Richard Dawkins: The Four Horsemen, episode 1

[SH] Right, but you wouldn't lay awake at night.

[CH] And it would be just as dangerous that they believed that, yes. It would, 'cause it could spread. The belief could become more general.

[SH] Well, it has, in the case of Islam, it has spread, and is spreading, and so it's danger is not only potential but actual.

[RD] Yeah. I can see no contradiction …

[CH] Yes but over space and time, I think this tremendously evens out. I mean I didn't expect - I'm sure, neither did you - in the sixties, that there would be such a threat from Jewish fundamentalism, of relatively small numbers but in a very important place, a strategic place in (inaudible) … deciding to try and bring on the Messiah by stealing other people's land, and trying to bring on the end. Numerically it's extremely small, but the consequences that it's had, have been absolutely calamitous. We didn't used to think actually of Judaism as a threat in that way at all, until the Zionist movement annexed the messianic, or fused with it, because the messianists didn't used to be Zionists, as you know, so, you'd never know when it's gonna be next.

[SH] Well that I certainly …

[CH] I agree, I'm not likely to have my throat cut at the supermarket by a Quaker, but the Quakers do a lot of the work by saying we preach nonresistance to evil. That's as wicked a position as you could possibly hold.

[SH] Given the right context, yeah.

[CH] I mean, what could be more revolting than that? Say you see evil and violence and cruelty and you don't fight it?

[DD] Yeah, they're free riders.

[CH] Read Franklin on what the Quakers were like at the crucial moment in Philadelphia, when there had to be a battle over freedom and see why people despised them. I would've then said that Quakerism was actually quite a serious danger to the United States. So, it's a matter of space and time, but no, they're all, they're all equally rotten, false, dishonest, corrupt, humourless and dangerous.

[SH] It's true, I mean, there's one point you make here that I think we should say a little more about, is that you almost can never quite anticipate the danger of unreason. I mean, when your mode of interacting with others and the universe is to affirm truths, you're in no position to affirm. If the liabilities of that are potentially infinite, I mean you just don't know. So to take a case that I raised a moment ago, stem cell research, you don't know going in, that the idea that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception, is a terrible idea. I mean, it seems a totally benign idea, until you invent something like stem cell research, where it stands in the way of incredibly promising, lifesaving research. I mean, there's something about dogmatism which you can almost never foresee how many lives it's gonna cost, because the conflict with reality just erupts.

[CH] Well, that's why I think the moment where everything went wrong, is the moment when, the Jewish Hellenists were defeated by the Jewish messianists. The celebration now benignly known as Hanukah, so as it can not clash with Christendom. That's where the human race took it's worst turn. There's a few people, but they re-established the animal sacrifices, the circumcision and the cult of Yahweh over Hellenism and philosophy and Christianity is a plagiarism of that. Christianity would never have happened (inaudible) and nor would Islam. No doubt there would've been other crazed cults and so forth, but there might have been a chance to not destroy Hellenistic civilisation. Well, it's not a matter of numbers …

[SH] You'd still have a Dalai Lama …

[CH] it's a matter of, if I may say so, memes and infections, which would spread very fast. Of course I would've certainly said in the 1930s that the Catholic Church was the most deadly organisation because of its alliance with fascism, which was explicit and open and sordid, much the most dangerous church. But I would not now say that the Pope is the most dangerous of the religious authorities, there's no question Islam is most dangerous religion and partly because it doesn't have a papacy. You can't tell it to stop something and make an edict saying …

[SH] (inaudible) out of control, yeah.

[CH] But I would still have to say that Judaism is the root of the problem.

[SH] Although it's only the root of the problem in light of the Muslim fixation on that

land. If the Muslims didn't care about Palestine we could have the settlers trying to usher in the messiah all they want. There'd be no issue. It's only the conflict of claims on that real estate.

[RD] Well, both sides have that, are fixated on it.

[SH] Both sides are at fault, but the only reason why 200,000 settlers could potentially precipitate a global conflict is because there are a billion people who really care whether those settlers tear down the Al-Aqsa Mosque, …

[CH] Which it's their dream to do, because they have the belief that one part of the globe is holier than another. Than which no belief could be no more insane or irrational or indecent. And so just a few of them holding that view and having the power to make it real, is enough to risk the civilisational conflict which civilisation could lose. I mean, I think we'll be very lucky if we get through this conflict without a nuclear exchange.

[SH] Actually, I think that's a very good topic. What are our most grandiose hopes and fears here? I mean, what do you think reasonably could be accomplished in the lifetime of our children? What do you think the stakes actually are, and …

[DD] And how would you get there?

[SH] Yeah, I mean, is there something we could engineer apart from just mere criticism? I mean, are there sort of like practical steps? I mean what with a billion dollars could we do to effect some significant change of ideas? Is there any practical …

[CH] Well, I feel myself on the losing side politically, and on the winning side intellectually.

[DD] But you don't see anything to do?

[CH] Look, in the current zeitgeist. I don't think we would be accused of undue conceit if we said of ourselves, or didn't mind it being said of us, that we've been opening and carrying forward and largely winning an argument that's been neglected for too long. I mean, certainly in the United States and Britain at this moment that's true, it seems to me, but in global terms, I think we're absolutely in a tiny, dwindling minority that's going to be defeated by the forces of theocracy, which will probably …

[SH] So you're betting against us?

[CH] No, I think they're gonna end up by destroying civilisation. I've long thought so.

[DD] Well of course you may be right, because …

[CH] but not without a struggle.

[DD] because it can be a single catastrophe …

[CH] 'cause that's my big disagreement with Professor Dawkins is that I think it's us, plus the 82nd Airborne and the 101st, who are the real fighters for secularism at the moment. The ones who are really fighting the main enemy.

[SH] So in what sense do you disagree?

[CH] And I think, amongst secularists, that must be considered the most eccentric

position that you could possibly hold. That's a tooth fairy belief among most people. But I believe it to be an absolute fact. It is only because of the willingness of the United States to combat and confront theocracy that we have a chance of beating it. Our arguments are absolutely of no relevance in that respect.

[SH] well you may have many more takers, although not on the territory of Iraq. It mean it may be that we need the 82nd Airborne to fight a different war in a different place, for the same purpose, for the stated purpose.

[CH] Voila, by all means, there are reservations to be expressed by me, which I happily give you but in principle I think it's a very important recognition.

[RD] Unfortunately we're running out of time,