Best of Christopher Hitchens Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks Part 5

Video Statistics and Information

Video

Captions Word Cloud

Captions

okay let me see I don't think it's going to take ten minutes to disprove the existence of God the Atheist proposition is the following most of the time it may not be said that there is no God it may be said that there is no reason to think that there is one that was the situation after Lucretia and Democritus and the original anti Fiesta thinkers began their critique of religion and I would just ask you all ladies and gentlemen to bear in mind a mild distinction while we go on you may wish to be a deist as my heroes Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine were and you may not wish to abandon the idea that there must be some sort of first or proximate cause or prime mover of the known and observable world and universe but even if you can get yourself to that position which we unbelievers maintain is always subject to better and more perfect and what elegant explanations even if you can't get yourself left in all your work is still ahead of you to go from being a deist to a theist in other words from someone who says God cares about you knows who you are Minds what you do answers your prayers cares which bits of your penis or clitoris you saw a way or have sworn away for you minds who you go to bed with and in what way minds what holy days you observe Minds what you eat Minds what positions you use for pleasure all your work is still ahead of you and lots of luck because there's nobody there's nobody even Aquinas had to give it up there's no one who can move from the first position to the second so I could and I'm actually strongly tempted to I can leave it right there but then it's not in my nature to let off a captive audience so easily so I'll add a couple of things the reasons why I am glad this is not true would I suppose be the gravamen of my case some people I know who are atheists will say they wish they could some people I know who are former believers say they wish they could have their old faith back they miss it I don't understand this at all I think it's a it's an excellent thing there's no reason to believe in the absurd propositions I just admission D rather briefly rehearsed to you the main reason for this I think is that it is a totalitarian belief it is the wish to be a slave it is the desire that there be an unalterable unchallengeable tyrannical authority who can prove it you of thoughtcrime while you are asleep who can who can subject you who must indeed subject you to a total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life I say of your life before you're born and even worse than where the real fun begins after you're dead a celestial North Korea who wants this to be true who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate I've been to North Korea it has a dead man as its president Kim jong-il is only head of the party and head of the Army is not head of the government of the state that office belongs to his deceased father Kim il-sung it's a neck Rock recei a fan autocracy is one short of a trinity I might add the son is the reincarnation of the father it is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved but at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea does the Quran does the Quran or the Bible offer you that Liberty no no the tyranny the misery the utter ownership of your entire personality the Smashing of your individuality only begins at the point of death the question about the line-drawing Jew the practice of religion being about the tone of living a framework and about self-restraint well that's dead easy just like the rabbi just now his religion is man-made - he decides what he'd like to believe it's a la carte he says shouldn't my children be taught what was it self-restrained responsibility care for others and so on I don't believe in the rest of it I believe in the prophets don't believe in the mountaintop they believe in the revelation well nor should you but how dare you suggest to us that we couldn't teach our children self-restraint and respect for others in the golden group how dare you excuse me a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment that any religious institution can receive any payment from the United States government I would regard being tax-exempt or tax free as a disguised form of subsidy as I regard that so-called faith-based initiative to be a surreptitious violation of the same I should say for sincere believers that there is a there's an excellent reason why the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was first proposed it wasn't proposed just by people like myself who wouldn't go any further than deism in their attitude to religion it was proposed by many people who were quite devout and who thought not just that the government must not be corrupted by religion but that the churches mustn't be corrupted by this association with a state either and I think that's an equally morally valid point James Madison the co-author of the Virginia statute on religious freedom and of the First Amendment and the other things that bodyguard are our wonderful Republican secular Constitution didn't think there should be chaplains to open Congress didn't even think there should be chaplains in the Armed Forces if you want to pray in the army they can no one can stop them but we're not going to pay for someone to pray oh these are very tough questions but they must be understood that these were part of the very urgent views of the framers and the founding fathers and it's our responsibility to be discussing this very seriously now at a time when Hillary Clinton has joined some reactionary evangelical organization John McCain to try and book bills to her faith-based connections John McCain a lifelong Episcopalian has this year I wonder why said he's a Baptist and Barack Obama senator Obama has been caught in some big mouth sinister windbag rock and roll horror show Church on the south side religion religion is poisoning religion is poisoning our election and our Democratic Republic and it's time that we set enough if you want to be if you want to be a fraud and a fundraiser and a shakedown artist and a bigmouth and an ethnos in this country try your best but it's in it's long past time that we said putting Reverend in front of your name is not enough of an achievement you who believe in the material world don't believe in the supernatural you can't account for the experiences of revelation and enlightenment and miracles or the other people experience and you you don't understand the numinous in other ones and I say that that's true for me I don't and I don't trust them though I do think they can be confused with experiences of nature landscape music sex and love the numinous in other ways but if these experiences the positive ones are going to be credited to the religion account then so must the person who says that God told him to go and get a gun and kill all the unveiled girls and leggins if they're going to be if all these things are going to be charged they've all got to be charged I actually don't like the Sistine Chapel I didn't like it I didn't like it even before I knew that every brick of st. Peters was raised by the sale of indulgences which obviously changes nothing but order scrutinise I special sale of indulgences by the way but I do like the Parthenon very much I've written a book about it I think I think of as a cheat of artistic symmetry and architectural glory it probably has no Christian rival but I believe that I can in fact I know I can I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been there and said and appreciated and loved it without having to subscribe to these superstitions of the early Cillian mysteries to the cult of Athena and Zeus to the million expedition and the Peloponnesian War to slavery and Athenian imperialism and to human sacrifice we can have our Parthenon and we can indeed recover it from what was done to in by Byzantine Ottomans by Venetian Catholics by National Socialist barbarians and many others we can still have it it's our common property without the superstitions that go with it without the dread and fear and sacrifice that the terrified cringing humanity that was so much sheltered under the walls as it was being raised and the word for that the ability to have these things to have John Milton's poetry to have Philip Larkins poem church-going to have Shakespeare without the superstition is called culture on which we've all laid our lives on which we've all sworn to defend ourselves and our civilization against especially now precisely against religious barbarism against those who know they are right against those who say they only need one book against those who say they know gods on their side against those who say there's a revelation that's what culture is that's what we're defending yes we'd be better off with culture and yes we can have it without religion which is a mind forged miracle thanks thank you it's in my interest that people don't suffer I don't want I don't want someone bleeding to death from AIDS on my doorstep for not just for their sake for mine I don't want that Oscar Wilde in the soul of man under socialism puts it very beautifully so socialism would free us from the awful necessity of living for others George Bernard Shaw when he ran for office in London said there should be no more houses built for the working classes without baths and and it was objected to him by the Tories the Conservatives it why give them baths the poor are so ignorant and stupid they won't even know how to use them they'll keep : them they don't deserve baths you're wasting your compassion on they said I don't want them to have a bath for their sake I want them to have bath for my saying that's the right mix of self-interest in morality and it works - it works it works whereas religious exhortation and telling people telling children that if they don't do the right thing they'll go to terrifying punishments or unbelievable rewards that's making a living out of lying to children that's what the priesthood do and if all they did was lies with the children it would be bad enough but they raped them and torture them and then hope will call it abuse know the priesthood must get out of the way for this argument have become grown-up that that evolution occurred is conclusively verified by the record of molecular biology and of fossil record there isn't there has never been an article in any peer-reviewed journal and there never will be to say to the contrary however that's only you say that that it did occur how it occurred is not something that's completely consensual and the Darwinian theory of natural selection is only so far the least contested of those explanations and Stephen Jay Gould for example of whom I was something a friend a great admirer Irish Dawkins is also very much had a tremendous disagreement still do posthumous in the case of now about punctuated evolution about the steps by which this occurred but that it occurred is not read out yet and thus the the idea that that can be equal time for the opposite ear in a science class is as false as to say well children the chemistry period is over now after the break we'll be doing our alchemy for your astronomy teachers off today but your astrology ultimate can check-in nonsense of when and when President Bush says we should teach the argument I'm with him if he's sincere because everything I know about the the Darwin argument comes from two great set peace debates one in Oxford in the late Victorian Ypres between Bishop Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley the inventor of the term agnostic about Darwinism and the second in jealousy in the 1920s even more famous but if the president wants that and he wants to stay faced initiative then every church that gets a subsidy or a grant must also teach Darwinism equal time is that what the president wants I am sure I know the answer we don't want people to live without wonder or mystery and in fact we thoroughly recommend take a look through the Hubble telescope see if you can get over what you see the unbelievable beauty and symmetry and majesty of what your seed and you want to exchange this for the burning bush I don't think you will once of time you read a page of Stephen Hawking on the event horizon for example let's see if that isn't all inspiring enough for anybody and you're seeing there the future of a potentially much more noble and in noble and enlightened and emancipated humanity where none of these discoveries and none of this for and Majesty requires that you kill anyone in the name of some man-made Idol or God or superstition for heaven's sake let's get this out of the way I'm going to assume I know what you mean by fundamentalist if we take the best known current political dispute in which this country is involved I suppose I'm the oldest one of the best understood it would probably be the question of Palestine okay where they've been there has been for some time a conflict between two nationalisms approximately equivalent size of people's Jewish and Arab over a piece of land about the size of Wales with a great and quite just claims motion Allah just claims on both of their parts going back quite a long time for a long time now the solution to this very difficult matter seemed to many people to be something like a partition an award of a roughly half e of the disputed territory not it's not perfect it's not great but it is the it is the accepted view of the PLO now most of the Israeli voting public of vast majority of American Jews of the UN of the European Union of the international community and so it and it makes a rough kind of sense it's not brilliant personally it's thinkable it's not insane why can't we get whatever one seems to want because of religion that's why because there are enough people on the Jewish side to say what land split God gave all this land to us all of it to us and on the other side doesn't take much to say you're dead right about that God did it award all about but not to you to the Muslims only and there are off of them to make certain that cannot be a solution and just as if that wasn't enough the mad supporters of Judaism and the mad supporters of Islam American Christians to the rescue with luck with luck if the Jews can be supported long enough as our rope supports the hanging man they can bring on the Battle of Armageddon the thing we all secretly yearn for as all religions do totalitarian first in their origin genocide and their conclusions we want this to be over we want this world to pass away we are pointless without that demand we are not humanists we are eschatology and hey what could be more wonderful the Jews will bring it on and those who aren't converted in time to Christianity will be turn to ash as what everybody else so what could be more heavenly than that so now you see why religion poisons everything these congregations these congregations and their religions and the filthy texts on which they base themselves earnestly desire that everything we call civilization and everyone in this room be destroyed they want it they relish it they work for it while you're asleep as well as while you're away coexistence with this kind of thing is as impossible as coexistence with fascism or Stalinism the sooner we wake up to it the better our chances of survival will be thank you crispy because religion is not provided to us by Revelation it doesn't come from the heavens it doesn't come from the beyond it doesn't come from the divine it's man-made and it shows it shows very well that religion is created invented imposed by a species half a chromosome away from the chimpanzee it shows doesn't it well why do we deceive ourselves on this point is there anywhere now going to wind up is there any way of the the places I've mentioned and I exempt basra and all the other B's I could take you around where it wouldn't be enormous Lee welcomed if there was a mass conversion to secularism or a mass adoption of the secular idea and principle of the principles of Bertrand Russell who once spoke famously from this platform of Thomas end of Thomas Jefferson or Voltaire and and others and I'll close by saying that I want you to be on your guard against to force issues in this respect not be very brief when I mentioned those gentlemen and I could mention some ladies too in this connection I'm Mary Wollstonecraft don't let anyone tell you that oh well secular tyranny is just as bad after all has been fascist and communist dictatorships which have been just as revolting fascism as you know was supported by the Catholic Church all through its life in fact all after it had died and still is defended by it one of the leaders of the axis was actually the Japanese leader was actually a god there's no way of saying fascism and National Socialists when the actors were secular and in the case of Stalinism and Maoism in the Khmer Rouge the same mistake is made and religion is made out of man it's the religious impulse itself that I think we need to oppose to criticize to criticize in ourselves as well as in others the argument from faith in other words the argument from certainty so those of us who maintain this may not be described my closing point as fundamentalists or secularists a certain cheap and demagogic and opportunist forces have recently been suggesting we do believe in evidence we do believe in skepticism we do believe in reason we hold our views we hold our views with as much conviction and principle as any God bother a does but we are open to the argument and we're going to prove it tonight to you and do that anyone dare to imply this a moral equivalence between us and the fanatics and the fools and those who think they know God's will and can tell you what it is who are our enemies and your enemies too so I beg to propose the notion that stands in on a thank you now for there to be a fair test about this you'd have to do the following and no one I've ever debated with has even tried it so you be the first you find me a state or society that threw off theocracy and threw off religion and said we adopt the teachings of Lucretius and Democritus and Galileo and Spinoza and Darwin and Russell and Jefferson and Thomas Paine and we make those what we teach our children we make that scientific and rational humanism our teaching and you find me that state that did that and fell into tyranny and slavery and famine and torture and then will be on a level playing field as it is all you've done is show that the idea of worship and the idea of credulity and the idea of civility and slavery to religion is a barrage in the first place but none of the desires and none of the Chinese Ches by the way the Russian Russian Orthodox Church always stayed when Stalin will wear sailor stomach but they never killed 30 percent of their population who didn't the Russians never killed 30 percent of the population before the Communists took over 20 or 30 percent knows I ever did that nope no Christians are ever did any killing any weather suits not at the first world war they started the pogroms they brought the protocols of the Elders of Zion - that was imported by sonorous secret policeman - National Socialists a Christian gangsters in Europe how much do you think the export of Russian Orthodox anti-semitism cost us in point of lives and war and have you ever counted up what happened to the wars in the Wars of Zionism started and carried on and the persecutions and the famines and the tortures and the starvation of the people who just died of neglect come on you want to do this accounting I'm here I'm really here for you or what the Serbian or what the Serbian Orthodox and the Russian Orthodox have just done in the Balkans the most the most recent genocide we've seen in Europe entirely done by by a Russian and Serbian Orthodox fascists and Catholic Croatian Mustafa grinding the whole part of civilized Europe into nothingness and bloodshed for their filthy stupid medieval quarrels how dare you say that any secularist we have opposed this kind of barbaric stuff or on all fours with these creeps don't you should take it back you owe me an apology you lose boy check you lose YJ please hey civility civility civility is overrated every modern state has had to go through a period of declarative as a ssin of one kind of violence or another the Cromwellian revolution the Henry it's just this dissolution of the monasteries the wars in Spain the the wars in Italy the French Revolution which you mentioned they all have to go through it it's usually in proportion to how vile how filthy how cruel how tyrannical how greedy how ghastly was the pre-existing clerical regime on which much of this must be blamed but you can't say that the the test of humanistic secular atheist values has been conducted until you've had that conducted theory hitler's birthday was celebrated from the pulpit by order of the Vatican by every Church in Germany till the last day of his regime do I say that makes your National Socialist no I don't know I don't I would know how to if I was capable of a low blow but as you know I'm not

Info

Channel: Agatan Foundation

Views: 696,175

Rating: 4.8654661 out of 5

Keywords: Best, of, Amazing, Arguments, And, Delivery, Atheism (Religion), Atheist (Religion), Antitheism (Literature Subject), Religion, Debate, Philosophy, argument, funny, Science, great, nice, cool, Good, Fun, debate, comeback, answer, Christopher Hitchens (Author), anti-theist, anti, theist, clever, intelligent, bright, smart, church, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, new, morality, god, humanism, free will, theism, three, muslim, islamism, extremism, five, Peter Hitchens (Author)

Id: _ACt2MrkeHE

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 26min 2sec (1562 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 08 2014

Reddit Comments