Interviewer: The author Christopher Hitchens has a new book out. Its 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, whos a columnist for the Mail On Sunday, is in Oxford. Good morning to you both. Christopher Hitchens, its 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: Ive 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-ones yet been able to produce one, so its 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 its a dud question. The question isnt 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. Its 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, its 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 whos 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, its founded on a lie: the lie that we can escape death.
PH: Well, youve 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 theyre 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. Its innate in people to know that these things are wrong; its 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 thats 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, youve changed the subject. You cant address, and no atheist has addressed, nor ever will, the simple problem that if you dont believe in any kind of supreme authority then ultimately you make your own mind up about whats good and bad, and that leads to the consequences we all know.
CH: That would mean logically, wouldnt it, that if there was no objective evidence that could be provided for the existence of this dictator who you worship, youd have to say then I dont 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 were supposed to do. No-ones offering any evidence; again, youre changing the subject ...
