[official] Christopher Hitchens and John Haldane at Oxford - We Don't Do God? - The Veritas Forum

welcome to the Veritas forum engaging University students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life good evening my name is Sherif Girgis and I'd like to welcome you to the third annual Veritas forum at Oxford University here and at dozens of universities in North America and Europe the Veritas forum offers a chance to escape our sometimes narrow and fractured specializations and consider together some of the more perennial questions that give shape to all our lives the free pursuit of these questions is also part of any University's mission a mission to which we hope to contribute by putting the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in conversation with other worldviews while drawing on the insights of scholars and thoughtful observers our exchanges aren't purely academic they're meant to issue not in proceedings and articles but in greater reflectiveness and mutual understanding the seeds of personal growth and friendship tonight's forum sponsored by the Graduate Christian Union and supported by groups like the Oxford pastor at a Catholic chaplain C and the Oxford secular and atheist societies focuses on how secularists and people of faith should order our common public life our title quotation comes from a telling episode in the ongoing struggle to answer just that question seven years ago this month Prime Minister Tony Blair was asked about his faith in a Vanity Fair interview his communications director Alastair Campbell quickly interjected we don't do God it was a blunter form of the answer that the Marquis de Laplace had given Napoleon when the Emperor asked Laplace why he hadn't mentioned God in his book on the universe this year he said I had no need of that hypothesis why should it be any different for us when it to the conduct of our public life how might we have need of religious or perhaps secularists hypotheses in that realm the answer begins by recognizing that a vibrant society depends on more than having the structure of a liberal democracy important though that is we also need the moral resources to accomplish what procedural mechanisms of separation of powers or majority rule or judicial review can't alone provide first we have to find common purpose across creedal and ethnic divides as we use those institutions to pursue a genuinely common good second we need to develop a robust account of human rights and liberties and forms of aid to the needy to be asserted and reasserted against selfish interests the powerful majority the overweighting state and aggressors from within or abroad and third we need a set of shared cultural narratives and moral commitments by which to pass on the same Civic principles to the next generation does Christianity or some faith-based worldview provide a more compelling account of these ideals or would a secularist culture one free of religiously informed principles and arguments be more adequate to the task would the latter provide a more neutral common ground or is there no such thing these will be our questions tonight but our discussion will proceed a bit differently than usual for this familiar topic some would defend their side by imputing to their opponents various crimes committed in the name of religion or religion the case may be so forced conversions Crusades and suicide bombings or suppressions of speech gulags and gas chambers though not irrelevant that sort of historical tallying can tend to overlook confounding factors it also counts a strike against any one form of faith or of secularism as a strike against all such forms and finally it assumes that anything done in the name of somewhere view is done out of genuine fidelity to that worldview and doesn't represent a mere distortion or abuse of it to minimize these problems as noted in your programs tonight we've asked each of our speakers to focus in his opening talk on his own worldview and on the positive within it to what extent does it really provide reasons for our public values and ideals and are these reasons sufficiently non-sectarian to promote tolerance and cooperation amid pluralism then in the moderated discussion we can explore apparent problems with each perspective as well as the comparative question of whether either is a better public philosophy overall now let me just introduce our first speaker Christopher Hitchens is an English American journalist and author whose career spans over 40 years but you can't tell by looking at him he's been a literary critic columnist or contributor to Vanity Fair slate the Atlantic the nation the New York Review of Books and many other publications read philosophy politics and economics at Balliol College Oxford and has been a visiting professor at the University of California Berkeley University of Pittsburgh and the new school of social research a trenchant political and social commentator and self-avowed anti theist mr. Hitchens has written several books including the missionary position Mother Teresa in theory and practice and God is not great how religion poisons everything please join me in welcoming mr. Hitchens well my thanks to the noble Sherif for that suspiciously terse introduction and for his kind remarks by my agelessness I have to confess that there is a portrait in my attic that's beginning to look distinctly seedy haven't been here since I came to hear Claude lévi-strauss cover his wonderful lecture on the scope of anthropology but Oxford is my town was my family's home in my my university bail just down the road before you get to Bailey to get to the tow where my mother once swore that she heard the following from a bewildered American tourist who said I can never tell which is Lincoln and which is Jesus to which someone returned that's a problem with all you Americans now we're not supposed to do God this evening strangely enough it's one of the very few occasions I've been asked to debate religion not during God but I can't avoid a slight reflection by way of introduction because I want to talk about the American experience in the secular square and sphere when Abraham Lincoln was dying in a room just off Pennsylvania Avenue with a terrible wound in the back of the skull inflicted by a racist lunatic he was living in the age of newspapers and print there was a newspaper published just around the corner the Washington star in the edge of photography we have math Matthew Brady's photographs of him and of the Civil War not in the age of tape recording anxiety but in the age of very very good stenography and we still don't know when his cabinet gathered around him and saw him die I think Seward was there the man who later bought Alaska I'm sure Herndon was there I haven't looked this up you can it doesn't matter particularly which of them said this but one of them said either as he died as he drew his last breath either now he's with the Angels or now he's with the ages we still don't know and there's no reason why we shouldn't eyewitnesses literate man practically contemporaries of ours in the age of print in the age of photography and nobody knows which thing Seward or Herndon said and yet we're expected to take at face value the statements of illiterate stupefied terrified peasants from the most benign part of the Middle East who founded monotheism and I say this not to break the rule about not doing God but because until that kind of conflicts been resolved and on the principle of a necessary uncertainty about the recording of these myths and the hostages made us all of us sent to village squabbles and clan wars in the desert all of us all the time are being forced consider the outcomes of these irrelevant combats until that's the case it seems to me the burden of proof is and always will be and has to be with those who say no only if you believe all of it can you hope for salvation Redemption and afterlife in eternity those of us who say that the rule of doubt and of uncertainty which also governs all other observable principles in the universe I think are entitle to say that until something like evidence is produced we're entitled to be free of it you can't make us believe it if you want to believe it that's fine we hope it cheers you up though we hope it comforts you in your last hour but we don't want to hear about it we don't want to have to be told about it we don't want the Queen to be the head of the church as well as the state and the Armed Forces we don't want the ridiculous situation that will occur as our sovereign lady drawers may it be a long time distant her final breath and her bat-eared Muslim fancying no choice no taste in woman's son becomes at that moment the head of the church and the armed forces in the state that's what you get if you found a National Church on the family values of Henry the eighth by the way we don't we don't want it a lot of us who think it's absurd that it makes the country look silly we think it's preposterous that there's a bench of bishops in the House of Lords and all the rest of the church schools can claim subsidies and all the rest of it now the great breakaway the great English revolutionary break away from this was the American Revolution which was founded on two principles one was adumbrated just after the Revolution and one was enshrined in the Constitution consequently I'll just take a moment to describe it the Church of England's expelled from the United States at least as a established Church it no longer had a monopoly up until then therefore if you'd been and after the Revolution if you were a Catholic in Georgia you couldn't run for office if you were not a Catholic in Maryland you rather if you were if you were Catholic in Maryland you were the only person who could run for office Jews were forbidden to run in New York everyone was different the state religion of Georgia was pronounced to be Protestant with no further definition in Virginia after the scrapping of the established church it was decided to have a debate Patrick Henry great revolutionary said we should now subsidize all churches from the taxpayers money not just down Beacon 1 the Episcopalian one Thomas Jefferson and James Madison made the first-ever statement of this kind in human history they said as a matter of fact new church it should be subsidized all churches should be allowed from Muslim there were no Muslims in Virginia then to the synagogue to the Catholic to the Presbyterian and so forth but no church should receive the favor of the government that Virginia statute on religious freedom which which guaranteed by being secular here's my point obviously by being secular it guarantees religious pluralism there is no guarantee of religious freedom without a secular system became enshrined as what we now know as the first amendment to the Constitution and as a result the persecution of Catholics in Georgia ceased the persecution of Protestants in Maryland ceased and you may remember some of you will already know that Jefferson as president was sent a letter from the Baptist's of Danbury Connecticut it's a very famous letter they wrote to him saying they didn't feel safe in their own state they felt unwanted persecuted put upon they invited the protection of Washington the Capitol Indian and end of the president Jefferson and in the famous letter that he wrote back to them he said you may rest assured that there will always be a wall of separation you've heard the phrase that no one on account of their belief or religion shall ever feel persecution in this in this Republic now just for fun is there anyone who knows what the Baptist's of jamberry Connecticut were frightened of very good actually very bad does anyone but whether they were afraid or - they were afraid of the Congregationalists of Danbury Connecticut that's who was persecuting them now I actually do understand the difference between a Congregationalist and the Baptist it's not a very interesting one it's worth is will repairs a certain degree of study but we don't have to know any more because that persecution was presented no one shall have any preference on counter their faith you are free to practice any religion and you were free from religion as well and on to this great roof-tree of the constitution as Jefferson described it has grown up the most pluralist the most democratic the most multi-religious the most tolerant society in the world where it is illegal for the government to support the establishment even indirectly of a church now I believe this constitutional principles should be further tested I believe for example I'm actually bringing a motion about it to their attention that the Supreme Court in Washington should hear evidence that no United States money can be used for the building of settlements on the west bank of the River Jordan that this any legal establishment of the Jewish religion by for with American money unconstitutional we can't do it I think that the same should be said to the Saudi Arabians that until they allow synagogues in Saudi Arabia until they allow Christian churches in Saudi Arabia and most important till they allow the Tom Paine Richard Dawkins study library in Riyadh they're not allowed to open anymore madrassas in the united states with covert Saudi money you'll see why I suddenly shift of the foreign arena I only have three more minutes look to your east see how the russian orthodox church has become the black cowled guardian and clerical guarantee of the the newly revanchist expansionist great russian chauvinist KGB like regime of vladimir putin if you haven't looked at it yet look at it now you're going to be hearing about it very soon it's going to be adding to your words look and see what's going to happen when a nightmare that was being discussed when i was a young man at this university what will happen when a crazed regime gets a thermonuclear weapon we're about to find out in persia where an ancient civilization has been blotted out and superimposed upon by a theocratic regime that considers all adults as children and as property of the church you're about to see what happens when the Messianic settlers get busy you're about to see what happens when as they as they never cease to try to do the Christian Right in the United States argues for the teaching of nonsense in school to American children Ecore sometimes when they're feeling cowardly equal time for creationism so yes children after the chemistry period we'll have our alchemy class after we've done astronomy there'll be mrs. Watkins we'll take the astrology group after break we'll wear out the day in this way no we worked that's flat-out unconstitutional we beat them in court every time every day they're never going to get away with it is there anyone here who when they look around just some of the places I've mentioned wishes that the Israelis were more orthodox that the Russians were more devoutly committed to their church which says that not only should Russia be Christian but it should be Russian Orthodox Christian and bands Baptists and Catholics and any other kind don't they see the the pearl that they're throwing away until they understand that secularism is the only guarantee of religious freedom religious pluralism there will be no progress and check it on a graph look at the Muslim world look at any actually any country in Western Europe the further they move away from an established church the more democratic the more prosperous the more pluralist the more open the more available to innovation they are Jewish on a graph for the Muslim world Indonesia Turkey Tunisia reasonably tolerant places to live precisely because there's no Sharia precisely because there's a separation made between church and state this example works if you think about it alright I'll leave you with the thoughts my time's up this works in all countries in all societies and at all times so not to argue from Authority or from a majority but I really do hope it works with you too thank you very much for having me thanks to mr. Hitchens and our next speaker is John Haldane a philosophy professor and director of the Center for Ethics philosophy and public affairs at the University of st. Andrew his research interests include issues in the history philosophy philosophy of mind political and moral philosophy and aesthetics professor Haldane obtained a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy in 1980 and a PhD in 1984 he's held fellowships from the universities of Oxford Cambridge Aberdeen Edinburgh and Pittsburgh a proponent of analytical approaches to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas professor Haldane has authored or edited dozens of articles in books including an intelligent persons guide to religion faithful reason reasonable faith and atheism and theism he's also appeared on several BBC radio and television programs as he will tomorrow on in our time is that right on bbc4 I think and has contributed to the Times The Daily Telegraph The Scotsman and several other outlets please join me in welcoming professor Haldane thank you very much Sheree congratulations on organizing this and thanks also to the many others who I know I've been involved in this organization particularly those members of Veritas but also the other associations that you mentioned there's going to be a certain contrast but also complementarity I hope in these contributions I in one respect I suppose part of what I want to do is draw out a certain structure or map and part of what Christopher Hitchens has been doing is applying hi-color to certain elements within that structure on that but the issue that I fight to sort of put before us are ones that I think are as broad and general interest and increasing urgency and they do bear upon questions of the possibility of articulating and sustaining a tolerant humanism and I think that's something that actually turns out that we share a desire to see diversity recognized and celebrated and but as well as they say now drilling down into that asking the question what are the conditions is the Philosopher's question what are the conditions are the possibility of that recognition and that respect and I want to be suggesting that the conditions of that possibility take us in the direction of philosophy but more beyond that takers in the direction of a certain kind of worldview a religious worldview so the question I take it that's before us or 10 rate one of the questions as before it says how to secure a common public life structured by shareable ideals and shareable is going to be important in this context it's pretty obvious if anybody who reads the newspapers listens to radio or television or just sort of engages in sort of ongoing ethical debate it's pretty obvious that we see ourselves confronted by a remarkable range of ethical disagreements about substantive ethical questions whether it be questions of abortion gay marriage family life warfare and so on it goes on endlessly now one thing that one one looks at those questions and and which so debated is that there is an interesting agreement in form with respect to the ways in which they're discussed that is to say there's a recurrent tendency to structure those questions in terms of things like welfare on the one hand and notions of respect on the other so people will argue that so to say that certain economic policies are justified by the proportion of welfare or that certain constraints are required on account of respect that's true so there's a commonality of form but what there is immediately beyond that is disagreement about substance that's to say that those notions of welfare and of rights or of respect are themselves disputed with regard to what their content is what their range is and what their implications are now I think the fact that there's this agreement and form and disagreement in substances itself rather significant because what I think it points to is a common philosophical and religious heritage that's showing through in the expression of those concepts but the decline of that philosophical religious heritage is part of what explains the disagreement when it comes to matters of substance so beyond that what we find is I think if one were to draw a kind of chart for one axis there was time on another sense of the range of data of issues that challenged us and another element perhaps the question of the resources that we have available to us what you would find is that the there's an increase as a line that rises which is the line of identified ethical challenges ethical social political challenges and that is crossed by another line which is the ethical social resources commonly shared for the resolution of those questions when those lines crossed I'm not exactly sure sometime I think in the 20th century that's to say we have a sense that the ethical resources the common ethical resources were declining while the ethical problems were increasing and now those two lines stand at some distance apart and one question then is how those might be brought together again now in the task of trying to structure a common public life a set of values adequate to trait between competing views with regard to some of these issues and more broadly with regard to the structure of society and the way in which you might organize our lives with regard to those there are kinds of two sorts of values that are at issue I think actually Christopher touched on one of these are certain procedural values to do with notions like fairness equality of access to positions and so on and then there are a substantive values now with regard to the procedural values these are typically justified by reference either to notions of respect or to notions of utility or welfare and I want to come back and ask briefly where those notions of respect and utility come from with regard to the substantive are with procedural values you can sort out matters of fairness equality of access to positions of power and so on but that still leaves you with certain unanswered questions which is what conception of the good what set of values what we to be in pursuit of the obviously there's much more to be said about that but at this point all I want to say is that engagement with those fundamental questions about issues of substantive values is unavoidable one simply cannot resolve all the questions simply by reference to procedural values of fairness one has to actually ask at the end of the day what what goods are we trying to pursue but the further problem is it seems to be both unavoidable but also unattainable we seem to need a conception of the good both individually and collectively but we see more conceptions of the good but that seems to be unattainable why unsaleable well one set of considerations what I meant which I'm not going to touch on not that they've not been pervasive and influential but I think of them as being very broadly if I can put it this way Boulder our considerations of relativism and skepticism I don't think as it happens that Christopher Hitchens RI are inclined to ethical relativism and nor I think we get inclined to a deep ethical skepticism but I'll let him speak for himself but I suspect that we are committed to the idea that there is right and wrong there is good and bad but we might dispute what its origins and what its content is so I'm not going to say anything about that the unattainable 'ti that confronts us is not the inability pause by the relativist or the skeptic it's the unattainable Attila's pause by ethical disagreement we need agreement on substantive values if we're going to structure our lives individually and socially but it seems that that kind of agreement is not available to us because of deep deep disagreement now that issue how to structure so a society how to structure a life in the face of deep disagreement is one of the principal themes of contemporary American political thought it articulates the structure of contemporary liberal theory in the United States particularly but not exclusively in the work of roles and others roles contrasts different approaches to this but basically he thinks that we live in a cynic under conditions in which it simply is impossible to base our lives on a shared what he calls a comprehensive doctrine that is where a broad philosophy of life I think he's right in part he was right in part about that but I think he was wrong in thinking that it was possible to do it on some other basis as well so let me just say something about some of the concepts and some of the ideas and some of the values that feature rightly in our ethical discourse one is the notion of human dignity whatever it is we want to say about how we should live our lives particularly how we should articulate our policies we're going to have to have some regard for the notion of human dignity secondly it seems to me importantly is the notion of the inviolability of the innocent this is invoked on one side by those advocates of pro-life causes against abortion against certain forms of euthanasia and so on but it's also invoked by advocates of Just War theories and in other contexts where they see innocents being slaughtered or put at risk in some way so human dignity of the environment of the innocent and then thirdly I would say a duty of concern or regard for those in material or psychological or one might even say spiritual need now what I'm interested is this what is the source and foundation of those notions notions of human dignity and viability of the innocent and duty of kin and regard well here are two secular efforts to try to ground those one is in the impartial promotion of happiness broadly speaking a utilitarian approach that says that we can under we can find a place for these values in terms of this regard for human welfare or human benefit or human happiness impartial II considered each is two counters for one nobody for more than one the second alternative foundation is not in the idea of utility or the promotion of welfare or benefit or happiness but in respect for rights and with regard to that the idea is that each of us has an inalienable status that others must respect now I want to point out that it is very very difficult in fact I think it's impossible to give an account of why one should constrain the distribution of happiness or benefit by impartiality why is why should we have operate on the basis of reaches to count for one and why should we have a respect for rights rooted in the idea of the ethical status of individuals very hard to find a secular foundation for that but relatively easy to find a religious one the impartial promotion of happiness is rooted religiously of the idea that each one of us here and each human being throughout the world is an equal creation of God that none of us exists save for God's chosen to contribute to creatively contribute to our origination and therefore that being the case none of us should be disposed to act to deface a work of creation and particular work of creation that is itself an image of God that there's kind of the desecration that we feel that comes in attacking the innocence and so on is quite literally that it is an attack upon the sacred because what shines forth in the face of each human being is an image of the face of God now there's a foundation to the idea of impartial promotion of happiness that I think has no a our nor so the substantive rival on a secular foundation and likewise the idea of respect for Rights is rooted plausibly it seems to me and compellingly in the idea that each person is like their creator a center of origination of value and of meaning now I think what's happened is this we've continued to use these concepts that have that religious foundation but they've become detached from that religious source as a were the source of energy and animation that lay behind them give shape to them and kept them alive has progressively been severed to the point where now they simply hang there and not just become part of a kind of sentimental rhetoric moral discourse is increasingly in our culture deeply deeply sentimental and the one thing that a religious foundation steers away from at any rate the religious foundation that somebody such as I am interested in I was seeing over dinner earlier on that I'm slightly unused on the philosophical community and also being a papist but Henreid what we papist philosophers are inclined to say is that or sentimentalism has no place so time is up we're going to discuss these matters further I hope but anyway there's an opening shot thank you very much so I'd like to start the Q&A segment by asking each of you actually to ask to pose a question to the other that highlights what you consider a central difficulty for the other person's worldview as a public philosophy as a foundation for these values and ideals that were saying we agree on and need a foundation so professor Haldane why don't we you go first and then mr. Hitchens so I where I think we're in greement is that we're seeking for a kind of tolerant humanism that can respect that certain kinds of diversity not any kind of diversity but serious seriously ground a diversity and difference and I see the foundation of that is provided by respect for individuals as autonomous centers of created life if you like and I suppose my question most basically exactly did you see autonomous centers of created life he created life yeah which is also itself part of an ongoing creation I think but I suppose my question very simply to Christa would be this why what does he think groans the values of human dignity respect human value and so on if not the kind of theological foundation that I suggested well first I think a fairly unsentimental realism which would consist of the minimum of a recognition that we're not created that we are evolved and that we are in fact identifiable members of a primate species with kinship with other animals some people don't like to believe this or think it would be unpleasant if it was true but it just is so we may as well deal with that I am generally tolerant I love to teach arguments I'd like to take part in arguments but in this case there is no argument but creationism versus evolution it's over it's been over since the debate at the Natural History Museum in this University in the mid 19th century the basis further for our morality why is it that we think of others why why do we care for them I think is equally simple if you like just as religion is preached to the simple and doesn't require a great superstructure of theology the principles are essentially I would even say simplistic but we have such a thing as human solidarity if we didn't have it we wouldn't have got this far the usual statement of the moral the nearest statement we can make of the moral absolute the best approximation we've come up with this what's called the Golden Rule it's variously stated but it's really rendered as something like don't do to others what is what you would not wish them to do to you this of course makes it difficult to pass judgment on people like Charles Manson or out of Hitler it's open to the charge there it's only as good as the person making it that's why I have a difficulty with the idea of moral absolutes but it's pretty it's a pretty good approximation there's no society ever being discovered that doesn't have some such principle if you tell me that my grandmother's Jewish ancestors got as far as Sinai not knowing that murder and theft and perjury were bad and only then found out I will say to you they wouldn't have got that far if they've been under another impression there has been no revelation of this it doesn't come from on high it's innate it's one of the things that makes up for being a primate if there are some people don't have it but we call them psychopathic the anne's we have to reason it if geez and Mohammed and Abraham and Moses had never been born which in any case I tend to doubt although if all the stories told about them were untrue if that was suddenly to be found and everyone had to admit it some people I know would go into a panic now what will we do we have no morals suddenly what could be more nonsensical than that as a matter of fact the position we occupy would be precisely the same as it is now if none of these texts had ever been written if none of these supposed doctrine seas had ever been made we would still have to reason together about how to treat one another about how to build a just City and about how to have irony in a sense of humor so that's my answer and I think the idea that there's a supernatural dictatorship required for us to think about our duties and responsibilities to each other is the most sinister idea ever invented these questions cannot be referred up to a celestial cheerleader we do not live and do not wish to live fortunately in any case don't have to live in a divine North Korea thank you mr. Hitchens your turn ah Oh already listen I really didn't ask myself earlier what I was going to ask and I'm not even completely shorn out of a rich a target-rich environment of stuff that I took from your remarks first holiday I think I think what I'd like to ask you is this and don't think of it as ad hominem please do you really would you really prefer me to be a war ha being Muslim or an Orthodox Jew or a Jesuit do you think I'd be I'd be a better person do you wish there were more Orthodox Jews or Harvey Muslims and Jesuits and fewer people like me and if and if the word you think the world would be a more moral player's seriously well I don't know whether the particular classes were chosen but some I could add I could add some scientists are insane I could add to the feel I have yours young I've no reason to think that simply by matter of some treadle affiliation that would people would be any better or worse and I think in that respect it is important perhaps I should make this clear in case the point to be missed it's no part of anything that I've said so far that the content of morality derives from some set of divine commands I mean you spoke about it's not no you spoke about the idea of some sort of supernatural dictatorship or something of that sort what I was talking about was that were the grounds of value not the idea that these if you take for example you mentioned the Golden Rule right treat others as you would have them treat you which is one of the formulations effectively of can'ts categorical imperative another one of which is treat others and not merely as means but always as ends now both of those formulations interesting thing is if you ask the question who are others in this respect right this this principle has to be applied when you say treat others it doesn't collude pieces of furniture right so the question is who gets in to the constituency of that and my suggestion is this that when one starts to probe the question of who the other is in this respect what comes forward as an idea of a person the person as a kind of site and look of a certain kind of inviolable value and my question not to you but I mean the question of inviting others to discusses this what could explain the existence of centers of inviolable value now here's one answer to that the transference by a creator of a certain kind of value that is attached to that deity itself on to others whom he chooses to extend as part of a certain kind of community of his own now by the way the community of his own here is not in the sense of a covenant to community or some set of peoples against another set of people this is all people so nothing of what I had to say was to do with the idea that morality comes in the form of divine commands but that rather the condition of the possibility of morality is that there be special kinds of beings in the world the nature itself doesn't account for good right I have my own questions first for mr. Hitchens um how can your perspective part of what we're talking about tonight is providing common ground for our public deliberations and how can your perspectives that's not over do that right that's right let's be tasteful yeah how can your perspective provide that kind of common ground if it dismisses a large majority of the population as irrational as stuck in what you call in your book the infancy of our race I mean doesn't that remove any room or incentive for people to try to reason together not at all I mean religion is a is a private matter in my opinion I've raised it like this in my book as I say if you think that there's a creator who's made you especially and who watches over you and supervisors you it cares about you wants you to do well and even wants you to survive death I think I have to say I think it's a preposterous proposition because I have to be honest and an irrational one and a fatuous one and a sinister one because the idea of wanting a father who never dies and won't quit is infantilizing but suppose you did think that shouldn't it make you happy it doesn't make them happy doesn't make them better at all they won't be happy so I believe it too so the first principle isn't it separate that keep it to yourselves go to any church you like build any church you want do it with your own money don't ask the government to teach this stuff to my children in local government so we won't have that and surely who's in other words I'm not I don't when I'm offended by a filthy article I read about atheists and Jews and secularists I have to bombard nents of stuff of this kind comes at me all the time I don't go out and burn down that nearest mosque because I've been offended do I don't be ridiculous but I'm supposed to respect those who do do such things I'm supposed to treat them with an extra delicacy why should I be doing that who's the offended one here really I'm not going to make a big point about my feelings being hurt I have a thick skin or a broad back I've studied Socrates I think the Socratic method is more convincing but you act as if I'm the one who's offending them by saying I find your beliefs actually rather unconvincing and in any case I'm not going to have them forced on me now is that finally clear is it I hope so good professor halt dein someone might have a similar worry in terms of fairness about your own view so you think that a lot of the moral norms and principles that we that we based even some of our policies on to inviolability of the innocent and so on are dependent on theological claims but if if we base political decisions on Christian ideas at all isn't it unfair to impose those decisions on non-christians who can't accept the rationale I mean especially if there are non theological arguments to make the same points well look I mean what I've suggesting is this is a kind of two-stage process here first of all what I think is extremely important and this I brought to be a matter of common agreement at least if not universally but wide agreement between us is that it is very important to fashion some basis to identify some basis of common shared values beyond the merely procedural value that I made reference to it because matters of mere procedural fairness are not going to get us through to the deeper questions so there the question is on what basis does one do that now I think that and here actually again I think there should be an area of agreement I think that for example the thinkers of the Enlightenment who emphasized the importance of autonomy of self direction of lives lived from the inside of an input of that way rather than imposed an order imposed from the outside I think identified something very important but I think we need to probe that question further what is it to live such life it's not just to choose randomly as to choose an accord with a conception of value and so on so what I see at the heart of human as he two things at the heart of human nature one is a striving of reaching out for truth reaching out for goodness and so on which we recognize in one another as and this enables us to identify one another's as members of the same moral species if I could put it that way but I think we also find on ourselves and we find in one another a kind of conflicted nespresso universally quite independent of culturally variant circumstances and so on so what we're looking for now is deeper level is an explanation of how it could be that we're beings of a sort that find ourselves directed towards the good and the true but also beings of a sort that find ourselves apparently resolved oblique inflicted both interior and in between ourselves I think at that point the story has to continue can't just stop at that point I think a religious foundation here of the sort that I just suggested doesn't turn at this point on the tenets of particular revelations if you like in that respect as a natural theological foundation but the question then would be to what extent is that picked up in particular faiths and traditions and I think by the way that in this respect there is a moral criterion of the adequacy of particular revelations and faiths the extent to which they do or fail to conform with those ideals and values so I don't think that every faith is to be respect that's why you know I'm not interested in the kind of sentimental universalism that accommodates faith as if it were some sort of trump card in every context context there are some face are absolutely you know abhorrent there are some scriptures that are important and one has to apply a test of reasonableness but I think at the end of the day the foundation of that reasonability rests beyond a confined natural human nature and points the direction of a kind of supernatural order that's the view you say got it just register yeah but you said you said got it then you let him get from natural to supernatural without a word of transition so press the nut yeah what grants you have that's thing there's a supernatural dimension well because I the form of the argument was something like this how are we to make sense of this right this sense the sense of our status as moral beings that have these two aspects as it were that reaching out to value but on the other hand seaman way is conflicted now if you write this is a this is a seeks for a kind of anthropology and account of what it is to be human and I think we stand in need of a philosophical account of your I Corps an ethical account of what it is to be human such that we can fill in things like the golden rule so we know who falls within the scope of that now I think that when we look around for such the richest understanding of that comes from religious directions that's the claim it's not meant to be a deduction strictly of that it's meant to be a question if you like a what provides the best account or explanation and in the meantime it also stands as a challenge to secular accounts that simply would treat these things as freestanding as if they simply arise without explanation but you're making a mystery we're not exists I mean if you make the assumption if you make the assumption that we are members of been involved higher primate species and you then you look at us and think why did they have wars why do they have sexual jealousy why do they have rape you understand already there's no mystery about it but also why do they have families why do they have emotions why do they care for their children same question can be asked is asked about chimpanzees and dolphins there's no there isn't a mystery you're creating one when none exists you're piling on supererogatory but no he's he said I was very glad to see you make the concession earlier that there isn't any necessary connection between faith and morality I think that's a rather larger concession than I expected so soon from the exam that's why I've read it fast but the question is not whether or not we can't find sort of social pressures and features that have adaptive utility and so on that might contour certain patterns of human behavior the question that's more interesting is our capacity to engage in the reflective questioning of those habits those inclinations and so on so we might say that look we found that certain sort of thing has benefited us over the years of the century the millennia the question is ought we to behave in that way and the idea that certain things have just benefitted Justin in and of itself answered the question as to whether or not this is a good and normal and decent way to live and it's that question which i think is a pressing question which we feel beyond as it were what nature has forced upon us does the question have what we to live and that's a question that only moral beings can ask and by moral beings I mean beings that are not simply determined by those evolutionary and historical pressures I didn't say I wouldn't say determine let shall we say least say conditioned and by the way not created the you ask you chose if we have a responsibility to a higher being which we don't when you say since mammals do behave in this way would you agree that's the ears bit then we course we can ask or theta but isn't isn't it once you have made my assumption a slightly odd request but its outcome will they what about a question like this do you think they will go on we our species will go on making war torturing each other killing each other raping each other just kissing each other so and you can I think you can probably as a believer in original sin I presume and make the assumption that they will but I without original sin can tell you that that will happen yeah and the question I suppose would be fine but look the point is it's just that there's no why there's no mystery but it is precisely that ability to reflect upon our condition that reveals us to be moral beings that transcend that mere evolutionary history but look you know that's going to be the point of course it were usurping you sure that's true sorry yeah the next question was for you mr. goody it's a clarification from some of your writings so you've written that civil rights reformers like Martin Luther King were despite appearances not really religious but secular and that certain murderous tyrants like Stalin where again despite appearances not secular but religious so what do you mean by that and why isn't it just a case of calling anything you dislike religious and anything you like right I didn't mean it to be an applause line but there that was naked that was a rather easy clap I must say um well anyone who's read dr. Martin Luther King's speeches or indeed his doctoral thesis will know that he was a rather complicated the Galleon that he of course didn't believe in the Exodus story though that was the that was the text he took because the only place you could make a public speech if you of black man in the south of that time was from the pulpit and it was the only book everyone knew but a moment's thought will tell you that the Exodus story would have entitled his oppressed tribe to kill and dispossessed anyone else who got in their way that's why we don't have any Amalekite problem anymore or Moabite or JB's eye problem in fact dr. King fortunately for us obviously didn't believe the exodus story he believed to the contrary and a good thing too so that's the first thing and the American anti-slavery society where it was first begun was decorated by wonderful non-believers like Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin and it took the Christians and even then several more decades to catch up to undo some of the harm that the Christian authority and warrant for slavery had done and even then it went on in the South under the same warrant of the biblical separation of the races that the the motto of the Confederacy day of Indy say by the way of the motto the Pharisee got on our side the same slogan that appears in German on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier and the same words that appear in the oath everyone had to take to Hitler I swear in the name of God for the Fuhrer or that can't be described I think as secular with the Joseph selling a question I'll have to take just 30 seconds it's a little more complicated if you become the head of a Russian state that for several thousand years of serfdom and slavery and Jew baiting and war and feudalism has taught millions and millions of peasants that the head of the state is somewhere a little above the throne little below heaven something supernatural if you if you don't take advantage of that you really shouldn't be in the dictatorship business he had a ready-made a ready-made audience of credulous believers and what did he produce for them an inquisition a really ingenious inclusion at remnant one of the greatest heresy hunts in history miraculous harvests all flowing from the Dear Leader the biology of lysenko you could fill in the rest for yourself and always at his side invariable at his side the russian orthodox church which to this day produces icons painted ones beautiful ones in some ways ugly and others showing his face with a halo around it he never he never ever repudiated the allegiance of or was repudiated by the orthodox church of his country if you want to call this secular you're entitled but don't try it again when i'm here then one more question and then we'll go to audience questions professor Haldane there may be side worries about taking a kind of theistic public philosophy as the foundation at least for our norms and civil society I mean for example isn't it easier to fall into fanaticism if you think you're discharging some divine command as opposed to just following common-sense secular ideas about the good of helping people and the bad of harming them well there certainly recurrently a kind of fanaticism associated with absolutism and but I think two things about that first of all that that is not the privilege of prerogative exclusively of the religious and secondly I think it's come it's a consequence of a kind of fallacious inference as I see it I put it like this the here's one with raising the question who is the better friend of tolerance the believer an absolute truth or they believer in relativism now I'm trying to say the better friend of tolerance and toleration is a believer in absolute truth and for the following reason but we can see how this might also go wrong the believer and absolute truth thinks there is something to be discovered and if that person has any experience of serious inquiry they will know that human beings are fallible in the effort to discover it but they will recognize in others what they find in themselves a desire to discover it and so the ground what what that belief in absolute truth does in the human search for it is grounds our respect for fellow Enquirer's and a recognition of the failed ability that we exhibit in our efforts to discover it so there's a kind of toleration that comes from recognizing others as seekers after truth and the difficulty of discerning that truth but what some absolutists of our truth have done is transfer the attitude that's appropriate to the object of their inquiry namely truth and intolerance of error in that sense of falsity and suchlike to fellow seekers and have become intolerant to fellow seekers but not only is there nothing in the doctrine of absolute truth that requires that there's something in it it seems to me to exclude it on the other hand the relativist is gently disposed towards difference and wants to perhaps respect and regard or how or be tolerant towards difference but they make the mistake of then transferring the attitude that's appropriate to the person mainly that of toleration to the idea of truth itself and so in losing the idea of a notion of absolute truth they also lose the possibility of grounding a sense of value in that inquiry so the clay might want to make is this that intolerance is not a consequence of a belief in truth a truth to be discovered in tolerances as equally I mean can arise from people who have that view but that's a mistake and it's equally and increasingly more commonly to be discovered on the part of people who have no regard for truth where is it Commission go ahead where you gonna add some well I'm not sure it's my turn but well it in principle it isn't but I give you a turn okay I just spent you appear to say that though because if you had said that someone was more inclined to be tolerant if they possessed absolute truth you would obviously voted a nonsense and I wasn't saying but you had people who because people think they have the absolute truth believe me you don't mean to need me to tell you are capable of anything including tremendous lying yeah but it's not what you're teaching the Senate so instead of saying that you seem to say that there exists somewhere maybe platonic absolute truth fine but it can't be attained by us that we keep looking how is that different from Roseau ism well because first of all I didn't say platonic but what I'm just saying the idea you say you just say we'll then you know you just to be sure you don't say anyone has absolute truth or access to it no what I'm saying is this the question was whether or not people who take a view about truth let us say or absolutism and so on or intolerance in certain ways and why my claim was this that in fact a belief in objective truth combined with I'm sorry well you can ask or I will have absolute in there all right a belief in absolute God you can't well I mean I'm down that far that's fine no by absolutely I mean non relative truth there really is some fact of the matter that fact is not conditioned by our dependent upon human opinion with regard to some matter there is a truth that is autonomous and independent of us and is it is thus and so right so absolute in that respect now I quite was this that a person who believes in that combined with two further thoughts common in the traditions one is that we are interested in that and the human inquiry is directed towards the discovery of that science as one example a things as another there are lots of them right areas in which we seek out truth of that kind a person who believes in truth believes in the value of seeking truth and recognizes human fallibility in that effort has a foundation for a kind of toleration in recognizing in fellow human beings fellow seekers respecting also the fact that the dates to are subject to the burdens that we are subject to in our efforts to try to understand and discover these matters and that produces a kind of fellowship of common shared human understanding take away the notion of absolute truth and all you have is where is what a fashion of the moment as to where it is that things tend to go at any given moment all right well look I'd now be use upping knee as we would the right of the audience to ask a question but I'll just have to leave you with this if you are you saying we'll know absolute truth when we find it and I could make a statement of objective truth easily enough and so can you but can you make a statement of absolute truth while you while we wait to find what it is well how is that different from a relativistic sceptical open conversation what does it open conversation skepticism and relativism were three different things but this regard to the question at Rinty the projects of one another well I hope not if the condition of the possibilities of an open conversations you'd be a relativist or a skeptic that I would seem to me a mistake but look the point was simply this that if you say what so give us an example of something that might be an absolute truth and I do think that I maybe we share this actually but on different foundation that something like human life innocent human life is something to be respected and not violated that's a mental product that's a precept not a truth well I'm not sure what you're taking that difference to be well innocent humans died in their millions every year for no reason than that they're born to a primate species on a very harsh planet well that's nice we kind of a we just like that yeah that's the description what might happen well we assign a claim about basically ought or ought not to do but that I mean that is not a safe what you just made is in no sense a truth statement I'm fight what others can judge that as well no sense of truth statement very well your turn sorry come right on to the audience here's a truth the it's not a joke although it might sound like it the regulations of health and safety forbid the use of microphones on the upper level for fear of dropping a microphone on the head of someone on a lower level so hate to break it to you so we will go with questions around here Rosalyn or Bryan will bring you the microphone and right there's our first one please stand mr. Richards I wouldn't call myself a fan of yours but I am a devout YouTube follower so it's a pleasure to actually hear you in person I want to challenge an assertion in your book and you argue that one of the reasons why religion poisons everything is because it's abusive to children now multiple studies have shown that in the u.s. religiously active youth are less likely to be depressed and commit suicide and they're less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol so my question would be how could child abuse have an empirically verify a verifiable effect on youth that is so positive was the question I'll just say audible to everybody right so I fear that you would do this you give me the task of making your question not just audible but intelligible the gentleman asks or claims to know that the more religious you are as a young person in the United States the less likely you are to be depressed or alienated and connects this by what means I don't know to the question of child abuse which is a euphemism for torture rape and psychic destruction of children well two things first it is said that Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam group gets black kids off frogs I have no means of knowing whether this is or is not true but let's grant that it might be true it doesn't seem to have been established but it doesn't also the fact that the Nation of Islam is a racist crackpot organization which anyone would interested in mental health would be well advised to stay away from it is said that the Mormon Church has a lower incidence of misery and family life and higher motivations if that might for all I know be true but it doesn't alter the fact that Joseph Smith's fake religion is an outrageous impostor on human and dignity it's it's it's a cult it's a regrettable fact that some people do better in cults because they need they're so weak minded and cowardly that they need the support of a pseudo family this says absolutely nothing at all about the value of religion let alone its validity morally or philosophically I hope I hope that's clear since you've brought up the question of the rape and torture and psychic destruction of the lives of children I suppose I'll I will just do this I thought this might come up hmm I it's awkward because I know my I know my visa avi dr. Holden is a practicing Roman Catholic but it does seem to me that after what we've learned about what the Roman Church has done to the children entrusted to its care that there's I don't know of a single case I've studied quite a lot of them Australia the United States Ireland France Austria Germany Italy and this is by no means an exhaustive list that there is no case where those children wouldn't have been better off if the secular courts had had the ordering of it instead of private secret religious courts that were interested not in what you call rightly the inviolability of the innocent a precept not a truth but a precept that you that you invoked but were instead concerned only with the silencing of the victims the exculpation of the of the criminals the covering up of the crime and the continuing exculpation cover-up and blackmail of the victims now practiced by the very head of this church himself a man who his followers believed to be the Vicar of Christ on earth I ask you who can who can think of this as other than a grotesque parody of even the most elementary principles of decency ones which we don't have to be taught who doesn't know that the rape and torture and desecration of children is wick it is an iniquity and what is and how I'm never going to be told again whether in a Catholic Church that I wouldn't know good from even if it wasn't for them I'm sorry I'm never going to hear that again okay thanks for your talk I don't think we can I think is politically productive to discuss what the substantive truth of for instance any one religion is because obviously we can get into sort of hermeneutic debates and endlessly new sorry debate can you give it some well slice out and slow down so I'm not particularly interested in debating the substantive content of a religious faith Islam Christianity or Judaism but someone who actually grew up in Iran has experienced the aquatic dictatorship and the yoke of sort of the particular curse of the religious states I could say that I don't really need to have given to us over a long sort of long winded debate to decide which sort of state I prefer to live under it's more of a statement to be honest really to looking at the results of that state and to the horrors reached on that country I don't think we need to sort of you know to look any further to the results of you know living under this religious theory well good for you well let me briefly turn the little cert into a question for professor Haldane professor eldane how is your view distinct from or at least why doesn't your view lead down the road of a theocracy well I'm sorry and we have the Optus is is a claim about the authority of a church or some religious structure to govern something like a state or to have jurisdiction over population I with the sphere of its liturgical and other practices for example that it would make law more generally I I didn't see any connection for twice 2001 is I see no connection between the things I have said and the idea that theocracy might in some way be a good thing secondly the history of these things teaches us even those of us who inhabit these religious basis that theocracies are proven to be a bad thing but certainly one of the ways in which they've proven to be bad is that they're injurious to the religions themselves that they actually corrupt the religious values themselves by bestowing upon the occupants of religious offices ambitions are quite beyond that of proper spiritual care and what is there the suit of their competence absolutely so I don't think that this is an issue as whether or literally this way a religious believer whose interest in a theocracy seems to me if somebody is more likely to be interested in power than they are religious values my point our point distasteful team hold on too much agreement to agree go ahead bring it in um I have a question about religious pluralism so listen I'm sorry we are having difficulty up here I think hearing the questions could you just go if I don't know what others but if you could just go slightly slower please and is really hear them I think sorry is that Alright so I have a question about religious pluralism mr. Hitchens spoke about religious pluralism sort of as secularism and I first want to contest that conflation and talk about religious pluralism as something that's not a reality of religious diversity and plurality but sort of a state of what do we sort of a positive definition of what we do with the reality of that diversity so I kind of I wanted to ask what each of you what your vision of religious pluralism is acknowledging religious plurality in a world where religion is in or is out of the public sphere I'm sorry I missed an in a world and we well one of you is clearly arguing for religion to be part of the public sphere and one is arguing for religion to be out of the public sphere so what does religious pluralism look like to you in each of these situations and not just not pluralism conflated with blur out in your secularism to start the short of that and then you can see how we're coming in yes I mean supposing some that maybe this will help I don't know supposing somebody said what is your view of say aesthetic pluralism the idea that out there there are people who some of whom take principle pleasure from say music others from literature or others from the visual arts plastic arts and so on and then within each of those there are some who have these preferences and romantic classical and such like I think the response the natural response to that would be that each of these answers to a certain appetite or a dimension or an aspect of the human condition of human sensibility and such like now it seems to be to some extent to some extent this is true of religions as well that is to say there are those there are aspects of human nature that tend in the direction of the is that ascetic the spare the restricted the disciplined and so on and you know Quakers in one direction certain kinds of free Presbyterians and another and so on and you could find outside Christian traditions ease and there are others that go for a certain richness of liturgical complexity ritual and such like sacramentalism a great theological complexity that to some extent it seems to me that as a reflection of different aspects of human sensibility I don't think that in the sphere of religion any more than the sphere of the aesthetic one could as it were set out some unitary board of religious expression that could satisfy all aspects of as we're here in sensibility and human condition so it seems to me religious pluralism in one sense of it is precisely what one would expect to find given the complexity of human psyche and Sensibility and so on now there's different question of course about religious pluralism one as where a theoretical one is there some difficulty for religion reconciling these differences and there's a political question or a practical question how are they to rub up together and yeah Christopher Hitchens is quite rightly often pointed to their inability to rub up to go to effectively coexist I think the explanation for that by the way is a very deep common one which is that human beings have difficulty inhabiting the same space they compete for that space and this is a general question independently of whether you religious are not finding a foundation in which River basis on which people can inhabit common space that's part of what we were discussing tonight but these are very large and complex questions I think I was the one who she misunderstood the most even said and it's my fault I daresay but let me clarify it there was established during the McCarthy period in the United States by Billy Graham and various other right-wing evangelicals the panic resolution in Congress establishing a National Day of Prayer National Day of Prayer it was last week an organization with which I associated the Freedom From Religion Foundation secured a judgement from a judge in Madison Wisconsin which will I think be heard by the Supreme Court saying that that not prayer is unconstitutional Americans can pray anytime they like but the government can't tell them to do so pretty simple proposition you think it takes forever to hammer this principle into people's heads one way to do it is to say all right from tomorrow all schoolchildren America will have to pray the Billy Graham rights brighten up see but it'll be Hindu prayer they said we didn't mean that we didn't save didn't Oh or do you mean that what you said you wanted was a national day of Christian prayer or just Protestant Christian prayer to be exact because otherwise we can say they all have to say Hail Mary in school and show you that we'll be just as good for their moral education or they'll all have to go to shul or they'll all have to make the the Muslim profession of faith surely any of these are better than secularism or a theater they don't get it what they don't understand is it's only people like myself the secular forces you say the government has no business here who guarantee that they won't be oppressed by another religion and it's in other words there is only one way in which any society has ever guaranteed regice feedom and it's by a wall of separation between church and state I really don't think that penny should have taken so long to drop if I may say so Roslin could get that gentleman right here yeah thanks very much for a fascinating debate I would present mr. Hitchens mr. who seemed to have been seeing yourself as debating with an audience the sort of of whom is to whom the book The God Delusion is directed where as Professor Haldane seems have been speaking more than the context of the last 300 years of moral and political philosophy in particular people like John Rawls and Bernie Williams and Tom and Blackburn and so I want to get back to the question I think was the first professor Haldane asks and which is specifically mentioned in the synopsis of this talk which is do you think do you accept that the only way that you as a secular risk can normatively can ground your normative conception of the person is simply to say well it's in my intuition as an evolved being and if you don't share that intuition then there's not much I can do to persuade you did you say intuition yeah well you've already earned your applause I think it came too soon be careful about that I simply don't share the grammar of your question the feeling that I have of being an evolved member of a primate species is excuse me not an intuition policy I think that wasn't my question at all the question is okay well then oh I see we already left that bit out there we are all evolved members of the primate species I accept that entirely now having accepted that and living in a society where we lots of us don't share religious intuitions and you have a secularist when it comes to debating within society and using reasons in public debate what's reason do you have when you're arguing in favor of things like fundamental human rights what reason do you have to ground those rights and normative conceptions of the Pascal well first I'm not taking a Secretary's position I'm an atheist an anti theist the main common ground I have with da Cardenas is if I was a believer I would still be for the separation of church and state for the excellently phrased reason that he gave remember how Dante says I see the Pope is still fornicating with the Emperor that it isn't just that I don't want this the Society of the state a rigid religion eyes but if I was a believer I wouldn't want it corrupted by association with state power in other words the worst the worst moment comes when the Emperor Constantine says this is now the official religion of my Empire that's a terrible thing and we have parodic sub versions of that like the absurd appearance of that sheep faced luden Rowan Williams in the House of Lords place where she he's no right to legislate just because he's a bishop but that matter I would that I would say if I was an Anglican when you said what's my grounding how do I know there are such things as humor I don't I don't know there are such things I have a very strong suspicion that Bentham might have been right about that that they're not they're certainly not from God because if they were a few more people would have them or have had them the concept is only a few hundred years old it had to be wrung out of the the bogus concept that there was a right but there was a divine right and only for Kings it's an attempt to negate and spread that made by Thomas Paine my strong suspicion is also you don't get the rights you don't fight for so that's my grounding I think I think I'll I think our position there is about as tenuous is our position as a primate species on a rather dodgy planet all right do we have unsupervised microphone up there yes mr. Hitchens sir from Virginia I'm pleased to actually express appreciation of separation of church and state like you mentioned thank you I also can recognize the the problems of having beliefs forced on you I also can recognize the the depraved human condition that we lived in I also can look at the issue that you might say of no responsibility to a higher being I would also agree to your accurate criticisms of manmade religion there's a but look again somewhere yes sir surely I can also agree you just try to speed up to the question the man I'm forgiving buts time yes and and one of the issues I noticed though is that though you are able to at times it appears the intent and the content of some of your criticisms are very heartfelt in disappointment with a concept of of benevolence yeah of a sense of life as a gift and the sense of present as being a present and what I ask you is some of that criticism seems to be beyond the capacity of a primate and so I ask you as a not religious person but as a Christian that it's goods of that yes one who disdains the ignorance of the man-made religion because of the thousands of years of outcomes of it I ask you where in the world is that source coming from that is actually able to articulate the concept of one who is disappointed and as a standing in the position of an anti theist because I would say perhaps that source might be inspired you know it got less good as it went along I think I started very promising Lee well by the way I I knew this would happen and you must see it a lot I'm not religious at all I'm just a Christian and is it is it not is it not it's like being an advocate is it not George Herbert the great poet of any person who speaks of the sweet mediocrity of our our native church it commits you to nothing I actually my impression of Christianity is that you're a Christian if you believe that God gave a son for the redemption of our sins and allowed him to become a human sacrifice as the seal of that pact if you don't believe something like that that human sacrifice commits you even if you didn't want it to happen I don't really think you can save a question you ask me what I think the source is and where you almost seem to ask where is my divine and spark come from well sweetie I don't know but I don't I don't mind not knowing I look forward to discovering further frontiers of my ignorance Socrates was never wiser than when he said the definition of the educator is the one who has some idea of how little he knows and the more education you get and the older I warn you you get the more you'll find out that you know more and more about less and less and less and more and more and more things and it's wonderful it's a tremendous experiment in learning so I'm quite happy to say I don't know but the believer has to say that they do know they can't they can't hedge this if it be not truest and Paul says that Christ crucified rose again we are the unhappiest people living that I can take seriously that I can understand and I take leave to doubt it and I don't believe there's any salvation I don't believe there is any redemption so thus my own sir okay next question try to make them quickly please I'll try me works we're officially over time so I dispense you remember if tea quickly that's for you and then I'll go to this room this is the sort of thing that we would normally do over a 12-week course so let me just answer it in the following respect which is really a synopsis of what that course might involve interestingly thomas aquinas a figure revered within my intellectual tradition and he was in my church was in fact a theological determinists he thought he could reconcile determinism with human liberty and in that respect he was like David Hume who also thought you could reconcile determinism with human Liberty I don't think you can reconcile determinism with human Liberty and this respect I'm opposed both to David Hume and to Thomas Aquinas but I don't think it's to do with divine omnipotence I mean I don't see that as being the key to the problem I understand why you might think it is because you're assuming that God has foreknowledge of all this going to happen if he knows what's going to happen it must be that some says it's fixed antecedently that it's going to happen all I would say is this is probably week three of this where we talk about what's known as middle knowledge and God's knowledge of ungrounded counterfactual propositions but I'm not going to get into that right now well right but that I would say briefly that the role of randomness and uncertainty in biological evolution and in the cosmos is so great that I don't think it can be reconciled with determinism unless determinism is a way of planning for randomness and uncertainty which doesn't seem to make much ontological sense so my own casuistry on this point is to say if asked if I have free will is to say of course I have no choice clever at least I know I'm being ironic but the people who say of course you have free will the boss in heaven says you have to have it our speaking nonsense on stilts this gentleman right here that gentleman at the corner and then emotionally I think Oh rabbi Ryan hi please be brief question to Professor Haldane I never understood how divinely inspired morals are more convincing than say instinctively inspired morals so my question is if for some reason the Holy Spirit would decide to have another encounter two thousand and ten years after the first one and Jesus would then have a half brother and that half brother would tell the church officials for example you know that after all the Lord made up his mind we can now accept morally torture rape and mass murder for example would you take his word again well I thought I'd sort of addressed that point not exactly in the colorful terms in which you present it now but when I said that that I and this in the way there is a kind of odd agreement between us because I actually think there is a moral test on the adequacy of the proclaim revelation that's to say if somebody says look verily I say unto you the Lord says go forth and torture the innocent which of course in certain aspects of Hebrew Scripture some things he did say precisely that I think that is has to be subject to a test of ethical credibility now and again just to repeat I'm sorry to repeat the point but I'm going to have to do so is my claim is that the role of a religious conception in this is not in giving the content of moral prescriptions or commands but setting the condition of the possibility of there being intrinsic moral values that's really the point and we in a sense we've returned to this again again because I mean a question was posed from over here and another question Inc was posed with over there Christopher has been on this occasion on many occasions in the past righteously indignant about certain matters and in response I think perhaps or the opening question which was what do you say about empirical evidence that say people and religious environments are less liable to see addiction whatever it might be his response to that is to say first of all that made me not be the case but even if it were the case that says nothing about the credibility or the reasonableness of those religious beliefs you have to look at those in their own I agree with that that is to say I think we have to bring in a certain kind of critical evaluation but my claim is that what that moral critical evaluation reveals is a dimension of reflexive moral consciousness that is not itself accounted for within this within the naturalistic worldview that we find ourselves charged as it were with a moral sensitivity and an aspiration towards the good but also with an element of conflict earnest and the question is how is that possible I have an answer to that at a religious answer if you like Christopher wants to say I don't know what the answer to that is perhaps evolution is a part of the explanation but we don't need an answer to it I think if you say we don't need an answer to it then you collapse back into a kind of acceptance that we may be blown wherever the wind carries us whereas I want to try and find a foundation that will make us secure against those winds of fashioned tide in time oh we know from we know from the Bible that the Virgin Mary did have quite a lot of other children but you excuse me we know from the study of the New Testament that the Virgin Mary did have quite a number of other children you can Duke it out at the research didn't what I was just trying to make a Duke it out with you at the reception this is a topic that wasn't what they were saying what are they complaining that they can hear or that they can't make up your mind um we know from the New Testament the Virgin Mary did have an early you didn't have to invent such an extreme contingency for your question because one of the things that makes theology I think incoherent and absurd is that not content with creating a supreme being full of love and care there's another supreme being has to be created who was once himself an angel in heaven who is the source of all woe and evil and temptation and the god can't seem to defeat him nor can he seem to save his creatures from having created the Manichaean opposite so don't worry your question was anticipated oh yes the the the one who mandates torture and slavery and wickedness is already amongst us by divine mandate how do you like that what could possibly be more ridiculous last question hello so I suppose I have a rather redundant question to ask actually and that's on the actual possible sorry I'm not I'm not getting this can we cannot let's just be quiet so we can hear what you say I'm sorry yeah I'm sorry I suppose I have a rather redundant question to ask as to please bear with me well translate yeah we were the judges of that yeah come on let's get a good as to the actual possibility of a dialog between an atheist and someone who is a believer the 20th century intellectual Arthur Kessler once called communism psychology and Catholicism closed systems now obviously that was very catchy catchphrase and Catholicism the way he was using the term could be expanded but those words a question of a closed system if we take a closed system to refer to something is very logical very coherent working together and rationality is that looking outwards to some objective fact that you were Pope arguing about it would seem to me that say Catholicism doesn't really allow an opening for a sincere dialogue of sorts and in this case I suppose one example you might look to say that natural law in the u.s. we're just about every noted scholar of it happens to be Catholic then not that that necessarily proves one thing or another but I think it's rather curious and I would just ask believing you do have a rational or logical system with a reference in rationality how does that allow you to talk of somebody who just frankly doesn't agree on the facts well I think we have been talking every but look one of the issues that divides the larger Christian community and I fall on one side of that divide and many here where Christians fall on the other side of it is the notion of the development of doctrine one of the things that people who would describe themselves as biblical Christians hold fiercely against Roman Catholicism and its shadow variants perhaps Anglicanism in some modes is the presumption as they would see it to supplement biblical revelation with a whole set of doctrines dogmas and claims and so on now I don't want to go into the particular heresies and there isn't the time to do so but what I would say is that it's part of the tradition to which I belong which would would be true also of the Orthodox and of others including some within the reformed tradition generate some Lutheran's and others that actually it's part of this creation of which we have beneficiaries that we have the means to interpret something like a revelation and interpreting it here can impart be a matter of elaborate elaborating explicating work out what's implied and so on but it's also a process of selection and was in the tradition to which I belong one thing that's emphasized is that it isn't the case that the church is the product of the Bible it's a case of the Bible is a product of the church that it was a process of selection begun in the Apostolic period and continued until the period of canonization of the Bible the 4th century it's a process of intellectual filtering judgment putting into interplay various kinds of considerations and so on and many of those considerations and many of those modes of interplay were drawn from the Hellenic world and indeed from Roman jurisprudential theory and so on so is no tradition engaging in that broader intellectual dialogue it seems to be something that linear in my tradition has been doing for at least 1700 years right on that note silence well let's just get a 1-minute summary from each and we don't have to time it just be quick of any final thoughts that you have and if you have not in particular then focus them on what it was that either brought you to the view that you hold or kind of helped clinched it for your just end on a personal note I think I just want to say that um those who have a some impression of a an outer figure creator or supervisor and so forth may possibly be able to get as far as a deist position and to say well given how little we know and how much we know we don't know we can't absolutely say there isn't a prime mover we can say there's no evidence for it but we can't say that there isn't one the evidence might be undiscovered I'm willing to debate that have often done sir but the argument for Thea not only can we establish this prime movers existence but we can show by some form of induction that he intervenes in wars that he answers prayers that he cares who we sleep with and in what position that what food we eaten on what days is a ridiculous proposition it's a claim to a truth that no primate can claim to make primates who claim to know it should be distrusted great damage has been done and continues to be done by such people and by and by such ideas you're better off thinking for yourself and taking all the risks and I might add all the pleasures that will come from that the most overrated of the virtues is faith the metaphysical claims of religion are untrue thank your attorney thank you well let me just begin briefly with a supplement to the previous answer I gave because I suppose that one thing that some might feel is that there's a kind of a danger of a kind of arrogant intellectualism here in dealing with matters of religious adopted by the tradition from out of which I was speaking one in which notions of natural law play an important part and one thing that sometimes some Christians are neglectful of which other Christians rightly remind us of is the idea that what we come to what we're is also matter of what we're brought to that actually what I haven't mentioned so far is the rule of grace grace not as something merited but something is freely given and I think it is an in a liminal part of religious faith faith under students trust that that be something that one receives rather than something that one errands or secures world by one's own intellectual or other endeavors that's one thing the second thing I really I just returned to where I began which is that we stand in need and I would have thought this was ever more evident in the kind of widely degraded and conflicted culture that we inhabit we stand in need of a kind of a no blurring conception of what it is to be a human being and I don't think that that's what's at issue between us the question is whether or not that conception B can be given out of the resources or say something like enlightenment reason or whether it's something that has to have a deeper foundation if you like an ontological foundation of foundation in the kinds of beings that we are not just the ways in which we choose to think of I think it has to have that ontological foundation and I see no possibility of it having that foundation other than within the scheme of creation so at the end of the day was a combination of some reason and perhaps some grace those are the factors that are determined quite where the position that I occupy but whether you share any part of that that quest for a conception as a human that will serve to ground a kind of mutual respect and a sense of human Worth and so on is a search that goes on and I think to some extent is imperiled by aspects of the kind of degraded culture we inhabit thank you thank you although the fun does not end here it continues across the street at Blackwell's with a book signing and some wine so join me once more in thanking our speakers and then head over there for more information about the veritas forum including additional recordings and a calendar of upcoming events please visit our website at Veritas org

Channel: The Veritas Forum

Views: 1,144,332

Rating: 4.6840143 out of 5

Keywords: veritas forum, dailyhitchens22, christopher hitchens, human rights, john haldane, we don't do God, Oxford University, new atheism, christianity

Id: pflU-nnY4MA

Length: 100min 39sec (6039 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

haha ,. i think even Hitch was falling asleep listening to this guy.

[u/Tatooine16]

It's a shame that the principle of freedom from religion is dead in the US now. I miss Mr. Hitchens point of view, but am glad that he did not live to see the days that have come upon us.

[u/Digelato]

Haldane's insult at the end was sophisticated and layered. This philosopher v Hitchens debate was inspiring and thought provoking in ways that Hitchens v religious does not come close. Thanks OP.