Question: Is religion responsible for a lot
of the world’s problems?
Penn Jillette: What you've said, "a lot,"
sure.
If you want to go to "most" or "all," then
no but there is certainly people... there's
a great quote by the physicist...
What's his name?
Weinberg.
Steve Weinberg.
The quote of with or without religion good
people do good things and bad people do bad
things but for good people to do bad things
that takes religion.
I'm not sure that's word-for-word, almost
certain it isn't, but it's important.
I think it's not religion.
It's much deeper than that.
My beef is not with religion per se; my difference
of opinion is with objective and subjective
reality.
Einstein said the big question is when you
turn away is the tree still there?
And I talk to Richard Feynman about this and
Murray Goodman, there's a feeling that in
particle physics the "experimenter effect,"
a lot of that stuff is distorted.
I believe very strongly that there is a physical
reality that my perception does not change.
Now you can make the argument that we're all
just brains in jars, the Matrix, and all of
this is an illusion and that is an airtight
argument.
You can't refute it but let's just say it's
not that.
I think there's a real reality out there and
the people who say "I believe in God because
I feel that there's some higher power in the
universe"—the problem I have with that is
that once you've said you believe something
that you can't prove to someone else you have
completely walled yourself off from the world.
And you've essentially said no one can talk
to you and you can talk to no one.
You've also given license to everybody else
who feels that.
If you say to me "I can't prove it Penn, but
I have a feeling in my heart that there is
a power over everything that connects us,"
why can't Charlie Manson say "I can't prove
it but I can have a feeling that the Beatles
are telling us to kill Sharon Tate and that
the race riots are coming?"
Why can't Al Qaeda say "I have a feeling in
my heart that we need to kill these particular
infidels?"
Why can't the men who tortured and disfigured
Ayaan Hirsi Ali—why isn't what they feel
in their heart valid?
The problem is if you have a sense of fairness
simply by saying you believe in a higher power
because you believe in it, you've automatically
given license to anyone else that wants to
say that.
So I would rather be busted on everything
I say and I am, you know, when you've put
yourself out on television and on radio as
someone who really does believe in objective
truth there is not a sentence that I will
say in this interview that won't get three
or four tweets of somebody with information
busting me on it.
And they're right, you know, very rarely am
I busted on something where I'm right.
If someone is taking the trouble to let me
know I've said something wrong, chances are
I'm wrong.
But that's the world I live in.
I want to live in a world of a marketplace
of ideas where everybody is busted on their
bullshit all the time because I think that's
the way we get to truth.
That is also what respect is.
What we call tolerance nowadays, maybe always—I'm
always skeptical about the "nowadays" thing.
I don't think things get that much different.
What we call "tolerance" is often just condescending.
It's often just saying, "Okay, you believe
what you want to believe that's fine with
me."
I think true respect... it's one of the reasons
I get along so much better with fundamentalist
Christians than I do with liberal Christians
because fundamentalist Christians I can look
them in the eye and say, "You are wrong."
They also know that I will always fight for
their right to say that.
And I will celebrate their right to say that
but I will look them in the eye and say, "You're
wrong."
And fundamentalists will look me in the eye
and say, "You're wrong."
And that to me is respect.
The more liberal religious people who go "There
are many paths to truth you just go on and
maybe you'll find your way"... is the way
you talk to a child.
And I bristle at that, so I do very well with
proselytizing hardcore fundamentalists and
in a very deep level I respect them and at
a very deep level i think I share a big part
of their heart.
I think in a certain sense I'm a preacher.
My heart is there.
