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>> Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's Authors at Google event. After the talk, we're going
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to have a Q and A session, and I'd like to remind everyone to please use the microphone
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in the middle of the room, if you have questions. It's my pleasure to introduce Christopher
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Hitchens. Mr. Hitchens was born in England, and educated at Oxford. In 1981, he migrated
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to the US, and recently, became a US citizen. He's the author of a number of notable books
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including “Why Orwell Matters” and “Letters to a Young Contrarian.” As one of our most
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notable public intellectuals, he has been a columnist at “Vanity Fair”, “The Atlantic,”
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“The Nation,” “Slate” and “Free Inquiry,” and taught at the New School,
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UC Berkeley, and the University of Pittsburgh. In his new book, “God Is Not Great,” he
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lines up the case against religion which he spent a lifetime developing with anger, humor
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and a formidable style of argument that defines all of Mr. Hitchens's work. About the book,
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Michael Kinsley wrote in the New York Times, “Hitchens has outfoxed the Hitchens watchers
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by writing a serious and deeply-thought book, totally consistent with his beliefs of the
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lifetime. And God should be flattered; unlike most of those clamoring for his attention,
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Hitchens treats him like an adult. Ever contrarian, and always eloquent, he's here today to
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discuss the book, take your questions, and take on anyone who dares to challenge him
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to a debate. He'll be signing books afterwards. And, with that, please join me in welcoming
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Christopher Hitchens to Google. >> HITCHENS: Thank you, darling. Sweet. Well,
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thank you so much for that suspiciously grudging introduction. And thank you very much, ladies
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and gentlemen, for coming. I understand we've only got the balance of an hour together so,
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I'll try and break the rule of a lifetime and be terse. I think I'll put it like this.
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It's true that publishers sometimes want to put a catchy or suggestive or challenging
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title, subtitle on a book. And so, when we hit upon or they hit upon, well, how religion
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poisons and why religion poisons everything, I knew what would happen, people would come
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up to me, they'd say, you mean absolutely everything, you mean the whole thing? They'd
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take me literally. I thought, well, all right. One of the things you have to do in life as
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an author is live up to your damn subtitle. So, today, I'd defend the subtitle because
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I think the title probably, when it came to me in the shower, I realized, it pretty much
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does speak for itself. Unlike that sign outside Little Rock airport, huge--we had a black
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sign that you see from the airport that says, just "Jesus," a word I have used myself, and
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a name I know but putting it like that seems to say both too much and too little, you know
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what I mean? Well, here's how religion has this effect, in my opinion: It is derived
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from the childhood of our species, from the bawling, fearful period of infancy. It comes
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from the time when we did not know that we lived on an orb. We thought we lived on a
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disc. And we did not know that we went around the sun or that the sky was not a dome, when
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we didn't know that there was a germ theory to explain disease, and innumerable theories
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for the explanation of things like famine. It comes from a time when we had no good answers,
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but because we are pattern-seeking animals, a good thing about us, and because we will
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prefer even a conspiracy theory or junk theory to no theory at all, a bad thing about us.
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This is and was our first attempt of philosophy, just as in some ways, it was our first attempt
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at science, and it was all founded on and remains founded on a complete misapprehension
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about the origins, first of the universe, and, second, about human nature. We now know
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a great deal about the origins of the universe, and a great deal about our own nature. I just
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had my DNA sequenced by National Geographic. You should all by the way get this done. It's
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incredibly important to find out how racism and creationism would be abolished by this
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extraordinary scientific breakthrough, how you can find out your kinship with all your
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fellow creatures originating in Africa; but also, your kinship with other forms of life
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including not just animal but plant, and you get an idea of how you are part of nature,
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and how that's wonderful enough. And we know from Stephen Hawking and from any others,
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Steven Weinberg and many other great physicists, an enormous amount now about what Professor
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Weinberg's brilliant book calls The First Three Minutes, the concept of the Big Bang.
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And we can be assured as we could probably need be that neither this enormous explosion
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that set the universe in motion, which is still moving away from us in a great rate
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nor this amazingly complex billion dollar--billion year period of evolution--we can be pretty
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certain it was not designed so that you and I could be meeting in this room. We are not
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the objects of either of these plans. These plans don't know we're here. I'm sorry
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to say, wouldn't know or care if we stopped being here. We have to face this alone with
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the equipment, intellectual and moral, that we've been given, or that we've acquired
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or that is innate to us. And here's another way in which religion poisons matters. It
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begins by saying, well, why don't we lie to ourselves instead, why don't we pretend
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that we're not going to die, or that an exception to be made at least in our own case
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if we make the right propitiations or the right moves. Why do we not pretend that the
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things like modern diseases which we can sequence now, sequence the genes of, like AIDS, are
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the punishment for wickedness and fornication? Why don't we keep fooling ourselves that there
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is a divine superintendent of all this because it would abolish the feeling of loneliness
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and possibly even irrelevance that we might otherwise--in other words, why don't we
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surrender to wish thinking? That poisons everything, in my opinion. Right away, it attacks the
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very basic integrity that we need to conduct the scrupulous inquiries, investigations,
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experiments, interrogations of evidence that we need to survive, and to prosper and to
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grow. And it's no coincidence, no accident that almost every scientific advance has been
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made in the teeth of religious opposition of one form or another that says we shouldn't
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be tampering with God's design. I suppose the most recent and most dangerous one of
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these is the attempt to limit stem cell research. But everyone could probably think of all other
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forms of scientific research and inquiry, especially medical that had led to religious
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persecution, in reprisal. Thirdly, it's an attack, I think, on what's also very
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important to us, our innate morality. If there's one point that I get made more than another
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to me when I go and debate religious people, it's this: They say, where would your morals
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come from if there was no God? It's actually--it's a question that's posed in Dostoyevsky's
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wonderful novel, The Brothers Karamazov, one of the brothers says--Snelyakov, actually,
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the wicked one, says it. If God is dead, isn't everything permitted, isn't everything permissible?
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Where would our ethics be if there was no superintending duty? This, again, seems to
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me a very profound insult to us in our very deepest nature and character. It is not the
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case, I submit to you, that we do not set about butchering and raping and thieving from
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each other right now only because we're afraid of a divine punishment or because we're
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looking for a divine reward. It's an extraordinarily base and insulting thing to say to people.
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On my mother's side, some of my ancestry is Jewish. I don't happen to believe the
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story of Moses and Egypt or the exile or the wandering and the Sinai. And in fact, now
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even Israeli archaeology has shown that there isn't a word of truth to that story or really
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any of the others; but take it to be true. Am I expected to believe my mother's ancestors
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got all the way to Mount Sinai, quite a trek, under the impression until they got there
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that rape, murder, perjury, and theft were okay, only to be told when they got to the
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foot of Mount Sinai, bad news, none of these things are kosher at all. They're all forbidden.
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I don't think so. I think, I think we can--actually, I have a better explanation ever since--superior
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as well as better--that no one would have been able to get as far as Mount Sinai or
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any other mountain or in any other direction unless they had known that human solidarity
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demands that we look upon each other as brothers and sisters, and that we forbid activities
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such as murder, rape, perjury, and theft. This is innate in us. If those activities
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are not innate, the sociopaths who don't understand the needs of anyone but themselves and the
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psychopaths who positively take pleasure in breaking these rules, well, all we can say
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is, according to one theory, they are also made in the image of God which makes the image
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of God question rather problematic, does it not or that they can be explained by a further
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and better research and have to be restrained and disciplined meanwhile, but in no sense
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here is religion a help where it came to help most which is to our morality, to our ethics.
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Finally, I would say--not finally because I'm finished here, I'm not quite done.
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Don't relax. Everyone has got to drink, something to eat, but on the poison question, I think
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there's the real temptation of something very poisonous to human society and human
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relations which is the fear of freedom, the wish to be slaves, the wish to be told what
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to do. Now, just as we all like to think and we live under written documents and proclamations
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that encourage us to think that it is our birth right and our most precious need to
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be free, to be liberated, to be untrammeled. So we also knew that unfortunately the innate
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in people is the servile, is the wish to be told what to do, is the adoration for strong
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and brutal and cruel leaders, that this other baser element of the human makeup has to be
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accounted for and it gives us a great deal of trouble around the world as we speak. Religion,
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in my view, is a reification, a distillation of this wish to be a serf, to be a slave.
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Ask yourself if you really wish it was true that there was a celestial dictatorship that
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watched over you from the moment you were born, actually the moment you were conceived,
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all through life, night and day, knew your thoughts, waking and sleeping, could in fact
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convict you of thought crime, the absolute--the absolute definition of a dictatorship, can
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convict you for what you think or what you privately want, what you're talking about
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to yourself, that admonishes you like this under permanent surveillance, control and
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supervision and doesn't even let go of you when you're dead because that's when the
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real fun begins. Now, my question is this--my question is this, who wishes that that were
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true? Who wants to live the life of a serf in a celestial North Korea? I've been to
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North Korea. I'm one of the very few writers who has. I'm indeed the only writer who's
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been to all three axis of evil countries, Iran, Iraq and North Korea. And I can tell
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you North Korea is the most religious state I've ever been to. I used to wonder when
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I was a kid, what would it be like praising God and thanking him all day and all night?
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Well, now I know because North Korea is a completely worshipful state. It's set up only
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to do that, for adoration and it's only one short of a trinity. They have a father
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and the son, as you know, the Dear Leader and the Great Leader. The father is still
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the president of the country. He's been dead for 15 years, but Kim Jong-il, the little
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one, is only the head of the party and the Army. His father is still the president, head
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of the state. So you have in North Korea what you might call a necrocracy or what I also--I
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called them mausolocracy, thanatocracy. One--just one short of a trinity; father, son, maybe
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no holy ghost, but they do say that when the birth of the younger one took place, the birds
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of Korea sang in Korean to mark the occasion. This I've checked. It did not happen. Take
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my word for it. It didn't occur and I suppose I should add they don't threaten to follow
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you after you're dead. You can leave North Korea. You can get out of their hell and their
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paradise by dying. To the Christian and Muslim one, you cannot. This is the wish to be a
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slave. And in my point of view, it's poisonous of human relations. Now, I've really babbled
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for nearly twenty minutes. I'll be quick. It is argued, well, some religious people
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have done great things and have been motivated to do so by their faith; the most cited case
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in point I have found is that of Dr. Martin Luther King, who I know I don't need to
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explain to you about. Two quick things on that: First, he was it's true a minister.
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He did preach the Book of Exodus, the exile of an enslaved and oppressed people as his
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metaphor. But if he really meant it, he would have said that the oppressed people, as the
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Book of Exodus finds them doing, were entitled to kill anyone who stood on their way and
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take their land and their property, enslave their women or kill their children, and commit
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genocide, rape, ethnic cleansing and forcible theft of land. That's what Exodus described
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as happening--the full destruction of the tribes. It's very fortunate that Dr. King
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only the meant the Bible at the most to be used as a metaphor and after all he was using
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the only book that he could be sure his audience has ever already read. That's the first
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thing. The second is, during his lifetime, he was attacked all the time for having too
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many secular and leftist non-believing friends, the people like famous black secularists like
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Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph. These are the men that did organize the march on Washington;
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which leads me to my third observation which is this: It's a challenge I made now in
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debates with rabbis, with priests of all Christian stripes, with imams. Once--I know this sounds
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like an opening of a joke about some bar, but once also with a Buddhist nun in Miami.
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I asked them all. Here is my--here is my challenge. You have to name me an ethical statement that
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was made or a moral action that was performed by a religious person in the name of faith
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that could not have been made as an action or uttered as a statement by non--a person
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not of faith, a person of no faith. You have to do that. Not so far and I've dealt at
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quite a high level with the religious, no takers. No one has been able to find me that.
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That being the case, we're entitled to say, I think, that religious faith serve as the
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requirements whereas if I was to ask anyone in this room, think of a wicked thing said
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or an evil thing done by a person of faith in the name of faith, no one would have a
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second of hesitation in thinking of one, would they? It's interesting to realize how true
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that is and how much true it's getting. Does anyone ever listen to Dennis Prager's Show?
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He's a slightly loopy Christian broadcaster, religious broadcaster, I should say. He's
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more Jewish than Christian--Judaic-Christian broadcaster who quite often rather generously
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has me on the show. And he asked me a question the other day; he had a challenge of his own.
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He said, “You are to imagine that you're in a town late at night where you have never
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been before, and you have no friends and it's getting dark. And through the darkness, you
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see coming towards you a group of men, let's say ten. Do you feel better or worse if you
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know that they're just coming from a prayer meeting?” This is Mr. Prager's question
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to me. I said, “Well, Mr. Prager, without leaving you, from just without quitting the
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letter B, I can tell you I've had that experience in Belfast, in Beirut, in Baghdad, in Bombay,
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in Bosnia, and in Bethlehem. And if you see anyone coming from a religious gathering,
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in any of those places, you know exactly how fast you need to run. And no one has to explain
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to you why and I haven't had to waste any time telling you, have I, ladies and gentlemen?
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So I submit to you that it is those who are people of faith who have the explaining to
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do, who have the justifying to do if this is indeed the case. If they can't account
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for anything about the origin of our cosmos or our species, if they say that without them,
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we'd be without morals and make us seem as if we are merely animals without faith,
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if further, everybody can name an instance where religion has made people actually behave
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worse to one another and act as a retardant upon the advances of knowledge and science
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and information, I submit that the case to be made is theirs rather than mine. We have
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a better tradition. We're not just arid secularists and materialists, we on the atheist
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side. We can point, through the Hubble telescope, the fantastic, awe-inspiring majestic pictures
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that are being taken now of the outer limits of our universe, and who's going to turn
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away from those pictures and start gaping again at the burning bush? We have smaller
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microscopes that can examine for us the miracles of the interior of the double helix and the
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sheer beauty of that. The natural world is wonderful enough, more wonderful than anything
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conjured by the fools who believe in astrology or the supernatural. And we have a better
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tradition politically against the popes and the imams and the witch doctors and the divine
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right of kings and the whole long tradition of civic repression combined with religion
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that's known as theocracy. We have created in the United States, the only country in
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the history of the world, written on founding documents testable, organized, works in progress
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based on the theory of human liberation and the only constitution in the history of world
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that says that there shall be a separation between the church and the state. God is never
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mentioned in the United States Constitution except in order to limit religion and keep
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it out of politics and put it under legal control. This achievement was described by
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President Jefferson whose biographer, I am in a small way, to the Baptists of Danbury,
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Connecticut in a letter after they reasoned him for fear of persecution. By the way, who
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do you think Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut were afraid of being persecuted by? Anyone
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knows? MALE: The Methodists?
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HITCHENS: No, the Congregationalists of Danbury, Connecticut. People forget what it used to
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be like, see how the Christians loved each other, how they tried to repeat the European
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passion of one religious sect repressing and torturing another one. And as you probably
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know, the president wrote back and saud, “No, you may be assured that there will ever be
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in this country a wall of separation between the church and the state.” So I have a new
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slogan and I'm taking it on tour and I invite you to join me in it and it goes like this,
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“Mr. Jefferson, build up that wall.” Okay, thank you very much for coming.