[SH] Too many commitments, yeah.
[CH] But you absolutely wouldn't be challengeable in your belief. It'd be very, very important to you, but there would be no way in your life, your real life, of vindicating or practicing the opinion that you have. And I'm sure the same is true of people who say well I shouldn't really prefer one child to another or one parent to another but I do, I'm just not gonna act as if I do.
[SH] Right.
[CH] All kinds of things of this kind.
[SH] But what do you think, as educators …
[CH] Or Senator Craig saying he is not gay. Thinking in his own mind he's absolutely sure he's not, but he can't manage his life by saying he is or that he isn't. So, a question I wanted to ask was this: we should ask ourselves what our real objective is. Do we, in fact, wish to see a world without faith? I think I would have to say that I don't. I don't either expect to, or wish to, see that.
[SH] What do you mean by 'faith'?
[CH] Well I don't think it's possible, because it replicates so fast, faith. As often as it's cut down, or superseded, or discredited, it replicates, it seems to me, extraordinarily fast, I think. For Freudian reasons, principally to do with the fear of extinction, or annihilation
[SH] So you mean faith in supernatural paradigms?
[CH] Yes, the wish. Wish thinking.
[RD] Then why would you not wish it?
[CH] And then, the other thing is, would I want this argument to come to an end, with all having conceded that …
[SH] You wouldn't like to retire and move on to other stuff?
[CH] 'Hitchens really won that round, now nobody in the world believes in God'? Now, apart from being unable to picture this, I'm not completely certain that it's what I want. I think it is rather to be considered as sort of the foundation of all arguments about epistemology, philosophy, biology, and so on. It's the thing you have to always be arguing against, the other explanation.
[RD] It's an extraordinary thing. I don't understand what you're … I mean, I understand you're saying that it'll never work, I don't understand why you wouldn't wish it.
[CH] Because, I think, a bit like the argument between, Huxley and Darwin. Sorry, excuse me, Huxley and Wilberforce, or Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, I want it to go on.
[RD] Because it's interesting.
[CH] I want our side to get more refined, and theirs to be ever more exposed. But I can't see it with one hand clapping.
[SH] I mean, you don't want it to go on with the Jihadists, I mean, there's a certain face of this …
[CH] No, but I don't have a difference of opinion with the Jihadists.
[SH] Well, you do in terms of the legitimacy of their project …
[CH] No, not really, no, there's nothing to argue about with that, I mean, there it's a simple matter of survival. I want them to be extirpated.
[SH] Alright, well move it down to the people who are blocking stem cell research.
[CH] No, that is a purely primate response with me, the recognising the need to destroy an enemy in order to assure my own survival. I've no interest at all in what they think.
[RD] Sounds like you're (inaudible)
[CH] No, I mean, really … we haven't still come to your question about Islam, but no interest at all in what they think. Only interested in refining methods of destroying them.
[SH] Okay.
[DD] In other words, you've simply given up.
[CH] A task in which, by the way, one gets very little secular support.
[SH] Yes, that's notable.
[CH] Most atheists don't want this fight. The most important one is the one they want to shirk. They'd far rather go off and dump on Billy Graham, 'cause on that they know that they can't, so there's no danger.
[DD] Well I think that because we find the idea of exterminating these people just abhorrent, and we think that, besides, it will (inaudible) them.
[CH] No, I said 'extirpating'.
[DD] Extirpate?
[CH] Yes, complete destruction of the Jihadist forces. Extermination, I think, has to be applied more as a species, or, sort of …
[RD] No, but Christopher, it sounds as though you like argument. You like having … it's almost the theatre of having an intellectual argument, which would be lost.
[CH] Well, I'd rather say the dialectic actually, Richard. In other words, one learns from arguing with other people.
[RD] Yes.
[CH] Now I think all of us around this table have probably enhanced, or improved, our own capacities as reasoners.
[RD] Yes, but I mean, there are plenty of other things to reason about. Having won the battle against religion, we can go back to science, or whatever it is we practice. And we can argue and reason about that, and there's plenty of arguments, really worthwhile arguments to be had.
[CH] But it'll always be the case that some will attribute their presence here to the laws of biology, and others will attribute their presence here to a divine plan that has a scheme for them. And you can tell a lot, in my view, about people, from which view they take. And, as we all know, only one of those views makes sense. Well how do we know that? Because we have to contrast it with the opposite one, which is not going to disappear.
[SH] Well let me make an analogy here. 'Cause you could've said the same thing about witchcraft at some point in recent history. You could say that every culture has had a belief in witches, a belief in the efficacy of magic spells. Witchcraft is ubiquitous, and we're never going to get rid of it, and we're fools to try. Or we can try only as a matter of dialectic, but witchcraft is going to be with us. And yet witchcraft has, almost without exception … I mean, you can find certain communities where …
[CH] Not at all, not at all.
[SH] No, I mean real witchcraft, not witchcraft as in its religious …
[CH] Witchcraft is completely ineradicable; it spreads like weed, often under animist and Christian religions.
[SH] No, no, I don't mean …
[DD] But not in the western world.
[SH] I mean frank witchcraft,
[CH] The Washington Post …
[SH] The witchcraft of the evil eye, and instead of medicine, you have the …
[CH] You think you've gotten rid of that?
[SH] I think fundamentally we've gotten rid of that, yes.
[RD] But in any case …
[CH] Not at all.
[RD] don't you want to get rid of it?
[CH] Not at all. There's currently a campaign to get Wiccans registered to be buried in Arlington Cemetery.
[SH] Well, modulo the Wiccans …
[DD] But Wiccans are to witchcraft as Unitarians are to … (laughter)
[SH] Right, they're not real. What I'm talking about a willingness to kill your neighbour, because you think that there is some causal mechanism by which they, through their evil intent, could have destroyed your crops psychically, you know, or cast an evil eye upon your … I mean it comes in ignorance of medical science. I mean, you don't know why people get sick, and you suspect your neighbour of ill-intent, and then witchcraft fills the void there.
[CH] No, I wouldn't say in such a case that one didn't wish to be without it, that we'd have lost something interesting to argue with.
[SH] But, we are effectively … I mean, we're not dealing with the claims of witches intruding upon medical - and don't go to alternative medicine and acupuncture here - I'm talking about real witchcraft, you know, medieval witchcraft.
[CH] Well I was about to deal with that very thing, and The Washington Post publishes horoscopes every day.
[SH] Astrology is yet another …
[DD] Yes, and that is …
[CH] You think … I'm …
[DD] Astrology is a pale …
[CH] Astrology is not going to be eradicated, even after I stop reading my horoscope.
[SH] Okay, but it doesn't need to be eradicated.
[RD] No, but you're confusing whether it's going to be eradicated and whether you want it to be eradicated. And it sounds as though you don't want it to be eradicated, because you want something to argue against, and something to sharpen your wits on.