The full transcript

Good evening.

Thanks for being here on such a wretched night, and what a big turnout. We've busted right out of the temple tonight. I'm a little intimidated with America's rabbi and the God Slayer, Chris Hitchens, right here. Maybe you should be a little intimidated in this community. For all you know, I'm the son of snake handlers and primitive Baptists. In fact, I am, so we'll see what happens here. I hope that doesn't mean a prejudice in this debate. I made a mistake with my third child. I waited until she could speak to have her baptized. And when the— baptism, you know, water on head. And when the preacher, you know, got the water with the droplets and began to put it on her head, and he said, in the name of God, and she said, What is God?

Let's just do it.

Let's start with the simplicity of a child. What is God, Rabbi?

+4 C-3.1 · Direct answer to a hard question · Rabbi David Wolpe

Well, it depends who you're answering. If you're answering a 2-year-old, you answer one way, but if you're discussing it with an adult, you begin with a recognition, which actually the entire debate should be framed with, of human limitation. In the following sense: when you were 2 years old, could you imagine what it's like to be an adult? Of course not. A 2-year-old has no idea what an adult is like. And yet we make definitive statements about God all the time when, in every religion that I know of, the distance between God and human beings is infinitely greater than the distance between an adult and a 2-year-old. So when I say, as I'm going to in a second, I'm not going to avoid your question, but understand that I say it against the background of a religious recognition of our own inability to understand that which is infinitely greater than ourselves. I— my thumbnail definition of what God is is that God is the source of everything that exists, and God is someone, something with whom a human being can have a relationship, and that you can live your life in alignment with a godly purpose. But any definition that is greater than that is in some ways to traduce God, which is why, by the way, the title of Christopher's book is exactly right. God is Not Great. Because to say God is great or God is something is to put a definition on God, which we know from classical Jewish philosophy you ought not to do. So in fact, Christopher's exactly right, and we can wrap it up right now.

Thank you very much for coming. It's been a wonderful evening. Apologies perhaps to Muslims in the audience who say God is great all the time. We'll circle back.

Okay.

Chris Hedges, to you, answer my daughter's question. Maybe you'll warn her off.

If you don't mind, it would be Christopher and Hitchens.

Yes, sir.

Chris Hedges is a horrible—

Hedges? Did I say Hedges?

Yes, you did.

Forgive me.

Chris Hedges is a horrible apologist for liberation creed.

Christopher Hitchens.

That's better.

Too many guests, too little time.

Sorry, but I exist too, if you see what I mean.

Yes, yes.

May as well start by establishing that ontological Yes. Well, Friedrich Nietzsche famously said that God was dead, and Sigmund Freud can be rendered as having said that God was dad. And I think both of them are probably right. The concept of God is like everything else in our vocabulary, man-made. It's an invention of human beings. Unless you take the view that God made us, in which case there'd be a lot to explain. How many— why did we in that case make so many gods? It does seem to be much, very much more probable that men and women made many gods than that any one god made all men and women and the rest of creation. And as well as being man-made, it's fear-made. It is the unexpressed or partially expressed wish for a protector, a parent, someone who will never desert you, someone who will do in a way your thinking for you, especially on questions of moral philosophy. At its best, it's that. It's a wish to be loved more than you probably deserve. And at its worst, it's the underdeveloped part of the human psyche that leads to totalitarianism, that wants to worship, and that wants a boss, that wants a celestial dictatorship. And that's the bit that's now threatening to destroy our secular civilization. And so you're quite right to start where you do. It used to be believed, I mean, the number of gods now is infinite, and a new god is created almost every day by some cult or other, but it used to be that there was a belief that gods were in the trees, in the woods, in the springs, in the sea, in the clouds, and so forth. Polytheism of a kind. Then something a bit more polytheistic like Olympus, where there was at least a location for the divine, but it was multifaceted. And then monotheism, getting it down to one. So I regard this as progress of a sort because they're getting nearer the true figure all the time.

I actually— Rabbi, yes, yes, progress, maybe.

Which is why, which by the way is why the Vatican in its old days was very upset by the concept of zero. Didn't like zero at all. The most important number of all. The number without which you can't do anything. Which wasn't there in Roman numerals.

No, it was invented in Islamic civilization, actually.

Which also struck them as a sinister import from, in part of us, infidelium, from pagan lands. But also the concept of zero was very troubling for theism, and must be, and does indeed remain so. It's one of the many, many ways in which theism is not compatible with scientific worldview.

Rabbi Volpe, may I ask you—

I just want to point out, without even taking issue with the incorrect statements that he made. But I want you to understand— I would take issue with some of them. Wait, wait, wait. I want you to understand the progress of the argument that you just heard because it's important and people do this all the time and at least you should be aware of it whether you accept it or not. Very often when people argue with you, especially when they argue about religion, they attribute their own beliefs to logic and your belief to psychology. So religious people believe in something because they need to be loved or they need a crutch or they're weak, but I believe what I believe because it's true and scientific. And I just want you to be aware that you cannot actually disprove someone's belief by imputing an unworthy motive to it. You actually have to disprove the belief. So don't let Christopher pull the psychological wool over your eyes. You can actually be—

+3 C-1.2 · Partial concession · Christopher Hitchens

I'm not.

just as worthy or unworthy of love, just as tough-minded, just as thoughtful, just as deep, and still believe in God, as most human beings have throughout all of human history, as if you are Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher, are you a trickster?

Well, I don't think that— you couldn't accuse that of being an incorrect statement. You could accuse it of being an incomplete one. I didn't give all the reasons why people believe in God. But after all, you did write a whole book that argues that the belief in God can be very useful to people in times of crisis. Did you not? I mean, that's— and that's—

Yes, but I never said that that was why you should believe in God.

And I don't think it is the reason why many people do. But remember that there are 2 questions. I better now say, lest I be accused of not having exhausted the entire subject in my first response, I better say there are at least 2 questions. One is this: is there a God, a creator, a prime mover, an uncaused cause? Whatever you like to call it. And this was the question answered at a certain point, not very long ago in our history, by the deists, people like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and many others who said that the order of the universe seemed to suggest that it couldn't just have been random, that there may have been a designer, but that the designer didn't take any part in human affairs. And that in the late 17th, early 18th centuries was probably— sorry, late 18th, early 19th centuries was probably a very intelligent position to hold. It was as far pre-Einstein, pre-Darwin, was probably as far as you were likely to get with philosophical speculation. But so believing that there might be a cause or a mover or a creator is one thing, but believing that there is a supervising, intervening entity who cares who wins the war, who cares who you sleep with and in what way, Who cares what you eat and on what day, and in other words, who makes you the center of the whole cosmos, is another thing altogether. So, people who say, I believe in God, I'm a deist, have all their work in front of them before they can say that they are really religious.

Are you prepared to be a deist?

+4 C-3.1 · Direct answer to a hard question · Christopher Hitchens

No.

No divine mover even at the— whatever, the origin?

There's nothing in the natural, in the cosmic order, or— that's the macro level— or the micro level, that's to say the constituent of our own DNA and the things that we have in common with the other animals and indeed other forms of life like plants, that isn't susceptible to a much better explanation?

Well, here's—

In other words, as the great physicist Laplace said when he demonstrated his working model, his orrery as it's called, of the solar system to the emperor, and Napoleon said, well, I see there's no God in this system. And Laplace said, well, Your Majesty, it works without that assumption.

Rather, I don't want to play God, but to give form to this.

Sure.

It's 2010. You said you think of God as the source of all. In the year BCE 2010, why attribute the source of all to divinity? What about science? And you just said—

Well, that's right, exactly what I was just going to address is the— first of all, There are 2 separate ways of thinking about this, both, and I'll offer them both briefly and you can decide if both or neither is congenial to you. One is that of course you can't equate God and proof for God and discussion of God with a demonstration in a laboratory. That's never been the case. The idea is different, to shift it differently, which is this. I would ask you this question instead: Deep down, do you believe that the universe is constituted only by stuff, by material, or is there a mystery at the heart of things? Do you believe that you are purely synapses, or is there something immaterial and eternal about you and those you love? Do you believe that things like love are just an epiphenomena of the way evolution has put us all together? Or do you think there is something that in the fact that immaterial things like ideas and love and consciousness have such a profound influence on our lives that leads you to believe that the intangible can be at least as real or more real than the tangible? If that way of looking at the world appeals to you or speaks to you, then you understand That Laplace, in order to explain how the heavens go, may not need the hypothesis of God, but that in order to explain why there is something rather than nothing, why there is a deeper meaning to life than stuff alone, that that's something that speaks to you and lets you understand that God is real. That's part 1. Wait, wait, wait.

Part 2.

Part 2 is— There are, in fact, things that are suggestive of something greater in even the scientific worldview, which is why, by the way, in the American Academy of Science, more than half consistently— and this has been true for the last 100 years— 51%, 52% of scientists say that they believe in God. And that is the fact that everything exists rather than nothing, that consciousness, which is still inexplicable to human beings, is real, that I make sounds, which is immaterial, and it touches you in some way that makes you want to change things. The way of looking at the world, even from what we can see and touch and feel, suggests that there's something greater than what we know. And now, go right ahead.

↳ P5 raised again here · first raised at U-043

↳ evidence for the P2 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-043

I can't paraphrase him properly, but you really ought to get hold of— it's easy to find on Google— a lecture given by Lawrence Krauss, who I regard as the greatest living physicist. And it's about the quantum. And it's about a whole universe from nothing. It's exactly how you get from nothing to something, in fact, quite a lot of things. One means by which this happens is the following. Every second that we're speaking, a star the size of our sun or bigger goes out, blows up or goes out. That's been the case every single second since the first moment of the Big Bang. It's a lot. That'll be a lot of suns going out as we speak, and there's a lot of annihilation, isn't there? There's a lot of destruction. It's on a rather, what you might call, almost a wasteful scale. It does have the positive outcome, though, that we are all constituted of those materials. We are made of stardust. Now, I find that a rather more majestic and wonderful and even beautiful idea than, say, the idea of the burning bush. bit more impressive, gives you more to think about.

Are they mutually exclusive?

Also has the virtue—

+0.5 R-6.1 · Interruption · Rabbi David Wolpe

Are they mutually exclusive?

Oh, no, no.

Wouldn't God make you a star?

One has the virtue of being true and provable and studiable, which the other doesn't. And I do think that the verifiability of something is a virtue of its kind.

Are we simply material beings? Yes.

We don't have bodies, we are bodies. Until 50,000 years ago, there were 4 other kinds of biped, humanoid, not unlike us, still living on the planet, died leaving no descendants. We're the only survivors of those people, that family. We're the last. We don't know if they had gods or not. So you think it's inexplicable? No religion ever invented appears to have known that these creatures even existed because the religious are forced to believe that the only really significant event that happened in the human story happened about 3,000 years ago.

And the mysteries, the inexplicable, are we just waiting for them to appear?

That's not true. No, it's the fact.

actually there's a plan? All of this massive Big Bang cosmological churning and destruction and annihilation, which is paralleled, by the way, on our own Earth, where 99% of all species that have ever been on the planet have already gone extinct, leaving no descendants, all of this could be part of a plan. There is no way an atheist can prove it's not, but it's some plan, isn't it, with mass destruction, pitiless extermination, annihilation going on all the time, and all of this set in motion on a scale that's absolutely beyond our imagination in order that the Pope can tell people not to jerk off.

+1.5 C-2.1 · Common ground · Rabbi David Wolpe

Rabbi, stupid.

Right.

No, I think here we've reached actually— It's childish to believe. We've reached an area of agreement. I too repudiate that statement by the Pope, and I'm happy to do it publicly.

I'd—

No, no, no, no, no, wait just a second. Hold on. First of all, it's just not true that religions don't actually acknowledge very important things that happened before their own founding. Just read the beginning of the Bible, which goes back far beyond the founding of the Bible. But more important than that, there are actually things that if you are material, you can't give an accounting of. For example, you might not believe that you have free will. You might think that everything you do was predetermined from the beginning of the Big Bang. And just the fact, by the way, that all of the universe, physics tells us, came from something tinier than the head of a pin is, to me, there is no word other than miraculous for it. But nonetheless, you might believe that all the— everything you did, our words tonight, the fact that those flowers would be orange on the table, That was all predetermined from the beginning of time. But if you believe that you actually make a choice, that human beings have free will, then I ask you how you account for that. You didn't pick your birth, your genetics. You didn't pick your environment. So, from the very beginning, all of that was predetermined for you, and unless there is something immaterial about you that allows you to choose, then everything human beings do is already set from the beginning of time. I don't understand how you get free will if you don't have God.

Christopher?

It's pathetic, I'm sorry to say, to say of the cosmological and the genetic that these are deterministic processes. They're not at all. They're full of extraordinary randomness, and in the genetic case, of mutation. Stephen Jay Gould, the great paleontologist, wrote a book which I recommend to you called The Burgess Shale, which is the side of a mountain in Canada, in the Canadian Rockies, that sheared off. So you can read, you can see the inside of a mountain. You can see it as if you're looking at a blackboard, and you can see the growth and development of species, and you realize that it's not a tree. It's more like a bush. There are various branches that go off and go nowhere, and there are others that succeed, and there are different kinds of failure and different kinds of mutation. His most exciting thought, most revolutionary thought, is this: if you could so to speak, put all that onto a tape and rewind it, and then press play again, there's no certainty it would come out the same way. In fact, there's every reason to believe that it would not. So there's nothing predetermined, there's nothing deterministic about this at all. And thanks to our understanding of our genetics, which are also not predetermined because they're a result of random mutation and natural selection, as everyone now knows, and that's why we can have, sad to say for the kosher, but we can have—

Pork.

skin transplants and organ transplants from pigs who are much closer to us than we used to think. We can also sequence the DNA of viruses and learn how to immunize ourselves from them. It works, in other words. But yes, it can be tampered with, it can be engineered for good as well as for ill. There's nothing deterministic about it at all. But that's the point. It's much more exciting, it's much more interesting, it's much more rewarding, it's verifiable, and yes, there are elements of— I was trying to say— the miraculous the awe-inspiring, the tragic, the majestic in this that there simply are not in the incantations of Genesis where the supposed authors claim to know the divinity, the creator, on personal terms. This is nonsense.

It's for children.

Rabbi?

First of all, it is interesting. I mean, Stephen Gould, who was, by the way, very sympathetic to religion and wrote a book called Rocks of Ages, which I also recommend to you, where he said that religion and science don't overlap, They sure do. But he— wait one second. If you read his book on the Burgess Sale, he does say if you rewind, then you assume if you push play again, you would get a different result. And that's certainly true unless the result was intended. But more important than that, yes, there's randomness in the system. Nobody would argue that there isn't randomness in the system. But randomness isn't free will. Randomness is getting a result you don't expect. The question is, how do you get a directed choice which isn't random? I choose right now to pick this glass up. Now, how did I make that choice if I'm purely a product of my DNA and my environment? Then it's not a choice. Then it was programmed in. Then it's instinct. And the whole point that religion's always made about instinct was that human beings can rise above it. Unlike animals, which are the same at age 2 as they are at age 10 as they are at age 15. A human being grows and changes and chooses. That's the basis of religious—

↳ P7 raised again here · first raised at U-062

I have to say, to me, it doesn't seem a matter of religion that I can choose to pick up this glass. That seems to me to be well within what could develop—

How?

—purely scientific basis.

How?

I'm not a scientist, but it doesn't seem like a mystery of God to me personally.

Oh, sure it is. Well, no, but seriously, where does the element of free choice come from?

I could be purely instinctual. instinctual and put my head in a stream and drink and choose to do that. I can do it now.

But when you say choose, wait, wait, when you say choose, where does the choice come from any more than the choice of this glass to fall down? Where do you get a choice as opposed to a complex interaction of DNA and environment, neither of which you chose?

Again, piling on completely unnecessary assumptions. It's also inviting a question that will make you uncomfortable. If you say that no, it's because God has given you free will, I have to ask you, how do you know that?

↳ P9 raised again here · first raised at U-086

Well, are you assuming that we have free will? Are you assuming that we have free will?

If you ask—

Then give me another source.

If you answer my question with another question, I'll still answer it.

Okay.

I will still answer it, even though your question is an answer to mine. Rather, not an answer, a response to mine. The view I take about free will is that of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.

↳ evidence for the P7 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-064

I was—

That's a quip, not an answer. I was and I still to some extent am a dialectical materialist, and I also think there are some ironies in the universe as well as in history. But to say, of course we have free will, the boss says we've got it, is to make a mockery of the whole concept. And it's also to invite the question, What kind of tyranny is this that you want? You want an all-supervising, all-deciding person. I ask you first, what sources of information do you have about this person's existence that I don't have, that are denied to me? I'd like to know. And second, why do you want it? Why do you want to arrive at a terminus of unfreedom where there is a celestial authority upon whom all things depend and from which all things flow? Why do you want that, and how on earth do you know that there's any case to be made for its existence?

Yes, please. That's a good question.

I don't think that's determinism unfreedom. I actually think that—

I think you're only free when you've declared against it, frankly. That's the beginning of freedom, is the emancipation from the tyranny of theocracy, yes.

↳ evidence for the P7 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-064

I actually think that the whole point that I was making was that a belief in a God who creates you is what gives you free will, and that without it, you have to fall into a determinism. And by the way, you may think that science gives it to you, but every scientist I've asked on this question, including David Barash, who's an evolutionary biologist, says that it— and Steven Pinker had the same reaction— is that it is more or less a commonplace of modern science that determinism is the only worldview that's consistent with an understanding of the way science works. So you may be able to find it in science, but I haven't met a scientist yet who's been able to account for it.

↳ P7 raised again here · first raised at U-062

Not every scientist is a believer.

Putting that aside, no, of course not. I'm saying that those who don't use determinism as their philosophical assumption. But let me answer his question too, which is, therefore, I assume that as a religious person, you're granted freedom. That's the whole point, is you do make choices.

Once you've said granted—

Better choices—

Once you've said granted, you've made my point.

And he's English, he knows about canes.

Thank you for making me free.

No, you're granted freedom. So, you're granted freedom by the evolutionary process I'm granted freedom by a creator. Either way, what you— either way, you have to be—

No, no, granted all sorts of freedom. I mean, of course scientists are right to this extent. There are— Einstein says the miraculous thing about the laws of nature is they're never suspended. That's what's so amazing about them, is they're immutable. Religion claims that on occasions, the laws of nature are suspended in order to prove what they wouldn't otherwise prove.

It depends who you ask, not Maimonides. It depends who you ask in religion.

Is there a fundamental contradiction in your mind Rabbi, between Jewish teaching and evolution?

No.

None at all?

No, none.

But evolution, as we learn it, doesn't require a deity.

No, it— well, it depends what you mean by require a deity. It's just like saying that building this stage doesn't require a deity. The question isn't whether the, the discovery of the mechanism by which God made the world requires God. It just requires the discovery of the mechanism by which God made the world. But it also doesn't outlaw God or make God impossible or make it, in fact, less plausible.

What's the difference, to your mind, between mystery and incomprehension?

Incomprehension? In other words, when we say— Incomprehension describes my reaction to the question.

Oh, great. America's rabble-rousing, like, questions incomprehension.

I'm not sure I understand. Tell me again.

In other words, progressively made a lot of things comprehensible.

Yes. Mystery means those things that by the very nature of the world are unfigureoutable, no matter how bright we are, no matter how hard we work at it.

How do you know that they're unfigureoutable?

Well, you're asking—

Prefer that over incomprehensible.

You're asking no in a way that I'm not willing to concede is the proper way to describe religious conviction. It's like saying to me, how do you know that love exists? Or how do you know that another human being is beautiful? Or how do you know that, that, I don't know, that these, that these lights are a pageant of gorgeous colors? The answer is you don't know it. Some things you have as the deepest conviction of your soul, and they're things that make sense of the world in ways that nothing else makes sense of the world. But if you ask me, do I know that God exists the way I know that that glass is on the table, then I say you're putting it in an empirical scientific framework, which is exactly the framework that religious people want to keep religion out of.

No, but I want to put it the other way around. How do you know the mystery won't be solved one day?

↳ P10 raised again here · first raised at U-113

Because it's not a mystery of a question that's solvable. It's like saying, how do you know the mystery won't be solved That you have an ineradicable sense that the world is wondrous. I don't know how you would even think about solving such a mystery.

I could understand it and still find it wondrous. Christopher, what about you? If it's not God, is it all soluble?

Well, first—

One day?

You're right that science has made many things more comprehensible to us, and it's explained things that religion used to take credit for. In other words, now we know There's a germ theory of disease. Diseases are not curses or revenges from heaven. Same with earthquakes and so on. The stuff they used to teach us, and many of them still do, is nonsense, evil nonsense as well as ignorant nonsense. But it's also taught us, just in my lifetime, an enormous amount more about how little we know. We're much, much more ignorant than people who lived before Galileo. We just— because we have now an increasingly large idea of the fantastic expanse—

How ignorant?

of the unknown. That's precisely the moment at which to say that skepticism is what's necessary. Inquiry, debate, doubt. Where's faith in this? Where's the usefulness of faith there? There's no use to it at all. Socrates, who as far as I know existed but may well not have done, it doesn't matter to me. No one would insult me if they say, Socrates, you're your great hero didn't exist. Try it on a Muslim, try it on a Christian, that their prophets didn't exist, or tell people that Moses is a myth. They start hurling themselves about, making menacing noises very often. Socrates said, you're only educated when you've understood how ignorant you are, and you're only gonna even find that out by doubting everything all the time. There's all the difference in the world between that outlook and that mentality.

↳ P11 raised again here · first raised at U-126

Now—

And the mentality of faith. And second, on On metaphysics, which you, I noticed, take refuge in several times already this evening, like what is love? Is something poetic or is it prosaic? Very good questions, but metaphysical ones. Those who say God exists and intervenes in the world, in other words, those who say there is a religious God, the God of religion, are saying that redemption is on offer to human beings, that salvation is on offer to them. And that if they reject the offer, they can be in really big trouble. Now, don't start talking to an audience like this, or if you don't mind, to a debate partner like me, as if religion was a private matter, because everybody knows that if it was, there wouldn't be anything to argue about. It's precisely because it claims to be a total solution, a complete solution to all problems, available on pain of Death, sometimes, in some forms, but available to you if you'll only have enough faith. Well, we've just found out that faith is probably the most overrated of the virtues and the one most— least useful to us in the real dilemmas that we actually have to face.

There are so many things to unpack in that statement that I'll just pick on 2 or 3, the first being, interestingly, that Socrates, whether he exists or not, existed or not, according to Plato at least, believed in the gods and even in an afterlife. So, he didn't doubt everything.

The gods may be—

But wait, no, wait, wait, wait. Didn't interrupt you. But I want you to know, and you should know this in particular— Could you do it in 2? I didn't interrupt you twice. But I want you to know—

You weren't quick enough.

It may be true that part of it wasn't was speed, but I also think it's because civility is a very religious virtue.

So, the— I could have said that.

The Jewish tradition actually doesn't tell you that everyone must do this in the world. Rather, it prescribes goodness, and that's what it is that religion is supposed to bring into the world. Now, can you Can you point to examples of religious wickedness? Of course you can. But that's clearly what Judaism asks of people. The first obligation that you have is goodness. And that's why when you talk about religion as though it is inherently totalitarian and tells you you must act this way, it makes 2 mistakes. First of all, it doesn't see religion as evolving as everything else does, when in fact the Judaism of thousands of years ago ought to be, must be, should be, is expected to be different from the Judaism of today.

↳ P12 raised again here · first raised at U-140

↳ P16 raised again here · first raised at U-169

↳ evidence for the P15 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-169

It still has 10 Commandments.

Right.

None of which mention goodness. Guys, guys, guys, you have to let me finish my statement, okay?

Okay, please.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I feel a little bit between a sandwich here. But the second— and the second part of it is that if you say that faith does nothing for you, as Christopher repeats over and over again, It's very hard to explain why it is that millions and millions of people all over the world and throughout history have felt that faith deepens their life, gives them meaning, increases their goodness, and why it is, for example, in America, that people of faith give more to charity, vote more in elections, volunteer more, help more. Do you know what the largest aid organization is, aid and development organization in the United States? It's not CARE, it's not Save the Children, it's One World, which is a Christian organization out of Seattle, which not only gives millions and millions and millions of dollars across the world, but sends people all across the world to the most beleaguered, helpless places, and they do it because they believe they're called to do it by God. It's just not true that having faith makes no difference in this world. It makes a tremendous difference, and the vast majority of that difference, not all of it, But the vast majority of that difference is for goodness.

Let me put a question then, if you'd be so good. The rabbi feels in a sandwich, and I don't mean for you to feel in a sandwich, so let me put this to you.

No, he makes me feel in a sandwich.

Oh, that's okay. Christopher, what about the solace of faith? Some of the most religious people I know ended up there when—

Oh, this is a softball! I want a hard question!

No, I mean—

I know what he's going to say to this!

Well, maybe, but he's—

You hard-minded, hard-hearted— A non-neater of solace.

Yes, worse, you're a misanthrope because you're not sympathetic to people's need for religion.

I say in my book, available at fine bookstores everywhere, that as long as I don't have to hear about it, I don't mind what people believe. If they say, well, thanks to Joseph Smith and his gold plates, I have real faith now and I've got a family and I have friends and I have a real system, and so on. I said, fine, fine. Just don't come to my front door with it. Don't ask for a tax break for it. Don't ask my children to be taught it in the school.

Did you sign up for my thinking you wouldn't hear about it?

And I ask the question in the book, people think they have a personal relationship with the creator, and they're the possessors of a wonderful secret. It must feel— I've never felt it, but I presume it feels great. Why doesn't it make them happy? They're not happy. They can't be happy till everyone else believes it too. They go out and proselytize very often—

Now—

And here's— I can't let your last answer go. Very often in the guise of charity. You notice how often that religion, rather than answer the questions that I've put, like, how do you know there's a God? What evidence do you have for it? Which you say, well, lots of good people do good things because they're religious. Well, let's take the most recent pressing case. Richard Dawkins and I and a few others, in response to the Haiti earthquake, set up an emergency charity for people of non-belief to give to, because so many charitable organizations are, in fact, proselytizing groups. So we raised about $2 million in a weekend, and all that money goes straight— By the way, thank you. If you go to Richard's website, you can find out more about how to donate to this, because it's permanent. It's going to stay in being. All that money went straight to Doctors Without Borders, of course, and the International Red Cross, which though it has a cross, isn't a religious organization. Both these organizations are already in Haiti. They're proven. None of the money goes to support any missionary activity, none. And the Scientologists and all the others who turned up in Haiti, and the people who turned up in Haiti to kidnap babies to convert them to their faith, and the Catholics who turned up and said, standing in the ruins of their own cathedral, with a quarter of a million Haitians buried under the rubble said, God spoke here today and you should listen to his message. Don't tell me that's good. Don't tell me that's good. That's wicked. It's proselytizing. It's proselytizing with the helpless, using them as objects of charity and conversion. It's lying to people.

But there's also a lot of—

It's wrong to lie.

But let me—

It's wrong to lie to people and it's giving them false hopes and false explanations for their plight. Now, we're not guilty of any of that. And now I'll ask you another question. Where in the Decalogue does the word goodness appear? Where? That's a good swathe of Exodus for you. Where in Exodus does the word goodness appear? Where in this commandment-rich territory does the word goodness or the enjoinement to be good occur? This should be a softball for you.

↳ P15 raised again here · first raised at U-167

Okay. First of all, it tells you what you ought not to do. It says, love your neighbor as yourself, in the In the book of Leviticus, I mean, I'm allowed to move to Leviticus from Exodus, I assume?

Yes, that's fair.

Yes, okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. It says you should pursue justice, justice, justice you shall pursue. It says it over and over and over again. And also, by the way, you know, no tradition, at least certainly not the Jewish tradition, and I'm not aware of any other tradition, is only the Bible. Judaism is a long exegetical tradition and It says several times in the Talmud that the one purpose of the mitzvot is לצרף את הבריאות, which means to refine human character. It's clear that Judaism is directed around goodness. It's repeated over and over again. The whole system and framework of mitzvot are to get people to treat each other decently. And if you say, which you do, that people use authority— governmental authority, religious authority, military authority, political authority— to do bad things, My answer is, of course they do. Anytime you set up a structure of authority, people will do bad things. Churches, other things.

But that isn't what I said.

But that— yes, of course it is. So what you say is— what you heard is, when religion does good things, it doesn't count because sometimes they want people to believe what they believe. When it does bad things, it's because of religion. When you make everything good that happens that religion does invalid and everything bad that religion does representative, That's called arguing in bad faith, which is ironic for someone who has none.

+4 R-2.2 · Contested the opponent's sincerity · Rabbi David Wolpe

It seems a fair question.

Yes, but it's not— I mean, as I know you know, that isn't at all what I say. I don't say bad things are done in the name of religion or by authorities. I say it's religion itself that is the problem. I go out of my way to make clear that I don't take refuge in any other position. Now, in Leviticus and in Exodus, if your neighbor You better not, and you're supposed to love him. This person had better not be an Amalekite, a Midianite, a Moabite. Better not be a witch.

Yep.

The destruction of whom is enjoined. Better not be a homosexual, the stoning of whom is enjoined. Better not be a slave, the terms of enslavement of which are all laid out. Now, these are primitive, tribal, agricultural. Most of the commandments, by the way, all the Decalogue, by the way, is addressed to the property-owning classes. Here's what you can't do with your servants. Here, your servants must also obey this commandment. Why are the commandments addressed only to people who have staff? Why are the women— Rather a large objection, I would have thought. Why are the women counted as part of the animal and chattel that's disposable by these holders of property? Couldn't it be any more obvious that this is a man-made phenomenon, and at a time when people were not at their best and were full of fear and ignorance and greed and covetousness of other people's property?

Can we be faithful and not be trapped by history? Not all of its elements are attractive.

Well, it's not only that, but as Christopher knows very well, I assume that the Bible was put together by human beings and that The Jewish tradition is a long-evolving tradition, as are other traditions, in which the dross of history is gradually refined in the same way that you would not expect someone 3,000 years ago to be able to understand the sort of arguments that you're making tonight. People change. There's an evolutionary process also not only to biology but to sociology, to ideology, all of those things. And that's why The question is very much, does religion make people better, and can these systems refine themselves, and can they get rid of the stuff that's bad in religion? And I think that to assume that you can cherry-pick the things in the statements in religion that are negative and those things are necessarily enduring contradicts the history of every tradition I know.

+4.5 C-1.2 · Partial concession that the Bible is human-authored · Rabbi David Wolpe

Well, cherry-picking is an odd word to use for something that's thrust upon you. I've got no choice but to study the Decalogue.

No, actually—

I point out it says it's addressed to property owners and enjoins them to keep women as property. I say, oh, you're cherry-picking, nitpicking.

↳ evidence for the P16 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-170

Are you in favor of theft, murder, and adultery? Do you think those are good things?

Well, there's—

now, here's exactly the nub of my question. If what you say is true—

Yes.

Not that I— and I've never said and wouldn't— I couldn't be interpreted as having said no religious person can do a good thing. If you— but if what you say is true, this should be true, and you should find it easy to point it out.

Okay.

there must be something, not that they can do or do, but that I cannot do, that's a good thing. Either a moral statement made or a moral or ethical statement performed that a person of faith could perform that I cannot. You must be able to identify that if your point is to have any force to it.

No, actually, how can one human being do something that another human being can't do physically? Physically, of course, you could do anything that I could do, but I can say lots of things you don't do. No, I said a moral or ethical— I can say lots of things you don't do, not that you can't do. You probably don't do, as I do, bless your child on a Friday night. You probably don't create great works of art based on religion. You probably don't go halfway across the world feeling that you're motivated and called by a God who tells you to help other human beings. I mean, all those things are things that religion motivates people to do, not that you can't do them, but that people generally don't do them if they're not motivated by religion.

But, Paul, let's get real. I mean, pronouncing an incantation Yes. Isn't a moral action.

Of course it is.

Or is it? No, it isn't.

It's only not a moral action if you don't feel— Subjectively, it means it's not a moral action.

↳ evidence for the P17 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-232

Anyway, it is something I could do.

It's not— I know, of course you can, and I encourage you to do it. It's only not a moral action if you don't feel the unique expression of love when it takes place in an atmosphere of sanctity that is not the same as saying to a child, I love you. I have to tell you, I mean, some of you knew my father, who passed away in May, who was a rabbi. When I think of the most powerful and intimate moments that I had with my father, it was when he put his hands on my head and blessed me on a Friday night. Now, he would not have done that were he not religious, and it wasn't the same as when he kissed me goodnight and said, I love you, because there is an element in which religious people dwell. It's called a world of sanctity that you can't invoke and can't dwell in if you don't believe that that realm exists.

↳ evidence for the P4 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-062

Christopher— So, do you— well, wait. First, I'm sorry for your loss, as the Irish say. Sorry for your trouble.

Right.

Second, but I'm still going to have to insist, I don't think anyone in the audience can consider that's an answer to my challenge.

Of course not.

That's to say there's a moral or ethical statement or action that an unbeliever could not perform.

↳ P13 raised again here · first raised at U-179

But could not means that you're physically incapable of it.

↳ evidence for the P13 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-180

No.

I'm willing to concede right here—

+0.5 R-6.1 · Interruption during a concession · Christopher Hitchens

No, it's goodness. It would be morally—

You can do everything I can do.

↳ evidence for the P13 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-180

Well, that's not what I asked, though.

Of course you can't.

Let's go to the—

Of course you can't.

All right, well then, okay.

I mean, you have to say wouldn't do. You can't say can't do.

Well, I will leave— since you won't answer it, I'll just leave the question to the audience. If anyone can come up to me and say, here's a moral thing you couldn't do, not don't do, but could not do, that only a religious person could do, I'd be very interested to hear of it. No one's ever come up with any.

↳ P13 raised again here · first raised at U-179

Let me ask a second question.

There was a brief corollary. Think of a wicked thing done, or evil thing said, that is done precisely because of faith? You've already thought of one.

But any that someone who doesn't have faith couldn't do? Wait, tell me one that someone who doesn't have faith could not do.

No, I didn't say that.

Okay, but that's exactly the point. A human being can do certain things whether they're believers or not. They have the physical ability. Believing something doesn't give you a new physical ability. It still doesn't seem—

it's no problem to you that the suicide-murder community, the genital mutilation community, These are all faith-based communities.

↳ P14 raised again here · first raised at U-205

Do you want me to answer that?

While we're on the subject of charity, who doesn't hear Hamas saying, the reason we're loved by our people is because we provide social services, we help the needy, we're the only people who come out and do that, which is, by the way, I'm horrified to have to say, is true. But do you excuse them for that because they're charitable?

Of course not.

↳ evidence for the P14 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-262

Do you not think that they bless their children a whole lot?

Yes, I think that's a beautiful thing to do.

I've heard them do it.

Right.

You try being a Muslim child and not be blessed the entire time. That's part of the authority that they claim. They claim to own the truth.

I want to ask, who—

This is all faith-based.

Who steps up to— you won't like any of the language, but life has a lot of despair. People fall into despair. Who steps up to save? And I don't mean in Christian terms necessarily at all, but who steps up to reach out to those people? And for society as a whole, if you don't have the teaching of religion What will offer a kind of moral construct? I don't see it in schools. I don't— union halls are gone.

Who's going to give people a structure of self-discipline? I live in such a world. I live in such a world. It's called Hollywood.

Hollywood. Well, exactly. I mean, what— it may have blemishes. It may be deeply flawed. It may be fatally flawed, you would say, but what's the substitute? What's the structure for moral teaching and save the despairing?

I think despair is quite a good starting point, Michael. myself. I mean, I think it's very good to know that we're born into a losing struggle. I think that the stoicism that comes from that and the reflection that comes from that is very useful. I'm not very impressed by people who say, well, I wish it wasn't true, so I'll try and act as if it isn't. It is true. Everything is governed by entropy and decline and annihilation and disaster. And you're born into a losing struggle, and because you're a mammal primate, primate mammal, You know you are, and you know you're gonna die, and that there'll be a lot of struggle and pain on the way. I don't want a world without anxiety and grief and pain and struggle. I want— I can't get it.

No one's saying you can't get it.

But those who offer it to me, I spurn the gift. I don't want what you want. I don't want the feeling of eternal love and peace. Love and peace, very, very overrated in my view. One reason, one of the many reasons actually I should despise all religions equally, and I do in a way. But one way which I prefer Judaism to its rivals is that the emphasis is more on justice than on love.

I want to go there, but why is that not misanthropic of you, that attitude?

Misanthropic? It doesn't mean I have to hate people.

Well, it's—

It means I respect them enough not to offer them false consolation.

I do think it's important—

The realm of illusion will not help you to cure this condition.

I do think it's important to say that part of this Part of this is based in temperament, but also part of it is based in life experience. I spend a lot of my time at the bedside of people who are dying, with parents who lost children, with husbands who lost wives and wives who lost husbands. The sense of community that is created by religion, the sense that life is meaningful even if it's short, all of that, it's not trivial, it's not cheap consolation, it's not illusion, it goes to the depths of the questions that human beings ask themselves. And I know that you can make a clever remark about the cheap selling of religious consolation, but you know what? The remark gets melted by the heat of human anguish when you're standing beside the grave of a child who died and the mother is saying a prayer and that brings her some measure of comfort because she really does believe that this world in some sense is meaningful and is not nihilistic and is not empty and is not foolish. And although I can't prove to you in an empirical sense that in fact the world is meaningful, at that moment, even as I question it, it seems to me the deepest instinct of my soul.

+2 C-4.1 · Acknowledged he cannot prove the world is meaningful · Rabbi David Wolpe

Well, if you'll— gosh. Well, if you'll pardon me, I won't share any of my griefs with you, but I've never had one or known anyone who had one who's had the faintest consolation from religion. And indeed, being told, as the Christians tell them, that they're off to a better place and so on, I think it's a positively wicked thing to do. I think lying to the dying for a living, what self-respecting person can do that?

And you know it's a lie because— just tell me how you know it's a lie since you assert it again and again.

↳ P18 raised again here · first raised at U-232

+4 C-3.1 · Direct answer on why deathbed consolation is a lie · Christopher Hitchens

Because the person saying it cannot possibly know it to be true.

↳ P17 raised again here · first raised at U-233

And therefore, it's a lie.

They don't have access to information that's provided to them.

↳ evidence for the P18 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-235

Even if they believe it, it's a lie.

↳ evidence for the P17 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-232

Yes, it's a lie.

But how do we create, for those who aren't able or don't desire to walk around in despair or to walk around in irony, in a world that brings— can bring plenty of despair?

Try it. Try it.

Try it, fine, but I think it's manifestly clear lots of people don't choose that. So, what does atheism offer?

↳ P19 raised again here · first raised at U-220

+4 C-3.1 · Direct answer on what atheism offers the despairing · Christopher Hitchens

Well, it offers the chance of living without illusion, which I think— and it says that philosophy and literature will do a great deal more for you. They're much more— there's a lot more morality in them. There's a lot more ethical discussion in Dostoevsky, say, than in Hollywood.

It may be true, but who will present them in our society, in a real society? Who will present them in a way—

For now, I'm presenting it.

There he is.

For now, I'm presenting it. I can't do—

You're gonna be very busy.

I can only appear in my own person here. I can even say that to some extent it works for me. Irony, I think, is tremendously useful, as is philosophy, especially the philosophy of Spinoza, especially in times of anguish. And the realization that there's no false consolation can actually cheer you up.

↳ evidence for the P19 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-243

But—

Once you face the fact that you're born into a losing struggle, things immediately appear a great deal more manageable in some ways. And really, of the remarks against this made, not one of these remarks couldn't have been made by a devout member of the Muslim Brotherhood. And what I want to ask him is this. If anything of what he says is true, is he really saying that he would prefer me not to be myself, not to be an unbeliever and someone who believes in irony and the unillusioned world, but I'd be morally better off if I was a Wahhabi Muslim, for example?

Is he me?

Is he me?

Are you asking me?

I'm saying to you, I would be a better person—

+0.5 R-6.1 · Interruption to reclaim the floor · Rabbi David Wolpe

No, no, no, don't answer the question. You asked me the question. You're not allowed to answer it for me.

You imply.

I imply.

I want to know if you really mean that.

Actually, I never said that you were automatically better off if you believed than you didn't believe. I think Christopher is very useful in the world because he forces religious people— I mean, he's useful for many, many reasons, obviously, to the world, but he also forces religious people to think seriously about their faith. And as I understand the God that I believe in and the God that Judaism presents, the first and primary demand is not belief. The first and primary demand is goodness. That's exactly what characterizes Judaism. And therefore, if you say to me, I'm a good person, but I don't believe. Is it better that I would be a miserable person who believed? I— all I have to do is look at the sources and say, obviously not. Obviously, it's better for you to be who you are and to promote goodness in the world. That's exactly, לתקן העולם במלכות שדה, is what the Jewish tradition teaches, to make the world better under the sovereignty of God. But notice the first clause in that is to make the world better. So, if you do that, that's the primary demand of any faith that I think is worth its salt.

+4.5 C-1.2 · Conceded a good unbeliever need not become a believer · Rabbi David Wolpe

+5 R-1.1 · Strawman · Christopher Hitchens

May we turn on that point to what Barry Shregg raised as an acute concern, that is, violence, and the question of whether violence is integral to religion or exceptional and an offense to religion, or both, or all 3. Violence and religion.

Okay, so I'm gonna try to abbreviate this. There are 2 things to remember. First of all, most religious conflicts are not about religion. What you find is religions will fight when there's land, when there's power, when there's resources, when there's water, when there's money. It's very rare for a a religious group, not inconceivable, but very rare for a religious group to say, hey, guess what? There's someone halfway across the world who believes differently, let's go get them. It's the people who live next door to us who are other than us, we should get them, and by the way, along the way, we're gonna take their land and we're gonna take their riches and we're gonna take this. And that's because, and if you look in the Encyclopedia of War, which is probably not something that you peruse in your leisure hours, but if you do, you will see that it identified 1,763 wars since the beginning of time, 123 of them are identified as religious wars. When you take religion out of a society, you don't get a more peaceful society. We look at the 20th century, it was like a laboratory for that— Stalinism, Maoism, Nazism, Cambodia, North Korea versus South Korea, on and on and on and on. The fact is the record of extracting religion is very poor. And the final point is this, which is, if you ask why religious people fight, the answer is clear. It's because they're people. I have a colleague in— not a rabbi, but a psychologist in Los Angeles who studies bullying. Do you know at what age bullying is most prominent? Think to yourself what age, and then I'll tell you the answer. The answer is preschool. Because we're not born all sweetness and light. It's why it's so much hard work to get a kid to be good, right? Parents don't have to say to their child, why don't you share a little bit less? You know? Because you're really, you're too selfless, you're too kind. Instead, it's very hard work to get people to do well. What religions are known for is their attempts to make something straight of the crooked nature of human beings, and they fail again and again and again, exactly as you would expect if you know human nature. But that doesn't mean that the attempt to do it makes people worse. Quite the opposite, at least according to the evidence of history.

Well, violence— there's no mystery about violence. Violence arises because we are primates, imperfectly evolved. Our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenaline glands are too big. There are various other deformities of this kind, sexual organs designed by committee, all the rest of it. And we're greedy and—

We're back to politics, I guess.

We're greedy and fearful, and covetous of other people's property. And also, surprisingly, it's probably our biggest defect, given that the reason we're so successful is there's almost no genetic difference between us. If we were dogs, we'd all be the same breed, fantastically little variation. But we're incredibly prone to tribalism and ethnic and racial—

Yes.

What Freud calls the narcissism of small differences. So, of course, if a tribe, let's say, that's calling itself the Children of Israel, for the sake of argument, decides that it should kill all the other tribes that get in its way, take their women as slaves, butcher their men, take their land, take their cattle, and so battle this way across to Canaan and take everyone else's land and burn down their— That's gonna happen whether there's a God or not, or whether there's religion or not, but it'll happen very much more intensely if they believe they have a mandate from heaven to do so. It's a terrific force multiplier. I think there would have been a quarrel between the Hutu and the Tutsi of Rwanda, say, once Belgian colonialism had established that there were these 2 different groups, types, that is, tribes. But it's a terrific force multiplier that the Catholic Church was as strong as it was in Rwanda, the most Christian country in Africa. It made it infinitely worse. What makes the Israel-Palestine two-state solution ungettable? Because there's a chunk of people on both sides who say they have God in their corner, and God gave only their group the land. They can negate the votes of everybody else. including the whole of the international community, by the way, just because of their faith. Northern Ireland is the same. There would have been a Republican nationalist dispute. It's infinitely worse because of religion. So, I think that the possible, the corollary I'd like to hold would be that the less religion there was, the less violence there would be, but I can't in good Darwinian conscience say that. But I think the more that people refused orders that were divine, as for example, to take the preposterous allegation that the rabbi makes that the wars of the 20th century were secular wars, the belt buckle worn by every soldier in the Nazi army that says, Gott mit uns, God on our side. I don't think that was a help to you. Things were bad enough as they were. On page 70, I think it is, of Mein Kampf, Hitler says that in taking on the filthy virus of Judaism, I know I'm doing the work of the Lord, and I'm called, I'm summoned by the Lord to do this work.

Right.

A book, one of the very few books the Vatican didn't ban in that period, by the way. I don't think that was a help either. So I'd say, on the whole, we'd be better off without the belief either in a supreme dictator, because that leads to violence, or the idea that God takes sides. In our pathetic mammalian disputes.

↳ evidence for the P20 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-267

I wanna just—

Thank you.

As a coda to this, when you say that we shouldn't take orders, I just want to remind you of a long history. For example, the abolition of slavery was almost entirely the work of people who believed they were taking orders from something higher than societal orders. Wilberforce in England, here, you know, Beecher and John Brown and so on, they believed they were doing God's work by abolishing slavery. And it's interesting that the abolition of slavery— So, you're a slaveist. It's interesting the abolition of slavery was a Christian movement, but the idea is it's not an issue of who you take orders from. It's an issue of the orders you take. That's the issue. And it comes down in part to what kind of religion you practice, not whether you practice religion.

Comrades, I just— I'm sorry.

Comrades? What kind of orders you take is what it comes down to.

↳ P22 raised again here · first raised at U-272

↳ evidence for the P21 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-272

Brothers and sisters.

That's better.

Comrades. I suppose it is somewhat to the credit of some Christians that in the waning decades of thousands of years of slavery that were biblically mandated, some of them belatedly joined things like the American Anti-Slavery Society, stars of which were Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, non-believers, right? That makes sense. Whereas, to the last day of the Confederacy, the flag of the Confederacy said Deo Vindice. God on our side, and every justification for that slavery came from the Bible, where indeed it's not hard to find it.

↳ evidence for the P16 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-170

We're gonna take questions from the audience in about 1 minute. There are microphones. If you have questions, make your way, and we will take them very shortly. As we begin to do that, may I ask Christopher Hitchens, you've debated Rabbi David Wolpe on this subject, you've debated the Reverend Al Sharpton.

↳ evidence for the P23 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-277

Yes.

What's the difference between these debates?

Well, the Reverend Al Sharpton is another case of the damage done by society— to society by religion, because once it was agreed by the rest of America that black people are best led by preachers, and once it was agreed to write out of the civil rights record the heroic black secularists like Bayard Rustin and the great black union leader, Philip Randolph, who actually organized, with the help of the United Automobile Workers, the March on Washington. Once all that had been forgotten and we decided, yeah, black people, they really love their preachers, then once Dr. King is gone, it's one succession of junk demagogues after another, all of them given the mantle because they're in holy orders. There's no fraudulence you can't get away with in this country if you can get the word Reverend put in front of your name.

Questions from the audience?

Sharpton's a very conspicuous example of that.

We'll begin right here. Madam, your question.

Sir. Sir, I can't see very—

I'm sorry, the lights. Hedges, Hitchens.

Mr. Hedges, yeah. Sir.

I'm gonna come up there and beat you up, man.

Later.

Okay. It seems to me that, you know, most religions deal with operational aspects of life, such as human capital development, that is the accumulation of literacy and technology, economic development, mental and physical well-being, and public service, which deals with charity and those kinds of things. These are the work of religion, you're saying? Yes, that they profess this, yes. And that all faiths profess these things, and since they do, it seems to me that it's not so much their profession that causes the negative externalities, between people who profess these things, but it's the labels that they take hold, such as I think Mr. Hitchens alluded to the fact that people say things about their faith that they actually don't practice or believe. And so I'm saying that should we just abandon these labels and stop calling ourselves Jews, Christians, or Muslims, or whatever, and deal with the operational facts of life which deal with, again, human capital, you know, literacy, economic development, mental and physical well-being, and public service and charity, helping others without the labels. Rabbi?

If I understand your question correctly, I would say this. The largest organized groups of charities in the world over and over and over again all around the world organize themselves around religious groups. I don't think that that's a mistake and I don't think that that's a coincidence. So that in fact, if you disband the idea that we're doing this as a religious group—

Sure.

You will in one stroke undo a great deal of the good that happens in the world. So, no, I think that communities, which by the way, without religions, I don't know where you get communities where young and old sit together in common purpose. It's very rare, especially in our atomized society. If you disband that, I think you'll get trouble.

Christopher, without community, without the labels?

The concern I implied in what David says is that a person exists who would say, now that I don't believe in God, I'll stop giving money to charity. I don't care anymore. I don't know— I don't think there is such a person, and if that were so, it would be a very strange religion that they'd been Who will organize good works in the absence of religion?

↳ P24 raised again here · first raised at U-307

↳ evidence for the P12 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-154

Not only that, why is it that in survey after survey, religious people do give more and religious people watch less television and use drugs less and use alcohol less?

This is what religion is down to.

It has social utility.

It's very impressive to me.

Okay, good.

It's very often the first thing. When we debate with Catholics, they always change the subject to charity right away. With Jews, it's usually a little later.

You just said that they— And with Muslims, it's It's at the very end.

All the time, because what else can they— they don't want to defend their faith.

But you just said the opposite. You just said that even once you didn't believe, you would do it.

They don't want to defend their faith. They don't want to say— they feel uneasy talking about redemption, salvation, all this kind of thing, but look at the good work we've done. If you talk to the Mormons, they'll say, you may not think much of Joseph Smith, and I say, you got that right, but boy, you should see our missionaries in Peru.

So government will do the work if religion does not?

Excuse me, what has this got to do with the existence of God or the validity of religious claims. It has nothing to do with it. Social utility is always introduced as a time-wasting tactic.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Now, don't applaud that. Nothing to do with it. He's just— But, all right, all of you who applauded, I just want to ask you this. If Christopher says to me, God doesn't exist, and I say, but we do good things, He's got a point. But his previous comment was, people who don't believe in religion do good things. In response, I say— in response to the question, people who believe in religion do good things to a greater extent. And then he says, well, why aren't you talking about whether God exists? You made an argument against the social utility of religion. I then made an argument for the social utility of religion, and you turned theological on me.

+3 C-1.2 · Partial concession that social utility does not establish God · Rabbi David Wolpe

I have not conceded. that it's to a greater extent. Let me give you an example. With the great Brazilian photographer, Sebastião Salgado, whose wonderful work on the primary producers of the Third World, you ought to be familiar with, great, like one of the great photographers. He's the ambassador, as the UNICEF calls it, the United Nations Children's Fund, for the eradication of polio. I went with him all over Bengal. We went, we got it down to the point where, except for a few bits of Afghanistan and El Salvador, Polio was almost gone from the world. It could go with smallpox. Not a small thing. Done by UNICEF, a secular organization. And we nearly got— a date was announced, which we were pretty sure polio would be gone. And it spread back.

↳ P25 raised again here · first raised at U-296

Yes.

Because largely Muslim groups in Nigeria, and also in parts of Bengal and Afghanistan, told people, don't go get your children inoculated. It's a plot. by scientists and Jews and others to sterilize Muslims. And that plus the Hajj, that plus the wonderful devotional habit of going to Mecca all the time and taking all your diseases with you, has meant that polio is back all the way across Africa now. So I'm not gonna have it said that in order to do good, you've gotta be more religious than someone who—

↳ P25 raised again here · first raised at U-296

↳ evidence for the P12 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-154

↳ evidence for the P25 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-309

It's complicated, but I want to get another question, if I may, sir.

All the practical evidence is the other way, and it's nothing to do with the claims of faith.

↳ evidence for the P25 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-309

Nothing.

Thank you. Thank you.

First comment to Mr. Hitchens: thank you for a very well-argued book. You and I are in violent agreement.

Second, it seems to me, not to talk about religion and faith for the moment, but the question as to whether God exists, let's not duck that one.

It seems to me that to discuss that subject one needs to have some scientific knowledge.

My question is very simply to Rabbi Wolpe, and please take a second to think about it.

My question is, and I've asked this of priests, reverends, and rabbis many times—

We're ready.

My question is, if no one ever explained God to you, not in writing, not orally, would you have figured it out?

+1 C-4.1 · Acknowledged uncertainty · Rabbi David Wolpe

Thank you.

So, first of all, I think that it's important to understand that the idea that there's an inbuilt opposition between scientific knowledge and belief is contradicted by some very prominent scientists, including Francis Collins, who's the head of the Human Genome Project, who wrote a book in favor of God, Owen Gingrich, who's an astrophysicist at Harvard who wrote a book talking about his belief in God. I always find it interesting that people assume that the expertise they have is necessary in order to make the assertion that someone else makes, and if they don't have it, then they can't speak about it. I grew up in a home where one of my brothers is a PhD in bioethics and the other one is a PhD in developmental biology. They talk science all the time. I think for a layperson, I have a reasonably good grasp of, uh, of some sciences. And I would say absolutely, I can make the assertion that God exists precisely because the criteria that is used for a scientific assertion is not used for a religious assertion. Nobody asks a— in the same way that you make philosophical statements that are not subject to scientific criteria. If you, for ex— if you ask yourself What does the world look like to something that's not human, to a bat, to an ant? The answer is we can't possibly know that because we can't unknow what we know and we can't look at the world through different eyes. So if you ask me, would I have come to this belief if it wasn't explained to me, my only evidence to answer that is yes, human beings did. And either it was explained to them by God, which is what I assume, or you would come to it naturally. I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. So, yeah, I think I would come to it naturally, but can I prove that to you? No, it is precisely one of the many examples of unprovable questions that we nonetheless can feel deeply about. My point, though, is that early on— Is this a debate or is this a question?

Early on—

Let me put it to Christopher. Do you assume that everything will one day be solved scientifically, or does it matter to you?

No, all the science is going to do is keep on teaching us how little we know and multiplying the distance between our own attainments and our desire to master these matters. Many of these questions will remain undecidable, which is the way I like them. Religion and science can coexist in the same person. That's true. I know Francis Collins. He writes brilliant on the genome, but if you've read C.S. Lewis, you don't need to read him on religion. It's unbelievably naïve. Sir Isaac Newton was an alchemist. A very strong, if rather superstitious, Christian. He thought the Pope was the Antichrist, might have been onto something there. But a very weird— full of very weird beliefs. I thought if you knew the measurements of the old temple, you'd know more than if you understood gravity. Alfred Russel Wallace, who did most of Darwin's work for him, was a spiritualist, would go to table-rapping sessions listening to burblings from the beyond. Joseph Priestley was a Unitarian and believed in the phlogiston theory.

Shouldn't that be a late breakthrough?

It's really only until— I would say it's only until Albert Einstein— not until, I mean, Albert Einstein, that you get a scientist who's also essentially a philosopher of pure mind. That's the great breakthrough. And now you can have private beliefs and be a scientific person, but no one says, my science helps to vindicate my religion. No one says that anymore. That's not doable.

I want to get to more questions, please.

Yes, I have a question for both of you. I have a question for both of you regarding the existence of a universal morality. My question for Mr. Hitchens: Is there one, and if so, where does it come from? And my question for the rabbi is: If there is one, and it's, for example, in the 613 mitzvot, how do you personally pick and choose which ones to follow? Because I notice, you know, you're not wearing tzitzit and some of the other prescriptions. So, if it's universal— I might be. It might be under my shirt. Well, there are— I won't go there. But generally speaking, can you be a good Jew and not follow the 613 if that is the prescription for universal morality?

+4 C-3.1 · Direct answer to a hard question · Christopher Hitchens

Well, the most commonly taken universal, absolute moral statement is what's sometimes called the Golden Rule, which Well, Rabbi Hillel says, don't do to another person what would be repulsive to you. Others say, do as you would be done by, just putting it the other way. It's in the Analects of Confucius. It's— very few societies don't have it. So I think that's what we'd have to take as the nearest to an absolute. It's obviously subject to various relativities, alas. For one thing, it's only really as good as the person saying it. Should I not do to Charles Manson what I don't want him to do to me? Well, if you see what I mean. I mean, should we say, don't let's do to Charles Manson what we wouldn't want done to ourselves? Obviously not. It's just like the contradiction between the Old and the New Testaments. The Old Testament says, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, which would lead to a very eyeless and toothless world. And then the Nazarenes, says, you can't condemn anyone unless you can cast the first stone. Actually, that bit was knitted into the Bible quite late and is almost certainly a fabrication, but it's believed in by many Christians who, as you know, will believe practically anything. If you can't condemn anyone without being yourself without sin, then we can't even arrest Charles Manson unless we were sinless ourselves. So these moral absolutes are actually more full of moral relativism than you might think. And the reason people want there to be absolutes is this: they want there to be an absolute authority who can give them to you, because wouldn't that save you all the trouble of thinking out ethics for yourself, which is where I started? Why not take that chance? More enjoyable, less subject to appalling commandments to stone witches and murder homosexuals and all the rest. I won't carry on.

What about universal morality, and if there is, The—

which— I'm not sure that Christopher said whether he believes in a universal morality, but yes, someone who believes in God assumes that there is a universal morality, but also assumes that it's very hard— it's not that the 613 mitzvot instantiate universal morality. And moral reasoning, as far as I know, is certainly in other traditions, but obviously in Judaism, is an essential part of the Jewish tradition. It's not that you get out of thinking by being part of the Jewish tradition. In fact, questioning, reasoning, wondering, thinking, objecting is an essential part of Judaism. Anybody who studies Talmud knows it's filled with objections and questions. But the assumption is that there actually is a right and a wrong in any given case. If all human beings are evolved primates, there's not a right and a wrong. There's a better and a worse. There's a more powerful and less powerful. Nietzsche was exactly right. If God is dead, then power is all that matters, because ultimately there isn't a right and a wrong. There's something that promotes your interests and something that negates your interests. But I don't believe that.

Excuse me, do you or do you not believe that human beings are evolved primates?

Yes, but I also believe— but I also would— I said if all they are— I said if all they are is evolved primates as opposed to evolved primates who have a spark of the eternal in them, which I believe we do.

↳ evidence for the P30 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-360

Question.

2 questions for Mr. Hitchens. The first one is, I was taught by a physics professor that if you go back to the Big Bang, beginning of the universe, in the first 1 to the 61st of the first second, the entire universe is in a tiny amount of space, and at that size, space and time can cross. And his point was that the whole universe came into existence out of a hiccup in the space-time warp, and therefore it's just kind of a big accident that we were here. And so my question is the same one that I posed to him that day: why is there a space-time warp? Which leads me to the second question, which is, wouldn't it make more sense that there would be nothing? There is— should be no universe. There should be no space-time warp. There should be none of us, and unless we're hooked into the Matrix right now, we seem to be here. And so—

You take that as an argument for God? Is that what you're saying?

For something. There's a great mystery at the core of the universe, and then why are we here is the second question to argue those out.

Okay. Thank you very much. Well, I'd again commend to you someone who's much more expert on this subject. I started by mentioning Lawrence Krauss's lecture on A Whole Universe from Nothing. But where's the grandeur, where's the divinity in the hiccup? And who produces the hiccupper? All you get from this is an infinite regression. Who creates this creator? Who— It gets you nowhere. And again, if you do make the assumption, which I can't dispute or certainly cannot refute, that there is a first cause or an uncaused cause, it still doesn't mean that there's a God who takes sides, answers prayers, enjoins morals.

↳ P29 raised again here · first raised at U-338

+3 C-1.2 · Partial concession · Christopher Hitchens

I didn't ask about that.

No, no. So, but I mean, so I'm afraid you only— you compel me to somewhat repeat myself.

Can I just ask a quick question about what you just said? If it's an assumption that you can't refute, which I understand, I think everybody here would say you can't prove that there's not a God, but that doesn't mean that there is one. But if it's an assumption that you can't refute, why is it that when someone says, I believe that it is true, do you say they're lying?

+3 C-1.2 · Partial concession · Rabbi David Wolpe

I didn't say that they're lying.

You said to me, when someone stands up there—

No, I said someone who goes to tell a child that if they don't behave well, they'll go to hell is lying to them.

That wasn't the example that we gave.

Someone who goes to the deathbed of a person who believes that they're going to heaven—

And says that I believe that there's a world other than this one.

Or going to a better place is, I think, a charlatan, a nauseating charlatan.

And the question is whether religious people at the highest level have a better understanding of themselves than people who claim to be atheists. And in particular, we can ask the question, is Mr. Hitchens himself really as great an atheist as he claims? He's pretty good. Yeah, he's pretty good.

Mr. Hitchens, are you a Christian? You closet believer.

No, a point of agreement between the rabbi and myself is that the human species, mammalian primates, though it undoubtedly is, and made out of the dust of exploded suns, does have a need for, I would say, the transcendent would be one word, the numinous, even the ecstatic. Wouldn't trust anyone who hadn't felt this. And it has obviously to do with landscape, light, music, love, and I think also a permanent awareness of the transience of all things, and the melancholy that invests all this. So it isn't just gaping happily at a sunset while listening to music. You're doing that knowing that it can't last for very long. Very important part of the awareness. People who didn't have this would, I think, be beyond autistic. But there's no need for the supernatural in this at all. There is no supernatural dimension of which this gives you a share. And yes, of course, for poetry and literature, we are rather stuck with the pathetic fallacy, if you know what I mean. The pathetic fallacy is giving human attributes to material things. So we're tempted to do that too.

↳ evidence for the P5 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-053

+3 C-2.1 · Common ground · Christopher Hitchens

+5 R-1.1 · Strawman · Rabbi David Wolpe

Rev, I can— Oh, you can just follow up. It can be saved.

Just on the word evil, though, I personally find it's a a word you absolutely have to have.

↳ P30 raised again here · first raised at U-354

Why?

I decided this in Iraq, as a matter of fact, after I'd seen Saddam Hussein's attempt with chemical weapons to destroy the Kurdish people of northern Iraq. I'd seen the, as it were, the stench of evil. I thought, now, everything else that you could say about Saddam Hussein, psychopathic dictator, mass murderer, genocidalist, bad guy, as some people used to call him, things of this kind, wasn't up to it. There was a surplus value to totalitarianism, a sort of a numinous bit, a shimmer around it that meant that evil is a word we could not do without.

Do you see in he who speaks up for the numinous the possibility of belief? Do you smell a potential person of faith in Hitchens, or no way, no how?

I think no. I mean, to be perfectly honest and not to make a cheap I think that Christopher is a person of tremendous, impressive faith, not the faith that I have at all, but faith in justice, faith in goodness. I mean, what he's done with much of his life is, I think, really awe-inspiring. That doesn't mean for a minute that I think that he's being dishonest about his lack of faith in the things that I believe, but does he have faith in a different sense Absolutely.

Can we do more? Yes?

Mr.

Hitchens, you are likely the world's most charming, roguish, and enlightened atheist, and I love you for that. But as a Sufi Muslim, I'm very ruffled by the title of your book.

Of all the titles that you likely had at your disposal, did you have to settle for the literal negation of Allahu Akbar? Yes. I thought so. Thank you for that question.

Thank you. It's a very good question, and I'm glad.

I wanted to come back to it. Why? As I've said, I think that all religions are wrong in the same way, in that they privilege faith over reason, but they're not all equally bad in the same way all the time. I mean, if I'd been writing in the 1930s, I would certainly have said that the Roman Catholic Church was the most dangerous. religion in the world because of its open alliance with fascism and antisemitism, which the damage from that our culture has never recovered from and never will. But at the moment, it's very clear to me that the most toxic form that religion takes is the Islamic form. The horrible idea of wanting to end up with Sharia, with a religion-governed state, a state of religious law, and that the best means of getting there is jihad. holy war, and that Muslims have a special right to feel aggrieved enough to demand this, I think is absolute obscene wickedness, and I think their religion is nonsense.

The entire—

in its entirety?

In its entirety. The idea of God speaks to some illiterate merchant warlord in Arabia, and he's able to write this down perfectly, and it contains the answers to all— Don't waste my time. It's bullshit.

But you're saying the same about—

also that God speaks— the Archangel Gabriel speaks only Arabic, it seems.

I just want to say, in retrospect, you were very civil, actually. I don't know what I was thinking.

↳ evidence for the P31 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-366

No, this is—

Is this the same characterization of all religions?

Well, actually, no, because remember, Islam makes one special claim for itself. All religions claim to be revealed truth, that they all are founded by divine revelation, but Islam rather dangerously says, ours is the last and final one. There can't be any more after this. This is God's last word. Now, that's straightaway a temptation to violence and intolerance, and if you note, it's a temptation they seem quite willing to fall for.

↳ P31 raised again here · first raised at U-366

↳ evidence for the P31 verdict on Rabbi David Wolpe · ruling prints at U-366

Rabbi, can I make a quick—

Secondly, I had another motive, another motive, which is this. If you remember Dick Gregory, the older comrades here will, great black comedian and civil rights activist. When he came to write his memoir, he called it Nigger. It upset a lot of people, including his old mum, who called him and said, why are you doing this? He says, Mama, every time you hear that word again, they're selling my book. So every Allahu Akbar reminds people that we're in a very serious struggle with a very depraved religion. And that there are—

You give no quarter?

Help is available.

Look, he believes in the prophecy of Muhammad. I'm sorry to say, I think he's being, at best, conned.

Yeah. Our time is ticking down. With respect, if I may be the protocol guy, sorry.

I wanna go back to your answer to the question just before this, because I think, and particularly I wanna interrogate you, Rabbi, Because you, in your earlier discussion and your answer to a couple of the questions, you seem to suggest that if there's something beyond the material, that's evidence for God, or it— And then on the question of whether there can be moral behavior, one can have a reason to act morally, you say that only, you know, that requires the existence of God. If there's no exist— if God doesn't exist, you don't believe in God, you don't have reasons to behave morally. But then I think in your answer— so I think that's where it was until your answer to the question before last, and at that point you seem to grant that the gentleman sitting to your left actually did have reasons to act morally even though he does not believe in God.

Yes, that's right.

And I'm trying to figure out— I'll explain. The difference is not whether people in their own minds have compelling reasons to act morally. The question is, if you don't believe in God and you say, you know what, I'm going to— why would you do good in secret? As Balzac put it, perhaps only believers in God do good in secret. Now, obviously, that's not true, but you understand the ideology behind it, which is, if you don't believe that there's a universal moral code that comes from beyond us and that human beings make up what's right and what's wrong, why is it that I, as a human being, can't decide this is right for me even though I know it's going to be wrong for anyone else? In other words, the standard that arises only from human beings is easily broken by human beings. Whereas, if you think that goodness is woven into the fabric of the universe, which is what a believer says, then it's always wrong at all times in all places, whether someone's watching or they're not watching, whether you're a believer or you're not a believer, that's always true, and that's the distinction I was trying to get at.

↳ P28 raised again here · first raised at U-334

I was very struck, because this is the core question, so we might as well revisit it. I was very struck this week reading, I'm sure you saw it, the Pope's brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, who runs the choir school in Regensburg. He's discovered recently there's been some unpleasantness at this school, of which he was the steward for about 20, 30 years. He said he didn't know about any of that, and surely claims not to have taken any part in it, but he said he did used to smack the boys around quite a lot. He said until Bavarian law changed and made it illegal for teachers to hit children.

Right.

Well, I don't wanna be told anymore that without religious people, we wouldn't know what morality was. He didn't know this. until the secular law intervened and taught him how to behave. Now, wait, wait, wait. What is the church defending? What is the whole racket of the church in this? Protecting yourself from it, saying they were ordered, don't go near the courts, don't go near the police, we'll sort this out among ourselves. And they say they're the people who prevent us from succumbing to moral relativism? I'm not hearing it from them. I'm sorry, it's insulting to be talked to in that way. The great recent governor of this state, Mr. Romney, wants to be president. Okay, there's a constitutional issue here. Mormons are supposed to say that their prophet, as they call their leader, his word is sovereign over anyone else's, including the Constitution of the United States. So Romney has to say— and finally people did force him to answer the question— well, do you think that about your prophet? He said, no, the Constitution takes precedence in all cases. Fine. So to the extent that he's an acceptable person, it's to the extent he's not a Mormon. The discipline of secularism is necessary to civilize these superstitions. I hope very few of you begin your day by thanking God that you're not a female or a goy.

↳ evidence for the P28 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-332

Our time is short. We're going to swing around just a little bit. Yes, back here.

This is for Mr. Wolpe. At the start of your talk, you said your belief was scientific, but you spent the rest of the talk backpedaling from that. But my real question is about free will. You say that you cannot get free will from a deterministic system. I can create a pseudorandom number generator that you cannot distinguish from randomness, no matter how long you look at it. It'll take longer than the life of the universe.

Right.

So, where did you get— That gives you randomness. That doesn't give you intentional free will. And I never said that it did. I said at the beginning, by the way, that my belief was scientific. Okay, but if you use that as an output, it's Deterministic, but it gives you a random result that you can use for free will. Now, where did your deity get free will, if it has it? If it doesn't have it, it's not much of a deity. If it does have free will, either it got it itself— why can't we do it?— or some other deity gave your deity free will, which gives you infinite regress.

This will be our last question, I'm afraid.

The answer is that there is no analogy between the deity and between human beings. Just like when someone says, Who gave birth to God? That's a misconceiving of the religious concept of God, which is that God has always existed, and God isn't a biological creature. Therefore, God doesn't get free will the way human beings get free will. The objection and the problem with human beings getting free will is that if we're purely biological, how does that alchemical, metaphysical free will get into us? And a random generator doesn't give you free will, even if it gave you random numbers, that's quite different from actual choosing to do something or to do something else.

Well, who do you think in our society is winning this debate? The atheists, the new atheists, the religious? Where's the center of gravity going? And this will be the last question, I'm afraid.

I think a very large number of people don't— and I say this based on experience debating in a large number of churches and synagogues— go there for some of the reasons the rabbi gives: community, Tocquevillian reasons, you might say. American communities, charities, self-help, often they run a school, this kind of thing. They don't really believe the holy books. They don't think they have been specially noticed by God or can expect any special favours from him, but they see, as it were, no harm in it. And there's a great deal of schism among those who do believe, enormous amount of schism. So when people say in opinion polls, That when you read that 90% of Americans believe in the virgin birth and in Satan and so forth, I don't believe it at all. I don't believe it, and I don't believe people who have doubts about it would tell it to someone who rang them up in their kitchen on the telephone either. I think that underneath this, there's a huge crust of doubt and a great resentment against American theocrats. If you wanted to know how to piss off an American Protestant in the South, say, oh, are you one of those Jerry Falwell people? They hate that, rightly.

Do you think you're winning then?

No, I think that the supposed religious monolithic nature of America is grossly overstated. It doesn't describe reality. And it is certainly true, as one of the questioners mentioned, that the number of those who say— not that they're atheists, we're still a very small minority— but those who say that they have no faith and no allegiance to any church has doubled in the last few years, and that's according to a decent opinion survey, the Pew one, not a random poll.

↳ evidence for the P32 verdict on Christopher Hitchens · ruling prints at U-395

Rabbi, where do you see the center of gravity?

It'll double again.

Toward you? Toward Christopher? Somewhere else?

I'm not— I mean, I don't have a sociological expertise. I can't tell you in terms of statistics where it's going. This is what I would say. I think that there are lots of reasons why organized religion has trouble. Many of them have been enumerated by Christopher. There are various other reasons as well. But I actually think that the impulse to piety and the sense of something greater than ourselves is deeply implanted in human beings and will never go away. And in that sense, although people will find different expressions for their religious belief, I feel quite confident that actually most people will continue to be religious in the sense of believing that That in fact life isn't an empty howling wilderness the way that Christopher describes it, but that there is something deep, lasting, eternal, meaningful about you, about those you love, and about the world that we live in.

Rabbi David Wolpe, Christopher Hitchens, you're a great audience. Thank you very much.