The Four Horsemen, episode 1   ::   Dawkins Richard

The less you believe it, the more your demonstration of faith.

[SH] The more you prove it's true.

[CH] Yes, and the struggle, the dark night of the soul, is the proof in itself. So, we just have to realise that these really are nonoverlapping magisteria. We can't hope to argue with a mentality of this kind.

[SH] Well, no, actually, I disagree there …

[DD] No, but we can do just what you're doing now, and that is, we can say, "look at this interesting bag of tricks that've evolved" "Notice that they are circular … that they're self-sustaining … that they don't have any … that they could be about anything." And then you don't argue with them, you simply point out that these are not valid ways of thinking about anything. Because you could use the very same tricks to sustain something which was manifestly fraudulent. And in fact, what fascinates me is that a lot of the tricks are … they have their counterparts with con artists. They use the very same forms of non-argument, the very same non sequiturs, and they make, for instance, a virtue out of trust. And as soon as you start exhibiting any suspicion of the con man who is about … gets all hurt on you, plays the hurt feelings card, and reminds you how wonderful taking it on faith is. I mean, there aren't any new tricks, these tricks have evolved over thousands of years.

[CH] And you could add the production of bogus special effects as well, which was one of the things that completely convicts religion of being fraudulent, the belief in the miraculous. The same people will say well Einstein felt a spiritual force in the universe, when he said, "the whole point about it is, there are no miracles, there are no changes in the natural order. That's the miraculous thing." They're completely cynical about claiming him in almost the same breath. Every religious person feels the same criticism of other people's faith that we do, as atheists. I mean, they reject the pseudo miracles and the pseudo claims to certainty of others, and they see the confidence tricks in other people's faith, and they see it rather readily. You know, every Christian knows the Koran can't be the perfect word of the creator of the universe, and anyone who thinks it is, hasn't read it closely enough and it's just in this hermetically-sealed discourse that isn't really being self-critical. And I think we make a very strong case when we point that out, and point out also that whatever people are experiencing, in church or in prayer, no matter how positive, the fact that Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and Christians are all experiencing it, proves that it can't be matter of the divinity of Jesus, or the unique sanctity of the Koran, or because …

[DD] 'Cause there's seventeen different ways of getting there, yeah.

[CH] By the way, on that, a tiny point. I hope not a digression, it's useful bearing that in mind, too, when you get, as I did this morning on ABC News, the question "well, wouldn't you say religion did some good in the world, and there were good people?" You don't go that argument, and by the way, there's no reason why one shouldn't, you say "well, yes, I have indeed heard it said that Hamas provides social services in Gaza", And I've even heard it said that Farrakhan's group gets young, black men in prison off drugs. I don't know if it's true, I'm willing to accept it might be but it doesn't alter the fact that the one is a militarised, terrorist organisation with a fanatical anti-Semitic ideology, and the second is a racist, crackpot cult. And I have no doubt that Scientology gets people off drugs, too. But my insistence always with these people is if you will claim it for one, you must accept it for them all.

[SH] And the other move you can make there …

[CH] 'Cause if you don't it's flat-out dishonest.

[SH] You can invent an ideology, which by your mere invention in that moment, is obviously untrue, which would be quite useful if propagated, to billions. I mean, you can say this is my new religion: teach people to demand that your children study science and math and economics, and all of our terrestrial disciplines, to the best of their abilities, and if they don't persist in those efforts, they'll be tortured after death by seventeen demons (laughter). This would be extremely useful, and maybe far more useful than Islam, propagated to billions, and yet what are the chances that the seventeen demons exist? Zero.

[RD] There's a slipperiness too, isn't there, about one way of speaking to sophisticated intellectuals and theologians and another way of speaking to congregations and above all, children. And I think we've, all of us, been accused of going after the easy targets of the Jerry Falwells of this world and ignoring the sophisticated professors of theology and, I mean, I don't know what you feel about that but one of the things that I feel is that the sophisticated professors of theology will say one thing to each other and to intellectuals generally but will say something totally different to a congregation. They'll talk about miracles, they'll talk about …

[DD] Well they won't talk to a congregation …

[RD] Well, archbishops will …

[DD] Yes, but when sophisticated theologians try to talk to the preachers, the preachers wont have any of it.

[RD] Well that’s true of course.

[DD] I mean, you gotta realise that sophisticated theology is like stamp collecting. It’s a very specialised thing and only a few people do it.

[RD] They're of negligible influence.

[DD] They take in their own laundry and they get all excited about some very arcane details, and their own religions pay almost no attention to what they're saying. A little bit of it does, of course, filter in but it always gets beefed up again for general consumption, because what they say in their writings, at least from my experience, is eye-glazing, mind twisting, very subtle things which have no particular bearing on life.

[CH] Oh! No I must insist, I must say a good word here for Professor Allister McGrath who, in his attack on Richard, said it’s not true, as we've always been told and most people, most Christians believe that Tertullian said “credo quia absurdum”, I believe it because it’s ridiculous, no! It turns out, I've checked this now, though, I don't know this in McGrath that in fact Tertullian said the impossibility of it is the thing that makes it the most believable. That’s a well worth distinction, I think, and very useful for training one’s mind in the fine (inaudible).

[SH] If possibility is cause to absurdity …

[CH] It’s the likelihood, in other words, that it could’ve been made up.

[SH] Right

[CH] … is diminished by the incredibility of it.