survival as we speak. We could become extinct at any moment. In fact, when we still lived on the Savanna of Africa, the environment to which we were adpated and have fled but where we still betray the scars of our lowly origin by the coat of fur we grow in the womb and then shed, by the appendix, by our terrible dentition, and by many other things. Our adrenal glands are too big, our prefrontal lobes are too small; we're not the finest primates that could've evolved. It's estimated by the people who've done the DNA work on this that we were down as a species to less than a few thousand because of climatic events and other nightmares and catastrophes before the decision was made to abandon the Savanna and seek coooler territory. We could very easily have joined the 99.9% of every other speices that has ever been in existence on this tiny planet and become extinct. <i>That</i> close. What are we flattering ourselves about? What's so great about our anthropic principle that we should attribute this to design or designer? Some design, huh? And some designer too. Who but a serf wants it to be true? Who but someone who doesn't like to do their own thinking wants or needs this to be true in the face of all, not just some, but all of the available evidence before us. I've put it like this it's the only hypothesis of my own that I've ever come up with. It's a version of, on this point anyway, it's a version of Joseph Schumpeter's hypoethsis about creative destruction as the energy of capitalism: In order to believe in—not a deistic god, in other words a creator, a first cause, an imponderable starter, which of course only leads you to an infinite regression because how could there be a starter who wasn't himself started or herself begun? Who created the god who made the creator who invented the inventor who designed the designer? Any fool can see the fallacy appearing right over the shoulder of this hypothesis, but suppose it's not just a theistic question—excuse me a deistic question—but a theistic one? A god who answers prayers; a god who intervenes; a god who didn't just start this but cares how it winds up; who cares what you do to your private parts or to those of your children and insists on their being mutilated; who knows what you should eat and what day of the week; who knows with which gender you may or may not recreate yourself or be recreational with, and so forth. The deist has all their work still ahead of them to prove that there is such a being. Here's what you'd have to believe to be a theist (I've already shown the absurdity of deism, I hope). To be a theist you'd have to believe this: How long do you think, ladies and gentlemen—I have three minutes, I shan't—I won't need them all—how long do you think the human species as a distinct <i>Homo sapiens</i> has been on the planet? Any one want to shout a guess? Ok, well Richard Dawkins thinks 250,000 years (a quarter of a million). That's considered to be on the high end. Francis Collins, who's become a friend of mine, a very devout Christian, who, as you will know, sequenced the human genome project and did the final report on the full-out discovery of that unravelment which showed us our kinship with other creatures and indeed with other non creatures, other forms of vegetation and junk that's in our—that undoubtedly proves us to be part of the creational soup, he thinks minimum 100,000. He's not quite sure if it's 250,000. Alright, I only need 100,000. 100,000 years since we dared to separate from, became separate from the Cro-magnons and the Neanderthals as our own species, <i>Homo sapiens</i>. Here's what you'd have to believe to be a theist: For 100,000 years humanity is born, perhaps 25% of it dies in childbirth or very shortly afterwards. Life expectancy, I don't know, 25 for a very long time, infant mortality extraordinary, but after-childbirth deaths I mean, killed by microorganisms we didn't know existed, by earthquakes that we thought were portense, by storms that we didn't know came from our climate system, by other events that arise from our being born onto a cooling planet with deep cracks in its crust—faults in its crust. Then man-made things: turf wars, fights over women, fights over territory, over food, so on. Very, very slow, gradual, exponential upward progress we might like to think. Pretty slow, but at least we can claim out of our own self respect, man-made. And for the first 96,000 years of this experience heaven watches with folded arms, us go through this, with indifference, without pity and then around 4,000 years ago decides, "Gee, it's time to intervene. And the best way of doing that would probably be in Bronze Age Middle East, making appearances to stupified, illiterate peasants, which could later be passed on. The news would get to China after about a thousand years after that." That's what you have to believe. Aren't you glad you can't be made to believe that? Aren't you glad there's no theocracy any more within range of you that can make you believe that? Do you know what it's like living in countries where you can be made to believe it? Do you know what the penalties are for not believing it? They're just exactly congruent with the stupidity of the belief itself. We would be better off, ladies and gentlemen, if we grew out of it. We'd be would better of we'd grown out of it a long time ago. I've only had fifteen minutes to show its falsity. The rest of the evening, I hope, can be devoted to its wickedness, but the falsity is part of the wickedness too and thanks for hearing me out. Thank you. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEyqOFTUN0e98n8mWPRkj85-s5n4v5jpksOelsPUejFAjkk5OWO9xw8CL1AbS84ZIS4m49jRg7NepUIRZ4pMULGQeGpdi_KG9xRRrAGImUz1HkER_PMiF9xv13d9Z8K4zDPadtBWFDjpbm/s1600/boteachjackson.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEyqOFTUN0e98n8mWPRkj85-s5n4v5jpksOelsPUejFAjkk5OWO9xw8CL1AbS84ZIS4m49jRg7NepUIRZ4pMULGQeGpdi_KG9xRRrAGImUz1HkER_PMiF9xv13d9Z8K4zDPadtBWFDjpbm/s320/boteachjackson.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490591767351411970" /></a><br />BOTEACH: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. After hearing that speech, I am so depressed. God almighty, if the Andromeda galaxy doesn't finish me off and Christopher Hitchens doesn't, how many other threats will? Christopher Hitchens' book <i>god is Not Great</i> made a lot of money for him even though atheism is a non-profit organization. (Hope someone caught that.) And I am a fan of Christopher Hitchens' work. This is our second debate. But my friends, I am profoundly disappointed with this work. It is his weakest book yet. In it he is guilty of the same colossal close-mindedness of which he accuses religion. The book is filled with logical inconsistencies, factual inaccuracies, and blatant untruths. In a nutshell, Christopher Hitchens is a secular, fundamentalist fanatic. He falls prey to mankind's most base instinct, namely, hatred. He <i>hates</i> religion. He even hates God, which is difficult since He doesn't exist. And most importantly, he hates hope. Like Richard Dawkins, who I have debated at Oxford University on several occasions, Hitchens is a scientific reductionist, reducing humans to naught but vapid animals, semi-literate primates, half-thinking apes. His book lacks joy, it lacks humor. It is a profoundly depressing tome about the decrepit nature of human existence. The book that I've launched tonight, <i>The Broken American Male</i>—available at fine bookstores everywhere—is the direct result of this shattered vision. Human beings are bereft of any real cosmic purpose. All they can do in life is revert to hunter-gatherers, gathering money during the day so they can hunt women at night. In so doing, they fulfill their genetic role of being naught but sperm donors. Jack Nicholson expressed it best in that great bible of American literature, <i>People</i> magazine of December 21, 2007, he said, "When it comes to love we men have more in common with a male dog than we do with a woman. Ah, this may be male chauvinism, but it's science baby." Hence, my friends, Christopher Hitchens does not believe in any kind of heroes or human greatness. Of Martin Luther King in his book he writes, "He was a mammal like the rest of us, probably plagiarized his doctoral dissertation, had a notorious fondness for booze and for women a good deal younger than his wife." Mahatma Ghandi is someone who would have caused millions of Indians to starve and had we listened to him we'd be worshipping cows. The Dalai Lama makes the claim that he's a hereditary king and dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted. Of course, Mother Teresa bears the greatest brunt of his fury. He says of Mother Teresa, "She was a friend of poverty, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud." But tell us what you really think, Christopher. My friends, religion has a vastly different vision and a vastly different take. Yes, a man is a creature like any other, but he is born with the spiritual capacity to transcend instinct and to choose goodness; to rise above his animal nature and become godly. What to Hitchens is a failure that humans occasionally succumb to their nature is to us glory. When they choose inspiration over indulgence, they triumph over instinct. Hitchens is right: Human beings, in terms of DNA are 98% exactly like primates, but in that 2%—in that 2% lies human consciousness and therefore human conscience; human transcendence and therefore human choice; human soulfulness and therefore the indomitable human spirit. A watermelon is also 98% water just like a jellyfish is, but they are hardly alike. I'm not eating any jellyfish any time soon. And I cannot accept that we are nothing but thinking primates. To give you an idea of the degree of blindness that you're hearing tonight, I want to just choose a few examples of this loathing of religion that has made a great scholar become positively ignorant. He said that the Torah lacks compassion, on page 99, "The pitiless teachings of Moses, who never mentions human solidarity and compassion at all." Even school children know Leviticus 19:18 with the greatest statement of human solidarity in the history of the world: "You must love your fellow man as yourself." He attacked circumcision a few moments ago. In his book he calls it "religious barbarism." "It is a mutilation of a powerless infant with the aim of ruining his future sex life." As an authority on the subject—no not because I have eight children but I wrote <i>Kosher Sex</i>—what a shame that Christopher Hitchens doesn't read <i>The New York Times</i>, he would've discovered, I'm sure you remember, it was a front-page story. December 14th, 2006: "Circumcision appears to reduce a man's risk of contracting AIDS by 50%." In fact, the two largest AIDS charities on the earth "are considering paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries." So these great charities are going to inflict this barbarism in order to save peoples' lives. But this is the really fun part: Because he sees religion as primitive he says that the most annoying and the most unfortunate of all Jewish holiday is Hanukkah. He calls it "an absolutely tragic day in human history." Now this is funny, parenthetically he says—I love this—("The Jews borrowed shamelessly from Christians in the pathetic hope that celebration that coincides with Christmas.)" Surely he knows that the Macavys lived 300 years before the birth of Jesus but we'll ignore that for a moment. What I love what he says about Hanukkah is, "It's a primitive holidays where Jews reject science and Hellenism for their primitive beliefs." Listen to this: "The Jews felt that the pull exerted by Athens, they chose the superstition mandated by the Torah." Let's see what enlightenment the Jews fought against during Hanukkah. The great Oxford historian, who's a friend of mine, Martin Goodman, says that Antiochus IV, the villain of Hanukkah, was "called a barbarian and a madmen by his own people." If you look up in Wikipedia—just Google it: Antiochus IV put Jerusalem's inhabitants to death in the most cruel way: He insisted on slaughtering a pig in the temple and when Jews refused to eat it "he cut off their hands and feet, burned them on the altar, scalped them," and this is the Greek enlightenment that the Jews should not have resisted. Christopher, you supported the invasion of Iraq because you said that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who didn't deserve to slaughter his people. But you decrey the Jews for standing up against their own brutal oppressors. But my friends, it's really the values of those Greco-Romans the Jews rejected. These great, enlightened values that Christopher Hitchens decries us religious Neanderthals for rejecting, those great values like the people of Sparta, the Greeks, who used to inspect newborn infants and if they were found to be weakly they would cast them from Mount Taygetus. The Romans, of course, would inspect grown adults and if they were mentally infirm they would be thrown from the Tarpeian Rock. Don't think I'm being unfair in citing ancient Hellenisitc values against religious ones. No less an authority than Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who mapped the DNA molecule, suggested that birth in our time come two days after parturition so that a baby could be examined for defects and if found to be sufficiently deleterious could be removed with impunities since it had not yet been born. He also suggested that we declared death at the age of 80 when people are no longer useful. Professor Bentley Glass said, "Good and evil should have an scientific evolutionary connotation. They should be divorced from their traditional connotation and they should be—they should connote what is good and bad of the species," so a child with Taysaks would be eliminated. In fact, hitchens himself in something that sounds quite frightening (page 221 of his book): "A very large number of pregnancies are aborted," he's speaking about miscarriages, "because of malformation. Sad though this is, it is probably less miserable an outcome than the vast number of deformed or idiot children who would otherwise have been born or whose brief lives would have been a torment to themselves and others." I therefore challenge my august colleague to explain why then should we not euthanize Down Syndrome children? They are a burden to their parents. They can contribute nothing to this society. They are the idiot children of whom even our own Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said famously, "Three generations of idiots are enough," when so many states here in America used to sterilize the mentally handicapped. What was wrong with that? In fact, let me give you two quotations and I would like you to tell me who you think they are from. Number one: "In nature there is no pity for the lesser creatures when they are destroyed so that the fittest may survive. Going against nature brings ruin to man. It is only Jewish impudence to demand we overcome nature." Listen to this very similar quote: "The more civilized so called Caucasian races, the white people, have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. The white people decimated the dark people. Looking at the world in no very distant dates what an endless number of the lower races will have been limited by the higher civilized races." The first quotation was from a politician, his name was Adolf Hitler. The second quotation was from a scientist, his name was Charles Darwin. Evolutionary theory, as I intend to demonstrate in the second part of this debate, is based on the survival of the fittest. It is not good for the species or for the human race to sustain people who are weaker. Charity is a religious concept, pure and simple. That's why you heard such a depressing presentation; there is no hope, life has no amber, there is nothing that glows. In fact, Sir Arthur Keith, the greatest British evolutionist of the World War II period said, "To see evolutionary measures being applied vigorously, one must turn to Germany of 1942. We see Hitler devoutly convinced that evolution produces the only real basis for a national policy. The means he adopted was organized slaughter to secure the German race." They needed more space, they needed more food. You kill the weaker ones to protect the stronger ones. "The German führer, as I have consistently maintained," wrote Sir Arthur Keith, "is an evolutionist and seeks to make the practice of Germany conform to evolution." And here you have why Christopher Hitchens attacks the Ten Commandments. You know this is amazing because he says about the Ten Commandments, listen to this, "However little one thinks of the Jewish tradition, it is surely insulting to the people of Moses to imagine they had come this far under the impression that murder, adultery, theft, and perjury were permissible." But he misses the entire point. God didn't bring the Jews to the foot of Mount Sinai to tell them not to kill. God brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai so that they would understand that "Do not murder" is God's law, not now, not ever. There is no excuse, this is why genocide is perpetrated by nations who have man-made laws. There were laws against murder in Ottoman Turkey; there were laws against murder in Nazi Germany; there were laws against murder in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge. But they were human laws and subject to human tampering. That's why the Ten Commandments have preserved the morality of a nation who, even when they were turned into soap and lampshades during the Holocaust, never blew up a German school bus because we live by that edict "Do not murder." My friends, open your eyes and see what I see. As Rabbi Akiva famously said, "Just as the garment testifies to the weaver, the door to the carpenter, the house to the builder, so to the entire world testifies to God's—to God the creator." In this book, which I published as a result of my debates with Richard Dawkins at Oxford—this is thirteen years old—I have about another minute—and surely science has found far greater wonders since then. If the earth were closer or further from the sun by just a little bit the heat or cold it generated would make life impossible. If the earth were not tilted on its axis 23 degrees, huge mountains of ice would pile up from the water vapor of the oceans. The earth revolves at the speed of 1000 miles per hour. If it were to revolve at just 100 miles per hour, night and day would increase ten times in duration; plants would be scorched in the day, seedlings would be frozen at night. If the moon were a bit closer to the earth, the tide would flood all lands, including the high mountains. If the oceans were deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would be absorbed and no plants could exist. If the atmophere were thinner, millions of meteors, which are burned up in the air, would fall to the earth and cause limitless devastation. While most substances contract when they freeze, water miraculously expands by eleventh of its volume. This makes ice float on the top and it allows the fish to survive. Until today the cause of this expansion perplexes scientists. Two weeks ago <i>The New York Times Magazine</i> wrote, January 13th, 2008, "The moral sense is an innate part of being human. We are born with innate morality, it is not acquired. The list of universals, collected by anthropologist Donald Brown includes moral concepts, including a distinguishing between right and wrong, empathy, fairness, admiration, generosity, shame." These are all character traits which are antithetical to evolution which are about ensuring that your genes survive. Finally my friends, listen to this: That little embryo, that little baby that'll have to grow up in a world of hope, hearing so much about how we're the only forlorn rock without any life surrounding us. It's born with 10,000 taste buds in its mouth. Some twelve trillion nerve endings will form in the baby's nose to help it detect fragrances of odors in the air. More than 100,000 nerve cells will be devoted to react to a Beethoven symphony. The piano has 240 strings but a baby's ear will have 240,000 hearing units. Those 10,000 spokes—by the way the million nerve endings of the optical nerves of the eye, which connect with the brain and somehow grows from two different directions and meets one million nerve endings, is so vast that, if were it mapped, the entire world's telephone cable system would be only a small fraction of it—a small fraction. It has no designer at all, according to Christopher Hitchens. Since I have to end, let me just tell you of course science says this phenomenal complexity came about through genetic mutation and natural selection. When I come back we'll explore whether that is the case or whether such vast complexity—such vast complexity could never have come about spontaneously and whether those who believe it did are guilty of cognitive dissonance, afraid of a truth so great that they're forced to deny it. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, as some of you already know, never buy crackling from a mohel. The Rabbi's in the uplift business. "C'est son metier," as was once said. He thinks it's a point against me that some of the conclusions I draw are not so just to make one happy. I'm unused to arguing in this style. I will simply point out that that's what I'm expected to do in a debate that's organized along these lines against someone who thinks that evolution by means of natural selection, which is a hypothesis, theory, which, if tested, always works; which allows us to sequence the DNA of the influenza virus, so that next time it comes, unlike 1919, it won't kill us all; because we know of its kinship with ourselves; because we know we ourselves evolved from sightless bacteria; because we have the computer models by which the eye was evolved in forty different ways at least among different species so there's nothing left to argue with except with people—or about—except with people like Rabbi Boteach and Governer Huckabee of [inaudible] who, head as he is of a, what I would describe as a non-philo-semitic Christian organization, believes that Adam and Eve were real and indeed quite recent people. In my experience there's nothing to be done with points like this except to underline them. Governer Huckabee in fact doesn't even know what he doesn't believe. When putting up his chubby hand to say he was among those in the room who didn't believe in the theory of evolution he said, "No, I don't believe that I'm descended from a monkey." Well, as you know, the theory of evolution does not demand that you believe anything remotely like that. It points to a common ancestry between other primates and ourselves. If we were descended from monkeys we'd probably look quite a lot like Governer Huckabee. I just have to spend a second on the taunt about being a fundamentalist. To be a fundamentalist is to insist that something can be advanced on faith alone and without evidence. I will submit myself to your fairmindedness, ladies and gentlemen, and ask if anything I said to you or am saying now requires that of you, that you take and act of faith or leap of faith as if it were an ethical thing to do, or that you take one at all for anything I say. Of course I don't. There's nothing in common between me and any other faith-based person of any kind. It's one of the last-ditch arguments that our foes, the foes of science and science education and the theory of evolution by natural selection as the explanation for our presence here, have had to come up with in their desperation. Hatred, yes, I plead guilty to that. One of the many things I don't like about Christianity is that it tells me to love my enemies. I don't do that and I don't want you doing it for me either. Go love your own enemies, don't be loving mine. I'll get on with the business of destroying, isolating, combatting the enemies of civilization. I don't need any—[audience applause]—and I don't need any sickly advice from Nazareth from the man who, after all the Old Testament horrors that we know about, none of them included the punishment of hell, there's no hell in the Old Testament. It's to the credit of the Jewish people, actually. When God and Moses are done with injoining genocide on you which, by the way, they do, according to those books. (I don't know where—which books the Rabbi's been reading.) But he might want to tell you what happened to the Amalekites. Where are the Midianites? What happened to all these people? We know what we were told to do to them. So glad to think that those books are fictional because if they were true we would all be spattered with the blood of others to please a hideous authority. But no punishment: Once he's done with you, once the earth closed over you, that's it, there's no torture of the dead. Not until gentle Jesus, meek and mild, do you get that. My same point about the overrated figures of Dr. King and Mahatma Ghandi. It's a very bad thing, it seems to me, that especially among—in white, liberal society, the plaster saint of Martin Luther King has become iconographic. It's led to two bad consequences that I can think of. One: The great black secularists and socialists and trade union leaders, some of whom spoke at this very podium (Bayard Rustin, A Philip Randolph, and others, the people who actually organized the March on Washington, with their white friends, secular friends like Victor Reuther of the United Automobile Workers, the people who actually put this great movement of liberation onto the streets) are airbrushed from history. White people are given deliberately the impression, "Well black folks sure like their preachers and their pulpitmen." And, as a result, anyone who can claim to be a preacher, a fraud, a demogogue, a crook, like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, is automatically awarded the right to represent black America. This is not progress. Very well? Hope you understand me. That's not—it's not Dr. King's fault, that's not Dr. King's fault. But—as I say in my book—but it is that fault of those who make a cult out of him and who dare to say that without religious permission we wouldn't know how to demand equal rights for our African American brothers and sisters. Well excuse me, we don't need religious permission for that and the case for it had been made by the secular left long before Dr. King started preaching and that's precisely why he was always attacked in his lifetime, for having Communist and Socialist and Marxist friends, which he did, who had done most of the spadework. So, let's again be very clear what we're talking about. I'm sorry I do not believe the Dalai Lama's claim either to be hereditary king or hereditary God and I think anyone who does believe it is a fool. And there hasn't been even the pretense of an election in the Tibetan exile community that he's now been leading for almost half a century in Dharamsala in India. It is still run as an absolute despotism. People who like that sort of thing like that sort of thing. More to the purpose—and you'll let me know Mr. Chairman when I'm coming to the—I have rather a crazy salad of slanders to respond to and I don't want to miss any of them out. If you want to saw off the end of your penis, you're welcome. You're not to do it to a child who hasn't asked for it. Same with the genitals of a little girl. If she thinks later on she'd be better off without them, let her take, or have taken to her, a sharp instrument. If it proves it's good for AIDS, which it might well be, I've heard it's been said it's good for cervical cancer, let it be decided by the grown-up. It is not right, it is not moral, it is in fact wicked to submit children to mutilation of their genitalia, or to anyone, without their consent. Do you understand that this elementary point only needs to be made because of wickedness enjoined by religion? The Rabbi here's a fairly humane guy, he wouldn't, if he didn't think God was involved, ever consider mutilating the genitals of a child. But because it's a covenant with God <i>anything</i> can be done. Now don't you see, you laugh, but you should be crying. I said crying! Ok, suit yourself. Now, I'm not here to defend Zeus or Juno or Aphrodite, I say—I listed them in the list of barbaric and forgotten gods. The Jews who celebrate Hanukkah which, by the way I think you will have to agree, only became promoted in the United States among Jews—it's a relatively minor holiday—because of its nearness to Christmas day. The Jews who particularly care about their holiday are not arguing against the worship of Zeus. They're arguing against, as the Rabbi perfectly well knows, the idea of the Apicurus (what in orthodox Judaism is known as the heretic, the unbeliever). The Apicurus: the follower of Epicurus. Epicurus and Lucretius were the secular Hellenists, the ones who discovered that the world was made of atoms and if the gods, if they do exist, do not concern themselves with human affairs because, among other things, they avoid unnecessary pain. Now there's a discovery that's worth having. And the Jews want you to turn away—the Orthodox Jews want you to turn away from the unbelievable scholarship and originality of Humanism, of Epicurus and Lucretius, to look at a candle, "Hey look, goggle at this, it burned an extra day or two," or is it eight? This is what retards human intelligence and human civilization. Now of course you may—I'll close on this because I don't want to trespass on your time or the Rabbi's—of course you can be an atheist and you can be a genocist; you can be a fascist; you can be a Stalinist; you can be a nihilist; you can be a sadist. Atheism—unbelief, the repudiation of the supernatural, is not a necessary—excuse me—is not a sufficient condition for wisdom or for enlightenment. But it is, and I say it joylessly, humorlessly, gloomily, pessimistically, it is a necessary one. Thanks.<br /><br />BOTEACH: My objection to the current religious-secular debate is that for so many centuries, Christopher Hitchens is right, religion had a closed mind. Who has the closed mind now? Who uses character assasination to portray anyone who has certain beliefs, that they try to root in logic, as closeminded, unscholarly? The gist of my argument is that Christopher Hitchens, who is one of America's most talented writers, has become so fanatical in his hatred of religion that he just invents things to decry it. For example, he can make fun of the fact that I don't believe in evolution, although I never even said that. I believe in evolutionary development, as the Torah itself says, six days of creation: The mineral was followed by the vegetable then the animal then the intellectual. The question is whether this is guided. The question is whether mathematical possibilities allows for this. But before I get to that, here's an example of just pure invention in order to make religion, Jews, the state of Israel, look bad. Listen to this, he's writing about the greatest scientists of the twentieth century saying don't be impressed that Einstein believed in God because he didn't believe in a god that we believe in, he was a deist and "offered the first presidency of the state of Israel. Einstein declined because of his many qualms about the way that Zionism was tending." That is pure, utter fabrication. First of all, Einstein was offered the second presidency (the first was Chaim Weizmann), he was offered it in 1952. He died three years later. <i>The Princeton Review</i> says he turned it down "because he had neither the desire nor the energy to run a country," he was a scientist. <i>The New York Sun</i>, in an essay about the subject, "He politely and sensibly declined on the grounds that it would interefere with his scientific work." He loved Israel, he was one of the great Zionists of the twentieth century. Anything to portray religion in a negative light. As far as the great complexity...<br /><br />HITCHENS: [inaudible objection]<br /><br />BOTEACH: [To Hitchens] Well, you continually invent in your book—I'll get to that in a moment. You'll have to just be patient as I dissect it. My friends, most people today accept evolutionary principles without being knowledgeable about them. I actually studied them and debated some fo the world's greatest evolutionary biologists: Richard Dawkins, four debates; John Maynard Smith, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Sussex, the world's greatest—he was the greatest living evolutionist at the time. For evolution to work you need two things: You need genetic mutation and you need natural selection. Now genetic mutation means that when DNA replicates it introduces, through a mistake in copying itself, a new feature that is not existent in the parental type. So for that to happen you need mutation to do two things. Number one: They have to be very common because you have great complexity in the world. Number two: They have to be beneficial. Let's see what the world's greatest scientists say about mutation, because remember, Darwin knew nothing about mutation. Darwin believed in adaptation and he based it on the Lamarckian theory of acquired characteristics that preceded him. Here is what H. J. Muller, the world's foremost expert on mutation, Nobel Prize winner, says, "Mutations are of random nature. Accordingly, the vast majority, certainly well over 99%, are harmful." Nobel Prize winner Ernst Mayr—these are all evolutionists, most of them are atheists—"It is a considerable strain of one's credulity to assume that finely balanced systems, such as certain sense organs, could be improved by random mutation." Will the eye get better if it makes a mistake in it replication? In fact, the author of <i>The Mystery of Heredity</i> concludes, listen to this: "The vast majority of mutants in any organism are so detrimental as to believe that it is impossible for them to lead to complexity." These are people who all believe in evolution. Now Julian Huxley, from the most important of all evolutionary families wrote the following: "We should clearly have to breed," to get a horse, he says, "a million strains (a thousand squared) to get two favorable mutations. Up to a thousand to a millionth power to produce a horse," now listen to this, "a thousand to the millionth power to produce a horse," which isn't even as complex as the human brain, "becomes one with three million zeros written after it. That would take three volumes of five hundred pages just to print. No one would bet on anything so improbable happening and yet," ta-dah! "it has happened," (that's how he ends the quote). Now how could an evolutionist say on one hand mutation is destructive—I mean, if you're born with a third arm you're really not doing that well, I assure you. Even though it seems that you've gone forward you've gone backward. So how could this theory—and again, I'm not denying evolution, I'm saying evolution needs a guiding parent because the numbers are impossible. How could we believe that things—just a horse, one to the three millionth power, fifteen hundred pages to write the number, would this ever happen? So here's how a Harvard professor answers it: "The important point is that since the origin of life belongs in the category of at least once phenomena, time is on its side. However impossible we regard this event, given enough time, it will almost certainly happen at least once. Time in fact is the hero of the plot." I love this part, listen carefully, "Given so much time the impossible becomes possible, the possible probable, the probable virtually certain. One has to only wait because time itself performs miracles." Do you get it? I believe in a three-word entity called "God." Christopher Hitchens believes in a forward entity called "time." The essence of evolutionary theory, which is undeniable, is that you give enough time this is all going to happen. My friends, when I was young—and I'm not a scientist—I remember and you remember, they told us the world was four billion years old; then they said it was eight billion; now it went up to sixteen; soon it'll be twenty, thirty; soon they'll give it a trillion years. Now why? Because the more we discover the complexity of life and the impossibility of any of this stuff evolving the more—the more time we need. Let me tell you something: You can give this forever, forever. Something that mathematically has three hundred million zeros after it is never going to happen. I don't care if you have forever. That's why, as Christopher Hitchens said, it didn't happen on all other planets. If he's right and I'm wrong, why did life happen only here? We have sixteen billion years, there's natural selection there, there genetic mutation there, why did it happen there? One place? Oh he'll tell you that we haven't yet found it. Well we have all of these—he's seen the galaxy Andromeda, it's not there. Let me tell you, I'm not the only person who doesn't believe in evolution without guidance, and let me be clear about that. The greatest scientists, he passed away a few years ago but I met him at Oxford, from Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould, he didn't believe in evolution, he believed in punctuated equilibrium. I saw him debate Richard Dawkins. He destroyed evolution and he's an atheist. He said that the fossil record does not reflect evolution. Sir Fred Hoyle said that because there are trillions of mutations that would have to take place and none of those organisms would have survived, because the possibility of a genetic mutation is 99.9 negative detrimental and lethal to the organism, so Hoyle said you would have to find trillions of destroyed organisms that don't exist. In fact, it was Darwin himself who said that the greatest objection to his theory—because let's remember, <i>The Origins of Species</i>, published in 1863, was not a tome about the origin of life, it was a theory to explain the fossil records but the problem was that there were missing transitional links. So what he said was—I'd like to give you the exact quote—Darwin said that the imperfection of the fossil record come entirely to the fact that we have not dug sufficiently. (In 1863 that would make sense.) But my friends, we've now dug up the whole world. We're looking for oil; we're looking for diamonds; we've dug up everywhere; we've barely found them. So Stephen Jay Gould, as Christopher Hitchens well knows, doesn't believe in evolution, or didn't. He argued for punctuated equilibrium (great, great leaps which explains the dearth of fossils). To still be an evolutionist today you have to have faith. There is no evidence that transitional links barely exist. That's why when I—when Dawkins, again a friend of mine, I debated him—when he debated Stephen Jay Gould, he had nothing to say. What evidence? Where are these trillions and trillions and trillions of transitional links? Remember, you need billions of mutations to go from a single cell amoeba to the eye and yet amazingly—which would give us an untold number of failed transitional steps, and they don't exist. You know what's interesting to me as well? Christopher Hitchens—just give me thirty seconds here—Christopher Hitchens says that the eye's not impressive—everything about him is, "the eye is nothing and there's no complexity and what are you talking about? The organism is so ill-formed." He says that the eye is "the ineptitude of design," page 82, he even says, "The anatomy of the eye, in fact, shows anything but intelligence. It is built upside down and backwards." Well Charles Darwin didn't think so. Well I'm glad you don't like your eyes but...Darwin said, "I became sick when I thought of how the complexity of the eye could have evolved." He then said (Charles Darwin), "To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection seems, I really confess, aburd in the highest possible degree." Then Christopher Hitchens says that—he says, "Why have we agreed so easily to call this exploded old non-theory," the theory of intelligent design, "by it's commonly new disguise of intelligent design? There's nothing intelligent about it." Let me therefore conclude with the words of Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer of the twentieth century: "In man there is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe." I mean, God almighty, all you need to do to prove the existence of God and how intelligent the design of our universe is, is to see how smart Christopher Hitchens is.<br /><br />GILLMAN: We'll sit for the—we'll sit for the third part.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Do you wanna sit? Well if I can't be erect I'd at least rather be upstanding. I have to sit for this. He says I gotta sit.<br /><br />GILLMAN: You—we agreed.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Alright. There was a terrible moment, I think it was when Lawrence Krauss was talking about the Andromeda galaxy when—and it's heading towards us—when someone got up and said to him, "Doctor, did you say it was going to collide with our galaxy in five billion years or five million?" Lawrence said, "Five billion." The guy said, "That's a huge relief. I thought he said five million there for a second." Now, on the fabrication point I can't sit still, or stand still if I was standing, be accused of that. The argument about Einstein and the state of Israel has nothing to do with religion at all. There may have been a religious element in his opposition to a Jewish state. He was for a state for Jews, but not for a Jewish state, a distinction that a lot of people have forgotten. The same distinction that was made by I. F. Stone, Judah Magnes, and others, often in debates under this roof, as a matter of fact. I don't know how much influence that had on his decision to reject the offer from Ben-Gurion, who at one point said to his cabinet, "What are we going to do if he say yes?" But I would be very surprised if there was nothing to do with it. At any rate it has no bearing whatever on the fact that Einstein believed only in Spinoza's god. In other words not, as Rabbi Shuley would have you believe, in God as an intervening or supervising or caring force but as one Spinoza identified, the pantheistic one. These distinctions are, I think, important and worth stressing. On the claim that Stephen Jay Gould did not believe in evolution, I really do not know where to begin. I think the best thing to do would be to read any chapter of any of his books, and in fact I think the—[audience applause]—I might indeed recommend the one where he has a very famous, very celebrated disagreement with Richard Dawkins on the question not of <i>whether</i> evolution occured, because nobody denies that. That it occured, we know. It's in the record of molecular biology and it's in the fossil record. There's a lot of argument about how and there is a certain amount of argument about the punctuations and a lot of those gaps only just now being filled in, only just now we're discovering intermediate species, partly vertebrate yet amphibian, for example, a very, very important one, recently in northern Canada. It's in Gould's book on the Burgess Shale that the most sobering point is made, a point that even I as a materialist find rather shaking—I don't, by the way, deny things because they don't cheer me up. It's not my attitude to evidence, but, I would like to think too that, you know, I was a little bit more than the primate that I so evidently am. But in Stephen Jay Gould's account of the Burgess Shale, which I think is his best book, is the most beautiful, the most finished, and the most polished of his books, he says there's a Cambrian vertebrate, little creature called <i>Pikaia gracilens</i>, that has the beginnings of a backbone. It could've got washed out in one of the great subsequent dyings outs, it could've done. If it had, human beings would have never appeared. This is the first we can find of a vertebrate. It could very easily have gone but it didn't, and as a result we're here having this conversation. You can say that's miraculous if you like. You can say that only God would have thought of such a thing. But—and that's the way you'd think if that's the way you thought. Because there will always be people who will say, "Oh well, we used not to think about these fossils, we thought that was all nonsense." It was argued until very recently by the godly, "God put the bones in the rocks to test our faith. At least we don't deny they're there, they're just there as a test." Now you have animatronic dinosaurs playing with animatronic children in the creation museum that just opened in Ohio. And there are those who say, "We didn't used to think about that the Big Bang could possibly be true." In fact the Big Bang itself is a term, like Tory, like suffragette, like impressionist and other terms, originally evolved as a term of abuse, as a term of mockery, instead adopted by its exponents. "Big Bang" was what Fred Hoyle used to say to try and dismiss the idea. He'd say, "Some people thought that it began with a big bang." Now we know there was a time when everything was inside something about the size of a baseball that's now four thousand billion galaxies. And what my daughter wants to know is what was outside the baseball. And I don't know. But we know that much. People say, "Oh well, nothing so amazing could've happened without God." So, there's a name for this kind of argument, a very old and important name—also comes largely from work at Oxford university though it's actually attributable largely to Sir Karl Popper—it's called unfalsifiability. It's an argument you can't beat because it isn't an argument. If you say, "Well, no I see how complex everything is. It would have to be God who is responsible," there's no was I can disprove that. There's no way I can falsify it. And unfalsifiability, counter-intuitively, is, quite rightly considered to be a test, not of the strength of an argument, but of its extreme weakness—in fact, of it's non-existence as an argument. Now I left unanswered a point about social Darwinism and—if I could have—ok—it was in fact at the Scopes trial that the contention of William Jennings Brian, not just that evolution had not occurred, but that it shouldn't have occurred because it would mean that only the fittest would survive. Now, we don't want that to be true and we can actually take steps to make sure, as humans, that it isn't absolutely the only rule of existence. When the Rabbi quite misrepresented what I said about abortion, I was talking about how nature aborts so many unborn children, not how humans do or should or might have to, but how nature takes care of it, and I said because when we were on the Savanna and sharing the territory and diminishing in size as a tribe ourselves and having to bear live young in an environment full of predators, probably if we bore eight or nine children, some of them sickly with lolling heads and diarrhea, we wouldn't be able to pick them up and carry them and run away with them fast enough. It's a fact. Because it's a fact and because it's unpleasant and, because as Darwin says, it betrays, has with it, as everything about us does, the lowly stamp of our original origin, doesn't mean it isn't so. So the beginning of wisdom I would say is the recognition of what science has been able to teach us and neither to deny that, as the Rabbi does in one tone of voice, or to claim that it shows how clever God is, with another tone. Make up your mind, you can't have it both ways and actually you're wrong twice. Thanks.<br /><br />BOTEACH: I don't care how much you dislike religion and I don't care how false you believe the faith in God is, you can't invent facts to sustain your argument. You can't be unscientific when you complain that religion is unscientific. That's the whole problem with this book; it's the problem with everything you've heard tonight; it's the problem with the utter distortions that we continue to hear. You said that your attack about Einstein, which you didn't respond to because you clearly invented out of whole cloth this idea that he didn't want to be president because of Zionism you said it's not about religion. What about this: Speaking about Dr. Baruch Goldstein, Christopher Hitchens writes, "While serving as a physician in the Israeli army, he had announced that he would not treat non-Jewish patients, such as Israeli Arabs, on the Sabbath. As it happens he was obeying Rabbinic law in declining to do this, as many Israeli religious courts have confirmed." I challenge Mr. Hitchens to name a single Jewish court in the entire world that would ever rule that a non-Jew should not be treated on the Sabbath. In fact if he names it I will buy a hundred copies of his book give it to —talking about a mainstream, just a regular Jewish court—I will give a hundred copies of his book to my religious friends. But if he fails I challenge him to buy a hundred copies of my book—or let's make that a thousand. Not only does the Talmud obligate us to treat non-Jews on the Sabbath, in fact, Noah Feldman, my dear friend, Rhodes scholar at Oxford, who debated me on this subject, he famously wrote about the debate in the Talmud how there was a steering within the Talmud that maybe you shouldn't and this is because the non-Jews they were talking about Roman centurions. That's when the Talmud was written. These were horrible troops that persecuted Jews. But even then they said that you have to. It's a law in Judaism. The court would be stripped of its authority in a moment and would be declared racist. In fact, Christopher Hitchens, who prtrays Jews throughout this book as being closeminded, racist. He attacks Israel non-stop based on non-existent evidence. He doesn't even know Judaism, which he should study it before he writes about it. I mean I didn't just get up and talk about evolution, I tried to study the texts. I'm not a great scientist but I debated leading scientists and I prepared for those debates. You should prepare if you're going to write about this. Avos 4:3: "Do not despise any man." The Rabbis declared, "Even a gentile who studies God's law is equal to the high priest," 2000 years ago. (A non-Jew equal to the high priest.) Tosefta Sanhedrin 13: "The righteous of all nations have a share in what is to come." (Non-Jews go to heaven.) Tanna Devei Eliahu Rabba 9: "I call upon heaven and earth as witnesses, any individual, whether gentile of Jew, man or woman, servant or mate can bring the divine presence upon himself in accordance with his deeds." That is a slander against Jews to say that any Jewish court would say that non-Jews should not be treated and the state of Israel treats every single Arab and Palestinian even when terrorists are the ones who are brought to the hospitals. The possibility of the human eye evolving has been equated to monkeys randomly hitting the keys on a typewriter typing Shakespeare <i>Hamlet</i>—you've heard this—not once but four quadrillion times. Now, again, he said that Stephen Jay Gould believed in evolution. He believed in punctuated equilibrium. Evolution means to slowly evolve with great time. He believed in these vast quantum leaps. Read the books, see who's telling the truth. He did not believe in slow evolution. Dawkins is one of the last people who still believes it. Fred Hoyle, one of the smartest British scientists, mathematicians of the twentieth century, famously wrote, "Life cannot have a random beginning. Troops of monkey thundering away at random typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare," but listen why, "for the practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough to contain the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of the wrong attempts." You just heard Christopher HItchens say, "We're beginning to find the transitional links." God almighty, we're only beginning? Do you realize how many trillions of these links have to exist? Where are they? We have found oil, we have found gold, we have found diamonds. They should be here on the desk. They should be here in my notes. Finally, finally, finally, this whole thing about values: My friends, you remember sadly that, I spoke about Francis Crick before. His partner James Watson who mapped the double helix DNA molecule, you remember that tragically and sadly on October 14, 2007 he told <i>The London Times</i> that he's inherently gloomy about the prospect for Africa because all of our policies are based on the idea that blacks and whites are of equal intelligence, but the evidence says that's not the case. It's just echoing what Thomas Huxley, the famous Darwinian bulldog, greatest progenitor of evolution in history said, "No rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man." To his dying day Charles Darwin himself still believed that the blacks were the missing link between the white and apes. Now, that doesn't mean that every evolutionist is a racist, God forbid. Christopher Hitchens is at the forefront of defending valuing human life around the world and he is a phenomenal hero, but it does mean that when he goes out to save human life, it's not because of evolutionary ethics, it's because of religion that declared the infinite sanctity of life. My point before, quoting him about miscarriages was not that he would ever argue for euthanizing infants, it's rather the fact that he doesn't argue for that in acknowledging that these Down Syndrome babies are nothing but a burden and can contribute nothing and they're a burden to everyone around them, they will suck out their parents' resources...<br /><br />GILLMAN: Rabbi Boteach I have to stop you, ok?<br /><br />BOTEACH: It's because he observes the Ten Commandments that says, "Do not murder." It's our values he's embraced. <br /><br />GILLMAN: We have—Ladies and gentlemen we have a number of questions from the floor and we have a number of questions that arrived to us from around the country and one of them, from Cincinnati, Ohio was precisely the question that, were I permitted to engage the debaters, would have wanted to ask myself. So I ask our two presenters, I ask Christopher Hitchens first and then Rabbi Boteach second in two or three minutes, sorry, that's about all you have, the question is, "Is it possible to talk about 'does God exist' without asking when you use the word 'god' what do you mean?"<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very good. But it won't have escaped your attention rabbi or the audience I think that I was asked to answer a direct challenge by the Rabbi a moment ago and I won't have it said that I didn't. On the matter of whether an Israeli court ever ruled that Dr. Baruch Goldstein was right and he couldn't refuse to help on non-Jew on the Shabbat, I refer you to my great mentor in Spinoza studies Dr. Israel Shahak, S-H-A-H-A-K, his book <i>The Jewish Religion and Its Attitude To Non-Jews</i>, he the very brave professor of chemistry at The Hebrew University who brought that case and lost it in the high court in Jerusalem and a very celebrated write-up of the topic in <i>Haaretz</i>. I would of course never make such a suggestion...<br /><br />BOTEACH: High court's a secular court.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Excuse me, and the Rabbinical courts also. He lost the whole case, very important. Look it up, the book is easily found, it's published by Pluto Press. Also, if you look up the history as told by him and his colleague, Dr. Norton Mezvinsky of Dr. Baruch Goldstein you will discover things that will make you glad that, as I said in a talk which you can also look up at the Spertus Institute (Jewish University in Chicago) recently, very glad but it seems the Jews have a gene for atheism. The great Jewish contribution has always been to Humanism and to human solidarity and it is that, and not the wailings and bleatings to an empty sky, that distinguish it. Now...<br /><br />GILLMAN: Gentlemen, can we talk about—can we talk about God, please?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, and to the topic—well, to the question of—I'm sorry, I could hardly let such a challenge go in all decency—now, I can do the rest very quickly, it's called the ontological argument: It says that if you can name the idea of a god, surely there must be something existent, or real at any rate, that you're talking about. It's not the teapot that Bertrand Russell postulates on orbiting the sun; to talk about is is to postulate it. Well, this of course is a piece of circular reasoning, but I hope I helped to clarify it in my opening statement by saying there's every difference between being a deist and a theist. Science and reason cannot disprove the existence of a first cause or creator. It cannot do that. We can only say that everything works without that assumption and there is no evidence on the other side of the case. This seems to ask to license unbelief. To the theistic argument, of a god who is actually interested in answering prayers, cares who you marry, who you go to bed with, what you eat and whose—which side wins in a war, or so forth, we say that this is human propaganda, self-evidently man-made and the so-called miraculous evidence for it has been repeatedly and conclusively falsified and disproved. <br /><br />BOTEACH: You know I must be one of those half-thinking primates or half-intelligent primates that Christopher Hitchens speaks of because it strains credulity—did the rest of you just hear a great writer say the Isreali Supreme Court, respected throughout the world—throughout the world for its fairness, judiciousness, ruled that you cannot help save a non-Jewish life on the Sabbath? It's not even a religious court.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's a religious...<br /><br />BOTEACH: It's always attacked for being the most secular court. The religious people don't like that court.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's the religious—it's the Rabbinical court.<br /><br />BOTEACH: You said the high court.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I said the—yeah, high Rabbinical court. <br /><br />BOTEACH: No, you said high court. Maybe the Rabbinical court but...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I did not say—I did not say the Israeli...<br /><br />BOTEACH: Well, then let me just say if you're wrong, if you're now going back and saying...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You mentioned...<br /><br />BOTEACH: Ok fair enough.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You mentioned character assassination...<br /><br />BOTEACH: How could you write that?<br /><br />HITCHENS: You be very careful now.<br /><br />BOTEACH: Wait, wait, let me finish, let me finish, let me finish, let me finish.<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, you be very careful, sir.<br /><br />BOTEACH: You have the book in front of you, even though I bought it it's my book.<br /><br />HITCHENS: You be very careful, sir.<br /><br />BOTEACH: Where's the footnote? When you write something in a book that a Jewish court will not treat a non-Jewish life don't you think you ought to cite a footnote?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I gave you—I gave—I've given...<br /><br />GILLMAN: Gentlemen, please.<br /><br />HITCHENS: This is, this is—wait a minute. A second ago you mentioned the term "character assassination." Be careful your character doesn't committed suicide in front of this everyone in this room.<br /><br />BOTEACH: That's pretty—that's pretty harsh.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I gave careful chapter, name, author, and book citations knowing that I'm televised, willing to stand up for what I said. Don't you try and misquote me in front of everybody.<br /><br />BOTEACH: Ok, I want to repeat...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You'll only succeed in looking even dumber than you do now.<br /><br />BOTEACH: Ok, I want to repeat...<br /><br />GILLMAN: Rabbi—Rabbi Boteach...<br /><br />BOTEACH: Wait, wait, I want to repeat—I'm just...<br /><br />GILLMAN: Can we talk about God now? Can we talk about God?<br /><br />BOTEACH: Ok, well, I want to repeat that we heard tonight that a high Rabbinical court said that you cannot save a non-Jewish life on the Sabbath. That is absolutely false and we will look it up—we'll have to look it up after the debate. <br /><br />HITCHENS: And a hundred books riding on it.<br /><br />BOTEACH: And that's why he can't cite the court.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Hundred books.<br /><br />BOTEACH: He cites a book but I want the court.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Hundred books riding on it, big boy.<br /><br />BOTEACH: That's absolutely not true but be that as it may...<br /><br />GILLMAN: We'll come back to this. Rabbi Boteach...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'll be there.<br /><br />GILLMAN: Is it possible to talk about does God exists without asking, "When you use the word 'god' what do you mean?"<br /><br />BOTEACH: When I use the word 'god' I use it to connote the sumpreme moral authority. He who said that murder is wrong and that life is of infinite value which is why life to us is so precious; which is why, in this great country, in the United States, we do take care of our elderly; it's the reason why we don't accept the Kevorkians of this world who want to put people to death once they believe that they're life is riddled with too much pain. I have sat with teenagers who wanted to kill themselves, thinking that their life was riddled with so much pain. My job, at that moment, was to be reminded that life is of infinite value. When I speak of 'god', obviously when an evolutionist speaks of god he thinks of a myth, but as I stated earlier, my contention is that evolution, which I accept with a designer watching its slow ascendency, evolution believes that time is 'god,' that if you give anything enough time you will have a miracles. That's just the euphemism. Time becomes a euphamism for 'god.' The average secular evolutionist like Christopher Hitchens believes that given enough time anything can happen. Which, by the way, utterly undermines everything he said earlier about the hopelessness of our situation and galaxies that are going to destroy us because, God willing, time will save us. And no doubt, it will come to our salvation. I should say that the reason why people like Hitler so hated religion, because he always identified religion as his greatest enemy—like from Martin Bormann's <i>Table Talk</i>: "The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was Christianity, we have no sort of use for fairy tales invented by Jews"—is because Hitler did not seek to destroy the Jews. He sought to impose a new value system on the world, a racial value system which is the natural outgrowth of a belief in evolutionary phylums and strata and different races. The Bible establishes that we are all one race, we are all equally created in the image of God, it does not in any way mean that an evolutionist is a racist, God forbid. It means that when he or she is not it's because they accept the validity of the Ten Commandments, as I said earlier. And as many philosophers warn against, you cannot have cut-flower ethics. Hitchens would like to take the beautiful values we get from religion: charity, generosity, goodness, faith, hope, etc., all those things that keep us going, all those things that have made someone like Barack Obama so popular in the United States, and he would like to say that we can have it without religion. It's like taking flowers, cutting from their bed, their fertile soil and believing they're going to last. Put them in a vase and they'll die.<br /><br />GILLMAN: Rabbi Boteach, can I interrupt you please? I have to—When I speak to my students about God I invariably tell them "If anbody should say to you, 'Do you believe in God?' the only appropriate answer to that question is, 'Tell me what you mean by "God" and I'll tell you if I believe in that god or not.' " So, we are back to this question: Is this a <i>New Yorker</i> cartoon kind of god that sits in the sky and clouds, an old man wrapped in a kalik and a kaftan? Is it a Spinozistic god that we're talking about? Is it a god of the Jewish naturalist Mordecai Kaplan, the power that makes for salvation? Is it a Maimonidean god, knowledge knowing itself? What is your image? What is it...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You want him to say <i>more</i> about this?<br /><br />GILLMAN: What—I want him to say more and then I want you to say more.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think you're in a minority on that point. I mean, I thought we both answered that question to the best of his ability.<br /><br />GILLMAN: I did not—sorry, I did not hear an answer. I did not hear an answer, Rabbi Boteach.<br /><br />BOTEACH: For me God is He who fills the infinite expanse of space; it is He who is the origin of life; it is He who is the absolute moral authority to determine what is right and what is wrong; God is He who hears my prayer when I cry in moments of distress; God is He who looks after the helpless and God is He who I am sometimes very angry at for failing to look after the helpless. The essence of Judaism is the word "Israel" (he who wrestles with God). God is also He with whom I have a relationship. I have a right to challenge God. I...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Rabbi, you asked for this. You asked for this.<br /><br />GILLMAN: I asked for this. Fine, if I asked for it I will then interrupt it and...<br /><br />HITCHENS: You asked for white noise. You asked for white noise and you got it. <br /><br />GILLMAN: And I will then—I will then address a question to Mr. Hitchens: Though the burden of proof is on the faithful for the existence of God, do you believe there is a discovery that can cause a paradigm shift, maybe advances in neuroscience?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well all the evidence so far is the other way. I mean, the heavens get emptier, if you like, all the time. I think the unravelling of the DNA string is probably the most conclusive recent thing to shows us both that racism, of which, I'm aware of, Rabbi Shuley and I at least agree, and creationism are alike, illusions. We are part of the natural order. We're not a specially created species, we have no unique privilege, we are only too aware that Darwin was right on the point of the stamp of our lowly origins. It's best to begin, I think, from that realistic understanding because, bleak though it may be (at least it's realistic), it doesn't mean we have to live without irony; doesn't mean we have to live without humor; doesn't mean we have to live without solidarity or any of the other things that make life A) bearable and B) possible. You may or may not have noticed that Rabbi Boteach has been contradicting himself directly all evening: He began by saying our good qualities, our heroic and noble and gentle and generous qualities, are innate in us. He's quite right in saying that. Yes, they are innate in us, or in most of us, those who are psycho- or sociopathic. That is precisely the point: Religion borrows its morality from us, not we from religion. God is man-made and I can very briefly underline this point and make it not just an assertion on my part by putting it in the form a dialectical question: Name me, if you can, a noble action performed or a noble thought uttered by a believer in God that could not be uttered by a non-believer, alright? I've issued this challenge in innumerable places and spaces now and have not yet had a response. I await one. There's another question that goes with it, a corollary question: Name a wicked action performed or a wicked thing said by someone purely because of their religious faith. You don't even have to blink before you've thought of one. I rest my case. Thank you.<br /><br />GILLMAN: One final question for Rabbi Boteach: Rabbi, why did God play favorites and make the Jews the chosen people?<br /><br />BOTEACH: Well, clearly because Christopher Hitchens likes us so much. In fact, this is one of most misunderstood concepts in all of Judaism. It is one that Christopher Hitchens not only misunderstands but destructively misportrays in his book. God never played favorites with the Jews. The word "chosen" [?] ("I made you a light to the nations") is never a noun, it is a verb. It connotes an activity. You are chosen by God to spread the light of God and the laws of God to all the inhabitants of the earth; to tell them how they too are God's children; to tell them how they too matter; how they too are loved by God. That is why Judaism always insists on not converting people to our faith because you do not upgrade when you become a Jew. We're the only nation on earth that exists on the non-copyright to truth held by a religion. Christopher Hitchens actually uses the concept of "choseness" to, sadly, justify anti-semitism. Quote, page 250, "By claiming to be chosen in an exclusive copyright with the Almighty, the Jews invited hatred and suspicion and evinced their own form of racism." So we're hated because we told the world that we're chosen. Well, my friends, the British sort of think they're chosen. I lived there for eleven years. They sing this song called "Rule Britannia! Britannia Rules the World!" No one hated the British for that.<br /><br />GILLMAN: I believe it's "the waves."<br /><br />BOTEACH: Hold on. "Rules" or "waves." Well, they never really took the British and sort of gassed them or anything like that. The Japanese have a rising sun on their flag because they believe they are the land of the rising sun. The sun rises for them, I don't see that there's any particular hatred for the Japanese for that belief. Marcus Garvey—I just filmed a television show in Jamaica with my famiy—Marcus Garvey founded black power in the 1920s with the famous motto "Black is beautiful." I didn't see people segregating blacks because of that belief. On the contrary, they were hated well before it; they were hated for no reason at all. To say that Jews are hated for a claim to chosenness is to justify the most pernicious hatred in the history of the world.<br /><br />GILLMAN: Ok, but let's go back to the liturgical formulation. <br /><br />BOTEACH: And as I said, God never chose us and never played favorites. It was not that you are sufficient and now make everybody like you, get everyone to emulate you because your path is the only correct path. Going as far back as 900 years the great Jewish philosopher Mimonedes, considered the greatest Jewish mind of all time, said that Christianity serves a godly purpose as does Islam. He respected and admired Islam. He said that Jews could even pray in Mosques because they don't worship any kind of image, any kind of icon. So, God never chose the Jews as a form of favoritism, He gave us this incredible mission. One might even say that it's a humbling motif rather than one that breeds arrogance. It means that if we ever think for amoment that we're "it," that we are the end, God made us the <i>means</i> to other ends. Be sure that we spread the knowledge of God. I should say that, you know, I believe that we have to keep all these conversations decent and ethical and moral. And one of my major points tonight is—I don't care that Christopher Hitchens is an atheist, he has every right to be and I respect all my atheist friends and most people who know me know that most of my friends are atheists—my problem is when you distort—because I spend my time primarily among secular people—but when you distort and invent and when you make statements like a claim to chosenness breeds antisemitism. No, the Jews should not be blamed for the hatred shown to them. We should never blame a victim. It's not the woman who dresses in a suggestive way that leads her to being raped, God forbid. It is hatred that leads to those things and that's why God said in the Ten Commandments that we cannot kill, we cannot steal, we have to live by a moral code and finally, it's the reason why in the most moral—greatest moral affirmation in the history of the world God says in Genesis II: He created every human being, regardless of religion, creed, color or faith, or non-faith, in His indelable image.<br /><br />GILLMAN: And as a final note I assume you mean "His" literally.<br /><br />BOTEACH: I don't mean it literally because God has no gender.<br /><br />GILLMAN: Thank you. Thank you, Rabbi Boteach, thank you, Mr. Hitchens, thank you all.<br /><br />HITCHENS: What?! Well, no maybe they've heard enough of us, maybe they've had enough of us. [audience: "No!"] Well then, just—I should hate to leave it like that. Since he's been so generous as to claim so many atheists among his friends I should say that some of my worst enemies are Jews. And certainly those who didn't get the news, again rather discrepently delivered, that either God did or did not make a covenant with the Jewish people. I think, of course you're right in saying that he didn't because there's no such person and the events described in those books never took place. Israeli archaeology has conclusively shown that the books of Moses are false propaganda. It's a jolly good thing because otherwise there would have been a covenant that said you can kill everyone in Canaan and take your property as long as you keep your covenant with me and as long as you mark it in your flesh. Now don't go saying that that was not part of that fictional religion while it was strong. And I ask again, what happened to the Amalekites, what happened to the Midianites if this fiction is all that it is? It was actually Lord Alfred Douglas who, I think, said in a famous, nasty little poem, "How odd of God to choose the Jews" to whom someone in Oxford replied, "Not odd of God / The Goyim annoy'im." But I will say that those who flirt with this kind of specialness—it's true that every naiton—almost every nation—has a feeling of being favored by the divine, not a covenant at Mount Sinai exactly, a location that has yet to be discovered but let's say "Joan of Arc" or indeed "Rule Brittania!" a song, when I lived in England, I refused to sing, precisely because, as most of my friends would decline, precisely because it did express a concept of racial and national superiority and to say that it did earn English and British people dislike, that we're simply victims blaming ourselves and people don't like us for shouting out about our supremacy is absurd and self-pitying.<br /><br />BOTEACH: How could you compare dislike of the British to antisemitism?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I didn't, I didn't. You did.<br /><br />BOTEACH: This is absurd.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I didn't, big boy, you did. <br /><br />BOTEACH: This is absurd. This is absurd, how could you compare the British being unpopular to the Haulocost? God almighty.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, who made the comparison?<br /><br />AUDIENCE: He did.<br /><br />BOTEACH: No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. You know...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well if the kippour fits why don't you just wear it? Well now if...<br /><br />BOTEACH: I should be allowed to respond to what you said about the Amalekites and the Hittites.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well I have a...<br /><br />BOTEACH: I should be allowed to respond to this. You know my friends...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I haven't gotten my trousers off yet.<br /><br />BOTEACH: I lived in Britain for eleven years and it's a country that I came to love and admire. I had the great honor of being the rabbi at Oxford University. And I befriended people like Richard Dawkins, who became a dear friend, and in England, until today, the statesmen who is most respected is Winston Churchill. I think that's fair to say, stastically, popularity. He ordered the indiscriminate bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, these cities were obliterated three months before the war ended. In Dresden 250,000 died, in Hamburg 330,000 died, there were cyclones created by the fire bombs, winds 200 miles per hour from the fires. Four months later Harry S. Truman, who was voted our second-most popular president of the twentieth century, ordered the indiscriminate nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But this did not mean that these were immoral men. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was voted the most popular, the most effective of twentieth century presidents, he participated in many of those decisions for the indiscriminate slaughter of cilivians including men, women and children. It's just that they found...<br /><br />GILLMAN: Rabbi Boteach, what does this have to do with God?<br /><br />BOTEACH: I'm sorry? I'm answering his thing about the Hittites. It's just that they felt that certain war measure sometimes called for very, very extreme measures that, in any other context, would be immoral. Judaism would never today allow the murder of Hittites, Amalekites. In fact, Christopher Hitchens—it was only done in the context of war at the time and God specifically forbade it forever thereafter in the same way that we would never bomb a German city today or use a nuclear bomb against another nation. You know that—[audience disapproval]—well I don't think we would. Maybe the United States would nuke someone, then so be it, I don't believe we would. I should tell you that Christopher Hitchens writes in his book that rabbis debate whether the Palestinians are today the Amalekites and that is why they ought to be—and debate whether they should be expelled. Again, name a single mainstream rabbi—there's always fringes and to the extent to which fringes are kept on the fringe they could never ever define the mainstream—name <i>any</i> mainstream rabbi that would ever say that. In fact, every Orthodox Jew, or anyone who's knowledgeable with the Torah here will know, that we are not—that Amalek is a concept that we have no capacity to identify, according to the Torah itself. We don't know who they are. It's an ethereal concept, so much so that when the Jews of Hevron—[audience laughs at Gillman blowing his nose]—when Baruch Goldstein killed the Palestinians who were at prayer in their mosque, the very next morning, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs—I was living in England—called it an abomination as did virtually every other rabbi. My house was firebombed that night at Oxford. (Until today the police don't know by how.) Thank God a Spanish au pair who lived with us saved our childrens' lives by putting it out. (My wife and I were out it was a Saturday night, it was the night after Purim if you recall.) I still got up—I called a press conference and I said that what Baruch Goldstein did to those Palestinians who are our brothers, who are equally God's children, is the highest disgrace that Judaism, an Orthodox jury, has faced in my lifetime. So let's never say that this is justified and that's why, I mean, with all due respect, in my own opnion, if you're going to write a book—and you're a great scholar, and I love your writing, most of the time—and if you're going to say that "Rabbis say this and this court said that," I really believe there ought to be a footnote or a name. Until today—and you're still not quoting a name, you're quoting a book of something, etc. (There is no such thing as a high Jewish court in Halakha, by the way.)<br /><br />HITCHENS: You would take, perhaps, the name of Rabbi [?] yourself, the head of The National Religious Party, very much sought-after Israeli politician as well as Rabbi...<br /><br />GILLMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, good night. Thank you.<br /><br />HITCHENS: And also the—and I direct you again...<br /><br />GILLMAN: Thank you Rabbi Boteach, thank you Mr. Hitchens.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I direct you again to Dr. Isreal Shahak's essay, "The Significance of Baruch Goldstein." From now on, I'm sorry, I can only be polite to someone who has a receipt and a book. Thanks for coming.<br /><br />BOTEACH: Thank you.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Hundred books.<br /><br />BOTEACH: Hundred books.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Hundred books.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-70864741996649520872010-07-15T23:56:00.025-04:002011-07-06T22:22:46.816-04:00Hitchens vs. Friel, Wretched Radio<li><a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> vs. <a href=http://www.wretchedradio.com/>Todd Friel</a><br /><li>April 9, 2009, <a href=http://www.wretchedradio.com/>Wretched Radio</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5mk-3_T8v4JdK7_pE8s6wbPQNYJm1Q4QniRkmmb0O3LJJuyku1iStfkCHZjzH66ol3hIDVDBa_cFZN_o3fGygsNiFGZdsH6R5b50JNMD5h9M1O9pe_XMJrtTTI_F7efZun6yl_tN-ibjx/s1600/friel.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5mk-3_T8v4JdK7_pE8s6wbPQNYJm1Q4QniRkmmb0O3LJJuyku1iStfkCHZjzH66ol3hIDVDBa_cFZN_o3fGygsNiFGZdsH6R5b50JNMD5h9M1O9pe_XMJrtTTI_F7efZun6yl_tN-ibjx/s320/friel.jpg" border="0" alt="Todd Friel"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491353752277866066" /></a>FRIEL: It's time for one of America's fastest growing game sensations. (Oh, this is going to be a bust.) It is "What If?" That's right, we're going to play an exciting episode of "What If?" here on <i>Wretched Radio</i>, the game where we create a scenario for some they would consider it to be fantastic and then we ask them, "What if it's true?" Tony, who's our first contestant today on "What If?"?<br /><br />[TONY] VERKINNES: Todd, our first and last guest has been hailed as one the most brilliant journalists of our time, according to <i>The London Observer</i>. He's a contributing editor, ironically, for <i>Vanity Fair</i>. He was named one of top 100 public intellectuals by <i>Foreign Policy</i> and Britain's <i>Prospect</i>. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyphGjiHEsxfYzURlcAmaGTxrUGOmRSq_eesBDZeFBx_7Sg8yaO0Le9y2aJlkd9qsPn0R03_oxLplU8K3gLMWbeT6ekjY-9g9SW2K0-wZGyRwNUnQGxpmxkjxj7XLkPEt9QxF9cb6YfFPc/s1600/verkinnes.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyphGjiHEsxfYzURlcAmaGTxrUGOmRSq_eesBDZeFBx_7Sg8yaO0Le9y2aJlkd9qsPn0R03_oxLplU8K3gLMWbeT6ekjY-9g9SW2K0-wZGyRwNUnQGxpmxkjxj7XLkPEt9QxF9cb6YfFPc/s320/verkinnes.jpg" border="0" alt="Tony Verkinnes"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491353929954207330" /></a>He studied in Cambridge and Oxford and now he just hates God. He is the author of <i>god is Not Great</i>. He is Christopher Hitchens. <br /><br />FRIEL: Wow, fancy that. Christopher thanks very much for being with us, sir.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8JnlN3Lc8F8cG1rY-BmvkJ3CMMHzv9EnmjBMje4jb7UqOfzmT1FuzOXdG2CLUR8QX7DovQe-B_AxAeQs5C5KtTGj4Ib4fWeJ_YFAyUUYMTGSmv4PMzmQysSpI2JTVs2MdU6PAZ_egBz9a/s1600/hitchcucumbermask.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8JnlN3Lc8F8cG1rY-BmvkJ3CMMHzv9EnmjBMje4jb7UqOfzmT1FuzOXdG2CLUR8QX7DovQe-B_AxAeQs5C5KtTGj4Ib4fWeJ_YFAyUUYMTGSmv4PMzmQysSpI2JTVs2MdU6PAZ_egBz9a/s320/hitchcucumbermask.jpg" border="0" alt="Hitch"id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491352827364113922" /></a>HITCHENS: Hello.<br /><br />FRIEL: Christopher we're going to have you play a game show today called "What If?" Are you game?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Sounds alright.<br /><br />FRIEL: Ok, here's what we've got for you, sir: We're going to play a game. I'm going to create some fantastic scenarios and then you tell me, sir, what your response would be <i>if</i> these things happened to be true. Ready to go?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yeah.<br /><br />FRIEL: Alright, here we go. Here's the first one now: I realize for you, sir, the author of <i>god is Not Good</i> that you don't believe in God but what if...<br /><br />HITCHENS: <i>god is Not Great</i>, excuse me.<br /><br />FRIEL: <i>god is Not Great</i>. What...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Now in paperback in fine bookstores everywhere.<br /><br />FRIEL: Mmmhmm. So what if God actually exists, sir, and what if He actually has provided everything for you? He's granted you life; He has given you health; He has given you food; He's given you the trees to write your screed against Him; He's provided you royalties; it all came from Him. What if that is true, sir? Would He not have been good to you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, He wouldn't. Because if that were true it would mean that I had an eternal, supervising parent who would never die and let me get on with my life, never let me grow up, keep me under surveillance...<br /><br />FRIEL: But you have, sir.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...and supervision every minute of my life...<br /><br />FRIEL: But you have.<br /><br />HITCHENS: ...and constantly ask me to be thanking and praising Him.<br /><br />FRIEL: Yeah...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think it would be...<br /><br />FRIEL: That wasn't part of the scenario.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It would be like living in North Korea. I think it'd be a horrible outcome.<br /><br />FRIEL: Well, I'm not sure that God is Kim Jong Il, but what if what I said is true...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, ask Kim Jong Il, he has a different opinion.<br /><br />FRIEL: Uh-huh. So, if that is the God who's made you and created you, He's allowed you to live your life. Shouldn't that be a sign of kindness to you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No. I don't want anyone's permission to live my life, thanks.<br /><br />FRIEL: Alrighty. Well, it's not that you've been asked, or that you asked Him.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think it's servile that one is expected to constantly grovel as a result. <br /><br />FRIEL: Alright. Christopher Hitchens, round two of "What If?" What if God exists? He's provided everything for you, He's kept you together by the power of His word. If that is truly God—<i>if</i>—do you believe that that God, if He's provided everything for you, has rights on your life?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No.<br /><br />FRIEL: Because?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Why should He? What gives Him this right?<br /><br />FRIEL: Because He owns you, He's created everything you, He's kept you alive.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I don't want to be owned. I don't want to be owned and I don't recognize anyone's right to own me. That's elementary.<br /><br />FRIEL: Remember, we're playing a game of "What If?"<br /><br />HITCHENS: I wrote my book exactly to teach people to emancipate themselves from the man-made slavery of religion and you're giving the perfect instance of what I mean. I don't acknowledge anyone's ownership of myself.<br /><br />FRIEL: I know you don't acknowledge it but what if He is God...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Suppose that I grant your premise about Him having made me and even treated me well, that still doesn't give anyone ownership rights.<br /><br />FRIEL: Even if...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Any more than I have these for my children. <br /><br />FRIEL: Ok. So even though He keeps you alive, He causes you to breath, He provides you food and everything that is good...<br /><br />HITCHENS: So you say.<br /><br />FRIEL: He doesn't have any rights to tell you what to do? Nothing?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Does that mean that people who are sick and poor and hungry are excused this obligation of thanking someone brokenly for owning them?<br /><br />FRIEL: Well that isn't part of the game show. I'm just asking you. Let's play another round here...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I'm sorry. I think the question may take the form of an answer.<br /><br />FRIEL: Alright. So here's question number three of our little game show called "What If?" with our special guest Christopher Hitchens, the author of <i>god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything</i>, which is a, I hope, hyperbole, but even so...<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it isn't. Not if it postulates that I'm someone who's owned by someone else. <br /><br />FRIEL: Alright.<br /><br />HITCHENS: That would ruin everything for me if it were true.<br /><br />FRIEL: Ok. So ownership is a bad thing?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Of people, yes.<br /><br />FRIEL: Oh, ok.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I know the Bible does call for slavery, as it calls for genocide, but that doesn't make it right.<br /><br />FRIEL: Yeah, well it doesn't, but we're playing "What If?" If there is a...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It might be for you, I don't know. You might take the Bible seriously for all I know.<br /><br />FRIEL: Oh, I sure do. What if there's a judgement day, sir? Just what if—what if (I know, a crazy scenario for you)—but a day when God causes you to give an account for every thought, every word, every deed? How do you think you'd do on that day, sir?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I would ask by what right?<br /><br />FRIEL: That's not the question. How would you do?<br /><br />HITCHENS: If someone stops me and says, "I've got a few questions for you," I say, "Excuse me, I'm in a hurry. Who are you to be posing these questions?"<br /><br />FRIEL: Well what if He's God and He made you and He has the right? What if—how would you...<br /><br />HITCHENS: The question—the most ancient question is still, "Quo warranto" ("By what right?") This right can't just be assumed.<br /><br />FRIEL: Alright, if it's true—remember, we're just playing a little fantasy game here...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, I understand. I'm telling you what my reaction would be.<br /><br />FRIEL: Alright. For instance, if He ran you through the Ten Commandments, His standard of goodness and perfection, how do you think you'd measure up, sir?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, on the initial burst, which are all about His jealousy and His envy and His self-esteem and how one has to respect that, nix on those, I don't care for those. I don't obey them and never have tried to, don't think anyone should, don't think anyone needs to. <br /><br />FRIEL: So in other words...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Same for the Sabbath, same for the Sabbath.<br /><br />FRIEL: You haven't done well with that.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Same for the Sabbath. I don't give a damn about the Sabbath.<br /><br />FRIEL: Yep.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Murder, theft and perjury I know—thanks a lot—I know without being told that those are not kosher. Honor the father and the mother: rather depends on how they behave towards me and there's no commandment about taking care of your children. There's no prohibition of child abuse any more than there's any prohibition of slavery or genocide in the Ten Commandments. So I don't care about those either, particularly.<br /><br />FRIEL: Have you made any graven images?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Coveting, I think, is a good thing because it leads to emulation and innovation. It's a spur to do better, if you're jealous or envious of other people's property. However, I don't approve...<br /><br />FRIEL: So, you've pretty much kept the Ten Commandments.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Of course, it's wrong to take that property. It's not wrong to wish you had it yourself. And I don't, of course, approve of lumping in women with oxen and asses.<br /><br />FRIEL: Alright. So, specifically sir, have you ever taken God's name in vain?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I've never completely known—and this is only in the King James translation, which is the one I know best—quite what that means. <br /><br />FRIEL: That you've used God's name in a low way. Instead of using a four-letter filth word, you use the name of God to express disgust. <br /><br />HITCHENS: No, not in that way, no. I don't believe I have.<br /><br />FRIEL: Really? "GD"? Nothing like that has ever flown out of your mouth?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Not as a filth expression.<br /><br />FRIEL: No, as a curse expression.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Or not instead of a filth expression.<br /><br />FRIEL: Dragging God's name through the mud. You've substituted His name with a swear word. Have you ever had God—did you ever put God first in your life, sir? Has He ever been number one for Christopher Hitchens?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, He's been nowhere for me, as He is, in point of fact.<br /><br />FRIEL: So the first, second, and third Commandments you've broken. The Sabbath, you admitted to that. I'm sure you were naughty as a child, right?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't admit it.<br /><br />FRIEL: Yeah, but you were naughty as a child, correct?<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's not an admission—excuse me—it's not an admission, it's an assertion.<br /><br />FRIEL: Did you parents ever get upset with you as a child, sir?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I dare say they did.<br /><br />FRIEL: Because you were naughty. So you broke that commandment.<br /><br />HITCHENS: How do you know that's what it was for?<br /><br />FRIEL: I'm just guessing you're like every other kid I've seen. <br /><br />HITCHENS: That might not have made them upset.<br /><br />FRIEL: Because you probably...<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's rather pathetic to have children and then expect them not to be naughty, don't you think?<br /><br />FRIEL: Well, I think that the expectation is that they should be good.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I don't know, are you a father?<br /><br />FRIEL: Yes, sir, I am. Sir, have you ever committed murder?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No.<br /><br />FRIEL: Have you ever been angry with somebody?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Repeatedly and justifiably.<br /><br />FRIEL: Yeah...<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well, I should better say—I don't want to sound smug—justifiably and unjustifiably, fairly and unfairly, I have.<br /><br />FRIEL: Because the Bible says that's murder of the heart. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Anger is a very important—anger is an emotion without which the human species couldn't do. We're onto deadly sins now, are we not (commandments)?<br /><br />FRIEL: Well, I would suggest that righteous anger is good. But if you've been unrighteously angry, then you have committed murder in your heart because God examines our thoughts and our intentions and our desires.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Oh well, you should've just asked me if I've committed murder in my heart. I've certainly done that. <br /><br />FRIEL: Ok, so you've broken the commandment of "Thou shall not murder." What about lusting, sir? Jesus warned that if you lust in your mind...<br /><br />HITCHENS: All the time. All the time.<br /><br />FRIEL: So you've broken the commandment of adultery, correct sir?<br /><br />HITCHENS: None of your ****ing business.<br /><br />FRIEL: Alrighty. What we've basically done is determine how you'd be doing on judgement day. It doesn't sound like you'd measure up at all to God's Ten Commandments.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Who gives a ****?<br /><br />FRIEL: Well, we're just playing a little game of "What If?"<br /><br />HITCHENS: Yes, I'm playing it right along with you. <br /><br />FRIEL: Alrighty. So what would God do with you, sir...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I'm glad you think it's a game, by the way.<br /><br />FRIEL: What would you do...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I rather agree with you.<br /><br />FRIEL: What would God do with you if He found you guilty of breaking His laws? Would He send you to heaven or hell, what if?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Well not heaven, I hope.<br /><br />FRIEL: So what would a just god do with somebody like you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: An eternity of praise and groveling and thanksgiving would be my idea of hell.<br /><br />FRIEL: So he'd send you to hell?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I've no idea. <br /><br />FRIEL: Alright. If it's true, if He judged you by the standard of the Ten Commandments, you'd be going to hell.<br /><br />HITCHENS: If you believe in the God of the Old Testament, not, because there's no hell mentioned in the Old Testament. The punishment of the dead is not specified there, as I dare say you know. It's only with gentle Jesus, meek and mild, that the idea of eternal torture for minor transgressions is introduced.<br /><br />FRIEL: So, speaking of Jesus...<br /><br />HITCHENS: So I'm not sure you know quite what you're talking about.<br /><br />FRIEL: So, speaking of Jesus. If, sir—remember, we're playing "What If?"...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I haven't forgotten we're playing.<br /><br />FRIEL: What if it's true that God exists? He came to this earth—Jesus Christ, the god man, the savior of souls—and he took the punishment that you deserved for breaking God's moral laws, He died on a cross for you, He rose from the dead and defeated death. Let's say that it's true, sir. He died knowing that you, Christopher Hitchens, would spend all of your calories and energy on fighting against Him but he died for you anyway.<br /><br />HITCHENS: So...<br /><br />FRIEL: Would that not be the single greatest act of kindness in the history of your life, if not in the world?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it would not.<br /><br />FRIEL: How come?<br /><br />HITCHENS: Because if I'd had the power, or had actually been present, I would've done everything possible to prevent this human sacrifice from being enacted, whether the person concerned wanted it or not.<br /><br />FRIEL: But let's just say it happened.<br /><br />HITCHENS: It's barbaric. No one has the right or the duty to immolate themselves for me. I don't want it, I didn't ask for it, and I'm not bound by it.<br /><br />FRIEL: Yeah. That's not the question, though. If it happened...<br /><br />HITCHENS: That's my answer.<br /><br />FRIEL: Would it not be an act of kindness?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No. It would be an act of extreme arrogance.<br /><br />FRIEL: That God died for you, a sinner?<br /><br />HITCHENS: It would be an act of extreme presumption saying, "What I'm doing now binds someone who hasn't yet been born." Takes away my free will, takes away my autonomy, gives me no choice in the matter. I've been told, "I'm sorry, it's too bad. The sacrifice has already been made. You're committed." What is this but a very, very crude form of tyranny and intimidation?<br /><br />FRIEL: Yeah. Well it seems like you have the right to reject it, you've done a fine job to date. So if it's true, sir, can't you at least admit, 'Yes, that would've been an act of kindness, I just don't believe that it happened"?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I've thought about is quite a lot.<br /><br />FRIEL: You can't give that up?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I have quite a long discussion of this in my book. You're not trying anything on me that's original or all that daring or playful. I make that assumption and examine it in my book. I say, "Here's what my reaction is to this offer." Please look it up and please encourage your listeners to do likewise.<br /><br />FRIEL: But sir, we're playing a little fantasy game.<br /><br />HITCHENS: I understand perfectly. I'm not as slow on the uptake as you seem to suppose. How many times do I have to tell you: I make the assumption along with you and I give you my response to it. No, I don't think it would be an act of kindness.<br /><br />FRIEL: Alright. What if...<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think it's a tyrannical act.<br /><br />FRIEL: It's a tyrannical act that somebody sacrificed his life for you?<br /><br />HITCHENS: But according to you He didn't. Because He was seen alive very shortly after these supposed events.<br /><br />FRIEL: That'd be the resurrection from the dead.<br /><br />HITCHENS: So which is it going to be, did He die or what?<br /><br />FRIEL: Yeah, He did and rose from the dead. It's called Easter, been celebrated for a couple thousand years.<br /><br />HITCHENS: To no effect.<br /><br />FRIEL: Ok, I'm sure that it hasn't affected anyone.<br /><br />HITCHENS: He was supposed to come back in the lifetime of His listeners. That was a direct promise.<br /><br />FRIEL: It depends on your understanding of eschatology. Sir, let me play another round of "What If?" before we close our time together with Christopher Hitchens.<br /><br />HITCHENS: Very well.<br /><br />FRIEL: What if the Bible is accurate? Sir, I want to share a quote with you from the Bible. Alright, sir? "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, His eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so that they," slash you, "are without excuse." Does that sound like you, sir?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, it sounds like Saint Paul. <br /><br />FRIEL: Right, but does it sound like he's describing you in Romans I?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No.<br /><br />FRIEL: You're not suppressing the obvious truth, that there's a creator because you, sir, prefer to live your own autonomous way?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No, I prefer Saint Paul when—Saint Paul is nearer to the mark when he talks about the evidence of things not seen and when he admits that most of this is supposition and the things he claiming to know cannot be known by anyone. <br /><br />FRIEL: So, sir, you're familiar with the "Prince of Preachers" Charles Spurgeon, correct?<br /><br />HITCHENS: No.<br /><br />FRIEL: You've never heard of Charles Spurgeon?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I've heard the name. I can't say I'm familiar.<br /><br />FRIEL: Ah, the "Prince of Preachers." He said, regarding a fellow like you, somebody who fights and wars against God, typically, if you want to know the reason why just follow him home. Sir, is it possible that the reason you rage so much against God is because you just want to live your own autonomous way, living any way that you want to, any lifestyle that you prefer without being accountable to your creator?<br /><br />HITCHENS: I think that's highly probable, yes.<br /><br />FRIEL: Alright, excellent. Sir, we appreciate your time. The book is called <i>god is Not Great: How Religions Poisons Absolutely 100% Everything</i>. Sir, we're grateful for your time. Thanks for playing our little game. <br /><br />HITCHENS: Any time.<br /><br />FRIEL: Goodbye, sir. "What If?" This is <i>Wretched Radio</i>.HitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970158045367019600.post-67465600179603844102010-07-15T23:02:00.005-04:002010-11-25T14:32:37.472-05:00Welcome<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6us1Caes0tod-owT2zkiFiWOHteHfomLs2ADVh2lWi8pJcRBlg-S7LCCSu-h-ViSAk3xIVqXUXFD72ItR4Tul2epEt67bXt5XaGD-ixh5NoXeCpEmx5SgBlW_gbeVz6MszYcmwImDuCW/s1600/hitchbow.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU6us1Caes0tod-owT2zkiFiWOHteHfomLs2ADVh2lWi8pJcRBlg-S7LCCSu-h-ViSAk3xIVqXUXFD72ItR4Tul2epEt67bXt5XaGD-ixh5NoXeCpEmx5SgBlW_gbeVz6MszYcmwImDuCW/s320/hitchbow.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490489571978400082" /></a>Hello and welcome to Hitchens Debates Transcripts!<br /><br />Here at HDT you will find transcripts of public debates, interviews, and discussions in which journalist and anti-theist <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens>Christopher Hitchens</a> engages believers in the grandest of all questions: Does God exist? Is Christianity good for the world? Is Perrier the best delivery system for Johnnie Walker Black?<br /><br />Wake up those small prefrontal lobes and get ready to gloat over the misfortunes of others as Hitchens crosses swords with the likes of evidentialist William Lane Craig, the-guy-who-blames-the-American-cultural-left-for-9/11 Dinesh D'Souza, professional screamer Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, the Mormon-lovin' Al Sharpton, and even his baby brother Peter.<br /><br />Hitch has recently been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and we wish him the speediest of recoveries.<br /><br />Cheers, Hitch.<br /><br />Sincerely,<br />HitchBitchHitchBitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14669686419435721239noreply@blogger.com30