The Four Horsemen, episode 1

[CH] or religious icons trashed, and so forth. We share an admiration for at least some of the aesthetic achievements of religion.

[SH] Right. I think this whole notion of … I think our criticism actually more barbed than that, in the sense that we're not … we are offending people, but we are also telling them that they're wrong to be offended. I mean, physicists aren't offended when their view of physics is disproved or challenged. I mean, this is just not the way rational minds operate when they're really trying to get at what's true in the world. And religions purport to be representing reality. And yet there's this peevish, tribal, and ultimately dangerous, reflexive response to having these ideas challenged. I think we're pointing to the total liability of that fact.

[DD] Well, and too, there's no polite way to say to somebody …

[SH] You've wasted your life! (laughter)

[DD] do you realise you've wasted your life? Do you realise that you've just devoted all your efforts and all your goods to the glorification of something which is just a myth? Or have you ever considered - even if you say have you even considered the possibility that maybe you've wasted your life on this? There's no inoffensive way of saying that. But we do have to say it, because they should jolly well consider it. Same as we do about our own lives.

[SH] Oh, absolutely.

[RD] Dan Barker's making a collection of clergymen who've lost their faith but don't dare say so, because it's their only living. It's the only thing they know what to do.

[SH] Yeah, I've heard from one of them, at least.

[RD] Have you? Yes.

[CH] I used to have this when I was young, ongoing arguments with members of the Communist Party. They sort of knew that it was all up with the Soviet Union. Many of them have suffered a lot, and sacrificed a great deal, and struggled, you know, manfully to keep what they thought was the great ideal life. Their mainspring had broken, but they couldn't give it up, because it would involve a similar concession. But certainly, I mean, if anyone said to me, "how could you say that to them about the Soviet Union? Didn't you know you were going to really make them cry and hurt their feelings?" I would've said don't be ridiculous! Don't be absurd! But I find it in many cases almost an exactly analogous argument.

[DD] When people tell me I'm being rude and vicious and terribly aggressive in the way that I say … well if I were saying these things about the pharmaceutical industry or the oil interests, would it be rude? Would it be off-limits? No.

[RD] 'Course it wouldn't.

[DD] Well, I want religion to be treated just the way we treat the pharmaceuticals and the oil industry. I'm not against pharmaceutical companies. I am against some of the things they do. But I just want to put religions on the same page with them.

[CH] Including denying them tax exemption.

[DD] Yeah.

[RD] Yes.

[CH] Or in the English case, state subsidy.

[RD] I'm curious how religion acquired this charm status that it has, compared to any of these other things. And somehow we've all bought into it whether we're religious or not. Some historical process has lead to this immunisation of religion against, well, this hyper-offense taking that religion is allowed to take.

[DD] And what's particular amusing to me finally - at first it infuriated me, but now I'm amused - is they've managed to enlist legions of non-religious people who take offense on their behalf.

[RD] And how!

[DD] In fact, the most vicious reviews of my book have been by people who are not themselves religious, but they're terribly afraid of hurting the feelings of the people that are religious. And they chastise me worse than anybody who is deeply religious.

[RD] Exactly my experience. Exactly my experience.

[SH] So one of you pointed out how condescending that view is. It's like the idea of penitentiaries I mean, other people need them, you know, that we must keep these people safely in their myths.

[RD] Yes.