Best of Christopher Hitchens Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks Part 13

as in Bali people's lives are controlled and run along this religious clock yeah you know there it's the harvest there at you I know there are even ways of worshipping your vehicle's your machinery sure silly but probably harmless I get what I what I say what I what I say you wouldn't like to see it gone though would you know what I say in my in my in my introduction is that all of that and more for better and worse I don't know I don't mind I mean how tolerant can I get how nice to me to be he's not it's just that I I'm a I'm a just liked it very much but I won't I don't expect people to give it up or want them to I insist only that they leave me out of it okay but I don't have to know what they believe that they drove 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 to have to live under it in any way then that's all absolutely fine but therefore for me the chest of religion is in a way whether it proselytizers or not and it seemed to me in Bali that if there ever was a time when they did that they've given it up but 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 Balinese actually ran from an Islamic invasion that's why they I mean there's that too but I mean I bet among between different Buddhist and Hindu groups they'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 okay anyway 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 it's just it just sub goes against the idea that religion poisons everything which is your your basic what's a retiree when you're describing a culture that they're praising it as far as justly to precisely the extent to which it doesn't resemble really religion is that me having it both ways I mean it certainly it certainly resentful so guess what he resembles a religion to me well I would say probably to the majority of the Balinese people but what if you get what do you guys like what do you get if you cross the Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian someone who comes and knocks on your door for no particular reason Unitarians are religious too they say their parent belief is one God at the most de jure 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 the all I ask is that it leaves me alone what do you think about liberation theology as a contradiction in terms what about the amount site the emancipation of the human personality the human mind is from theology there are no two ways about it I don't care if I run into some priest in Colombia who thinks that Fidel Castro should be Pope it bores me it irritates me I asked him the same question is there anything you're saying that an atheist couldn't say that might be right or might be wrong but would still be said what's the theological bit for know Jesus doesn't have a special privilege for the poor he says render unto Caesar don't you believe that if not why go on as if you did know it's piffle it's Cal Oh piffle let's look at another example there's a place called the Oasis here in Sydney it's a shelter for 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 called Paul moulds 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 no but what sends in that case is it religious you again you're saying these people are so nice they're hardly religious at all you're making no why don't you chill you two is here to pick an example where their faith we had nothing to do with murder we're not mentioning any of that it's not clear at all we just like he just like running orphanages now I'll just tell you something most people have faith who'd like running orphanages aren't that nice 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 an example I like giving blood okay it's not that I think I should and I was brought up in the idea of the National Health Service but actually positively enjoy it more than shedding it I find it a pleasurable relaxing experience and 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 because I regrow it quite quickly but someone else gets one I like that there's a great book by old socialist call Peter chitin that's 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 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 because I don't think it's healthy for people to want there to be a permanent unalterable irremovable authority over them I don't like the idea of a father who never goes away and nor do you if you think about it when you get closer to Parenthood you won't say to your children don't worry I'll never die you won't be at my funeral I'll be at yours I'll be at your grandchildren's funeral you'll never hear the end of me that's actually not loving paternity the idea of a king who cannot be deposed very on America right here as well as a very I'm Democratic one the idea of a judge who doesn't allow lawyer or a jury or an appeal this isn't appeal to absolutism it's it's the part of ourselves that's not so nice that wants security that wants certainty that wants to be taken care of for hundreds and hundreds of years thus here the human struggle for freedom was against the worst kind of dictatorship of all the theocracy that one that claims it has God on its side the Divine Right of Kings the feudal system the monarchical one against which the American Revolution with a secular humanism took place I believe the totalitarian temptation has to be resisted and I believe this is one of its core and origin points and so what I'm inviting you to do is to consider emancipating yourself from the idea that you selfishly are the sole object of all the wonders of the cosmos and of nature cuz that's not a humble idea at all it's a very arrogant one and there's no evidence for it you do better to emancipate yourself from it and do some real study of genetics and biology and cosmology and then again a second emancipation to think of yourselves as free citizens who are not in thrall to any supernatural eternal Authority which you will always find is interpreted for you by other mammals who claim to have access and to this authority that gives them special power over you don't allow yourselves don't allow yourselves to have your lives run like that 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 man did not create God men and women created many many many gods and always have since the dawn of our history and still do and one of those gods may be true out of all of them might be real all of them could be false or all of them could be true and the overwhelming probability it seems to me as the cults that attach to each rule is that all of them are false and for the same reason they are made up by creatures half a chromosome away from being chimpanzees and I'm afraid to say it shows thank you I used to enjoy scripture lessons as it was my first I didn't know this but it was my first work as a literary critic I was going through well who it was called searched the scriptures they'd give you a text of a piece of gummed paper that the government would send because it was an officially Anglican country my country of birth the Queen is the head of the church as well as the state you know all this and the Armed Forces I hope she has a long life of any because the moment she checks out her bat-eared chinless resentful Islam fancying 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 the eighth now as it happens we do have some very good descriptions of the life of Socrates that make his existence to me plausible but it doesn't matter to me at all whether he was real or not what matters is that someone advanced his method of reasoning his testing of evidence against experience his commitment to a certain kind of dialectical honesty and that if it hadn't been him it would have been someone else and that's what's precious to me and that he never said you've got to believe in everything I say or go to hell or heaven because and here's why you've got to agree with me because my mother never went to bed with anybody and that proves the truth of what I say or that I taught by the way it looks at I must have looked very dead when they took me down from the cross but I didn't die and that proves my point I'm willing to grant it all I'm willing to grant the Immaculate Conception first then the virgin birth then the resurrection and the Annunciation and the Assumption and we need to grant all of it it doesn't prove the truth of the proposition that you should take no thought for the morrow the central doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth take no thought for the morrow no investment no thrift no care for your children that you should abandon your family not worry about construction about investment about anything just follow me a ridiculous an immoral proposition that are CS Lewis so cleverly and I must say for him very honestly puts it means that the man must either have been a maniac a sick man an evil man or he must have believed that the world was coming immediately to an end and that he was commanded to announce this fact to the deluded Bronze Age inhabitants of Palestine because if he didn't believe that if he didn't believe he was divinely mandated then his words would not have been inaccurate or false they would have been wicked it's it's really odd in fact that I chose to do this as a devil's advocate interview but let's leave that aside you know we wait up sort of after now um I was asked by oh no it's an anecdote chaplets Nelson Alger I was asked who know not chapter 10 again please sir not that um in case you don't know and haven't got the damn book yet I'm not sure is even it it's not in there um I was asked by the Vatican to testify against the sainthood nomination of Mother Teresa against initially heard the ossification and I said yes of course I was very I was very honored to be asked and yes your holiness first time I've ever said that and the last as well so I went to testify and I made a discovery that I thought I'd share with you everyone used to think they knew one thing about the Catholic Church will they're Catholics or not that in sainthood arguments they have a devil's advocate advocaat estaba lie and it was true until very recently the last Pope to this office the office doesn't exist any longer I was poly so he could fast-track sainthood he made more sense the last Pope did than his ten predecessors combined in double so the other collister novel I office was shut down no longer as their so I had to testify just in a seminar room with a Monsignor and a deacon and a priest and a tape recorder and a Bible and I realized halfway through I just become the first person in history to have represented the devil pro bono I'll close on the implied question that bill asked me earlier why don't you accept this wonderful offer why wouldn't you like to meet Shakespeare for example I mean I don't know if you really think that when you die you can be corporately reassembled and have conversations with authors from previous epochs it's not necessary that you believe that in Christian theology and I have to say it sounds like complete fairy tale to me the only reason I want to meet Shakespeare or might even want to is because I can meet him anytime because he is immortal in the works he's left behind if you've read those meeting the author would almost certainly be a disappointment but when Socrates were sentenced to death for his philosophical investigations and for blasphemy for challenging the gods of the city and he accepted his death he did say well if we are lucky perhaps I'll be able to hold conversation with other great thinkers and philosophers and doubters too in other words that the discussion about what is good what is beautiful what is noble what is pure and what is true could always go on why is that important why would I like to do that because that's the only conversation worth having and whether it goes on or not after I die I don't know but I do know that it's the conversation I want to have while I'm still alive which means that to me the offer of certainty the offer of complete security the offer of an impermeable faith that can't give way is an offer of something not worth having I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don't know anything like enough yet that I haven't understood enough that I can't know enough that I'm always hungry operating on the on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom I wouldn't have it any other way and I'd urge you to look at those of you who tell you those people who tell you at your age that you're dead till you believers they do what a terrible thing to be telling to children and as you can only live and that you can only live by accepting and absolute authority don't think of that as a gift think of it as a think of it as a poison chalice push it aside however tempting it is take the risk of thinking for yourself much more happiness truth beauty and wisdom will come to you that way

Channel: Agatan Foundation

Views: 227,333

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, thirteen

Id: qJ5TqMm-WEI

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 30 2016