“THAT’S Moral to You?” — Hitchens Explodes at Christian Interviewer Nonsense

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Why it's a very good thing that Dr. King isn't basing himself on the biblical because if he was, he'd be telling his followers, you have the right to kill anyone who gets in your way and to enslave them and to take their women as your concubines and to murder the their children and to steal their land. That's what the children of Israel are told they can do by way of the first five or so books of the uh Bible. It's in the Babylonian Talmud. We don't know of any society that didn't have some such common sensical morality.

[00:00:26]>> Religion gets its morality from us. We don't get our morality from religion.

[00:00:30]Let's start if we can with a a portrait of the um artist as a young contrarian.

[00:00:35]And I'd like to know, did you ever as a as a young man or a boy actually have any religious faith?

[00:00:42]Um I I'm terrified that someone here might have bought my book and have read my answer to that question. If you haven't, by the way, it's available at fine bookstores.

[00:00:54]Um, I'll make it I'll make it quick by I I never did. I think a lot of people have the same experience as me. I I was not I wasn't maltreated by any faith or any church or anything like that. Um, I didn't have a reverse Damascus of losing my faith. What I did was more like discover that I didn't believe. I think probably there are a fair number of people here who know what I'm talking about the same experience. Um, the way I discovered it was this. I had a a nice teacher called Mrs. Watts, an old trout.

[00:01:27]Um when I was at a boy's school in Devonshire, I must have been about 10.

[00:01:31]And she was our nature teacher. Nature walks. Come on, boys. Show you different kinds of tree, flower. I used to know the difference. Um bird um that sort of thing. Um but she was also a scripture teacher. Uh, I used to enjoy scripture lessons because it was my first I didn't know this but it was my first um work as a literary critic. I was going through well who it was called search the scriptures. They'd give you a text on a piece of gummed paper that the government would send cuz it was we're an officially Anglican country my country of birth. Um the queen is the head of the church as well as the state.

[00:02:08]You know all this and the armed forces.

[00:02:10]I hope she has a long life. If only because the moment she checks out, her bat eared, chinless, resentful, Islam fancing son will become the head of the church and the head of the state in the armed forces at that instant, which is what you get if you found a regime on the family values of Henry VII.

[00:02:33]But I digress again. Um, so the government would send these papers out and you'd be given one and gum it in your little book and it would give a chapter and a verse and you'd have to look that up and say what led up to and what led away from this verse. So they wouldn't give you the story, just the verse and you'd have to tell of what story or parable that this verse was the culmination. Really well worth doing and taught you to do some close textual analysis.

[00:03:05]Um, one day Mrs. Watts made a fatal mistake and she she tried to combine her scripture teaching with her nature teaching and she said swept away by faith. He said, "And boys, you notice how beautiful the greenery is, the trees, the fields, the shrubs, the leaves, all they're lovely shades of green, which he said is amazing because it's the color that's most restful and lovely to our eyes. So God must be very good because imagine if he'd made the leaves and the grass orange or or purple or something very clashing and and horrible to the eyes.

[00:03:46]But he didn't. made it green which is much nicer and I thought I was 10. I thought that's [ __ ] I didn't know I didn't know anything about chlorophyll say then or photosynthesis. In fact I don't know that much about it now or photo trobism or natural selection or anything. I didn't know anything like that and that no one had ever told me that it might not be true of what was in the Bible.

[00:04:14]But I thought, no, this that's absolute nonsense. It's obvious to me. I knew the uh eyes came after the trees.

[00:04:22]The natural vegetation had been there before the human eye was. How I knew this, I don't know, but I did know it.

[00:04:29]Um, turns out to be true. Um, and I could never get over it. I started to notice more and more uh discrepancies and um absurdities. And you know how it is, you can't be a little bit heretical.

[00:04:43]Um, that's partly why I favor compulsory religious instruction in schools because I know of no other way to guarantee the steady mass production of atheism.

[00:05:02]>> Do you know it never occurred to me when I asked that question it was an invitation to recite the first chapter.

[00:05:07]Well, there you go.

[00:05:08]>> But, uh, you've done so.

[00:05:09]>> If you want the hard copy, still find paperback version. Listen, uh, God is not great. I mean, you can tell and everyone here can tell that, uh, your use of language is mesmerizing.

[00:05:21]The book is a is a palemic and as such, it's quite intoxicating as well, I think. But for this conversation, I've been looking for the flaws in your argument. And here's what I think the main one is. Um, you've exposed every conceivable facet of religion's capacity for evil, but you've made virtually no admissions at all about its capacity for good. So I wonder why you refused to do that.

[00:05:46]>> Well, I thought there were enough books making that point.

[00:05:51]Um, so I would write one stressing the dark side of it if you like, but I'm not going to pretend. I don't know what you mean. I mean, it is another question that I know I always know I'm going to be faced with. So I don't think I I duck it so much as to try and anticipate it.

[00:06:06]My the way I've resolved this to try and make it um condense is this um you have to point out to me I've tried this with quite leading theologians and members of various religions and important clerical spokesman. I said, "You give me an example of a moral action taken or a moral statement made by a believer because of their faith that I couldn't make as a person who doesn't have faith." And I have not so far had anyone point such a thing out to me except the the um um well, let me come to that in a second because u I haven't yet had a convincing answer offered. But the corollery question is this. Can you name me a wicked action undertaken or a wicked statement made by someone purely because of their religion? And you've already thought of one. Everyone here can think of one right away. And you've thought of another one, too. Now you're thinking about it. To answer my own question, um I I was once told, well, I've thought of something. It's a statement. And I said, okay, tell me. And it was, father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And I said, yes, but I by definition couldn't make that statement.

[00:07:22]for obvious reasons. I mean, I I'm not in the position of having such a father or being able to uh make such an appeal to him. So, it isn't it isn't something I'm forbidden to do by faith. It's something no Christian could say either.

[00:07:35]Uh but it was a good try. I have come up with a remark because I try very hard to to argue against myself and it came to me the other day that Levville WA during the early struggle of the Solidarity movement in Poland was interviewed as the shipyards were being surrounded by the Polish militia and army and his little band of of resistors and dissident was in there with the with the hard fairly hardcore of the Polish working class around it but a perilous situation and he was asked by an interviewer aren't you scared Dad, aren't you afraid? And he said with complete composure, he said, I'm not afraid of anyone but God. And I thought, well, I think that's a nonsensical statement, but I think it's a very noble one, and I wouldn't be able to make it.

[00:08:21]Um, it is a bit contextual, however, that was the favorite statement of General Edwin Walker, the right-wing crackpot who was the founder of the John Burch Society in the United States as well, the man who Lee Harvey Oswald practiced assassination on. in fact first try um dry run you might say um but I I I would have to say I'm I'm aware of what a statement like that can mean to people indeed >> in the same way as I'm aware of what a stained glass window or a psalm or um a mosque can mean to people that alas it can't mean to me >> religion poisons the mind when it teaches people to explain the world backward Christianity tells people to start with God then force nature to fit the story.

[00:09:06]But the facts do not need that story.

[00:09:09]Plants are green because of chlorophyll and photosynthesis, not because a god picked a relaxing color for human eyes.

[00:09:16]Even Genesis says plants came before humans. So the argument collapses inside the Bible itself. Genesis 111-13 has plants appear before Genesis 1:26-27 when humans are created.

[00:09:30]That is the problem with religion. It trains people to protect belief before they respect truth.

[00:09:36]>> Indeed. And and there is a passage in your book actually. I mean you you say that you can't think of something that you couldn't have done, a moral action that you couldn't have done without having religion. Fair enough. But you do in your book single out on one occasion, it seems to be the closest you come to praising anybody who is overtly religious. It's Dr. Martin Luther King and what inspired him. And you write about the placards that appeared at these rallies carrying the words, "I am a man."

[00:10:05]>> Yes.

[00:10:06]>> Carried by itinerant black workers. And I'm just wondering whether you can't see it is the most ground down garbage workers in Memphis.

[00:10:17]>> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But can you not see in that the capacity for good in religion because everything that he said and did was based upon biblical teaching. Um what I go on to say is that that's precisely not the case. You see the Taylor Branch's biography of him following his king's own um biblical annexations. The first volume is called I think um the pillar of fire. Uh the second volume is called the parting of the waters. The third is called crossing the Jordan. Um it's all the image is that of the Exodus from slavery.

[00:10:54]But I say in my book, and I'll repeat, because I never tire of doing so, um why it's a very good thing that Dr. King isn't basing himself on the biblical, because if he was, he'd be telling his followers, you have the right to kill anyone who gets in your way and to enslave them and to take their women as your concubines and to murder the their children and to steal their land. That's what the children of Israel are told they can do by way of the first five or so books of the uh Bible.

[00:11:25]>> Except Dr. King would probably tell you that he drew his inspiration from parts of the sermon on the mount which is considered the main source of Christian pacifism.

[00:11:33]>> Yes. But he's the the the the stuff he talks about is going is Moses going to the mountaintop. Indeed, I say I think what it is the most moving speech he makes is the night before he dies or is murdered. He says, "I've been to the mountaintop and I know I'm not going to see Canaan. Uh it's it's far enough for me. I've seen all I I have to." And it's it's eerie watching it cuz you know what he doesn't which is he isn't going to make it. He's he's in fact he's not going to make it to sunset the next day.

[00:11:59]As it happens, it was a favorite speech of his. He made it on dozens of occasions. It was part of his repertoire. It's less a little less eerie when you know that. But I just say I'm very glad that Moses was not in fact his mentor because if so, King would have been a bloodthirsty conquering racist and slavemonger, which it's a good thing he wasn't. The great dis the great problem with the King legacy is this. It's meant that for every school child in America, the legacy of black secularism in the civil rights movement has been completely abolished. The people who actually organized the March on Washington, A. Philip Randolph for example, fantastic black trade union leader. Um Bayard Rustin, a brilliant black socialist intellectual, the people who actually did it. And Philip Randolph proposed the first march in Washington during the years of Franklin Roosevelt.

[00:12:48]All these people are gone. And it's the prevailing view among most white liberals that black people only really respond to preachers. And as a result, an enormous number of black frauds have been foisted on the population. as long as they can get the word reverend in front of their name. Jeremiah Wright, um Jesse Jackson, uh the Al Sharpton, I mean, you know, Chor Syeran frauds um of the lowest kind. Everyone thinks, well, they must be okay cuz these black guys, they sure love them some some ministers.

[00:13:22]>> I I'll can I >> It's not a good thing.

[00:13:24]>> Christopher, I I'll I'll press you on this point. I'll press you on this point because uh your argument is if he was to take biblical texts, he would have got his followers to turn their swords upon their oppressors. But if he actually took his moral compass, if his moral compass was in fact uh based upon the sermon on the mount, based upon the biatitudes, it would be turn the other cheek, love your enemy as yourself, blessed are the peacemakers. These are things you don't me mention at all in your book and yet they did inform his teachings. Um, just a second on the oppressors. Um, Moses wasn't telling his followers that they could kill their oppressors. He was saying that they could kill anyone who got in their way.

[00:14:05]That's why we don't run into any Amalachites anymore, for example. And he explicitly said, I mean, I'm not I'm not a pacifist. If Martin Luther King had said to his people, you have the right to rebel and resist and use violence against racism, I would have been absolutely with him. Um, as I have been on other occasions when that's been the case. uh but he would know to be to be consistent he'd had to say no we can we have the right to enslave people we have the right to commit genocide that's what the biblical precedent would be as for the biatitudes that that is it seems to me pacifism in its strictly immoral sense it says it's wrong to resist evil I don't think that's true I think it's immoral to say that you shouldn't resist evil >> let's go back to the general proposition that >> and by the way to say you love your neighbor as yourself is What I mean by compulsory love, um it's a very sinister injunction. You cannot possibly love another person in the same in the same way as you love say your lover or your family or let alone in my case at any rate yourself. Um it's asking too much. The golden rule says it's asking too much and it's guar and that's not that's not all that's wrong with it. It's asking too much and it's guaranteeing that you will fail and therefore that you have to feel constantly guilty for your shortcomings.

[00:15:24]It's it's demanding the impossible for you on pain of hell fire. This is not a good thing. It's not good for the morals either. The golden rule demand for yourself. Oh, sorry. Demand expect for demand of others the selfrespect that you would demand for yourself. That's fine. That's doable. It's hard but it's feasible.

[00:15:46]Um, it has a contradiction in it, a big trap door actually, which you can ask me about if you like. But at least it's not immoral and not but it's not Christian.

[00:15:54]It comes it's it appears that the idea of the golden rule do unto others as you'd like to be treated yourself. It appears in the analytics of Confucious.

[00:16:01]It's in the Babylonian Talmood. We don't know of any society that didn't have some such common sensical morality.

[00:16:08]>> Okay.

[00:16:09]>> Religion gets its morality from us. We don't get our morality from religion.

[00:16:13]Christianity loves to borrow moral progress after it happens, then act like it created it. The civil rights movement gets reduced to church language while the secular organizers get pushed into the background.

[00:16:25]A Philip Randolph and Bay Rustin helped build the march on Washington and neither needed a Bible to know racism was wrong. The Bible also gives no clean moral record here. Deuteronomy 20 commands the killing of entire cities.

[00:16:41]Numbers 31 allows women captives.

[00:16:44]First Samuel 15 orders the destruction of Amalecch. So when religion claims moral ownership, push back hard. Human rights came from human struggle, not ancient holy violence.

[00:17:03]Since you since you kept going on the point, uh let me let me go back to Kings for a moment because the assumption uh that he never was influenced by the New Testament seems to say that.

[00:17:13]>> Okay.

[00:17:14]>> I say that his main narrative was Exodus. Um of course he was a Christian.

[00:17:18]>> You also say his most Lutheran his most his most imperative teaching was that of nonviolence. Now if that didn't come from the beatitudes, where did it come from?

[00:17:25]>> No, no, it's saying it gently. I'm saying that's not moral to me. That's not moral teaching. There are two things wrong with the biatitudes. One is the idea of non-resistance.

[00:17:33]Um the other is the idea of loving of compulsory love to an impossible degree.

[00:17:38]I don't think these are moral preachments. I think they're fanatical preachments made by the same person who said take no thought for the moral. Uh don't care about clothing or investment or education or any of these things.

[00:17:52]Just drop everything and follow me.

[00:17:53]That's moral. A mad preaching means you don't care about your children's education. You don't care about building a house. You don't care about uh thrift, um about investment, about husbandry, any of these things. Why? Because the world's going to come to an end.

[00:18:11]That's what the preacher was saying. And meaning these things are all pointless.

[00:18:15]The world is going to come to an end.

[00:18:16]You're going to be around when it comes to an end. It'll happen in your lifetime. So throw everything away for the very disastrous apocalyp apoc apocalypticism that I began tonight by trying to criticize.

[00:18:29]>> But King's nonviolence worked well. It worked in he was lucky I think because there was um >> preferred the other way around though that he urged his followers to take up the sword. I would if it hadn't if what he tried the first time hadn't worked.

[00:18:45]If it had been resisted much longer um they were going to take up if not the sword they were going to resort to violence. They indeed a lot of the time did and every negotiation uh with the Dixierat very highly organized violent reaction was conducted with the knowledge they had not theoretical either practical that if we don't negotiate with this guy person much rougher guys we will have to be dealing with so there was the believable threat of violence behind the nonviolence but as it happens historically the United states couldn't postpone the question of civil rights any longer and um it had become a big issue in the cold war, a big embarrassment to the United States in the cold war. Um there was a probably a majority among at least northern whites in favor of emancipation. Um there hadn't been any mass immigration to the United States for a very long time. Uh there was no further excuse to put it off. It was really a case of the right man at the right hour.

[00:19:46]But that's that's a relativistic point, isn't it? Let's go back to um the general proposition.

[00:19:51]>> But the struggle for civil rights would have occurred whether there was uh whether there been a Christian revelation or not. I mean the the American Anti-Slavery Society for example was largely begun by people um who were of no faith, people like Thomas Payne and Benjamin Franklin. Um the likelihood that you'd be a secularist and in favor of civil rights would be extremely high, almost 100%. the likelihood that you'd be an opponent of civil rights and be a Christian roughly 100% the other way. Um, remember the the whole mandate for slavery and segregation is taken directly from the Bible where it is warranted. Remember the Ku Klux Clan is a Protestant identity organization. It's a specifically uh declaredly avowedly Christian Protestant group. Um, if if people are going to say that biblical inspiration is allowed, how are they going to say it's only allowed in their own case?

[00:20:45]>> Let's go back to your general proposition that religion poisons everything. And you do tend to argue by analogy, anecdote, and example. So, let me do the same thing >> here if I can. A lot like a lot of Australians, I've actually spent a good deal of time uh taking trips to the island of Bali over the years and I simply find it impossible to imagine that Bali would be a better place if stripped of its religion.

[00:21:10]So I'd ask you just to to talk to that because you know to me it's an incredibly appealing place precisely because the rhythms of life are maintained by a religious calendar and by strict adherence to principles.

[00:21:24]Yes. Um I've been to Bali too, though mainly to investigate.

[00:21:29]>> I don't know if you realize that's a song, but you probably >> but mainly to investigate um religious thugery in my case and I went partly out of solidarity to that Australian bar in Deasar Patty's Patty's Pub Reloaded as it was called by then um where all the worst actions in the island were conducted by people of faith. But I do I guess know what you mean. There are those who say that these Eastern practices aren't really religions. I mean, they it's said of Buddhism, for example, that it isn't one. Um, I have I'm in two minds about this. Most Buddhists claim that they're not religious. It's not a god business. It's a it's a a spiritual practice, if you like.

[00:22:08]>> Well, in Bali, 95% of the people roughly adhere to what they call the Hindu Dharma.

[00:22:14]>> Yes.

[00:22:14]>> It's a blend of Hinduism, Buddhism, and ancestor worship.

[00:22:18]>> Um, to not call that a religion is stretching the point. Um, no, I agree. I mean, it's it's more like it seems to me more like a culture or a practice. I mean, what um what what threats do they make against non-believers? Um, we don't know. I mean, it's very also very highly evolved. When you say it's a bit like asking me, can I imagine um England, my country of birth, or okay, anywhere else in Europe without cathedrals. No, I can't. I absolutely can't. or rather if I try I don't I don't like the idea.

[00:22:51]>> Yes. But the difference is that 95% of the population don't worship in those cathedrals. Whereas in Bali people's lives are controlled and run along this religious clock. Um you know there it's the harvest. There are even there are even ways of worshiping your vehicles, your machinery.

[00:23:08]>> Sure. Silly but probably harmless. I guess what I what I say >> you wouldn't like to see it gone though would you?

[00:23:15]>> No. What I say in my in my in my introduction is that all of that and more, for better and worse, I don't it's not I don't mind. I mean, how how tolerant can I get? How nice do you want me to be? It's not it's just that I I may I may dislike it very much, but I I won't I I don't expect people to give it up or want them to. I I insist only that they leave me out of it. Okay? That I don't have to know what they do.

[00:23:44]that they joke that they don't want a subsidy from the government for it, that they don't try and teach it to my children, that they don't expect me uh to uh have to live under it in any way, then that's all absolutely fine. But uh therefore for me the test of religion is in a way whether it procilitizes or not.

[00:24:00]And it seemed to me in Bali that if there ever was a time when they did that, they'd given it up. I'm sure there was a time of terrible spiritual and religious warfare in that part of the world. It can't have been the only part of the world where there never was. The Balan actually ran from an Islamic invasion. That's why they exist.

[00:24:17]>> I mean, there's that, too. But I mean, I bet among between different Buddhist and Hindu groups, there've been terrible episodes of homicide and worse. There are some parts of the world where they've calmed down and got over it. But it doesn't entitle us to forget what religion was like when it thought it could get away with it.

[00:24:31]>> Okay. But I mean, >> anyway, my my my principle is absolutely one of coexistence and even of cultural admiration as long as the fangs are drawn. And if you say they've been drawn in Bali, good on them.

[00:24:44]>> It it's just it just sort of goes against the idea that religion poisons everything, which is your your basic point. Perhaps it's a rhetorical >> Well, you're describing a culture and praising it as far as I know justly to to precisely the extent to which it doesn't resemble really a religion. Now, is that me having it both ways?

[00:25:05]>> I mean, it it certainly it certainly resembles certainly resembles a religion to me and I would say probably to the majority of the Balines people.

[00:25:14]>> What if you get what do you get? What do you get if you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian?

[00:25:19]Someone who comes and knocks on your door for no particular reason.

[00:25:24]Unitarians are religious too.

[00:25:28]They they say the apparent belief is one God at the most. Um, they don't I don't have any I don't have this I don't have the energy for real quarrel with them, but I mean I don't I don't terrifically respect it either. As long as all I ask is that it leaves me alone.

[00:25:47]>> Christianity cannot honestly claim the civil rights victory while ignoring how often it defended the abuse. The same Bible used in churches also told slaves to obey their masters. Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, and 1 Peter 2:18. That language gave slaveholders and segregationists a religious shield. Then groups like the Ku Klux Clan wrapped racism in Protestant Christian identity and called it moral. So the problem is clear. When Christianity helps, believers call it holy. When Christianity harms, they call it a misuse. That is not morality. That is a rigged argument protecting religion from responsibility.

[00:26:29]>> Let's bring the principle closer to home and to our home here. I mean um let's look at another example. There's a a place called the Oasis here in Sydney.

[00:26:38]It's a shelter for uh young homeless people was a subject of very moving documentary not so long ago. And from that it's clear that the heart and soul of this place is a Salvation Army captain uh called Paul Molds and his wife. Now they're non-judgmental as far as I can see. They don't seem to be pushing their religion. Essentially, they practice their faith by helping others. So, can that be poisonous?

[00:27:04]>> No. But in what sense in that case is it religious?

[00:27:08]Again, you're saying these people are so nice, they're hardly religious at all.

[00:27:21]>> No, no. You you you took you took care to pick the example where their faith had nothing to do with No, we're not mentioning any of that.

[00:27:27]>> It's not clear at all.

[00:27:29]>> We just like we just like running orphanages. Now, I'll just tell you something. Most people of faith who like running orphanages aren't that nice.

[00:27:37]>> And I know that Australia is one of the places where I don't need to underline that. So again, if you're going to accept or claim the one, you have to take on the other. Whereas I'll give you an example. Um, I like giving blood. Okay, it's not that I think I should and that I was brought up in the idea of the National Health Service, but I actually positively enjoy it. Um, more than shedding it.

[00:28:05]Um, I find it a pleasurable, relaxing experience and I I give pleasure I get pleasure from the idea that the National Health Service or wherever I am isn't going to run out of blood and I don't lose a pint cuz I regrow it quite quickly, but someone else gets one. I like that. There's a great book by old socialist called Peter Titmas called The Gift Relationship about how people like to help and they get positive benefit to themselves from helping other people. And I also have a very rare blood group indeed. And I want to make sure that when it's my turn to hemorrhage, there's enough blood around the blood.

[00:28:39]Why make a strenuous thing of it? I don't say, "And by the way, vote for my party now or come over to my team or so." No, I've just I've just done a good thing for its own sake. How about that?

[00:28:54]>> And the sake and the sake includes my own. And we this is a human species we're talking about. as a as a test of your principle then and I'm going right back to where we started here because you went on a bit of a tangent but uh just sticking to these sticking to these people >> sticking to Captain Molds and his wife just for a moment I mean they are people of faith >> that is what drives them to do what they do 24 hours a day okay they're not proletizing >> right >> and perhaps that's the thing that for you for you lets them off the hook but in fact they are still religious and they are evidently doing something good.

[00:29:32]So I'm simply saying your principle doesn't hold up in that case.

[00:29:36]>> Well, I don't know enough about them to be sure about that. Not trying funny. I I just I don't know. But I mean, if if there's a motive apart from for its own sake, then I would be inclined to suspect it, however ostensibly sweet they were. Yes, I would say that if there's a hint of prosperization if if they're so careful to point out they're not doing it.

[00:29:56]>> I wonder why they're so keen to disclaim something.

[00:30:00]>> I just I just But I mean, you know, I give I give my money to charities like Medic Frontier or Am Amnesty International that go and help my fellow creatures without any uh supernatural um inducement or consideration.

[00:30:18]Okay, this sort of brings us back to uh and we talked about this the other night, but it brings us back to why people seek solace in religion. The killer quote of course came from Karl Marx. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world just as it is, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation.

[00:30:40]>> I mean, it's interesting he said it so clearly and so well. uh and doesn't that sort of at least demonstrate why it's still today in existence? Well, I to complete the quotation which um is from the his the introduction to his um critique of Hegel's philosophy of right. He goes on to say um criticism of religion has uh is necessary um not sorry criticism has plucked the flowers from the chain.

[00:31:11]Uh not so that um men may wear the chain without consolation but so that they may break the chain and cull the living flower. So what Markx is saying is of course it's a consolation and it it arises from a deep spiritual hunger but it's a false consolation. It's not it's not the friend it claims to be and it's always vulgarly misrepresented as Markx having said that religion was an opiate of the people that it was a mere narcotic a ruling class uh drug uh scam which it's of course not. It's self-generating and it comes I think not just from unhappiness or loneliness or what was sometimes in that same uh discussion called alienation but from a need that we would have no matter what the material circumstances were um for well I would say the numinous would be one word the transcendent would be another the things that we we know about without being able to quantify them music uh love landscape for a lot of people I think um different times of day uh some combinations of all those things um the nocturn um I wouldn't trust anyone who was who was turned deaf on these things but I think the the the great intellectual and in some ways um cultural task is to satisfy hungers of this kind um artistically um and aesthetically without them becoming the pretext for superstition um or empowering the supernatural or anyone who wants to build power on that.

[00:32:52]And I don't think it's too much to ask.

[00:32:53]There are many people I mean this building is in a way a testimony to it.

[00:32:57]It's not a cathedral exactly but it's where people can come uh for music and for a sense of there being something higher and finer than the everyday. Uh but it doesn't gratify uh any cult or any um any any ambition that has supernatural uh well that exploits the supernatural for what are unfortunately rather crudely material purposes.

[00:33:24]Markx thought he had the answer. Um but your appeal here to higher values and so on is interesting. And the question is whether it really will happen. I mean, and the question is whether we've gone from dialectical materialism to plain old materialism and whether that's all that's going to be left when you take away or strip away religious thought.

[00:33:48]Well, um I was asked this question earlier um on this visit. I asked a lot say you know the the alternative is the world of McDonald's and um condoms and pointless uh tourism and pleasure seeeking and emptyanism and so forth. I I fail to see the force of this critique uh in two ways. One is if you if you if you really look at the intestinal life of any religion, you'll find it's extremely earthy and materialistic.

[00:34:21]Um, are you going to really tell me that the Catholic Church lives on spirituality?

[00:34:28]Um, even just look at the outlines of its prellets. Um, just look at the look at its finances. Look at the it's pretty gross. Uh, look at look at what the how the Islamic Republic of Iran actually conducts business. It's a racket. It's a shameful obvious racket which includes, by the way, dealing in things profiting from things like child prostitution and and narcotics. Look at how the Taliban finances itself. These so-called aesthetics and self-sacrificing suicidal visionaries. It's a crime family is what it is. That's the first thing. I I've never met a church that isn't completely in in and of the material world and can't wouldn't yield to that analysis.

[00:35:05]Second, religion wants credit every time a believer does something kind. But kindness does not require a church, a priest, or a promise of heaven. People help each other because empathy, cooperation, and shared survival are part of being human. Blood donation proves the point. A person can give part of himself to save a stranger with no prayer, no conversion pitch, and no supernatural reward. That is cleaner morality. Religion often turns suffering into a sales funnel. Comfort first, belief second, control after that. real compassion helps people without asking for their mind in return.

[00:35:45]>> And I tried a bit of this in my my shorter address. Um if you don't think that contemplating say the work of Einstein or Edwin Hubble um or Steven Hawking doesn't have something of the transcendent and the numminous to it, I then I feel sorry for you. It's almost at some points it's almost ecstatic uh what they're what they're talking about the the sheer beauty of the natural world uh the what I call the all inspiring character of of physics. This this this is really magnificent. It's marvelous. It deserves almost to be called miraculous. Um who here knows what I mean by the event horizon?

[00:36:30]I well I couldn't see you if you did but I and by the way I don't really know either. But here's how Hawking, he's such a brilliant writer about science.

[00:36:38]This is how he describes it. So the event horizon is the lip of the black hole. It's the the uh aperture itself.

[00:36:47]Um if you could travel to it in some way and you could get to the edge of the black hole, get to the little black hole, you'd be at the event horizon. And if you could fall in, be pulled into it, you'd be able to see in some way the past as well as the future. except of course you wouldn't have time. Um there's always something but uh there's a a contemplate that for a bit it's not McDonald's.

[00:37:17]Um and in fact one of Hawking's friends says to him that if he himself were ever diagnosed with a terminal illness and if he could arrange to go of his own valition that's how he would want to do it. Um so no it's uh if it's the same as the people who say uh that to other forms of totalitarianism not explicitly theocratic are secular.

[00:37:41]um an argument that keeps on annoying me and you'll probably want to return to it. But just for now, I'd say well because I never don't get asked, but I just say, well, I'm on this particular aspect of it. to say um to have this argument fairly, you'd have to point to a society not that had been Stalinized or Nazified or something of this sort, but that was based on the on the veneration of veneration of respect for study of um Voltater, Lucriccius, Einstein, um Galileo, Spinoza, possibly the greatest ethicist there ever was, uh Burch and Russell, Thomas Jefferson. So you'd have to find a society where those were these sort of if you like the moral and philosophical authorities and and see how that society had degenerated into slavery, cannibalism, starvation, purges and witch hunts. And that experiment alas we have not yet run. But that's the one I would propose. It's it's odd u when I think about it.

[00:38:45]It's uh it's really odd in fact that I chose to do this as a devil's advocate interview, but uh let's leave that aside.

[00:38:52]>> Oh no, wait. I'm sorry. I have to now.

[00:38:54]Um I was asked by >> Oh, no.

[00:38:56]>> It's an anecdote. Not chapter 10.

[00:38:58]>> No, it's an anecdote. I was asked Oh, no. Not chapter 10 again. Please. Uh not that. Um, in case you don't know and haven't got the damn book yet, and I'm not sure even, it's not in there yet, but um, I was asked by the Vatican to testify against the saintthood nomination of Mother Theresa, against initially her beatatification, and I said, "Yes, of course." Um, I was very I was very honored to be asked and yes, your holiness. The first time I've ever said that. Uh, and the last as well. So I I went to testify and I made a discovery that I I thought I'd share with you. Um everyone used to think they knew one thing about the Catholic Church, whether they were Catholics or not, that in saintthood arguments, they have a devil's advocate, advocacy.

[00:39:43]And it was true until very recently. The last pope scrapped this office. The office doesn't exist any longer. Uh it was partly so he could fast track saintthood. He he made more saints the last pope did than his 10 predecessors combined in double. So the avocado office was shut down. No longer is there. Um so I had to testify just in a seminar room with a monsenior and a deacon and a priest and a tape recorder and a bible. And I realized halfway through that I'd just become the first person in history to have represented the devil proono.

[00:40:25]Okay. Which is a distinction of a sort.

[00:40:28]You took us in the into the realms of cosmology a short time ago. Here's another quote from your book. Religion has run out of justifications thanks to the telescope and the microscope. I mean, you're simply arguing that a >> bit simplistic that, isn't it?

[00:40:41]>> Yes, it is a bit.

[00:40:43]>> But you are simply arguing that science has killed off religion. Is that right?

[00:40:47]Um, I'm saying I think it's incompatible with it's the two ways of thinking as well as the two modes of discovery that follow um are incompatible with the irreconcilable.

[00:40:58]Yes, I do think so. But it's a bit it's a bit crude to say that um the microscope and the telescope alone will do it. I'm thinking more about how what we found out about our own human nature, namely the microscope. We know we know a lot more about what what makes us morally and ethically the way we are and what what our kinship is with the lower animals as well. Um and the from the telescope we know more about the origins of our cosmos. It's a shorthand for what I was trying to enlarge upon this evening.

[00:41:27]>> Yeah. The problem have to revisit that.

[00:41:30]>> The problem is there are going to remain fundamental questions which science almost certainly will never answer. For example, if the origin of the universe was the big bang, what caused that to happen? How could the entire universe simply pop into existence magically for no reason at all? I mean, because science won't be able to answer those questions. Religion will always seek to.

[00:41:54]Well, I think it's the other way around, actually. I mean, the reason why religion is such a great argument to be having is that it is our first attempt at making sense. I mean, religion is what you get before philosophy. It's our first attempt at philosophy. Most philosophers began started off as religious. Um as did many ethicists.

[00:42:13]It's our first attempt at cosmology.

[00:42:16]Um first attempt at healthcare by means of miracle alas, but still um and prayer. It's a it's our first attempt to make sense. Um but uh and science doesn't completely replace all those questions but it says that there's no need for a supernatural attempt to answer them. In other words, if you say because we don't know what the scientific origins of the big bang are, uh which father lmet didn't know any more than I do or Einstein did, there must be a supernatural explanation. That isn't logical at all. And if there was a supernatural uh progenitor, where did that supernatural progenitor come from?

[00:42:55]who created that. So you get nothing out of it but an infinite regression. And I think the meanest application to science is more satisfying than that and much more likely to yield an answer that you can at least argue about. Whereas if you're simply told you have a creator and he has a plan for you, um it explains nothing and it has reactionary implications because it suggests there are people who can't just tell you what to do. There are plenty of those as it is. of people who say God tells me to tell you what to do and that's slavery.

[00:43:28]>> The God did it answer is not an explanation. It is a stop sign. When religion cannot explain the universe, it points to a creator, then refuses to answer the obvious next question. Who created the creator? Science admits what it does not know, then keeps testing.

[00:43:46]Religion fills the gap with authority.

[00:43:48]That is why it becomes dangerous. It turns mystery into obedience.

[00:43:53]The telescope showed we are not the center of the universe. The microscope showed we are connected to other life.

[00:44:00]Religion fought both ideas because facts threaten control. Wonder does not need a church. Truth does not need permission from scripture. Incidentally, um you make this point yourself, don't you, about this infinite regression of creators. And in fact, Aristotle concluded that the logic all of all of this would necessitate 47 or 55 gods.

[00:44:25]>> Yes.

[00:44:26]>> What's the mathematics?

[00:44:27]>> I have no idea.

[00:44:30]>> There's a lot about Aristotle I don't understand.

[00:44:35]>> And some of it's in that song. But >> yes, >> from Wimulu.

[00:44:41]>> Well, the I think it was actually the University of Walu.

[00:44:44]>> Walu. So I knew I was pronouncing Yeah.

[00:44:45]Yes. Yes. Aristotle was a bugger for the >> Yeah. Plato. Yes.

[00:44:50]>> Never mind.

[00:44:53]>> John Stewart Mill of his own free will on half a pound of Chandandy got spectacularly ill. But Plato they say could stick it away half a crate of whiskey every day. And of course Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.

[00:45:06]Thomas Hobbes was a slave to his drum.

[00:45:08]And Rene Deart was pissed as a fart. I drink therefore I am.

[00:45:17]Okay.

[00:45:19]If my wife was >> How the hell did that happen?

[00:45:21]>> Yeah, I didn't really know.

[00:45:23]>> Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed. Lovely little thinker, but bugger when he's pissed.

[00:45:31]>> There's something about the raising of the wrist.

[00:45:33]>> There's nothing nature couldn't teach you about the raising of the wrist.

[00:45:35]>> Yes. Okay, >> let's continue.

[00:45:38]>> Manuel K was a real piss.

[00:45:41]very sull and stable. Martin Hyde was a boozy beggar. He could think you under the table.

[00:45:50]>> David Hume could out consume >> shopenhar and Hegel.

[00:45:55]>> Hegel. Yes. Say again.

[00:45:56]>> And Vickenstein was a boozy swine who was just as sloshed as Schlaggel.

[00:46:07]I >> think that's all they wrote. As you can see, Christopher is widely read.

[00:46:12]Okay, fast forward to today. Um, acutely aware that they will never be able to answer some of these big questions about existence. Some scientists have come up with the idea of quantum cosmology.

[00:46:25]And it seems that, and I think you almost alluded to this yourself, that quantum physics almost has a theological dimension. Now, could this become in fact the new religion?

[00:46:39]>> Well, um I think that there are signs of I mean I think that look to back up, I think that the temptation to worship has to be admitted as being innate in us. I mean, there are very few people who are born without it. Um I think I may be one of them, but I mean, I don't say I'm completely immune to superstition either. I mean, I'm I'm a primate. Um I I think for that reason I don't think religion is eradicable or that it would be desirable if it could be eradicated.

[00:47:08]I think it needs to be if you like domesticated, brought under control. Um that very quotation from Markx that I use in his critique of Hegel um uh shows that he understands that this is a product of the human soul if you wish or human personality. It's not just the result of unresolved material contradictions. Thus it would be it is it's been folly for any communist regime to try and put it down to put that shortly. Um so yes it's possible that people could become worshippers of physics. Yeah. Or the quantum. Um just as in my view and it's it's beginning to worry me in some of the the green and environmental movements there's a feeling that we've brought punishment upon ourselves. you know that we've sinned and that we've we've uh and there indeed there are people who look upon I haven't been into this Gaia stuff very much but who look upon the planet as in some sense something that needs to be propitiated and placated I can I can hear some echoes of this in in some apparently modern and reasonbased and evidence-based movements >> so yeah it's always there and you always have to be on the lookout for it >> I'm actually talking about um physicians well not physicians but quantum physicians, I suppose you would call them cosmologists, >> put very simply, um the idea is that things can just happen spontaneously.

[00:48:30]Particles can pop into existence without warning and disappear without warning.

[00:48:35]And the corrotery of that according to Paul Davies among others is that the entire universe could have just popped into existence.

[00:48:42]I'm reading this book about the quantum now and about Heisenberg. There was this discovery that it seems that a particle isn't so much pop into existence though might but it can be there and then be there reassembled with no one knowing where it was in between which is like a poltergeist or something except that it's not because there aren't any poltergeists. You can't measure them.

[00:49:04]Whereas with this there's a chance um I haven't got very far with the book yet but there's a chance of it being of it yielding to analysis. Um, it's certainly the only method we have had any luck with in the past >> and one p potential.

[00:49:22]>> And of course, we don't like to think of ourselves as random.

[00:49:25]Um, it's not in us to feel that we're just an accident any more than we can picture our own extinction, let alone the extinction of our whole our whole species. But it it has to be faced. It's no good saying because that thought is depressing, we should banish it in favor of something more uplifting because that means you get all the bad news anyway and in the meantime you've been fooling yourself.

[00:49:50]Let's go to someone you talked about during your talk but didn't sort of we didn't go into any detail. Steven J.

[00:49:56]Gould and his work on fossils in the so-called Burgess shale deep in the Canadian Rockies which actually helped to establish the origins of human life.

[00:50:06]Um pinning it back onto this tiny little creature called the Pa grassallets. Tell us about that. Yeah, there's a there's a the Burgess Shale is this some of you will I'm sure already know this, but it's a it's a place in the K Rockies where essentially half of a mountain fell away. Um, so you get a side view, a cross-section of a mountain looked at from the side. Very useful because you see all these stems and branches of life and the fossil record. You're not drilling down for it. You're surveying it like that. Scientists go there in a big way. It's it's the best example we have. And what's very striking about it is how many of the branches and um uh sprigs go nowhere. They just taper off. Uh Gould in fact says it's silly to think of evolution as a tree. It's much more uh useful to think of it as a big bush.

[00:50:59]It goes in all directions. A tree seems to have a sense of upward photoropic movement. This is more like a bush that's growing sideways and so on. So the the question is suppose you could uh scan all this picture onto a tape mixing the metaphor slightly. Rewind that tape to the back to the beginning. Play it again. There's absolutely no guarantee that it would come out the same way. In fact, the likelihood that it would come out the same way is almost nothing.

[00:51:34]Very sobering thought. And in the in the succession of uh evolutions that led to ourselves, there's one moment where there's a tiny creature called a picare grasslands. Grasslands simply meaning graceful, meaning bendy, which has the beginnings of a vertebrae system of a spinal column.

[00:51:55]Um, and that's the creature from which we got the idea of having a a spine um and built upon it. If it had been left out of the mix, there's no homo sapiens either. And it's sort of that big.

[00:52:09]And if the tape was replayed, it might not show up in the right time and place.

[00:52:14]>> From which you conclude randomness and no plan.

[00:52:17]>> Well, certainly I would certainly say no plan or because I can't quite say that because no, no one can be that certain.

[00:52:26]No plan that isn't fantastically wasteful, capricious, arbitrary, and and run by a designer who half the time doesn't know what he's doing. A mad scientist. In other words, >> religion hates randomness because randomness destroys the fantasy that humans were the planned center of everything. Evolution does not look like a straight road designed for us. It looks messy, wasteful, and full of dead ends.

[00:52:52]The Burgess Shale fossil record shows life branching in many directions with countless forms disappearing before they led anywhere. Human existence depended on fragile accidents, including early vertebrae life that could have easily vanished. That is a brutal problem for Christianity. A loving designer would not need billions of years of extinction, suffering, mutation, and failure to make one species. That looks less like divine planning and more like blind nature.

[00:53:21]and possibly a very nasty one. I mean, in other words, you certainly you can't say it's a benign plan. No, no, you could you could not say this was a heavenly father plan. Um, it would the implications of there being a planner of that plan are much more frightening than the implications of it being random.

[00:53:40]We're we're running towards the end, but I want to quickly go to Steven J.

[00:53:44]Gould's own philosophy because he mentioned it earlier. Um he was not an atheist in spite of understanding this.

[00:53:50]He was an agnostic um who took the view that science and religion ask different questions about life.

[00:53:59]>> Um and he reached this conclusion if we keep science and religion apart neither one can oppress the other. But in fact he he wanted to and he said this I believe with all my heart in a respectful even loving concordat between science and religion. Now you admire him a lot.

[00:54:18]>> Yeah I do. I think he was one of the great educators of all time and that's why it cost me a lot of pain to say why I disagree with him and and at such length when he was a boy he was a he was a Marxist um and I think he overcompensated for not being one by trying to be more friendly towards religion than it than it deserves.

[00:54:40]Um and I well for the reasons I've already given I I don't think it's true that there can be a real coexistence. I think they're constantly trying to patrol the same frontier and in the case of religion to cross it in in inappropriate ways. I mean why should it be that in the United States great country of science and technology and reason there's this unceasing attempt to have nonsense taught in the schools with government money. They won't quit.

[00:55:06]They've been beaten back. They keep coming back for more. we they try and smuggle it through customs and it used to be when they were strong enough they would ban the teaching of Darwin until the 20s they could do that in some places now they can't do that the next demand was for equal time sounds fair um for what they then called creation science nice try um that was exposed as a fraud then they said secular humanism is a religion that sh that could shouldn't be taught either um the latest intelligent design I refuse even to call it that u I refuse to gratify them by using the term it's creationism um and again with equal time demand fairness great American virtue so um after the biology class we'll have the creation uh period and then after chemistry where it'll be time children forget your alchemy books out this with taxpayers money and then we'll be doing um well you can see how the rest will go after astronomy we'll be doing our zod IACS.

[00:56:10]No, we're not having it. Now, why don't they say, "I want to hear it from them that uh it's possible to be a religious person and not preach garbage in school.

[00:56:20]Let them be the ones to propose this compromise and then if I see a genuine hand being extended, I might take it."

[00:56:28]But I think Steven was attributing much more goodwill to the other side than it really manifests.

[00:56:33]>> I think this have to be a final question really, Christopher. your critics sort of argue there's no light and shade, no room for disagreement in a in a Christopher Hitchens argument. And uh I mean do you accept >> ladies and gentlemen?

[00:56:49]>> Do you accept do you accept actually that you are rather evangelical >> in your promotion of atheism?

[00:56:56]>> No, because I have nothing to I have nothing to convert anyone to. See that's ladies and gentlemen, you should regret that giggle. I mean you will. Tomorrow you'll be sorry. Um, I have nothing. I don't I don't I ask have I tried to persuade you of any one point of view? No. I've said beware of anyone who says that you don't that you that you already have all the evidence you need. That's been my constant point.

[00:57:21]The only progress we've ever made can ever hope to make is by continual doubt, skepticism, the measurement of evidence against theory, practice against theory.

[00:57:32]That's the that's not just um as I gave with the example of Father Limemetra and the Pope um things cannot be even if they're right established as dogmas.

[00:57:43]Um I think I rest my case. Couldn't we end on a more controversial note?

[00:57:49]>> We can something bitchier.

[00:57:52]I think I've got just the thing actually uh because uh and and it was Professor Richard Dawkins who uh who did this um put this kind of slight upon atheism. I suspect he wants you all to be called brights. I guess because you're brighter than the rest of us.

[00:58:09]>> Yes. I wish I really wish I say in my book he and Daniel Dennett, another great scientist and teacher. I really wish they hadn't done that because I think it's wrong perhaps three ways. I mean, no one could say Father Lmetra was stupid, for example. That's one thing.

[00:58:24]Two, um, if it was a test of of intelligence, it would have the unpleasant suggestion that that's how society should be ordered. I mean, like the brave new world concept of the alpha and the beta and down to the absylon and so forth, which is a a sinister behaviorist uh form of utopia.

[00:58:44]And the third is that it gratifies exactly the suspicion of many religious people um that they're looked down upon and scorned by the pointy-headed intellectuals and so forth. And I I absolutely promise you that I don't do that even with the real low brows and slope heads among them.

[00:59:07]They're my fellow primates, too.

[00:59:10]Let me tell I I was going to finish I was going to finish, you know.

[00:59:14]>> I don't want to I don't want to barely evolved once.

[00:59:18]>> I don't want to finish on that [ __ ] >> The ones whose eyes are so close together they could use a monle. THAT'S >> Are you saved? Oh, shut up.

[00:59:35]Okay. And just to be clear, and it's it's obvious obviously to just about everybody, of an atheist is a person who believes there is no God. An agnostic >> believes that nothing is known or can be known about the existence or nature of God. Why is that a less rational position than yours? Sorry, I just jumped like a pee on a hot shovel because um I'd meant to say this when you said about Steven calling himself an an agnostic. Uh I I was a great I would have been if I'd been around and I still am a great admire of Thomas Huxley um who the man who is the I think uncle of Aldis and Julian um who had the great he was known as Darwin's bulldog he had the great debate on Darwin at the natural history museum in Oxford with Bishop Wilberforce known as Sophie Sam to his parishioners who was a descendant of the great William and Huxley creamed him on that occasion as everyone remembers he was a walkover for our our team. And so we're all we're all very grateful to Thomas Huxley, but I can't thank him for his coinage of the term agnostic, which was his bolt hole term. Again, to try for a compromise where I don't really think the the basis for it exists. So you don't have to say you don't believe in God. You can simply say not all the returns, not all the evidence are or is in yet, so I I won't declare. Now, I think that that's wrong twice. One, um, you're not saying that you cannot prove that there is no God. No atheist has ever said that. There is a scientist in America called Victor Stanger who's produced a book called God, The Failed Hypothesis, who goes as far now as to say science can definitively say there isn't. But, but I I think that that's a very adventurous position. But the atheist view is there's absolutely no reason ever being advanced by another primate to believe that there is one.

[01:01:34]And when you've got that far, you really ought to say there isn't.

[01:01:39]It seems to me, not that for that reason, I'm not sure. And it's completely not on all fours with the other position, which is evidence has nothing to do with it. Faith is much more important. Not only should you have faith, but you'll be saved if you do.

[01:01:54]Now, you can't. That's not I don't know.

[01:01:57]It's not. There might be. It's not. It's unless you do it with like Pascal and say it's a vulgar bet. It's a wager.

[01:02:04]What have you got to lose? Which I think is morally creepy as well as evidentially unsound. Because if some hu comes to me and says, "Look, he may not be there, but if he is, you've got everything to gain by saying you believe in him, even if you don't really." I'll say, "Well, then I don't think much of your God." Because if there is such a person and I spend my life arguing that there isn't and I do my best um when I check out if I'm which I sure will which I'm if I find that I'm mistaken and I'm confronted with the guy I would hope he would be able to say I at least admire your honesty and and Right. Okay. Let's close on this, ladies and gentlemen. The the Christians don't give their God that much credit.

[01:03:01]So, doesn't that say something both about the fear base and the fact base and the moral base of what their faith really is? I submit that it really does.

[01:03:11]And thus that one is morally healthier as well as much more likely to be studying science and reason objectively if one puts um religion behind one.

[01:03:22]Religion keeps demanding equal respect while attacking science every time science threatens its story. In schools, creationism kept changing costumes.

[01:03:31]First, it was banning evolution, then creation science, then intelligent design. Same old superstition, new label. Science says show evidence, test it, correct it. Religion says believe first, then protect the belief. That is why the two cannot peacefully share the same job. One is built on doubt. The other is built on obedience. And when someone says believe just in case God is real, that is not faith. That is fear dressed up as morality. So what do you think? Does religion make people more moral? Or does it train people to obey without evidence? Drop your thoughts in the comments. And if you want more breakdowns like this, like the video and subscribe.