Christopher Hitchens in Studio Q

I am the Lord your God you shall have no other gods before me that's actually quote it's still G on here although it was empowering for a moment still those Ten Commandments can be pretty commanding can't they those divine moral standards from the Old Testament have shaped laws institutions and ethical beliefs for millennia as well as being the focal point of cultural and religious conflicts but how should we interpret the original intent of the commandments today my next guest has a few ideas and he's sure to upset religious purists in the process that's because he is Christopher Hitchens the writer political commentator and author of God is not great the bestseller that argues religious faith itself is false unnecessary and in some cases and I quote a threat to human survival he's in Canada to kick off a series at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum in association with the roms exhibition Dead Sea Scrolls words that change the world mr. Hitchens will give his thoughts on how the Bible's moral codes can be interpreted today and he'll be asked to add three more Commandments to the original Ten but right now Christopher Hitchens joins me in studio q hello sir I lawsuit happening it's very good to have only here let me start with the obvious why is it renowned atheist commenting on something he doesn't believe in well don't think I didn't consider asking the ROM why I was getting a twofer in this manner but I should start by saying I'm more of an anti theist than an atheist in other words my view is not just that there is no reason to believe that there is a deity and that all the arguments that there is one have all long since been exploded by philosophers astronomers scientists physicists biologists and so forth mainly by philosophers there in my opinion um but that it's a good thing that that's not the case in other words I do know some non-believers who wish it was true who would think it would be nice if there was a celestial dictator sure sure I can't make myself want that it'd be a celestial internship i mean i'd i think it would be the the absolute definition of an freedom if there was an unchanging undying all supervising all-knowing father who kept you under surveillance before you were born all your life and after your death there's secretly no part of you somewhere inside you that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to hang out in heaven and or live beyond your 80 or so years or how many oh I don't have any big brother Envy at all it's much more big brother than a big father idea but I mean I am a father and I know one of the jobs father is to as it were move on we're presenting more dramatically than that and get out of the way give the children sand room if I said to them hey children I'm never leaving you'll always have me always forever in fact I'm going to be at your funerals and in the meantime I'm going to supervise even after you're dead I'm going to carry on go to another place it's kind of fatherhood is that what kind of paradise would it be no I mean if from if one was to believe in the supernatural at all which I don't I mean I think the supernatural dimension is man-made illusion I can see why Milton makes the devil sir tractive because you'd rather be in Hell than be serving forever a benevolent dictator well I mean to return to my question so that's paradise Riga in Teressa interestingly in your book you make the case that if the Lord created everything why does he need Commandments why does he then need to give us rules let me flip it on you if you don't believe in it why do you need to tell us about your disk well staying with my point about the totalitarian and the authoritarian if you want in the real world the only world I think we have the material world the physical world if you want to have power over other human beings the the most potent way that's a bit of a repetition to say potent and powerful but anyway the most effective way of claiming and exerting power over fellow humans is to say you're doing it in God's name that you're God's appointed and they can't challenge that you've got to say hey I'm me you should do what I say well though people do when they attempt they can get laughed at which potential tyrants hate the best thing is to say no no I'm doing God's work here I am God's representative on earth that's been ever since antiquity the easiest way of establishing the dictatorship and the worst dictatorships today are still theocratic ones so what this all represents isn't an argument of unresolved contradictions in the real world and that you'll notice is where priests really want power look at look at the way the Pope has look at the way the ayatollahs behave look at the way the rabbis on the West Bank stealing other people's property in the name of God behave do they want power in this world or the next it's pretty obvious which one they want power and property to specifically in the case of the commandments you wrote an essay for Slate a few years ago and in it you question what you call the vague pre-christian desert more tap morality of the Ten Commandments which you say show every sign of being invented by a Bronze Age demagogue so I we can assume that you don't have much respect for that the Ten Commandments well you notice the chenkin well let's begin by saying don't have any other gods in other words they're not even monotheistic they're saying there are other gods but I'm a jealous one choose me and then that they're all addressed to people who don't know about anything except agriculture I mean all the commandments are effectively to do with animals and agricultural subsistence except for Commandments that every society has right such as prohibitions against murder lying murder theft and perjury are the ones that are I would say unimpeachable and then I'm giving idea what to give away too much about what I'm speaking of later but I'll just say this much I mean the tenth commandment is the one I'm writing independently another book about forbidding thought defining thought crime as a well would put it as big brother does point for the first time you're not allowed to think about your neighbor's property right not allowed to cover cover that's normal I have the ambition to be as well off as or have the it's not you mustn't take your neighbor's property you mustn't try and an exit yourself steal it you mustn't even think about it the beginning of thought crime which is the beginning of the totalitarian idea that you're guilty for thinking things which you may only have been half aware of doing you may be half asleep but you're still condemned the is very very dangerous stuff I mean you're obviously well-established and renowned as a contrary and thinker but is this really this black and white for you I mean are there no nuances or you you you you resolutely believe that there's no use for these Commandments well no I'm to the contrary I'm sorry I mean the in the Analects of Confucius for example long before monotheism it says don't do to another person what you would find repulsive if done to yourself it's it's actually a rather weaker rule and most people realize but it is what we call the golden rule it's been around as long as human societies people until until I came yeah we couldn't we couldn't have we wouldn't you and I couldn't have evolved far enough to be having this discussion with this technology if people were any different I mean if we didn't have an instinct for solidarity and for common interest and for care for one another life would be impossible the idea that we wouldn't know this without a supernatural Authority however is a groveling slavish ideas if we need permission to know what is innate to us religion actually takes its morality from us not the other way around so I write whereas I didn't create well humans humans created God it's like this I mean if I probably put this question to verse people quite senior religious people in public in debates several times and they haven't come up with an answer yet you have to tell me of a moral statement that could be made by a believer or moral action undertaken by believer that I couldn't make or undertake because I'm not a believer something that would be impossible for me I've not yet been told what that would be whereas if I ask you the corollary question can you think of a wicked action done by a believer because of his or her belief you can think of one right away the suicide bombing communities all religious the genital mutilation community not exclusively right because of the Tamil Tigers I suppose who are partly religious but but religious wouldn't claim genital mutilation of children is it precisely as a religious commandment right now these are things that wickedness is if you wouldn't commit without God so there's a quite a sharp divorce between ethics and religion and morality and religion but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a religious person who would claim that there's never been any naked implications or violence or or wicked deeds that have been done in the name of Allah they say in the name of it's not in the name of that's the get out clause you echo it yourself jet means pick you up on it that's yes I do go ahead what is the need to do it's explicit it is part of the religion we the the the most celebrated action of the Abrahamic is the willingness of someone to gut and murder his own son because he thinks it will please God but the flipside of that I mean if you say you go back to Confucius if the basic rules of these Commandments some of them I mean and I'm thinking from four through eight now right adultery lying stealing be honest these are basic if these are basic rules that people use to try and live a good life or try and be good to their fellow citizens what's wrong with that nothing except that that if you're telling me that the Jewish people wouldn't have known this if they hadn't been at the foot of Mount Sinai and having it on tablets as if from God now as it happens that story's a myth I mean there was no there was no Egyptian slavery there was no exile there was no wandering in the sunny all that's made up but it's still insulting to the Jewish people to say that and without this they would they would not have known that perjury say just to take one example what's wrong if they thought perjury was okay they wouldn't have been able to stick together long enough to get to the foot of Mount Sinai wherever it was or was not you're saying the religion or the commandments don't serve the foundation of morality no I think it's also very dangerous to say that what should be effortless innate the sort of thing you don't have to teach your children is instead something that you you only can get from an unanswerable dictator from a totalitarian authority who says I command you this and in return hmm I give you the territory of other people I'll give you land that I will clear holy land that I will clear of the existence of all others I'll make I'll give you the power to murder and slaughter and erase and take away the property of anyone who gets in your way that's not morality that's an inducement but so what do what do you say to true believers who those who sincerely question whether true morality can exist in the absence of God well I'd put out to them of their mistaken and also I have you do so quite a good boy also I worry for them because it makes me wonder if they didn't believe in the existence of God would they stop believing in the existence of the principles I mean in other words what is stopping them I once saw it's in my book which you you might have mentioned by the way as a fine bookstores everywhere yeah and I think I mentioned bestseller fine school God is not great how religion poisons everything I saw the famous debate between a Catholic bishop bishop butter and professor aja a great humanist professor the bishop said to the professor if you believe there's no God what stops you from going on an endless campaign of rape theft murder incest s' than the rest of it I mean and I was a GOG to see this question from a man from men of God no other cloth as was Fresa the months just him to say that that I if I didn't if I didn't agree with you i become a psychopath I mean what arrogance unbelievable this from a church by the way would just be in the empower shelter and cover-up of the rape and torture of children for what for decades if not centuries but worse than that and I posed this question in my book what's in the bishops mind is he saying to himself thank goodness I believe in the resurrection cuz otherwise I'd be out there raping and pillaging and perjury I mean that's all that's stopping me well that's a huge confession for the guy to make I think but clearly just think I'm sorry sir I have enough salt and I'm not sorry to say I'm glad to say I have enough self-respect in my own instance and say no I'm that's not what stops me it's not the fear of hell father starts me doing this thing but I mean and you do make that poor the fear of some posturing priests but if the priest or the believer who says it's because I want to go to heaven or it's because I believe in this cetera then therefore doesn't do those things doesn't rob that's great that I have a great Sufi prayer for those people for a very fine old wise man of of antiquity who said you prayed and said God if I if I believe in you for the fear of heaven 290 heaven if I believe in you out of jazz I fear I have not wish for heaven out of the desire for heaven 290 heaven if I if I only believe in you out of fear of Hell send me straight to hell don't I mean it matters what the motive is well in the state of mind is and because surely there's people who are doing good things in the world in the name of religion would you agree to that at least I mean whether it's liberation theology or whether it's taking well sin well what it really is nonsense sinister nonsense well would you agree that there's anything in the world that has been done in the name of religion that's positive Habitat for Humanity's really falls under things done by Jimmy Carter John Barr Jimmy Carter if you're telling me people wouldn't help build affordable housing if it were if they weren't Baptist fundamental no I'm telling you they do do it for those reasons and if they let them do it it just says nothing about their faith Carter's faith is still nonsense Carter's the guy who runs Habitat for Humanity is still the guy who goes to the Israelis and says the problem with you is you've abandoned the prophetic tradition you've walked away from your religion you've become to secular that's what's wrong with your state a wicked and ridiculous thing to be say he can he can hammer as many nails into as many staircases as he likes the rest of his life he won't make up for the for the horror of that remark when I'm wondering who when you read a book all his belief in UFOs or his belief he's been born again when once it's quite enough with a guy like Carter believe me when you write a book like God is not great which i think is that if not provocative a tremendously entertaining read I mean it's it's it's it's planned available at fine bookstores thank you yeah you can write d tell me who you think your audience is because you're quite aggressive with your argument and really if you want I mean this is going to if you really want to change things it might take some effort you know to over overcome organized religion in the world but I'm wondering if the tact of saying hey being a little softer in your approach might be more effective then I'm wondering you're going to find a receptive audience for believers who just hear someone who's very basically telling them no I know I know what you were saying and you're kind to your kind of give me tactical advice but when I launched the book I said to my publishers I don't want to do the liberal traditional book tour of you know Toronto New York Vancouver Seattle Los Angeles blah blah I want to go to the south of the United States and I want to get a challenger in every city we go to whether it's Atlanta or Little Rock or so forth and we have a debate about it not just your reading in it in an upscale bookstore so that's how it did get launched and that's why it's a best-seller because I get invited not less than twice a month to either the campuses all the pulpits of the American Christian Right do you think you when people over who are already well if I don't I don't know give them reason to rethink I can I can't say win them over I know I've won some people over but that's not the point the point I'm not trying to convert by definition I'm not in the conversion business but but forcing them to confront what they believe and to reexamine it that's been the whole success of the book actually and I think if I'd moderated my tone or made it seem as if I could split the difference with them there would be much less to debate one needs as much heat as one needs light with light is only produced by heat I don't want to suggest that it's an epidemic but there does seem to be a big surge of interest in atheism or antitheism in your case not only your book God is not great which is available apparently in bookstores across the nation but but Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion Bill Maher's popular movie Religulous there's atheist bus ad campaigns why is this all happening now because people are fed up with theocratic bullying both at home and abroad and they've had too much of it and they're fed up I think also with our profession outdoors in my profession which always treats people as if the assumption is that they're religious and bess you here to the country as if everyone is a person of faith or that as if faith was something to be respected actually be read with this assumption the fastest-growing minority in North America is of those who check the box that say none of the above when asked what faith they prefer as we will open their daily paper and look around the world they see the nightmare of a theocracy going nuclear in both imminently perhaps both finem Iran and in Pakistan they see what the parties of God are doing to ruin Iraq and Lebanon they see the mad Jewish settlers in the West Bank trying to bring on Armageddon and the Messiah by stealing other people's property they see arrogant ignorant cretins in the United States trying to teach nonsense to children in school by law trying to stall to fire children with creationist babble and they've had enough of it and they don't like the the easy assumptions made by politicians like Bush that if you can just pronounce the word faith that you've covered yourself on this I mean I think it's high time for a pushback and I'm very proud to be part of it but what you've talked about in terms of the growth of the non-believers and the recognition in fact from President Obama a couple of times now in talking about non-believers does seem to fly in the face of the orthodoxy in which the world is becoming a more religious place and and and more polarized as such between the growth of Christianity or or the Bible Belt etc in the US and Islam in the Middle East and so so why do we hear some others that don't go these things don't come and go in even measurable waves for example the fastest growing religion in South America is probably a Pentecostal Protestantism the Catholic Church is on the defensive there on the other hand in Africa the Catholic Church is growing growing rapidly Islam is having several civil wars within itself but between the the modernizers and the fundamentalist but also between the Sunni and the Shia between both of those and discrepant sects like the arc mahdi for example the Ishmael II Muslims so there's a permanent roiling about which kind of faith it is impervious though that may seem sort of impenetrable that may seem to the outsider and so forth but the there is a steady growth of people who say enough of this we can live a moral life without religion and the most successful societies of those that separate the church from the state by law and enforce it by their constitutions these are the happiest and most prosperous most democratic countries and we have to stop taking this for granted and be willing to defend it against the endless attempts by theocrats of differents tribes to take that away from us the from this line we will take a stand we will fight we being the the Atheist community also organized there are many many people who don't believe in God of course will be involved but many people who are in doubt or agnostic but you think that say the First Amendment the United States Constitution is worth fighting for that the Congress shall make no law establishing a religion that no one's entitled to define their country ok this yours or mine as a Christian once a let alone as a as a potentially one day Muslim one as people now starting tomorrow one day the Caliphate would extend to Canada - if you're really lucky no no no look what happened to Iran when their homeland look how they ruined and beggared a great civilized country and one that I know you know about but a lot has happened to your front yeah because you're here in Canada to a sense wait to add three Commandments to the original Ten what what do you think is missing from the Ten Commandments what what will you be bringing to the stage I can tell you what is otherwise commanded in the Bible I mean and very near in verse is very closely adjunct to the famous ones remember the ten commands appears twice in the text it's in Exodus and it's in Deuteronomy slightly different versions and there are all kinds of other instructions in between and these include genocide rape slavery mutilation of children and so on so you could you could probably get an idea of what I might recommend four Commandments if you thought of what the Bible already did recommend that was horrible and again I'll end on on the question I always emphasize if people think that religion is morality they have to account for the immoral things that religion demands that it's not in the name of it's in the word of God himself these are Commandments and instructions for these are warrants for genocide rape slavery infant mutilation and worse by working out what the negation of those would be how to humans can emancipate themselves from the the evil propaganda of manmade God then you could put a guess what my contrary recommendation that's a secure disfrute but I think I follow you I know you can I know your intuition is up to it let me end off here even outside of the context of religion we can probably all agree that we still have to lead our lives by certain values what do you think it takes to lead a good life um for me irony literature as the source of reflection on moral and ethical and human topics laughing at the misfortunes of others that gets me through a lot of the day love and some of the things that go with the possibility of passing on your genes to children the only kind of immortality around again and did I mention this already laughing at the misfortune roll and and it being proved right being vindicated in arguments that were other people wish they hadn't had with you they have to say okay I was wrong in you right maybe that what I want to do that maybe laughing which it may be that what above all and also adding terrifically to thee it's a gay love laughter one can have it the the sufferings that they are undergoing Christopher Hitchens III thank you for this thanks for making the time to come in today oh it's an honor thanks for them Christopher Hitchens is the author of more than ten books including God is not great how religion poisons everything and Christopher Hitchens join me here live in studio Q you

Channel: q on cbc

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Keywords: muslim, cbc, qtv, christopher hitchens, christopher hitchens interview, hitchens interview, christopher hitchens q, jian ghomeshi, christopher hitchens qtv, hitchens q, christopher hitchens studio q, christopher hitchens q tv, christopher hitchens q & a, hitchens qtv, q interview, qtv christopher hitchens, studio q christopher hitchens, atheist, atheism, q on cbc, hitchens, studio q, chris hitchens, christopher hitchens funny

Id: PeWpTjmtgXQ

Length: 24min 9sec (1449 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2009

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Brilliant. You are missed, Hitch, you are missed.

[u/dsk]

Very nice find. I haven't seen it either.

[u/lowlifecreep]

This is a great interview, respect for the interviewers conduct

[u/[deleted]]

Jian Ghomeshi - he's the host of Q, a Canadian radio/television broadcast. I once sat with him on a bus, years ago. Amiable fellow.

[u/nordic_spiderman]

He seems to be wearing an Indian flag on his suit. Maybe a reference to Mumbai November 2008?