Christopher Hitchens - [2007] - 30th Annual Freedom From Religion Foundation Conference

the farmers pray for precipitation then they say In God We Trust then along comes a drought and dries their crops out and turns their prayers into dust the next time they need some assistance they should take the advice of Mark Twain who said it's better to check the weather report before you pray for rain nothing fails like prayer nothing fails like prayer use your mind and you will find that nothing fails like prayer you reach the final week of the school year but you haven't studied your best so you stay up and cram for the final exam and pray for God's help on the tests you answer those questions with assurance that the Lord will help you sail through when the results are returned what have you learned God's no smarter than you nothing fails like prayer nothing fails like prayer use your mind and you will find that nothing fails like prayer you ask a supernatural power for sunshine on your wedding day then along comes a thundershower and washes your prayers away when things go right you praise the Almighty and you give thanks in Jesus name but when things go wrong you change your song and God never gets the blame nothing fails like prayer nothing fails like prayer use your mind and you will find that nothing fails like prayer how many centuries will it take us before we realize there are no magic forces in nature no watchful eyes in the skies as Robert Ingersoll said a single plow is much more effective than a hundred prayers a day the hands that help are better far then lips that pray nothing fails like prayer nothing fails like prayer use your mind and you will find that nothing fails like Rare nothing fails like prayer nothing fails like prayer use your mind and you will find that nothing fails like prayer beware of dogma it has a bite beware of dogma it wants a fight beware of dogma it will ignite a holy war by itself beware of dogma it'll trap your mind we live just dogma it'll make you blind beware of dogma it's not designed to let you think for yourself if we let it out in the universe there will be no doubt everything is worse beware of dogma don't let it loose that unchain dogma it'll reproduce tie up your dogma there's no excuse for ignorance anymore tie up your dogma don't let it loose that unchain dogma it'll reproduce tie up your dogma there's no excuse for ignorance anymore please clean up after your dog MA and now for the main act ladies and gentlemen one of the main reasons you all came here what a great crowd look at this are there any empty seats in their house one there's one empty seat in the house so thank you all for coming this has been a wonderful convention and it's going to get even better and even better and you've all been looking at the book sales table and are we ready now I didn't come here to sell things today but Annie Laurie did so here sir he's right first um we've been telling them to turn the heat down for an hour and a half and it's hotter up here I'm going to be kind of trapped if you it's still too hot in a couple minutes the house phone is over in the corner you dial zero and you tell them we're too hot but they've promised to do something about it but the lights are bright can we dim the lights more do we I think I might try to do that and then I do have some some house announcements this is our slightly irreverent 2008 wall calendar and people have been begging me for about three years since we started to do the free thought of the day calendar online to put out a wall calendar and I had been reluctant because you have to sell them quickly because they become dated and so we're hoping the response is good it's very charming there's a state Church or religion poking fun of religion cartoon by down at us on every page and then every month is full and replete with the birth dates of famous free thinkers so it would be a very nice Christmas gift for your religious relatives and we are at this conference selling them to 425 otherwise we have to sell them through the mail 15 for postpaid so it's a deal and also we still have some of katha pollitt learning to drive book we didn't have time for her to do a reading but I want you to know how funny that book is it will it's a belly laugher so this is a good chance to get that book still and are we ready to begin Dan I think our speaker is here oh and of course we still have God is not great how religion poisons everything books for sale while they last in the back and the book signing will be after the acceptance speech in that corner okay one other there is an open letter to those who deny God being passed out outside I'm sure some of you got this by the 5 loaves and 2 fish group mr. Hitchens has waged a war against God and he's winning someone said slammed certain Christians it goes on and on laurie Lippmann Brown suggested that people its might might like to make a pledge to FFRF for every one of these that's out there um but anyway you might want to get a copy it's pretty funny as many of you know the Freedom From Religion Foundation has a very special award the emperor has no clothes can you see it you should tell a photo the emperor has no clothes award is designed by the same company that makes the Oscars and this is a gold plated award of the emperor with a little scepter and a little mirror that you can adorn his beautiful face in and of course you know the story the public figures are like the child in that Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale who tells it like it is the emperor has no clothes about especially about religions this award goes to public figures who are not afraid to just tell it like it is past awardees include the Nobel laureate in physics Steven Weinberg Oliver Sacks Peter singer Steven Pinker Ron Reagan the son of Ronald and Nancy Natalie Angie R Alan Dershowitz Penn & Teller you might have seen there there was a show about Penn & Teller or tell her to read renovating his apartment and he kept the award there and it was right in the middle of that you could still see his no God award Steve Benson and Anne Gaylor both of whom are here and you'll see Steve tonight the former Mormon Richard Dawkins katha pollitt and Julia Sweeney among many many others this year's choice was a shoe-in who better exemplifies the spirit can I say spirit who better exemplifies the spirit of this award than our next speaker who's been traveling our God ridden religion drenched nation as Richard Dawkins calls him as a Bible belter and Christopher asked his publisher instead of sending me on the regular tour like the regular book tour I want to go down into the buckle of the Bible Belt he wanted to go down the south to do debates everywhere he can with religionists he's all over the airwaves even yesterday here in Madison he came in a day early he did a live CNN interview for CNN among many other media engagements he's been doing in town you may have read his September column for Vanity Fair about all of his experiences it's called god bless me I'm an atheist god bless me it's a best-seller he said Christopher Hitchens is witty he's entertaining he's plain spoken despite all those well turned phrases he says no what no one else will for example his candid and truthful statement about the death of Jerry Falwell did you see that we're not supposed to speak ill of the dead but we can make exceptions what did he what did you call him a little a little toad who should be selling pencils on a street corner or something like that you know which which I thought was a I thought it was it too good of a job for a for well but telling it in an important and engaging best-selling book that continues to be a best-seller surprise surprise God is not great how religion poisons everything and God may not be great but the book God is not great is great he says in here violent irrational intolerant allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry contemptuous of women and coercive toward children organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience above all he says we are in need of a new enlightenment which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman to clear the mind for this project it's become necessary to know the enemy and to prepare to fight it so are you here Christopher where are you yes he is I'm going to come on up here okay did you distill the item officially right Mr Cook no I didn't tell I'm going to give you this award I'm going to present two awards the first award is our our brand new wall calendar which has your birthday in here and then the 2007 emperor has no clothes award christopher hitchens Freedom From Religion Foundation we just said it right here thank you thank you thanks well thank you for legend gentlemen comrades friends brothers sisters for coming thank you various introduction thank you for the calendar my birthday is the 13th of April which is the same birthday as the author of the Virginia statute on religious freedom mr. Jefferson I took my oath at his Memorial in Washington swearing to particularly I wrote it in uphold the separation of church and state as bodied forth in his letter as president to the Baptist's of Danbury Connecticut who were frightened of persecution front of persecution from whom by the way the congregation lists of Danbury Connecticut anyway then as you the world knows there doesn't know that the reply that he gave said that there shall ever be a wall of separation between church and state in this great Republic and I proudly affirmed as much and I have been going around the south promulgating my new slogan in which I ask you to join me mr. Jefferson build up that wall that's an accidental preface given me by our generous host I didn't realize I was going to be able to say that and I did feel I might give you a brief report on the campaign trail on the swing through the areas of piety I don't ever claimed feel or detect the finger of the Divine certainly not in my own arrangements but I guess it was lucky that in the first week as I was in North Carolina the carcass of Jerry 4 was found unwrapped shirred slumped on the floor of his the mediocre degree mill of an office in Virginia and I was able to say there they tried to bleep it on I think it was Hannity and Colmes when I was a terrified for me that that Jan was going to tell this for me but Tim that had he been given an enema he could have been buried in a matchbox so good are things these days with YouTube and other things my children can do and I cannot but apparently I was lip read saying that even though they bleach it out said God said on the air anyway so let's let's not say that all the victories of the wicked side but I didn't expect it by the end of the summer there would have been a bunch of letters published by the late woman arrogantly calling herself Mother Teresa Agnes boo Joshu elderly virgin of Macedonia inflicting her hideous doctrines on the wretched of Bengal saying that she couldn't believe a word of it either I didn't think she was one of us two and look let's be chargeable let's welcome the old bag before it's too late if she can't bring herself to believe it and if all her confessors can do is to say that the suffering that results gives her a share in crucifixion then let's for heaven's sake extend the hand of compassion to her ourselves now what here's one I've learned on this process of debate and engagement with the faithful where I don't want to sound conceited but I have now taken on all the comers they suggest I don't nominate their side and in nominating their team and no one yet has said that I've lost one it's the furthest I ought to go in the fairness but here's what I've learned I've learned not to say some things that wood used to irritate me I don't say for example why do they never come up with any new arguments as I heard myself saying after a debate with the theatre gin the other night in Georgetown well they can't come up with any new arguments can they they're stuck if you like with the old arguments they can say if you like and by torturing themselves into pretzel shape all right this this applies only to those who do accept the theory of evolution by natural selection or who do understand a little bit of physics is it come to think of it it does look as if we got here as primates after 99.8% of all the other species ever created on earth became extinct that only shows how clever God was to begin with not much of an argument is it and she doesn't really count as an argument at all it isn't reasoning of any kind it's a sort of reverse engineering but it is as is often said of hypocrisy the complement advice players to virtue it's a tribute in a sense to the work that had it been done earlier would have meant there was no need for superstition in the first place the same with the Big Bang after all it's an awesome cosmic event involving a great deal of heat and a great deal of light in fact dinesh d'souza one of my best antagonists really believing serious Catholic does say it is nubuck what's so great about Christianity the book that needs a question mark in its title but doesn't have one that come to think of it now we look at it again genesis instead of negating the Big Bang predicts it because we used to laugh and say how could God create light and only then the Sun the moon and the stars well Big Bang answers that so you see it was always there all along only we were too dumb to see it now I agree with international that's a nice try but that's as generous as I'm prepared to be know what we have to do is grasp something right off and stop being in the least bit apologetic about it ourselves it is often quasi conceded if I can put it like that phrase it like that that the religion may be metaphysically false and not even really metaphorically true boom when you think of those torches about the Big Bang that I've just adumbrated and it's figures are those of legend and myth and its miracles are fairy tales for scared children and all of this and all this is now completely impossible to deny or to refute but nonetheless it has an ethical basis these fairy tales at least teach children how to behave well the beginning of the argument must be that we say this is not sane not so we are we are not conceding this to the faithful is it moral for example to tell children to tell anybody that their sins can be forgiven them because the human sacrifice in which they had no say in which if they had had any childish say they would have wanted to stop wouldn't have wanted to see happen but because of the the hideous public torture and death of someone 2,000 years ago that their personal responsibility is dissolved all they need to do is to recognize the beauty of this human sacrifice through their sins on the scapegoat and we forgiving them that's a positively immoral doctrine in my submission I could if I wanted to offer to pay your debts I'm not gonna but I could if I liked you enough I could do that I could if I really really liked you enough I suppose there's no system that allows it but I could be used to be in primitive facility I could offer to serve your term in prison for you if I knew you and I believed in you we know of cases Charles Dickens ISM Tale of Two Cities is the most luminous where someone will even take someone else's place on the scaffold they'll do their suffering for them they'll pay their debts but they can't take away their responsibility they can't say those sins never occurred and it would be immoral to try so the very centerpiece of the main religion at any rate in these United States there is something that is positively wicked we're not arguing we'd it's insulting for us to be made to argue that we might be less ethical or moral because we don't believe it's not enough for us to say hey you can be a good person and be an atheist somebody at the convention of AI the other day in Washington was quoted on television just before I was interviewed that's why I saw it saying well we're good people were just not God people no no nice try get off the apologetic get off the defensive you can't be a good person and a god person you can't be religion is the inculcation by coercion not just of irrationality but of immorality what is moral about vicarious Redemption the adoption I just mentioned what is moral about the mutilation of the genitals of children in the name of God what is moral about that the genital mutilation community is entirely theocratic it should accept responsibility for what it advocates and not say it's teaching morality what about the Muslim injunction that anyone wishing to change their religion to become a NAPA state must be killed is it moral teaching to say that people who have second thoughts about faith must suffer the death penalty I hardly think so is it moral for Orthodox Jews to greet every lovely day with thanking their maker for not making them a woman or a Gentile a is it moral for the women to have to say that we thank God for making us the way we are actually that's not at least immoral but there's something somewhat fatuous about it I hope you'll agree it's a form of sadomasochism which despite some of its advocates I don't think is good for you in the long run you're told to begin with even that you are a worm so sinful guilty shrunken miserable creature who has as we used to be made to say in Anglican school no health in us the Quran says made of a clot of blood the Bible says dust the Jews say thank God at least you're not going you begin with this abject masochism you're told that you're responsible the sins that were committed before you were born that you couldn't have influenced that your only chance is to take part in a barbaric ritual of torture and death if you were to be free of this inherited burden it's almost worse than race theory but just because no one can be that object for so long or forever there's a compensating offer well the universe is designed with you in mind and God has a plan for you so from being a groveling worm and clump of blood clot or dust you can go straight to saying well there's a divine scheme and it has me in mind to the most arid the most solipsistic self-centeredness and arrogance this is not morality this is bound to lead to bad behavior psychically physically socially and it always has and it always will is wish thinking moral I don't think it's moral at all to live children when I meet people in holy orders and I feel I'm meeting someone who is paid to lie to children I don't think that's a moral calling or occupation to tell children that they should be terrified of hell or that they if they do a right action or if they avoid wrong actions as defined as inescapable they might go to heaven this is wicked it's ruined the childhoods of millions of children down the generations we have some but not all of their memoirs there's certainly nobody in this room who doesn't know somebody whose life was effectively wrecked by this and it has something else that's not moral or defensible which is a implicit appeal to the totalitarian the origins of totalitarianism our greatest enemy lie in this we're told that we wouldn't know right from a wrong action who wouldn't be able to tell let alone to perform one if we were not already the property of a celestial dictator who we must love and fear at the same time compulsory love is a pretty horrible idea the fear that goes with it is a little more than the negation of that let me give you an instance of what I mean I've been to all three of the axis of evil countries now and very writer who has when I was a child and I was told about heaven and hell I couldn't form a picture of heaven because I was told well what it would be was eternal praise everlasting praise and thanks all the time thanks and praise and thank you and I praise you again forever for doing what appears to come to you naturally and having made me out of a clot of blood sorry like hell to me of hell of course a child can be given an awful picture and made many children never get over it but I couldn't imagine what it would be like to live like that forever praising will now be in North Korea and I do know the only duty the only duty or right of the half-starved citizen is to thank for his handful of joshiy rice every day or hers the dear leader who makes it possible there is no other culture all films or plays all classes in school or programs on the TV and the radio they're all about the same thing you have to thank the dear leader what did that were enough the Dear Leader is only the head of the party in the Army in North Korea he's not the president of North Korea president is his father has been dead for 15 years did you know that well North Korea has a dead president it's a neck Rock recei a fan autocracy in a mores hola cracy as a death cult and you may have noticed it's only one short of a Trinity and the son is the reincarnation of this father and now I know what it would be like now I know what it would be like and I wasn't able in the article I wrote to begin to describe the horrific pointlessness and misery of what it would be like to be a North Korean even for half a day none of you none of you can imagine it but it's what theocracy wants you to imagine and be grateful for and I'll add this at least you can die and get out of North Korea it is the only way you can leave that climatic nightmare not so with monotheism when you die is when the church out Aaron isn't really begins now who wants this to be true who but someone servile and stupid and pathetic wants it to be true that they can be convicted of thought crime at any minute of their day or night as they're sleeping for thinking the wrong thing who wants to be always in debt to someone who never asked them if they wanted the loan in the first place who wants this all of all of us who as Americans oppose the very idea of on freedom and tyranny must say that this is where the resistance to to challenge Aaron excuse me to totalitarianism really begins by the repudiation of religion and by the defiance of theocracy that's where the battle for our values has to start so religion abolish is our obligation to live in truth very important part of our basic integrity it caters to our worst solipsism and our worst masochism simultaneously thus denies us our self-respect on the trail so to say I've evolved three challenges well two really one takes a dual form if you will allow the expression on this matter of ethics in morality I say to every cleric I've debated with and to all of their audiences and I've said it on the Christianity Today website now on countless TV and radio shows in print hundreds of times on public platforms dozens of times and I've not yet had an answer if you say that morality can only be derived from a supernatural Authority detention don't have to say that just say Authority then you must be able to name for me an ethical statement made or ethical action performed by believer that could not have been performed but I not believe that by an infidel that would be forbidden to them unavailable unaccessible to them can you do it they haven't yet the challenge has been out extant for really quite a long time whereas if I can just mention my corollary if I ask any audience not just this one any audience I did it in Georgetown University the headquarters of the one that headquarters of the Catholic faith in this country the night before last ask anyone in any audience to say can they think of a wicked action performed that could only have been performed in the name of God or under divine instruction no one has any hesitation in recognising or don't file now as long as this remains the case it is they have to do the explaining they who are the accounting they who owe the apology and not us and we must be plain on it I have a third challenge which is to those who say the president is one of them there in these matters the Cardiac might be decided of where we come from our cosmos our species we should teach the argument we should have equal time the president is too stupid to know that there isn't really an argument about this anymore there used to be one and when the was when people weren't quite certain the line of the churches was the teaching of evolution and of Darwinism should be banned altogether they didn't want equal time then notice the slippage of their gears when they were strong enough to try and ban it that's what they wanted to do now they're not strong enough they come up with a wheelie feeble ingratiating whine of well equal time fair dues open-mindedness and so on as if there really was a disagreement about this all right let's see if we can accommodate them I learned about Darwin by studying actually the debate between Bishop Huxley and excuse me mr. Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley a doctor that is a classic debate that's how I learned about it I wasn't tortured in science class I was taught history class that's how I learned I've learned since as you have about the debate between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan the idol of all dimas' HL Mencken : in Dayton Tennessee I learned about that in history and literature class not a biology class keep it out of there because otherwise we'll be having people saying well children chemistry period is over but we'll be doing alchemy in the next half I put away your astronomy books and get out your astrology charts because we are open-minded in this school and other stultifying nonsense that you wouldn't even get in a madrassa Russian think but if we're to accept the principle there let us save the president of his friends by all means equal time any church that is tax-exempt therefore any religious group that gets a break from the IRS any church that's in receipt of any monies at all from the so called faith-based initiative must give 50% of its time to the teaching of evolution by natural selection you might take that back to your communities and tell them to suck on that and see if they like it because that's what they seem to be asking but are too stupid to realize see off the defensive again we're not resisting them we're on their trail now we've got their number we're on their track they're the ones who should be scared of us don't you think it's about time I do now because religion was the someone will tell me when I'm trespassing on our time together weren't they will you any loan will you let me know I mean my impression is that people come to events like this especially people like you for the chance to speak as well as to listen and we are supposed to have some time it's yours shall I just bang on till they tell me to stop okay but I wouldn't mind a light of something like I don't I don't want to skip Q&A Q&A sounds patronizing at the time which belongs to us okay and then I will stop being this nice and only talk to someone who has a receipt preferably from an independent bookstore because this is America after all and I didn't sign up for nothing okay the first and the have another challenge this is my fourth one the we have religion in our midst and it's in our even in our minds we know where it comes from for an excellent reason religion is the first and therefore in some ways therefore the worst of our chance to explain human nature and the natural order it was our first attempt at philosophy just as it was our first attempt at astronomy and at biology we embarked on it in the time of fearful infancy when we didn't know that we lived on a rounded planet in a tiny server system which had a center around which we revolved didn't revolve around us religion used to preach the contrary we didn't know that there were microorganisms that we couldn't see but that explained a lot about both our health and our unhealth ill health we were told we were given dominions over all animals and we were wrong because there were no dinosaurs in that list no marsupials because the people who wrote this didn't know they existed and we were certainly never given dominion over microorganisms and we'll never get that because they rule good for the gut sometimes bad for other things permanently listed as it were highly evolved rivals we were baffled by climatic and cataclysmic events earthquakes tidal waves storms lightning all of this was to us terrifying religion works as an attempt then to make sense of things we are pattern-seeking mammals after all it's a good thing that we are because if we weren't pattern-seeking mammals our curiosity would have no hourglass and we wouldn't be capable of the great innovations that are liberated us from so many things including religion and it's argued by some well then give it some credit the late Stephen Jay Gould said let's consider religion in one corner and the study of science and reason or another and consider them non-overlapping magisteria they one does one one does the other there's no need for a conflict I think this has become especially with the extraordinary revolution that we've been through in the last twenty years or so in the human and natural sciences with the work of Richard Dawkins Steven Weinberg Daniel Janet Carl Sagan have been leaving anyone out I'm sure I am a Stephen Hawking of course many others that we've come to the point where we have to say no this stuff is incompatible with in fact I prefer to say irreconcilable with a reasoned acquisition of knowledge and reasoned deployment of it and I think I found a way I'm a non scientist who's profited a lot from studying this discussion of putting it to a lay audience in such a way as it can be clearly understood and if you like I'll share it with you you want me to share sharing is such a lovely word well it's this I've taken the best evidence that I can most recently the night before last in Georgetown from Francis Collins who as you know completed the Human Genome Project but who believes himself to be the opiate or divine design I was very impressed once when hiking to find a frozen waterfall went into three parts of Trinity and knelt down at that very moment and gave himself he says to Jesus though I don't see what Jesus has to do in the free freezing of the waterfalls but it could have been Mohammed it could have been Krishna he chose the Nazarene and who therefore demonstrates that for many people it is possible to hold apparently irreconcilable ideas in the head at the same time and who is a man I was very proud to have met honored to have even been discussing with very well I asked him how long doctor do you believe the human species Homo sapiens after our brief encounters with the cro-magnons and the Neanderthals and so on have you autonomous as Homo sapiens on the earth so I've heard from Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins maybe it's as long as 200 maybe 240 or 50,000 years or as low as and he said as low as a hundred thousand could only be a hundred thousand I said okay I'm Jewish on my mother's side I'll take a hundred a hundred thousand years then let's just that's all I need for this experiment 100,000 years ladies and gentlemen of our species born probably dying a lot will evidently dying a lot in childbirth and killing its mothers by doing so but managing to get born living life expectancy for the first fifteen thousand years probably not more than about 20-25 dying of microorganisms we didn't know were there dying of our teeth which was suspiciously too near our brain for when they when they rotted or became infected terrified by earthquakes lightning floods famines inexplicable cataclysmic events fighting one another for sex for food for shelter for territory all of that you can any of you can fill in this bit for yourself this Trobe have a rough picture of what it was like but but slow it's true and gradual and much backsliding but a sort of upper progression to where we are approximately now for 50 60 70 80 ad on think think of the wars now think of the famines think of the rapes think of the gods they had because the Bears they worshipped and made skulls their skulls they made into totems think of the waterfalls they thought were magic think of the rocks they thought was special in all this they weren't without God believe you me none of them were but that didn't count didn't count at all because heaven watched this like that all that suffering death disease murder miseries famine with folded arms and indifference until 98 thousand years had gone by and said now it may be trying to intervene and the best place to do it and the best place to conduct this intervention would not be China where people can read and make gunpowder but in sort of Bronze Age Palestine would be a good good place to implant the idea by a human sacrifice of course we always do that ominously if the news can spread in pure form by word of mouth now I don't know about you I'm willing I've debated a lot of religious people now I know that it's conceivable that in nature that is such a thing as parthenogenesis thus a virgin could conceivably conceive without the I think rather exquisite preconditions that are thought by some to be so problematic why so many gods have been born that way I don't quite know I don't think of the birth when I was in one way street and I hope neither do you but I could be brought to believe that I could be and since resurrection is so commonplace in the New Testament happens all time if it was commonplace then it doesn't seem commonplace now but it would mean it wasn't particularly there was a resurrection there either certainly wouldn't prove the doctrines of the person who was so much okay I could be likely brought to believe that I can't be brought to believe the story I've just told you which must be true if religion is true if religion is true that's what happened to our species and that's impossible and it's irreconcilable with what we know it's incompatible with what we know it can't be squared with any concept we could possibly form of scientific knowledge or of the development of our cosmos biosphere or our species so we'd be better off without it even if it preached morality which it does not okay am i moving towards my climax you may be wondering well now I listen to Cather last night as I always do when I get the chance and I agree with her that we have some reason to be optimistic as least on the territory of these united states that our enemies are in retreat they're not only beaten in the courts but they're humiliated in the courts if you haven't read my friend Matthew Chapman's book on the Dover Pennsylvania case may I recommend it to you very strongly I didn't see it on the literature table but Matthew is Charles Darwin's great-great grandson he's a great friend of mine he's recently decided to become Rhian volved in this matter he's basically a filmmaker he just thought he couldn't he couldn't stay out of the argument any longer he went to Dover Pennsylvania he sat there for the whole trial which lasted 40 days and 40 nights which is the title of his book which I recommend and it does show how a small-town America can throw off this nonsense with some Brio and that's very much to the good I think and there are other indications as well of the of a fight back however if we look at the international picture I find that I find the situation very worrying doesn't make me optimistic at all in Russia recently mobilized by the extremely cynical forces of Vladimir Putin's party and his security services the Russian Orthodox Church is back as a real part of the nationalist ort ARCIC one-party Russian chauvinist regime with that he wishes to restore after the humiliations were visited on the greater Russian idea in the last few years but at every point where that regime tries to impose itself you will find a black drape figure standing next to the KGB man and in the classroom - it's coming it could be very very very dangerous it's very often ignored and when President Bush met Putin and so he was wearing a crucifix as you may remember he said that was the obvious clear proof that the man was a good egg a form of national suicide it seems to me that we'd have a president who could be so easily taken in by a sadistic expansionist goon who has a clerical militia as part of his campaign to intimidate Georgia Poland Chechnya the Baltic states Ukraine and beyond this many others it's going to be in our future and theocracies going to be one of the forms it's going to take and its nuclear so think about that if you would for a bit think about what you of course already know the situation in Iran now in Iran here's another case where religion doesn't always lead to moral results in Iran you're not allowed to execute a female virgin whatever crime she's committed she might have been a member of a opposition group she might have blasphemes in some way she might have uncovered her hair in public who knows what she might have done but you're not allowed even if the death penalty applies to put her to death if she's a virgin so she's raped by the Revolutionary Guards in the prison and then she can be executed some people say that without God people would give themselves permission to do anything look at that case and see that with god only with god only with the view that gods on your side can't people give themselves permission to do things that would otherwise be called satanic that's what this is regime is like I've seen it up close to now our greatest nightmare is about to occur because even though it's worst I think mr. Putin's regime is a cynical and so to say materialist one we're about to see in a run of the coincidence we've dreaded for a long time that of a Masonic regime with apokoliptic weaponry and is evidently looking for a confrontation with secular society everywhere from Lebanon to Iraq it doesn't feel as a confession win because it feels that a tooth fairy called the 12th Imam its Messiah is it is about to return to them and this is a fantastically dangerous extraordinarily dangerous state of affairs to see what the parties of God have been doing to demolish Iraqi civil society is something you can see every day you don't need me to tell you about to see the Masonic settlers on the west bank trying to bring on the Messiah in their way and hope to and hope to bring about the end of days is another phenomenon that has become to us almost too familiar remember again part of our charge against religion part of our belief that it is fundamentally wicked and anti human is precisely its eschatology religion is predicated on the idea that our time here is short and should be shorter but our job is to bring on the end of days that this is just a veil of Tears and guilt and shame and excellent this the only life we have the only life that we have it contains music and art and literature and solidarity insects all of and love all of this should be swept away we can't wait for the end times to come that's what they all have to believe the Archbishop of Canterbury of all people the man is thought to be the head of the mildest Church of the lot a few years ago Jeffrey Fisher was his name these are the people who say that they lead a flock and who suddenly look like sheep and how much can you tell by the way from a religion that refers to its adherents as if they were sheep and its leaders as shepherds but never mind that for now Jeffrey Fisher twas said discussing thermonuclear war you would have thought if I've given you the quote blind that it was some verminous mullah said the worst he could do would be to usher people sooner and in their millions into a higher form of life to which they're destined anyway eschatology is inseparable from religious faith it wants this to come to an end it seeks our destruction it thirsts for it it and it sometimes plans for it and that's what's happening to us now so I am NOT happy at the way in which these clouds are gathering not just in the corner of our eye but increasing directly in our in our vision and so rather than just to leave you with a pessimistic thought I want to leave you with a one with one I hope slightly pisses you off in the in katha speech today wait last night and in the literature table that I saw in the back and in many of the conversations I've had on the side here I would have got the impression that we were all met here to tell Jerry Falwell to off that's not true at all it's very I did think anyone's done much more than I have to rubbish the Christian Coalition to ridicule them to oppose them to trash them in their own heartlands to denounce them imprint on the and so on it's necessary job very important thing to do but it's not the whole story you haven't really come out as I'm sorry to hear the expression is for us this weekend you haven't declared yourself bravely to be an atheist and to be defending civilization against clerical barbarism you haven't done that when if all you've done is denounced some moon-faced Christian Coalition is or some bum face Jesuit child molester that should be the elementary duty of a citizen and many non atheists are capable at least of doing that no in order to say you've taken on the battle you have to say that you are taking on jihad the most virulent the most dangerous the most evil the most pernicious the most systematic attack that secular civilization is currently facing and I sense a terrible neutrality about this in this hall and in this constituency I said some real reluctance to mention anything that might possibly put people on the same side as the 82nd airborne or the hundred and first or indeed President Bush or Paul Wolfowitz a sense a real hanging back on the only thing that's going to decide whether our civilization outlast barbarism or not and if I'm wrong I want you to tell me and if we start not even I would leave to whereas dog dies thanks sure um I'm not finished but I've barely got my trousers off but that's always when they tell me to stop so who should recognize questioners should it be me I haven't planned anyone here have I is there an open mic yes go for it um I am Not sure I share your view I think I think the Muslim fundamentalism is one of the worst maybe it's the worst maybe it's worse than all of them I don't know about that for sure but I do have my strong belief that by invading Iraq by kicking out Saddam as terrible and brutal a guy as he was we have brought about the growth of this terrible fundamentalism we've made the Muslim we've caused the Muslim world to regress and I don't I don't I think that sending in the 82nd airborne can only push us in a reverse direction I'm wondering if your views have changed since the war started and if you think the war was a good idea or if it's going well well without some without having what I'm very willing to have in the time ago I would in detail on Iraq I can tell you immediately how I disagree with you you give away the entire argument when you say they only get angry because of what we do that was what was said about September the 11th as well that's what said about everything that the United States or the West does we've made them angry it's not because of the failed state created by Islamic backwardness that turns into a rogue state because it can't blame itself for its failure and exports the violence that can't hit it must be something we've done that's you've stated the ground of my disagreement with you absolutely perfectly I won't listen to a bar of that song the problem is and I shouldn't have to be saying this to an audience of unbelievers the problem is the religion to begin with and the oppression that it promulgates the violence that it preaches the way that it denies rights to half of its citizens by virtue of their gender the dreams of conquests that it inculcates into children and so forth no we can't make that any worse by fighting it we do not we do not create jihad by resisting it we just don't resist it enough we let it rot rot for far too long far too much we should have taken care of that a long time ago and we need to be training an army that is willing to fight in this way and in the most bizarre and ghastly and unpredictable circumstances as we are doing an army that's trained to fight and really kill in order to defend us and if you think that that idea is more dangerous than the idea of an Iranian theocracy waltzing past the European Union spitting its way through the United Nations tearing up all the treaties that serve a signed as it goes laughing at us sending death squads to kill our novelists sending death squads to blow up the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires sending killers with impunity to Berlin to kill the Kurdish Democratic leadership of Iran in a restaurant in Germany doing all this and never suffering a thing and then about to become thermonuclear if you don't think that's the most dangerous thing that you have no concept of what a threat religion can really be and you don't see it when it's blaring you in the face so don't clap I don't care I have recollections of growing up being schooled as a youngster in Catholicism and I remember having doubts about God and and then I remember reading history books and you know describing Kings and their activity and I thought one equated with the other God sort of was a recreated it with the idea of Kings and now I I feel with what's going on in this country in terms of the administration trying to create and make Imperial the unitary executive I feel that that also equates with the king and with God and that we should be resisting as much as we can and for that reason that is a reason I think we should impeach Cheney and Bush for doing that and as as a sidebar I would say ideally we probably should impeach Congress as well for further accommodation while we're at it well I'm tempted to say that as comment but I'll simply add I remember John Ashcroft Bush's first Attorney General saying I'm making this statement in the United States we have no king but Jesus a statement that is exactly two words too long and is in need of a abrupt circumcision to cut it down to size cut itself down so I'm a if you care I'm a named plaintiff in the lawsuit brought by American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Agency and the Justice Department on the warrantless wiretapping we won the first round in a court in Michigan and we've but know it I have to adjust I knew if you ever clap it would be the wrong moment when I I write for for free Inquirer magazine I wrote the column the some of you probably see and it depresses me that the impression given by that magazine most of the time is the new order to read it you should be a liberal Democrat I think that's a dangerous and foolish thing to be doing there are a lot of people who are not Democrats and liberals who perfectly understand the separation of church and state there are a lot of right-wing atheists some of them I'm afraid to say fans of the unreadable novels divine Rand and so forth but it's this is not this I wouldn't come I would not come to this gathering at our thought of us trying to elect a fool like Barack Obama to be President United States that was why I wouldn't do it let alone a really really wicked person like Hillary Clinton the faith-based from Michael reeking I wouldn't do it okay and if you ask me who I vote for tomorrow it would be Rudy Giuliani and if you don't like it you can take a number get online and suck my thumb you were talking about Iranian theocracy and the need to oppose it but it's one thing to say you know it's bad but what do you what do you think we do about it we demolish its own nuclear facilities we say we make it very plain the day will never dawn when that regime of the past around Revolutionary Guard has nuclear weapons at its disposal that will never happen when they say what do you mean by that we say we just said what we meant and we can make good on it yeah if there helps to demolish the theocracy as well all to the good but for now our existence is incompatible with you clear armed theocracy and can i really not be pushing at an open door saying that in this room evidently not okay let's see demolish it and try and bring down the regime at the same time it's a no brainer I'm curious about many things about you curiouser by the moment with the really Giuliani thing but I'll limit myself to one of the things in your book you apparently spent quite a bit of time with Rajesh Bhagwan back in the 80s yes and I'm curious as to were you there for enlightenment or expose of him or what was the situation what were you looking for there um of adverse experiences with them Eastern religious gurus and God men and preachers of the enlightened path and one of them was with the man now gone reincarnated as Osho if you follow the occult press with the same picture of the same flowing robe two flowing bearded man who was then known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Bhagwan basically means God Sri means holy Rajneesh was his name he had a group of orange robed rich people in a nosh Ram in Pune outside Bombay in India and the 80s was a very fashionable resort for American and European wealthy seekers in that period and you had the largest collection of Rolls Royces then of anyone except President Brezhnev of the city and the BBC paid me to go pretend to be an acolyte I put on orange robe and go to this ashram there's none of the most amusing weeks of my life actually he got tiring at times I mean it was essentially sex and drugs in rock and roll I thought the BBC is paying for this but there was the spiritual side too you had to listen to these bloody addresses in the morning and and you had to be slipped on your way and by two very beautiful girls in case you were wearing the wrong kind of aftershave in the pain it brings them in the angst and the anxiety and the questioning of the doubt that this is actually a very dangerous tendency I think it's obvious to me that many of our fellow creatures would rather do without their minds and they'd rather have reassurance they'd rather have bliss they keep being told if you've early accept nirvana and that the essence of the oil is the Godhead of the true you know you'd have happiness and you'd be free from anxiety and stress and sorry well I don't want it I like anxiety I like stress I like doubt and argument in these things if I thought you'd give me this I would hate it I wouldn't want it it's an offer not worth having but one of our antagonists we have to understand in this argument is not just the people who farm and exploit credulity and so-called spirituality and faith not just the people who farm it and exploit it but the people who want it to be true the people who would rather dwell in the realm of illusion and delusion many of whom are our fellow citizens that's our cultural project is to try and raise them above the level where Charlotte Emery can poison their lives my question is um what do you think the consequences will be for here in the United States if we leave Iraq in the theocrats or whoever takeover well we won't let the theocrats taken over Iran I'm telling you now there's too much oil in Iraq for us to let it be controlled by our enemies this used to be an axiom I didn't understand why it's so difficult fuel to grasp right Schad you understand because apparently oil is a substance almost obscene like some glass knee bodily secretions the company I don't feel about that way I don't feel that way about oil I think it's very important economic resource we will be hard-pressed without it as would our allies in Europe and elsewhere Iraq has a piece turned state in the region and a choke point in the world economy it shouldn't have been ever controlled by a psychopathic crime family had private ownership ago and it must never fall into the hands of the parties of God or other of our enemies that seems to me obvious if people say no blood for oil moronic thing to say it's like saying freedom isn't worth fighting for it's like saying your own interests aren't worth defending give up this some quasi-religious mentality if you can while you have time a fight is actually on in this area which we dare not lose we have some brilliant allies there other secular Kurds for example who I don't think anyone in this room would dare say to my face we should betray or abandon though I I know most of you are thinking of voting for candidates who would walk away and let them all be killed again without compunction well tell it to me look in my eye and say willing to do that the only secular part of the country the big success that we've created prosperity new oil fields an election no mullahs an example that could spread to the rest of Iraq tell me that that that you care so much about your own convictions that you're willing to abandon those people now get the chance so my question is you suggest that we we should fight Islam we should try and limit fundamentalist Islam that's a serious problem that we have to take you know as you guys know what I say huh that's not what I say hi MSA we are fighting it okay that's well just watching us but so my question is is how exactly does uh bombing and killing Muslims lessen their numbers or limit their fervor um just wondering if I should draw you a picture you mean how does killing them lessen their number your question cannot possibly be as sappy as it sounds you must have meant something more intelligent than that well my idea is you must have come across this the numbers of those bombs will decline oh oh yes but that encourages others ah you're so sure yes yes what I remember being told after 9/11 if we destroy our sama bin Laden hundreds will spring up in his place some of you may have said that hope not you all heard it well in that case we find a quick way of surrendering hadn't we had we better not I mean there's no point in resisting in that case because by the more we the more we beat them the more strong they'll get it's like a Greek myth of an tears every time thrown to the ground he drew strength from the soil unbeatable if you think if you think that by all means think it but I don't know what you're doing at a conference that wants to defend atheism against religious barbarism how do I vision victory someone asks from the floor I'll tell you how I'll tell you how I'd know it was possible become like this when the side of jihad said can we take these casualties any longer when they worried have we a lien ated the people as they are wearing nine Iraq have we turned everyone off we're tactics have we lost friends as our reputation gone down when they ask this when they say have we disgraced and discredited ourselves by rape and by video torture and by the killing of other Muslims they're the ones who are killing Muslims they're also blowing up the mosques not me not us they do it on boast of it for the for the mutilation of women for the throwing of acid in the faces of girls for the for the car bombing of girls schools it what I wonder if we've made a mistake by doing this that's what I want to hear them say no sir can we take it any longer the Marines come first by day or night they shoot us like rats we bring in volunteers none of them ever come back now I never go home they're all killed in Iraq it's a killing field for us we shove people by the hundreds over the border in open order from a Pakistan into Afghanistan they're all killed when do we have to ask ourselves is God really on our side that's the point we have to get to instead the sickly petty masochism of American public opinion say shouldn't we hold the flag to half-staff every time one of us gets killed shouldn't we be the ones in doubt that we're fighting a just war shouldn't we be the ones who are worrying that we have a right on our side no no no enough of that make them worry we can get to that point because they are prepared they are suicidal they are irrational they operate on a crazy worldview they will get to the stage where they've realized they've made a mistake all the evidence is in Iraq already that al Qaeda in Iraq because totally isolation of the spirit of softness imagine now just of hunting down and killing them which i think is a pleasure as well as a duty mr. Hitchens so that was a curious interruption they're not sure what that was I address you as an atheist and and a secularist and a Marxist I'm very much troubled by by your remarks about the need to stand up in and fight this this Muslim jihad I have no time for for oppressive religion of any stripe but I think you are well aware of the long history of crimes committed by the British government in Iraq the United States government in Vietnam and today in Iraq and Afghanistan and I'm wondering how you can possibly say that it is Western civilization the civilization of the colonizers and the oppressors who do it all of course in the name of liberation and democracy how this is not the fundamental problem rather than what you call the jihad of what I consider to be the response to the the crimes of of US and European imperialism well they haven't written gentlemen there you have it you see how you see how far the termites have spread and how long and well they've dined when someone get up and say that in a meeting of unbelievers that the problem is Western civilization not the Islamic threat to it that's how far the termites have gone now as a matter of fact sir I could have asked that question 50 times better than you did and answered it 50 times as comprehensively if you'd like I can without conceit refer you to a biography of mind by befriended Kissinger there is a compendium an anthology of the war crimes committed by the United States and its allies in the third world and elsewhere and a call for those people there's responsible to be arraigned for crimes against humanity and war crimes it's a cheap paperback published by the new left review that anyone can get hold of and I can't recommend too highly one of those crimes I'll just give you an example to show how utterly fatuous your implication is one of those crimes was the arming and training of the Indonesian Armed Forces to take over the Republic of East Timor some of you are no doubt aware of this terrible atrocity leading it's one of Noam Chomsky's best campaigns in writing leading to the very near physical extirpation of the people of East Timor a genocide more comprehensive than Cambodia taking place a little afterwards with our weapons with our diplomatic protection and with the endorsement of Kissinger and Ford hands up those who roughly remember this ok not as good as I'd like but still and sad but but bear it in mind and look it up now what do you know what are some of the items of the al Qaeda bin Laden manifesto well oddly enough if this was to my surprise I thought it would be lowered down item three in the charge against the West is that it reversed course on East Timor try to undo the genocide brought his team Auto referendum on independence sent Jose Vera de Mello one of the greatest term sorry Sergio Vieira de Melia one of the greatest UN civil servants to East Timor to supervise the transition to independence and the election and made East Timor the newest member of the UN bin Laden says for this we will never forgive the Christian Crusaders and their imperialist friends they took away a republic from a Muslim land Indonesia most of the people of East Timor by the way are Christian and speak Portuguese a detail for this we will never forgive them for this they that was the reason they gave from blowing up the UN office in Iraq because that's where Maria was sent next with a truck bomb of explosive so enormous that it must have been borrowed from the former Iraqi army and Baath Party that's the reason they gave for blowing the Australian tourists in Bali in Indonesia and the Indonesian taxi drivers who were servicing that resort because they couldn't forgive the West for its behavior in East Timor in other words if you want to avoid upsetting these people you have to let Indonesia commit genocide in East Timor otherwise they'll be upset with you you'll have made an enemy if you tell them they can't throw acid in the faces of unveiled women in Karachi they will be annoyed with you if you say we insist we we think that cartoonists in Copenhagen can print satire on the Prophet Mohammed you've just made an enemy you've brought it on your Europe you're encouraging it to happen so unless you're willing to commit suicide for yourself and for this culture get used to the compromises you'll have to make and the eventual capitulation that will come to you but bloody well don't do that in my name cuz I'm not doing it you surrender in your own name leave me out of it I'm going to fight these people and every other Thea crap all the way all the way for free expression for free expression for women's rights the self-determination of small people's for the right of Iraqis to federate and have their own show for the right of the Lebanese not to be bullied by Hezbollah and to have a multicultural democracy yes I'll fight for this and I think that the 82nd airborne is brave to be fighting for it too and I think you should be ashamed sneering at people who guard you while you sleep Thanks well oh yeah ah there's it's going to be a book signing mr. Fuji's is going to be in that corner over there so you can line up you

Channel: TheHitchensArchive

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Length: 76min 52sec (4612 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2013