Authors@Google | Christopher Hitchens

• Humans are pattern-seeking animals, prefering bad theories over no theory at all.
• Religion is a first attempt at philosophy/science.
• “If there is no god, where do you get your morals from?”
  • “I don’t happen to believe the story of Moses in Egypt or the exile or the wandering and the Sinai. And in fact, now even Israeli archaeology has shown that there isn’t a word of truth to that story or really any of the others; but take it to be tue. Am I expected to believe that my mother’s ancestors got all the way to Mount Sinai, quite a trek, under the impression until they got there that rape, murder, perjury, and theft were okay, only to be told when they got to the foot of Mount Sinai, bad news, none of these things are kosher at all. They’re all forbidden. I don’t think so. […] human solidarity demands that we look upon each other as brothers and sisters[…].”
• Fear of freedom / wish to be told what to do
  • celestial dictator who can see everything you do, can convict you of thoughtcrime
• Challenge: “Name an ethical statement that was made or a moral action that was performed by a religious person in the name of faith that could not have been made as an action or uttered as a statement by […] a person not of faith.”
  • “No one has been able to find me that.”
  • Meanwhile, if asked to “think of a wicked thing said or an evil thing done by a person of faith in the name of faith, no one would have a second of hesitation in thinking of one”
  • Dennis Prager posed this question to Hitchens:
    • Q: “You are to imagine you’re in a town late at night where you have never been before, and you have no friends and it’s getting dark. And through the darkness, you see coming towards you a group of men, let’s say ten. Do you feel better or worse if you know that they’re just coming from a prayer meeting?”"
    • A: “Without quitting the letter B, I can tell you I’ve had that experience in Belfast, in Beirut, in Baghdad, in Bombay, in Bosnia, and in Bethlehem. And if you see anyone coming from a religious gathering, in any of those places, you know exactly how fast you need to run.”
• So it is people of faith who have the explaining to do. Their argument is unconvincing until they can tell us concretely how religion has
  • explained the cosmos
  • advanced morals
  • actually improved how people behave to one another
• Questions
  • More about the ‘wish to be enslaved’ hypothesis re: North Korea as a perfect theocracy
    • perfectly situated for a human experiment: an ocean on either side, a few miles of DMZ on the south and Russia and China to the north.
    • Despite not wanting to be cliche, having had to compare North Korea to Kafka and Orwell because of how it was when he was there.
  • What about generally rational people who become religious?
    • Probably a natural (but illogical) reaction to a feeling of awe.
    • “If they can bend their argument so it can comprehend everything–comprise everything–then it isn’t an argument.”
  • What would you say to people who are happy to just accept a mild belief system to get a sense of community?
    • “Well, that used to be called the Church of England–or, the Unitarians, about whom Bertrand Russell said, “The great thing about them is they believe in one god–maximum.” Peter DeVries is very good on this. He says people used to be pagan and polytheist and believe in multiple gods, and then they started believing in one god and they’re going nearer the true figure all the time. This is progress.”
  • Ways in which his argument doesn’t hold in the USA
    • “once you have the hubble telescope, the burning bush is not that interesting”
    • Story about Bush trusting Putin on first meeting, because Putin was wearing his grandmother’s crucifix. But Hitchens not sure Putin had ever worn that cross before or after, and was just doing so manipulatively.
    • Parents may believe in creationism, but they don’t want their children educated in ways that are considered backwater, in the same way that the confederate flag has been shunned for racist connotations.
  • Should we be concerned about terrible things happening in the name of atheism?
    • Contrary to popular belief, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, & Hirohito did employ religion to influence their populations.
  • What about studies showing that churchgoers have lower blood pressure, etc.?
    • “that’s another indissoluble fact about American religion just as community and blood pressure may be involved. It has to be mentioned in the same breath as open fraud to an absolutely astonishing extent. I mean, the shake down community, the genital mutilation community, the suicide bombing community, the child abuse–I would prefer to say child rape communities–all these are communities of faith, believe you me.”
  • What about art in a world without religion?
    • Hard to know which works of art were carried out by artists who were doing so out of piety, or just by artists who were sponsored to work on with pious subject matter. But certainly great swaths of culture, art, literature, poetry were inspired by religion. But this doesn’t demand these topics remain foci of our creativity, it just stipulates that they already exist.
    • “I think that the human need for the transcendent–for the spiritual–is undeniable, but that’s not the supernatural. It’s very important to understand. The feeling that people get out of landscape and music, or landscape and music in combination; the feeling of ware and love at the same time has had extraordinary consequences for many people, or one or other on their own. These are the things we can’t do without but there’s no reason to attribute them to the supernatural. You’re not glimpsing anything but nature from that.”
  • Q: “There’s a fine line between attacking people versus attacking ideas, right?”
    • A: “If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I’m still waiting to hear what your point is.”