God Is Not Great | Christopher Hitchens | Talks at Google

1. 0:00 – 1:28

   Event welcome and Christopher Hitchens introduction

   1. SPSpeaker0:00

      Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's Authors@Google event. Um, after the talk, we're going to have a Q&A session, and I'd like to remind everyone to please use the microphone in the middle of the room if you have questions. It's my pleasure to introduce Christopher Hitchens. Mr. Hitchens was born in England and educated at Oxford. In nineteen eighty-one, he migrate, he migrated to the U.S. and recently became a U.S. citizen. He is the author of a number of notable books, including Why Orwell Matters and Letters to a Young Contrarian. As one of our most notable public intellectuals, he has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, The Nation, Slate, and Free Inquiry, and taught at The New School, UC Berkeley, and the University of Pittsburgh. In his new book, God Is Not Great, he lays out the ca-the case against religion, which he spent a lifetime developing with anger, humor, and the formidable style of argument that defines all of Mr. Hitchens' work. About the book, Michael Kinsey wrote in The New York Times, "Hitchens has outfoxed the Hitchens watchers by writing a serious and deeply felt book totally consistent with his beliefs of a lifetime, and God should be flattered. Unlike most of those clamoring for his attention, Hitchens treats him like an adult." Ever contrarian and always eloquent, he's here to dis-- today to discuss the book, take your questions, and take on anyone who dares to challenge him to a debate. He'll be signing books afterwards. And with that, please join me in welcoming Christopher Hitchens to Google.

   2. CHChristopher Hitchens1:26

      [audience clapping]

2. 1:28 – 2:57

   Why he’ll defend the subtitle: “How religion poisons everything”

   1. CHChristopher Hitchens1:28

      Thank you, darling. Geez. Well, thank you so much for that suspiciously grudging introduction.

   2. SPSpeaker1:40

      [laughing]

   3. CHChristopher Hitchens1:42

      Um, and thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for coming. I, I understand we've only got, uh, uh, the balance or so of an hour together, so I'll try and break the rule of a lifetime and be terse. Um, and I think I'll put it like this. Uh, it's true that publishers sometimes want to put a catchy or suggestive or challenging title, subtitle on a book. And so when we hit upon, or rather they hit upon, well, how religion poisons and why religion poisons everything, I knew what would happen. People would come up to me and they'd say, "You mean absolutely everything? You mean the whole thing?" They would take me literally. I thought, "Well, all right. One of the things you have to do in life as an author is live up to your damn subtitle."

   4. SPSpeaker2:28

      [laughing]

   5. CHChristopher Hitchens2:30

      So I thought today I'd defend the subtitle, uh, because I think the title probably, when it came to me in the shower, I realized pretty much does speak for itself. Uh, unlike that sign outside Little Rock Airport, huge yellow and black sign that you see from the airport that says just, "Jesus."

   6. SPSpeaker2:47

      [laughing]

   7. CHChristopher Hitchens2:49

      A word I have used myself and a name, and a name I know, but put like that seems to say both too much and too little, you know what I mean?

   8. SPSpeaker2:56

      [laughing]

3. 2:57 – 4:58

   Religion as an outdated theory from humanity’s “infancy”

   1. CHChristopher Hitchens2:57

      Well, here's how religion has this effect, in my opinion. It is derived from the childhood of our species, from the bawling, fearful period of infancy. It comes from the time when we did not know that we lived on an orb. We thought we lived on a disc, and we did not know, uh, that we went round the sun or that the sky was not a dome. When we didn't know that there was a germ theory to explain disease and innumerable theories for the explanation of things like famine. It comes from a time when we had no good answers. But because we are pattern-seeking animals, a good thing about us, and because we will prefer even a conspiracy theory or a junk theory to no theory at all, a bad thing about us, this is and was our first attempt at philosophy, just as in some ways it was our first attempt at science. And it was all founded on and remains founded on a complete misapprehension about the origins, first of the universe and second about human nature. We now know a great deal about the origins of the universe and a great deal about our own nature. I've just had my DNA sequenced by National Geographic. You should all, by the way, get this done. It's incredibly important to find out how racism and creationism have been abolished by this extraordinary scientific breakthrough. How you can find out your kinship with all your fellow creatures originating in Africa, but also your kinship with other forms of life, including, uh, not just animal, but plant. And you get an idea of how you are part of nature and how that's wonderful enough. And we know from Stephen Hawking and from many others, um, Steven Weinberg and many other great physicists, an enormous amount now about what Professor Weinberg's brilliant book calls The First Three Minutes, the, the concept of the Big Bang. And we can be as sure as we can probably need be that neither this enormous explosion that

4. 4:58 – 6:30

   Facing cosmic indifference vs. religious wish-thinking

   1. CHChristopher Hitchens4:58

      st-set the universe in motion, which is still moving away from us at a great rate, nor this amazingly complex billion-dollar, billion-dollar, billion-year per-- uh, period of evolution, we can be pretty certain it was not designed so that you and I could be meeting in this room. We are not the objects of either of these plans. These plans don't know we're here. Sorry to say, wouldn't know or care if we stopped being here. We have to face this alone with the eq-equipment, intellectual and moral, that we've been given or that we've acquired or that is innate to us. And here's another way in which religion, uh, poisons matters. It begins by saying, "Well, why don't we lie to ourselves instead? Why don't we pretend that we're not gonna die or that an exception can be made, at least in our own case, if we make the right propitiations or the right, the right moves? Why do we not, uh, pretend that the, uh, things like modern diseases which we can sequence now, sequence the genes of, uh, like AIDS, are the punishment for wickedness and fornication? Why don't we keep fooling ourselves that there is- A divine superintendent of all this because it would abolish the feeling of loneliness and possibly even irrelevance that we might otherwise have. In other words, why don't we surrender to wish thinking? That poisons everything, in my opinion, right away. It attacks the very basic integrity that we need to conduct the scrupulous inquiries, investigations, experiments,

5. 6:30 – 7:01

   Religion versus scientific progress and medical research

   1. CHChristopher Hitchens6:30

      interrogations of evidence that we need to survive and to prosper and to grow. And it's no coincidence, no accident that almost every scientific advance has been made in the teeth of religious opposition of one form or another that says we shouldn't be tampering with God's design. I suppose the most recent and most dangerous one of these is the attempt to limit, uh, stem cell, uh, research. But everyone could probably think of other forms of scientific research and inquiry, especially medical, uh, that had led, uh, uh, to religious persecution

6. 7:01 – 9:32

   Morality without God: religion as an insult to human ethics

   1. CHChristopher Hitchens7:01

      i-in reprisal. Uh, thirdly, it's an attack, I think, on what's also very important to us, our innate morality. If there's one point that I get made more than a-another to me when I go and debate religious people, it's this. They say, "Where would your morals come from if there was no God?" It's actually-- I-it's a question that's posed in, in, uh, Dostoevsky's wonderful novel, The Brothers Karamazov. One of the, one of the brothers says, uh, it's Smerdyakov actually, the wicked one says it, um, "If God is dead, isn't everything permitted? Isn't everything permissible?" Uh, where would our ethics be if there was no superintending deity? This again seems to me a very profound insult to us in our very deepest nature and character. It is not the case, I submit to you, that we do not set about butchering and raping and thieving from each other right now, b-uh, only because we're afraid of a divine punishment or because we're looking for a divine reward. It's an extraordinarily base and insulting thing to say to people. Um, on my mother's side, some of my ancestry is Jewish. I don't happen to believe the story of Moses in Egypt or the exile or the wandering in the Sinai, and in fact now even Israeli archeology has shown that there isn't a word of truth to that story or really any of the others. But take it to be true. Am I expected to believe that my mother's ancestors got all the way to Mount Sinai, quite a trek, under the impression until they got there that rape, murder, perjury, and theft were okay, only to be told when they got to the foot of Mount Sinai, "Bad news, none of these things is kosher after all." [audience laughing] "They're all forbidden." N- I don't think so. I think, I think we can s- we c- actually have a better explanation in every sense, superior as well as better, that no one would've been able to get as far as Mount Sinai or in any other mountain in any other direction unless they had known that h-human solidarity demands that we look upon each other as brothers and sisters, and that we forbid activities such as murder, uh, rape, uh, perjury, and theft, that this is innate in us. Of those to whom it is not innate, the sociopaths who don't understand the needs of anyone but themselves, and the psychopaths who positively take pleasure in breaking these rules, well, all we can say is, um, they-- according to one theory, they are also made in the image of God, which makes the image of God question rather problematic, does it not? Or that they can be explained by further and better research and have to be restrained and disciplined meanwhile.

7. 9:32 – 11:35

   The “fear of freedom”: religion as a celestial dictatorship

   1. CHChristopher Hitchens9:32

      But in no sense here is religion a help where it claims to help most, which is to our morality, to, uh, ethics. Uh, finally, I would say, uh, not finally 'cause I'm finished here. I'm not quite done. Do relax. [audience laughing] I hope everyone's got a drink, something to eat. Um, but of, of these, uh, on the poison question, I think, uh, there's the real temptation of something very poisonous to human society and human relations, uh, which is the fear of freedom, the wish to be slaves, the wish to be told what to do. Now, just as we all like to think and we live under written documents and proclamations that encourage us to think that it is our birthright and our, our pre- our most precious need to be free, to be liberated, to be untrammeled, so we also know that unfortunately the, the innate in people is the servile, is the wish to be told what to do, is the adoration for strong and brutal and cruel, uh, leaders. That the, th-this other baser element of the human makeup has to be accounted for and gives us a great deal of trouble around the world as we speak. Religion, in my view, is a reification, a distillation of this wish to be a serf, to be a slave. Ask yourself if you really wish it was true that there was a celestial dictatorship that watched over you from the moment you were born, actually the moment you were conceived, all through life, night and day, knew your thoughts waking and sleeping. Uh, could, could in fact convict you of thought crime, the absolute dis-- uh, the absolute definition of a, of a dictatorship, can convict you for what you think and what you privately want, what you're talking about to yourself. That, uh, monitors you like this under permanent surveillance, control, and supervision, and doesn't even let go of you when you're dead, because that's when the real fun begins. [audience laughing] Now

8. 11:35 – 13:26

   North Korea as an example of enforced worship and political religion

   1. CHChristopher Hitchens11:35

      my question is this. I-- My question to you is this: Who wishes that that were true? Who wants to lead the life of a serf in a celestial North Korea? I've been to North Korea. I'm one of the very few writers who has. I, I am indeed the, the only writer who's been to all three axis of evil countries, Iran, Iraq, a-and, and North Korea. And I can tell you, North Korea is the most religious state I've ever been to. I used to wonder when I was a kid, what would it be like praising God and thanking Him all day and all night? Well, now I know, because North Korea is a completely worshipful state. It's set up only to do that, for adoration, and it's only one short of a trinity. They have a father and a son, as you know, the Dear Leader and the Great Leader. The, the father is still the president of the country. He's been dead for 15 years. But, uh, the Kim Jong Il, the little one, is only the head of the party and the army. His father is still the president, head of the state. So you have in North Korea what you might call a necrocracy.

   2. SPSpeaker12:33

      [laughing]

   3. CHChristopher Hitchens12:35

      Or, uh, what I also-- I, I call a mausolocracy as well, a thanatocracy. One, just one short of eternity. Father, son, maybe no Holy Ghost, but they do say that when the birth of the younger one took place, the birds of Korea sang in Korean to mark the occasion. This I've checked. It did not happen.

   4. SPSpeaker12:54

      [laughing]

   5. CHChristopher Hitchens12:55

      Take my word for it. Uh, didn't occur, and I suppose I should add that they don't threaten to follow you after you're dead. You can leave North Korea. You can get out of their hell and their paradise by dying. Out of the Christian and Muslim one, you cannot. This is the wish to be a slave, and in my vi-- view, it, it, uh, poisons, uh, human relations. Now, I've, I've already babbled for nearly twenty minutes. I'll be quick. Um, it is argued, well, some

9. 13:26 – 17:31

   Religious virtue claims, Martin Luther King, and the “surplus” challenge

   1. CHChristopher Hitchens13:26

      religious people have done great things and have been motivated to do so by their faith. The most cited case in point I have found is that of Dr., Dr. Martin Luther King, who I know I don't need to explain to you about. Two quick things on that. First, he was, it's true, a minister, um, and it-- he did preach the Book of Exodus, the exile of an enslaved and, and oppressed people as his metaphor. But if he, if he really meant it, he would have said that the oppressed people, as the Book of Exodus finds them doing, uh, were entitled to kill anyone who stood in their way and take their land, their property, enslave their women, uh, kill their children, and, uh, commit, uh, genocide, uh, rape, ethnic cleansing, and, uh, forcible threat, theft of land. That's what the Book of Exodus describes happening, the, the, the full destruction of other tribes. It's very fortunate that Dr. King only meant the Bible at the most to be used as a metaphor, and after all, he was using the only book that he could be sure all of his audience had ever really read. That's the first thing. The second is, during his lifetime, he was attacked all the time for having too many secular and leftist and non-believing friends, the people like famous Black secularists like Bayard Rustin, uh, A. Philip Randolph, and others, the men who actually did organize the March on Washington, which leads me to my third observation, which is this. It's a challenge I've made now in debates with rabbis, with priests of all Christian stripes, with imams, um, once with a-- I know this sounds like the opening of a joke about some bar, but once also with a Buddhist nun, um, in, in Miami. I, I ask them all. Here's my, here's my challenge. You have to name me an ethical statement that was made or a moral action that was performed by a religious person in the name of faith that could not have been made as an action or uttered as a statement by non-- a person not of faith, a person of no faith. You have to do that. Not so far, and I've done it at quite a high level with the religious, no takers. No one's been able to find me that. That being the case, we're entitled to say, I think, that re-religious faith is surplus to requirements, whereas if I was to ask anyone in this room, think of a wicked thing said or an evil thing done by a person of faith in the name of faith, no one would have a second of hesitation in thinking of one, would they? Interesting to re-realize how true that is and how much truer it's getting. Does anyone ever listen to Dennis Prager's show? He's a slightly loopy, uh, Christian broadcaster, um, religious broadcaster, I should say. He's not-- He's, he's more Jewish than Chris-- Judeo-Christian broadcaster who quite often rather generously has me on his show, and he asked me a question the other day. He had a challenge of his own. He said, "You're to imagine that you're in a town late at night where you've never been before, and you have no friends, and it's getting dark, and through the darkness you see coming towards you a group of men, let's say ten. Do you feel better or worse if you know that they're just coming from a prayer meeting?"

   2. SPSpeaker16:29

      [laughing]

   3. CHChristopher Hitchens16:34

      This is, uh, Mr. Prager's question to me. I say, "Well, Mr. Prager, without leaving you the, from just without quitting the letter B, I can tell you I've had that experience in Belfast, in Beirut, in Baghdad, in Bombay, in Bosnia, and in Bethlehem, and if you see anyone coming from a religious gathering in any of those places, you know exactly how fast you need to run."

   4. SPSpeaker16:57

      [laughing]

   5. CHChristopher Hitchens16:59

      [clears throat] And no one has to explain to you why, and I haven't had to waste any time telling you how, ladies and gentlemen. So I submit to you that it is those who are people of faith who have the explaining to do, who have the justifying to do with if this is indeed the case. If they can't account for anything about the origin of our cosmos or our species, if they say that without them we'd be without morals and make us seem as if we are merely animals without faith. If further, uh, everybody f- everybody can name an instance where religion has made

10. 17:31 – 20:41

    Wonder without religion and the case for church–state separation

    1. CHChristopher Hitchens17:31

       people actually behave worse to one another and act as a retardant upon the advances of knowledge and science and information, I submit that the case to be made, uh, is theirs rather than mine, and we have a better tradition. We're not just arid secularists and materialists, we on the atheist side. We can point to the, through the Hubble Telescope, the fantastic, awe-inspiring, majestic pictures that are being taken now of the outer limits of our universe, and who's going to turn away from those pictures and start gaping again at the burning bush?

    2. SPSpeaker18:05

       [laughing]

    3. CHChristopher Hitchens18:07

       We have smaller microscopes that can examine for us the miracles of the interior of the double helix and the sheer beauty of that. The natural world is wonderful enough, more wonderful than anything conjured by the fools who believe in astrology or the supernatural. And we have a better tradition politically, uh, against the popes and the, and the imams and the witchdoctors and the, the divine right of kings, and the whole long tradition of re- of civic repression combined with, uh, religion that's known as theocracy. We have created in the United States, the only country in the history of the world written on founding documents testable, organized works in progress based on the theory of human liberation, and the only constitution in the history of the world that says that there shall be a separation between the church and the state. Th-that God is never mentioned in the United States Constitution, except in order to limit religion and keep it out of politics and, and put it under legal control. This, uh, achievement was described by President Jefferson, whose biographer I am in a small way, to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, in a letter after they'd written to him for fear of persecution. By the way, who do you think Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, were afraid of being persecuted by? Anyone knows?

    4. SPSpeaker19:31

       Methodists.

    5. CHChristopher Hitchens19:31

       No. No, the Congregationalists of Danbury, Connecticut.

    6. SPSpeaker19:34

       [laughing]

    7. CHChristopher Hitchens19:35

       Uh, people forget, uh, what it used to be like. See how the Christians loved each other, uh, how they, they tried to repeat the European pattern of one religious sect repressing and torturing another one. And as you, as you probably know, the president wrote back and said, "No, you may be assured that there will ever be in this country a wall of separation between the church and the state." So I have a new slogan, and I'm taking it on tour, and I invite you to join me in it, and it goes like this: Mr. Jefferson, build up that wall.

    8. SPSpeaker20:03

       [laughing]

    9. CHChristopher Hitchens20:05

       Okay, thank you very much for coming. [clapping] And I'm all yours. And that was twenty-five minutes. I hope that's fair.

    10. SPSpeaker20:20

        Yeah.

    11. CHChristopher Hitchens20:22

        And I'll point to questioners if you'd like because I don't think anyone thinks that I've planted my immediate family in this hall, but Carol, stay out of it. [laughs]

    12. SPSpeaker20:31

        [laughing]

    13. CHChristopher Hitchens20:33

        Bring it on.

    14. SPSpeaker20:33

        [laughing]

11. 20:41 – 33:17

    Q&A: clarifying “fear of freedom” and what replaces religion

    1. SPSpeaker20:41

       Thank you for coming to Google.

    2. CHChristopher Hitchens20:43

       It's my honor.

    3. SPSpeaker20:44

       So you, you make it sound really, really simple. I mean, you have explanations for everything. Uh-

    4. CHChristopher Hitchens20:51

       Da.

    5. SPSpeaker20:52

       And I agree with a lot of your arguments, and, you know, like, I, I lived in, you know, like, a, a socialist country. I mean, I come from Croatia, so I, you know, I, I empathize with a little bit of when you say, like, the axis of evil and especially North Korea being a perfect theocracy. I can relate to that. But I don't understand, uh, why do you say, uh, that these people really want to be enslaved? If you could, uh, explain this to me. I, I, I mean, I think there's really a system, you know, like set up by a minority, which, which is really a brutal system, and I, I, I don't understand that part of, you know, like, this is something that these people want, so.

    6. CHChristopher Hitchens21:34

       Did you say you were Hrvatska? Croatian?

    7. SPSpeaker21:37

       Yes. Yes.

    8. CHChristopher Hitchens21:38

       Yeah. Um, well, then you-- The, then I would be upset if you thought I meant that, uh, these man-made regimes were there because people wanted them to be. No. That's not what I meant at all about North Korea particularly. These, these have been riveted onto-

    9. SPSpeaker21:51

       Yes

    10. CHChristopher Hitchens21:52

        ... people. Um, I mean, North Korea is a hermetic place, unfortunately, in that it has ocean on either side of it, the Demilitarized Zone, which is several miles wide on the south, and Russia and China on the north. So y-you have a place where you, you can, uh, horribly conduct an experiment on human beings, essentially. You can isolate them totally. The North Korean state was set up in the same year that Orwell published, uh, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and you almost think that somebody gave Kim Il-sung a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four in Korean and said, "Do you think we could make this fly?"

    11. SPSpeaker22:25

        [laughing]

    12. CHChristopher Hitchens22:27

        And he said, "Well, I can't be sure, but we sure can give it the old college try."

    13. SPSpeaker22:30

        [laughing]

    14. CHChristopher Hitchens22:31

        'Cause that's how it feels there. I went there. I thought, "I've had this exper--" I'll just digress for a second. I've had this experience twice in my life. Journalists hate cliché. I know it doesn't always seem like that when you read the papers, but we try and avoid them. I went to Prague once under the old days of the communist regime. I thought, "Whatever happens to me here, I'm not going to mention Franz Kafka in my essay. I'm going to be the first journalist not to do it." I went to a meeting of the opposition underground. Somebody betrayed us 'cause the secret police came in suddenly, wham, like this, broke down the door, dogs, torches, rubber truncheons, the lot. Slam me against the wall. "You're under arrest." "I demand to see the British ambassador," blah, blah. "You're under arrest." "What's the charge?" "We don't have to tell you that." I thought, "Fuck, I've got to mention Kafka after all."

    15. SPSpeaker23:15

        [laughing]

    16. CHChristopher Hitchens23:17

        They make you do it. Well, I, I-- That's actually what a cliché is. That's-- Communism is a cliché in itself. I, I-- Same in North Korea. I thought, "I don't want to mention Orwell. I don't want to mention Orwell. Now I have to mention him." There's no o- there's no other standard of comparison. No, what I meant about the fear of freedom was this: Many, many people don't, of course, want to live on-under a hellish starvation regime of Gulag type like that. But they, they quite like being told what to do, and they, they don't want to be told that life doesn't, world doesn't owe them a living and that they're on their own, and they, you know, they, they quite like it and repeatedly vote for parties and sometimes leaders who promise to provide everything as long as they'll give up just a little bit of freedom. Just a little bit. In the trade-off, you'll get more security, more welfare. It's a temptation. In some cases, it takes an extreme form, and, um, it-- I'm very impressed by how often when I debate with religious people, they, they will tell me that they, they g- they go, they gravitate towards faith because they want someone to, if you like, uh, look after them. The whole idea of a heavenly father, for example, is built up in this. Um, the-- There's the old joke says, some say God is dead, some say God is dad.

    17. SPSpeaker24:37

        [laughing]

    18. CHChristopher Hitchens24:38

        You figure. Uh, then there are people who-- Well, Islam for example, the word means, the word Islam means surrender, prostration. You, you, you give everything to God. You, you-- Everything's in His hands. This is implicitly totalitarian. That's all I mean. But I think it's innate in most people, is the feeling that they'd, they'd quite like someone to take care of them all the time. So it can be hard to argue with them that there is no such person.

    19. SPSpeaker25:04

        [laughing]

    20. SPSpeaker25:06

        I, I understand better now, but-

    21. CHChristopher Hitchens25:07

        It's okay

    22. SPSpeaker25:08

        ... you know, like I, I, I-- Just to follow up a little bit. Uh, so is there a possibility there to say that then some people are more freedom-loving than others? And is this some sort of, you know, like a f- I wouldn't call it racism or anything, but you know, like differentiating people by their love towards freedom? And I'll end with that.

    23. CHChristopher Hitchens25:29

        No, I'm certain that the same, uh, feelings are innate in all people. Uh, and that one day there will be a, a, a North Korean edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it'll be a huge bestseller there. I'm, I'm as, I'm as sure of that as I can be of anything. Though, at the moment, it's hard to imagine that there's anyone in, in North Korea who's even allowed to consider the concept of political liberty. It will come because it is innate. I've, I've no doubt about that.

    24. SPSpeaker25:54

        To follow up on this fear of freedom and this innate idea, sorry to beat a dead horse, but-

    25. CHChristopher Hitchens25:59

        Please

    26. SPSpeaker25:59

        ... what do you, uh, what do you think would, would possibly replace this? I also think that there's some-- I mean, it's obviously much easier to say, "My life is out of my control," or, "These events are out of my control," so you know, I'm gonna thank God for the good things and, you know, uh, hate the devil for the bad things, whatever. So like, you know, from Plato to, to Si-- uh, to Nietzsche to Socra-- or to Sartre have said, it's difficult to choose the life where you're actually deciding and making choices for yourself and taking responsibility and, uh, appreciating the fact that the world doesn't care about your existence and, and doing what you need to do with that. It, it is difficult. How do we, you know, what-- How could we possibly imagine a world where everybody buys into that idea, and how do we-- Where would we go? Like, where would that structure that some people feel they can't do without, where would they get that from? I guess what would, what would religion be replaced by to fulfill this natural need, if anything?

    27. CHChristopher Hitchens26:47

        Yeah. Well, I would say that emancipating oneself from religion and from the, the combined sort of solipsism and masochism, which is what I was trying to say to the comrade here a moment ago. Um, religion says to you, remember, the, the monotheistic ones, you know, "You're a miserable sinner. Your sin is original. You can't escape it. You're born as a wretch. You're made out of dust," or according to the Quran, a clot of blood. You're a worm. You're nothing, you know, but a piece of gunk, basically. But-- And you've got to work really hard to get away from the, the terrible punishment that awaits you for that. So total abnegation. But there's also good news. The universe is designed with you in mind.

    28. SPSpeaker27:33

        [laughing]

    29. CHChristopher Hitchens27:34

        And God has a plan for you personally. So just when the person thinks they can't take any more abuse, it's like being inducted into a cult. Just when the person thinks they can't take any more humiliation, they're told, "Ah, but Father loves you, and He wants you to join our group." It's not good for people. You'd be better off without it, so would everyone you know. So it's not a matter of what would we put in its place, we wouldn't. We'd be emancipated from that kind of sadomasochism. That's a good thing to start off with. Second, we have the wonders and beauties of science to study. We have instead of ancient texts that are full of lies and myths, we have increasingly a wonderful li-- world literature that's available to anybody who can read even a little. Uh, uh, most recently, I would just cite it because yesterday was the birthday of India. Happy birthday, by the way, to all Indians here. Um, and Pakistanis, if you insist, though I think partition was a huge mistake.

    30. SPSpeaker28:29

        [laughing]
12. 33:17 – 37:08

    Q&A: community, organizing atheists, and practical resources

    1. SPSpeaker33:17

       So this is a kind of a follow-up on Tom's question. I have a buddy who styles himself as a kind of an allegorical pagan and, uh-

    2. CHChristopher Hitchens33:23

       Mm-hmm

    3. SPSpeaker33:24

       ... he's had a lot of angry criticisms of religion, many of which echo yours. But at the same time, he feels in himself a kind of a biological need to be part of a circle of believers in a community which he feels helps his rather fragile emotional demeanor. He goes through, you know, depression and things like that, and he finds that belief-- So, so what he's done is try to find what he feels is the least obnoxious religion he can find, and then not take it too seriously. What would you say to such a person? [audience laughing]

    4. CHChristopher Hitchens33:52

       Well, that used to be called the Church of England. [audience laughing] Or, um, the Unitarians, about whom Bertrand, Bertrand Russell said, "The great thing about them is they believe in one God maximum." [audience laughing] Uh, Peter de Vries is very good on this. He says people used to be pagans and polytheists and believe in multiple gods, and then they started believing in one God, and they're getting nearer the true figure all the time. [audience laughing] Uh, this is progress.

    5. SPSpeaker34:21

       [audience laughing]

    6. SPSpeaker34:25

       Hello. Um, in an article, I believe it was in Slate, that I read, y-you seemed, um, reluctant to endorse, if not critical of Richard Dawkins' attempt to sort of organize atheists under the title of Brights.

    7. CHChristopher Hitchens34:36

       Yes.

    8. SPSpeaker34:37

       Um, and I believe that your comment was that we infidels need no such machinery of reinforcement. Um, my question is, if, if like-minded people do not organize, um, especially if those whose ideals we oppose are more organized, how can we a-attempt to kind of steer our society the way that we would like it to go?

    9. CHChristopher Hitchens34:59

       Well, I, I was thinking of saying this to the previous question. I mean, I, I'm in some ways the wrong person to ask these questions 'cause I'm, I'm no longer a joiner-upper of, of groups. I don't feel the belonging need anymore. I used to when I was younger and more left than I am now, feel the, the need to be involved in an organized way. N-now I don't, and I think I probably have more influence as an individual than I ever did as a cogwheel in a so-called party. A point for e-anyone to ponder, actually, who's asked have they ever considered registering independent, for example. People may fight harder for your vote if you don't give it away in advance. Separate question, um, and it, um, it's very important to me that I, to, I don't belong to a church. People who believe as I believe don't need to get together all the time and remind ourselves what we believe, reinforce it, uh, ram it home in case we forget the incredible propositions that, you know, we're singing and all this kind of thing. Uh, you just recognize a fellow free thinker when you meet one. That should be enough, and in any country or any language as well. Um, the, there will be in, in Washington in, in October, the big gathering where Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and, um, Sam Harris and, uh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and myself and many others are gonna be, Victor Stenger. Because there has been an extraordinary vogue of, uh, of successful books on this subject now, and I think there's a change in the zeitgeist going on about religion.

    10. SPSpeaker36:27

        Mm-hmm.

    11. CHChristopher Hitchens36:27

        And let me just say this, if the, if that zeitgeist has been brought about, uh, has, if a change has been brought about in that zeitgeist, it hasn't been by any organization It's been by a group of like-minded people writing their hearts out and refusing to be intimidated by religious bullying or to allow religious nonsense to be taught in the schools, for example, in place of science, um, or to allow euphemisms to be spread about the behavior of the parties of God in Iraq or elsewhere. That's what's created it, not, not an organization, but what you might call an intellectual tendency. I think that's fine. I think it's encouraging.

13. 37:08 – 47:23

    Q&A: the U.S., religion’s political influence, and scientific education battles

    1. SPSpeaker37:08

       Hi. A few of the things that you said don't really seem consistent with our experience in the United States. Um, two things in particular. One is that you said, you know, once people, you know, have Hubble telescopes and microscopes, the burning bush is not as interesting.

    2. CHChristopher Hitchens37:20

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SPSpeaker37:20

       And the other thing you said is that, you know, religion kind of feeds into a hu-- you know, innate human nature for, you know, being told what to do or not having as much freedom. Well, in the United States, you have the most advanced, wealthy, most powerful nation in probably the history of the world, and you have a-- probably the most freedom-loving, you know, almost invented-- not, not inventing, but, like, really espousing the philosophy of freedom and individuality and trying to, you know, propagate that throughout the world. Yet you also have the most religious nation. Well, it's true. I mean, you can argue with the methods, but, I mean, it's-- there's no question that, like, the-- we are trying to promote democracy. Um, and yet you have, um, you know, the most religious nation. You have, like, you know, religio-- people going to church is probably at an all-time high. Um, religious people affect who our leaders are, you know, to, to a great degree. So how do you explain, like, that contradiction?

    4. CHChristopher Hitchens38:08

       Well, I don't think it's a contradiction because religious, um-- the secular constitution means you can have religious pluralism. Now, for example, where I come from originally, you can probably tell I was born in, in, in England, the, the head of the church is the head of the state and the head of the armed forces. It's a f- an official church, and you have to pay for it, and, um, whether you want to or not. And on the moment that, um, Her Majesty the Queen expires, the head of the Church of England will become a bat-eared half-Muslim with no taste in far-- women as far as I can see.

    5. SPSpeaker38:43

       [laughs]

    6. CHChristopher Hitchens38:46

       The lugubrious Prince Charles-

    7. SPSpeaker38:47

       [laughs]

    8. CHChristopher Hitchens38:49

       -who goes to classes on Islam and talks to plants and-

    9. SPSpeaker38:52

       [laughs]

    10. CHChristopher Hitchens38:54

        -is a loon. Um, that's what you get for founding a church on the family values of Henry VIII.

    11. SPSpeaker39:00

        [laughs]

    12. CHChristopher Hitchens39:01

        In the United States, you can't have any of that. That'd be completely unconstitutional. You can belong to any church you want, and the government has nothing to do with it. Uh, and people, I think, um, take a Tocquevillean view, if you like, of the church. They go, many of them, to church for social reasons, some, some of them for ethnic ones, some of them be- for charitable, some of them for community reasons, as you might say. If you ask someone now-- I, I've been doing it a lot recently. Uh, I have debated it at every stop of my book tour. "Okay, so you said you were a Baptist minister." "Yes." "Well, do you believe in John Calvin's teaching on predestination and hellfire?" "Why do you wanna know?"

    13. SPSpeaker39:40

        [laughs]

    14. CHChristopher Hitchens39:41

        "Well, only 'cause you said you were a Baptist." "Yeah, but I mean, I'm a Southern Baptist, you know, that ki-- Well, come on." They, they, they don't love the question. They, uh, they, they... Ask, ask Catholics if they really believe what their church teaches or what the pope tells them. Of course, they don't for the most part. Uh, the fastest-growing group of people in the country meas-- has been measured as being those who have no belief or who are atheists. By far the fastest-growing. It's doubled in the last ten years. Uh, people are evidently lying to the opinion polls. There aren't enough churches in the country, and there are plenty of them. There are not enough to f-- uh, to take all the people who say they go to them. Just couldn't be done. Couldn't fit them in. Uh, I don't think people who have doubts about religion are gonna tell them to opinion pollsters who call them up at dinnertime. They will say, "Yes, I am a Methodist," or whatever it is. They're not gonna say, "I sometimes wonder if John Wesley was really the man," you know?

    15. SPSpeaker40:32

        [laughs]

    16. CHChristopher Hitchens40:33

        Not when the multiple choice boxes are being gone through.

    17. SPSpeaker40:35

        [laughs]

    18. CHChristopher Hitchens40:36

        So, uh, but unfortunately, I mean, there are people who think that that's the way to go politically. I mean, the president, for example, uh, thinks that it-- to say someone is a person of faith is axiomatically to confer a compliment on them. And if you remember, he did it to Vladimir Putin, KGB goon in hood, and increasingly, evidently very dangerous man to have in charge of Russia. President meets him and says right away, "Well, I could tell by looking into his eyes and seeing he was wearing his grandmother's crucifix that he was just the chap for me." Now, in a strong field, I think that's the stupidest thing the president has yet said.

    19. SPSpeaker41:15

        [laughs]

    20. CHChristopher Hitchens41:17

        And he must, I think, occasionally regret it. Um, and I got-- tried to get a researcher onto this once to find out just-- I just need to know something. Has Vladimir Putin ever worn his grandmother's crucifix since? Had he ever been seen wearing it before? Or did he just think this should be enough for the president of the United States?

    21. SPSpeaker41:36

        [laughs]

    22. CHChristopher Hitchens41:38

        Because if so, it would show that religion was not just a, a, a metaphysically incorrect, but as I have believed said, a danger and a poison to all of us. If our republic can be, and its president can be pushed over like that, like someone offering garlic to a vampire, then we really are in trouble.

    23. SPSpeaker42:00

        But just, just to follow up, though, it just sounds like you would have almost no religion in the U.S. if you, if it was true what you were saying, is that once you became an advanced scientific society, you know, you'd lose interest in religion, which is not the case.

    24. CHChristopher Hitchens42:11

        All right. I'll say a bit more. I mean, the-- Take the case of the, uh, so-called intelligent design school. They want, they want at least equal time. They used to want to ban evolution. Now they want equal time in schools. So they've brought with their Discovery Institute friends from Washington, um, moves on school boards and courts in Oklahoma, uh, Kansas, um, Texas, and, uh, the most conservative county of Pennsylvania around the town of Dover. And they have been humiliated in each case. This is in Kansas, in Texas, in Oklahoma, and in the most reactionary part of Pennsylvania, thrown off the school board by the electorate and thrown out of court as flat-out unconstitutional by the judges, in all cases, Reagan Republican appointees. And I don't know what they're gonna do next, these rednecks. I don't know what they're gonna do.

    25. SPSpeaker43:05

        [laughs]

    26. CHChristopher Hitchens43:06

        But I know why it doesn't work and why it's not going to work, because there may be many, many parents in Kansas who say, "Well, I personally think that God made the rocks," and so on, and, uh, only made them six thousand years ago. But they don't want their children taught that in school. They don't wanna come from a state where they get laughed at when they say where they're from. "Oh, you're from Kansas."

    27. SPSpeaker43:27

        [laughs]

    28. CHChristopher Hitchens43:27

        "That's the place where..." They don't like that.

    29. SPSpeaker43:29

        [laughs]

    30. CHChristopher Hitchens43:29

        It was the same, it was the same with the Confederate flag issue. Quite apart from the racism, a lot of people didn't wanna come from a state that had the Confederate battle flag on its, was it? Among other things, people won't have their conventions in your state. You'll suffer for that, too. You'll get laughed at when you travel. They don't want this. And nor, and nor should they have to put up with it because of a handful of, uh, crackpots. So no, I don't say there aren't a lot of devout people in this country, and I don't say that science just negates religion. But I say that the influence of religion as opposed to scientific rationalism is hugely overestimated, yeah. Shouldn't, shouldn't impress people from, to the point where they feel it must, can't be opposed.
14. 47:23 – 1:07:41

    Q&A: atheism, totalitarianism, and Guantanamo; plus art and “the transcendent”

    1. SPSpeaker47:23

       Yeah, two things, an observation and a concern. Uh, my first observation is that I think you share something in common with Jesus, in that both of you seem to be attacking aspects of religion. But I note that in his case, he attacked the specific religious leaders, whereas you attack the religion itself. And I just find that interesting. The, the second thing-

    2. CHChristopher Hitchens47:41

       No, I'm not... Our resemblances are often pointed out.

    3. SPSpeaker47:43

       [laughs]

    4. SPSpeaker47:48

       I'm, I'm sad to hear that. I thought for sure I'd be the first.

    5. SPSpeaker47:50

       [laughs]

    6. SPSpeaker47:51

       Um, the second thing, a bit of concern. If we start tr-- going more and more toward atheism, I mean, you, you mentioned some of the horrible things that have happened in the name of religion. Um, but I look at one of the greatest genocides, uh, or, or at least mass murders ever was by the, uh, Soviet Union, uh, under Lenin and Stalin, when in the name of, among other things, uh, atheism, they killed an enormously large number of their own people. Um, and, uh, what do you think would prevent that from happening, uh, if indeed you are successful?

    7. CHChristopher Hitchens48:24

       I have a chapter on this in my book because it's a very frequently asked question. I think it's also a very serious one. Uh, I have to condense the chapter briefly, if I may, but here's the situation. Until nineteen seventeen, the year of the Russian Revolution, millions of Russians, millions and millions of them, had for hundreds and hundreds of years been told that the head of the state, the tsar, was also the head of the church and was little more than human. He was the Little Father Of the people. He wasn't quite divine, but he was more like a saint than a human, and he owned everything in the country, and everything was due to him. That's how gigantic layer of Russian society was, was inculcated with the servile, fatalistic, uh, ideas. If you are Joseph Stalin, you shouldn't be in the dictatorship business in the first place if you can't realize this is a huge opportunity for you. You've inherited a population that's servile and credulous [coughs] and superstitious. Well, what does Stalin do? He sets up an inquisition. He has heresy hunts and trials of heretics, the Moscow trials. He proclaims miracles, uh, Lysenko's agriculture that was supposed to produce three harvests a year or whatever it was, the pseudo-biology that would feed everyone in a week. Um, he says all thanks are due at all times to the leader, you must praise him at all times for his goodness and kindness. And incidentally, he always kept the Russian Orthodox Church on his side. It split. Uh, it split the church, and some of them moved to New York and set up a rival. But the Russian Orthodox Church always remained part of the regime. He was not so stupid as not to know he had to do that. Just as Hitler and Mussolini made an even more aggressive deal with the Roman Catholic Church and with some of the Protestants. And remember, the other great axis of evil person of that time, the Emperor of Japan, was not just a religious person, but actually a god. So fascism, communism and, and Stalinism, and Nazism are actually nothing like as secular as some people think, uh, and much more religious than most people know. But here's what a fair test would be. Find a society that's adopted the teachings of Spinoza and Voltaire, Galileo, Einstein, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, um, and gone down the pits as a result of doing that, into famine and war and dictatorship and torture and repression. That would be a fair test.

    8. SPSpeaker50:49

       Well, I understand that-

    9. CHChristopher Hitchens50:49

       That's the test I'd like to-- That's the experiment I'd like to run.

    10. SPSpeaker50:52

        [laughing]

    11. CHChristopher Hitchens50:53

        I don't think that's gonna end up with a gulag.

    12. SPSpeaker51:00

        Hi. Thank you for coming. Um-

    13. CHChristopher Hitchens51:02

        Thank you for having me.

    14. SPSpeaker51:02

        More ladies asking questions would be awesome. And please, I implore you to be really hilarious so we can prove Mr. Hitchens wrong about why women cannot be funny. Um-

    15. CHChristopher Hitchens51:11

        [audience laughing] I was wondering what you, what you'd done with your checks here, I must say.

    16. SPSpeaker51:15

        [laughs]

    17. SPSpeaker51:16

        [laughing]

    18. SPSpeaker51:16

        We're a technology company. Um-

    19. SPSpeaker51:20

        [laughing]

    20. SPSpeaker51:21

        So I'm, I'm not religious, but just to play a little devil's advocate, what do you say to studies that show that people who consistently go to church, who pray, who believe in God, have, like, lower blood pressure and live longer lives, et cetera?

    21. CHChristopher Hitchens51:37

        Well, I'd say it wouldn't, uh, wouldn't prove much. I mean, the... If it, uh, it was hard to prove. I w- I'm not sure I would be able to trust the, the methodology. But suppose it was true, um, the same could be said of being, um, a Moonie, for example. I mean, there are-- It's said that, it is said that Louis Farrakhan's, uh, racist, crackpot Nation of Islam section, gang gets young men off drugs. For all I know, it does. It may. But that doesn't recommend it to me.

    22. SPSpeaker52:09

        [laughing]

    23. CHChristopher Hitchens52:10

        Nor, nor, nor does it prove a thing about its theology, if you see what I mean. Whereas I can absolutely tell you that of the suicide bombing population, one hundred percent are faith-based.

    24. SPSpeaker52:21

        [laughing]

    25. CHChristopher Hitchens52:24

        And I don't think that that in itself disproves faith, but I think it should make you skeptical of that kind of, uh, random sampling.

    26. SPSpeaker52:32

        Sure. There seem to be a lot-

    27. CHChristopher Hitchens52:34

        Of the genital mutilation community-

    28. SPSpeaker52:37

        I, I have a lot of progressive-

    29. CHChristopher Hitchens52:37

        ... the same can be said

    30. SPSpeaker52:38

        ... I have a lot of progressive religious friends who... I used to be pretty condescending towards religion, but I feel like I've learned a lot from them and learned a lot about their religious practice and what it means to them. And as you stated earlier, a lot of religious people don't really believe all the tenets of what their faith says anyway. So I feel like those, those friends of mine are looking for community and looking for a feeling of oneness with other people and with the universe and, and ultimately on a scientific level, that bears out anyway because on, like, a quantum level, everything is one and is the same.

Episode duration: 1:07:41