One of the things we’ve all met is the accusation
that we are strident or arrogant, or vitriolic,
or shrill. What do we think about that?
Hah! Yeah, well I’m amused by it, because
I went out of my way in my book to address
reasonable religious people. And I test-flew
the draft with groups of students who were
deeply religious. And indeed, the first draft
incurred some real anguish. And so I made
adjustments and made adjustments. And it didn’t
do any good in the end because I still got
hammered for being for being rude and aggressive.
And I came to realize that it’s a no-win
situation. It’s a mug’s game. The religions
have contrived to make it impossible to disagree
with them critically without being rude.
Without being rude.
You know, they sort of play the hurt feelings
card at every opportunity, and faced with
a choice of, well, am I going to be rude or am
I going to articulate this criticism? I mean,
am I going to articulate it, or am I just
going to button my lip?
Right, well, that’s what it is to trespass
a taboo. I think we’re all encountering the
fact that that religion is held off the table
of rational criticism in some kind of formal
way even by, we’re discovering, our fellow
secularists and our fellow atheists. You know,
just leave people to their own superstition,
even if it’s abject and causing harm, and
don’t look too closely at it.
Now that was, of course, the point of the
title of my book is there is this spell and
we got to break it. But if the charge of offensiveness
in general is to be allowed in public discourse,
then, without self-pity, I think we should
say that we, too, can be offended and insulted.
I mean, I’m not just in disagreement when
someone like Tariq Ramadan, accepted now at
the high tables of Oxford University as a
spokesman, says the most he’ll demand, when
it comes to the stoning of women, is a moratorium
on it. I find that profoundly  much more
than annoying.
Right, yeah, but I think
Insulting, not only insulting, but actually
threatening.
But you’re not offended. I don’t see you
taking things personally. You’re alarmed
by the liabilities of certain ways of thinking,
as is in Ramadan’s case.
Yes. But he would say, or people like him
would say that if I doubt the historicity
of the prophet Muhammad, I’ve injured them
in their deepest feelings.
Right.
Well I am, in fact. I think all people ought
to be offended, at least in their deepest
integrity by, say, the religious proposition
that without a supernatural, celestial dictatorship,
we wouldn’t know right from wrong. That we
only live by
But are you really offended by that? Doesn’t
it just seem wrong with you?
No. I say only, Sam, that if the offensiveness
charge is to be allowed in general, and arbitrated
by the media, then I think we’re entitled
to claim that much, without being self-pitying,
or representing ourselves as an oppressed
minority, which I think is an opposite danger,
I will admit. I’d like to add also that that
I agree with Daniel that there is no way in
which the charge against us can be completely
avoided, because what we say does offend the
core, very core, of any serious religious
person, (inaudible). We deny the divinity
of Jesus, for example, that maybe will be
terrifically shocked and possibly hurt. It’s
just too bad.
I’m fascinated by the contrast between the
amount of offence that’s taken by religion
and the amount of offense that people take
against anything else, like artistic taste.
Your taste in music, your taste in art, your
politics. You could be not exactly as rude
as you’d like, but you could be far, far
more rude about such things. And I’d quite
like to try to quantify that, to actively
research about it, actually test people with
statements about their favorite football
team, or their favorite piece of music or
something, and see how far you can go, before
they take offense, compared to  well, is
there anything else, apart from say, how ugly
your face is, that gives such
Or your husband’s or wife’s, or girlfriend’s
or partner’s faces.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
Well it’s interesting that you say that,
because I regularly debate with a terrible
man called John Donahue, of the Catholic Defense
League, and he actually is righteously upset
by certain transient modern art, which tend
to draw attention to themselves by blasphemy.
For example Serrano’s Piss Christ,
or the elephant dung on the Virgin, and so
on. And indeed, I think it’s quite
important that we share,
with Sophocles and other pre-monotheists,
a revulsion to desecration or to profanity,
that we don’t want to see churches desecrated
No, indeed not.
or religious icons trashed, and so forth.
We share an admiration for at least some of
the aesthetic achievements of religion.
Right. I think this whole notion of  I think
our criticism actually more barbed than that,
in the sense that we’re not  we are offending
people, but we are also telling them that
they’re wrong to be offended. I mean, physicists
aren’t offended when their view of physics
is disproved or challenged. I mean, this is
just not the way rational minds operate when
they’re really trying to get at what’s true
in the world. And religions purport to be
representing reality. And yet there’s this
peevish, tribal, and ultimately dangerous,
reflexive response to having these ideas challenged.
I think we’re pointing to the total liability
of that fact.
Well, and too, there’s no polite way to say
to somebody
You’ve wasted your life! (laughter)
do you realize you’ve wasted your life? Do
you realize that you’ve just devoted all
your efforts and all your goods to the glorification
of something which is just a myth? Or have
you ever considered  even if you say have
you even considered the possibility that maybe
you’ve wasted your life on this? There’s
no inoffensive way of saying that. But we
do have to say it, because they should jolly
well consider it. Same as we do about our
own lives.
Oh, absolutely.
Dan Barker’s making a collection of clergymen
who’ve lost their faith but don’t dare say
so, because it’s their only living. It’s
the only thing they know what to do.
Yeah, I’ve heard from one of them, at least.
Have you? Yes.
I used to have this when I was young, ongoing
arguments with members of the Communist Party.
They sort of knew that it was all up with
the Soviet Union. Many of them have suffered
a lot, and sacrificed a great deal, and struggled,
you know, manfully to keep what they thought
was the great ideal life. Their mainspring
had broken, but they couldn’t give it up,
because it would involve a similar concession.
But certainly, I mean, if anyone said to me,
how could you say that to them about the
Soviet Union? Didn’t you know you were going
to really make them cry and hurt their feelings?
I would’ve said don’t be ridiculous! Don’t
be absurd! But I find it in many cases almost
an exactly analogous argument.
When people tell me I’m being rude and vicious
and terribly aggressive in the way that I
say  well if I were saying these things
about the pharmaceutical industry or the oil
interests, would it be rude? Would it be off-limits?
No.
Course it wouldn’t.
Well, I want religion to be treated just the
way we treat the pharmaceuticals and the oil
industry. I’m not against pharmaceutical
companies. I am against some of the things
they do. But I just want to put religions
on the same page with them.
Including denying them tax exemption.
Yeah.
Yes.
Or in the English case, state subsidy.
I’m curious how religion acquired this charm
status that it has, compared to any of these
other things. And somehow we’ve all bought
into it whether we’re religious or not. Some
historical process has led to this immunization
of religion against, well, this hyper-offense
taking that religion is allowed to take.
And what’s particular amusing to me finally
 at first it infuriated me, but now I’m
amused  is they’ve managed to enlist legions
of non-religious people who take offense on
their behalf.
And how!
In fact, the most vicious reviews of my book
have been by people who are not themselves
religious, but they’re terribly afraid of
hurting the feelings of the people that are
religious. And they chastise me worse than
anybody who is deeply religious.
Exactly my experience. Exactly my experience.
So one of you pointed out how condescending
that view is. It’s like the idea of penitentiaries
I mean, other people need them, you know,
that we must keep these people safely in their
myths.
Yes.
Well. I think there’s one answer to that
question which may illuminate a difference,
or at least the difference that I have, I
think, maybe with all three of you. There’s
something about  I mean, I still use words
like spiritual and mystical without
furrowing my brow too much and, I admit, to
the consternation of many atheists. I think
there is a range of experience that is rare,
and that is only talked about without obvious
qualms in religious discourse. And because
it’s only talked about in religious discourse,
it is just riddled with superstition. And
it’s used to cash out various metaphysical
schemes which it can’t reasonably do. But
clearly people have extraordinary experiences.
Whether they have them on LSD, or they have
them because they were alone in a cave for
a year, or they have them because just happen
to have the neurology that is particularly
labile that allows for it, but people have
self-transcending experiences. And people
have the best day of their life where everything
seemed , you know, they seemed at one with
nature. And for that, because religion seems
to be the only game in town in talking about
those experiences and dignifying them, that’s
one reason why I think it seems to be taboo
to criticise it, because you are talking about
the most important moments in people’s lives
and trashing them, at least from their view.
Well, I don’t have to agree with you, Sam,
in order to say that it’s a very good thing
you’re saying that sort of thing, because
it shows that, as you say, religion is not
the only game in town when it comes to being
spiritual. It’s like it’s a good idea to
have somebody from the political right who
is an atheist, because otherwise there’s
a confusion of values which doesn’t help
us. And it’s much better to have this diversity
in other areas. But I think I sort of do agree
with you. But even if I didn’t, I think it
was valuable to have that.
Right.
If one could make one change, and only one,
nine would be to distinguish the numinous
from the supernatural.
Yes.
Right.
You had a marvelous quotation from Francis
Collins, the genome pioneer, who said, while
mountaineering one day, he was so overcome
by the landscape, and then went down on his
knees and accepted Jesus Christ. A complete
non sequitur.
(general agreement)
It’s never even been suggested that Jesus
Christ created that landscape
Right. A frozen waterfall in three
Three parts
parts which would remind of the Trinity.
Well, absolutely. We’re all triune in one
way or another, We’re programmed for that.
That’s very clear. There wouldn’t ever have
been a four-headed God.
Right (laughs)
You know that from experience. But that would
be an enormous distinction to make. And I
think it would clear up a lot of people’s
confusion that what we have in our emotions
are the surplus value of our personalities,
the bits that aren’t particularly useful
for our evolution, well, that we can’t prove
are, but that do belong to us all the same
don’t belong to the supernatural and are
not to be conscripted or annexed by any priesthood.
Yes, it’s a sad fact that people, in a sense,
won’t trust their own valuing of their numinous
experiences. They think it isn’t really as
good as it seems, unless it’s from God, and
some kind of a proof of religion. No, it’s
just as wonderful as it seems. It’s just
as important. It is the best moment in your
life. And it’s the moment when you forget
yourself and become better than you ever thought
you could be in some way. And see, in all
humbleness, the wonderfulness of nature. That’s
it! And that’s wonderful. But, it doesn’t
add anything to say, golly, that has to have
been given to me by somebody even more wonderful.
It’s been hijacked, hasn’t it, by the ?
But it’s also, I’m afraid, I think it’s
a deformity or a shortcoming in the human
personality, frankly, because religion keeps
stressing how humble it is, and how meek it
is, and how accepting, almost to the point
of self-abnegationist. But actually it makes
extraordinarily arrogant claims for these
moments, it says that I suddenly realise that
the universe is all about me.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes.
And I felt terrifically humble about it. Come
on! You know, we can laugh people out of that,
I believe.
Right.
Yeah.
Also, and I think we should, and indeed must
I am so tired of the if only Professor Dennett
had the humility to blah, blah, blah
Yes.
And humility, humility  and this from people
of breathtaking arrogance. And I think
We shove one aside, saying  just don’t
mind me, I’m on an errand for God!
Yeah, right.
(laughter)
How modest is that?
This is the point I think we should return
to, this notion of the arrogance of science.
Because there is no discourse which enforces
humility more rigorously. Scientists, in my
experience, are the first people to say they
don’t know. I mean if you get a scientist
to start talking off his area of specialisation,
he immediately starts  he or she  hedging
his bet, saying, you know, I’m not sure but
I’m sure there’s someone in the room who
knows more about this than me  and, of course,
so, you know, all the data’s not in. This
is the mode of discourse in which we are most
candid about the scope of our ignorance.
Well actually a lot of academics come up with
that kind of false modesty, but I do know
what you mean.
Well, yeah, yes it is.
Many’s the historian who says, no, I yield
 (inaudible)
No, but any academic should do that, any
Yes, they should.
The thing about religious people is that they
recite the Nicene Creed every week, which
says precisely what they believe. There are
three gods, not one. The virgin Mary, Jesus
died  went to the  what was it?  down
for three days, and then came up again?
Yes.
In precise detail, and yet, they have the
gall to accuse us of being overconfident and
of not knowing what it is to doubt.
And I don’t think many of them ever let themselves
contemplate the question, which I think scientists
ask themselves all the time: what if I’m
wrong?. What if I’m wrong? I mean,
it’s just not part of their repertoire.
Actually, would you mind if I disagree with
you about that?
No.
A lot of talk that makes religious people
hard to  not hard to beat, but hard to argue
with, is precisely that they’ll say that
they’re in a permanent crisis of faith. There
is indeed a prayer, Lord I believe, help
thou my unbelief. Graham Greene says the
great thing about being a Catholic was that
it was a challenge to his unbelief. A lot
of people live by keeping two sets of books.
In fact, it’s my impression that a majority
of the people I know who call themselves believers,
or people of faith, do that all the time.
I wouldn’t say it was schizophrenia, that
would be rude. But they’re quite aware of
the implausibility of what they say. They
don’t act on it when they go to the doctor,
or when they travel, or anything of this kind.
But in some sense they couldn’t be without
it. But they’re quite respectful of the idea
of doubt. In fact they try and build it in
when they can.
Well, that’s interesting then. And so when
they are reciting the Creed, with its
sort of apparent conviction, is this a kind
of mantra which is forcing themselves to overcome
doubt, by saying yes, I do believe, I do believe,
I do believe! because really, I don’t.
And of course, like their secular counterparts,
they’re glad other people believe it. It’s
an affirmation they wouldn’t want other people
not to be making.
Yes.
Well, also, there’s this curious bootstrapping
move which I tried to point out in this recent
On Faith piece. This idea that you start with
the premise that belief without evidence
is especially noble. I mean, this is the
doctrine of faith. This is the parable of
Doubting Thomas. And so you start with that,
and then you add this notion which has come
to me through various debates that fact that
people can believe without evidence is itself
a subtle form of evidence. I mean, we’re
kind of wired to  Actually Francis Collins,
you mentioned, brings this up in this book.
The fact that we have this intuition of god
is itself some subtle form of evidence. And
it’s this kind of kindling phenomenon where
once you say, it’s good to start without
evidence  the fact that you can, is a
subtle form of evidence. And then, the demand
for any more evidence is itself a kind of
corruption of the intellect, or a temptation,
or something to be guarded against. And you
get a kind of perpetual motion machine of
self deception, where you can get this thing
up and running.
But like the idea that it can’t be demonstrated,
because then there’d be nothing to be faithful
about.
Right, that’s the point of faith.
If everyone has seen the resurrection, and
if we all knew that we’ve been saved by it,
well, then we would be living in an unalterable
system of belief. And it would have to be
policed, and it would actually be  those
of us who don’t believe in it are very glad
it’s not true, because we think it would
be horrible, those who do believe it don’t
want it to be absolutely proven so there can’t
be any doubt about it, because then there’s
no wrestling with conscience, there are no
dark nights of the soul.
Somebody  it was a review of one of our
books, I don’t remember which, but it was
exactly that point. That just what a crass
expectation on the part of atheists that there
should be total evidence for this. I mean,
there would be much less magic if everyone
was compelled to believe by too much evidence.
Actually, this is Francis Collins. I’m sorry.
This is Francis Collins.
Well, a friend of mine Canon Fenton of Oxford,
actually, said that if the Church validated
the Holy Shroud of Turin, he personally would
leave the ranks. Because if they were doing
things like that, he didn’t want any part
of it.
Right.
I didn’t expect when I started off for my
book tour to be as lucky as I was. I mean,
Jerry Falwell died in my first week on the
road. That was amazing.
Yes, that was amazing luck!
I didn’t expect Mother Teresa to come out
as an atheist.
Yes.
(general laughter)
But, reading her letters, which I now have,
it’s rather interesting. She writes, I
can’t bring myself to believe any of this.
She tells all her confessors, all her superiors,
I can’t hear a voice. I can’t feel the
presence, even in the mass, even in the sacraments.
No small thing. And they write back to her
saying, that’s good. That’s great. You’re
suffering  it gives you a share in the crucifixion.
It makes you part of Calvary. You can’t
beat an argument like that. The less you believe
it, the more your demonstration of faith.
The more you prove it’s true.
Yes, and the struggle, the dark night of the
soul, is the proof in itself. So, we just
have to realise that these really are nonoverlapping
magisteria. We can’t hope to argue with a
mentality of this kind.
Well, no, actually, I disagree there
No, but we can do just what you’re doing
now, and that is, we can say, look at this
interesting bag of tricks that’ve evolved
Notice that they are circular  that they’re
self-sustaining  that they don’t have any
 that they could be about anything. And
then you don’t argue with them, you simply
point out that these are not valid ways of
thinking about anything. Because you could
use the very same tricks to sustain something
which was manifestly fraudulent. And in fact,
what fascinates me is that a lot of the tricks
are  they have their counterparts with con
artists. They use the very same forms of non-argument,
the very same non sequiturs, and they make,
for instance, a virtue out of trust. And as
soon as you start exhibiting any suspicion
of the con man who is about  gets all hurt
on you, plays the hurt feelings card, and
reminds you how wonderful taking it on faith
is. I mean, there aren’t any new tricks,
these tricks have evolved over thousands of
And you could add the production of bogus
special effects as well, which was one of
years.
the things that completely convicts religion
of being fraudulent, the belief in the miraculous.
The same people will say well Einstein felt
a spiritual force in the universe, when he
said, the whole point about it is, there
are no miracles, there are no changes in the
natural order. That’s the miraculous thing.
They’re completely cynical about claiming
him in almost the same breath. Every religious
person feels the same criticism of other people’s
faith that we do, as atheists. I mean, they
reject the pseudo miracles and the pseudo
claims to certainty of others, and they see
the confidence tricks in other people’s faith,
and they see it rather readily. You know,
every Christian knows the Koran can’t be
the perfect word of the creator of the universe,
and anyone who thinks it is, hasn’t read
it closely enough and it’s just in this hermetically-sealed
discourse that isn’t really being self-critical.
And I think we make a very strong case when
we point that out, and point out also that
whatever people are experiencing, in church
or in prayer, no matter how positive, the
fact that Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims
and Christians are all experiencing it, proves
that it can’t be matter of the divinity of
Jesus, or the unique sanctity of the Koran,
or because
Cause there’s seventeen different ways
of getting there, yeah.
By the way, on that, a tiny point. I hope
not a digression, it’s useful bearing that
in mind, too, when you get, as I did this
morning on ABC News, the question well,
wouldn’t you say religion did some good in
the world, and there were good people? You
don’t go that argument, and by the way, there’s
no reason why one shouldn’t, you say well,
yes, I have indeed heard it said that Hamas
provides social services in Gaza, And I’ve
even heard it said that Farrakhan’s group
gets young, black men in prison off drugs.
I don’t know if it’s true, I’m willing
to accept it might be but it doesn’t alter
the fact that the one is a militarised, terrorist
organisation with a fanatical anti-Semitic
ideology, and the second is a racist, crackpot
cult. And I have no doubt that Scientology
gets people off drugs, too. But my insistence
always with these people is if you will claim
it for one, you must accept it for them all.
And the other move you can make there
Cause if you don’t it’s flat-out dishonest.
You can invent an ideology, which by your
mere invention in that moment, is obviously
untrue, which would be quite useful if propagated,
to billions. I mean, you can say this is my
new religion: teach people to demand that
your children study science and math and economics,
and all of our terrestrial disciplines, to
the best of their abilities, and if they don’t
persist in those efforts, they’ll be tortured
after death by seventeen demons (laughter).
This would be extremely useful, and maybe
far more useful than Islam, propagated to
billions, and yet what are the chances that
the seventeen demons exist? Zero.
There’s a slipperiness too, isn’t there,
about one way of speaking to sophisticated
intellectuals and theologians and another
way of speaking to congregations and above
all, children. And I think we’ve, all of
us, been accused of going after the easy targets
of the Jerry Falwells of this world and ignoring
the sophisticated professors of theology and,
I mean, I don’t know what you feel about
that but one of the things that I feel is
that the sophisticated professors of theology
will say one thing to each other and to intellectuals
generally but will say something totally different
to a congregation. They’ll talk about miracles,
they’ll talk about
Well they won’t talk to a congregation
Well, archbishops will
Yes, but when sophisticated theologians try
to talk to the preachers, the preachers wont
have any of it.
Well that’s true of course.
I mean, you gotta realise that sophisticated
theology is like stamp collecting. It’s a
very specialised thing and only a few people
do it.
They’re of negligible influence.
They take in their own laundry and they get
all excited about some very arcane details,
and their own religions pay almost no attention
to what they’re saying. A little bit of it
does, of course, filter in but it always gets
beefed up again for general consumption, because
what they say in their writings, at least
from my experience, is eye-glazing, mind twisting,
very subtle things which have no particular
bearing on life.
Oh! No I must insist, I must say a good word
here for Professor Allister McGrath who, in
his attack on Richard, said it’s not true,
as we’ve always been told and most people,
most Christians believe that Tertullian said
credo quia absurdum, I believe it because
it’s ridiculous, no! It turns out, I’ve
checked this now, though, I don’t know this
in McGrath that in fact Tertullian said the
impossibility of it is the thing that makes
it the most believable. That’s a well worth
distinction, I think, and very useful for
training one’s mind in the fine (inaudible).
If possibility is cause to absurdity
It’s the likelihood, in other words, that
it could’ve been made up.
Right
is diminished by the incredibility of it.
Who would try and invent something that was
that unbelievable, that is so off the wall?
You make a very good point on those lines.
That actually is, I think, a debate perfectly
well worth having.
That’s a good point.
What I say to these people is this, you’re
sending your e-mail or your letter to the
wrong address. Everyone says let’s not judge
religion by its fundamentalists. Alright.
Take the church of England, two of whose senior
leaders recently said that the floods in north
Yorkshire were the result of homosexual behavior,
not in north Yorkshire presumably, probably
in London, I think they’re thinking
God’s aim is a little off!
One of these, the Bishop of Carlisle, is apparently
about to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
Now, this is extraordinary. This is supposed
to be the mild and reflective and thoughtful
and rather troubled church making fanatical
pronouncements! Well, I want to hear what
Allister McGrath is gonna to write to the
Bishop of Carlisle, not to me. Is he going
to say, my Lord Bishop, do you not realise
what a complete idiot you’re making of yourself
and of our church? Did he do this? If he did
it in private I am not impressed. He has to
say it in public.
The Bishop of Carlisle backtracked.
Why are they telling me that? I will judge
the church by the statements of its
bishops, I think I’m allowed to.
Yeah, but the other thing is that never mind
about the academic theologians, bishops and
vicars who will attack us for taking scriptures,
or for accusing people of taking scriptures
literally, and of course we don’t believe
the Book of Genesis literally, and yet they
do preach about what Adam and Eve did as though
they did exist, as though there’s somehow
it’s a sort of license to talk about things
which they know and anybody of any sophistication
knows is fiction. And yet they will treat
their congregations, their sheep, as though
they did exist, as though they were factual,
and a huge number of those congregations actually
think they did exist.
Can you imagine any one of these preachers
saying, as such a topic is introduced, this
is a sort of theoretical fiction’?
Yes.
It’s not true but it’s a very fine metaphor.
No, they’d never  they’re just not going
they kind’ve, after the fact imply that that’s
what they expect you to know.
Yes but they would never announce
Well there’s another point there. It is that
they never admit how they have come to stop
taking it literally because you have all these
people criticising us for our crass literalism,
we’re as fundamentalist as the fundamentalists,
and yet these moderates don’t admit how they
have come to be moderate. What does moderation
consist of? It consists of having lost faith
in all of these propositions, or half of them
because of the hammer blows of science and
secular politics
of the crass literalism of the critics.
Yeah. Religion has lost its mandate on a thousand
questions and moderates tend to argue that
this is somehow a triumph of faith, that faith
is somehow self-enlightening, whereas it’s
been enlightened from the outside. It has
been intruded on by science.
On that point that I was wanting to raise
myself, about our own so-called fundamentalism,
there’s a cleric in Southwark, the first
person I saw attacking you and I in print
as being just as fundamentalist as those who
blew up the London Underground, do you remember
his name?
No, I don’t remember his name.
Sorry, I don’t remember. He’s a very senior
Anglican cleric in the diocese of Southwark.
I went on the BBC with him just entre parentheses
I’ll say, when I’ve said, how can you
call your congregation a flock? doesn’t that
say everything about your religion? that you
think they’re sheep? He said, Well actually
I used to be a pastor in New Guinea, where
there aren’t any sheep. Well of course
there’re a lot of places where there aren’t
any sheep! Gospel’s quite hard to teach,
as a result. We’ve found out what the most
important animal to the locals was and I remember
very well my local bishop rising to ask the
Divine One to behold these swine’, his
new congregation. But this is the man who
deliberately does a thing like that, that’s
as cynical as you could wish and as adaptive
as the day is long, and he says that we who
doubt it are as fundamentalist as people who
blow up their fellow citizens on the London
Underground. It’s unconscionable. Thus, I
don’t really mind being accused of ridiculing,
or treating with contempt, people like that.
I just frankly have no choice, I have the
faculty of humour, and some of it has an edge
to it, I’m not going to repress that, for
the sake of politeness of people.
Would you think that it would be good to make
a distinction between the professionals and
the amateurs? I share your impatience with
the officials of the churches, the people
whose  this is their professional life.
It seems to me, they know better.
Right.
The congregations don’t know better because
it’s maintained that they should not know
better. I do get very anxious about ridiculing
the beliefs of the flock, because of the
way in which they have ceded to their leaders.
They’ve delegated authority to their leaders
and they presume their leaders are gonna do
it right. So I think in this, you know, who
stands up and says the buck stops here? Well
it seems to me it’s the preachers themselves,
it’s the priests, it’s the bishops and we
really should hold their feet to the fire.
For instance, just take the issue of creationism.
If somebody in a fundamentalist church thinks
that creationism makes sense because their
pastor told them, well I can understand that
and excuse that. We all get a lot of what
we take to be true from people that we respect
and we view as authorities. We don’t check
everything out. But where’d the pastor get
this idea? I don’t care where. He or she
is responsible because their job is to know
what they’re talking about in a way that
the congregation
You have to be a little bit careful not to
sound condescending when we say that, and
in a way it’s reflecting the condescension
of the preacher.
Yes, because I’ll take things you and Richard
say on the human and natural sciences, not
without wanting to check, but I’m often unable
to but knowing that you are the sort of gentlemen
who would have checked. If you say, the
bishop told me it so I believe it’ you make
a fool of yourself it seems to me, and one
is entitled to say so. Just as one is entitled
when dealing with an ordinary racist to say
that his opinions are revolting, he may know
no better but that’s not gonna save him from
my condemnation and nor should it. And I think
exactly it’s condescending not to confront
people as it were one by one or en masse.
So public opinion is often wrong, mob opinion
is almost always wrong.
Well, let’s linger on this issue before
Religious opinion is wrong, religious opinion
is wrong by definition. We can’t avoid this.
And I wanted to intrude the name H L Mencken
at this point, now a very justly-celebrated
American writer, not particularly to my taste,
much too much of a Nietzschean and what really
was once meant by Social Darwinist at one
stage but why did he win the tremendous respect
of so many people in this country in the 20s
and 30s? Because he said the people who believe
what the Methodists tell them or what William
Jennings Bryan tells them are fools. They’re
not being fooled, they are fools. They should
Shame on them for believing me.
Yes. They make themselves undignified and
ignorant and, no mincing of words here, and
a grated mixture of wit and evidence and reasoning.
It absolutely works; the most successful anti-religious
polemic there’s probably ever been in the
modern world. In the twentieth century, anyway.
I think we just touched upon an issue that
we should really highlight. This whole notion
of authority, because religious people often
argue that science is just a tissue of uncashed
cheques, you know. We’re all relying on authority,
how do you know that the cosmological constant
is whatever it is? You know? So I think you
two are well-placed to do this, differentiate
the kind of faith-placing in authority that
we practise without fear in science and rationality
generally, and the kind of faith-placing in
the preacher or the theologian that we criticise.
Well, what we actually do when we who are
not physicists take on trust what physicists
say is we have some evidence to suggest that
physicists have looked into the matter, that
they’ve done experiments, that they’ve peer-reviewed
their papers, that they’ve criticised each
other, that they’ve been subjected to massive
criticism from their peers in seminars and
on lectures and things. And they’ve come
through with
And remember the structure that’s there,
too. It’s not just that there’s peer-review
but it’s very important that it’s competitive.
For instance, when Fermat’s Last Theorem
was proved by
Andrew Wiles.
Andrew Wiles, the reason that those of us
who  forget it, I’m never going to understand
that proof but the reason that we can be confident
that it really is a proof is that
Nobody wanted him to get there first, yeah!
Every other mathematician who was competent
in the world was very well motivated to study
that.
To find out, yeah.
And believe me, if they begrudge him that
this is a proof, it’s a proof! And there’s
nothing like that in
No, because we’re the antithesis of that.
No religious person’s ever been able to say
what Einstein said, if I’m right,
[DH] the following solar event will occur
off the west coast of Africa in ,
I forget how many years and months from now,
and it did, within a very tiny degree of variation;
there’s never been a prophecy that’s been
vindicated like that, or anyone willing to
place their reputation and, as it were, their
life on the idea that it would be.
I was once asked at a public meeting Don’t
you think that the mysteriousness of Quantum
Theory is just the same as the mysteriousness
of the Trinity or the Transubstantiation?
And the answer, of course, can be answered
in two quotes from Richard Feynman. One, Richard
Feynman said if you think you understand
Quantum Theory, you don’t understand Quantum
Theory. He was admitting that it’s highly
mysterious. But the other thing is that the
predictions of Quantum Theory experimentally
are verified to the equivalent of predicting
the width of North America to the width of
one human hair. And so, Quantum Theory is
massively supported by accurate predictions.
Even if you don’t understand the mystery
of the Copenhagen Interpretation, or whatever
it is. Whereas the mystery of the Trinity
doesn’t even try to make a prediction, let
alone an accurate one.
You know, I don’t like
It it isn’t a mystery, either.
I don’t like the use of the word mystery
here. I think, I think there’s been a lot
of consciousness-raising in philosophy about
this term, where we have so-called mysterians,
the new mysterians. These are people who like
the term mystery. Noam Chomsky is famously
quoted to say There’s two kinds of questions,
there’s puzzles and mysteries. Puzzles are
soluble, mysteries aren’t. And first of
all, I just don’t buy that. I buy that but
I buy the distinction and say ‘there’s nothing
about mystery in science. There’s puzzles,
there’s deep puzzles, there’s things we
don’t know, there’s things we’ll never
know, but they aren’t systematically incomprehensible
to human beings. The glorification of the
idea that these things are systematically
incomprehensible, I think, has no place in
science.
Which is why I think we should be quite happy
to revive traditional terms in our discourse,
such as obscurantism and obfuscation. Which
is what they really are. And to point out
that these things can make intelligent people
act stupidly. John Cornwell, who’s just written
another attack on yourself, Richard, and who
is an old friend of mine, a very brilliant
guy, wrote one of the best studies of the
Catholic Church and fascism that there’s
been published. In his review of you, he says
Mr Dawkins  Professor Dawkins should just
look at the shelves of books there are on
the Trinity. The libraries full of attempts
to solve this problem before he  But none
of the books in those religious libraries
solve it either! The whole point is that it
remains insoluble and it’s used to keep people
feeling baffled and inferior.
But I want to come back to the thing about
mystery in physics, because isn’t it possible
that our evolved brains  because we evolved
in what I call middle world, where we never
had to cope with either the very small or
the cosmologically very large, we may never
actually have an intuitive feel for what’s
going on in quantum mechanics but we can still
test its predictions, we can still actually
do the mathematics and do the physics to actually
test the predictions, ‘cause anybody can
read the dials on a
Right, I think what we can see is that what
scientists have constructed over the centuries
is a series of tools, mind-tools, thinking
tools, mathematical tools, and so forth which
enable us to some degree to overcome the limitations
of our evolved brains, our stone age, if you
like, brains, and overcoming those limitations
is not always direct. Sometimes you have to
give up something. Yes, you’ll just never
be able to think intuitively about this but
you can know that, even though you can’t
think intuitively about it.
Yeah, that’s right.
There’s this laborious process by which you
can make progress and you do have to cede
a certain authority to the process but you
can test that and it can carry you from A
to B in the same way. If you’re a quadriplegic,
an artificial device can carry you from A
to B. It doesn’t mean you can walk from A
to B but you can get from A to B.
And the bolder physicists will say well,
who cares about intuition? I mean, just look
at the math!
Yeah, yeah, that’s right, they are comfortable
with their  living with their prostheses.
Well, the perfect example of that is dimensions
beyond three, because we can’t visualise
a fourth dimension or a fifth but it’s trivial
to represent it mathematically, and so we
can move in that dimension.
And now we teach our undergraduates how to
manipulate n-dimensional spaces, and to think
about vectors in n-dimensional spaces, and
they get used to the fact. They can’t quite
imagine  what you do is you imagine three
of them and, say, you wave your hand a little
bit, and say more of the same, but you you
check your intuition by running the maths,
and it works.
But see, it’s easy to do some  say you’re
a psychologist looking at personality, and
you say there are fifteen dimensions of personality,
and you could think of them as being fifteen
dimensions in space. And anybody can see that
you’re  you can imagine moving along any
one of those dimensions with respect to the
others, and you don’t actually have to visualise
fifteen dimensional space.
No. And you give up that demand, and you realise
Yes, yes.
I can live without that. It would be nice
if I could do that but hey, I can’t see bacteria
with the naked eye, either. I can live without
that but
I think there’s one
Yeah, I was challenged on that, I was challenged
on that on the radio the other day by someone
who appeared to be fairly  who said I
believe in atoms on no evidence, cause I’ve
never seen one. Not since George Galloway
said to me that he’d never seen a barrel
of oil
Right! that’s cute
Yes but you realise that people at this point,
they’re wearing themselves right down to
their uppers, I mean they’re desperate when
they get to this stage. The reason I say it
is because I think it could  I don’t want
us to make our lives easier but it makes the
argument a little more simple.
We are quite willing to say there are many
things we don’t know. What Haldane, I think
it was, said, you know, the Universe is not
just queerer than we understand, it’s queerer
than we can understand. We know there’ll
be great new discoveries, we know we’ll live
to see great things but we know there’s a
tremendous amount of uncertainty. That’s
the whole distinction; the believer has to
say not just that there is a god, the deist
position, that there may be a mind at work
in the Universe, a proposition we can’t disprove,
but they know that, mind, and can interpret
it. They’re on good terms with it. They get
occasional revelations from it
They have a book that is a verbatim screed.
they get briefings from it. Now any decent
argument, any decent intellect, has to begin
by excluding people who claim to know more
than they can possibly know. You start off
by saying well, that’s wrong to begin with,
now can we get on with it?, so theism’s
gone in the first round.
Yep.
Yeah.
It’s off the island, it’s out of the show.
That’s a footnote I wanted to add to what
Dan was saying. That even if mystery was somehow
something we had to just  a bitter pill
we have to swallow in the end, we are cognitively
closed to the truth at some level, that still
doesn’t give any scope to theism.
Absolutely not, because it’s just as closed
to them as it is to
And also we claim perfect transparency of
revelation.
And also they can’t be allowed to forget
what they used to say when they were strong
enough to get away with it, which is this
is really true, in every detail, and if you
don’t believe it, we’ll kill you.
we’ll kill you, yes.
We’ll kill you, and it may take some days
to kill you, but we will get the job done,
yeah.
Yes, we’ll kill you slowly.
I mean, they wouldn’t have the power they
have now, if they hadn’t had the power they
had then.
Right. And you know this, what you just said
Christopher, actually, I think, strikes terror,
it strikes anxiety, in a lot of religious
hearts. Because it just hasn’t been brought
home to them that this move of theirs is just
off-limits. It’s not the game. You can’t
do that. And they’ve been taught all their
lives that you can do that  this is a legitimate
way of conducting a discussion. And here,
suddenly we’re just telling them ‘I’m sorry,
that is not a move in this game’. In fact
it is a disqualifying move.
Right. It’s precisely the move you can’t
be respected for making.
Yes.
Adumbrate the move for me a bit, if you would,
or for us. Perhaps only for me. Say what you
think that move is.
Somebody plays the faith card.
Yes.
They say look, I am a Christian and we Christians,
we just have to believe this and that’s it.
At which point, I guess the polite way of
saying it is well, okay, if that’s true you’ll
just have to excuse yourself from the discussion
because you’ve declared yourself incompetent
to proceed with an open mind. Now
That’s what I hoped. That’s what I hoped
you were saying.
If you really can’t defend your view, then
sorry, you can’t put it forward. We’re not
going to let you play the faith card. Now
if you want to defend what your holy book
says, in terms that we can appreciate, fine.
But because it says it in the holy book, that
just doesn’t cut any ice at all. And if you
think it does, that’s just arrogant. It is
a bullying move and we’re just not going
to accept it.
And it’s a move that they don’t accept when
done in the name of another faith.
Exactly.
But now, in which case, could I ask you something,
all three of you who are wiser than I on this
matter, what do we think of Victor Stenger’s
book that says you can now scientifically
disprove the existence of God? Do you have
a view on this?
Which god? I haven’t read the book. Which
god?
Any kind of
Any. Either a creating one, or a supervising
one, and certainly an intervening one. I mean,
I think that’s fairly exhaustive. My view
had always been that since we have to live
with uncertainty, only those who are certain
leave the room before the discussion can become
adult. Victor Stenger seems to think now we’ve
got to the stage where we can say with reasonable
confidence, it’s disproved. It’s not vindicated
or a better explanation proposed [inaudible].
I just thought it’d be an interesting proposition,
because it matters a lot to me that our opinions
are congruent with uncertainty.
Right. Well, I think the weak link
And in other words, we doubt.
I was a big fan of his book and actually blurbed
it but I think the weakest link is this foundational
claim on the texts. This idea that we know
that the bible is the perfect word of an omniscient
deity, and it really is the claim, it’s really
the gold in their epistemological gold standard.
I mean, it all rests on that, that if the
bible is not a magic book, Christianity, in
this case, evaporates. If the Koran is not
a magic book, Islam evaporates. And when you
look at the books and ask yourself is there
the slightest shred of evidence that this
is the product of omniscience? Is there a
single sentence in here that could not have
been uttered by a person for whom a wheelbarrow
would’ve been emergent technology? You have
to say no. I mean, if the bible had an account
of DNA and electricity, and other things that
would astonish us then, okay. Our jaws drop,
suitably, and we have to have a sensible conversation
about the source of this knowledge.
You know, Dinesh D’Souza makes this statement
in his new book. He’s going to be, by the
way, one of the much more literate and well-read
and educated of our antagonists I’m going
to be debating soon. He says that in Genesis,
which people used to mock, they said let
there be light’ and then only a few staves
later you get the sun and the moon and the
stars.
Right.
How could that be?
Yes.
Well, according to the Big Bang, that would
be right.
Yeah, but that’s pretty pathetic.
The Bang precedes the galaxies. Believe me,
I think it’s pathetic too, but
Right. Well, I try to demonstrate this cast
of mind in, I think, a very long end note
in 'The End of Faith’, where I say, any
text can be read". Well, with the eyes of
faith you can make magical (prescience/impressions)
out of any text. So, I literally walked into
a book store, the cookbook aisle of a book
store, randomly opened a cookbook, found a
recipe for wok-seared shrimp with ogo relish
or something, and then came up with a mystical
interpretation of the recipe. And you can
do it! I mean, you can play connect the dots
with any crazy text and find wisdom in it.
Michael Shermer did it with the Bible code.
Right, I haven’t seen that, but, yeah.
The hidden messages in the Bible. Very, very
good. You can write yesterday’s headlines
from it anytime you like. Yeah.
I have a question for the three of you. Is
there any argument for faith, any challenge
to your atheism that has given you pause,
that has set you back on your heels where
you felt you didn’t have a ready answer,
etc?
Actually I can’t think of anything.
I mean, I think the closest is the idea that
the fundamental constants of the universe
are too good to be true. And that does seem
to me to need some kind of explanation. If
it’s true. I mean, Victor Stenger doesn’t
think it is true but many physicists do. I
mean, it certainly doesn’t in any way suggest
to me creative intelligence because you’re
still left with the problem of explaining
where that came from. And a creative intelligence
who is sufficiently creative and intelligent
enough to fine-tune the constants of the universe
to give rise to us has, to got to be a lot
more fine-tuned himself than
Yeah, why create all the other planets in
our solar system dead?
Well, that’s a separate question.
Well say we think he was that good. Bishop
Montefiore was very good at this; he was a
former friend of mine. He’d say that you
have to marvel at the conditions of life and
the knife-edge on which they are. And I’d
say well, it is a knife edge. Yes, a lot of
our planet is too hot or too cold.
Right. Riddled with parasites.
The other planets are completely too hot or
too cold to support it. And that’s just one
solar system, the only one we know about where
there is life. Not much of a designer. And
of course you can’t get out of the infinite
regress. But I’ve not come across a single
persuasive argument of that kind. But I wouldn’t
have expected to because, as I realised when
I thought one evening, they never come up
with anything new. Well, why would they? Their
arguments are very old by definition. And
they were all evolved when we knew very, very
little about the natural order. The only argument
that I find at all attractive, and this is
for faith you asked as well as for theism,
is what I would, I suppose I’d call the apotropaic.
When people say all praise belongs to God
for this, He’s to be thanked for all this.
That is actually a form of modesty. It’s
a superstitious one, that’s why I say apotropaic,
but it’s avoiding hubris. It’s also for
that reason, obviously pre-monotheistic. But,
religion does, or can, help people to avoid
hubris, I think, morally and intellectually
and that might be a
But that’s not an argument that it’s true.
Oh, for heaven’s sake! No. There are and
cannot be any such arguments, I think.
Well maybe I should broaden this question.
Well, no, no. Wait a minute! I think
Before you answer Dan, I want
I could give you several discoveries which
would shake my faith right to the ground.
No, no! Let me just broaden the question.
Yep, yep.
Not only
Rabbits in the Precambrian?
No, no, no. That won’t work!
(laughter)
Not only in argument for the plausibility
of religious belief, but an argument that
suggests that what we’re up to, criticising
faith, is a bad thing.
Oh, that’s much easier.
That we shouldn’t be, so let’s exclude that.
Ah! Okay, yes, by all means.
We shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.
That’s much easier.
Okay.
It’s easier to think of a good reason?
Oh, I mean, if somebody could come up with
an argument that says that the world is a
better place and everybody believes the falsehood,
is there any context though, in your work
or in dialogue with your critics, where you
feel that that argument has given you pause?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes! Not so much in Breaking
The Spell’ but when I was working on my book
on free will,, Freedom Evolves’. I kept
running into critics who were basically expressing
something very close to a religious few, namely
free will is such an important idea, if we
gave up the idea of free will, people would
lose their sense of responsibility and we
would have chaos. And, you really don’t wanna
look too closely, just avert your eyes. Do
not look too closely at this issue of free
will and determinism. And I thought about
that explicitly in the environmental impact
category. Okay, could I imagine that my irrepressible
curiosity could lead me to articulate something
true or false
That’s dangerous.
which would have such devastating effects
on the world, that I should just shut up and
change the subject?
Right.
And I think that’s a good question that we
all should ask.
Yeah, it’s good.
Absolutely! And I spent a lot of time thinking
hard about that and I wouldn’t have published
either of those two books if I hadn’t come
to the conclusion that it was not only, as
it were, environmentally safe to proceed this
way, but obligatory. But I think you should
ask that question. I do.
Right.
Before publishing a book, but not before deciding
for yourself do I think that this is true
or not? One should never do what some politically
motivated critics do, which is to say this
is so politically obnoxious that it cannot
be true, and which is a different
Which is a different thing entirely. No. No.
No, it would be like discovering that you
thought that the bell on white and black intelligence
was a correct interpretation of IQ.
Yes, and you could well suppress publication
of
You see (inaudible) And now I’ve looked at
all this stuff again, I’m absolutely (inaudible)
so you could say, now what am I gonna
do?
Right.
Fortunately these questions don’t, in fact,
present themselves in that way.
I’ll tell you one place where it’s presented
itself to me, I think it was an op-ed in the
LA times, I could be mistaken, but someone
argued that the reason why the Muslim population
in the US is not radicalised the way it is
in Western Europe, is largely the result of
the fact that we honour faith so much in our
discourse that the community has not become
as insular and as grievance-ridden as it has
As in Western Europe?
in Western Europe. Now, I don’t know if this
is true, but if it were true that gave me
a moment’s pause.
That would be of interest. James Wolfensohn,
late of the World Bank, recently the negotiator
on Gaza, says that he firmly believes that
he had tremendous influence for good with
the Muslim brotherhood in Hamas, because he
was an orthodox Jew. If so, I think it would
be disgusting, I have to say, and he shouldn’t
have had the job in the first place. Because
we know one absolute thing for certain about
that conflict, which is that it’s been made
infinitely worse by the (inaudible). If it
were only a national and territorial dispute
it would’ve been solved by now. But his self-satisfaction
in saying so, even if it were true, would
turn me even more against him.
