Christopher Hitchens - [2008] - 'The Existence of god and the Role of Religion' vs David Wolpe

you to believe there is no God is not actually to make the world simpler it is to make the world unintelligible without sense without meaning and without logic it's to believe that this vast array arose from nothing and that it will return to nothing it's to believe that morality the basis on which all human beings either based their conduct or claimed they should base their conduct is ephemeral is created by us can be violated by us really in the end is as much of a human contrivance as this podium this stage your clothes your car and means as much ultimately because if you decide to violate it there is no order built into the universe because there is no intended universe which means that not only is there not a moral order but really the illusion that somehow you make choices in this world is just that an illusion without of God where do you get your free will from you don't get it from your genes you don't get it from your environment it's an illusion and everything you have decided from coming here this evening to the person whom you've chosen to marry to the profession you've chosen to enter to what you had for breakfast all of that was determined from the beginning of time by these blind forces that we are told to believe are in fact the only sovereign of the universe but there is more than that we also have to believe that every human being throughout history millions and billions of them who have been captured by a sense and a vision of something greater than themselves who have felt transcendence who have lived in sanctity who have believed that they are connecting to something to someone to divinity to Eternity that they are all fools dullards that in fact all they're promulgating is poison and all their believing his lies that everyone that we would call a saint or it's Sadiq was in fact credulous gullible beguiled and wrong and worst of all it means that the person sitting next to you into whose eyes you can look was just an accident of ancient chemistry is all synapse and no soul is just material there's nothing noble about them any more than there's anything noble about pure chemical biological life they came from nothing as the universe and returned to nothing there is no eternity inside of them or inside of you I don't believe it and I don't think you should believe it and as the evening progresses I will try to make the argument not just that believing in God makes sense but that it makes us better as individuals and as a people and not only on the basis of the fact that religious people in study after study give more to charity volunteer more do everything from giving more blood to voting more often but also also that if you have lived the life of faith and in a community of faith you know you know that it is true that you are constantly challenged to be better that the dissatisfaction that you feel with the world is a dissatisfaction that is spurred on by the certainty that human beings are meant to be Noble and meant to be good and intended for better things I can't tell you what God is Martin Buber said the great Jewish philosopher that God God can't be expressed only addressed in other words I can't tell you about God but I can talk to God and when I do and I hope when you do you understand that this is not a vain thought flung up at an empty universe but that you are talking to something real more real than that which you can see and that if you don't believe in the reality of the intangible the invisible that which you cannot see then you have a peculiar form of blindness and that if you live in God's presence then though at times you may feel as though the world doesn't live up to the expectations and hopes that you were taught that it doesn't always realize what it is that you believe God's world should be you know that there is hope that there is possibility that faith is real and that God is present thank Shalom good faith requires that I suppose the best of my antagonist when he said that religious people voted more often he meant to say more diligently or more thoroughly or so right not like Texas no it would be it could though it could be said that Tammany Hall was Catholic defense organization and a generally confessional and faith-based outfit I know that's not the sort of level 2 which will be descending tonight no it would be far better I think if I said why I don't think it's terrifying to imagine that we are alone and how much more terrifying it would be and more horrible it would be to imagine that we were permanently supervised and invigilator so I'll have to begin from exactly the opposite end of the moral and ethical spectrum from from the one that rabbi what they chose Thomas Jefferson said in in a phrase that's so haunting that once you've heard it you can't forget it he said I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just he thought he could discern a pattern he was a deist he did think that there was meaning in the observable universe and he writes this in these words unforgettable words in the notes on the state of Virginia and you can guess the subject that he's writing about and you can guess what revenge he thinks the divine might take on these United States for its original sin of slavery but I would reply in the following terms if you presume that there is a just God then really what is there to tremble about think of the things worrying you most this evening think of the things upset you most this week or that you're most afraid of for yourself or your loved ones or your children your relatives it would dissolve into a tiny concern if you knew there was a just God everything would assume a completely different proportion at once does the just God aah what what what matters is my trivial worries but if there isn't a just god if there isn't a permanent supervision that's all for your own good and if you don't think that's a sinister idea as I do then it will follow that you may have to get rid of slavery on your own account you may have to take the responsibility upon yourself as a human you may have to invoke humanism and human solidarity and say this cannot stand I cannot live as a human where another person is in bondage and I submit just to begin with just so you understand our difference properly that that is a much more noble and ethical and also much more logically probable position than the idea that one can refer these dilemmas upward to a supernatural dictatorship to a celestial totalitarianism that may or may not be just but we had better hope since we believe in its existence does care about us that in other words that reduces us to the abject and much more to the random and the unconsidered than any scientific concept would do think about that little girl in Somalia think of what Jefferson said on another occasion about how only by one vote because one man was sick the north-western ordinance on the abolition of slavery didn't pass he said one man was sick and missed the vote and it went the wrong way and he said in heaven was silent heaven was silent in that awful moment well now just you transfer yourself to Somalia last week girl of 13 probably out for the first time unsupervised in her life things must have been very bad if she was allowed out without male supervision to begin with but there's enough chaos to explain that she's immediately pounced upon by a group of older men and very thoroughly raped and sodomized and beaten and she goes to the religious court for redress and the religious court knows it's business and it knows it's texts very well and it says we don't know that it's true that what you say that men abused you in this manner but we can tell you've had sex in fact judging by your injuries we can tell you've had a great deal of sex lately but you're not married so you're guilty of adultery so now before your wounds of stop hurting you're going to be buried up to your waist in hot sand and laughing men will now take part in the only other cultural activity that gratifies the male sex in that part of the world which is stoning that a young woman to death these the people who did this knew exactly what they were doing and they were in perfect conformity with their holy books and they absolutely do not believe that everything happens randomly they are not under the illusion that heaven is indifferent they're not under the illusion that we are biologically created that we're here because of the laws of natural selection and random mutation they don't believe anything of the sort they're utterly consoled by the idea that heaven intervenes and cares about every action otherwise they wouldn't put themselves to the trouble of raping torturing and murdering a thirteen-year-old whose last moments you might want to take just a few seconds to imagine it is not true it is not true as is sometimes suggested by the people who have misread The Brothers Karamazov and the speech by Smerdyakov in that grade book who says that if there's no God then anything is possible to the contrary make the assumption make the assumption that there is a celestial totalitarian dictator and then absolutely any crime and cruelty is not distinct Abul but may be required of you is the suicide bombing community I invite you to ask yourselves comrades brothers sisters ladies gentlemen mister the secular community is the genital mutilation community a secular community I don't think you'll find that it is what are the historic justifications of slavery and genocide there was slavery and genocide before monotheism but monotheism codified and said that it was acceptable to do and carry out these appalling atrocities you may be an atheist one may be an atheist and be a nihilist one may be an atheist and be a sadist one may be an atheist and be a moral relativist or fascist very unlikely the second or the last one I mean most ashes were very devout Christian but it's almost mandatory if you're so earnest to be an atheist it's an it's not a position on its own but it avoids the absolutely critical cruelty which is that that says that we our duty as original sinners to the someone who created us ill created us sick and then ordered us on pain of torture and death to cure ourselves and in the meantime mandated every kind of violence against womanhood contempt for manhood cruelty against our fellow creatures superstitious and and crazed belief that it's possible to imagine so I think that in the struggle for emancipation which is where I began and the one in which mr. Jefferson with half his heart and half his head was able to take part the very first cruelty and shackle to throw off is the man forged manacle that is religion thank you I want to address mistakes both large and small and I want to start with large first of all if you believe that religion is what causes violence in human society then you have to look at human society when it was without the monotheistic faith mr. Hitchens talk about what the world was like for Greece and Roman Assyria and Babylonia and all the ancient cultures who committed serial genocides but didn't feel that that was against their principles and in fact why did Rome fall because according to the greatest historian of the Roman Empire given Christianity was too peaceful and all these Roman soldiers that slaughtered took on these Christian ideas of pacifism and self-abnegation and the barbarian hordes came in and overwhelmed them and even though it is true that religion sometimes mandates terrible things that's terrible religion and when you extract it from the world has happened from the French Revolution on what you get are the Napoleonic Wars world war one world war two communism Nazism as horrific as some of these things are is there anyone who can say that the explicitly atheistic ideologies of communism and Nazism and I was interested that mr. Hitchens began his address by saying comrades those ideas of just noting bring it on those ideas resulted in the systematic slaughter of untold millions untold millions of people all in the name of an ideology that burn churches expelled God and said that essentially what we are is just animals and then there were mistakes that were smaller like a genital mutilation by this what mr. Hitchens means is circumcision and I just happen to have an article here it's such it's remarkable that circumcision cuts the rate of HIV infection in heterosexual men by more than 50% and the results were so striking of this study that the National Institute of Health decided it would be unethical to continue this study so they stopped it and joined the World Health Organization in advocating circumcision worldwide or as mr. Hitchens would have it genital mutilation I don't think that such things ought to be spoken of lightly these are in fact deeply held beliefs and there are fanatics and fundamentalists in religion as there are outside of religion but that is after all not the essential content of religion in fact the essential content of religion is not that heaven intervenes all the time it isn't true that religious people expected God to end slavery after all the humanists of the ancient world Lucretius epictetus Epicurious none of them objected to slavery it was Moses who freed the slaves it was John Brown and evangelical who worked for abolition in America was Wilberforce and evangelical who worked for abolition in England in fact the idea that slavery is wrong is an idea that has religious roots in the notion that every human being is in the image of God therefore every human being has the right to be free if after all all you are is an animal why is it wrong to enslave you there is no rule of you and me and power makes right and that is what the brothers karamazov was warning against and that is what nietzsche celebrated the idea that not goodness not God but power is the arbiter of the world the 20th century tested that idea the idea that power should supplant God and the result was the most savage bloody regrettable and awful century in the long and difficult history of humanity we know better now and we shouldn't fall for it again again willing to establish a millimeter or serve common ground I will say that you're right nothing to do with my penis should be taken lightly but if you read what the sages say about the recommendation of circumcision by moieties in particular about the period is it sir you will find that it's exactly the same as the Islamic and Animists recommendations in the case of the female the point of it is not protect against the disease no one had then heard of butchered as far as possible blunt the feeling of the sexual organ male or female and if you'll just allow your minds and imaginations FreePlay comrades brothers and sisters and ask yourself how much crime and misery and suffering has been the result of just of sexual repression which is one of religions main businesses and the repression of the female gender another of religions main businesses I think you won't want for examples you won't lack for examples at that point and so I'll just rest my case there by the way what the World Health Organization is talking about is a bit of a loosening of the foreskin let's not go into too much detail here it's not the full excision they're tearing off the the blunting the dulling of the the whole if I may borrow an expression and there's all the difference in the world and by the way this should matter to women as much as to men if you ask me right now I knew that it would come up at some point we may as well get out of the way now it always comes up at these discussions what about the relationship of secularism to totalitarianism I invited the question obviously the rabbi put his case very well but he overlooks the three or four most salient points about it twentieth-century totalitarianism I'll be quick if you take out the word fascism or fascist in any account of twentieth-century totalitarianism and just put in catholic right wing you don't have to change a thing you don't have to change a thing from Portugal to Croatia to Spain to a Vichy to Bavaria to Slovakia where the head of a Nazi puppet state was actually a pretty steal early orders it's the same it's the it's the Vatican right wing that's what fascism is National Socialists and Butler and the Vatican had a Concorde out with every single one of those governments from Franco to Mussolini to the ustasha and Croatia fact pure historical fact nothing secular about fascism which is the origin of National Socialism National Socialism Hitler never announced his Catholicism the Vatican also had a Concorde out with his government there was the first treaty denounces ever signed prayers were said on Hitler's birthday by order of the Pope in every Church in Germany every Catholic Church the Protestants joined inserts not to be left out the ideology of anti-semitism and anti-bolshevik was borrowed by the Nazis from the Catholic ideology of the time nothing sector about that I'm sure Hitler wanted in the end to replace Christianity with the worship of himself and the restoration of some Nordic gods but Joji be calling that rubber job you call that secular so that's for the what so-called right-wing I'll be quick on the left um picture yourself being Joseph Stalin graduate of a Seminary in Georgia would have made a perfectly good Bishop if he'd stuck around that seminary he's in charge of Russia which but hundreds of years has been told his peasantry has been told the Tsar is a man above men he's not just the head of the state he's the head of the church he's not divine but he's a little more than human serfdom and and czars and justified completely by the Russian Orthodox Church you have a huge reservoir of credulity and civility ready for you to exploit you you shouldn't be in the dictatorship business if you don't mimic that Stalin invents an inquisition he invents the show trial doesn't have to invented he borrows it he invents Boris the idea of the devil the permanent evil trying to undermine his rule the idea the leader is always to be thanked that there are miracles in the form of life san'ko's biology it's nothing but a religious state in mimicry and simulacrum I could go on and describe why I know from experience the North Korea is the most worshipful state in the world for your point rabbi to stand you have to say and prove the following you'd have to point to a society in which the ideas of epicures Galileo Spinoza Jefferson Bertrand Russell Sigmund Freud Albert Einstein had become the dominant ideas at that society and show why that adoption had led that country into slavery bankruptcy journey and paranoia and you won't ever be able to point that out because the moral societies do gravitate towards those ideas the more they thrive flourish and prosper because they've left the childhood of our species behind and the dark myths of religion along with them thank you this but this is a crucial point this really is a crucial point can we stand up here for one more second and just finish thrashing this out sure sure okay I'm not going oh good first of all I don't think you want to build society on the ideas of Epicurus who didn't like poetry and didn't like music and and also Galileo who was a believer so we have built communities Galileo whose famous statement was that the Bible is not supposed to teach you how the heavens go but how to go to heaven but what you may not know is that he was quoting the Cardinal Cardinal Bellarmine who was one of the one of the scientifically sympathetic Cardinals in the Vatican so the division is not as clear as you think and frankly I'm not sure you really want to build the society on the ideas of Freud but maybe you do but more crucial is not the idea that religion in first of all religion didn't invent other nests right as look all you have to do is go to a playground what happens when a new kid comes to the playground right there the other children say oh I'm going to be the first one to share no they say who's that new kid right that the idea that a different group a different person an outside country and outside religion is inimical to you is built into the human system but the difference is when you take religious ideas and make them secular you have to ask yourself not why did Stalin adopt religious ideas but why when they were just religious ideas did they never produce a Stalin not why was Hitler able to Cal the church but why did you have to take the church out to produce a Hitler it's not that religion never instantiates bad ideas or anger or distance or cruelty it does of course it does but if you think that by taking the religion out what you get is a perfect pure human being the opposite is the case right if you want to talk about tyranny look at North Korea and South Korea North Korea which mr. agent says is a religious state is a religious state in the sense that it worships a person South Korea though is a flourishing democracy that is a Christian state where would you rather live in South Korea is life perfect no the people discriminate against people is their cruelty is their crime is their address is their greed is their hatred absolutely but you have to take the religion out of it to get a North Korea and that's the point not that religion is perfect we can spend all night talking about the depredations of religion but religion seeks to make people better it doesn't always but it seeks to do that and when you extract it from a society you don't get a better society you get a totalitarian society you get the 20th century gentleman they wanted to continue our conversation with you go ahead I'll go sit you can it will listen South Korea is not a Christian country it's partially Catholic one it's a partly Confucian one it's a it's a secular society actually one religions for success a flourish and with with religious pluralism but no official religion right no inculcation of religion by the state in North Korea the leader of the country is a dead person when George Bush writes to Kim jong-il the Dear Leader he calls him mr. chairman not mr. president why is that you ever notice those because Kim jong-il the dear leader the son is the head of the Communist Party and head of the Armed Forces he's not president the office of president is held by his father has been dead for 15 years so it's an era cracy or a fan of an autocracy or a Morlock recei these are the terms I've tried and official teaching is the son is the reincarnation of his father mark this and both their births were miraculous so they're just one short of a trinity and everyone has to worship all the time and how can you - it's religious because they have to thank all the time they have to thank all the time thank you thank you thank you for all you've done for me thank you thank you thank you dear and great ones for all you do for me just as they say will happen in Paradise but the difference is this if there is one at least you can will die and leave North Korea you can defect that way you can't get out of monotheism that way at all it's when you die that the supreme leader really starts to work on you are you glad this happens you think this is freedom this is emancipation I piss you if you do and I'll repeat you now will move if I abuse my position ask the question I asked you at the show in Park Avenue if you could have your way and you saw a new child being born tonight in Saudi Arabia would you wish that child to grow up as a Wahhabi Muslim or would you hope that he became an atheist I think a lot depends on your answer um I'll answer sure um and I'll sit down first of first of all I'm sorry first of all I just want to say that I decline your offer to defend the Trinity but the answer is that those are not the only two choices and that's in part what I think is objectionable about the approach you're suggesting that either you are an out-and-out atheist or you must have some sort of fanatic awful cruel belief in one or another sect of religion and what I'm saying is what I would want for that child is that he would average the approaches and end up to be a moderate Muslim as there are hundreds of millions in the world and that would be far better not only for Saudi Arabia because maybe he would influence some of his co-religionists but also for him because I think his relation to God would be more authentic well I mean that's a visually warm and furry reply I'm a wonderful Ari sorry okay I did give you permission just so imagine what you might like and you thought of all the things you might like you know he wouldn't just be moderate Muslim he'd be nice to animals and good sister and so there's no way to it do you really wish that my wish that this this society be secularized in religion and state religion be brought into into contempt and thought of as the main obstacle to progress would that not be better for you than continuing that heejun to faith you still think that's a perfectly good question but I accept your answer it's it's this sort of equivalent of my saying to you would you rather that child be born a Stalinist or a you know or a conservative Jew and you would say those aren't the only two choices and I would say you know what you're right they're not the only two choices and I hope that you'll give me the same concession seems like by the way you can be stillness it seems like what you're getting at is a couple things but but one was a question I had view Christopher what is wrong with a moderate religion what's wrong we say liberal Judaism which doesn't see you know mmm it doesn't see the Scriptures as divinely britta main thing that's wrong with it is that it doesn't give me enough to argue with and if there's something and that I find I have to tell you this I find there's something a little bit cowardly about it and evasive the night before I first debated grandpa warp in New York I was debating with Douglas Wilson of Christianity today who's invited me onto his website we've produced a book together we've done a little dog and pony show together and I was mentioning how religion makes Bill behave worse and I gave as my example one of the the Old Testament commandment to exterminate the children of Amalek and down to the last one and the only way you can incur the disapproval of the divinity is by leaving one child alive a very stern disapproval to if you don't absolutely complete the extirpation and druggist who's the rector of a big church in Moscow Idaho in a very important figure in Calvinist circles says well yeah but that commandment is absolutely valid I take it very seriously he said if I if I could find an Amalekite I'd be absolutely sure to rub him out and John to the last kidnap then I know that here's someone who really thinks that these books are the Word of God if I run into someone who says they may or may not be the Word of God I like some bits about them some bits of okay make people behave more thoroughly some bits not well we discard those bits I begin to feel that there's something well a little more a slushee going on it's like that what the Catholics call the cafeteria Catholic or the the cafe Christian the the ala carte Christian yeah well I don't like the bit that says I've got to stone adulterers but I do quite like the bit that's it come on is this stuff divine revelation on has God revealed himself to us or not do we owe God a duty or not is morality what we think of as human solidarity ethics or is it doing God's will these questions demand answers and I'm just not impressed by people who say we can have it any which way we like that's that's Karen ISM not religion I would say two things in response that the first is that it's interesting to me that the two extremes agree that is that that the fundamentalists are under the impression that they follow everything in the Bible and that the atheists are under the impression that it's only legitimate if you feel you follow everything in the Bible in fact life doesn't work that way and neither does religion if you say to somebody for example do you punish your children they the answer is never yes or no it's under certain circumstances if they do certain things sometimes I do sometimes they do it this way sometimes that's life like it's complicated life is messy and if you will life is slushy it's not so simple as to say this is the clear line and that's what we always do so in fact religious people don't want their ability to think taken away by the fact that somebody says this is the only legitimate religious position and anything to the left of that I find what did you say unimpressive some of the most impressive religious people I know actually think the commandments through for themselves in in their community because their assumption is that this is a partnership and that's why punished when yes with who with God and that's why I didn't make this up you didn't make that up no it's called shoot up fruit it's well well we'll go through it later but but that's why when Moses goes up the after breaking the tablets and Moses goes up Sinai for the second time it says that Moses wrote the second set of tablets doesn't say that God wrote the second set God wrote the first set then Moses writes the second set and as the commentators point out that's because God and human beings are partners in this world as a Hasidic rabbi have a couple hundred years ago put it God speaks in human language and therefore we don't draw clear bright lines because life isn't that way and when someone does it makes me just as suspicious as it does for you when someone doesn't I couldn't your whole congregation is in here somewhere and let me tell you they're all getting dues reductions I could get like I would I would just appeal I would just ask the audience to consider if I wanted the the moral pragmatism and relativism that we just heard why would I want holy books together to say I just I decide on the merits and on case by case whether whether or how to punish a child what do I need what do I need the Word of God for what's the point of all lists in that case it's there's nothing or inspiring there's nothing magnificent about is just hey you know you can occasionally consult if you don't like what you get you don't have to enforce it well why not just be a secularist everyone but the thing I do like about Judaism is something that you that you haven't chosen distress which is it does in some ways constitute I would not say a partnership with God but a willingness to rebel against him that's different from Christianity and Islam I mean this the its rabbi eliezer I think the debates about who's right about this question of the law and he says if I'm wrong that the you know the story let the river flow backwards that the carob tree walk on its roots that the roof of the temple fall in and all these things happen you still won't give up he said okay if I'm wrong let God say that I'm wrong and God leans in and said actually you are wrong you've been wrong all along and Rabbi Eliezer says well not even God can decide this but it's a matter of the law and is the majority in this meeting and Elijah is supposed to have been asked later on what did God think about all that and he thought well means the Jews a bit more promising and some other groups of people I know this is very nice but don't you think it's a little bit anthropomorphic doesn't it suggest that we make God in our own image rather than the other way around and wasn't that my point to begin with well first I didn't actually anticipate as I was coming here this evening speaking these words but I agree with mr. Hitchens Talmudic citations what God says at the end of that stories my children have defeated me and the idea that veteran that people rebel against God is I agree I mean from Abraham on it is a beautiful and powerful idea but I invite you to consider that it means nothing if there is no God against whom to rebel no that would mean that would mean the story of Prometheus your congregation just grew a little bit no cabbage I hope so that's not any intent of the whole I know you can rebuked and rebelled against the idea of God as being tyrannical you actually tortured Maya Prometheus stealing fire from heaven and saying we break the monopoly on womb and flame that is exert that is cruelly held by the gods you didn't have to believe that there are gods doing that you just have to deny other spirit in which prometheus is exerting himself it would be just like saying I can't say I'm an atheist without admitting that there's God I don't believe in no that is known as that used to be known as the ontological proof it's now known as the ontological fallacy which is exactly what it actually is well but you say then I give Acuras there are things I didn't like about him either but the other great thing about Judaism potentially latent Lee is this it says the struggle is between Athens in Jerusalem the word for heretic is Epicurus the epicurean so it forces people to confront the idea of Greek philosophy as a possible alternative explanation of reality of the origins of the cosmos and of the species and it's the reason I presume why the large majority of Jews in all countries have now become secular because their own religion taught them to think like Greeks not bad but in a dialogical christopher announced dialectics what what differentiates religion from any other human invention or endeavor in the sense that you know anything we do is imperfect anything we do runs in fads aren't we talking at the end of the day as a the religion is a tool like logic is a build like politics as a tool and humans can use or misuse any tool no I don't think so because it's a rare occasion it says you're born unfree you're born with original sin or with a duty to a stern parent and a stern parent who won't quit let me see what I mean I mean I've my patient actually more Christian than Jewish but these things coincide to a certain extent you're taught that you must love someone and you owe a duty of love and respect to someone who you must also fear there's something to me rather sinister and the idea of compulsory love that must be owed and paid as a debt to someone of whom you're slightly terrified here is a Jewish mother well yes and who will know it's more the in this case it's more the joke about the speaking role it's more the father it's more the Eternal Father if the idea of the Eternal Father doesn't worry you it should because I don't know what your life experiences have been comrades but so we may have fathers living I'm sure a lot of you have fathers who drive if you if you had a father who said to you I'm never going to die how would you feel fond of the old manners you might be I'm never going to die your grandchildren will never see me dying either your great-grandchildren will see I'm never going away that's not Parenthood it's not fatherhood it's its journey and what does it do to you it infantilizes you means you can never grow up and though my favorite example my favorite metaphorical example of religious belief as the origin of totalitarianism compares God a bit more to Big Brother than father you'll see that the same point holds in that way who wants it to be true that they could never break away from an absolutely unalterable Authority it's quite different from every other man-made illusion and I believe that the emancipation from it is the first emancipation that we have to conduct for ourselves we can't be free too we break that chain I think that there's a certain impoverishment of oh go ahead I don't want to step on your congregation wrenching on some congregation actually that was my congregation their charitable by nature I think there's a sort of impoverishment of imagination here and I want I want you to see how this is working I believe not I don't but I'm going to step into my my friends shoes here can I call you that okay thank you focus though I'm going to try now I believe that God is actually just a projection of my human father and therefore the idea that God will never die terrifies me because I know that if a human father never dies it would be terrifying realize that this is an inversion of the way it actually works the whole point is that God we use the metaphor father for God because we can't conceive of what God is like but it's not like having a human parent the idea that you have a Creator who loves you who cares for you who cares for you not only in this life but beyond is anything but terrifying and most religious people in healthy religion don't experience it as terrifying they experience it as consoling they experience it as powerful and meaningful and it's very rare I must tell you I have been at the bedside of many people before they've died it's very rare that someone has said to me oh dear God I just hope that there is no God after I die because that would be terrifying in fact the exact opposite is what I always hear which is look rabbi I don't know what's going to happen to me after I die but I really do hope that there is a God because I hope that there is something after this and I hope I will be embraced and they don't think of it as a tyranny they think of it as the opposite of a tyranny which we call love but now I see now I see with the horrific clarity why you didn't like my mention of Sigmund Freud Nietzsche Nietzsche special said God was dead Freud is supposed to said God was dad in the future in the future of an illusion his best SL and so I think he says that it's impossible to study religion without noticing its connection to wishful thinking that people would like as they expire to think I'm not going anywhere I'm just going into the arms of a loving father yo who wouldn't like to believe that who here decides what they believe on the basis of their wish there may I inquire do you do any of you decide to believe things because they would concern you what about a word like we haven't doesn't come up yet in our discussion big interesting important word begins with E evidence all the evidence is that the cosmos doesn't know we're here that evolution doesn't know it's created us that the stars don't look down on us that there is no one who knows about or cares about or supervises our existence that we have to face this on our own responsibility but all the evidence is that way there is no serious evidence any other way but there is a strong desire that we could abolish and dissolve responsibility and just relax and say well I'm so glad that as I check out daddy we'll be taking care of I've got some evidence I don't think it's moral to be preaching that kind of thing I'm sorry to say and I think it's positively immoral to be preaching it to people who are ill suffering and defenseless I think it's hateful to tell lies to people who are in that condition how would you tell them I would not encourage them to delude themselves okay I work I just want to say when my turn comes I won't listen to any rubbish of that kind I want you to cover I could not possibly be more seriously you while you executed a very clever two-step there and I just want to I just want to illustrate it first you said to believe in God is to believe in a stern totalitarian father and when I pointed out but that's not the religious belief you said AHA to believe in God is wishful thinking which is not true now you can't have both become so let's see yes you can right so let's take let's take number two where you said there's absolutely no evidence that the universe knows we're coming actually there is there's two kinds of evidence the first is that the universe exists in the first place which as you know is an extraordinarily improbable event if you I mean just look at a book like Martin Rees is just six numbers where he talks about as many astrophysicists do the odds that the universe would actually be constituted our 0.0002 the billion power because all these various astronomical constants have to be exactly right balanced on a knife-edge in order for there to be a world so that's the first piece of evidence that the world knew we were coming and the second piece of evidence is consciousness which is how do you get consciousness from inanimate stuff if the world is composed only if stuff how do you get ideas how do you get my throwing sounds up into the air and somehow you catch them and your minds are changed or not changed by them in fact I think there's a lot of good evidence if you want to open yourself to this possibility that not only did the universe know we were coming but it made provision for us and if you'll allow me to is glad we're here you know a wedge realizing I knew by no means permit that but first to your first point yes there's no contradiction whatever in saying that the image of God as a solitary dictator and the image of God as a benign paternalistic trajectory doesn't absolutely no difference between the two concepts what dictatorship has not said that it's there for benevolence that is the selling point of dictatorship you don't have to worry you don't have to vote you don't have to be citizens you don't have to think you know you will publish the newspapers for you you don't have to publish your own we'll do that all for you that's the whole point you're not needed you're just there to applaud and to thank that's the whole point two million with the whole horror to me all the other dictatorship would be that it wouldn't say it was for my own good that's exactly the denial of Liberty that I was trying to talk about so no there's that those are those concepts of the saying now for this knife-edge point why are people so impressed that it so nearly didn't happen some designer I might mention on the knife edge point knife edge is exactly the right metaphor as it turns out just in the little far-off suburban slum of our tiny solar system that's a detail in the cosmos just the one we know we know the following that of the other planets and the all of them are either much too hot or much too cold to support any kind of life at all if they ever did they don't any longer and will never do so again and that is true a very large tracts of our own planet there are the too hot or too cold and it's on a climatic knife edge as it is and is waiting for the Sun to swell up into a Red Dwarf boil the oceans and have done with the whole business and we even know roughly the date on which that will occur that's just in our suburb it's in our hood so we may have a lot of a little bit of something that's a great deal of nothingness headed our way some design huh they were waiting for us it was waiting for us to occur for you and me to arrive 98.9% of every species has ever been on earth has already become extinct so if there's a creator or designer and I can't prove there isn't who wanted that this designer must be either very capricious very cruel very incompetent or very indifferent grant him and you must grant all that you can't say oh what a welcome what a table was spread for us to die now and then now I knew it I'm not gonna have to I'm gonna have to ask you something go ahead do you or do you not book well I'll say one thing then I'll ask you another in the night sky ladies and gentlemen you can already see Lawrence Krauss as columns on this and on the ratio of which the universe is continuing to expand the redshift the way which then the Big Bang is still blowing this hugely further apart so that you can see the heat death of the universe actually coming we know the date of that to where in the night sky you can now see the Andromeda galaxy headed on direct course for hours it's coming we know the day when that will happen to that's when our something that's even more nothing this book just a matter of which of these occurs first so that's what the capital e evidence is and there's no counter evidence for it so I floss dude yeah a relatively trivial question but it's one with major implications do you think that Jewish people have a special covenant with God okay so good now you well hold it no no you can't give a five-minute speech and then say yes or no I will answer the question I will answer the crack just a minute no no no just a minute first let's see let's see first of all but do you see yes hold on first of all I want to go back to the to the original if we can if we can cast our mind back to those olden days when you started talking about that that a dictator can be both loving and fearsome because and I quote I wrote down your words you are just there to applaud and to thank no religion and certainly not Judaism tells you that you are there to be good to make the world better you're not supposed to be quiescent you're not supposed to be a servile follower you're supposed to do good deeds in this world after all that's what most of Jewish law is about it's about how we treat each other so this notion of this notion yes so this notion that I mean in the same way that a parent says treat your brother nicely if that's under orders yes you get to obey it or disobey it but there is a moral order that's the whole idea of orders wait you hold it you'll get your chance I promise I know you will know a second okay i Rowling is fine we do that I mean that's my conjugation second you said why should we be impressed it it almost didn't happen well that's exactly what's impressive right what's exactly impressive is when a juggler almost doesn't catch it but does catch it what's impressive is that it's very improbable that the universe would be created yet it is now you point out that there's you know evidence that the world is expanding and will be destroyed I hate to invoke him but it's so appropriate here remember Woody Allen's movie Annie Hall so in Annie Hall there's this wonderful scene where where he remembers himself as a kid and he won't do his homework and his mother says why won't you do your homework and he says because the universe is expanding and she says to him Brooklyn is not expanding you and I bring this up to peak chorus yes sir it says yes what is it your business right she I bring the subsequent first of all it does not invalidate the value of human life that in 500 million years this part of the solar system may not be here and look there is a Midrash there's a rabbinic story that God created and destroyed many worlds before this one it says nothing about where we will be in 500 million years we may be elsewhere the design in fact may be more intricate complicated then you might suppose as to whether the Jews have a special covenant with God my answer to that is absolutely but that does not preclude other people having special covenants with God the idea is not only the Jews have a special covenant with God the idea is that it is possible for human beings for groups for religions to create a special kind of relationship that give them a special mission in this world so for me it's not a problem because it's not actually my job to argue Judaism superiority it's my job to argue its excellence and part of that excellence is our covenant okay just what just wanted to hit him said hey I let's let's talk a little bit about since you mentioned history and evidence David when the historical record clashes with religious myth why do people of faith choose story over history and what can religious leaders do to encourage a more enlightened form of religious practice and thinking that takes history into account Christopher mentioned the Greeks and the Jews were coming up on Hanukkah which has a very specific dark history and yet we celebrated in this kind of happy light way but how could you go about taming that religious impulse to disregard facts in history well I think that I mean this is a question dear to my heart as you know and it seems to me that that one ought not to preclude the other that is that we ought to teach to take Chanukah for an example we ought to teach both what happened and also what we learned from it good and bad that if you make a historical claim it deserves to be evaluated by history but a historical claim does not invalidate a spiritual or religious claim and they operate to some extent even though they are somewhat interdependent they also operate on different levels and and that's the way you teach that is by teaching it the way you teach that is by telling people and by submitting that which can be submitted to evidence to evidence as far as I understand it that the Hanukkah story isn't particularly discredited as a historical one I mean it is a rebellion by Jewish fundamentalism against the hellenization of Palestine it's the restoration of orthodoxy by force by the Maccabees obviously a lot of it has accretions of myth and legend to it but something like that so he did happen and it's regarded by people like myself as a great tragedy that the Jews did not continue with organization because I think that humanity would have been hugely better off if Jews had turned to Athens and away from the smoldering waters and the circumcisions and the animal oof Isis yeah we could have had slavery in the Peloponnesian War in Avenel Iain massacre hold oh yeah a lot better fit depends what you want you know depends what you want well it's taken a long time but that's the way that most Jews have decided to resolve it and I don't think you can say that that's being a mistake because all of the real impressive achievements have been in diaspora and in secular society but by turning away from the ghetto and from rabbinical control do you not know fear of a non-existent god do you not believe that a great deal of the achievements of Jews in all areas of life have been motivated by religious ideologies and religious ideas by noetic ideas by ideas of commandment and Torah and so on I mean it seems to me that that's you don't think so I know I don't I think that Eroica of the Jews Jewish people begins with them the the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza everything starts with that oh I'm sorry I say that the the the heroic age of Jewish emancipation and of Jewish um contribution science medicine philosophy everything else begins with the moment when the fools in the Amsterdam synagogue decide to get rid of Baruch Spinoza and described him as a revolting heretic and make him go through a form of capital punishment and attract for this the applause and approbation of the Protestant and Catholic authorities Jewish emancipation from anti-semitism and from ghettoization begins with Spinoza and it means leaving behind it means leaving behind all the all the horrors of other rabbinical detention you know this is a question I've been wanting to ask religious scholars and and atheist scholars for a while and I'll tell you why because I don't think we'd be having this conversation if at least not with the same intensity if it weren't for what happened on September 11th 2001 so on that day when 19 men took three different airplanes and each one prayed to God that they would succeed you had passengers on those three airplanes terrified praying to God for those men to fail so I guess my question to David is if prayer works how did it work that day and my question to you Christopher is if those people didn't have prayer in those last moments what we suggest they do you don't want those um okay so I I think that for both of them if you believe that prayer I mean look I understand in a moment of desperation that people pray that there will be a sort of magical intervention in the world but I don't believe that that's how prayer works and I don't believe that most people who pray day to day in the in healthy faith believe that this is a sort of slot machine that you you know where you have good odds that if you pull the lever enough times you'll get the result for myself and for people I know who've gone through difficult times and sickness I know that what you pray for is intimacy and closeness and that you not be alone I don't believe that because I was sick and prayed that God said okay well won't be prayed so I'm going to save him in fact I believe what Leone Medina said already in the seventeenth century and he's following a long tradition of commentary I mean even in the Talmud it says that there's no reward for meats vote into this world which the rabbi's understood what leona Medina says is if you if you saw a man who was pulling his boat towards the shore and you were mistaken about sort of mechanics and motion you might think that he was pulling the shore towards his boat and the same thing is true of Prayer a lot of people pray and what they think that they're changing God but actually if they pray well what they're doing is changing themselves and if you ask me just as in every other human activity there's good prayer and there's bad prayer the prayer that says God help me kill these people is distancing you from God the prayer that at the last moment people say because they know that they're facing their death and they don't want to face it alone is the prayer that draws you close from God and I have no doubt that those prayers were in this sense answered there was a Sufi Imam in 13th century Basra in today's erupted in Mesopotamia whose prayer was oh god if I believed in you for my fear of hell send me to hell if I believe in you because if I wish for heaven deny me having said he wasn't asking to be given responsibility I would say that wasn't a prayer or even a mantra say that was a decent reflection you're of course quite right that on the length of September of 2001 we were forced yet again as we are all the time to confront the fact that faith by itself doesn't deserve respect as we keep saying it does that faith on its own is another form of fanaticism or substitution of belief for reason and that that's a Oh a sign of what had poorly evolved primate mammalian species we are the rabbi earlier appear to pour contempt on the idea that we should think of ourselves as animals will again evidence counts ladies and gentlemen we are half a chromosome away from being chimpanzees and don't you think it shows yes of course we are animals web I think a qualitatively as well as quantitatively better primate but primates is what we are we know it we even have the DNA - absolutely deception nothing to be proud of or ashamed of but a fact not to be denied now we're lucky that there were people on one of those planes who didn't pray at all they got out of their seats and they said we're not going to let this plane fly into the United States Capitol in Washington DC we're willing to give our lives to prevent people who are willing to commit suicide it always prevent that happening no time to pray trying to act very important that's what we should be grateful for they'd all fallen to their knees and invoked the deity the plane would have hit the Capitol on an election day by the way primary day in New York and I think during the joint session of both houses of Congress in case you don't know this I live in Washington DC that dome isn't made of marble it's made of from wrought iron would have melted on top of our legislators and we never of where we'd never have got over it now dub is Wilson my Christian antagonist the other day said to me see what a nihilist Hitchens is he thinks that over Ash wits there was only sky he doesn't think that Hitler would be judged now again I say I didn't say I didn't wish he'd be judged I said I don't think he was going to be and he said and didn't act even though he had the blessings of Christianity and the Pope behind him and no one in his party was ever even threatened with excommunication for taking part in the final solution and act as if he feared such a country and the best book in my view on the final solution the endless on the Shoah is on mas book why did the heavens not darken well I think that's a stupid question because unfortunately there was only sky over heaven wasn't different in that moment you didn't have to tremble at the thought that God was just you had to tremble at the thought that wasn't just God a much worse tremble if you see what I mean but it's not all bad news because it does mean that those who crash planes full of living people into buildings full of living people shouting that god is great and believing it's going to get them to paradise arms going to get there Oh about that one is only sorry every one is only what is only sorry oh and very sorry in my case that there's no moment at the moment of the extinction there's no matter when they think ah damn it isn't but wishful thinking can't help that either so my subtle consideration verda John this is they want to die and I'm here to help them to say and so should you be and everyone in this room should be ashamed until they've done something to kill at least one jihadist or bring about the physical and moral and political and military defeat and humiliation of these people and the guard in which they believe and the non-existent deity in which in which they dare to take permission to try and kill us all Christopher of you have you ever prayed once for a hard-on and I don't know whether it works or not it's a rather you know I may I may be wrong but I thought you said that I was obsessed with Freud I've got to tell you what happened and I don't know whether it was the prayer in either case does prayer work but you had to ask so have to do i I'm going to give you both a chance to get some concluding statements but before I do that I want to ask one last question well I've shot my belt now I think yes please do either do either of you see I mean it's my job as a moderator ASUS but it's also where I'm coming from do either of you see a middle ground where religion and secularism can borrow from the best insights of the other oh I think unquestionably in fact that the middle ground exists right here the middle ground exists right here maybe not on stage so much but but a religious society that is pluralistic and democratic and yet is inspired by the goodness that religion creates because again the truth is that in study after study it's not just that religious people volunteer more it's not just that they donate more blood it's also they have more stable families they have lower levels of drug and alcohol dependence I mean religion it works in people's lives I believe it works in people's lives because it's true but also it does work in people's lives so there is no question that a pluralistic Democratic and religiously vibrant state is going to be a healthier better place even in places by the way since let me anticipate a question you didn't ask places like Sweden and Denmark where people say oh well they're completely secular and look how well they do are you aware of the fact that the vast majority of people in Sweden and Denmark although they say they don't believe in God identify themselves as Christians have their kids baptized get married in churches the Social Solidarity that religion creates is not in fact substitutable by a secular lack of belief that says humanism will in fact bind us all together the only thing that will bind human beings together is a transcendent ideal something that in fact implicates all of us black white brown yellow Jew Christian Muslim Sikh what makes them all one not the idea that we're all one chromosome away from a chimpanzee that doesn't create in me any moral obligation to you creates a curiosity about you but no moral obligation the only thing that creates a moral obligation that I cannot turn away from that I have to do even when it's to my disadvantage is that you're a child of God therefore you're my brother you're my sister if that's not true why should I be kind to you when it's to my disadvantage why should I care about you if I'm never going to see you again why should I leave to take a trivial example why should I leave that tip in the hotel room for the maid that I don't know that I don't see that I'm never going to see and walk out impoverished by whatever number of dollars I leave her why should I do it there's no reason to if all I am is a trick of chromosomes we are animals that's true but we are not just animals we're also images of God and that's why we which either this moral obligation and without it we don't well well then you'll have to come up with an answer to my challenge which you've heard before which I put to the Archbishop of Canterbury in person and put in print and put in sari okay then the rabbi will have to come up with an answer to my challenge which he's heard before which I've put in person to the Archbishop of Canterbury many senior religious figures in in in real life real time and have put in print and on air many many times it's this if you believe the straw Denari claim then Rob iopa just made you'll simply have to do this it'll be easy for you think of a moral statement made or a moral action performed but I believer that I couldn't before my turn no letting it sink into them I'm selling them to surprise okay no one's ever come up with it yet if there's a corollary by the way question think of a wicked thing done by a religious person that's done because of their religion or wicked statement made by a religious person John purely because they are people of faith you've already thought of what no one's ever come up with an answer to my first one I don't make the chromosomal point as a moral one I say it's dangerous to say that we mustn't act as if we were primates because we must not act as if we don't know this now why do I like to give blood I can tell you easily it gives me pleasure to give someone else blood and I give a pint but I don't lose it I have a cup of hot tea lie down have some water I've got my pint back in a couple of hours they've they've benefited I haven't lost its enormous perfect socialists logarithm and I feel good about having done it and it's red and and I will add and and I will add that I have a rare blood group myself and I might need a blood donation myself one day and I'd like to think that other people would feel be feeling the same way there's nothing required except the obligations of human solidarity which are not just chromosomal or mammalian they're little more noble than that but I don't need divine permission to behave like this what I need divine permission for was to say I'll shed your blood because you're an Amalekite or I will make your penis bleed because you haven't been genitally mutilated yet so you're not down with the Covenant that's something an immoral action that you would require a divine ordinance to occur so now then I was also your question reverse order I'll be quick common ground I don't look for common ground what I look for is polarization and contradiction because that's how progress is made and of course the best way to make a progress in an argument about anthropology philosophy and morality ethics is with the religious absolutely it's the it's the necessary argument religion was our first and our worst explanation of things it's what we thought before we had a German theory of disease before we knew that we lived on a cooling planet or around one before we knew we lived in a solar system if we knew any of this it was our first attempt anyone who wants to think has to have a confrontation with religion I'm not looking for common ground no that's silly that's just compromise that's bipartisanship that's not that's not appropriate for this kind of thing now I'm looking for the kind of intellectual combat where heat produces light and after all light doesn't come from any other source but here so I actually believe that I answered mr. Hitchens challenge he doesn't think so I'm going to leave it to you and then I'm going to make my last quick comment and then I think we're wrapping it up the question is not can believers do things that non-believers can't because after all if you say if you reverse it and you say do believers do things that non-believers don't in wicked ways they may do things that non-believers don't like say I will kill you because of God but that's something a non-believer could do that is they're physically able to the question isn't whether believers are suddenly physically able to do things that non-believers can't it's not the believers can fly and non-believers can't even though in the Middle Ages they claimed miracles but I mean the leaders and non-believers have the same physiology but there are things believers do that non-believers don't do that are moral actions some of them are great works of art right there is great religious poetry there's great religious music that non-believers would never have produced there are also model actions like Shiva minions after somebody dies there are actions like praying around the bed of somebody who is dying which even if you don't believe changes God comforts the person who's dying so there are in fact actions that human beings that are religious take the people who are not religious never do take and that seems to me a perfectly adequate answer I'm surprised if the archbishop didn't say the same thing but it seems to me a perfectly adequate answer to the challenge and let me finish with this it's not true that heat is the only source of light in fact in Genesis God waits to create the Sun but on the very first day before there is a Sun there is darkness and there is light there is a light in the world that's not a chemical light that is not generated by stuff it's a light that everybody here acknowledges exists it's a light that exists inside you you may in fact sometimes deny it but it's real and that light comes from something beyond the Sun something greater and you are part of that something greater and realize that in the name of a spurious nobility what in fact atheism is doing is diminishing you not ennobling you saying that you are less than you are don't accept it the greatest sin according to an old Hasidic statement that a human being can make is to forget that they are children of the Creator in other words to feel yourself as less than something eternal is to make yourself little to make yourself small to make yourself unknowable to make yourself something that no human being having reached so far after so long should do which is to believe in the non transcendence of human beings I'll close by telling you something that Heschel once said Abraham Joshua Heschel the Jewish theologian asked why Judaism prohibits idolatry he said after all people think that idolatry is an insult to God you create this statue and you say that's God and God gets insulted this is but look God is God it's not going to hurt God to insult God the question is that there actually exists in this world an image of God it's in every human face and when you point to the products of human beings and say that's eternal it's not that you're insulting God it's that you're insulting yourself and that you're not permitted to do and you shouldn't let anyone else do it either I mean it is it is it's been remarked about Genesis that God says let there be light and then later says the Sun Moon and stars and some people think that's a contradiction whether the light come before the Sun Moon and stars well if you think which I didn't suspect that you did that Genesis isn't literal account of creation then that would be one metaphor for the Big Bang certainly did precede the formation of Sun Moon stars or any other celestial bodies but I think that the account you invite by Stephen Hawking of that is much much more persuasive and more convincing than the account in in Genesis in other words you don't need the creator account we have further and better and more beautiful and more awe-inspiring and more transcendent explanations than the burning bush or the finger of God or Noah's Flood the same is true I think and I'm very glad this points come up though I'm sorry it's come up at the end of the idea that only religion can lead to beauty or aesthetics for example Verdi could write did write who compose a wonderful Requiem and many other devotional pieces didn't believe in God at all but he could do that I think that example on its own means your case Falls because it's not necessary to be a person of faith to produce devotional work we only know of the great period of baroque and Renaissance painting and architecture and music and so on that it would be very very dangerous indeed to be a practicing artist or composer and to be an atheist in fact it wouldn't just me wouldn't get much business sent you away you might have a very protracted and painful death they would also be inflicted upon your family so that you should choose a test like that as one of religious contribution to the ethical life do you know what happened to painters and writers and architects and thinkers who didn't affirm the Trinity in those days do you know what happened if you were Jewish in Spain and said I don't subscribe so the prevailing orthodoxy but I'd still like to be able to publish or - do you know come on how dare anybody say this proves the connection between religion and morality I it's a scandalous thing for the rabbi to have a verdun to say well oh yes I can't think of another moral thing that believers do that unknown believers doing they pray around deathbeds excuse me that's not even a tautology so I'm sorry but there's a say that my challenge still stands and it seems to me to have become a little more salient given the the rather morally horrible accounts of the matter that the rabbi's just given now just on this point of the transcendence and numinous Ness I think it's a big cultural task I wrote a book about the path not available fine bookstores everything I think the path beyond is an extraordinary building I don't think it could have been done without people of faith in a sense their faith was in the culture of Pallas Athena and also in the cult of the Eleusinian mysteries and of to a secondary tertiary extent Athenian imperialism otherwise it couldn't have got done well I'm I appreciate the Parthenon very much it's wonderful symmetries it's extraordinary sculptures and so forth but I take no part or stop at all in the worship of Pallas Athena neither do you all in the eros in Ian's mysteries which may have included human sacrifice probably dead or an Athenian imperialism the great cultural task is indeed to separate what is in us artistic aesthetic numinous transcendent from the supernatural the superstitious and the cognate word for that the barbaric and there are salt i I just want to thank both our speakers I want to thank the American Jewish University and all of you for coming and I really want to give another round of applause for our speakers

Channel: TheHitchensArchive

Views: 43,282

Rating: 4.8426967 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher Hitchens, David Wolpe, debate, jew, god, religion, atheism

Id: ejmN7qP4pD4

Length: 83min 26sec (5006 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/JadedIdealist]

"The explicitly atheistic ideology of Nazism" FFS how can the rabbi stand up and just lie like that. Fuuuuuck.