Is Religion Poisonous? A Debate with Christopher Hitchens | Ultimate Issues Hour

Life Audio.

On today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.

My guest is Christopher Hitchens, who's been on my show often. His latest book is God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. It's on many bestseller lists. And Christopher Hitchens, welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show.

Very nice of you to have me. Again.

Again, that's exactly right.

But after all, you're in my book a lot, so—

Yes, yes, I noticed that. I saw it cited in The New Yorker as well.

That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

Life can be messy, but you don't have to figure it out alone.

Hey, it's the Luskos!

Join pastors and bestselling authors Levi and Jenny Lusko on Hey, It's the Luskos for honest conversations about faith, marriage, family, grief, ministry, and all the unexpected moments in between. You'll laugh, you'll be encouraged, and you'll be reminded that God is faithful through every season.

It will always come back to Jesus in the end.

That's right.

Tune in to Hey, It's the Luskos with Levi and Jenny Lusko, available now Wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to dennisprager.com.

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Where was God? Isn't God supposed to be good?

Isn't he supposed to love us? Does God want us to suffer? 10 years, you're not finished yet?

Morty!

Why did you do this to me?

Who are you?

Bruce, I am God.

Bingo!

Yahtzee!

Is that your final answer? Our service has God! Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing! Well, it was nice to meet you, God. Thank you for the Grand Canyon, and good luck with the apocalypse. And hello everybody and welcome to The Dennis Prager Show, the Ultimate Issues Hour. Every week at this time, an hour is devoted to some great issue of life. There's no greater issue than, is there a God and is religion— well, I guess they're 2 separate issues, though related— and is religion nonsense? And in fact, worse than that, is it in fact poisonous? My guest is Christopher Hitchens, who's been on my show often. His latest book is God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. It's on many bestseller lists. And Christopher Hitchens, welcome back to the Dennis Prager Show.

Very nice of you to have me. Again.

Again, that's exactly right.

But after all, you're in my book a lot, so—

Yes, yes, I noticed that. I saw it cited in The New Yorker as well. Now, I have to tell you something. Let me read this to everybody, where I'm first cited in your book, and not because it's me and my show, but because it's relevant. 'Cause, and I— you got— I'm sorry to say, and I know you didn't mean to, but you got my question wrong. A week before the events of September 11th, 2001, I was on a panel with Dennis Prager. Do you remember what panel that was? Was that Politically Incorrect?

No, it was David Horowitz's weekend at the Broadmoor Hotel.

Oh, okay.

Surely.

All right.

By the way, I did not mistake your question.

I'll tell you why I believe you did in a moment, and maybe you're right. One of us is right. I was on a panel with Dennis Prager, who is one of America's better-known religious broadcasters. He challenged me in public to answer what he called, quote, a straight yes/no question, unquote, and I happily agreed. Very well, he said. I was to imagine myself in a strange city as the evening was coming on. Toward me, I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approaching me. Now, would I feel safer or less safe if I was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting? As the reader will see, this is not a question to which a yes-no answer can be given, but I was not— but I was able to answer it as if it were not hypothetical. Quote: Just to stay within the letter B, I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad, and in each case I can say absolutely and can give my reasons. Why I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance. This is the question that I have posed over and over, and my listeners have heard it, and I have it in writing as well. Now, I may have posed it differently to you for the first time in my life, but it seems odd. I never said prayer meeting. I always put it this way: if you were in a bad part of a city at night and 10 strange men were walking toward you, Would you or would you not be relieved to know, to find out, that they had just attended a Bible class? And I purposely said Bible class because then it is within the— within a Judeo-Christian realm, and it is not— it is not many of the examples that you cited, and it was always in the United States, and your examples are overwhelmingly, in fact exclusively, in other countries.

You certainly didn't specify the United States. I can believe you said Bible class. Now you say it, but I'm not sure you did on that panel. But Bible class would only mean I had to drop Baghdad, I think, because most of the other examples I give are of Christians killing Christians.

No, no, well, you'd have to—

Christians killing non-Christians and Jews killing non-Christians.

Well, it wouldn't apply to Bombay, Bethlehem, or Baghdad. Or Beirut, for that matter.

Yes, it would. The Phalange Party, the Maronite Rite, you should read on. The only one where it's Muslim on Muslim is Baghdad, and Muslim on everyone else also. Bethlehem is Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. By the way, don't you think— I'm taking it you don't think that Muslims are peoples of the book then? I don't mind.

No, I don't believe that 10 Muslims would be coming out of a Bible study. They would be coming out of a Quran study.

Well, the Quran contains a huge amount of—

Well, but that's—

Let's say the Islamic canon contains irreverent remarks about Abraham.

Right. Well, you know what? If 10—

Or Genesis, even about the virgin birth.

No, no, that's theology, not scripture. If in fact 10 Muslims had been studying Genesis, I would be very relieved, to be perfectly honest.

Would you? I would— that's exactly— well, then you see, you can see my point. That's exactly what would alarm me.

Okay, that's fine.

You study that and you're in real trouble.

But for the record, I was— you're right that I probably didn't specify America, though to the best of my recollection, when anybody would give foreign cities, I would always say, well, I'm talking about America. And I always talk about America because I've never argued religion is better always and for everyone, and that's my problem with your book. There is good religion and bad religion. One might as well argue, you know, the Scientologists, they say that all psychiatry is poisonous, just like you say all religion is poisonous.

Yes.

Well, some psychiatry is poisonous and some is terrific.

I agree.

Well, why can't you acknowledge that about religion?

The same isn't true— well, because First, it comes from the childhood of our species when we had no information and didn't know there was germ theory of disease, didn't know we lived on a round planet, didn't know that it went around another round object, didn't know anything really. But so we just adopted the first and most primitive explanation, and I think it's time we outgrew it. Second, religion degenerates our morality. I think that's the most important point. People say that without religion we wouldn't know right from wrong. In other words, we are Our self-respect is impugned in the most deep way by the suggestion that we would only do a right action out of the hope of reward or avoid an evil one out of fear of punishment. This is to undermine the very basis of human ethics and human solidarity, which predate religion, of course. Religion is very new. We are expected to believe that God only bothered to start trying to reveal himself about 6,000 years ago in your tradition. 2,000 in the Christian one. For all the rest of the time, the human race just had to rub along for tens of thousands of years without this revelation, just managing somehow not always to be slaughtering each other or always stealing or always lying. I think it's a fantastically stupid belief and a very immoral one.

Well, it may be fantastically stupid. I'm not going to argue right now about its intelligence, although I must say to you that I find that the secular-run institutions institutions produce infinitely more stupidity in the Western world than the religious ones.

Oh, we must come to that.

Oh, let's just start with that. I think that the— yeah, fine, the university is secular, and there is more idiocy in the university than at your local church.

Well, it's— funnily enough, if that's what you mean, I didn't think that was the shape your question would take.

Well, let's be—

let's be— If that's what you mean, I—

Yeah, that is what I mean.

I actually, in some ways, you're pushing at an open door. I mean, the same is true of Hollywood, I suppose. It's not exactly religious. It's very respectful, too much so I think, of religion, but you couldn't say—

Well, leave Hollywood. The university takes secularism seriously. It is the most secular of our major institutions, and it's the only place in the Western world where people still believe, for example, that men and women are basically the same, just as I was taught when I went to Columbia University.

I don't know if it was actually taught by the university, but I know what you mean. It's it seems to be a prevalent assumption, they confuse equality with identity, but that's not necessarily a secular problem.

No, no, no, but a lot of the— but it doesn't matter if it's necessarily.

But I mean, why don't I just concede this to you now? I mean, an atheist can be a nihilist or a fascist, though most fascists were actually Catholics. It can be a National Socialist, though most National Socialists were pagans and worshippers of odd cults, and of course many of them were Christians too. An atheist can be a Stalinist, an atheist can be a sadist or masochist. There's no— it doesn't say anything about your morality or your intelligence to be a non-believer.

Alright, so all I'm saying is when you spoke about— I think you used the word stupidity as essentially synonymous with religious belief— I'm saying to you that institutionally there's more stupidity in secular institutions than in religious ones In my country, the United States of America.

That could be true, but leave my point unchanged. I still think it's not a necessary— excuse me, it's not a sufficient condition for emancipation from— No, what is— no. To abandon religion. I think it's a necessary one.

Oh, I see.

The argument only begins when you start to look around yourself and say, well, we just have to do without revelation. Okay, then tell me though—

well, tell me why you think then the institution most freed from religious belief is the stupidest.

Well, I don't say it is.

Well, I do. Tell me, tell me.

I don't say it's the stupidest. I mean, the—

You think the humanities that your average—

The people most free of overt religious belief are students of evolutionary biology and physics. They just find that they can operate with all the beauty and wisdom that they've brought to the study of— they find they can operate without any religious beliefs. They're by far the most enlightened and most intelligent.

Really?

If you were to make that—

Well, that's a very rarefied view of secularism. The average professor of sociology is also secular. Let me restate your book: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Christopher Hitchens, I'm Dennis Prager.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

Rising interest rates, stock volatility, out-of-control inflation— people are concerned about what the future holds financially. This is Dennis Prager for AMFED Coin and Bullion. There's no better time than the present to move a portion of your IRA into precious metals. You should know there's a right and a wrong way to set up your precious metals IRA. Mistakes could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in IRS fines. Call AMFED Coin and Bullion, 800-221-7694, americanfederal.com. That's americanfederal.com.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show. My guest is Christopher Hitchens, and his latest book, bestselling, is God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. And I asked you before, and I don't recall if we got a chance to discuss this part of your thesis, if you had written a critique of religion, I probably could have subscribed to much of what you wrote. It's the absolutism, as I gave the example with the Scientologists, who have— who see no good in psychiatry. You see religion as poisoning everything, and it's just— I mean, the abolitionist movement in the United States against slavery was overwhelmingly religious Christians. It obviously didn't poison that.

Well, I would say 2 things to that. First, the imposition of slavery was overwhelmingly Christian.

Yeah, but it was overwhelming—

The maintenance of it. So if some Christians belatedly decided against the scriptural warrant, which does exist, there is scriptural warrant for slavery, then good for them. But it isn't because of their religion. It was— the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, by the way, for the most part were not believers.

Oh, well, no. Even the New York Review of Books, which is left of center and secular in its orientation, acknowledged in a recent article that it was overwhelmingly a religious movement, and that remains the case.

By the end it was William Lloyd Garrison, for example.

Yeah, but wait a minute.

No, no, wait, but here's—

Go ahead.

You must be careful if you're going to claim this, because William Lloyd Garrison, until he became a much more secular person and read the writings of Thomas Paine and others against slavery, was the man who said, yes, we must destroy the United States Constitution and the Union because that's what the book of Isaiah says. We've made a covenant with death we are in agreement with hell. He was the one who wanted to secede before the Confederates did. He would have destroyed the Union on the proposition because he was a religious fanatic. It's just as well that Garrison changed his mind.

Yeah, but—

It says nothing to the credit of Christianity that having imposed and justified slavery for so long that some of its adherents—

Oh, I'll tell you why it justifies it, and I'm not a Christian. I'll tell you why it speaks well for at least that aspect of Christianity. And that is that slavery was universal. It has nothing to do with Christians. It specifically— slavery is about as universal a human institution as sex.

That's certainly true.

Okay, then you can't blame Christianity for something that everybody did.

Nor can you credit abolition for it, sir.

Why not?

Because, as I say, it's contingent. You could be— it doesn't derive from Christianity. A Christian may do these things, just as an atheist may be a slaveholder. But in the British Empire and in these United States, the justification for slavery was biblical.

Partially biblical and a particularly—

No, totally biblical.

Well, well, well, but that—

Just as it is in all surviving cases of which I'm aware where slavery persists, it's justified from the Quran, which does indeed justify it. It doesn't mean there would be no slavery without religion.

Yeah, but the fact that— look, here we have to then be intellectually honest.

Well, then we both agree to that.

No, no, wait, wait. Yeah, no, I agree that there were people who used the Bible to justify slavery, but if I— I hope that if I had lived then, I would have said, excuse me, if nothing else, what do you do with the law in the Bible, the Old Testament, that you cannot return a slave to its owner? That you cannot kidnap people, that that's a capital offense to kidnap people.

That alone would have rendered African slavery, the African slave trade, It's a pity that the Christians didn't notice that at the time.

You're right! You're— wait, the failure of religious people is not the—

But there are many, many other justifications for slavery throughout the Old Testament, including all the details of the ways in which you may do it.

No, all the ways— yes, I happen— all right, I happen to teach—

It's ritualized, it's institutionalized in the Old Testament.

Well, as it happens, I've taught that from the Hebrew, and what it is is bonded indenture. It has nothing, nothing in common with the African slave trade. It was within Israel overwhelmingly, and it was if I owed you money and couldn't pay you back because I stole from you or whatever, then I worked for you for 6 years and then I was sent free, and I had to be sent free with all sorts of goods, and if you mistreated me, I was free, and so on.

Well, you're being bored through with an awl.

No, that's only if I asked to stay on more. It was a statement of— look, kids put holes in their ears today for fun.

Please don't run away with the idea that I would be impressed whether the Bible was in favor of it or not.

I mean, yeah, all right, let's go to— let's go to other— let me ask you a question. You, you say that it is unnecessary, and I believe that it is necessary having a God-based code. So let, let me ask you, how do you come, uh, how do you view on purely rational grounds— because that's what you use to derive your morality, is that correct?

And not purely rational, no, but I mean, not—

not—

okay, so tell me, not allowing anything to outrage reason.

Okay, so how do you— and this is not a challenge, it's— I am truly curious— how do you arrive at a view of the human fetus's worth?

How do I?

Yes, you personally.

Well, I believe that the findings of embryology and also our more basic moral promptings confirm that the concept unborn child is a real one. I've always thought that.

Good, and I salute you for that. Tell me then why it is overwhelmingly that those who are secular regard the human fetus as essentially a tissue and it is the religious who invest it with value.

Very good question. I mean, I debate it in the book. I say that it's— there was a time when things were even worse when one was able to hear feminists Saying, for instance, that the fetus was no more than an appendix, or even— I've heard this said too— a tumor, a growth on the woman's body, and no one's business but hers, thus no problem, for example, with a 3rd trimester or 9th month termination.

So why doesn't that reflect on secularism?

You do not fortunately hear that anymore. Well, I'll tell you why, because the argument from the other end of the case Yes. Was also fanatical and dogmatic, and to some extent still is. It says that, for example, that an IUD, an intrauterine device, because it prevents the egg from clinging to the wall, is a murder weapon, and that an ectopic pregnancy is a human life, and it talks about ensoulment and other nonsensical theological things of this kind, and also says For a long time, the same people who were advocating this very much condemned contraception and said, as Mother Teresa did, that that was morally equivalent to abortion. In other words, that contraception was murder too. So in the face of this hysterical nonsense, a lot of feminists took up very extreme self-determination positions of their own.

Right, right, but that there is nonsense in religious life, I am the first to acknowledge, and I am more pained by it than you because I am religious. It doesn't— you don't pay a price for religious idiocy. I do. I wish I didn't, but I mean, they wouldn't leave me alone.

All right, fine.

All right, well, all right, be that as it may. I just need to get your answer, though. When you speak about religious people having awful moral views, and now you acknowledge, though, that this is overwhelmingly on the secular side, the dismissal of the worth of the human fetus, why should I not conclude that secularism poisons everything? Just as you believe religion poisons everything.

Well, you just have a much harder job of it, is all. I mean, because the secular view isn't any longer the fanatical one about abortion. It's one of the few cases I know of, actually, where an argument between 2 opposed positions has actually produced something like a moral compromise.

All right, then I will give you an argument where secularism does poison everything, looking at Western Europe today, and I think I know some of your values, and I'm very curious to get your answer. Christopher Hitchens, his book God Is Not Great. I'm Dennis Prager.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

Precious metals dealers come and go. This is Nick Grovich, president of Amped Coin and Bullion. We've stood the test of time since 1983. With the flurry of coin and bullion dealers coming and going, how do you know who to trust and what to buy? At Amped Coin and Bullion, we value educated consumers. We want to alert you to good bullion buys in the market and help you steer clear of the tricks and bad deals. Call AMFED Coin and Bullion for a free coin performance review. 800-221-7694 or americanfederal.com.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show, The Ultimate Issues Hour. In fact, every week at this time, I spend this hour on some great issue of life. That's why I call it The Ultimate Issues Hour. And this time I have a guest. He's Christopher Hitchens, and his book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, one of a number of books now being published against religion and against belief in God. And that is an interesting phenomenon unto itself. But I want to get back to an argument which I don't believe. I would never write How Secularism Poisons Everything, and I am deeply religious. But I would argue that without God and religion, the Western world is doomed to to extinction, and I offer you Western Europe. It doesn't reproduce. It is— it doesn't stand for anything that I can— that I know of. It didn't stand for anything in the Cold War. The United States, the religious America, did. Secular Europe has hardly been a bastion of moral strength, and as I said, they don't even repopulate themselves.

Well, I think you're wrong on all those counts. Secular Europe is a highly civilized place. It's where I'm originally from.

Oh, it's a high— people treat each other in a very civilized manner. I couldn't agree more.

They certainly do, and its standards of education and culture are exemplary. It draws people from all over the world to it for good reasons. One of its achievements has been certainly to be able to limit population, but there's some— I know there's a case for which Mark Stein has most recently made, and I reviewed his book, for pointing out that in some countries, notably of all places Italy, population is falling below replacement. Not France, for example.

Germany it is.

Where there is a lot of encouragement from the government for people to have children. In Germany, yes, and actually surprisingly in Poland. You'll notice there is a paradox here. Or one that would— there's an apparent one. It seems that the more Catholic the country, the more the crisis prevails, and I think that must be because—

It may well be a reaction.

For so long, the church made it impossible to have a rational discussion of contraception and abortion.

Well, putting aside the rational question, there's— it probably is a reaction. Spain is another example.

Yes.

All right, that's fair enough, but it doesn't negate my point that on the larger moral issues The secular world was incapable, overwhelmingly— there are exceptions like you, but there are very few— the secular world was incapable of saying that something evil was evil. And I'm speaking about the Soviet Union when President Reagan called it an evil empire. Religious— the religious West said yes, and the secular West said that this was nonsense. You can't call them evil.

No, that's not true, because for example, one of the people who most loudly applauded that statement was Václav Havel, extremely secular leader.

Yeah, he was a Czech dissident. He was a— yes, because he was— wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, that's— you can't use him. He's Eastern Europe. I'm talking Western Europe.

Well, I would certainly put Prague squarely in the center of Europe.

Not at the time the thing was said. It was Eastern Europe run by the Soviets.

There was a big disagreement even within the Republican Party about the wisdom of Mr. Reagan saying that because He had alarmed people in other ways by saying things like his looking forward to the end of days, his ruminations and musings on Armageddon, his friendship with clowns and charlatans and crooks like Jerry Falwell.

Well, I don't think he was a charlatan and a crook. That's not fair.

His public casting of doubt on evolution, everything that Reagan said that that sounded religious used to make people take alarm, including myself, who didn't disagree at all with the characterization of the Soviet Union. You have to remember the context of these things.

Yes, but the context—

And the people who really fought against— I mean, if you talk about someone like Willy Brandt, for example, the socialist mayor of Berlin, who was Kennedy's host when he made that hypocritical speech saying he was a Berliner before actually allowing the city to be partitioned by the Soviet Union. He—

Wait, the city was part—

Having just allowed it, not before, having just allowed it to be—

No, it was partitioned at the end of World War II.

People like Willy Brandt and the leaders of the democratic left in Western Europe, they fought against Stalinists much harder than anyone in the United States ever had to do.

Well, that's not— Matter of fact. Well, well, that—

Simply a matter of fact.

Well, I don't believe it's a matter of fact.

Matter of record, shall I say.

matter of record. In any event, this— the issue was not Stalinism here, it was Brezhnevism. Stalin died in 1953, and so we're talking—

Well, I'm giving the ideology a name. Brezhnevism is fine. Brezhnevism is absolutely fine if you prefer that.

Yes, but I don't know— the left didn't fight Brezhnevism. That was fought by the right. Well, we'll be back in a moment. God Is Not Great is the book. I'm Dennis Prager.

Dennis. Dennis.

Dennis Prager.

Do you have a question you've always wanted to ask Dennis Prager? Well, now's your opportunity. For upcoming Ask Me Anything episodes of Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager, we're inviting you to leave Dennis a voicemail. He'll personally answer selected questions, and your question could be featured on a future episode, whether it's about faith, morality, politics, history, relationships, happiness, or simply navigating life. Dennis would love to hear from you. Just call 877-243-7776 and leave your question. Oh, and be sure to include your first name and where you're calling from. That's 877-243-7776. While we can't feature every question, Dennis will listen to every voicemail. So call today. You may hear Dennis Prager answering your question on an upcoming episode of Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. And thanks for listening and supporting Dennis Prager.

I do want to return for a moment, Christopher, to my— the question that you cite me asking you in your book. Now that we can— forgetting how it was posed the first time, though you acknowledge I may well have said what I think I said, or I'm pretty certain that I said that it was a Bible class, so let me put it to you then in the way that I meant it and clarify for both of us. If you were in a an American city that you were not familiar with, alone, late at night, and you couldn't find your car in a bad neighborhood, and you saw 10 men walking toward you, would you or would you not be relieved to know that they had just attended a Bible class?

Not relieved. Not alarmed either, necessarily, but not relieved.

Okay.

It's irrelevant to me, in other words.

I see.

I wouldn't be looking for a group of 10 I wouldn't be looking for a minion at that point.

Right, well, that's—

I'd be looking for a friendly face, which you can find just as probable you'll find from an atheist as from someone else. So, I mean, I just think your question lacks force, if you follow me.

Okay, I think it's rhetorical, it's so forceful, but you don't, and that's fine. But that was my question, and most people, including atheists, I think, if put to a real-life test would be relieved to know that they had just attended a Bible class. I mean, I admit I would be relieved to know that they had just attended a physics class.

Or that they'd just come from studying Thomas Paine's Rights of Man.

Yes, right.

Then I would feel positively cheered up.

I'm sure, right. The only difference is, of course—

Or they're members of the local Thomas Jefferson Society.

Yeah, but it doesn't happen. In the bad parts of our city, the only chance of people really being elevated morally is through a Bible class, not a Thomas Paine class.

Well, that's probably why these areas are so bad.

No, it's—

yes, yes.

They'd be a lot better off if they were studying—

No, they would be better off—

They'd be a lot better off if they were studying the beauties of the secular Constitution and the principles of the American Revolution.

Right. Well, both of them— A lot better off. I agree with you.

If Bible study improved these things, it would have done so in the last 2,000 years. It doesn't.

Well, it has done it in the United States. It depends how it's applied. I think America did make a better country, and it has been a religious country.

I don't deny there are a lot of religious believers in this country, but they're kept at bay by the law. And that's what's made it a great country, is that it has a Constitution that prevents the clergy from influencing the state and the state from taking over the churches.

Very, very important.

Yeah, I know that. Mr. Jefferson built up that wall.

Well, Mr. Jefferson wrote that in one letter, and in fact it was written by men who believed that liberty comes from God. That's why the Liberty Bell has a Bible quote and not a Thomas Paine quote.

Well, look, I mean, Mr. Jefferson didn't want— didn't feel able to say in his lifetime, nor did Mr. Franklin, what they actually felt about the holy books. But that's because religious intimidation was—

But wait a minute, but you know how they felt about the holy books?

Well, we know now. Yeah, we do know now because we can read their— yes, I've been able to read their private correspondence. But everybody knew at the time it was dangerous because of the intolerance and bigotry of the godly to say if you didn't believe in the revelation.

Thomas Paine didn't get hurt for his non-belief.

Until the First Amendment to the Constitution was passed, there were states of the Union where if you denied the Trinity or the Holy Spirit, you could be, on a third or fourth offense, put to death without benefit of clergy.

Yeah, it never happened, so it's theoretical. But I have to, because of the time factor, I want to push on to the God question for a moment.

Why not?

Yeah, agreed. You write here that your maker, that is our maker, whoever, whatever made us, turns out not to be a who, but a process of mutation with rather more random elements than our vanity might wish.

Yes.

Okay. Now, this is a purely emotional question, not an intellectual one. Would you rather, and please be honest with me, purely emotionally, Would you rather be created by a maker, a who, or by a process of mutation with random elements?

Well, because, I mean, I do understand your question. I don't want to seem to duck it, but because I am the product of a process that's led to me being a mammal with a lot in common with other primates, and indeed now I've had my DNA sequence analyzed, as I hope everyone listening to this will do. You can get it down from the National Geographic. Things in common with vegetables and plants as well as with other beasts. Because I am a mammal, I'm much more likely to call on God and wish that there was a real plan for me and that the universe was all organized for my benefit. That's a mammalian failing.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I'm aware of it in myself. I don't think I'm affected at all.

OK, this is— I didn't finish your book. Did you write that in your book, that you wish, that you personally wish that?

I don't wish it. I say it's because—

No, no, you say it's a failing.

The tendency—

But you acknowledge that you have that failing.

I'm in no position to deny it. I got over it when I was 9.

Why do you consider it a failing to prefer to be a human in God's image than a vegetable?

Because it's wish thinking.

No, no, no, but why is it—

Which I find contemptible. It tries to get me out of the inevitability of death, which I accept, I don't deny. And it gives me the absurd— it's designed to give me the absurd feeling that the universe is all arranged with me in mind, which I know it's not.

You know it's not?

I know it's not.

No, it's not all arranged with me in mind at all. He knows it's not. How do you know it's not? I understand if you believe it's not, yes.

Anytime I ever walk around with the idea that it is arranged with me in mind and me at its center, rude reality tends to disabuse me of this self-centered illusion. So, and I don't like it in myself and I don't like it in other people.

Do you have a wish for world peace?

No, I don't. I have a wish for world struggle.

So do you have any wishes?

Oh, many, yes. I want a very sharp struggle against theocracy and its apologists. I don't want peace with them, I want victory over them.

I want war.

If all these secular evil regimes could be overthrown, or all religion could be overthrown, but only one, which would you choose?

But only one?

Which one of the two? The desire to worship is No, no, no, but you're evading the question. You're evading the question, but I'll give you an entire break to think it through. In other words, regimes like Kim Il-sung— I know you say he's worshipped, but that doesn't matter, but it's a secular regime. We'll be back, final segment with Christopher Hitchens, the book God Is Not Great. I'm Dennis Prager.

This episode of Timeless Endless Wisdom will continue right after this.

Precious metals dealers come and go. This is Nick Grovich, president of Amped Coin and Bullion. We've stood the test of time since 1983. With the flurry of coin and bullion dealers coming and going, how do you know who to trust and what to buy? At Amped Coin and Bullion, we value educated consumers. We want to alert you to good bullion buys in the market and help you steer clear of the tricks and bad deals. Call Amped Coin and Bullion for a free coin performance review. 800-221-7694 or americanfederal.com.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show. This hour has gone really fast. My guest, Christopher Hitchens, his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. And I asked you, since you would love to see Your dream is to have people rebel against religion. So, I'm asking you, if you could have an Aladdin's lamp and get your wish realized, would you remove all the bad secular regimes or would you destroy all religion in the world?

Well, if the adoption of my principles was general, I suppose I'm allowed to wish that everyone thought roughly like myself, which I'm not even sure I would want, but I suppose I could. The adoption of the principles of Spinoza and Jefferson and Thomas Paine and Albert Einstein would have the same effect on any dictatorship, whether it was formerly atheist and consisted of the worship of human beings, or formerly theistic and consisted of the worship of human beings who claimed that they represented God. It would have the same solvent effect on both. They vanish with the same rubber map.

Well, yeah, alright, so you would— it would be a toss-up for you since they both emanate from the same—

I mean, if you mean would I now, this minute, if I could rescue the people of North Korea from what is— I've been there, I'm one of the very few people to have been to all 3 Axis of Evil countries— from what is a state of abject slavery, would I do that before I would give the Pope a smack on the face for what he's just said about limbo? I would certainly emancipate the people of North Korea first.

Yeah.

If that's what it came to, sure.

Right.

Well—

It's urgent. I mean, every day they live is one of absolutely unspeakable misery.

Do you believe that people are basically good?

No.

Then I particularly— and I respect that answer. I don't either.

I think that the extent to which they're good, it's innate.

Yeah, well, I'm talking about innate. Do you believe we're innately good?

The good bits of us are innate. I mean, you don't have to teach children the Golden Rule. You may have to—

Oh yes, you do.

You may have to give it a bit of reinforcement, but you have to give it a bit of reinforcement.

No, I—

oh, okay.

They understand it without being— you don't have to explain it to them.

Yes, you do.

No, you don't.

No, empathy is not built into most kids. They're very happy to treat other kids in a bullying way and mock them and tease them and—

Well, so are grown-ups, but it's—

Yes, I agree.

It becomes very evident to people quite early on.

No, but it doesn't.

They need—

Maybe this is why we differ in the final analysis, because I believe that the Golden Rule is not innate and it has to be taught. And if there isn't a God behind it, it won't be very effective in its teaching.

Well, if you want to use God as a pedagogic tool—

Mm-hmm, I do.

I think that's rather a downgrading of the divine position.

No, no, no, I believe in God, but it doesn't— but I do believe in it.

I've done it myself. I have said to a turbulent 2-year-old son, that I hope he knows that Santa Claus is watching what he's doing, and I've seen it have—

Yeah, all right, but I believe in God, not Santa Claus.

Excuse me, I'm not gonna—

All right, I gotta say goodbye. I gotta thank you, Christopher Hitchens. The book, God Is Not Great. I'll speak to you soon. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Righto, bye-bye.

Thank you.

Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

So welcome to the Male-Female Hour, and I'm about to tell you— drum roll please— I am about to tell you what may well be the worst thing outside of beating that a spouse can do to the other, and it is not an affair.

That's bad.

There was something worse. I want you all to think for just a moment.

What?

There was something— it's not beating, clearly not beating. What could be worse than an affair in destroying a marriage? And again, I'm excluding, obviously, the beating of a spouse.

The answer is That the berater is the one with the problem, not the person who's being berated.

I don't understand what you mean by that.

Well, I mean, you're only humiliated if you allow yourself to be humiliated.

That's not true. You may only, you may only feel humiliated if you allow yourself to, but you're still humiliated. You're humiliated in the eyes of the others. That's why I keep saying public humiliation. Maybe you're—

say your spouse is drunk in public and saying things about you.

Well, not drunk. Let— not drunk. If drunk, you're right, then people will ascribe it to drunkenness. But what if the person isn't drunk? What if they're sober?

I've enjoyed listening to this. I was thinking about— you made a comment earlier about whether the offending person knows what they're doing, and—

Yes, that's what I— I have no idea what the answer is. Go on.

Well, I'm sure it's different for many people, but I know that at my church, my pastor often says things about his wife that I, I feel humiliated for her, and I truly believe that he has no clue.

Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Visit our website to listen to hundreds of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. We want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. Go to lifeaudio.com to find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network, including shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.

Precious metals dealers come and go. This is Nick Grovich, president of Amped Coin and Bullion. With the flurry of coin and bullion dealers coming and going, how do you know who to trust and what to buy? At AMFED Coin and Bullion, we value educated consumers. We want to alert you to good bullion buys in the market and help you steer clear of the tricks and bad deals. Call AMFED Coin and Bullion for a free coin performance review. 800-221-7694 or americanfederal.com.