Forgive the alliteration, but your
Audience: (laughter)
persistent, power- mad, punch- ups
are pissing me off.
Audience: (laughter)
It's mainly extremists, obviously,
but not exclusively. It's a lot
of mainstreamers as well. Let me give
you an example of what I'm talking about,
okay? Muslims, listen up my bearded and
veily friends. Calm down. Okay?
Audience: (laughter)
Stop blowing stuff up. Not everything that's
Audience: (laughter)
said about you is an attack on the prophet
Muhammed and Allah that needs to end in
the infidel being destroyed. Have a cup
of tea, put on a Cat Stevens record, sit
down, and chill out. I mean seriously,
Audience: (laughter and cheering)
what's wrong with a strongly worded
letter to the Times?!
Audience: (laughter)
Christians, you and your churches
don't get to be millionaires while other
people have nothing at all.
They're your bloody rules, either stick
to them or abandon the faith.
And stop persecuting and killing people
you judge to be immoral. Oh, and stop
pretending you're celibate as a cover up
for being a gay or a nonce.
Audience: (laughter and applause)
Right, that's two ticked off.
Jews! I know you're God's chosen people
and the rest of us are just "whatever,"
but when Israel behaves like a violent
psychopathic bully and someone mentions it,
that doesn't make them anti-Semitic, and
for the record, your troubled history is
not a license to act with impunity now.
So, when the letters come, and I'm
guessing they will, I can guarantee that
Audience: (laughter)
each one of those faiths will be utterly
convinced that I've singled them out for
special criticism. "Why did it have to
be us? Islam is a peaceful faith."
"I don't see what's wrong with being
Christian, we're a peaceful loving faith."
"How dare you after all we've been through!
We Jews know how terrible violence can be."
You see? All of them will be convinced
that they're the ones being picked on.
The Abrahamic faiths are like scousers.
They're always convinced "they have it
harder than everyone else."
Audience: (laughter)
And why is it that all these faiths claim
to be peaceful when even the most
fleeting glance at the history of warfare
will tell you otherwise?
The relationship between religion and warfare
is very similar to the relationship
between Ant and Dec. You could have
one without the other, but I'm not sure
anyone would see the point.
Audience: (laughter and applause)
I wouldn't actually like it, but it would
at least be refreshing to hear one
of them come out and say
"Oh, our faith's fine as you like.
We love a scrap, us lot, we do.
honestly, our special book says
fight, fight, kill, maim, fight, smash,
destroy, fight, murder, kill, and fight.
That's why I signed up, to be honest. I'm
a bit naughty, d'ya know what I mean?"
Audience: (laughter)
But no, all of them claim to be peaceful
religions. Yeah, peaceful right up to
the point someone takes something they
think is theirs, or says the wrong thing,
or looks at them funny, then it's
fighty, smashy, kicky, punchy all the way.
I know this will upset a lot of people,
Audience: (laughter)
and frankly I don't care. I'm getting
so sick of religious people screwing it
up for the rest of us. Please don't kill us.
Seriously. As far as I'm concerned, this
is the only chance we get. When we
die, it's all over. There's no virgins and
pearly gates waiting for us, no big
beardy man saying "Right! So how do
you think that went then? Picnics? Oh!
Audience: (laughter)
Killed a lot of people in my name, I see.
Yeah, not really what I had in mind
actually. Um, tell you what, have
Audience: (laughter)
another go as a worm."
Audience: (laughter)
While we're at it, I'm sick of religious
people forcing their children to define
themselves by their parent's faith.
A four- year- old is no more a Christian than
he is a member of the Postal Worker's Union.
Audience: (laughter and applause)
"We want a fair working wage, decent
working conditions, and time allotted
to see the new Transformers film."
Audience: (laughter)
said a spokesman.
Audience: (laughter)
Audience: (applause)
Another piece of consciousness- raising.
You've all seen maps of the world showing
what people believe in different places.
In the blue area, they're Catholic,
in the red area they're Protestant,
in the orange area, they're Eastern Orthodox,
in the green area, they're Sunni Muslim
and so on. And we all take that perfectly
for granted. It seems entirely natural
that people's opinions about the cosmos,
about morality, about humanity, should
depend upon the accident of geography,
where they happen to have been born.
Suppose scientists worked like that.
Take a difficult and interesting
scientific issue. Take, for example
the question of what made the dinosaurs
go extinct. Was it an asteroid hitting
the earth? Was it a comet? Was it the
rise of the mammals? Was it a plague
of viruses? All these different theories
have something going for them.
In the blue area, the scientists all
believe it was a meteorite. In the red
area, they believe it was a comet.
In the orange area, a virus plague.
In the green area, the eggs of the
dinosaurs were all eaten, et cetera.
I hope yet again to have raised consciousness.
We all take for granted that it's okay
for religion to be distributed geographically
in that kind of way, and yet we immediately
see, when I show you a map like this,
how totally ridiculous that is.
Why do we all accept it, as though it
were natural, and sensible, and
the way things should be?
Here's another exercise in consciousness
raising, again using the example of the
scientific controversy over what made the
dinosaurs go extinct. The Quarterly Review
Of Biology is a journal in which biologists
publish their findings, their research.
I have edited an imaginary spoof issue of
the Quarterly Review of Biology devoted
as they sometimes are, to a particular topic,
namely the topic "Did an asteroid kill
the dinosaurs?" The first paper
would be a perfectly respectable,
normal scientific paper.
Iridium layer at K/T boundary and
potassium argon dated crater in Yucatan
indicate that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs.
Nobody would be surprised to see a
paper like that in any scientific journal.
The President of the Royal Society has
been vouchsafed a strong inner conviction
that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs.
It has been privately revealed
Audience: (laughter)
to Professor Huxdane that an asteroid
killed the dinosaurs.
Professor Haldley has been brought up
to have total and unquestioning faith
that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs.
Professor Hawkins has promulgated an offical
dogma, binding on all loyal Hawkinsians,
that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs.
Professor Huxkins is personally offended
by all strident, shrill, and polemical
Audience: (laughter)
denials that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs.
Professor Hallux derives deep personal
comfort from his belief
Audience: (laughter)
that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs.
The president of the National Academy
of Sciences has issued a fatwa.
Audience: (laughter and applause)
I'm now going to switch gears and look at
a couple of criticisms that the hardback
God Delusion encountered.
And I've mentioned these in the preface
to the paperback, which is now just out.
Interestingly some of the strongest
criticisms came from Atheists who,
although they don't believe themselves,
believe in belief, as philosopher
Dan Dennett puts it.
I'm an Atheists, but I wish to dissociate
myself from your shrill, strident,
intemperate, intolerant, ranting language.
Well actually, if you look at the language
of the God Delusion, it's rather less shrill
or intemperate than we regularly take in our
stride when listening to political
commentators for example, theatre critics,
or book critics, or restaurant critics.
Here are some quotes from restaurant
criticisms of London restaurants in the
leading papers recently: "It is difficult if
not impossible to imagine anyone conjuring
up a restaurant, even in their sleep, where
the food of this mediocracy comes so
close to inedible. All things considered,
Audience: (laughter)
quite the worst restaurant in London,
maybe the world, serves horrendous food
grudgingly, in a room that is a museum to
Italian waiter's taste, circa 1976.
The worse meal I have ever eaten, not
by a small margin, I mean the worst.
The most unrelievedly awful. What looked
like a sea mine in miniature was the most
disgusting thing I put in my mouth since
I ate earthworms at school.
Audience: (laughter)
Well, insulting a restaurant might seem
trivial, compared to insulting God,
but restauranteurs and chefs really
exist, and they have feelings to be hurt.
Audience: (laughter)
Whereas blasphemy, as the witty bumper
sticker puts it, is a victimless crime.
Audience: (laughter and applause)
