Best of Christopher Hitchens Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks Part 8

I'd like to exempt myself from the Chairman's kind offer of protection you don't have to demonstrate southern courtesy to me I've had enough of it all day everyone's been almost stupefyingly polite and gentle with me so very own wants to get rough they might find that I was ready to play there must be something very persuasive about those who put this meeting together because they maybe break to my usual rules one is not to enter a house of worship without wearing a vast necklace of garlic around my neck and the other is to do no work no labor of any kind on the International Day of the working class May Day so you may be break2 for a start but hey that's what commandments are for the stuff that's in the Ten Commandments dinesh that isn't to do with human morality is often highly immoral for example it's forbidden even to covet other people's goods or achievements by the way among their goods are included their wives their women folk who are lumped in with chattel which goes to show these Commandments are created by men and not by gods they're created by the agricultural and and masculine values of the time it's not a small point but there's nothing for example to condemn the abuse of children there's only a vague demand the parents be respected after all this is coming from apparently a father there's nothing against racism there's nothing against slavery there's nothing against genocide partly because in these and ensuing chapters all those things racism genocide slavery are actually going to be not just recommended but enjoined made an actual injunction on the children of Israel they're going to be told to do these things so it seems to be very obvious that the what is known as religious morality is partly man-made and it shows it shows that it's made by a greedy and cruel partly evolved fairly highly evolved let's not run ourselves down too much primate species that turns out on examination to be as we now know 1/2 chromosome away from a chimpanzee 600 I'm supposed to close to examine I should do that role in dressage don't think I've run out of things to say no just I'm just recovering from the amount of applause for Christianity I just heard from the pews perhaps it was just making nice I don't know why don't I do a bit of cross-examination see how it goes someone have to be a timekeeper and my first I'm told my first is to Dennis and I think I'll begin by asking him if he would care to specify for me the secular roots of anti-semitism and fascism the founding movement of totalitarianism I'm taking you up on your point about secular totalitarianism being as bad as religious given that there was knowledge in the original totalitarian move in the move that invented the term in 20th century and fascism is if you look at any history I'll just make this observation any history of the a of the mid 20th century take out the word fascism put in the Catholic right wing nothing changes right whether it's history of Spain or Croatia or Hungary I want to know where the secular roots of anti-semitism and fascism are in your opinion yeah Roger I'd rather have evidence than opinion okay for a change just bear in mind ladies and gentlemen if you do want things to get a little warm later on that I for one will take it as extremely insulting if any person of faith makes the assumption that their faith gives them a moral edge on me I want to hear a lot more apologizing from the faith-based communities for the evil that they have done before they even start clearing their throats and telling me I wouldn't know right from wrong without their permission I'm sorry I won't be can't be spoken to in that tone of voice and nor should any of you today did say that this was a secular movement I did say what was it you said that fascism and Nazism was secular yes they are indeed then I said that I actually I said communism is out censors I said communism and ask you to try to get you to acknowledge the art of falsity of what you'd said you'd be one of what I said the problem with the sounds and getting you to say that it is utterly false the the origins of the organizing principle of that movement Jew hedging are not secular yes you're absolutely right they are religious because daily they are in the religion that's half the people in this injustice well then give me the secular roots of the 10th commandment it's just a silly a question there there is no secular roots when there is no secularism but today in America almost all the anti-semitism comes from the secular left so so it's it's a very poor argument on your where there is religion in America and there is secularism the anti-semitism is overwhelmingly like at UC Irvine next week from the secular Lao I'm just very sorry to have to tell you that I think now you may perhaps exhausted the extreme tolerance for other people's religions that as the Catholic anti-semitism that I've just been specifying in this room anyone who doesn't know where anti-semitism is being pumped out in the modern world in this room I'd be very surprised if it isn't pretty well understood that the revival of the protocols of the Elders of Zion comes from the Hamas website yes of course it comes from another node in the United States now the notion that correctly claims kinship with Christianity and Judaism it's the the origins of anti-semitism are entirely in other monotheism's I mean if anyone doesn't know yes they are they are single it singles a single text to the secretary left that that license is anti-semitism I should be very surprised and I challenge you to do so well sure I'll be I also I would invite you to stop exculpating I'm not really not making excuses for the actual practitioners in anti-semitism the Catholic and Islamic right-wing on with the false picture of reality religion has its grandeur the reason why this discussion is always so interesting or is so worth having the magnificence of religion comes from the fact that it was first it was our first attempt so our first attempt to make sense of the cosmos our first cosmology our first attempt at philosophy in many ways and in some of the books our first attempt at literature and and poetry in some ways our first attempt at medicine even at physics at all Sciences and some of the arts this was humanity's first fumbling attempt to look at the sky and see where it fitted in all credit to religion for trying this someone had to but it because it was the first it was also is also in many ways the worst what happens when you don't have a germ theory disease and you wonder where the plagues are coming from well you either think they're punishment from God or you think depending on how far we've gone long into the medieval years of religion they come from the Jews poisoning the world or from witchcraft or from people not going to their prayers enough the same about natural phenomena like earthquakes or floods there must be a supernatural explanation for things that of course we now know can be much better and more accurately explained for us so the fact that we are still burdened by the false picture given of reality of nature by religion is I think not there's not the smallest of the indictments against it you still here at times like Katrina or the or the Pacific Tsunami you will still hear men of religion including in civilized and advanced educated countries such as such as England the the bishops saying this is because of sin that there is an inundation and out of this it seems to me again we must teach ourselves as developed humans evolving humans to grow but your your admit that for me I mean who does say to anyone who asks exactly what he thinks and when you where I say oh I'm an atheist you can pretty much tell what I'm going to say what I'm going to stand by it's disappointing every time I ask a religious person to find that they they're shopping from some clerical cafeteria I like this bit I don't like that bit to be a Roman Catholic is supposed to mean that you say that all other forms of religion are false and I think first of all I think that's less lucrative whereas it's worth not only now here's what that is what Holy Mother Church actually says I'm saying this for this reason there's a lot of soft ecumenism in the air tonight and there's a lot of soft ecumenism in the audience tonight I just feel a few tough distinctions of worth making well let people make their take that the church seriously the ticularly Holy Mother Church they it's a pity you're wasting your time your religion is worthless to you it's not going to get you to heaven it's not going to redeem you it's not going to say the only well there's only one way of doing that now that surely has to be counted also as among the beliefs that we're discussing well first of all don't you say yes to that the great thing about being religious is this when the evidence against you becomes overwhelming and you can see the amazing intricacies of the Big Bang and the extraordinary matter of the Hubble red light shift and the things we can now see through mr. Hubble's telescope and when you see the extraordinary variety of species religion says are come to think of it that is true in fact it shows that God was even more ingenious than we had thought him in the first place what's my objection to this kind of argument well the of the many I could make the first is simply this it's completely impossible to refute because every time any new evidence comes to light it's all it's claimed for well we it fits with what with the out with the under over throwable theory that we already had some of you will have been taught already I hope that a theory that can be described as unfalsifiable is that extent a very weak theory and that seems to me to apply with overwhelming force to the religious or godly explanation of our presence here and the natural phenomena around us every thinking believer has doubts do you ever doubt your atheism well the the practice the Atheist securest materialist practice is based on doubt now you're not answering my question do you ever doubt do you ever doubt atheism I sometimes doubt God's existence do you ever doubt God's non-existence no okay that is exactly a perfect example I mean I try it is a private I cannot see all right I do my best i well you don't you either I give it a try but her case it's not possible to I know I know I well that that is look I appreciate your honesty because I think I'm here myself because of the laws of biology okay not because of a divine plan I just haven't worked the arrogance to claim that I'm here because God has a plan for Monica most of the tyrannies under which humans have labored in the past and continue to labor under in the present have in their essence being theocratic because once you can give to any other group of mammals and primates any other group of humans are essentially no better than you the right to say that they speak in God's name that they know God's will that they have God's authority in God's permission then there is no limit to the kind of totalitarian misery that can be inflicted on you in the real world in the very few years of existence and life and potential freedom that we absolutely know for a sure thing we do have that are not part of the metaphysic but that our common property are our birthright and this has been true since the the early the early theocratic tyrannies of the Aztecs the Babylonians threw to the idea of their journeys of feudalism and monarchism against which the American Revolution was mounted to many many of the terrible twentieth-century tyrannies fascism hitlerism the South African system of apartheid which was a branch entirely of the Dutch Reformed Church in its belief that there was a divine mission on their side the Islamic Republic of Iran which is shortly to get its own apocalyptic and Armageddon weapon and other threats which make me think and I rest my case here and wait for rebuttal make me think that the battle against the religious illusion is part of a very important battle not as the human emancipation but actually potentially if not really initally also for human survival and therefore a battle that we dare not lose thank you there's nothing hypothetical about the last question I was asked when when it finally came to a question because it was the fate of many many Jewish people in Europe to have to wonder to whom they could turn in their time of extremity and I'll tell you the place they didn't which was the to the churches that had made the official Concorde out without off Hitler and Benito Mussolini the churches that had told their parties to vote for him in the in the Reichstag the church that had told the especially the Catholic Church there told its bishops to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday every year from the pulpit which they did till April 1945 which had preached the anti-semitism or which the Nazi Party based itself which in many cases violated the seal of the confessional to turn over resistors and in all cases turned over the birth records of the parishes of Bavaria and the rest of Germany so the Nuremberg Laws could be enforced and everyone with even a particle of Jewish blood could be identified set aside for deportation and persecution anyone who doesn't know this doesn't know anything about it not only that not one person was excommunicated or threatened with excommunication by the church for taking part in the final solution Paul Johnson a Roman Catholic historian estimates that 40 to 50 percent of the rough and SS were confessing communicating Roman Catholics not one of them was ever threatened with the smallest punishment for what they did or were doing but no don't let's give up it doesn't mean that there's no relationship between Christianity and morality in this jar car Joseph Goebbels was expelled was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church he was why do you know why for marrying a Protestant Magda Goebbels was a Protestant in a divorcee Joseph Goebbels had the sacraments withdrawn from him that's the only case I know the Nazi being corrected with discipline by the Roman Catholic Church to dare to ask me that question in that tone of voice in this audience I think shows something something really like moral responsibility but that's my reply and that's the short version okay try me on this again and on the relationship between faith and totalitarianism and I have a lot more for you okay so just keep trying of course but I don't actually think that loving your enemy is always a moral injunction there are some enemies I don't love and I don't think I should I it's not my right for people who might want to kill you and your children or kill my children is not my right to love these people it's my duty to destroy them to defeat them there's nothing moral about saying let them have their way turn the other cheek that would simply be my political my secular rather than my my theological view but I do think there is a problem with the rest of what Dinesh said on this point the the other injunctions about love and wit will stay just with Christianity for the moment a problem I always had with it was was compulsory love not you're compelled to love your neighbor or even not just to love him but remember to love him or her as you love yourself an injunction that actually cannot be obeyed nobody with any integrity and self-respect can have the same regard for another person as he has for himself and perhaps his family it's not to be expected it's more than can be demanded it's a work of super irrigation and it has the sinister corollary that because you know you can never quite do it you're always falling short you must always Calandra late yourself for failing to come up to this magnificent idea you're always going to be guilty again you can't possibly be right you're always in a state of sin and this has the connotation again of the totalitarian law you cannot obey further you're supposed to return this love to someone who is your Creator and you're told in addition to being compelled to love this person you must also fear him is there not a problematic element here compulsory love for a being a supreme being of whom he must also at all times always be in fear when I think of this the image I get is of George Orwell's big brother in 1984 where adoration is extracted from people who are in a state of holy terror it doesn't seem like morality to me now the golden the so-called golden rule that we should have the same consideration for others that we expect them to have for us is a very fine rule in its way it has a limitation I'm about to mention it's but it's a decent-enough rule and it long buried and it's not hysterical and it's not totalitarian and it doesn't demand the impossible of people don't do to another what would what would be repulsive if they did it to you we know that that was said by rabbi Hillel long before Christianity Babylonian ratline something almost exactly in that form of words also appears in the Analects of Confucius so it predates monotheism altogether some such idea is obviously in H to us it's common sensical the limitation I'll just mention it conversationally is it's a rule that's only really as good as the person who's uttering it the person who's uttering it must be a person of average moral character because there are many people let me think of an example we'll chance Charles Manson for example it's ludicrous for me to say of him that I don't want anything done to him I wouldn't want done to myself obviously I want different things to happen to Charles Manson I don't judge it by what I think I'm entitled to so the rule is in danger of becoming too autologous and a breaking down and that's why I don't think that there are in that sense religious or moral absolutes and why it never makes any sense to say that we wouldn't know right from wrong if we couldn't refer it upwards to the unseen celestial core there will always unfortunately be ethical and moral approximations and that's part of the curse of our mammalian condition but just as I wrote a book about the parthenon for example and would think it should be regarded as a great temple of our civilization and a great as 5th century Athens was a great flourishing of it but I don't agree with the cult of Pallas Athena I don't agree with the Athenian imperialism in Michelini and Sparta I don't agree with the Eleusinian mysteries and the various dark cults that disfigured okay but it's quite possible to have the one the glory the architecture the culture the symmetry the poetry in the music without the superstition I would define the cultural task of agnosticism and atheism as being the recognition of the numinous and the transcendent while repudiating the superstitious and the supernatural but if it was the case that a belief in Jupiter or Zeus or Dhyana inspired the Parthenon it would actually be simply wrong and in fact historically narrow-minded to say that the Greek myths poisoned everything clearly they had enormous ly beneficial impact because they did inspire those people who built those buildings so unless you're claiming we can't know that well two things one we can't know that the belief in these cults was sincerely affirmed rather than coerced that's the first thing the second is if you grant this Ganesh if you want me to grant it then you too have to say well as you very carelessly have just already come close to saying that any religion is as good as any other you can go to heaven who cares that Jesus said you can only come to the Father by me well no you're shifting grounded absolutely saying you have to say that the Aztecs your monsters you're implying preposterous a that the people who built the hideous temples based on human sacrifice everywhere from Cambodia to Mexico have just as good a claim to be the founders of our civilization I'm sure you don't mean to make such an idiotic statement well you have that I've I see no reason to believe in the existence of any supernatural dimension either cosmologically or or on earth or a human life I can I can live without it and in fact I think everyone does live without it whether they believe in it or not you clearly don't think that but you also think that salvation is attainable by this it's not just a matter of proving that there might be a supernatural intervention but that if you believe in it in the right way your sins can be forgiven you can be saved and you can have an afterlife a blissful one that will go on forever it's Digitas quite a high burden of proof given the number of gods that have been you touched on you even name some of them baled Dagon Thor Artemis anyone could come up with quite a long list HL Mencken once got the list up to something like 10,000 the gods that we know who have been worshiped it seems to me that we have three possible alternatives I think it will definitely say possible to thinkable alternatives one that all of these are false in other words that the proposition God made man in his own image is exactly the wrong way around instead men made many gods in their own image so either they're all false or they're all true which as I say is only just thinkable because it's obviously nonsensical or only one of them is true and actually if you chose that to be Christianity you'd have to say if you're a real Christian it seems to me only one version of that Christianity is true because many of those are mutually incompatible now do you really think given the odds and given the scope and the scale of it that the third answer can be the correct one will you admit them that this analogy is specious and that in fact there are fundamental differences between Christianity and Islam that the new atheists have been exploiting to in a sense transfer the guilt of Islamic radicalism onto Christianity if you had asked me in the 1930s which religious belief I thought was the most threatening to the survival of human society and civilization I would have said Roman Catholicism because of its very intimate and deep and nasty relationship with fascism at that stage the greatest threat to the humanity was not jihadism but at present it is religions take their turn at bat I mean Northern Ireland Protestantism has been far more oppressive okay and obscurantist and Catholicism even for the last half century I would regard that as anomalous but there's no way just as you can't answer my question about why in that case don't you credit the builders of mosques and Aztec temples and and Khmer temples too and say that all these prove that religion is the origin of civilization you won't do that because it would be to IQ medical for you human efforts to reach the supernatural the fact that you've got so many efforts shows that it's quite likely that some firts are closer than others it's sort of like a way of saying we're all trying to get up to the light up there they're going to be different attempts different theories for how to do it but what some of them may approximate better than others but one might actually be the closest but surely that's not really an analogy in conflicting accounts of observable natural phenomena he's saying where what what are the constituent elements of matter we can see that nature is here is it all water is it all air is it phlogiston is it atoms that's completely different from saying whose God are you going to worship and by the way scientists do not kill each other for getting jefra coming up with different interpretations in order their sentence other people to eternal paradise or torment for getting it right or wrong religion is something else than an opinion I took you agree it is but let it's a faith let's look at that it's your faith with a big promise attached to it and isn't the core principle of Christianity that God offers his love to us Christ died for our sins but there's nothing compulsory about it it's completely a free choice you have a free choice no one's forcing you you've chosen to reject it but nobody made you well you can you can of course you want you're free to reject it I'm here to illustrate that point to the best of my ability but in a very large number of times and places the price of rejecting it or even of seeming to reject it has been very high and not just in the sense of eternal punishment after death but extreme punishment and persecution during the early life one actually has so I'm thankful very grateful to you naturally for giving me my manumission but I don't actually think I need your permission to be free on this point for all the permission from the divine either that's being on free it's like saying of course there's if you ask me have we got free will I say yes of course we have we have no choice at least I know I'm being ironic and the irony is somewhat my expense but if you say of course we have free will because the boss says we do you've advanced the argument not at all it's analogous to that so my question is of Socrates existed by a the canons of historical scholarship on what basis do you deny the historicity forget the divinity just the historicity of Christ well you already had to turn another page we're going to see that I say that there's no proof of the existence of Socrates neither oh I'm so sorry June as you're walking by Alexander the Great you already exist you only have to turn another page to see my say in my discussion of Athenian philosophy that there's no proof of the existence of Socrates either I make the point almost as you do I say it's with the exception of two people who were admirers we don't we can't be certain that he existed to talk but it doesn't make any difference crystal magic I can I can Revere the Socratic method without having any need at all to deify or put on a pedestal a make superhuman of the person who invented it no the point I'm making is already of just dug a pit not the first time the CV was dug a pit for yourself with your own hands all I can ask people to do is one by one for themselves to emancipate themselves from this primitive belief and for societies one by one as many have to put at least the theocratic phase behind them and build up a wall of separation between religion and politics and that's what I'm here to do it's ingenious but it doesn't allow for the retarding effect upon human civilization of superstition slavery genocide human sacrifice religious warfare resistance to scientific and medical advance and so forth all of which can be chalked up with a great deal more accuracy I might have to the religious worldview okay and which now now that we're about to reach the point where apokoliptic weaponry is within the grasp of messianic parties and states the babe fund that it's a extremely counter survival way then we're very alarming an immediate sense you would know where lie to you there is no evidence but the hearsay of fans I want to switch with Nazareth that is out of the great at least has coins with his face on them I'm gonna put one quick question name one question to dennis prager written down by literate people there's nothing with that for Jesus or Marissa poor you are engaging in the filibuster alright no answering the question I think otherwise you could have accused me of not doing so there is no evidence of any kind for the existence of Moses or Jesus no battle of the kind that there is for Alexander the Great not to know the difference let's just say that I wouldn't say that atheism was a morally superior position I wouldn't say was a morally inferior one certainly but there's a tiny edge that it might possess and it's this we can't be accused of wishful thinking at all we will accept conclusions that may be unwelcome to us we don't say well I won't believe this because if I did it would mean not have to be a pessimist I mean that would be absurd it would be counter intellectual I'm not particularly delighted at the thought of my own biological annihilation of my returning to atoms it doesn't delight me my conclusion is it's the overwhelmingly probable thing that the likelihood that I'll be reassembled and we'll have this discussion again in some theme-park is vanishingly small and if you want to reintroduce the question of hope no I don't like the idea that at a certain point I'll be tapped on the shoulder and told you have to leave the party now and you can't come back and not only that it's going to go on without you I don't particularly like that thought but I think it will happen on the other hand if you replace it with the thought the party is going to go on forever and daddy will be watching you at it over time and you can never leave if you find hope in that I wish you joy of it but that there is so much injustice and that there is so much random misery and unfairness is not my problem it is the problem for those who say and I'll rest on this this you look at look at the idea of a God and you say a God who would make a penis that needs to be snipped it's so badly thought out some designer the word for this was good this phrase this was come there was it was come up with muffler the great poet for Greville long time ago said if you believe this then you believe that we are created sick and then ordered to be well that can only be done by a heartless cruel incompetent designer voila

Channel: Agatan Foundation

Views: 588,670

Rating: 4.8360109 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher Hitchens (Author), Best, of, arguments, argument, and, clever, comeback, comebacks, part, Amazing, And, 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, muslim, islamism, Muhammad, eight

Id: MQ8I55weDqA

Length: 30min 49sec (1849 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 19 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/InDeoRideo]

Part 8? I have some vids to watch!