Christopher Hitchens vs. David Berlinski | Does Atheism Poison Everything? Debate

[Applause] good evening I'm Larry ta'en executive director of fixed-point foundation and we welcome you to tonight's debate the resolution being debated this evening is atheism poisons everything now again this is the resolution this is the question being discussed it is of course a play on the title to Christopher Hitchens a best-selling book God is not great how religion poisons everything arguing the affirmative of the resolution is dr. David Berlinski a scientist professor of mathematics and author of many books most notably the devil's delusion atheism and its scientific pretensions which is available in the lobby and afterwards there will be a book signing so you'll have the opportunity to meet dr. Berlinski arguing the negative of the resolution is Christopher Hitchens journalist cultural critic and best-selling author and most recently he is the author of the memoir hitch 22 this is also a best-seller it's also available in the lobby and you will have the same opportunity to meet Christopher Hitchens and to have your book signed by him now just a bit about the format for tonight's debate first of all there will be 12 minute opening statements by each of these men dr. Belinsky will be the first to speak and then of course Christopher Hitchens then we will have a rebuttal of 6 minutes each and then a speaker recap that is to say some some final remarks for that portion of the debate three minutes each now I will be time keeping as we as we move along and I'm asking these gentlemen not to trample those those time limits and then we will move into a question-and-answer time I have some questions here which have been submitted and I will read them to the two of them and then I will signal them at the end when they have received their last question that they should then give some sort of closing statement and since dr. velinski is going first he will have the opportunity to go last so that being the case we we will now begin our debate and dr. David belinskiy please open for us thank you all very much for being here I would like to thank Larry Taunton and the fixed-point foundation for their outstanding hospitality and to Christopher Christopher Hitchins Landsman my pleasure being allowed to bask in the radiance of his reputation and lehayim the proposition before us is atheism poisons everything ladies and gentlemen I'm perfectly aware and you should be to that that proposition is fully compatible with the proposition that religion poisons something where Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins tomorrow to announce that they were prepared to invade hell in order to roust a variety of patter a stick priests I would wish them well although for reasons of personal inconvenience I could not join them in some respects is dr. Johnson once said the proposition that atheism poisons everything hardly requires a defense the inquiry is not needed he said the last date at which atheism was a possibility in social thought was also the last date in which it was a plausibility in social thought I asked you to cast your mind back all around 1790 1791 in France Paris in front of the Cathedral of note Kadam and standing there somewhat elaborated by my historical imagination is August Pierre read thin narrow green-eyed fanatical rabbit as a bat and Danton large boisterous remarkably eloquent and they're watching or they're looking at Notre Dame and one guy says to the other what should we do with this pile of gothic junk and the answer is let's rename this good idea what should we call it each man was hoping that would call it after themselves but that was not to be in ropes Pierre habis beer came up with a wonderful idea we'll call it the temple of Reason good thinking his companion said the temple of Reason that work splendidly it means nothing but it works splendidly we might as well have called it the temple of evidence temple of rationality what should we do next was the question and the inevitable answer the answer known from historical circumstances well let's go out and kill a whole lot of people and that's exactly what they did once they had renamed notes with Dom the temple of Reason it was relatively easy to go out and kill fifty thousand innocent men and women and children that I submit to you is the nature of the proposition we are discussing 1851 60 or 70 years later an age of remarkable progress enlightenment wonderful sense of dawning material possibility Matthew Arnold in a poem entitled over beach reflected on the decline of religious faith in Europe the melancholy long withdrawing all he didn't see anything particularly optimistic in that withdrawal and he could think to say to himself and to his readers only this only this my beloved let us be true to one another my beloved true to one another for the world which lies about us like a land of dreams so various so beautiful so new hath neither really joy nor light nor love nor certitude nor peace nor help for pain and we are caught as on a Darkling plain swept by confused alarms of struggle in flight where ignorant armies clash by night this is a prophetic declaration from the heart of the progressive enlightened 19th century in 1914 surveying the carnage that was to come the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain said again prophetically the lights are going out all over Europe the lights what a strange word we shall not see them lit again in our time ladies and gentlemen I submit to you that the 20th century was a record in Germany in Russia and China Cambodia and elsewhere not only of remarkable stupidity brutal brutality and violence but of unparalleled brutality stupidity environment violence and each of the regimes each of the regime's behind this remarkable decay of civilization had two features in common two characteristics we should bear in mind in the first place the men guiding these regimes and their entourage did not believe for a moment there was any power higher than their own and they acted on that and in the second place in the mass murders they conducted they were aided and supported by any number of crackpot scientific disciplines that makes for a character characteristic combination the case of the Nazis the scientific disciplines were derived from biology and especially from Darwinian biology in 1937 having murdered 70,000 handicapped men women and children the Nazis released a film and on the background of the film the narrator says in terms of solemn incomprehension my goodness we have sinned against the law of natural selection the law of natural selection what could that mean we have sinned against the law of natural selection the Communists of course had an equally crackpot theory that they derived for Marxian economics the two cracked Potteries joining in one deeply repugnant stream as all of you know atheism today is not simply the private doctrine of a handful of individuals become a social movement and as a social movement it has been advanced chiefly by the scientific community certainly in the United States but to a large extent in Europe to some of this is adventitious a few popular writers such as Richard Dawkins discovered that by writing books indicating that science has shown that God does not exist well they could make a fortune I'm very sorry I wasn't there to join him I didn't think of it at the time I'm quite sure that someone now is writing a book how margarine science shows that God does not exist but the inevitable consequences of this degree of atheism within the scientific community has involved a defamation of scientific thought quite striking in its character and its extent after all the sciences if we restrict our attention to the serious sciences and those may be found in mathematics or not physics in no other place then we must recognize that the serious Sciences have nothing to say about the existence of God either in their premises or in their conclusion what a remarkable fact people are writing books how physics shows that God does not exist but physics has nothing to say about the existence of God the aching questions the trouble the human imagination about which the science is one seriously considered our resolutely silent these remain just where there were and the religious tradition especially the judeo-christian religious tradition has offered a coherent body of belief and doctrine by which they can be explained do we understand why the universe arose 14 million no we don't do we understand why it's there at all no we have no idea do we understand how life emerged on earth not a prayer right now do we understand the complexity of life we can't even begin to describe a living creature and anything resembling precise terms recent article in science digest cell division requires 4000 coordinated proteins acting together what a remarkable statement what a wealth of information we possess about biology what an abundant lack of understanding we have about living systems do we understand why the laws of nature are true no we have no idea do we understand the miracle of analytic continuation in physics when certain kinds of functions can be pushed forward into the future contrary to all experience do we understand why the universe remains stable from moment to moment the meaty evils pondered this question ladies and gentlemen they came to the conclusion and I quote a medieval theology theologian that God is everywhere conserving the world what a remarkable declaration can we do without it can we do without it do we have an explanation for the continuity and stability of the universe there is one paper that I know in the literature by Freeman Dyson that addresses the stability of matter but beyond that everything is in an enigmatic how can we propose seriously and solemnly to rule out of court in advance a hypothesis that not only answers to the human heart in many respects but that answers to genuine intellectual needs in other respects when one sees the American scientific community like a herd of wildebeests trotting across a fruited plain it's very reasonable to ask are they going someplace are they fleeing from someplace and I think the overwhelming the obvious answer is they are flee they are fleeing from an idea that they reject for a variety of reasons not only is the inquiry about atheism not necessary in terms of the history of social thought it's not necessary in terms of the outlines of scientific thought but there is a last question to be addressed perhaps the most important for you and me the cosmologists Joel Premack asked an interesting question he asked what compels the electron to follow the laws of nature good question I don't know but Heinrich Himmler who had presided over the destruction of churches and synagogues throughout Europe and was the mastermind behind the extermination of the Jewish people asked a very similar question in 1944 when confronted with the ownerís treaty obligations the German state have adopted with respect to its own say traps he asked insouciantly but pregnant Lee afterall what compels us to keep our promises moral relativism is very often derided as unhappy consequence of atheism I don't think moral relativism is a particularly deep issue but I do think the issue I do think the issue of what compels us to keep our promises is very relevant I have in front of in front of me rather a remarkable button if you should press it if you should press it yours would be untold riches and whatever else you desire the only consequence depressing it beyond your happiness is the death of an anonymous Chinese peasant who among us would you trust with this button sit still Christopher thank you [Applause] thank you best velinski Thank You Larry for the very generous introduction thank you ladies and gentlemen for coming at short notice I can only hope to match the Parisian bounty of my arrival in knowledge of French ecclesiastical architecture and its cosmic implications and in modern and in the ready access to 120 searched portray will let's take instead of Notre Dame and the famous story of its D consecration by Danton and Robespierre the erection of the other most prominent eglee's of Paris the one that you see on your way and from the airport the grand wedding cake style direction of sacre coeur the Sacred Heart built on top of the commanding heights of Montmartre built Y built to celebrate the massacre of Parisian workers and intellectuals after the Paris Commune of 1871 and tried to save the honor of humiliation France that had thrown itself officially and was thrashing at the feet of Bismarck and his Prussian invaders many many more people were killed in that massacre in that terrible reprisal that were killed in the hood of the terror but it were and it wasn't enough but that was the case but a whole church had to be consecrated by the French religious and clerical establishment and their political allies to celebrate the massacre of their fellow countrymen does this prove that religion poisons everything by no means does it do sir does it help to curtain raise and to understand the terrible century which professor Wollensky and I have both studied yes to a degree it does this French right-wing clerical right wing goes on to the terrible arraignment and frame-up of captain Alfred Dreyfus possibly the most serious miscarriage of justice in the most thorough most thorough going ly justified and advanced by political establishment in modern European history this and the sides taken in it determine who will be who in the terrible war of 1914 which Dermot McCullough admired by Larry Taunton among others as a historian of Christianity and very much venerated by me in his magnificent history new history of the first 2,000 years of Christianity describes as the theocratic war who says the Christendom as we used to understand it as our fathers and grandfathers used to understand it ends in 1914 when every country in Europe goes to war in the name of its own God or Church King George the sixth is the King Emperor and the head of the Church of England others are of Russia is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church is considered not to be a god but a little more than a human being you know the rest of it it's the first time that Gott mit uns is put on the belt buckles but not the last time of the German army and this is the end of Christendom and the curtain-raiser to fascism without that terrible war of Christendom it's impossible that the totalitarian movements that became such a threat to civilization could have arisen in the first place and just to stay with France it is the Vichy collaborationist regime the rounder up of France's Jews the massacre the massacre agent in the French colonies the collaborator with the Third Reich that strikes from the French coinage the noble words Liberty Liberty Galit a fraternity and replaces them with the Catholic slogan fami patrie travail and under this France fell to the lowest point of its history so I would beware sir of deriving your argument about atheism from the coincidences of French ecclesiastical a design but I'm with you on the larger point that you made and I'll also try and illustrate it from the work actually of a great anglo-catholic anglo-american poet Thomas Stearns Eliot who in his choruses from the rock asks the question where is the knowledge we have lost in information this the question has to preoccupy us all when I am told and I suppose in one way you could accuse me of taking it on faith because I couldn't prove it for myself and having had it Germans to me I probably couldn't repeat the demonstration but having been told by Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss and all of the leaders in the field of physics that we now estimate a total of 400 billion galaxies that's not universes or solar system at 400 in galaxies and asked to decide the question with one Sun every second since the Big Bang one star we only call our own star the Sun in a prophetic propitiating way that comes from our terrorised ancestors a star that size goes out every second so that's quite a lot while I'm talking and has been blowing up and going out ever since the first moment of the Big Bang this is more than we can handle we cannot say we know about this it can be argued that all that was indeed set in motion with the intention of producing on a very small planet in a very small solar system in a tiny neglected suburb of a relatively unimportant galaxy a race of beings primate but capable of language and reason who believe that if they make the right propitiation they will live forever you could say that all that gigantic explosion and destruction was designed with that in mind but I wouldn't be able to take your word for it and it seems to me that the burden is not on me I don't have to prove that kind of thing I don't make the equivalent claim that the religious person has to make the religious person doesn't have to just say oh of course God wanted it that way and that's the way it is because the design of that kind doesn't just imply a designer it implicates a designer it means if there is such a designer he's fantastically destructive and wasteful as he is in microcosm ninety-nine point eight percent of all species ever on this earth have already become extinct this is a pitiless wasteful capricious designer I can't prove that that isn't the way he wanted it to be but I can say that there's an implication for the designer but again it's not me who's saying that if you believe in it you have the means of grace and the hope of glory and the possibility of redemption and vicarious salvation and forgiveness of sins through human sacrifice and it's Serna life we can't attempt and don't try anything like that so the eighth the excuse me the agnostic or the dearest is not arbitrating between equal kinds of certainty those who are certain in the face of all this uncertainty and unknowability the strongest ground of agreement between me and David are bound to say if they're arbitrating it properly the first people to leave the island are the ones who say they already know enough that they know why this is happening that they know the mind of God those who claim the certainty are out of the argument then goes on but you in dears agnostics and atheists how can we make sense of what we know and how can we in doing so be true to the great principle adumbrated by Socrates which is this you must educate yourself by striving constantly excuse me as hard as you can to get to the point of understanding your own ignorance only then can you claim to have any acquaintance with knowledge at all that's the appropriate and due modesty that the founder of our school of thought brought to the question and there's no proof that Socrates ever existed I tend to think from the eyewitness accounts and secondhand ones that he did it would be quite hard to confess such a personality but it doesn't matter to me whether he existed or not we have the method he taught us how to think if I was to tell Larry after our drive down through shenandoah yesterday and our joint reading of the first passages of the Gospel of st. John that the Jesus who is so real to him is in fact all could be proved to be only a fictitious person the mythical individual it would have to ruin comrade taunt instead not just his day his life it would extinguish his hope is there not something slightly fanatical in placing such large claims to remember the size of the claims I'm talking about on such a slender and narrow basis now we'll get to the we'll get to the Nazis in my rebuttal if that's all right that won't take frightfully long and for their totalitarian and will have to do can we be moral without believing fantastic things that word take too long either and we can we can do a number of other things too that I have so far left unaddressed but believe me not forgotten but I just wanted to see if I could introduce just the once a new element into this argument you must win your next go to Washington go to the nearest Museum in the United States it's the newly opened Hall of human origins in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History it's by the way paid for by mr. Koch the former Libertarian candidate for president and founder and paymaster of the Tea Party movement so I invite you to join me once again and saying in some way this really is a great country here is the greatest gallery paying giving the proper account of evolution and our true origins that has ever been erected in any country the bit that has fascinated me and taken me back to it again again is this until 17,000 years ago only in one case and not many more years than that in others there were at least three other hominid or human species primates like us with large brain pans language capacity in the case of the Neanderthals very significantly decorated graves which suggests if it doesn't insist upon the idea of a ritual or and a religion they have genes in common with us they are of our species and they've left important traces they weren't very well understood or in some cases known at all the cases the Flores Islanders of the Indonesian archipelago only it's all very recently but they're they always were they were our brothers and our sisters in our and they had all these yearnings and hopes and terrors and fears and they're not in Genesis and they've had no one to visit their graves or do them honor and so very recently and as a result of scientific innovation and curiosity and whatever gods they had abandoned them and so I just think it's worth brooding since we talk about ourselves as the objects of a tremendous cosmic and biological process that was set in motion supervised and if it's me believed designed intended I just think we should take a moment of silence and think of our fellow humans our fellow creatures the fellow extinct already extinct members of our species to whom we might spare a little thought before we go on I'm in your debt and I'll be back thanks we now move to rebuttals six minutes thank you very much there's a disturbing area of agreement but I sense between mr. Hitchens and myself which I will do my best to minimize please remember ladies and gentlemen that when it comes to the wickedness of religion I have ceded the point it's no longer argumentative I would remind you however a remark dr. Johnson made he made it about original sin and I paraphrased him he said the inquiry is not necessary for all the laws of heaven and earth are unable to prevent men from their crimes now mr. Hitchens is very much in the position of someone watching a walking painfully with two crutches moving arduously and saying to himself and saying to you I've got a great idea kick one of the crutches away everything will be so much better that seems to me a weak argument a weak argument not an impossible argument I would welcome the defense of the argument but it is no rebuttal to my position that atheism poisons everything the religion poisons something there are plenty of poisons in the world we don't lack an abundance second point I would like to mention is this strange enchantment with the views of say Lawrence Krauss or Steven Hauk and you know Stephen Hawking just published a book and I don't know whether any of you had yet seen it it is again a book explaining how everything began why it's there why we shouldn't worry about God and a multitude of other subjects he published it in collaboration with a friend of mine Leonard Milano and of course the lines are very deep in the bookstores and to paraphrase the claim that he now makes having given up a through n he now champion something called m-theory they claim that he now makes is the universe just blasted itself into existence following the laws of m-theory the universe just blasted itself into existence following the laws of m-theory I don't deny what Stephen Hawking has said I do not endorse it I haven't read the book although I've read his other books I respect Hawking is a reputable physicist who did his great work thirty or forty years ago but I can tell you this what is lamentably lacking in every one of these discussions is a coruscating spirit of skepticism which our Christopher Hitchens or a Richard Dawkins or of the extender will bring to religious claims and that lapse is absurdly when it comes to scientific claims surely we should have the sophistication to wonder it any-any a separation of the form that the universe does blasted itself into existence following the laws of M theory a theory that no one can understand whose mathematical formalism hasn't been completed in it which has never been never once been tested in any laboratory on the face of the earth third and final point of rebuttal the fact that the earth our home is a small part of the physical universe does not mean it does not mean it is not the center of the universe that is a non sequitur after all no one would argue least of all mr. Hitchens that the doctrine at home is where the heart lies is rendered false by distance we should be very careful about making these claims I agree the universe is very big lots of galaxies amazing things and there is certainly some point of continuity between human beings and the animals that went before but as for the central religious claim that this particular place is blessed and important that's quite different no doctrine about physical size rebuts it thanks very much [Applause] I swore to answer press Malinsky is two points about totalitarianism and atheism well his one point and I hadn't want to make perhaps I'll make it in preface atheism by itself is of course not a moral position or political one of any kind it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension or a supernatural supervisor all dictator and it's the it's the maintenance of the view that there that cannot be disproved no good evidence has ever been adduced for it or any good argument put forward for it but that's where it ends you can be an atheist and a nihilist you can be an atheist and a sadist you can be an atheist and say as is said in Dostoyevsky's famous passage of brothers karamazov without God anything is possible anything is doable is thinkable of course that's open I would say immediately to the objections that anyone who says they have God on their side also Awards themselves and you can see it happening by opening the newspaper the right to commit any crime however ghastly that there's no escape from the existence of certain psychopathic human beings who either for want of supervision or by invoking the idea that they are the agents of a divine supervisor will do anything at all that gets us no fella forward you can be an atheist and a fascist most fascists were actually Christian you can be an atheist and a communist most of the not all communists were unbelievers by definition you can be an atheist and perfectly indifferent to the oke to your fellow creatures but there is a humanism within atheism it starts I think with Lucretius who put the atomic theory of Democritus and Epicurus into a wonderful poem that effectively suggested not that people were using religion as a crutch as you've still in such a domesticated and furry way put it but that instead on a very hot day they were putting on a huge heavy overcoat and dragging a ball and chain oh dear my crops have failed I didn't make enough sacrifices oh god I've had a filthy thought what now I'm going to hell all my children are because I didn't baptize them man forged manacles of terror and ignorance and stupidity the emancipation of which all of our species has been in millimetric ly slow but in which material an atheist thinkers have played a great part with our Lucretius you can only have to read Galileo's work he's inspired by the work of Lucretius he considers him consumed self to be very lucky to possess one of the very few copies of new creatures his work that was not destroyed in the Christian centuries in the hope of putting an end to such terrible unwise speculations as that as so much if Galileo's work was either destroy it or censor on the slow the thread is passed on it's picked up by the greatest Jew who ever breathed Baruch Spinoza changing his name later after his excommunication from the synagogue to Benedict who said if there's a god his pantheistic is in nature there's no personal God prayers are not answered divine interventions do not occur the conservation of philosophy must be resorted to from him and people like him we get the Enlightenment in which not only done stone and Robespierre ladies and gentlemen have their share but Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and the founders of this great Republic and the Philadelphia enlightenment this is not a tradition of which anyone on my side need be ashamed and of course not all of it is atheist some of it is deist but it becomes more atheist as Darwin and Einstein and others approaches with their mind-boggling warmest and one wants to say mind-altering findings and you perhaps will fix it it's a coincidence that Einstein is expelled by the Third Reich and long with anyone else who understood anything about biology or physics as practitioners of Jewish science I'm sorry the area of agreement has just contracted sir for you to save Nazism that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander undeserving of you and an insult to this audience Darwin's thought was not taught in Germany Darwinism was rioted in Germany along with every other form of unbelief the the all the great modern atheist thinkers darwin Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime and there is it said I believe it to be true a misprint in one German edition of the Origin of Species from which the full statement that evolution requires the survival of the fittest is taken or statement never made by Darwin who as anyone knows says that adaptability is what is unlikely as to give survival or luck or advantage we'd better say in the struggle now just to take the most notorious of the 20th century totalitarianism so the most finished example the most perfected one the most ruthless syndra find one that of National Socialism the one that fortunately allowed the escape of all these great atheist thinkers and many others to the United States country of separation of church and state that gave them welcome if it's a atheistic regime then how come that in the first chapter of mine camp Hitler says he's doing God's work and executing God's will in destroying the Jewish people how come the Fuhrer oath that every officer of the party in the army had to take making Hitler into a minor God begins I swear in the name of Almighty God my loyalty to the Fuhrer how come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says got mittens God on our side how come that the first treaty made by the National Socialist dictatorship the very first is with the Vatican exchanging political control of Germany for Catholic control of German education how come that the church is celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every day every year I mean on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy quasi religious superstitious barbarous reactionary system again this is not a difference of emphasis between us to suggest that there's something fascistic about me and my beliefs is something I won't here said and you shouldn't believe thank you dr. velinski your recount you have three minutes thank you I've endeavoured to assert the following proposition first the general proposition that atheism poisons everything and second the ancillary proposition that for sure religion poisons something these propositions are not a conflict and at the beginning of the discussion I said they were a conflict so as separations to the contrary introduced into this discussion neither interesting evidence nor a valid argument in terms of the social history of atheism it seems to me when I began this debate and still seems to me now overwhelmingly clear that while Nazism in Germany communism in Russia communism in China even communism in Cambodia certainly had religious elements who would deny that why is that an interesting claim the governing apparatus of ideology no matter what Hitler had to say about his devotion to a warrior like Christ involved the proposition among those who ruled these states and their entourage that no power no power was greater than their own they acted on that proposition they were restrained by nothing and we saw the consequences now you may say and perhaps say truly that in their heart of hearts some Catholics adopted the rituals of the SS and took communion after an especially arduous day murdering innocent women in the fields of Poland could be true I don't deny it but what we must ask ourselves if this is to be an intellectually serious discussion is not whether there were infiltrations of religious thought and the worst tyrannies of mankind of course there were that goes without saying but whether something fundamental had changed in the dire pace and the thought that made these atrocities possible and I say yes there was I've argued as well but that atheism is a decision has a deforming influence on science and I've given you my reasons finally I have argued that atheism insofar as it removes from the human context a bruit sense of obligation based on fear a brute sense of obligation based on fear removes from the moral calculus profound and powerful reason not to do evil I think there is no escaping this it's unpleasant I don't particularly like it and to be perfectly honest I haven't lived my life that way but I recognize it as a fact and I think we all must with that said I thank you for listening three minutes well I think perhaps I could help close the gap a little the gap that press Felicity complains of in my closing remarks I came across a stray comment by George Orwell whom I'm a great admirer in a little-known essay recently in which he said at root all totalitarianism must be theocratic and I thought of my most admired author that's that's rather stretching it and this it's certainly possible to admire totalitarianism superb my to identify totalitarianism that are not explicitly religious he went on to clarify it a bit he said the reason I say it's theocratic is this in all such dictatorships there must be certain unchallengeable assumptions some things that are beyond discussion that are not available that for debate that must be taken as statements of faith in other words in initially for example under fascism you do chair has Sempra journey the leader is always right the of course the culture of the Fuhrer the view that Stalin could bring two or three crops a year was the great protector of the people the worship of now the to take the other great element of the of the Axis powers of Japan the Emperor was actually a God couldn't have anything more theocratic than that then we had secular appearance as well now if you think of totalitarian totalitarianism in that way and if you think of that as the greatest poison since I'm accused notice and sheeting poisoning not for stressing it enough then you'll see that the charge that is essentially theocratic is true because it depends upon unchallengeable statements of dogma and faith I don't know if anyone wants to named me or whether David will take up the challenge a statement of atheism that is a stable purely of faith independent of evidence requiring no reasoning and above all punishable if challenged I don't believe you can come up with anything of the sort to the contrary the little faction with which I'm honored to be identified as a Jew member is adamant for doubt is resolved to be skeptical is certain only of the principle of uncertainty and says that what we have yet to know is enormous Lee greater than anything we have discovered or known so far and that that and only that is the test of Education of intellectual integrity of honesty and inquiry and yes let's hope for it the emancipation of humans from from man-made and high-stress man-made delusions including hopeful ones including false consolation and second that's it thus again and I'll close by repeating myself I've done worse it is only those who claim to know things like the mind of God and the origins and destination and intention of the universe it is they and only they who are the explanation and so far this evening haven't cared to furnish it thank you we now move to the question-and-answer forum a time of this evening and we begin with with Christopher Hitchens and Christopher your first question what are the weaknesses of Pascal's wager well sometimes known by the way as Pascal's gambit which is I think a suggestive the coinage for those of you who don't know well who might be watching of whom this is new I'll just state it I hope not too crudely Blaise Pascal was one of the founders of probability theory and a great mathematician and a great Catholic apologists of the 17th century phrased it like this he was addressing the people he called those who are so made that they cannot believe that's me for example and he said well if you can't believe think of it like this if you bet that making the right adjustments to your relationship with God will save you in the future and in a future state and you're right you win a lot if you're wrong what have you lost what have you got to this now the reason why I say where's your in gambit are appropriate for this is it's obviously a very huckster ish claim or offer I need to say it's pretty cheap and pretty vulgar and I would say especially so when offered to people who are dying or ill or frightened or in extremis I think it's distinctly nasty and sharp practice to try it on them but it's pretty sharp and nasty at any time and you'll notice that it postulates and here it's other weaknesses two things one a very cynical and gullible God who will who will if I say to him tell you what I'll give up the convictions of a lifetime fleeing myself at your feet pretend I believe hope you're impressed would say yeah that's good that's progress in other words you get no reward for intellectual consistency courage honesty anything of that sort and of course as with all these human-made ideas are divine tribunals no lawyers who represent you no appeal and no opportunity to produce any evidence I passed over that lightly and say what is it Basque also of the widget asks for someone to be a credulous cringing unprincipled serf who says sure what a principles for if not to be sold in the hope of a future boon well those are the the largest I think shortcomings of Casco lien and by implication all other religious reasoning about the death judgment and the other last things thank you dr. velinski what are the strengths of Pascal's wager there are none very good [Applause] still there on facility would you christopher hitchens would you agree with the following statement made by Sam Harris and I quote some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them you dude you would be idle in dismissing it at the first reading and obviously Sam has put it at its most blunt but let me I'll give you a very practical example of a current theocratic dictatorship we've all wondered at least every one of my age has since they were small what will happen the day that a really nasty guy gets hold of a really bad weapon that was I thought about it when I was seven I would now say what happens when a messianic regime lays hold of an apocalyptic weapon well we're about to find out and the people who have plagiarized the ingredients of this weapon stolen it from piracy on the high seas broken every international law every agreement every treaty they've ever signed with the UN Atomic Energy Authority EU and up and so forth are governed by the totalitarian theory called the variety the guardianship of the jurist the Supreme Leader noticed that again another supreme leader another divinely inspired dictator whose word cannot be challenged and who wants to bring on the end of days it's not the least of my dislikes of religion that it has openly or covertly an expressed wish a clear one for the end of the world doesn't like this world wants it to finish people who want are in the process of acquiring the the secular weaponry with which to bring about genocide deserve I think have their their ideology treated as toxic and it's character as dangerous vermin and as like pirates and terrorists people who it is lawful to destroy yes so to that extent I'm with Sam dr. Berlinski you're not a Christian and indeed you're you're not religious as as I understand it why do you argue for the influence of of Christianity or a judeo-christian influence in society I presume you're not asking that in the hopes of a personal declaration I mean I argue for a great many things and my personal involvement in topics for debate is variable this particular question strikes me is more important and more demanding of a personal involvement than most I think the issue is tremendously significant I think if we're honest about the times in which we live it's quite right what Matthew Arnold suggested the sea of faith has been receding under the power of a variety of forces and the results had in a certain way been catastrophic for the human race I should not say that a secular Jew has a remarkable degree of authority when it comes to discussing these events after all I have lived my own life under the impress of the maxim to have a good time all the time but on the other hand it doesn't hurt to hear these words from someone such as myself because at least you are hearing these words for someone with no conceivable bias in their favor I count myself as an objective observer of the circumstances so perhaps that's the only reasonable answer I can give these are important questions they've had horrific consequences in human history they continue to have horrific consequences especially in to intellectual history and in response to why should it be that a secular Jew opens his mouth on questions pertaining to the Christian religion seconds it's a big tent I'm presuming I will be welcome thank you [Applause] christopher hitchens what specific teachings of Jesus do you believe to be evil or poisonous the concept of vicarious Redemption is the most repulsive I think and the most central and I could pick a lot of peripheral our trances of the Nazarene or alleged utterances of the Nazarene but the the inescapable one the one that none of his followers troubles to deny that he is the idea that by throwing your sins onto somebody else on to escape you can you can have them annealed polished that is the disgusting and immoral doctrine if I care for you enough I can pay your debt even if you incurred it out of your own stupid irresponsibility I could if I wished and it's been done offer to take your place in prison there not many people will allow the exchange or if you were a hostage I could do that if I loved you enough and there are examples of people willing to put themselves forward as the substitute for someone's execution I suppose Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities is the best-known folkloric one but you cannot relieve people of their responsibility and it's immoral to offer to do so and it would be disgusting if it could be done so the moral rot of Christianity is I think exposed in its central doctrine of vicarious forgiveness it's it's it's an abdication of moral responsibility I think the idea of taking no thought for the morrow of the instructions are abandon your family if you don't you are one who hates me give up investment thrift any thought of a future their children architecture anything of the sort forget all that and follow me is moral only on one condition and it's the condition I referred to before that the world is about to come to an end and that only those who stick by me a familiar trope from deluded prophets throughout the ages are going to get out of it again I would say a multiple a multiple wicked thing to be saying and offer to be making we would be so much better off without this cult we would think so much more clearly about the real moral questions that confront us thank you given this choice and no other would you prefer a secular or an Islamic Europe what my dear sir makes you think it's a choice right now large portions of Europe are already Islamic I mean how would I adjust the European continent I have no opinion why should I judge the European continent as far as I can tell having conducted the relationship with the Arab community for more than eleven years I have no objections to Moslems in Europe Oh David do you mind if I reached convention to one degree in cigarettes anyway I think you could have answered that better sure I mean because it implied in what in your view that atheism poisons everything is is it not and I think this was the intention of the question anyway but I'd be better off as it were hobby then I would as an atheist now the what Larry I think was trying to ask you is do you seriously maintain any such thing you mean with respect to Europe would Europe be better religious but Islamic or without God is that I think the question is it not and I miniaturized it for myself all right I invite you to take another run at it yeah this is strongly advising them you can have it out of my time this is a forced choice which would you prefer in Islamic Europe would you like to live in an Islamic Europe or would you you do live in Europe or would you prefer to live in a this secular the trouble the trouble is the question has no provocative urgency for me it has none whatsoever I mean it's like asking which I would prefer to be dressed in gold or and silver it's not a living issue Christopher do you believe that all this is by the ways your last question so at the end take take a extra minute or so to summarize your arguments to make a final statement do you believe that all religions are equally poisonous my beloved younger daughter today became a senior at Sidwell Friends School in Washington so at least I know that she's under serious police guard during the day and as its name implies this is a Quaker foundation where if she hasn't understood the story of Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and many other people by now it's not for dint wanted acutely not for want of trying and so would I not be fatuous or demagogic if I said that Quakerism to me is exactly the same as war hobb ism or 12 the 12 she ight theory of the variety of our key that khomeini theory of course not but religions different ones do take their turn at bat I think to be to show how dangerous the religious proposition is Quakers for example expelled from their ranks those who supported the American Revolution because they thought that they'd taken an oath of loyalty and that it was it transcended all other principles and there had to be another Quaker meeting set up in Philadelphia of people have been chucked out Betsy Ross who stitched the American flag was thrown out of the meeting for marrying an Episcopalian and so on the more you look at some of these supposedly innocuous sex you realize they're only innocuous because they've become so by having their fangs drawn by civil society over the years when Jefferson says to the Baptist's of Danbury Connecticut we'll don't worry you live in a country that has a wall of separation between church and state and it will ever be thus who can tell me actually I've got a better chance in Birmingham of getting someone who were the Baptist's of jamberry Connecticut afraid of oh come on the Congregationalists one one in Alabama the Congregationalists of Danbury Connecticut thought that Baptists shouldn't be citizens so I already got a minute so just as I would have said for it 50 years ago the Catholic Church is by far the most dangerous because of its open soggy disgusting rotten alliance with fascism which it didn't get over too well after the Second World War obviously now Islam which had been going through a long period of latency is by far the most dangerous religion but yes they all make the same mistake they all take the only real faculty we have that distinguishes us from other primates and from other animals the Faculty of reason and the willingness to take any risk that reason demands of us and they replaced that with the idea that faith is a virtue if I could change just one thing it would be to dissociate the idea of faith from virtue now and for good and to expose it for what it is a servile weakness a refuge in cowardice and a willingness to follow Craig with credulity people who are in the highest degree unscrupulous thank you [Music] your final question and at the end you may summarize your arguments what is one to make of the claim or rather what do you make of the claim that science and Christianity are in opposition to one another what am I to make of the claim that science and Christianity are in opposition to one another I would need to hear the claim reticulated properly to claim a point of opposition in general seems to me unhelpful to claim points of opposition in particular seems to me rather more reasonable in its largest aspect Western science is of course an outgrowth of the judeo-christian tradition especially to the extent and perhaps only to the extent that it is committed to the principle that the universe the manifest universe contains a latent structure that can be discovered by the intellect of man I think this is true I don't think this is very far from gerard manley hopkins declaration that the world is charged with the grandeur of god they represent rather the same position in the world of thought the world is charged with the grandeur of god therefore it can be rationally comprehended please notice this is very different from a muslim claim it's very different from the islamic tradition in which god is at a sign rather a capricious role there is a reason that muslim science so fecund and glorious in the 10th 11th and 12th century did come to an end unceremoniously and it can be traced back to muslim theological writings so yes I would say the judeo-christian tradition the traditional revealed religion that is revealed in nature pointing to a supernatural order has been a powerful influence on the development of Western science 1 by the way recognized virtually every significant scientist every single one of them what do I have next one minute for closing remarks I certainly have no objection to repeating myself but whether you're equally willing to hear myself repeat it I don't know I've offered you three considerations I've listened very respectfully to what mr. Hitchens has said and I have found myself as he expected immeasurably improved however I have heard nothing that discourages me or dissuades me from affirming the propositions that I have affirmed the influence of atheism even though religions have done dreadful things has been poisonous for at least 300 years an especially poisonous in the 20th century second atheism is a position and thought a dogmatic position and thought and as a separation that there is no God has had a deforming influences on the sciences because it leaves open unanswered questions that press on the human heart and third that atheism inevitably in the moral sphere leave zones that unanswered the question what obliges us what forces us not what persuades us what forces us to behave as we should thank you [Music] I want to thank both of these gentlemen for participating in this debate and it seems appropriate at this time now the debate is over to say a word about a fixed-point foundation fixed-point foundation is a Christian organization and unashamedly so though we do seek to engage in the realm of ideas now some would wonder why we would sponsor a debate like this I mean as a Christian organization we have represented on the state stage here a night neither of these men are our Christians well we think that these are these are questions these are ideas that are relevant to everyone whether you're a Christian whether you're an atheist agnostic or of some other religion now that said I want to be very honest in state that our our position our sympathy certainly lie in the direction that a robust Christian influence in society is a as a good thing now Christopher said and it seems appropriate to me to respond to him that that it would that it would ruin my life if it were if I were to learn that that Jesus Christ was just a figment of my imagination and millions and billions of other people as well to that I must confess that he is correct it would ruin my life it really would because it would suggest from our perspective that this that this life is in fact meaningless that it's a that it's a hoax that it's a sham that is that is our perspective now if you are interested if you are interested if you're interested in knowing more about fixed-point foundation then certainly you can find that about us on the web this particular debate will be aired on c-span and I'm not sure of the dates or times of that but I think it'll be aired a number of occasions so you can find it there and you can certainly find it on our website as well and we also want to welcome somewhat belatedly 60 minutes who is here and they are doing a piece on Christopher Hitchens so please join me and in thanking these men for their participation this evening [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Fixed Point Foundation

Views: 424,340

Rating: 4.7739224 out of 5

Keywords: Christopher Hitchens, David Berlinski, debate, God, atheism, ethics, morality, religion, agnosticism, apologetics

Id: MBZXqsC89RY

Length: 69min 8sec (4148 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 13 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

it seems that Berlinski speaks to impress and Hitchens speaks to explain