Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Debate on God

dr. Gillman the one in the middle he's an ordained rabbi he is an ordained rabbi through the Jewish Theological Seminary while he is now a professor of Jewish philosophy throughout his distinguished career as a rabbi and an academic dr. Gilman has been known as both a prominent figure in the conservative movement and an intellectual iconoclast I will leave it to him to tell us more about our evenings guests please join me in welcoming dr. Neal Gilman thank you very much thank you and welcome to you all let me first outline the procedures for this evening there will be two initial presentations of 15 minutes each the first by mr. Hitchens the second by rabbi botella this will be followed by two ten-minute rebuttals in the same order which will then in turn be followed by two five-minute rebuttals this should leave at the end approximately 30 minutes for questions from the floor which will be screened by the WHI staff and passed on to me and I will read them and present them to our two speakers Christopher Hitchens has written prolifically for periodicals including the nation the London Review of Books Harper's the Los Angeles Times Book Review slate The New York Review of Books Newsweek international The Times Literary Supplement in the Washington Post he is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair he is also the author of more than 10 books including why Orwell matters the trial of hidden Henry Kissinger letters to a young contrarian and most recently the portable atheist and God is not great Rabbi Shmuley botella is host of the Rabbi Shmuley bhatia show on The Oprah and Friends XM satellite radio network he has been named a finalist for Brandeis University's new Charles R Bronfman visiting chair in Jewish communal innovation but that competition will be determined within the next few weeks he is the founder and chairman of this world the Jewish value Network worked that's what they wrote okay and just released his 19th book the broken American male ladies and gentlemen it's my pleasure to present Christopher Hitchens Shalom thank you very much for coming ladies and gentlemen Thank You rabbi for a very generous introduction I don't know how I'm going to fill up 15 minutes after all the burden of proof is not with me but I can probably make that that is going to take some time making the case but I think I can really make a fist of it um I prefer to argue and I do in my book that the belief in the Supreme Being or creator is actually a pernicious belief that does a great moral and intellectual damage to our poorly evolved primate species and I'm hoping that we will in the course of this evening get to the point about the ill effect of religion but I'm not going to dock the obligation imposed upon me by the motion before us which is to give the reasons why we're so lucky as to be furnished with so little evidence for such a horrible proposition and falsity after all is is a subdivision of pernicious Ness religion however does stand our having started in that pejorative manner does it a waste and to our credit we are after all imperfectly evolved primate mammals there we are and aware of our kinship with other such creatures we do have the gift of pattern seeking in our minds and we will pursue this gift often at our own expense but a great hazard and often with great ingenuity that has a plus side and a minus side it often means very often means you'll have observed it in your own lives and those of others that we prefer junk explanation to no explanation at all or conspiracy theory to no theory and religion takes its place in our evolution in this precise manner it's the first and worst explanation we came up with it's what we it's the best we could do when we didn't know we lived on a cooling planet with big fissures in its crust when we didn't know there were microorganisms that power over us we didn't have dominion over them to the contrary when we didn't know we lived on a spherical planet we didn't know we revolved around other spherical bodies everything was terrifying new mysterious and often lethal it was our first attempt at philosophy in that way first attempt at cosmology first attempt at geography biology all the rest of it a hopeless attempt belonging to the bawling fearful ignorant childhood of our species but very necessary and it possesses still the advantage of having come first the terrible advantage over the mind and over learning that it possesses is its originality and the history of human emancipation is the struggle to get away from this terrifying foolish ignorant first try and I can see what we have still some distance to travel but we have made a start now you can argue it because it's still here we know we know a little bit of course we don't now think that the Aztecs we're really on to something we don't think that all faith based is better than none we don't think you need to wrench a living heart out of a chest cavity to make the Sun come up every day we've been through the list of gods it's in my editing collection the portal atheist men can actually drew up a list of very nearly 10,000 gods they used to be worshipped or not anymore as my friend Richard Dawkins says everyone's an atheist nobody believes in the sun-god rah anymore nobody believes in wetzel capital anymore nobody believes in Juno and Venus anymore you're all atheists as far as that's concerned you look with pity on those who support or whatever did such cults all we say is make it consistent just go one God more and you're nearly there Peter DeVries puts you purge of resue poor guy brilliant novelists and great great essayist - poor guy was brought up Dutch Reformed in Illinois says in his wonderful discussion of religion snatching towards Kalamazoo it's called I recommend it um people used to be poly poly justic they believed in many many many gods then for some reason they decided to narrow it down to one they're getting nourished the true figure all the time this is the struggle I want to invite you to join the ladies and gentlemen at the easiest way I think to clear your mind of such remaining illusions as you may possess or labor under is the following the great words of Laplace the first person to develop what's called the or are' a model of how the cosmos in the universe would look as if it was viewed for the first time from the outside the circulation of the heavenly bodies and the planets and he showed it to the emperor napoleon who wanted to know how this great genius the only rival to newton in his time laplace had managed this and he demonstrated to the Emperor how it worked and the Emperor said but there's no God in this machine and Laplace it works very well your highness without that assumption not just science but our own other reflections have told us that there is nothing remaining to be explained that could only be explained by the existence of a Supreme Being creator or first cause the universe and our lives to all operate exactly as you would expect them to if there was no such thing why does the delusion persist where we might get to that I think it has a lot to do with wish thinking and not wishing only for desirable things either such as the survival of death but also wishing for things that are less desirable such as the triumph of ourselves over others with God on our side having made a special covenant with say just one tribe in Bronze Age Palestine the most reactionary idea probably ever invented by the religious but you'll see analogies of it everywhere God is discussed or the need for it for a terrifying supreme dictator Nietzsche is said to have said that god is dead Freud as such of said that God is dad others others clearly believe that we will be better off in fact we wouldn't have we wouldn't have any ideas of our own if we couldn't submit to a celestial totalitarianism the final unanswerable authority in the heavens this is wish thinking but of a very unpleasant kind it shows poorly we have evolved ourselves from the fearful primary and mammalian species that first crawled out of the mire now there are global and cosmic versions of this I have time I think a few minutes remaining to deal with them with them both start with the cosmic why not therefore I think it's four thousand billion observable galaxies now anyone who claims to know a lot about all of these has sources of information denied to me but we know a little bit about them and a lot more than we used to do and Edwin Hubble noticed rather famously few decades ago that they're all moving away from each other rather rapidly it's what called the red light problem or observation very rapidly indeed in fact now this has very important implications because it was thought in civil 9 years ago that because of gravitational factors that rate of expansion would surely by now be slowing they'd still be expanding moving away from each other fast but less fast all the time no the rate is going up the speed is is increasing Lawrence Krauss has a wonderful piece in the upcoming Scientific American on this absolutely crucial point it means that within measurable time there will be no signs left in the observable universe that the Big Bang ever occurred at all everything will have disappeared out of sight will be no markers nothing to take observations from I mentioned this because it's often said that how can them how can something come out of nothing it's the clever clever question every register magog and businessman always begins by asking you well we know we've got a bit of something in this universe and we know nothingness is coming so some design huh nothingness is not just innate programmed it's the next big thing and we at least had some somethingness as if to make assurance doubly sure the Andromeda galaxy is headed directly directly in collision course with our own measurably it's already filling the sky can be seen with the naked eye in five billion years which is to say [ __ ] soon ladies and gentlemen it's honest and if it hasn't happened before then our son goes into a red giant then a Red Dwarf we become a crisp that'll be nothingness programmed instead of something this some design huh well let's move then while you ponder that to the Chinese suburb in which we actually do know we live this little corner just our solar system every other rock in our solar system is completely inhospitable to life either too hot or too cold as is most of our planet which as we know have good cause to know is on a knife-edge of climatic survival as we speak we we could become extinct at any moment in fact when we still lived on the savanna of Africa the the environment to which we were adapted and have fled but where we still betrayed the scars of our lowly origin by the coat of fur we grow in the womb and then shared by the appendix by our terrible generation and by many other things our adrenal glands are too big our prefrontal lobes are too small we're not the finest primates that could have evolved very it's estimated by the people who've done the DNA work on this that we were down as a species to less than a few thousand because of climatic events and other nightmares and catastrophes before the decision was made to abandon the savanna and seek cooler territory we could very easily have joined the 99.9% of every other species that has ever been in existence on this tiny planet and become extinct that close what are we flattering ourselves about what is so great about our anthropic principle that we should attribute this to a design or designer some design huh and some designer to who but a serf wants it to be true who but someone who doesn't like to do their own thinking once or needs this to be true in the face of all not just some but all of the available evidence before us I've put it like this it's the only hypothesis of my own that I've ever come up with it's a version of them on this point anyway it's a version of Joseph Schumpeter some hypothesis about creative destruction as the energy of capitalism um in order to believe in sorry not in a mystic god no was a creator the first course of an imponderable starter which of course only leads you to an infinite regression because how could there be a star she wasn't himself started or herself begun who created the God who made the creator who invented the inventor who designed the designer any fool can see the fallacy appearing right over the shoulder this huckel's but suppose it's not just a theistic question but excuse me a deistic question but a theistic one a God who answers prayers a God who intervenes a god it didn't just start this but cares how it winds up who cares what you do to your private parts also those of your children and assists on their being mutilated who knows what you should eat and what day of the week who knows with which gender you may or may not recreational with and so forth the dears has all their work still ahead of them to prove that there is such a being here's what you'd have to believe to be theist already shown the absurdity of dears in my hope to be a theist you have to believe this how long do you think ladies and gentlemen I have three minutes Shawn I hope need them all how long do you think the human species as a distinct Homo sapiens has been on the planet I don't want to shout a guess okay well Richard Dawkins thinks 250,000 years quarter of a million that's considered to be on the high end Francis Collins who's become a friend of mine the very very devout Christian who as you will know sequence the human genome project and did the final report on the the full-out discovery of that unravel meant which showed us our kinship with other creatures and indeed with other non creatures are the forms of vegetation and junk that's in our oddly proves us to be part of the creational soup he thinks minimum hundred thousand he's not quite sure if it's 250,000 all right I only need a hundred thousand a hundred thousand years since we dared to separate from became separate from the cro-magnons and the Neanderthals as our own species Homo sapiens here's what you have to believe to be a fierce for a hundred thousand years humanity is born probes perhaps 25% of it dies in childbirth or very shortly afterwards life expectancy I don't know 25 for a very long time infant mortality extraordinary but after after childbirth Tanzania killed by microorganisms we didn't know existed by earthquakes that we thought were portents by storms that we didn't know came from our climate system by other events arise from being born onto a cooling planet with deep cracks in its faults in its month then man-made things turf wars fights over women rights of a territory of a food very very slow gradual exponential output progress we might we might like to think pretty slow and but at least we can claim out of our own self-respect man-made from and for the first ninety six thousand years of this experience Heaven watches with holded arms us go through this with indifference without pity and then around 4,000 years ago decides gee it's time to intervene and the best way of doing that would probably be in Bronze Age Middle East making appearances to stupefied illiterate peasants which could later be passed on the news would get to China after about a thousand years of that that's what you have to believe aren't you glad you can't be made to believe that aren't you glad there's no theocracy anymore within range of you that can make you believe that do you know what it's like living in countries where you can be made to believe it do you know what the penalties off and not believing it they're just exactly congruent with the stupidity of the belief itself we would be better off ladies and gentlemen if we grew out of it we will be better off with grown up if we grown out of it a long time ago I've only had 15 minutes to show its falsity the rest of the evening I hope can be diverted to its wickedness but the falsity is part of the wickedness too and thanks for hearing me out thank you good evening ladies and gentlemen after hearing that speech I am so depressed God Almighty if the andromeda galaxy doesn't finish me off and Christopher Hitchens doesn't how many other threats will Christopher Hitchens book God is not great made a lot of money for him even though atheism is a non-profit organization I hope someone caught that and I am a fan of Christopher Hitchens work this is our second debate but my friends I am profoundly disappointed with this work it is his weakest book yet in it he is guilty of the same colossal closed mindedness of which he accuses religion the book is filled with logical inconsistencies factual inaccuracies and blatant untruths in a nutshell Christopher Hitchens is a secular fundamentalist phonetic he falls prey to mankind's most base instinct namely hatred he hates religion he even hates God which is difficult since he doesn't exist and most importantly he hates hope like Richard Dawkins who I have debated at Oxford University on several occasions Hitchens is a scientific reductionist producing humans - not but vapid animals semi-literate primates half thinking Apes his book lacks joy it lacks humor it is a profoundly depressing tone about the decrepit nature of human existence the book that I've launched tonight the broken American male available fine bookstores everywhere is the direct result of this shattered vision human beings are bereft of any real cosmic purpose all they can do in life revert to hunter-gatherers gathering money during the day so they can hunt women at night in so doing they fulfill their genetic role of being not but sperm donors Jack Nicholson expressed it best in that great Bible of American literature People magazine of December 21st 2007 he said when it comes to love we men have more in common with a male dog than we do with the woman oh this may be male chauvinism but it's science baby hence my friends Christopher Hitchens does not believe in any kind of heroes or human greatness of Martin Luther King in his book he writes quote he was a mammal like the rest of us probably plagiarized his doctoral dissertation had a notorious fondness for booze and for women a good deal younger than his wife Mahatma Gandhi is someone who would have caused millions of Indians to starve and had we listened to him would be we'd be worshipping cows the Dalai Lama makes a claim that he's a hereditary king and dissenting sex within his faith are persecuted of course mother Teresa bears the greatest brunt of his fury he says the mother Teresa she was a friend of poverty a fanatic a fundamentalist and a fraud but tell us what you really think Christopher my friends religion has a vastly different vision and a vastly different take yes a man is a creature like any other but he has born with the spiritual capacity to transcend instinct and to choose goodness to rise above his animal nature and become godly what - Hitchens is a failure that humans occasionally succumb to their nature is to us glory when they choose inspiration over indulgence they triumph over instinct Hitchens is right human beings in terms of DNA are 98% exactly like primates but in that 2% and that 2% lies human consciousness and therefore human conscience human transcendence and therefore human choice human soulfulness soulfulness and therefore the indomitable human spirit a watermelon is also 98% water just like a jellyfishes but they are hardly alike not eating any jellyfish anytime soon and I cannot accept that we are nothing but thinking primates to give you an idea of the degree of blindness that you're hearing tonight I want to just choose a few examples of this loathing of religion that has made a great scholar become positively ignorant he says that the Torah lacks compassion on page 99 quote the pitiless teachings of Moses who never mentions human solidarity and compassion at all even schoolchildren knew no Leviticus 19:18 with the greatest statement of human solidarity and history of the world you must love your fellow man as yourself he attacks circumcision a few moments ago in his book he calls it religious barbarism quote it is a mutilation of a powerless infant with the aim of ruining his future sex life as an authority on the subject no not because I have eight children but I wrote kosher sex what a shame that Christopher Hitchens doesn't read the New York Times he would have discovered I'm sure you remember was a front-page story December 14 2006 quote circumcision appears to reduce a man's risk of contracting AIDS by 50 percent in fact the two largest AIDS charities on earth quote are considering paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries so these great charities are going to inflict this barbarism in order to save people's lives but this is the really fun part because he sees religion as primitive he says that the most annoying and the most unfortunate of all Jewish holidays is Hanukkah he calls it an absolutely tragic day in human history this is funny parenthetically he says I love this the Jews borrowed shamelessly from Christians in the pathetic hope of celebration that coincides with Christmas surely he knows that the Maccabees lived 300 years before the birth of Jesus but we'll ignore that for a moment what I love what he says about Hanukkah is it's a primitive holiday where Jews reject science and Hellenism for their primitive beliefs listen to this the Jews felt the pull exerted by Athens they chose the superstition mandated by the Torah let's see what enlightenment did use fought against during Hanukkah the great oxford historian who was a friend of mine Martin Goodman says that Antiochus the fourth the the villain of Hanukkah was quote called a barbarian and madman by his own people if you look up in Wikipedia just google it Antiochus the 4th protrusions inhabitants to death in the most cruel way he insisted on slaughtering a pig in the temple and when the Jews refused to eat it quote he cut off their hands and feet burned them on the altar scalped them and this is the Greek enlightenment that the Jews should not have resisted Christopher you supported the invasion of Iraq because you said that the Dom Hussein was a tyrant who didn't deserve to slaughter his people but you decry the Jews for standing up against their own brutal oppressors but my friends it's really the values of those Greco Romans that the Jews rejected these great enlightened values that Christopher Hitchens the crisis really aids religiously and ourselves for rejecting those great values like the people of Sparta the Greeks who used to inspect news born infants and if they were found to be weekly they would cast them from menthe mounted gatos the Romans of course would inspect grown adults and if they were mentally infirm they would be thrown from the Tarpeian rock don't think I'm being unfair in citing ancient Hellenistic values against religious ones no less an authority than Francis Crick the Nobel prize-winning scientists who mapped the DNA molecule suggested that birth in our time come two days after Parcher issue so that a baby could be examined for defects and if found to be sufficiently deleterious could be removed with impunity since it has not yet been born he also suggested that we declare death at the age of 80 when people are no longer useful professor Bentley glass said good and evil should have a scientific evolutionary connotation they should be divorced from their traditional connotation and they should be they should connote what is good and bad for the species so a child with Tay Sachs would be eliminated and Hitchens himself something that sounds quite frightening page 221 of his book a very large number of pregnancies are aborted he's speaking about miscarriages because of malformation said though this is it is probably less miserable and outcome and the vast number of deformed or idiot children who would otherwise have been born or whose brief lives would have been a torment to themselves and others I therefore challenge my August colleague to explain why then should we not euthanize Down syndrome children they are a burden to their parents they can contribute nothing to the society they are the idiot children of whom even our own Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said famously three generations of idiots are enough when so many states here in America used to sterilize the mentally handicapped what was wrong with that in fact let me give you two quotations and I would like you to tell me who you think they are from number one in nature there is no pity for the lesser creatures when they are destroyed so that the fittest may survive going against nature brings ruin to man it is only Jewish impudence to demand that we overcome nature listen to this very similar quote the more civilized so-called Caucasian races the white people have been the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence the white people decimated the dark people looking at the world and no very distant date what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races first quotation was from the politician his name was Adolf Hitler the second quotation was from a scientist his name was Charles Darwin evolutionary theory is I intend to demonstrate in the second part of this debate is based on the survival of the fittest it is not good for the species or for the human race to sustain people who are weaker charity is a religious concept pure and simple that's why you heard such a depressing presentation there is no hope life has no amber there is nothing that glows in fact Sir Arthur Keith the greatest British evolutionist of the world war ii period said quote to see evolutionary measures being applied vigorously one must turn to germany of 1942 we see Hitler devoutly convinced that evolution produces the only real basis for a national policy the means he adopted was organized slaughter to secure the German race they needed more space they needed more food you kill the weaker ones to protect the stronger ones the German Fuhrer as I have consistently maintained wrote Sir Arthur Keith is an evolutionist and seeks to make the practice of Germany conform to evolution here you have why Christopher Hitchens attacks the 10 commandments you know this is amazing because he says about the Ten Commandments isn't to this however a little one thinks of the Jewish tradition it is surely insulting to the people of Moses to imagine they had come this far under the impression that murder adultery theft and perjury were permissible but he misses the entire point God didn't bring the Jews to the foot of Mount Sinai to tell them not to kill God brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai so they would understand that do not murder is God's law not now not ever there is no excuse this is why genocide is perpetrated by nations who have man-made laws there were laws against murder in the audit in Ottoman Turkey there were laws against murder and Nazi Germany there were Nozick laws against murder in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge but they were human laws and subject to human tampering that's why the Ten Commandments have preserved the morality of a nation who even when they were turn into soap and lampshades during the Holocaust never blew up a German school bus because we live by that edict do not murder my friends open your eyes and see what I see as as Rabi Akiva famously said just as the garment testifies to the Weaver the door to the carpenter the house to the Builder so the entire world testifies to God's to God the Creator in this book which I published as a result of my debates with Richard Dawkins at Oxford 13 years this is 13 years old I have about another minute and surely science has found far greater wonder since then if the earth were closer or further from the Sun by just a little bit the heat or cold with jet generated would make life impossible if the earth were not tilted on its axis 23 degrees huge mountains of ice would pile up from the water vapour of the oceans the earth revolves at a speed of a thousand miles per hour if it were to evolve at just 100 miles per hour night and day would increase ten times in duration plants would be scorched in the day seed things will be frozen at night if the moon were bit closer to the earth the tide would flood all lands including the high mountains if the oceans were deeper carbon dioxide and oxygen would be absorbed and no plans could exist if the atmosphere were thinner millions of meteors which are burned up in the air would fall to the earth and cause limitless devastation while most substances contract when they freeze water miraculously expands by 11th of its volume this makes ice float on the top and that allows the fish to survive till today the cause of this expansion perplex the scientists two weeks ago the New York Times Magazine wrote January 13 2008 the moral sense is an innate part of being human we are born with innate morality it is not acquired a list of human Universal's collected by anthropologist Donald Brown includes moral concepts including a distinction between right and wrong empathy fairness admiration generosity shame these are all character traits which are antithetical to evolution which are about ensuring that your genes survive finally my friends listen to this the little embryo that little baby that he'll have to grow up in a world of hope hearing so much about how we're the only forlorn Rock without any any life surrounding us it's born with 10,000 taste buds in its mouth some 12 trillion nerve endings will form in the baby's nose to help it detect fragrances of odors in the air more than a hundred thousand nerve cells will be devoted to reacting to Beethoven's Symphony the piano has 240 strings but a baby's ear will have 240,000 hearing units those 10,000 spokes by the way the million nerve endings of the optical nerves of the eye which connects with the brain and somehow grows from two different directions and meets one million nerve endings is so vast that if weren't mapped the entire world's telephone cable system would be only a small fraction of it a small fraction it has no designer at all according to Christopher Hitchens since I have to end let me just tell you of course science says that these this phenomenal complexity came about through genetic mutation and natural selection when I come back we'll explore whether that is the case or whether such vast complexity such vast complexity could never have come about spontaneously and whether those who believed it did are guilty of cognitive dissonance afraid of a truth so great that they're forced to deny it well as some of you already know never by crackling from a moil but the rabbi is in the uplift business say Psalm HEA as was once said and he thinks it's a point against me that some of the conclusions I draw are not such as to make one happy I'm unused to arguing in this style I will simply point out that that's what I'm expected to do in a debate that's organized along these lines against someone who thinks that evolution by means of natural selection which is a hypothesis a theory which if tested always works which allows us to sequence the DNA of the influenza virus so that next time it comes on like 1919 it won't kill us all because we know of its kinship with ourselves as we know we ourselves evolved from sightless bacteria because we have the computer models by which the eye was evolved in 40 different ways at least among different species so there's nothing left to argue with except but with people or about except with people like rabbi but if and Governor Huckabee of Kobe who had as he is of what I would describe as a non Philo Semitic Christian organization believes that Adam and Eve were real and indeed quite recent people my experience that there's nothing to be done with points like this except to underline them governor Huckabee in fact doesn't even know what he doesn't believe when we're not went putting up his chubby hand to say he was among those in the room who didn't believe in the theory of evolution he said no I don't believe that I'm descended from a monkey well as you know the theory of evolution does not demand that you believe anything remotely like that points to a common ancestry between other primates and and ourselves if we were descended from monkeys we probably look quite a lot like governor Huckabee now the I just have spent a second on the taunt about being a fundamentalist to be a fundamentalist is to insist that something can be advanced on faith alone and without evidence I will submit myself to your fair-mindedness ladies and gentlemen and ask if anything I said to you or I'm saying now requires that of you that you take an act of faith or leap of faith as if it were an ethical thing to do or did you take one at all for anything I say of course I don't there's nothing in common between me and any other faith-based person of any kind it's one of the last-ditch arguments that our foes the foes of science and science education and the theory of evolution by natural selection as the explanation for our presence here have had to come up with in their desperation hatred yes I plead guilty to that one of the many things I don't like about Christianity is that it tells me to love my enemies I don't do that and I don't want you doing it for me either go love your own enemies don't be loving mine I'll get on with the business of destroying isolating and combating the enemies of civilization I don't need any and I don't really any sickly advice from Nazareth from the man who after all the Old Testament horrors that we know about none of them included the punishment of hell there's no hell in the Old Testament so the credit of the Jewish people actually when when when God and Moses have done with enjoining genocide on you which by the way they do include those books I don't know where which books the rabbi's been reading but he might want to tell you what happened to the Amalekites where are the Midianites happened to all these people we know what we were told to do to them so glad to think that those books are fictional because if they were true we would all be bespattered with the blood of others to please a hideous Authority but no punishment once he's done with you once the earth is closed over you that's it there's no torture of the Dead not till gentle Jesus meek and mild do you get that my same point about the overrated figures of dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi it's a very bad thing it seems to me that especially among in white liberal society the plasterer saint of Martin Luther King has become iconographic it's led to bad consequences that I can think of one the great black securest and socialists and trade union leaders some of whom spoke at this very podium Bayard Rustin a philip Randolph and the others of you actually organized the march on Washington with their white friends secular friends Levitch aruthor of the United Automobile Workers the people actually put this great movement of liberation onto the streets are airbrushed from history why people get are given deliberately the impression where black folks sure like their preachers in their pulpit men and as a result anyone who can claim to be a preacher a fraud a demagogue a crook like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson is automatically awarded the right to represent black America this is not progress very well I hope you understand me that's not doctor it's not dr. King's thought it's not dr. King's fault but as I said in my book but it is the fault of those who make a cult out of him and who who dare to say that without religious permission we wouldn't know how to demand equal rights for our african-american brothers and sisters we'll excuse me we don't need religious permission for that and the case for it had been made by the secular left long before dr. King started preaching and that's precisely why he was always attacked in his lifetime for having communists and socialists and Marxist friends which he did who had done most of the spade work so let's again be very clear what we're talking about I'm sorry I do not believe the ji Lama's claim either to be hereditary King or hereditary God and I think anyone who does believe it is a fool and there hasn't been even the pretense of an election in the Tibetan exile community that he's now been leading for more than almost half a century in Dharamsala in India it is still run as an absolute despotism people like that sort of thing like that sort of thing too the more to the purpose and you'll let me know mr. chairman when I were coming actually I have rather crazy salad of them slanders to respond to and I don't want to miss any of them out if you want to saw off the end of your penis you're welcome you're not to do it to a child who hasn't asked for it same with the genitals of a little girl if she thinks later on she'd be better off without them let her take or have taken to her a sharp instrument if it proves that it's good for AIDS which it might well be I've heard it means said that it's good for cervical cancer let it be decided by the grown up it is not right it is not moral it is in fact wicked to submit children to the mutilation of the genitalia or to anyone without their consent do you understand that it's that this elementary point only needs to be made because of wickedness and joined by religion the rabbi here is a fairly humane guy he wouldn't if he didn't think God was involved ever consider mutilating the genitals of a child but because it's a covenant with God anything can be done at judge you see you laugh but you should be crying I said crying ok suit yourself now I'm not here to defend Zeus or Juno or Aphrodite I said I listed them in the in the list of barbaric and forgotten gods the Jews who celebrate Hanukkah which by the way I think you will have to agree only became promoted in the United States among Jews it's a relatively minor holiday because of its nearness to Christmas Day the Jews who particularly care about that holiday are not aren't arguing against the worship of Zeus they're arguing against as the rabbi perfectly well knows the idea of the Epicurus when in Orthodox Judaism is known as the heretic the unbeliever the app Icarus the follower of Epicurus epicurus and lucretius were the secular Helenus the ones who discovered that the world was made of atoms and that the gods if they exist do not concern themselves with human affairs because among other things they avoid unnecessary pain now there's a discovery that's worth having and the Jews want you to turn away the Orthodox Jews want you to turn away from the unbelievable scholarship and originality and humanism of epicurus and lucretius to look at a candle Hey look Gogol at this it burned an extra day or two or is it age this is what retards human intelligence and human civilization now of course you may I'll close on this because they're able to trespass on your time or the rabbi's of course you can be an atheist and you can be in Genesis you can be a fascist you can be a Stalinist you can be an idealist you can be a sadist if there's an unbelief the repudiation of the supernatural is not a necessary excuse me it's not a sufficient condition not a sufficient condition for for wisdom or for enlightenment but it is and I say it joylessly he Emily gloomily pessimistically it is a necessary one thanks my objection to the current religious secular debate is that for so many centuries Christopher Hitchens is right religion had a very closed mind who has the closed mind now who uses character assassination to portray anyone who has certain beliefs that they try to root in logic as closed-minded unscholarly the gist of my argument is that Christopher Hitchens who is one of America's most talented writers has become so fanatical in his hatred of religion but he just invents things to decry it for example he can make fun of the fact that I don't believe in evolution although I never even said that I believe in evolutionary development as the Torah itself says six days of creation the mineral was followed by the vegetable than the animal then the intellectual question is whether this is guided question is whether mathematic as the medical possibilities allows for this but before I even get to that here's an example just pure invention in order to make religion Jews the State of Israel look bad what's this he's writing about the greatest scientist of the twentieth centuries and don't be impressed that Einstein believed in God because he didn't believe in a God that we believed in he was a deist and quote offered the first presidency of the State of Israel Einstein declined because of his many coms about the way Zionism was tending that is pure utter fabrication first of all I'm Stein was offered the second presidency the first president was Haim Weitzman he was offered in 1952 he died three years later the Princeton Review says he turned it down quote because he had neither the desire nor the energy to run a country he was a scientist New York's son in an essay about the subject he politely and sensibly declined on the grounds that it would interfere with the scientific work he loved Israel he was one of the great Zionists of the 20th century anything to portray religion in a negative light as far as as far as the great complexity well you continually and you continually invent in your book I'll get to that in a moment you'll have to just be patient as I dissect it my friends most people today accept evolutionary principles without being knowledgeable of them I actually studied them and debated some of the world's greatest evolutionary biologists from Richard Dawkins for debates John Maynard Smith professor evolutionary biology University of Sussex the world's greatest live he was the world's grading living evolutionist at the time too for evolution to work any two things you need genetic mutation and you need natural selection and genetic mutation means that when DNA replicates it introduces to a mistake in copying itself a new feature that is not existent in the parental type so for that to happen you need mutation to be to do two things number one they have to be very common because you have great complexity in the world number two they have to be beneficial let's see what the world's greatest scientists say about mutation because remember Darwin knew nothing about mutation Darwin believed in adaptation and he based it on the Lamarckian theory of acquired characteristics that preceded him here is what Ernst what HJ Muller the world's foremost expert on mutation Nobel Prize winner says quote mutations are of random nature accordingly the vast majority certainly well over 99% are harmful a Nobel Prize winner Ernst Meier these are all evolution evolutionists most of them are atheists it is a considerable strain on one's credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs could be improved by random mutations will be I get better if it makes a mistake in its replication in fact the author of the mystery of hereditary aridity concludes this to this the vast majority of mutants in any organism are so detrimental as to believe that it is impossible for them to lead to complexity these are people who all believe in evolution now Julian Huxley for the most important of all evolutionary families wrote the following we should clearly have to breed to get a horse he says a million strains a thousand squared to get two favorable mutations up to a thousand to the millions power to produce a horse now listen to this a thousand to the millionth power to produce a horse which isn't even as complex as the human brain becomes one with three million zeroes written after it that would take three volumes of 500 pages just to print no one would bet on anything so improbably happening and yet Dom it has happened that's how he ends the quote now how could evolution is saying the one hand mutation is destructive I mean if you're born with a third arm you're not really doing that well I assure you even though it seems that you've gone forward you've gone backwards so how could this theory and again I'm not denying evolution I'm saying evolution needs a guiding parent because the numbers are impossible how could we believe that things just a horse one to the three millionth power five 1500 pages to write the number would this ever happened so here's how a Harvard professor answers it the important point is that since the origin of life belongs and the category of at least once phenomena time is on its side however impossible we regard this event given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once time is in fact the hero of the plot I love this part listen carefully given so much time the impossible becomes possible the possible probable the probable virtually certain one has to only wait because time itself performs miracles do you get it I believe in a three word entity called God Christopher Hitchens believes in a four word entity called time the essence of evolutionary theory which is undeniable is that you give enough time this is all gonna happen by friends when I was young and I'm not a scientist I remember and you remember they told us the world was four billion years old then they said it was eight billion now I went to 16 soon it will be twenty thirty soon they'll give it a trillion years and why because the more we discovered the complexity of life and the impossibility of any of this stuff evolving the more the more time we need let me tell you something you can give this forever forever something that something that mathematically has 300 million zeroes after it is never going to happen I don't care if you have forever that's why as Christopher Hitchens said it didn't happen all the other planets if he's right and I'm wrong why did life happen only here we have 16 billion years there's natural selection there this genetic mutation there why did it happen there one place oh he'll tell you that we haven't yet found it well we have all of these he's seen the galaxy and draw that's not there let me tell you I'm not the only person doesn't believe in evolution without guidance and let me be clear about that the greatest scientist uh he passed away a few years ago but I met up at Oxford from Harvard Stephen Jay Gould he didn't believe in evolution he believed in punctuated equilibrium I saw him debate Richard Dawkins he destroyed evolution and he's an atheist he said that the fossil record does not reflect evolution Sir Fred Hoyle said that because there are trillions of mutations that would have to take place and none of those organisms would have survived because the possibility of a genetic mutation is 99.9 negative that tremenda land lethal to the organism so Hoyle said you would have to find trillions of destroyed organisms they don't exist in fact it was Darwin himself who said that the greatest objection to his theory because let's remember the Origin of Species published in 1863 was not a tome about the origin of life it was a theory to explain the fossil record but the problem was that they were missing transitional links so what so what he said was I'd like to give you the exact quote Darwin said that the imperfection of the fossil record comes entirely to the fact that we have not yet dug sufficiently in 1863 that would make sense but my friends we've now dug up the whole world we're looking for oil looking for diamonds we've dug up everywhere we've barely found them so Stephen Jay Gould as Christopher rich as well most doesn't believe in evolution or didn't he argue for punctuated equilibrium great great leaps which explains the dearth of fossils to still be an evolutionist today you have to have faith there's no evidence the transitional links barely exist that's why when I when Dawkins again friend of mine I debated him when he debated Stephen Jay Gould he had nothing to say what evidence where are these trillions and trillions and trillions of transitional links remember you need billions of mutations to go from to go from a single cell amoeba to the eye and yet amazingly which would give us an untold number of failed transit no steps and they don't exist you know what's interesting to me as well christopher hitchens give me 30 seconds here crystal vision says that the eyes not impressive everything about him is the eye is nothing and there's no complexity what are you talking about the organism is so ill formed he says that the eye is quote the inaptitude of design page 82 he even says the anatomy of the eye in fact shows anything but intelligence it has built upside down and backwards well Charles Darwin didn't think so I'm I'm glad you don't like your eyes but Darwin said quote I became sick when I thought of how the complexity of the eye could have evolved he then said Charles Darwin to suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection seems I freely confess absurd in the highest possible degree then Christopher Hitchens says that he says why have we agreed so easily to call this exploded old non theory the theory of intelligent design by its commonly chosen new disguise of intelligent design there's nothing intelligent about it let me therefore conclude with the words of Isaac Asimov the greatest sign fiction writer of the 20th century in man there is a three-pound brain which as far as we know is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe I mean God Almighty all you need to do to prove the existence of God and how intelligent the design of our universe is is to see how smart Christopher Hitchens is what's it for the third what's it for who was it if I can't be erect at least brother be upstanding I have to sit for this he says I gotta sit ok we agreed alright um there was a terrible moment I think it was when Lawrence Krauss was talking about the andromeda galaxy when and it's heading towards us when someone got up and said jim doctor did you say it was going to collide with our galaxy 5 billion years or five million and lawrence said 5 billion the guy so that's a huge relief I thought he said 5 million there for a second now on the fabrication point I've can't sit still or stand so if I was standing because of that the argument about Einstein the State of Israel has nothing to do with national with religion at all the may have been a religious element in his opposition to a Jewish state he was for a state for Jews but not for a jurist age a distinction that a lot of people have forgotten the same distinction was made by I have stone Judah Magnus and others often in debates under this roof as a matter of fact I don't know how much influence that had on his decision to reject the the offer from Ben Gurion who at one point said to his cabinet what are we gonna to if he says yes but I will be very surprised if there was nothing to do with it anyway it has no bearing whatever on the fact that Einstein believed only in Spinoza is God in other words not rabbi surely would have you believe in God as an intervening or supervising or caring for Spinoza only the one Spinoza identified the pantheistic one these distinctions I think important and worth stressing on the on the claim that Stephen Jay Gould did not believe in evolution I really do not know where to begin I think the best thing to do would be to read any chapter of any of his books and and in fact I think the I might I might indeed recommend and I might indeed recommend the one where he has a very famous very celebrated disagreement with with Richard Dawkins on the question not of whether evolution occurred because no body denies that that it occurred we know it's in the record of molecular biology and it's in the fossil record there's a lot of argument about how and there is a certain amount of argument about the punctuation and a lot of those gaps only just now being filled in only just now we're discovering intermediate species the partly vertebrate yet amphibian and for example a very very important one recently in northern Canada it's in Gold's book on the Burgess Shale that the most sobering point has made a point that even I as a materialist find rather shaking I don't by the way deny things because they don't cheer me up it's not my attitude to evidence but I would like to think too that you know I was a little bit more than the primate that I saw sort of evidently am but in Stephen Jay Gould account of the Burgess Shale which I think is his best book is the most beautiful than has finished in the most polished of his books he says there's a as a Cambrian vertebrate little creature called peculiar grasslands that has the beginnings of a backbone it could have got washed out in one of the great subsequent dying's out it could have done if it had human beings would never have appeared this is the first we can find of a vertebrate it could very easily have gone but it didn't and as a result we're here having this conversation you can say that's miraculous if you like you can say that only God would have thought of such a thing but and that's the way you'd think if that's the way he thought because there will always be people who will say oh well we use not to think about these fossils we thought that was all nonsense it was argued until fairly recently by the godly God put the bones in the rocks to test our faith at least we don't deny they're there they're just there as a test now you have animatronic dinosaurs play with animatronic children in the Creation Museum a just opened in Ohio and there are those who say we didn't used to think about that Big Bang could possibly be true in fact the Big Bang itself is a term like Tori like suffragette like Impressionists and other terms originally evolved as a term of abuse there's a ton of mockery adopted by its exponents big bang was what Fred Hoyle used to say to try and dismiss the idea I said have some people think it all began with the Big Bang now we know there was a time when everything was inside something about the size of a baseball that's now four thousand billion galaxies and what my daughter wants to know is what was outside the baseball and I don't know but we know that much you'll say well nothing so amazing could have happened without God so there's a name for this kind of argument a very old and important name also comes largely from work at Oxford University though it's actually attributable largely to Sir Karl Popper it's called unfalsifiable afee it's an argument you can't beat because it isn't an argument if you say well now I see how complex everything is it would have to be God who was responsible there's no there's no way I can disprove that there's no way I can falsified and unfalsifiable 'ti counter-intuitively is quite rightly considered to be a test not of the strength of an argument but of its extreme weakness in fact of its non-existence as an argument now I didn't I left unanswered a point about social Darwinism and if I can have okay um it was in fact at the Scopes trial the contention of William Jennings Bryan not just that evolution had not occurred but that it shouldn't have occurred because it would mean that only the fittest would survive now we don't want that to be true and we we can actually take steps to make sure as humans that it isn't absolutely the only rule of existence but it when the rabbi quite misrepresented what I say about abortion I was talking about how nature BOTS so many unborn children not how humans do or should or might have to but how nature takes care of it and I said because when we were on the Savannah and sharing the territory and diminishing in size as a tribe ourselves and having to bear live young in an environment full of predators probably if we bore 8 or 9 children them sickly with lolling heads and diarrhea we wouldn't be able to pick them up and carry them and run away fast enough it's a fact because it's a factor because it's unpleasant and because as Darwin says it betrays has with it as everything about it stars the the lowly stamp of our original origin doesn't mean it isn't so so the beginning of wisdom I would say is the recognition of what science has been able to teach us and neither to deny that as the rabbi does in one tone of voice or to claim that it shows how clever God is with another turn make up your mind you can't have it both ways and actually you're wrong twice I don't care how much you dislike religion and I don't care how much how false you believe the faith in God is you can't invent facts to sustain your argument can't be unscientific when you complain that religion is unscientific that's the whole problem with this book it's the prob with everything you've heard tonight is a problem with the utter distortions that we continue to hear you said that your attack about Einstein which you didn't respond to because you clearly invented out of whole cloth this idea that he didn't want to be president because design is you said it's not about religion what about this speaking about the buctober oath goldstein Christopher Hitchens writes while serving as a physician in the Israeli army he had announced that he would not treat non Jewish patients such as Israeli Arabs on the Sabbath as it happens he was obeying rabbinic law and declining to do this as many Israeli religious courts have confirmed I challenged mr. Hitchens to name a single Jewish court in the entire world that would ever rule that a non Jew should not be treated on the Sabbath in fact if he names it I will buy a hundred copies of his book and I will give it to talking about a mainstream just a regular Jewish court I will give 100 copies of his book to my religious friends but if he fails I challenge him to buy a hundred copies of my book or let's make that a thousand not only does the Talmud obligate us to treat on shoes on the Sabbath in fact Noah Feldman my dear friend who the road Scholar at Oxford who debated me on this subject he famously wrote about the debate in the Talmud how there was his steering with in the Talmud maybe you shouldn't and this was because the non-jews they were talking about were Roman centurions that's when the Talmud was written these were horrible troops that persecuted Jews but even then they said that you have to it's a law in Judaism the court would be stripped of its authority in a moment and we declared racist in fact Christopher Hitchens who portrays Jews throughout this book as being closed-minded racist he attacks Israel non-stop based on non-existent evidence he doesn't even know Judaism which he should study it before he writes about it I mean I didn't just get up and talk about evolution I tried to study the text I'm not a great scientist but I've debated leading scientist and I prepared for those debates you should prepare if you're gonna write about this Elvis for three do not despise any man the rabbi's declared quote even a Gentile who studies God's law is equal to the high priest two thousand years ago a non Jew equal to the high priests to scepter son hundred thirteen the righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come non-jews go to heaven tonight Valley Oh Robin nine I call upon heaven and earth as witnesses any individual whether Gentile or Jew man or woman servant her maid can bring the divine presence upon himself in accordance with his deeds that is a slander against Jews to say that any Jewish Court would say that non Jew should not be treated in the State of Israel treats every single Arab and Palestinian even when terrorists are the ones who were brought to the hospitals um the possibility of the human eye evolving has been has been equated to monkeys randomly hitting the keys on a typewriter typing Shakespeare's Hamlet you've heard this not once but four quadrillion times now again he said that that Stephen Jay Gould believes in evolution he believes in punctuated equilibrium if evolution means to slowly evolve with great time he believes in these vast quantum leaps read the books see who's telling the truth there he did not believe in slow evolution Dawkins is one of the last people who still believes it Fred Hoyle one of the smartest British scientists mathematicians of the 20th century famously wrote life cannot have a random beginning troops of monkeys thundering away at random typewriters could not produce a works of Shakespeare but listen why for the practice for the practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough to contain the wastepaper baskets required for the deposition of the wrong attempts you just heard Christopher Hitchens say we're beginning to find the transitional links god almighty we're only beginning do you realize how many trillions of these links have to exist where are they we have found oil we have found gold we have found diamonds they should be here on the desk they should be here in my notes um finally finally finally this whole thing about values my friends you remember sadly that I spoke about Francis quick before his partner James Watson who who mapped the double helix DNA molecule you remember that tragically sadly in October 14 2007 he told the London Times that he's inherently gloomy about the prospect for Africa because all our policies are based on the idea that blacks and whites are equal intelligence but but the evidence says that's not the case he was just echoing what Thomas Huxley the famous Darwinian bulldog greatest progenitor of evolution history said quote no rational man cognizant of the facts believes that the average Negro is the equal still less the superior of the white man to his dying day Charles Darwin himself believed that blacks were the missing link between whites and apes now at dozen think that evolutionist is a racist god forbid Christopher Hitchens Christopher Hitchens is at the forefront of defending human life around the world and he's a phenomenal hero but it does mean that when he goes out to save human life it's not because of evolutionary ethics it's because of religion that declared this the infinite sanctity of life my point before quoting him about about some miscarriages was not that he would ever argue for euthanizing infants it's rather the fact that he doesn't argue for that in acknowledging that these Down syndrome babies are nothing but a burden and can contribute not and they're a burden to everyone around them they will suck out their parents resources okay I have to stop you okay it's because he observes the ten commandments that says do not murder it's our values ease embrace we have ladies and gentlemen we have a number of questions we have a number of questions from the floor and we have a number of questions that arrive to us from around the country and one of them from Cincinnati Ohio was precisely the question that were I permitted to engage the debaters would have wanted to ask myself so I asked our two presenters I asked Christopher Hitchens first and then rava botella second in two or three minutes sorry that's about all you have question is is it possible to talk about does God exist without asking when you use the word God what do you mean very good but you would have escaped your attention rabbi or the audience I think that I was asked to answer a direct challenge to go and I won't have it said that I didn't on the matter of whether Israeli court ever ruled that dr. Barry Goldstein was right and you could refuse to help a non Jew on the Shabbat I refer you to my great mentor in Spinoza studies thought Israel shocked a sh a kha K his book the Jewish religion in his attitude to non-jews he's the very brave professor of chemistry the Hebrew University who brought that case and lost it in the high court in Jerusalem and a very celebrated write-up of the topic in Haaretz I would of course never make such a suggestion excuse meexcuse me and the rabbinical courts also he lost he lost the whole case very important look it up the book is easily files polish like blue Jade press also if you look up the history as told by him and his colleague dr. Norton Mezvinsky of dr. Baruch Goldstein you will discover things that make will make you glad that as I said in the talk which you can also look up at the Sporus Institute Jewish University in Chicago recently very glad that it seems that Jews have a gene for atheism the great joy the great Jewish contribution has always been to humanism and human solidarity and is that and not the not the wailings and bleating x' to an empty sky i don't think the distinction now yeah we talk about God a jolly well to the questioner percent the question of I'm sorry I could hardly let such a challenge go in or decency now when the I could do the rest and very quickly it's called the ontological argument it says if you can name the idea of a God surely there must be something existent or real at any rate that you are talking about it's not the teapot that Bertram Russell postulates orbiting the Sun to talk about it is to postulate it well this of course is a very is a piece of the circular reasoning but I hope I help to clarify it in my opening statement by saying there's every difference between being a deist and a theist science and reason cannot disprove the existence of a first cause or a creator it cannot do that we can only say that everything works without that assumption and there is no evidence on the other side of the case this seems to ask the licensed unbelief to the theistic argument of a God who actually is interested in answering prayers cares who you marry who you go to bear with what you eat who's which side wins in a war and so forth we say this is human propaganda of self-evidently man-made and the so-called miraculous evidence for it has been repeatedly and conclusively falsified and disproved you know I must be one of those half thinking primates or half intelligent primates that crystal vision speaks of because it strains credulity did the rest of you just hear a great writer say that the Israeli Supreme Court is respected throughout the world throughout the world for its fairness judicious nasaw that you cannot help a not save a non-jewish life on the Sabbath it's not even a religious court it's always attacked for being the most secular chord the religious maples all like that for the rabbinical court their opinion you said the High Court said they're high rabbinical court no you said High Court maybe they're a bit of a court okay but well then let me just say if you're wrong if you're now going back and saying okay fair enough how could you write that wait wait you finish let me finish let me finish let me finish there you be very careful you have the book in front of you and though I bought be very careful so where's the footnote when you write something in a book that a Jewish court will not treat a non-jewish life don't you think you ought to cite a footnote I gave you I gave I've given gentlemen please this is this is wait a minute a second ago you mentioned the term character assassination be careful your character doesn't commit suicide in front of everyone in this room that's a pretty every horror game careful chapter name author and book citations are knowing that I'm televised willing to stand up for what I said don't you try and this okay in front of everybody I want to I want to eat even dumber than you do now okay I want to repeat rabbi but wait I want to I want to repeat i'ma go can we talk about God please okay well I drove eight god that we heard tonight that a high rabbinical court said you cannot save a non-jewish life on the Sabbath that is absolutely false and we will look it up left look it up after the 100 books riding on it that's why he can't cite the court book but I want to hear the court hundred books riding on a big boy not true but be that as a business rabbi bouquet ah I'll be there is it possible to talk about does God exist without asking when you use the word God what do you mean when I use the word God I I use it to connote the supreme moral authority he who said that murder is wrong and that life is of infinite value which is why life to us is so precious which is why in this great country in the United States we do take Oh take care of our elderly it's the reason why we don't accept the kevorkians of this world who want to put people to death once they believe that their life is riddled with too much pain I have sat with teenagers who wanted to kill themselves thinking that their life was riddled with so much pain my job at that moment was to be reminded that life is of infinite value when I speak of God obviously when an evolutionist speaks of God he thinks of a myth but as I stated earlier my contention is that evolution which I accept with a designer watching it's slow ascendancy evolution believes that time is God that if you give anything enough time you will have miracles that's just the euphemism time becomes a euphemism for God the average secular evolutionist like Christopher Hitchens believes that given enough time anything can happen which by the way uh turley undermines everything he said earlier about the hopelessness of our situation and galaxies that are going to destroy us because God willing time will save us and no doubt it will come to our to our to our salvation I should say that the reason why people like Hitler so hated religion because he always identified religion as his greatest enemy like from Martin Bormann stable talk the heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was Christianity we have no sort of use for a fairy tale invented by Jews is because Hitler did seek to destroy the Jews he sought to impose a new value system on the world a racial value system which is the natural outgrowth of evolute of a belief in evolutionary phylum x' and strata and different races the bible establishes that we are all one race we are all equally creating the image of God it does not in any way mean that an evolutionist is a racist god forbid it means that when he or she is not it's because they accept the validity of the ten commandments as I said earlier and as and as many philosophers warned against you cannot have cut flower ethics Hitchens would like to take the beautiful values we get from religion charity generosity goodness faith hope etcetera all those things that keep us going all those things that have made something like Barack Obama so popular in the United States and he would like to say that we can have it without religion it's like taking flowers cutting them from their bed their fertile soil and believing they're gonna last put them into vows and they'll die by Motel can I interrupt you please I have to when my students when I speak to my students about God I invariably tell them if anybody should say to you do you believe in God the only appropriate answer to that question is tell me what you mean by God and I'll tell you if I believe in that God or not so we are back to this question is this a New Yorker cartoon kind of God that sits in the sky and clouds an old man wrapped in Italian a caftan is it a spinet istic God that we're talking about is it a god of the Jewish Naturalist Mordecai Kaplan the power that makes for salvation is it is it a my modded D in God knowledge knowing itself what is your image what is interesting what I want him to say more and then I want you to know minority on that point I mean I thought we've both answered that question I either the best of his ability I did not sorry I did not hear an answer I did not hear an answer rabbi vote for me for me God is he who fills the infinite expanse of space it is he it was the origin of life it is he who is the absolute moral authority determined to determine what is right and what is wrong God is he who hears my prayer when I cry out in moments of distress God is he who looks after the helpless and God is he who I am sometimes very angry at for failing to look after the helpless the essence of Judaism is the word ye Sharelle he who wrestles with God God is also he with whom with whom I have a relationship I have a right to challenge God WI you asked for this I asked for this fine if I ask for it I will then interrupt it and you ask for white noise you asked why there wasn't a uh-huh I will then address a question to mr. Hitchens though the burden of proof is on the faithful for the existence of God do you believe there is a discovery that can cause a paradigm shift maybe advances in neuroscience well the evidence so far is the other way I mean the the heavens get emptier if you like all the time I think the the unraveling of the DNA string is probably the most most conclusive recent thing that shows us the both that racism I wish I were rabbis for knightliest degree and creationism are alike illusions we are part of the natural order we're not especially created species we have no no unique privilege we we are only too aware that Darwin was right on the point of the stamp of our lowly origins it's best to begin I think from that realistic understanding because bleak though it may be at least it's realistic it doesn't mean that we have to live without irony doesn't mean we have to live without humor doesn't mean we have to live without solidarity or any of the other things that make life a bearable and be possible you may or may not have noticed that a rubber berchik has been contradicting himself directly all evening he began by saying that our good qualities are heroic and Noble and gentle and generous foreign nation us he's quite right in saying that yes they are a nation us or in most of us those who want psycho will socio noting that that is precisely the point religion borrows its morality from us not we from religion God is man-made and I can um I can very briefly underline this point but make it not just an assertion on my part by putting it in the form of the dialectical question name me if you can a noble actionperformed or noble thought uttered by a believer in God that could not be uttered by a non-believer right I've issued this challenge in innumerable places and spaces now I'm not yet had a response I await one well there's another question that goes with it a corollary question a name and wicked action performed or a wicked thing said by someone purely because of their religious faith you don't even have to blink before you've thought it one I rest my case thank you one final question for rabbi Bhatia rabbi why did God play favorites and make the Jews the chosen people well clearly because Crystal Bridges likes us so much in fact this is one of the most misunderstood concepts in all of Judaism it is one that Christopher Hitchens not only misunderstands but destructively miss portrays in his book God never played favorites with the Jews the word chosen or [ __ ] the Satya I have made you a light to the nation's is never a noun it is a verb it connotes an activity you are chosen by God to spread the light of God and laws of God to all the inhabitants of the earth to tell them how they too are God's children to tell them how they to matter how they too are loved by God that is why Judaism always insists on not converting people to our faith because you do not upgrade when you become a Jew we are the only nation on earth that exists on the non-copyright to truth held by our religion Christopher Hitchens actually uses the concept of chosen 'us to sadly justify anti-semitism quote page 250 by claiming to be chosen in a special exclusive covenant with the Almighty the Jews invited hatred and suspicion and events their own form of racism so we're hated because we told the world that were chosen well my friends the British sort of think they're chosen I lived there for 11 years they sing a song called Rule Britannia Britannia rules the world no one hated the British for that I leave it's the waves hold on rules the waves wave really they never really took the British and sort of gassed them or anything like that um the the the Japanese have a rising the Sun on their flag because they believe that they are the Land of the Rising Sun the Sun rises for them I don't see that there's any particular hatred of Japanese for that belief um Marcus Garvey I just filmed a television show in Jamaica with my family Marcus Garvey founded black power in the 1920s with the famous motto black is beautiful I didn't see people segregating blacks because of that belief on the contrary they were hated well before it they were hated for no reason at all to say that Jews are hated Franta summit to chosen us is to justify the most pernicious hatred in the history of the world okay but let's go back to the and her gentle formulation and as I said and as I said God never chose us and never played favorites it was not that you are sufficient and now make everybody like you get everybody to emulate you because your path is the only correct path going as far back as 900 years the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides who was considered the greatest Jewish mind of all time said that Christianity serves a godly purpose as does Islam he respected and admired Islam he said the Jews could even pray in mosques because they don't worship any kind of image or any kind of icon so God never chose the Jews as a form of favoritism he gave us this incredible mission one might even say that it's a humbling motif rather than something that breeds arrogance it means that we if we ever think for a moment that we're it that we are the end God made us the means to other ends to make sure that we spread the knowledge of God oh I I should say that you know I believe that we have to keep all these conversations decent and ethical and moral and one of my major points throughout the night is I don't care the crystal visions as an atheist he's every right to be and I respect all my atheist friends and most people who know me know that probably most of my friends are atheists my problem is when you just story when you because I spend my time primarily among secular people but when you distort and invent and when you make statements like a claim to chosen this breeds anti-semitism no the Jews would the Jews should not be blamed for the hatred shown to them we should never blame a victim it's not a woman who dresses in a suggestive way that leads her to being raped god forbid it is hatred that leads to those things and that's why God said in the Ten Commandments that we cannot kill we cannot steal we have to live by a moral code and finally it's the reason why and the most moral and affirm at greatest moral affirmation in history the world God says in Genesis 2 he created every human being regardless of religion creed color or faith or non faith in his indelible image and as a final note I assume you mean his literally no I don't mean it literally because God has no gender thank you Thank You rabbi botella Thank You mr. Hitchens psyche wallet well maybe they've heard enough of us well then just just I should hate you leave it like that and I since he's been so generous has claimed so many atheists among his friends I should say that some some of my worst enemies are Jews and certainly those who didn't get the news again rather discrepant Lee delivered either God did or did not make a covenant with the Jewish people I think of course you're right in saying that he didn't because there's no such person in the when the events described in those books never took place Israeli archeology has conclusively shown that the books of Moses of our falsehood and propaganda it's a jolly good thing because otherwise there would have been a covenant that said you can kill everyone in Canaan and take your property as long as you keep your covenant with me and as long as you mark it in your flesh now don't go saying that that was not part of that fictional religion while it was strong and I ask again what happened to the Amalekites what happened to to the Midianites if this fiction is all that it is it's actually Lord Alfred Douglas who I think said in a famous nasty little poem how odd of God choose the Jews to whom someone in Oxford replied nor thought of God the [ __ ] annoy him but I will say that those who flirt those who flirt with this those two flirt with this kind of specialness so it's true that every nation almost every nation has a feeling that especially a favor by the divine not a covenant at Mount Sinai exactly location that's yet to be discovered but let's say Joan of Arc or indeed Rule Britannia a song that when I lived in England I refused to sing precisely because as most of my friends would decline precisely because it did express a concept of racial and national superiority and to say that it didn't earn English and British people disliked and that we where we're simply victims blaming ourselves if you don't like us for shouting out about our supremacy is absurd and self-pitying how could you compare dislike of the British I do cemetery I didn't yes is it absurd I didn't big boys yes yes sir this is absurd you how can you compare the ladies and gentlemen fathers or just me to comparison no no no no no no no no you know what if the kipper fits why don't you just wear it well no I should be allowed to respond to what you said about the Amalekites and the Hittites what I have a um okay I should be a lot I should be allowed to respond to this you know my friends haven't got my file I lived I lived in Britain I lived in Britain for 11 years and it's a country that I came to love and admire I had the great honour of being a rabbi dockside University and I befriended people like Richard Dawkins who became a dear friend and in England till today The Statesman who was most respected is Winston Churchill I think that's fair to say statistically popularity he ordered the indiscriminate bombing of Dresden Hamburg these cities were obliterated three months before the war ended and Dresden 250,000 died and Homburg 330 thousand died there were cyclones created by the fire bombs winds 200 miles an hour from the from the fires four months later harry s truman who was in voted our second most popular president of the 20th entry ordered the indiscriminate nuclear destruction of Hiroshima Nagasaki that this did not mean that these were immoral men Franklin Delano Roosevelt was voted the most popular the most effective the twentieth century presidents he participated in any of those decisions for the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians including men women and travel boat at what does this have to do with God I'm sorry I'm answering his thing about the Hittites it's just that they felt that certain war measures sometimes call for very very extreme measures that are that in any other context would be immoral Judaism would never today allow the murder of Hittites and molokai it's in fact Christopher Hitchens said it was only done the context of war at a time and God specifically forbade it forever thereafter in the same way we would never bomb a German city today or use a nuclear bomb against against another nation you know that you know well I don't think we would if you believe the United States would nuke someone then so be it I don't believe we would um I should tell I should tell you I should tell you that I should tell you that Christopher Hitchens writes in his book that rabbis debate whether the Palestinians are today the Amalekites and that is why they ought to be and debate that they should be expelled again name a single mainstream rabbi where there's always fringes and to the extent to which fringes are kept on the fringe they could never ever define the mainstream name any mainstream rabbi that would ever say that in fact every Orthodox Jew or anyone who's knowledgeable the Torah here will know that we are not that a mullick is a concept that we have no capacity to identify according to the Torah itself we don't know who they are it's an ethereal concept so much so that when when when the when the when the Jews of have Ron when Baruch Goldstein killed the Palestinians who were at prayer in their mosque then the very next morning chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks I was living in England called it an abomination as did virtually every other rabbi my house was firebombed that night at Oxford till today the police don't know by how thank God a Spanish I'll pair who lived with us saved our children's lives I putting it out my wife and I were out it was a Saturday night was a night after Purim if you recall I still got up to called a press conference and I said that what baroque Goldstein did to those Palestinians who are our brothers who are equally God's children is the highest disgrace that Judaism and Orthodox jury has faced in my lifetime so let's never say that this is justified and that's why I mean with all due respect and my own opinion if you're gonna write a book and it's a very you're a great scholar and I love your writing most of the time and if you're gonna say that rabbi say this and this court said that I really believe there ought to be a footnote or a name till today and you're still not quoting an and recording a book about something etc there was no such thing as a high Jewish court you would change you would talk per hat you che perhaps the name of rabbi ovadia yosef the head of the national religious party very much sought after Israeli politicians and gentlemen good night and also the okay and I've direct your game AB okay I direct you again soon and I direct you again to dr. Israel shocks at si the significance of variability from now on I'm sorry I can only be polite to someone who has a receipt and a book thanks for coming it looks nice on ebooks

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 2,005,844

Rating: 4.6977949 out of 5

Keywords: hitchens, shmuley, boteach, god, atheism, judaism, 92ndStreetY, 92Y, religion, culture, authors, history

Id: vnMYL8sF7bQ

Length: 93min 55sec (5635 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 08 2008

Reddit Comments

[u/count_of_wilfore]

Context: rabbi Shmuley Boteach had criticized Hitch’s claim that “by claiming to be ‘chosen’ in a special exclusive covenant with the Almighty, [the Jews] invited hatred and suspicion and evinced their own form of racism” (from god is Not Great). Boteach then argued that the British proclaimed their superiority in various ways such as the song Rule Britannia, and that “no one hated the British for that”. This is Hitch’s reply.

I’ve been hearing some controversy in the UK regarding Rule Britannia. I’m not well informed but from what I understand, some feel like the song should be ceased because of the feeling of supremacy it conveys, and the responses tend to go “the words don’t actually mean that”, “it actually expresses unity”, “it’s national pride and history”, etc. It would’ve been interesting to see Hitch elaborate on his thoughts on the song, especially in the current climate of racial tensions.

[u/MildlyAgreeable]

Fantastic post, I’ve never seen this one before.

[u/[deleted]]

The people who've been loudly shouting for their right to sing Britain shall never, never be slaves, are invariably been the same people who've been loudly banging the drum for various despotic and police state responses to protect the UK from Covid-19. I could take these people more seriously if they actually understood the the words of the song they claim loudly they want to sing.