[CH] That's what I hoped. That's what I hoped you were saying.
[DD] If you really can't defend your view, then sorry, you can't put it forward. We're not going to let you play the faith card. Now if you want to defend what your holy book says, in terms that we can appreciate, fine. But because it says it in the holy book, that just doesn't cut any ice at all. And if you think it does, that's just arrogant. It is a bullying move and we're just not going to accept it.
[SH] And it's a move that they don't accept when done in the name of another faith.
[DD] Exactly.
[CH] But now, in which case, could I ask you something, all three of you who are wiser than I on this matter, what do we think of Victor Stenger's book that says you can now scientifically disprove the existence of God? Do you have a view on this?
[DD] Which god? I haven't read the book. Which god?
[RD] Any kind of …
[CH] Any. Either a creating one, or a supervising one, and certainly an intervening one. I mean, I think that's fairly exhaustive. My view had always been that since we have to live with uncertainty, only those who are certain leave the room before the discussion can become adult. Victor Stenger seems to think now we've got to the stage where we can say with reasonable confidence, it's disproved. It's not vindicated or a better explanation proposed [inaudible]. I just thought it'd be an interesting proposition, because it matters a lot to me that our opinions are congruent with uncertainty.
[SH] Right. Well, I think the weak link …
[CH] And in other words, we doubt.
[SH] I was a big fan of his book and actually blurbed it but I think the weakest link is this foundational claim on the texts. This idea that we know that the bible is the perfect word of an omniscient deity, and it really is the claim, it's really the gold in their epistemological gold standard. I mean, it all rests on that, that if the bible is not a magic book, Christianity, in this case, evaporates. If the Koran is not a magic book, Islam evaporates. And when you look at the books and ask yourself is there the slightest shred of evidence that this is the product of omniscience? Is there a single sentence in here that could not have been uttered by a person for whom a wheelbarrow would've been emergent technology? You have to say no. I mean, if the bible had an account of DNA and electricity, and other things that would astonish us then, okay. Our jaws drop, suitably, and we have to have a sensible conversation about the source of this knowledge.
[CH] You know, Dinesh D'Souza makes this statement in his new book. He's going to be, by the way, one of the much more literate and well-read and educated of our antagonists I'm going to be debating soon. He says that in Genesis, which people used to mock, they said 'let there be light' and then only a few staves later you get the sun and the moon and the stars.
[SH] Right.
[CH] How could that be?
[SH] Yes.
[CH] Well, according to the Big Bang, that would be right.
[RD] Yeah, but that’s pretty pathetic.
[CH] The Bang precedes the galaxies. Believe me, I think it's pathetic too, but …
[SH] Right. Well, I try to demonstrate this cast of mind in, I think, a very long end note in ‘The End of Faith’, where I say, “any text can be read". Well, with the eyes of faith you can make magical (?prescience/impressions) out of any text. So, I literally walked into a book store, the cookbook aisle of a book store, randomly opened a cookbook, found a recipe for wok-seared shrimp with ogo relish or something, and then came up with a mystical interpretation of the recipe. And you can do it! I mean, you can play connect the dots with any crazy text and find wisdom in it.
[CH] Michael Shermer did it with the Bible code.
[SH] Right, I haven’t seen that, but, yeah.
[CH] The hidden messages in the Bible. Very, very good. You can write yesterday’s headlines from it anytime you like. Yeah.
[SH] I have a question for the three of you. Is there any argument for faith, any challenge to your atheism that has given you pause, that has set you back on your heels where you felt you didn’t have a ready answer, etc?
[DD] Actually I can’t think of anything.
[RD] I mean, I think the closest is the idea that the fundamental constants of the universe are too good to be true. And that does seem to me to need some kind of explanation. If it’s true. I mean, Victor Stenger doesn’t think it is true but many physicists do. I mean, it certainly doesn’t in any way suggest to me creative intelligence because you're still left with the problem of explaining where that came from. And a creative intelligence who is sufficiently creative and intelligent enough to fine-tune the constants of the universe to give rise to us has, to got to be a lot more fine-tuned himself than …
[CH] Yeah, why create all the other planets in our solar system dead?
[RD] Well, that’s a separate question.
[CH] Well say we think he was that good. Bishop Montefiore was very good at this; he was a former friend of mine. He’d say that you have to marvel at the conditions of life and the knife-edge on which they are. And I'd say well, it is a knife edge. Yes, a lot of our planet is too hot or too cold.
[SH] Right. Riddled with parasites.
[CH] The other planets are completely too hot or too cold to support it. And that’s just one solar system, the only one we know about where there is life. Not much of a designer. And of course you can’t get out of the infinite regress. But I’ve not come across a single persuasive argument of that kind. But I wouldn’t have expected to because, as I realised when I thought one evening, they never come up with anything new. Well, why would they? Their arguments are very old by definition. And they were all evolved when we knew very, very little about the natural order. The only argument that I find at all attractive, and this is for faith you asked as well as for theism, is what I would, I suppose I’d call the apotropaic. When people say all praise belongs to God for this, He's to be thanked for all this. That is actually a form of modesty. It’s a superstitious one, that’s why I say apotropaic, but it's avoiding hubris. It’s also for that reason, obviously pre-monotheistic. But, religion does, or can, help people to avoid hubris, I think, morally and intellectually and that might be a …
[RD] But that’s not an argument that it’s true.
[CH] Oh, for heaven’s sake! No. There are and cannot be any such arguments, I think.
[SH] Well maybe I should broaden this question.
[DD] Well, no, no. Wait a minute! I think …
[SH] Before you answer Dan, I want …
[DD] I could give you several discoveries which would shake my faith right to the ground.
[SH] No, no! Let me just broaden the question.
[DD] Yep, yep.
[SH] Not only …
[CH] (inaudible) and the Precambrian?
[RD] No, no, no. That won’t work!
(laughter)
[SH] Not only in argument for the plausibility of religious belief, but an argument that suggests that what we’re up to, criticising faith, is a bad thing.
[RD] Oh, that’s much easier.
[SH] That we shouldn’t be, so let's exclude that.
[CH] Ah! Okay, yes, by all means.
[SH] We shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.
[RD] That's much easier.
[SH] Okay.
[DD] It’s easier to think of a good reason?
[RD] Oh, I mean, if somebody could come up with an argument that says that the world is a better place and everybody believes the falsehood, is there any context though, in your work or in dialogue with your critics, where you feel that that argument has given you pause?