Best of Christopher Hitchens Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks Part 7

I don't think churches should be exempt from taxation because that constitutes a subsidy so tax-exempt churches shouldn't be loud second I think if someone's found mutilating the gentles of the children they should go straight to jail and shouldn't be allowed to plead a religious right to do so same with honor killing same with polygamy same with bride-price same with child marriage and I think if a Jehovah's Witness or a Christian Scientist lets the child die from you get you to take them to the doctor the same should should apply that should be the last thing they do on the outside so obviously the common law has to be made to apply and I think that Congress should here and the supreme court should hear evidence that no American aid money should be allowed to go to Israel that is even diverted to the building of Masonic settlements on the West Bank because as well as theft that's the establishment of religion using American taxpayers money and should be illegal and if there's going to be equal time for the teaching of religion in schools then every religion every church that takes a faith-based initiative subsidy or tax break should be forced to spend half of its time teaching the origin of species' I think that's only fair when I said in my subtitle this is a lousy microphone isn't it was it only for me when I said in my subtitle there's something about religion that poisons everything I know publishers like controversial subtitles but I was willing to stand by it and I knew he would say everything I mean cricket tantric sex Chinese food yes I sort of do mean in a way everything for this reason it attacks our sin our deepest integrity in some of the ways I've just tried to describe it says we don't in ourselves have any innate knowledge of what's good or wicked we couldn't on our own responsibility out of our own self-respect decide upon an action in this way and decide to defend us in territory we would need divine permission and maybe it maybe even a human sacrifice or two to ram it home for this to occur and I go on to say that it makes intelligent people say stupid things and it makes decent and kindly people do and say very cruel things the King James Version famously says thou shalt not kill though the original Hebrew makes it very obvious that the meaning is thou shalt do no murder these transliterations by the way can be very hazardous and very useful the Hebrew word Alma for example means young woman that's all it means when Miss translated by King James's committee as virgin it very much alters the idea that a young woman will one day conceive and bring forth a son and a great deal of misunderstanding has resulted from that era in translation I'm reminded of the lady governor of Texas who during a controversy about bilingualism in the State House in Austin said if English was good enough for Jesus Christ it was pledgie good enough for her we so far haven't found any any society in which the Penal Code we've looked at reporters have searched we found no society in which the Penal Code approves of or is neutral about murder or theft or perjury adultery is is treated differently in different cultures but the murder theft and perjury and not one might argue that the Jewish people wouldn't have made it as far as they did to Mount Sinai assuming always that they did make the trip if they had been under the impression of murder theft perjury adultery were okay until they got there most of other historical figures in the ancient world are attested to by one or two or in in Christ has probably more attestations than many other figures whose historicity you wouldn't doubt for a moment janeshia did i don't know why you're doing this to yourself GCU is the macedonian royal house is an archaeological question as well as among many others decidable in innumerable ways the the probability of the having been someone with the one name of Socrates is very high but it can't be absolutely attested to and it doesn't need to be because those ideas would have been in someone else's mouth if they weren't in his the idea it surely is important to you that the physical existence of Jesus can be proved in a rather different way since he is the son of God and the Word made flesh and born of a virgin and by his death we are all healed so there's you've got a little bit more riding on this then Nigel and you've got no evidence for a nun but you note that in the tenth commandment unlike the others there's no specific action that's being either condemned or recommended neither enjoined or exported or forbidden or prohibited instead we've got the first recorded instance that I know of thoughtcrime it's not you're not supposed to do it it's you're not even supposed to think about it this is why those of us who maintain a critique of religion make the charge that it is implicitly totalitarian it can convict you for things that are only in your head for thoughts that have hardly begun to form and there's another reason I think why this commandment is somewhat sinister it appears to forbid the poor from resenting the rich if you want to make a left critique of it or if you want to approach matters from a free-market point of view it seems to crush the spirit of emulation and competition that's involved in wishing you had a better life some Jewish authors have argued that the prohibition it extends to actual neighbors in the sense of those who dwell in the immediate vicinity and some have said it only applies to covetousness of that sort but it would surely be a fairly poor tree commandment that excuse this exact same attitude if it was directed at people further away and only then do you notice when that thought has occurred here in the mind that you have it's always alive with versus picking you silly noticed that the children Israel are precisely and all the time being ordered to cover being enjoined to covet being told they must envy and hope to our necks the lands the flocks the herds and the women of neighboring tribes they're kept going by greed by the thought soon all these people's property will be yours and that you'll be licensed to take it by force and kill them and have the land and not the people this is perhaps why this ambition is perhaps why there are no prohibitions against say slavery or rape or genocide or child abuse in the Czech government it's not a matter of leaving these out or applying situational ethics to a time that was not ours it's not that I don't think so such things have always been known of and usually deplored it's more I feel that such terrible things as rape so they enslavement genocide and child abuse are just about to be mandatory they're just about to be forced on people as things that they are not just must not do but must do if the conquest is to continue in other words I think that are more lg's innate our ethics are innate to us as there are other mammalian and primate species it's observable there are solidarities there are ways of group behavior family function and so forth that make it clear that without this kind of evolution we wouldn't be having this discussion we wouldn't be here if we only looked out for each other and other other primates and mammals know this too in that case since the evils are a nation else as well what are we to do which will invent another supernatural person who's responsible for those as the religious tend to do are those don't come from this God they come from another God an evil one will find if you wish if you want to do it if it makes you feel better in some way invent another supernatural entity there's an infinite multiplication of them that you can do as Aquinas did with the demons as Mohammed did with the with the desert jinns keep multiplying these assumptions but how long a kind of healthy mind be satisfied with the infinite replication of supernatural assumptions when the natural world explained itself and when we already have enough explanation for why people are encoded and programmed the way they are where our knowledge of that is increasing all the time what is and I'll close on this and I'll be quick what we risk if we take the supernatural route is the idea of an unchangeable unalterable authority one apparently benign one apparently wicked both of them eternal both of them unchanging and unchangeable and ourselves as their playthings and their objects and their raw material this is the origin of the idea of the totalitarian this is where the idea of tyranny begins with the with the eternal unchanging tyrannical Authority where we were try with our poor powers to guess what's wanted of us and to spend our lives on our knees I say the beginning of emancipation is to repudiate this antique serfdom and all the all the contemptible and often lateral superstitions that it requires for its maintenance and the job can be begun tonight and I invite you to join me in doing so thank you thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the father's upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandments so you might think someone who keeps the commandments won't have their children persecuted on to the next generation so that if if the next generation of children didn't keep the commandments they'd still be protected by the fact that their parents had kept the commandments but no no thou shalt not take the name of their Lord in the LORD thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain right see where I'm going with that um all of this suggesting a great insecurity of 90 years then comes the requirement again tediously repeated for the observance of the Sabbath today remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God it now shalt not do any work thou nor thy son I may as well finish this nor thy daughter thy manservant nor thy maidservant nor thy cattle nor that stranger that is within thy gates uncontroversial in itself a day off but again having nothing to do in this case with ethics or morality but only with the fear of the Lord it is only obedience to that fear that is moral and it's interesting as marking not for the first time or the last those two who it applies male bosses and employers are the ones addressed and they're man servants and maid servants nor their cattle are permitted to work on Sunday held the Shabbat the confusion between people and chattel that is going to recur again very soon indeed if anything can show you that there's a good argument that the commandments of man made and not God ordained it would be the general Exodus emphasis on agriculture and sheep and lamb and goat products in general I had a debate on the BBC recently with them currently one of the deputies of the Archbishop of Canterbury I mean which I said that one of the things I disliked about Christianity when I was quite small was having to think of myself as a member of a flock in other words as a sheep or lamb and also to having to reflect that shepherds did look off a sheep just because they liked them there some Shepherds like them much too much but in order they can first fleece them and then kill them and sleeve to his career he took me up on it rather decently said you know it was a problem for us with with the church in New Guinea where I served for a considerable time because as with the huge number of areas of the world there are no sheep in New Guinea exodus is limited in that way to even the animals that describes aren't available everywhere so he said we had to work out what the locals in New Guinea valued as the Israelites would have valued sheep he said they got to the point where one Easter I saw my bishop get up into the pulpit and address this congregation and say in English to the new Lord behold these your swine so you see we're house off the track you can get off the beat Drogo with agricultural metaphors now confining they can be and of course it would have to be a pig the very one that Yahweh most eloquently condemns elsewhere as I say if this is God made it looks somewhat man-made all the same now furthermore if one day in only one day's Holi it can suggest that others are profane and that's literal good dealer finishes of the of the Sabbath and of Shabbat I remember when I used to work in Northern Ireland trying to point out to the Reverend Ian Paisley I work for a Sunday show at the time he wouldn't be interviewed by anyone whose show or newspaper came out on Sunday so I tried to point out him Reverend be it's the Monday papers that have printed on the Sunday and I could see his piggy eyes it's an area he took this in it took him a long long time if we had given it to you to the observer but in the end reason prevailed I have to take back some of the nice things I was just saying that one of them has to do with the prearrangement I've heard him make that point about the bull's horns so many times now tonight was the lamest I've also heard him try it on other people I hope this is the last time I have to hear it I noticed it didn't go down that well it's because it's not that good he was also never at that rodeo to his second point which I can scarcely believe I have heard made let alone and some of you should blush on your way home let alone applauded yes of course the the reason why civilization stopped being barbaric and why things stuff started to happen was the arrival of monotheism I mean to say there is a one word refutation of that I think you want to know what it is you've guessed this is University China when the first missionaries reached the Emperor bear Jane as he sat amid a civilization that dwarfed anything that Europe in the Middle East was about Latin America even it's hard to ever produce he said if what you are telling me is true how is it taken so long to reach the people of China no I'm sorry there are some arguments that just won't do and don't require any further refutation the the the lost the last years that lost millennium of the miseries of human prehistory have to be taken into account and after all we were invited to touch upon them by Janette in considering the difference between antique and modern slavery all right I'm not going to reject a challenge like that and slavery in antiquity was this you lose our civilization has conquered yours you now work do you the victims you work for us your machines from now on you work under our lash you build our our system for us you build our walls you jiggle canals for in return for our rations were to the conquered you can easily see how it happened it is only with the arrival of religion that it is said in holy books that certain people are born as a race or people to be the masters and others to be dispensable either to be slaughtered or when does most of the slaughter is done for the remainder to be kept often female slaves in every holy book from the original holy books of the Jewish people through the those wrongly adopted in my view by the mistakenly adopted by the Christian religion to the Quran to the Book of Mormon slavery is mandated and those who are born into it usually by a different colored skin are clearly plainly identified usually as the sons of ham or some such nonsense see the ethnological garbage okay that's what's different so you in the waning in the waning centuries of this powell system it is true that some Christians out of conscience turned against it Wilberforce is one of the best-known William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison who later became a secular humanist is another very famous case but it was never not the case never not the case and this is what Abraham Lincoln pointed out with such irony and bitterness it was never not the case that all the justifications for slavery were religious - and that all the leaders of it all the proper tears of it were taking their texts and their authority from the Holy Scriptures that's what you can't get over and that's what you can't accuse the Babylonians and the Sumerians of doing so my point remains exactly what it was not that religion doesn't make people behave better because it quite plainly does not but there are things in it that no secularists would regard with other than the horror that we now reserved for things like cannibalism and slavery the genital mutilation community ladies and gentlemen is exclusively as far as I know a religious one the mutilation of the genitals of children forcible regulation of gentle is entirely scripturally mandated the suicide bombing community in among some Tamils in Sri Lanka may or may not be partly secular it depends some of them are very extreme Buddhists and some of them quite extreme conduce but for the most part the hideous idea of suicide murder is a religious mandate not as something that has religious authority but is a commandment people wouldn't do this if they didn't have faith I'll open our next session with a question I'll make it my closing because I think it's time for my asthma at alas it not just an irrational I'm hoping to leave all my questions in the minds of all present for this evening as baby born tonight in Pakistan would you rather from the point of view of ethics morality the advance of human civilization that this baby adopt my views of secular humanism or that had become a war hobby Muslim baby because if you think that religion is good for people I don't see why you don't say the second and if you don't say the second I think you ought to work out why you don't say the second and if you prefer it over me see me afterwards while his compelled years re-examined the authorship reducer on me which tells us that Moses by then had reached the age of 120 adding that his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated one begins to doubt it because it seems that like many elderly men he'd begun to repeat his favorite stories to captive audiences who would naturally touch shy about interrupting him and not always remembering the stories precisely the same way a bit the same way some of the incantations so I don't trust us all the time that we shall have to discuss these great questions together but I'll just try and pull my threads to a conclusion it by returning to the questions I asked at the beginning did God make man or did not make off and does morality come from on high or not to the first question the study of the so-called Ten Commandments allows us to return a pretty confident reply the whole story is one of muddle chaos inconsistency revision as one goes along temper tantrums lapses into rage insanity sadism vengeance and general losing of the thread this would argue either for a very muddled irrational forgetful inconsistent God or no God at all but if we make the assumption that this mass of unresolved contradictions was the outcome of the ignorant struggles of a semi-literate frightened species of primates then the mystery clears up all by itself gives me the willingness of people to die for a rumour or delusion or illusion is very well attested not that that there's no element there's never been a last for our poori evolved mammalian primate species there's never been a period of history however modern where that won't happen look at them how many people are still willing to do this for Joseph Smith for example or for or for a deluded epileptic called Mohammed a plagiarist of the or some of the foregoing I repeat if you if you will accept this for one will you not accept it for all or must or are you not obliged to accept it for all are not all these prophets and revelations equally valid or equally false my position is at least on intelligible it is true that the declaration speaks of indelible rights from the from a creator but in my opinion this is a negation of what had been up till then the only way right was ever mentioned which was that there was a divine right of kingship if you recall that's what was being overthrown had already been overthrown in part in Britain it was being overthrown in the United States the the claim of the king to have his authority from the creator was false now if that claim is false and I believe that it is there is no Divine Right of Kings you can do one of two things you can either say well if there is if there are rights then everyone should have them and claim them from the Creator which is a sort of tautology or you can say that rights don't come from a creator that they are innate in us and in our species and we'll get the ones we fight for and defend we won't get the ones we don't and most of the time we're defending these rights against theocracy I don't think I'll propose a New Testament style update of the sword that orders us to love one another because a call me old-fashioned if you will the idea of mandatory compulsory love as always struck me as a rather sickly one or even a sinister one especially when it originates as an injunction from a Godhead of which or of whom you were also supposed to be afraid to be ordered to love someone someone of whom you have to be in dread is the form of sadomasochism it's the it's the eles big Big Brother card it's not enough to obey you have to love the obeisance as well it's the seedbed of the church a Leterrier love cannot be exacted but why might argue and searching for a new curve that at the very least we might enact some stern prohibitions it's not just our modern sensibilities I think or our consciousness of the fragility of our survival as a species that margin kline us now if we were drawing up a code to forbid slavery to condemn genocide the rape and torture of children and the desperation of the natural order of the world I hope that these might be considered in Benjamin Franklin's great words contributed to Thomas Jefferson's great preamble self-evident unfortunately though we can't do this by amending this book because slavery genocide and the rape and torture of children are not merely not denounced in the first five books of the Old Testament they are rather very enthusiastically recommended so if we search for ways of doing the right thing will will Consulting the wrong book and we're looking for morality in all the wrong places perhaps though there is still something to be salvaged and if so it might be found in the long been glorious menacing throw clearings of the very first commandment we might give some real thought to the prohibition on the mating of idols and of images we might do well to stop forging manacles with our own minds and setting up impressions and images of ourselves as if they were deveined and rarefied and supernatural we might cease to mate whips for our own backs we might stop making tyrants and despots in our own image we have rights as well as duties in respect of one another and as one can Intuit from Thomas Paine in order to safeguard and enjoy the rights of man we shall require a new age of reason thank that's precisely the the error I will just identifying if you can suck one right out of your thumb and call it divine why can't you say well then oysters have the same right that it comes from their creator there is no as you as you yourself have pointed out with the Wrights industry no real limit to this especially if you introvert it to the divine generally speaking there the struggle for rights is a struggle for humans to assert themselves against other humans who want to oppress them in the name of God do you mean sir that we do not have in look it's me again the questioner yes sir do you mean then you suddenly seem too little what should I say I mention it just came from somewhere else gave me an Aussie chat yes please do you mean them that we do not have any innate rights towards each other other than what we assert by force did I hear you right or did I hear you wrong I tend to agree with those who have said that the concept of right of rage is a human creation that it's it's an arbitrary creation yes and that we would be better to say that we get the ones we fight for that we don't get the ones we don't and that our duties are solidarity's with each other are mandated by evolution and I'm not in a sense predicated on anything supernatural I does my view of the mammalian evolution of our species is that it is that we are programmed to be superstitious religion is unvanquishable unmanageable as long as we're partly irrational as long as our prefrontal lobes are too small our drangleic glands are too large and our opposing thumbs are still too clumsy of course people can be sold every kind of of delusion I half agree with GK Chesterton when he said that people don't believe in God they don't believe in nothing but in anything I believe that the belief in God is a belief willingness to believe in anything but if you take Orthodox religion away you may very well find someone worshiping a pet rock or chained fish or a crystal or some new-age nonsense healing process yeah that's the way a lot of people are there I just would like to say that there's a solid minority of us who are not impressed by any of this and we're citizens too I deserve that much this time the Pew Research Center in the United States has recently done a lot of work on religious Allegiance and what it's found is that the largest growing minority in your southern neighbor is those who check none of the above in the box marked faith it's double what it was 10 years ago I put it to a double again in the next 10 years it's about 13 to 14 percent now now these are not atheists I should say but there are people who if you wanted to say what the common and unifying proposition was would be would be this an ethical life can be lived without reference to the supernatural simple proposition and that plus I think the desire to defend the Constitution and the idea of a secular Republican the separation of church and state from theocratic bullying both at home and abroad people have had enough of being menaced and threatened and lecturin and terrified by those who claim to have God on their side whether it's obviously the forces of jihad or more insidiously in nearer home those who want to have stultify nonsence taught to American schoolchildren with taxpayers money let alone the idea that equal time should go to start a [ __ ] nonsense in other words after the biology class we have the the intelligent design moment don't pause intelligent design by the way you've made a concession if you agree to call it that call it creationism this one again so then we have the astronomy period and then we'll do the mrs. Jenkins will take you for astrology after the break and then tomorrow we'll have your alchemy papers already it's enough to make a cat laugh and people who won't have it nobody wants to come from a state that gets a lot laughed out for that kind of stupidity and no one's going to hold their convention in the capital city of the state that does it and has been defeated now in every court in school board in the land and I proud to say I think after battling it for a long time I've lived to see these people defeated not just defeated but also humiliated which is very nice I would prefer to say that science bases itself on evidence as well as reason and that's the missing term in Christianity and Islam and Judaism and the rest of it a good scientist will say here's what I'll tell you now in advance would prove me wrong here's what I think is the case but if you find this I'll tell you now I'll climb down so for evolution help there is nowhere just believing that there is no religious believe in them do you that service you can say to you show me this and I'll stop believing it's never been done in the nature of the it couldn't be done the e word for religious people is essentially meaningless it's occasionally convenient sometimes they think they'd like to know it's usually the for miracles because faith always turns out to be not quite enough that's so a bit of it it's tiny bit it depends what authority they think they're obeying I mean if the Pope says you must go on crusade and this is a war for God and you you will be rewarded in paradise if you undertake it if you believe what the Pope says I think it's not inconsistent with being a Christian as I understand it you are to me responsible for all the crimes you thereupon commit I'm not going to claim more for atheism than it will bear I mean you can be an atheist and you can be a psychopath you can be an atheist of your sadist you can be an atheist and be a fascist it's actually quite quite uncommon that the latter most most nauseous actually were Catholics but you can be a you can be a atheist and be a scientist in fact it's almost mandatory they are the other way around all it's all it says is you don't believe in God now I don't some people think there shouldn't be a special word for it I don't believe in the tooth fairy either or in Santa Claus I don't have a special word for saying I don't believe that but wasn't he doesn't need doesn't need a special ontological counterfeit but ganaches arrived and we've actually both stated this in different ways the original arguments what is the good what is the bad what are our duties to each other is there a point to our existence the questions of philosophy religion is fossilized philosophy in our view but it is still philosophy with most of the questions left out or claimed the answer must be ours intercessory prayer for example is valid and if God can be called upon to save well there's a most obvious example the life of a sick child and the child recovers then God is just taking on all that's not that that happens and is attributable to the intercession then God has just taken on the responsibility for all the children who don't recover and the religious get very uneasy when you talk to them like this because they both do want to say that help is available from on high but if it's available sometimes why is it available all the time why is it so Mel distributed why is it so random why is it so capricious it only replaces the argument about suffering and evil so to where it was in the very first place which is why the more intelligent religions are various fairing about claiming divine intervention because they don't want to arouse to greater demand for it now if I mean you may be asking the wrong person in the when I here with all of this stuff it's white noise to me if I if a do someone dear to me had died well this has happened to me as a matter of fact if someone comes up to me and says well at least they're in a better place now I don't even remember to be insulted really but though I could take offence I think that such a fatuous thing being said to me uninvited but what I can't understand is why I can't put myself in the position of someone who'd be pleased and comforted to hear that I just can't I'm really sorry nor can I imagine myself saying it to someone who'd suffered a real loss I can't I can't imagine the expression I'd have to put on my face to say such a thing so maybe are not the ideal person to put this question where do you think of the supernatural but what with religion I say that it's it's like engaging with philosophy except philosophy frozen by Dogma thus all the original arguments we have are to do with whether or not there's been a supernatural intervention in these questions or not I also took particular care to say before you did that a great number of scientists were subject to one form or another of religious belief in the case of the greatest one instance Sir Isaac V one who thought that your church was the work of the devil result your problem not mine I don't read Newton for his theological opinions Newton thought that if you could find the true measurements of the temples in ancient women and so forth you'd know more than you could if you could measure the gravitational field I don't agree with him he wouldn't be remembered if that's what he was remembered for or he'd be remembered as a crackpot same with Alfred Russel Wallace being a spiritualist however yes you're right I would give I'd give a page of Spinoza for any of those people when it comes all of George David Hume for any of this but when it comes to reasoning whether or not we are objects of supernatural guidance and divine intervention you know - I know in time a play note and I can can't come by I maintain that we are not and that it's a good thing that we're not because if we were we would be living under a celestial dictatorship from which there would be no appeal that will mean our lives were essentially servo now is that plain if as you say it is not to be taken literally but only at best metaphorically then you've made the main concession yourself and my argument would then be well is there anything of non primeval morality that we just the question I asked that we owe to this something that without without this we wouldn't have and my conclusion is my argument isn't the answers that is no that there are many evil things recommended by this text to which we should close our ears there are many excellent things to which we should be called which are either not mentioned or are denied negated in this text so it isn't even a good metaphorical Guinea my friend and Ally Daniel Dennett in this book on belief in belief says that he thinks it's extremely likely that religious faith gave people advantages of survival if you go to the witch doctor and you think he is a real doctor everyone knows that there's an element of morale involved in recovery and it may be a very small advantage based on an illusion but it these are areas where even a tiny advantage may may indeed help however rather than confine himself to that dinesh goes on to say but wouldn't it be nice if it was true what the witch doctor said he just you just heard him saying I mean after all you'd feel a huge amount better if there was life everlasting as a reward for virtue and will that's known as wish thinking I phrase it like this or I'll take up your Jefferson challenge again if you'd like Thomas Jefferson says in notes on the state of Virginia about the slavery question he says I tremble for my country when I reflect you've all read it that God is just if you haven't read it you'll remember I said it you you'll go and read it now I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just who can forget but if there is a just God what is there to tremble about why look at God who really loves you and knows that you're there and cares you and looks out for you and is interested in how you're getting on and how you're going to get on and wants the best for you what is what is a small question like slavery all your all your feelings of responsibility and care about that are dissolved you obeyed in the refulgent of an absolutely wonderful thing the only price of it would be unfortunately because nothing comes out of price you'd have to submit to a celestial dictatorship but hey what's that in return for ton of love if it was demonstrated to me that Jesus of Nazareth had never existed all right that was no truthful story at all my life had going exactly as it had and the all the dilemmas that face us would in my view be precisely the same as they always are how do we live the good life what are our responsibilities to one another how can we improve on this how can we build the just city all of these questions would remain as they will for every generation to the believer it would have to be a calamity to discover that this person never existed they would have to say that the god their lives were pointless were meaningless now what just think for a second what a confession that constitutes what an abject confession that is well in that case I don't care they'd have to say without them as in Paul says if there was no resurrection no bodily resurrection then we are of all people the most miserable what is it what is it to believe this kind of thing if I say to a Muslim you know that the Prophet Mohammed very probably didn't exist anyway he certainly didn't change education from the Archangel Gabriel don't be silly the guy acts as if I've said the most unbelievably horrible thing as if as if life would be unlivable if what I said was true or even if even if I was allowed to say it what is this what is this I asked it belongs to the childhood of the race it belongs to our balling spoiled infancy we have to grow up and get over this now why does the people believe it I think I can make a guess um I think people are afraid of dying and I also think that they can be persuaded that an exception can be made in their own case if they make the relevant provisions and so I am NOT of that view I'm really not I mean just try it and just try standing in the airport on the street watching see them come towards you ask first which species of primate they'd be okay with is not a chimpanzee isn't that a silverback gorilla there is that an orangutan there you'll find everyone you know falls into one category or know this it passes the time at airports and then you say now look at that one now if that one had gone to church every day and gone to confession every week and tied himself and so on he'd be absolutely short of eternal life you'd have nothing to worry about see if you can make yourself believe it then see if you can make yourself believe it about yourself well obviously people can and there are obviously people who know how to make a living out of this racket but that's why I went on till well at least you must respect people of faith I say well actually I don't I don't think lying to children for living as a respective occupation the British royal family I was raised in Anglican as you may possibly guess the British royal family has prayers mandated for it to be said prayers every single day by every single Anglican in every single service prayers for that family okay have you read about the doings of this family lately the most prayed for family in the world I would take that as the control experiment virus here I'm so glad you asked I'm not I'm not saying that we've gone in yet but if I may take a shot if you're saying what would it change convince me okay I won't be frivolous here if I thought I saw there are those in the scientific matter if I thought I saw a dead person walking for example I would be much more time to think that I was the victim of hallucination then that I had seen the laws of nature suspended in my favor that's just the way I am I think David Hume was right the laws of nature have just been suspended apparently in front of your very eyes which nonetheless is likely that they have been suspended in your favor almost always by the way all that you are under a misapprehension always to me the first explanation would be the least probable one the likelihood that I was having a hallucination would have to occur to me the project would not occur to me if I was undergoing a hallucination but that's how these ideas get spread around I invite you to the thought experiment if it could be shown to you that the figure of the Nazarene was in fact as we believe entirely mythical as was the figure of his mother as was the figure of Vishnu as was the revelation supposedly given to the illiterate Arabian merchant peasant Mohammed the man calling himself the Prophet as was the existence of Moses and the legend of the exodus if all of this can be shown as it can be come time for it well I'll take any challenge or any of these points to be an entirely man-made legend would you really look at your neighbor differently are you telling me or are you willing to be told even by someone is fluent and charming as you - that it would be true of yourself that you would then become a thief that you would then become a liar that you would then not condemn a rapist that you would then have no knowledge of the difference between a right action and a wicked one I don't think there's anyone in this room who could be so abject so wanting in self-respect so masochistic so subject and I'm coming back to this so servile as to believe any such thing and if I had to stop now that's all I would really want you to say this evening but as I say I didn't come to be compassionate I have some more suffering to inflict on you before I'm done the remainder of Exodus Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy if the Pentateuch in other words is largely taken up with exact codification of the different kinds of enslavement of Jewish servants and non zero serfs the conditions of mass murder and disappointment of other neighbouring tribes neighbouring tribes there are also incidental and so to say by the way Commandments such as the one who stood to death any child that disrespects its parents and the prohibition on sieving a baby goat in its mother's milk one of those random Commandments on which the whole laborious edifice of kosher and cash-rich has since been been raised so that's just trace again to be sure where we are amid this blizzard of conflicting hysterical orders the evolutions of the Decalogue after the commandment specified in Exodus chapter 20 comes X's 21 a chapter of so-called judgments which gives the verdict and sentence in advance for any number of crimes from smiting to slave rebellion and from OC's going to witchcraft and these to have the forces of commandment and the penalty in all cases is death Moses then returns from his audience with God to discover his people have lapsed into calf worship and other frivolities as I mentioned earlier he thereupon smashes the two tablets which would surely at that time have been the most precious artifact that could possibly be known to man as having been conceived and made holy by God smashes them and summons the Levites of his contingent to deflect exemplary punishment and I quote enough Nexus 32 verses 27 to 28 thus saith the Lord God of Israel so this too is a divine commandment by the way the Seth the Lord God of Israel put every man his sword by his side and going in out from gate to gate throughout the camp and slay every man his brother and every man his companion and every man his neighbor and the children Levi did according to the word of Moses and the fell of the people that day about three thousand men so there's a terrific slaughter under orders and you'll note the small inconsistency which may perhaps I sometimes think betray the pricking of a poor conscience in the first verse the order for the indiscriminate slaughter is from God thus saith the Lord God of Israel in the second it's from Moses but Childre Levi did according to the word of Moses there's a bit of displacement going on here we don't know in either case it orders the killing of brothers companions and in that significant term as we've seen from the tenth commandment neighbors specified they must die without pity or without discrimination that's not excessive perhaps after the infanticide of the firstborn of Egypt that's already taken place for them to get this far and it pales beside the Agra of Moses in the later Book of Numbers where he speaks to his generals after the battle against the Amalekites and rages out them for sparing so many of the civilians now therefore he says kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman that has known a man by lying with him but all those women children that have not known amount by lying to with him keep alive for yourselves in the age of reason Thomas Payne drew attention to this passage saying that it constituted on grudging pain and ordered to butcher the boys to Massacre the mothers and to debauched the daughters a fairly good summary of what I've just found and this early were hurt and high-minded rejoinder from the bishop of clan DAF Lutheran Welshman who used to try to debate pain on these questions he didn't contest the butchery of the boys all the masculine mothers but he did say very pledgeted it wasn't actually stipulated that the daughters were being kept alive for immoral purposes you know as the bishop left opened the possibility they were being kept as I suppose pets it is certainly true that I consider that the question of liberty of the mind is involved in the repudiation of theism yes I think that we would be living in a celestial dictatorship if we accepted the authority scripturally revealed of a divine will and and I think this not because under the Inconvenient scrutiny of this I I'm not free to rape and pillage and lie as I might wish because there are other things I assure you as I'm sure you will say for yourselves those of you with any self-respect that stopped me from doing that but because and I don't mind admitting this is true once you grant that there's been a revelation of God to some humans sometimes in some places to be interpreted by a priesthood then the next thing you will find is that you are being told what to do what to eat what you can read who you can go to bed with by someone who is no better a mammal or primate than yourself but who claims to be doing this who claims the right to run your life and your sex life and your mind and your reading matter in the name of God I won't have it okay and the next thing they'll tell you the next thing they'll ask you for the next thing that's very little thing as well go and live on this piece of someone else's territory God wants you to settle it the next thing will be your call to holy war now because we can't coexist with the infidel the next thing that let it in once and you let it in all of it of all the questions of my and the dinesh didn't even attempt to answer this evening because we're talking not about Christianity but about religion was is this only true for one set or is it true for all of them if it's only true for one on what grounds is that the case if it's true for all of them where would that leave us as a species think on these things there's gentlemen think on these things as you get thanked

Channel: Agatan Foundation

Views: 1,145,213

Rating: 4.8147769 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher Hitchens (Author), Best, of, arguments, argument, and, clever, comeback, comebacks, part, seven, Amazing, And, Atheism (Religion), Atheist (Religion), Antitheism (Literature Subject), Religion, Debate, Philosophy, funny, Science, great, nice, cool, Good, Fun, answer, anti-theist, anti, theist, intelligent, bright, smart, church, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, morality, god, humanism, free will, theism, muslim, islamism, Six, Muhammad

Id: -kS6r6aZnuI

Length: 50min 30sec (3030 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 05 2014