Scott Klarr Jr

The Four Horsemen: Discussion with Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens

On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by RDFRS and filmed by Josh Timonen. All four authors have recently received a large amount of media attention for their writings against religion - some positive, and some negative. In this conversation the group trades stories of the public's reaction to their recent books, their unexpected successes, criticisms and common misrepresentations. They discuss the tough questions about religion that face to world today, and propose new strategies for going forward.

The Four Horsemen | Part 1

The Four Horsemen | Part 2

The Four Horsemen | Part 3

The Four Horsemen | Part 4

The Four Horsemen | Part 5

The Four Horsemen | Part 6

The Four Horsemen | Part 7

The Four Horsemen | Part 8

The Four Horsemen | Part 9

The Four Horsemen | Part 10

The Four Horsemen | Part 11

The Four Horsemen | Part 12

The Four Horsemen Transcript

Put into readable transcript by: Aesthetic Atheist

[CH] Christopher Hitchens
[DD] Daniel Dennett
[RD] Richard Dawkins
[SH] Sam Harris

[RD] 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?

[DD] 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 realise 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.

[RD] Without being rude.

[DD] You know, they sort of play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity, and faced with a choice of, well, am I gonna be rude or am I going to articulate this criticism? I mean, am I going to articulate it, or am I just gonna button my lip?

[SH] 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.

[DD] Now that was, of course, the point of the title of my book is there is this spell and we gotta 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.

[SH] Right, yeah, but I think …

[CH] Insulting, not only insulting, but actually threatening.

[SH] 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.

[CH] 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.

[SH] Right.

[CH] 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 …

[SH] But are you really offended by that? Doesn't it just seem wrong with you?

[CH] 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.

[RD] 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 favourite football team, or their favourite 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 …

[CH] Or your husband's or wife's, or girlfriend's or partner's faces.

[RD] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.

[CH] Well it's interesting that you say that, because I regularly debate with a terrible man called John Donahue, of the Catholic Defence 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 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 …

[RD] No, indeed not.

[CH] or religious icons trashed, and so forth. We share an admiration for at least some of the aesthetic achievements of religion.

[SH] 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.

[DD] Well, and too, there's no polite way to say to somebody …

[SH] You've wasted your life! (laughter)

[DD] do you realise you've wasted your life? Do you realise 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.

[SH] Oh, absolutely.

[RD] 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.

[SH] Yeah, I've heard from one of them, at least.

[RD] Have you? Yes.

[CH] 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.

[DD] 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.

[RD] 'Course it wouldn't.

[DD] 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.

[CH] Including denying them tax exemption.

[DD] Yeah.

[RD] Yes.

[CH] Or in the English case, state subsidy.

[RD] 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 lead to this immunisation of religion against, well, this hyper-offense taking that religion is allowed to take.

[DD] 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.

[RD] And how!

[DD] 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.

[RD] Exactly my experience. Exactly my experience.

[SH] 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.

[RD] Yes.

[SH] 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.

[RD] 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.

[SH] Right.

[CH] If one could make one change, and only one, nine would be to distinguish the numinous from the supernatural.

[RD] Yes.

[SH] Right.

[CH] 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)

[CH] It's never even been suggested that Jesus Christ created that landscape

[SH] Right. A frozen waterfall in three …

[RD] Three parts …

[SH] parts which would remind of the Trinity.

[CH] 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.

[SH] Right (laughs)

[CH] 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.

[DD] 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.

[RD] It's been hijacked, hasn't it, by the …?

[CH] 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.

[SH] Yeah, yeah.

[RD] Yes.

[CH] And I felt terrifically humble about it. Come on! You know, we can laugh people out of that, I believe.

[SH] Right.

[RD] Yeah.

[DD] Also, and I think we should, and indeed must …

[DD] I am so tired of the "if only Professor Dennett had the humility to blah, blah, blah"

[RD] Yes.

[DD] And humility, humility … and this from people of breathtaking arrogance. And I think …

[CH] We shove one aside, saying … just don't mind me, I'm on an errand for God!

[DD] Yeah, right.

(laughter)

[CH] How modest is that?

[SH] 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.

[CH] Well actually a lot of academics come up with that kind of false modesty, but I do know what you mean.

[SH] Well, yeah, yes it is.

[CH] Many's the historian who says, "no, I yield …" (inaudible)

[RD] No, but any academic should do that, any …

[CH] Yes, they should.

[RD] 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?

[CH] Yes.

[RD] In precise detail, and yet, they have the gall to accuse us of being overconfident and of not knowing what it is to doubt.

[DD] 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.

[CH] Actually, would you mind if I disagree with you about that?

[DD] No.

[CH] 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.

[RD] 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.

[CH] 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.

[RD] Yes.

[SH] 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.

[CH] But like the idea that it can't be demonstrated, because then there'd be nothing to be faithful about.

[SH] Right, that's the point of faith.

[CH] 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.

[SH] 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.

[CH] 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.

[SH] Right.

[CH] 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.

[SH] Yes, that was amazing luck!

[CH] I didn't expect Mother Teresa to come out as an atheist.

[DD] Yes.

(general laughter)

[CH] 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.

[SH] The more you prove it's true.

[CH] 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.

[SH] Well, no, actually, I disagree there …

[DD] 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 years.

[CH] And you could add the production of bogus special effects as well, which was one of 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 …

[DD] 'Cause there's seventeen different ways of getting there, yeah.

[CH] 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.

[SH] And the other move you can make there …

[CH] 'Cause if you don't it's flat-out dishonest.

[SH] 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.

[RD] 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 …

[DD] Well they won't talk to a congregation …

[RD] Well, archbishops will …

[DD] Yes, but when sophisticated theologians try to talk to the preachers, the preachers wont have any of it.

[RD] Well that’s true of course.

[DD] 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.

[RD] They're of negligible influence.

[DD] 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.

[CH] 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).

[SH] If possibility is cause to absurdity …

[CH] It’s the likelihood, in other words, that it could’ve been made up.

[SH] Right

[CH] … is diminished by the incredibility of it. Who would try and invent something that was that unbelievable, that is so off the wall?

[SH] You make a very good point on those lines.

[CH] That actually is, I think, a debate perfectly well worth having.

[RD] That’s a good point.

[CH] 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 …

[DD] God’s aim is a little off!

[CH] 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.

[RD] The Bishop of Carlisle backtracked.

[CH] Why are they telling me that? I will judge the church by the statements of its bishops, I think I'm allowed to.

[RD] 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.

[DD] Can you imagine any one of these preachers saying, as such a topic is introduced, ‘this is a sort of theoretical fiction’?

[RD] Yes.

[DD] It’s not true but it’s a very fine metaphor. No, they'd never … they’re just not going …

[RD] they kind’ve, after the fact imply that that’s what they expect you to know.

[DD] Yes but they would never announce …

[SH] 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 …

[DD] of the crass literalism of the critics.

[SH] 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.

[CH] 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?

[RD] No, I don't remember his name.

[CH] 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.

[DD] 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.

[SH] Right.

[DD] 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 …

[RD] 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.

[CH] 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.

[SH] Well, let’s linger on this issue before …

[CH] 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 …

[DD] Shame on them for believing me.

[CH] 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.

[SH] 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.

[RD] 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 …

[DD] 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 …

[RD] Andrew Wiles.

[DD] 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 …

[SH] Nobody wanted him to get there first, yeah!

[DD] Every other mathematician who was competent in the world was very well motivated to study that.

[RD] To find out, yeah.

[DD] And believe me, if they begrudge him that this is a proof, it's a proof! And there's nothing like that in …

[SH] No, because we're the antithesis of that.

[CH] 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 …,

[CH] 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.

[RD] 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.

[DD] You know, I don't like …

[CH] It it isn't a mystery, either.

[DD] 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.

[CH] 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.

[RD] 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 …

[DD] 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.

[RD] Yeah, that's right.

[DD] 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.

[RD] And the bolder physicists will say "well, who cares about intuition? I mean, just look at the math!"

[DD] Yeah, yeah, that's right, they are comfortable with their … living with their prostheses.

[SH] 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.

[DD] 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.

[RD] 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.

[DD] No. And you give up that demand, and you realise …

[RD] Yes, yes.

[DD] 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 …

[SH] I think there's one…

[CH] 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 …

[SH] Right! that's cute …

[CH] 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.

[CH] 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 …

[SH] They have a book that is a verbatim screed.

[CH] … 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.

[DD] Yep.

[SH] Yeah.

[CH] It's off the island, it's out of the show.

[SH] 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.

[DD] Absolutely not, because it's just as closed to them as it is to …

[SH] And also we claim perfect transparency of revelation.

[CH] 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.

[SH] we'll kill you, yes.

[CH] We'll kill you, and it may take some days to kill you, but we will get the job done, yeah.

[SH] Yes, we'll kill you slowly.

[CH] I mean, they wouldn't have the power they have now, if they hadn't had the power they had then.

[DD] 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.

[SH] Right. It's precisely the move you can't be respected for making.

[DD] Yes.

[CH] Adumbrate the move for me a bit, if you would, or for us. Perhaps only for me. Say what you think that move is.

[DD] Somebody plays the faith card.

[CH] Yes.

[DD] 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 …

[CH] That's what I hoped. That's what I hoped you were saying.

[DD] 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.

[SH] And it's a move that they don't accept when done in the name of another faith.

[DD] Exactly.

[CH] 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?

[DD] Which god? I haven't read the book. Which god?

[RD] Any kind of …

[CH] 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. [SH] Right. Well, I think the weak link …

[CH] And in other words, we doubt.

[SH] 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.

[CH] 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.

[SH] Right.

[CH] How could that be?

[SH] Yes.

[CH] Well, according to the Big Bang, that would be right.

[RD] Yeah, but that’s pretty pathetic.

[CH] The Bang precedes the galaxies. Believe me, I think it's pathetic too, but …

[SH] 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.

[CH] Michael Shermer did it with the Bible code.

[SH] Right, I haven’t seen that, but, yeah.

[CH] The hidden messages in the Bible. Very, very good. You can write yesterday’s headlines from it anytime you like. Yeah.

[SH] 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?

[DD] Actually I can’t think of anything.

[RD] 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 …

[CH] Yeah, why create all the other planets in our solar system dead?

[RD] Well, that’s a separate question.

[CH] 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.

[SH] Right. Riddled with parasites.

[CH] 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 …

[RD] But that’s not an argument that it’s true.

[CH] Oh, for heaven’s sake! No. There are and cann