Best of Christopher Hitchens Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks Part 12

a lot of you probably know Christopher Hitchens he is one of the probably the most widely known this has controversial writers and critics in the media he's just a tremendous writer he's a great wordsmith he is fabulous with the pen and is a wonderful presenter with his uh with his voice as well he's probably best known for his work here in Vanity Fair as well as the Atlantic Monthly he's a foreign correspondent and has written for more than 60 different countries he's the only writer to have written since 2000 from Iran Iraq and North Korea he's the author of many books one of them God is not great our religion destroys everything or poisons everything it's probably one of his most popular ones and he's recently released his memoirs hitched 22 he was born in England he's that educated at both Cambridge and Oxford holds honors degrees and philosophy politics and economics he moved to the United States in 1981 and has worked as a book reviewer a writer a commentator a critic and a social intellect for many publications when he comes up here please give Christopher Hitchens of one welcome just before we stopped on the virgin thing if these poor fools had read the Tamil deserve the Koran they know that they get 72 mothers-in-law as well here's the great contradiction of being religious actually is exemplified in a very amiable way this evening if you if you were a person of faith then that's what you are a person of especially in Christianity and Islam it's the strength of your faith is your merit it's your willingness to believe and to risk your life for it no matter what do you affirm it yes I do how does it go they say at five times a day there is no god but God and Allah is His Messenger you notice the first four words are exactly right yeah I think it works Oh Ana Muhammadan there is no god but God and Muhammad is His Messenger the first four words are exactly right there is no God so 5 times a day millions of people around the world unknowingly speak four words of complete fruit progress of a kind but it's the faith that is the merit what do they want evidence for they're never going to get any evidence for that the merit is the face so as soon as they say our and by the way it is possible to make night journeys to Jerusalem on a [ __ ] the faith shrivels the truth and the and christianity has given itself away repeatedly on this it now says ah we didn't used to think there was a big bang button but now we realize there was one reads a lot like Genesis when you read it backwards plagiarism pure and simple they do it all the time but then now there now they are pimping off the back of medical science and doing extraordinary moments in in surgery surgical intervention to do the near-death experience racket this is a familiar thing all these things will yield to properly controlled scientific investigation but the things that we know already are miraculous enough thus when the local Prince of the church who I was sorry to miss on Tony's show Cardinal Archbishop George Pell takes leave to tell me and is going to tell you under this roof that is earn words without God we are nothing my reply is your eminence please don't talk to me in that tone of voice I'm I'm not a slave and I'm on the side of anyone who is in their emancipation and it's the mind forged manacles that are often the hardest to break I'm sorry - till the Cardinal Archbishop and I wish I could say it to his face I have to some of his colleagues as you might say that his he's wrong twice he's first wrong in his concept of a deity in other words as someone without whom we would be nothing and he's wrong second to declare that we are worthless without agreeing with his concept of that concept and I demand to know how he knows his Eminence is claiming to know more than a primate can possibly know and he's showing that he knows much less than most primates probably should and then I get told that atheism is not ism the Pope does it today getting off the [ __ ] plane in to talk to the Queen and she doesn't exactly not say it now on this because of the church areas of the 20th century Adolphe Hitler is the only one he mentioned more than twice I'll because I'm because I can't do them although believe me I will if you press me I'll just take the Fuhrer my former colleagues and ancestors of the new school produced a very comprehensive edition of nine count the hard book to get they wanted it they wanted everyone to read it and I have several copies of the edition they brought out in 1940 just slightly too late actually in the hope of warning people ah I think it's the at the closing pages of chapter two that of Hitler says that his work his work against the Jews is done on the direct instruction and inspiration of Almighty God it's certainly a trope that's repeated throughout the book if you and there was no reason for someone brought up in Catholic Austria Bavaria not to think that centuries of Christian instruction in the poisonous nature of the Jewish people the verminous character his people a nun controversial remark the Vatican at that point was willing to ban books by even in war and Graham Greene say nothing books about evolution in the Big Mac they were invited to ban wine calf did they no they did it instead the Vatican made its first-ever political treaty with with the Third Reich exchanging complete control over education on their part for complete control over the rest of the state by the Nazi Party what did it say on the belt buckle of every single member of the Nazi army what did it say Gott mit uns you might want me to translate it says God on our side in German if you took your oath to the Fuhrer how does it have to begin I swear in the name of Almighty God my undying fealty to a door fiddler truly I will take it from you I'm sorry I don't want to spoil a relatively friendly evening either you dare bring this up again I can take a lot read any history of fascism in the 20th century and take out the word fascist from any history this remotely objective including much written by Christian history and just put it in so the word fascist extreme Catholic you don't need to change another word to say this was secular is just getting history completely wrong to say it's atheist is the deliberate conscious insult and I won't have it so now you know how rude I can though I think in all cases it's a big mistake to think that your own cause or your own country or your own side has God in its corner for one thing it commits the sin of pride which I know you've been warned against what the Greeks call hubris ah it is probably better as Abraham Lincoln said at a time when two sets of Christians were fighting over whether slavery was Christian or not to decide the future of this union Abraham Lincoln who was also likewise not a Christian but a deer's if he was anything said it might be more useful to find out if we are on God's side and whether he's on ours but the temptation to enlist the cause of a good god is very strong indeed there are many people in the world today they're well known as jihadists Muslim fundamentalists people who want to kill really do seriously want and intend to kill everyone in this room who get the energy they've got and they're willing to give their lives because they are so sure that God is with them and if so if you want to believe that God intervenes on one side or northern that God takes a hand in human history in human affairs you have to grant it to them - I don't know whether you're ready to do that all you'd have to say no it's only true when we say so which I think would be wouldn't it rather unsatisfying argument I'll take the Christians and all the Jews but the Muslims excuse me neither the Christmas northern Muslims but the Jews who say they have a covenant with God whose Testament we Christians Chris we Western civilization Christians include in the holy book those who claim to have met God was leading that God face to face in the Sinai Peninsula to receive the law to had a direct revelation of morality from to have a special covenant now let me just say briefly what the problem with that has been for the Jewish religious leadership about 10 years before I was born about 50 to 60 percent of the Jewish people of Europe were put to death in disgusting ways by mass murder gassing immolation in Christian Europe in the middle of the 20th century and many people wanted how God could could permit this to a people who he had made a special relationship with and many people left the synagogue as a result they stopped going the Jewish people are in their majority now post religious secular very largely for this reason and some rabbis were bold enough to say no there is a reason for this you fell away from God and you forgot Israel you forgot Jerusalem it's a punishment for exile it's a punishment for inattention to the Covenant many people who'd seen their children burned alive said I'm not listening to this I'm I'm leaving leaving the leaving the religion and many rabbis went quiet thinking perhaps they shouldn't come up with any to instant explanation for such a fantastic human disaster and human crime and they waited and then the Israelis won a war in 1967 which got them back control of the holy places in Jerusalem and then the rabbi's blew the ram's horn again and said no no we should have waited now we see the finger of God he was all to drive us back to Palestine where we shouldn't always have been and to make us the owners of Jerusalem now we see what the design was well I dare say you read the papers and watch the news there isn't a single Israeli now who isn't wondering whether the victory in that war and the conquest of those holy places wasn't a disaster hasn't led them into a terrible trap of endless war and confrontation in the Middle East where their own hubris they're an occupation of other people's territory in holy places has led to a terrible and pass there I 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 the duty as a law that's absolutely true and will hold good for all time and and it's been proclaimed structurally well we might say thou shalt not kill it would be probably the inevitable you have to start with but it doesn't say in Hebrew 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 a common to all times in place so different standards prevail different times but that argument is an open-ended one and will remain so I'm rather glad as a matter of fact for the point of both moral and intellectual and ethical exercise that you can't just tell someone one thing 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 it's acquired by experience by moral suasion and by comparing and contrasting different ways of resolving these questions there are four crimes in the chat compartments you're told you shouldn't even Envy someone else's prosperity or prompting well from a socialist point of view that says you know you've got to just lump it if people are better off commuting from a capitalist and for enterprise point of view it says it's basically a crime to emulate this whole spur emulation and innovation ISM 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 better off without it your argument is if he was to take biblical text 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 based upon the Sermon on the Mount based upon the Beatitudes we turn the other cheek love your enemy as yourself blessed are the peacemakers these are things you don't mention at all in your book and yet they did inform his teachings I'm just a second on the oppressors 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 that's why we don't run into any Amalekites any more for it and he explicitly said I mean I'm not under 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 as I have been on other occasions when that's been the case but he would know to be to be consistently if you had to say no we can we have the right to enslave people and we have the right to commit genocide that's what the biblical precedent would be as for the Beatitudes that that is it seems to me pacifism in it's strictly a moral 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 versus you let's go back to the general proposition then 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 the same way as you love say your lover or your family or let alone in my case they rate yourself it's asking too much the golden rule says that it's asking too much and it's gone 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'll have to feel constantly guilty if your shortcomings it's demanding the impossible for you on pain of hellfire this is not a good thing it's not good for the morals either the golden rule demand for yourself well sorry don't expect for demands of others the self respect that you would demand for yourself that's fine that's doable it's hard but it's feasible it has a contradiction in it a big trapdoor actually which you can ask you about if you die but at least it's not immoral and nor but it's not Christian it comes it appears that the idea of the Golden Rule do unto others as you'd like to be treated you'll say it's appears in the Analects of Confucius it's in the Babylonian Talmud we don't know of any society that didn't have some such common sensical morality okay the region gets its morality from us we don't get our morality from work but I'm much more outraged currently by what happened not three decades ago but three weeks ago - miss Fazio Youssef a Yemeni girl who died in childbirth in a hospital in Yemen hemorrhaging to death trying to give birth to it already dead baby the result of her having been married compulsively but legally at the age of 11 that's what I'm DeFazio Youssef on our watch she died in childbirth trying to give birth to a dead baby husband three times her age who is legally married to her as it's estimated but one quarter of the young womanhood of Yemen already years married at the very very latest line the age of 15 and though there have been moves in the Yemeni Parliament to raise the age at which a young lady may be betrothed these moves have been blocked even as recently as last September after this outrage by a political party which I will not tell you the name of this political party but it is not the Yemeni secular party in in Iran the age of consent doesn't come up by the way because there is no consent to any sex outside marriage in Islamic Society in any case and many many kinds of it are punishable by by death for the agent which young they'll may be married was moved up finally the Islamic Revolution put it back to 9 and he was moved up to 11 which you might say was progress of a kind now you see this isn't just backward countries we're talking about and let's not beat about the bush the Prophet Mohammed was betrothed to his favorite wife I show when she was six wasn't thought fit that he could marry her then in the full sense of the term but he put it off till she was nine and across a vast swath of the world worse things in Roman Polanski has even thought of doing are done as a matter of law and of course and in the name of no not in the name of but because of the preachings of God's anointed and then the religious turn to you you say secularism must mean moral relativism your ethics are situational and I say well let's just hear that again because given that I've taken the simplest moral baseline it's possible to take the protection of defenseless children isn't it true that all the leading religions of the world are Abrahamic yes we'd love to stress it we adore to say that we have all this wonderful multicultural thing in common and was able to have the most famous for apart from having a wife who had a baby when she was a hundred and one which is an advance over dying in childbirth when you're 11 having been raped probably by a close male relative if you really want the chin apart from that Abraham's most famous for saying if God wants me to kill my boy of course I will and the only difference between the monotheism's is that some say was Isaac and some say was Ishmael I don't particularly care but that but there are annual festivities on the part of the faithful to say we wish we two were capable of such faith and we we want to beat our breasts in sympathy with those who are why do the Jewish people blow the ram's horn the shofar because the shofar symbolizes the RAM who has sacrificed instead the blood sacrifice is the and there has to be a child involved this seems to me to be disgraceful and that what and what's taken for granted that goes with it because it was practiced on Isaac - in the form of the Covenant and imitated by others the genital mutilation of the young to seal the pact with God said nothing matters to me not the life or health or bodily integrity of my child never mind that what has to be proved is without God I am nothing I'll kill for it and I'm not just willing to say that I'm willing to prove it and I'm willing to use my children's bodies as the theater of this enactment of faith well civilization in my submission ladies and gentlemen begins where that evil nonsense leaves off and we have to advance the time when more and more people will be able to civilize themselves by outgrowing religion and leaving this awful nonsense behind and with that and with that I think I have realized that if you haven't copped my drift by now I might as well go and sit in that chair anyway very nice to you to come thank you

Channel: Agatan Foundation

Views: 383,256

Keywords: Christopher Hitchens (Author), Best, of, arguments, argument, and, clever, comeback, comebacks, part, Amazing, Atheism (Religion), Atheist (Religion), Antitheism (Literature Subject), Religion, Debate, Philosophy, funny, Science, great, nice, answer, anti-theist, anti, theist, intelligent, bright, smart, church, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, morality, god, humanism, free will, theism, eleven, agatan, fnd, foundation, twelve

Id: JgpAPjH3IMk

Length: 21min 14sec (1274 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 06 2016