The Four Horsemen, episode 1

[CH] That would be of interest. James Wolfensohn, late of the World Bank, recently the negotiator on Gaza, says that he firmly believes that he had tremendous influence for good with the Muslim brotherhood in Hamas, because he was an orthodox Jew. If so, I think it would be disgusting, I have to say, and he shouldn’t have had the job in the first place. Because we know one absolute thing for certain about that conflict, which is that it’s been made infinitely worse by the (inaudible). If it were only a national and territorial dispute it would’ve been solved by now. But his self-satisfaction in saying so, even if it were true, would turn me even more against him.

[SH] There are two issues that converge here. One is the question what do we want to accomplish?, what do we reasonably think we can accomplish? And then this article of faith that I think circulates, unfortunately, among people of our viewpoint that you can't argue anyone out of their beliefs. It's a completely fatuous exercise, or can we actually win a war of ideas with people and, I think, certainly judging from my e-mail, we can. I mean, I'm constantly getting e-mail from people who have lost their faith and in effect been argued out of it. And the straw that broke that camel's back was either one of our books or some other process of reasoning, or incompatibility of what they knew to be true and what they were told by their faith that I think we have to just highlight the fact that it's possible for people to be shown the contradictions, internal to their faith or the contradiction between their faith and what we've come to know to be true about the universe, and the process can take minutes or months or years but they have to renounce their superstition in the face of what they now know to be true.

[RD] I was having an argument with a very sophisticated biologist who's a brilliant expositor of evolution, and he still believes in God. And I said how can you? What's this all about? And he said I accept all your rational arguments, however it's faith. And then he said this very significant phrase to me: "There's a reason that it's called faith!" He said it very decisively, almost aggressively, that there's a reason that it's called faith. And that was, to him, the absolute knockdown clincher. You can't argue with it because it's faith and he said it proudly and defiantly rather than in any sort of apologetic way.

[CH] Oh, you get it all the time in North America from people who say you gotta read William James and to have had, to be able to judge other people's subjective experiences with something that's by definition impossible to do.

[SH] Right

[CH] If it's real to them why can't you respect it? I mean this wouldn't be accepted in any other field of argument at all. The impression people are under is the critical thing about them. I had a debate with a very senior Presbyterian in Orange County and I asked him, because we were talking about biblical literalism, of which he wasn't an exponent, but I said well what about the graves opening at the time of the crucifixion according to Saint Matthew? Matthew, I'd rather say, and everyone getting out of their graves in Jerusalem, walking around greeting old friends in the city. I was going to ask him, doesn't that rather cheapen the idea of the resurrection of Jesus? But he mistook my purpose, and wanted to know if I believed that had happened, that was what he thought. And he said that as an historian, which he also was, he was inclined to doubt it, but that as a Presbyterian minister, he thought it was true. Well, alright then. You see, for me it was enough that I got him to say that. I said in that case, I rest my case. I don't want to say anymore to you now. You've said all I could say.