Carnal Reason

A portion of a conversation between Christopher Hitchens, and Peter Hitchens, his brother, from Guardian Unlimited. I found their exchange on religion quite interesting. I plan to use it as a starting point for presenting some thoughts of my own. I admire the directness of CH’s response to the woman in the audience. It is a model answer to the demands of a busybody. Would that more people took that attitude to intrusions by the nanny state.

PH: … I returned as it were to the Anglicanism of my childhood. Such as it was - it wasn’t particularly strong: one has some background music of Hymns Ancient & Modern and the King James Bible, but not very much more than that. I’m probably keener about it now than I was then. I suppose [I returned] in my early 30s when people sometimes do, when various things start happening. As an issue between us I think he overestimates the issue. He has several faiths. He has the faith I think of Darwinism, which is just like Christianity an unproven and unprovable theory, which you can believe in if you want because you prefer that arrangement of the universe. I happen to think the arrangement of the universe based on the belief in intelligent design is more tolerable both morally and aesthetically, but he prefers another. I dislike only the attitude of the atheist that his is not a faith, cause it is. I have absolutely no disgust or anger at anybody who disagrees with me about that. I’m much more worried by people who are indifferent to the question.

CH: Ah, well I agree with that. There may be many things to be said against atheism - I’m not an atheist anyway, I’m an anti-theist. It would be horrible if it were true that we were designed and then created and then continuously supervised throughout all our lives waking and sleeping and then continue to be supervised after our deaths - if that were true, it would be horrible. I’m very glad there’s absolutely no evidence for it at all. It would be like living in a celestial North Korea. You can’t defect from North Korea but at least you can die. With monotheism they won’t let you die and get away from them. It’s the wish to be a slave. Who wants that to be true? It’s demanding the servile condition. I’ll give you a hint of how much I don’t like it. We don’t need to go regularly to chant a liturgy or a mantra and be reinforced by a priest. We obviously absolutely don’t need it. It’s the conclusion to which any reasoning, thinking person can come and increasing numbers do. It doesn’t put you in conflict with objective reality all the time or under the control of a supposedly spiritual leadership. Peter said one prefers to think Darwin is right. No, one takes the facts and examines them. The fact that one’s appearance on earth is a random process conditioned by evolution and will end in extinction isn’t a welcome conclusion. It’s just an inescapable one, and to be in denial about it is odd. And Darwinism is not the theory of evolution. It is a theory of evolution. The quarrel between say Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, two of the greatest of biologists and palaeontologists, about punctuated evolution shows there is a great deal to argue about and no one disputes that we have evolved. It’s in the fossil record.

PH: It actually isn’t proven. It is a choice. That’s the important thing that you choose to believe it. Your choice may be unwelcome to you and my choice my be equally unwelcome to me, but it’s one that you take as a matter of preference. There are many different forms of religion. Christopher in his latest contribution to Slate talks about something called ’serious Islam’ which came as something of a shock to me after Islamofascism, but I think there are different forms of religion. And I happen think that the combination of scripture, reason and tradition which is at the heart of serious Anglicanism is both appealing, constructive, and actually leads on to a much greater exercise in liberty than that which tends to result from the actions of political idealists who want to load us with identity cards and put us in North Koreas. And I would much prefer a world governed by conscience than a world governed by idealists who think they know best about how we should run our lives. And conscience is the governor of a world where God is sovereign. It’s an immense argument, as I say. For him to dismiss my position or for me to dismiss his, would be wrong. I don’t dismiss his. I’m worried by it, I think about it a lot, I would be idle to say it didn’t have any strengths. I just prefer mine.

Female audience member: Excuse me. I’m not usually awkward at all but I’m sitting here and we’re asked not to smoke. And I don’t like being in a room where smoking is going on.

CH: Well you don’t have to stay darling, do you? I’m working here and I’m your guest, OK? And this is what I’m like; nobody has to like it.

IK: Would you just stub that one out?

CH: No. I cleared it with the festival a long time ago. They let me do it.

FAM: We should all be allowed to smoke then.

CH: Fair enough. I wouldn’t object. It might get pretty nasty though. I have a privileged position here, I’m not just one of the audience, so it would be horrible if everyone was like me. This is my last of five gigs, I’ve worked very hard for the festival. I’m going from here to Heathrow airport. If anyone doesn’t like it they can kiss my ass.

Posted on June 12th, 2005 by pwyll
Filed under: General