Also interested in the reasons for your views.Interviewer: The author Christopher Hitchens has a new book out. It's called God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and in it he contends that religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry; contemptuous of women and coercive towards children. He joins is here in the studio, his brother Peter Hitchens, who's a columnist for the Mail On Sunday, is in Oxford. Good morning to you both. Christopher Hitchens, it's quite a series of claims made there — that religion poisons everything. Do you think that religious faith has done no good whatsoever?
CH: Well let me put it like this: I've been issuing this as a kind of challenge to the various priests and ministers and rabbis and so on that I've been debating in the United States in the last few weeks, and — in order to win my prize (so far undisclosed!) - you have to name an ethical statement made or action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer. No-one's yet been able to produce one, so it's no good saying that, “well I used to know a jolly nice priest who worked with disabled children and was an absolute sweetie” or “was a hero against tyranny” or something of this kind, because I could produce just as easily a German Communist who died heroically in the name of Joseph Stalin fighting Adolph Hitler. It would vindicate his party, would it?
Interviewer: Can you take up that challenge, Peter Hitchens?
PH: Not really, because it's a dud question. The question isn't whether a believer or an unbeliever could have done it; the question is whether the ideas which led the person to do it could have existed without the idea of an absolute morality and an absolute good, which atheism denies. And if there is no such thing as an absolute good then, for instance, there is no basis for things such as selfless courage which have absolutely no objective self-interested justification or, indeed, for the idea on which our civilisation rests that there exists such a thing as Law which is above power, and which has to be observed however powerful and however rich you may be.
CH: That went straight past my bat. Atheism does not deny that there is an absolute right or wrong. It's not relativistic — an atheist can be, of course — an atheist can be anything: can be a nihilist, but atheism is in my view only a necessary condition for clarity of mind, it's not a sufficient one.
PH: Atheism has no basis for deciding what right and wrong is.
CH: But no more does religion do so. If I was to ask anyone who's listening to this to imagine a wicked action performed by a religious person that was performed because of their faith, everyone could immediately think of an example; it would take no time at all. Religion makes people behave worse all the time and often preaches wicked things. For example, it's founded on a lie: the lie that we can escape death.
PH: Well, you've just changed the subject. The subject is: “what is the origin of any absolute idea of right and wrong?” Atheism denies that there is any origin for such an idea. All ideas of right and wrong which atheists can come up with are situational, ad hoc, designed for the times, and they're alterable. The point about the theist position is that it maintains that there is an absolute source of good, and that absolute source cannot be overcome by any particular worldly need that you have at any given time. The problem with people is that when they are left to their own devices, they will always find excuses for doing things which suit them.
CH: This involves the absurd belief that, say, the Jewish people wandering towards Sinai were under the impression that murder and usury and theft were all right until they were told by God that these things were not kosher. It's innate in people to know that these things are wrong; it's part of our evolution as humans top know that solidarity and mutuality are essential. We do not do a right action in order to please a celestial dictator, which is in my view an immoral basis of morality.
PH: We re-categorise actions which suit us. We all know that killing babies is wrong, and yet we kill 186,000 of them every year in the womb, in this country alone, and we call it abortion and instead of babies we call them foetuses to get round this problem, and there are many, many other things we do: actions of betrayal and dishonesty which we tell ourselves are all right because that's the way in which human beings evade the obligations of absolute morality
CH: The supreme being mandates the genital mutilation of babies, something no morally normal parent would consider doing.
PH: Again, you've changed the subject. You can't address, and no atheist has addressed, nor ever will, the simple problem that if you don't believe in any kind of supreme authority then ultimately you make your own mind up about what's good and bad, and that leads to the consequences we all know.
CH: That would mean logically, wouldn't it, that if there was no objective evidence that could be provided for the existence of this dictator who you worship, you'd have to say then I don't feel any longer I have any moral promptings. A perfectly nihilistic conclusion. Moral chaos results from your first premise.
PH: You can decide whether you want to believe that we are the products of random chaos or whether we live in a created, ordered, purposeful universe. Having taken that decision you than then try and discover what it is that we're supposed to do. No-one's offering any evidence; again, you're changing the subject ...
Interviewer: I'm going to come in, if I may, to change the subject slightly to ask both of you whether you have a theory as to why the two of you who were brought up, presumably, in the same way have come to such completely different conclusions?
CH: Well, there's nothing remarkable at all in any two people having divergent opinions. I certainly don't think it's very rare within families.
Interviewer: But on religion, on politics, the two of you are poles apart. Peter, do you have a ...?
CH: This doesn't help to sell my book at all!
PH: there is a simple answer to this one. We were both brought up with independence of mind and independence of mind doesn't necessarily lead you to agree with each other, but id does lead you to take positions as a result of thinking about them and as a result of consideration and experience rather than following conventional wisdom. I think you'll find neither of us follows conventional wisdom: that much we definitely have in common.
Interviewer: And you've always taken the decision not to review your brother's books, yet you've made an exception in this case. Why?
PH: Well, I don't think he's any more expert on the subject than I am. I wouldn't dream of taking him on on Henry Kissinger; I'm sure he knows more and cares more about Henry Kissinger than I do. But I think on the question of whether there should be religion in the world and whether for instance it should be classified as child abuse and therefore effectively stamped out, I think I can both disagree with him, and be as knowledgeable on the subject as he is.
Blind Electric Ray
