Well, thank you Georgetown, thank you ladies and gentlemen for coming. Thank you, Michael, for that suspiciously terse
introduction, which of all the introductions I've heard to myself, is certainly the most recent. Thank you, seriously, to the
Ethics and Public Policy Center and for your work, for conceiving this idea, for encouraging me to do it, for bringing us (Dr.
McGrath) all the way from our common alma mater of Oxford and for the regular seminars that you may not know that Michael does
all the time on these matters of faith versus reason which is, after all, the ground on which we are met this evening. I always
come before events like this with antagonists like Dr. McGrath with a slight sense, a very slight sense—I hope it doesn't sound
self-pitying—of inequality. My views are, if I say it for myself, tolerably well advertised and if they're not, it's partly your
fault because what I say is fairly intelligible, very plainly stated, if—you know what I think if you care to find out. When I
debate with Jews and Muslims and Christians, I very often find, I say, "Well, do you really believe there was a virgin birth?"
"Do you really believe in a Genesis creation?" "Do you really believe in bodily resurrection?" and I get a sort of Monty Python
reply: "Well, there's a little bit of metaphorical, really." I'm not sure, and I’m going to find out—I’m determined to find out
this evening which line on this my antagonist does take and I want you to notice and I want you to test him on it because I
think it's fair and I'm going to talk to him and to you as if he did represent the Christian faith. I can't do all three
monotheisms tonight. I may get a whack at the other two in the course of the discussion, I can only really do his and I'm going
to assume that it means something to him and that it's not just a humanist metaphysics and I think I'm entitled to that
assumption. The main thing I want to dispute this evening—because I'm either drowning in time with twenty minutes, it's either
too much or too little—is this: you hear it very often said by people of a vague faith that, well it may not be the case that
religion is metaphysically true; its figures and its stories may be legendary or dwell on the edge of myth, prehistoric, its
truth claims may be laughable; we have better claims—excuse me, better explanations for the origins and birth of our cosmos and
our species now, so much better so, in fact, that had they been available to begin with, religion would never have taken root.
No one would now go back to the stage when we didn't have any real philosophy, we only had mythology, when we thought we lived
on a flat planet or when we thought that our planet was circulated by the sun instead of the other way around, when we didn't
know that there were micro-organisms as part of creation and that they were more powerful than us and had dominion over us
rather than we, them, when we were fearful of the infancy of our species. We, we wouldn't have taken up theism if we'd known now
what we did then, but allow for all that, allow for all that, you still have to credit religion with being the source of ethics
and morals. Where would we get these from if it weren't from faith? I think, in the time I've got, I think that's the position I
most want to undermine. I don't believe that it's true that religion is moral or ethical. I certainly don't believe of course
that any of its explanations about the origin of our species or the Cosmos or its ultimate destiny are true either. In fact, I
think most of those have been conclusively, utterly discredited, but I'll deal with the remaining claim. It is moral—okay, and I
can only do Christianity this evening—is it moral to believe that your sins, yours and mine, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and
sisters, can be forgiven by the punishment of another person? Is it ethical to believe that? I would submit that the doctrine of
vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is utterly immoral. I might, if I wished, if I knew any of you, you were my friends or
even if I didn't know you but I just loved the idea of you (compulsory love is another sickly element of Christianity, by the
way), but suppose I could say, “Look, you're in debt, I've just made a lot of money out of a God-bashing book, I'll pay your
debts for you. Maybe you'll pay me back some day, but for now I can get you out of trouble.” I could say if I really loved
someone who had been sentenced to prison if I can find a way of saying I'd serve your sentence, I'd try and do it. I could do
what Sydney Carton does in a Tale of Two Cities, if you like—I'm very unlikely to do this unless you've been incredibly sweet to
me—I'll take your place on the scaffold, but I can't take away your responsibilities. I can't forgive what you did, I can't say
you didn't do it, I can't make you washed clean. The name for that in primitive middle eastern society was "scapegoating." You
pile the sins of the tribe on a goat, you drive that goat into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. And you think you've
taken away the sins of the tribe. This is a positively immoral doctrine that abolishes the concept of personal responsibility on
which all ethics and all morality must depend. It has a further implication. I'm told that I have to have a share in this human
sacrifice even though it took place long before I was born. I have no say in it happening, I wasn't consulted about it. Had I
been present I would have been bound to do my best to stop the public torture and execution of an eccentric preacher. I would do
the same even now. No, no, I'm implicated in it, I, myself, drove in the nails, I was present at Calvary, it confirms the
original filthy sin in which I was conceived and born, the sin of Adam in Genesis. Again, this may sound a mad belief, but it is
the Christian belief. Well it's here that we find something very sinister about monotheism and about religious practice in
general: It is incipiently at least, and I think often explicitly, totalitarian. I have no say in this. I am born under a
celestial dictatorship which I could not have had any hand in choosing. I don't put myself under its government. I am told that
it can watch me while I sleep. I'm told that it can convict me of—here's the definition of totalitarianism—thought crime, for
what I think I may be convicted and condemned. And that if I commit a right action, it's only to evade this punishment and if I
commit a wrong action, I'm going to be caught up not just with punishment in life for what I've done which often follows
axiomatically, but, no, even after I'm dead. In the Old Testament, gruesome as it is, recommending as it is of genocide, racism,
tribalism, slavery, genital mutilation, in the displacement and destruction of others, terrible as the Old Testament gods are,
they don't promise to punish the dead. There's no talk of torturing you after the earth has closed over the Amalekites. Only
toward when gentle Jesus, meek and mild, makes his appearance are those who won't accept the message told they must depart into
everlasting fire. Is this morality, is this ethics? I submit not only is it not, not only does it come with the false promise of
vicarious redemption, but it is the origin of the totalitarian principle which has been such a burden and shame to our species
for so long. I further think that it undermines us in our most essential integrity. It dissolves our obligation to live and
witness in truth. Which of us would say that we would believe something because it might cheer us up or tell our children that
something was true because it might dry their eyes? Which of us indulges in wishful thinking, who really cares about the pursuit
of truth at all costs and at all hazards? Can it not be said, do you not, in fact, hear it said repeatedly about religion and by
the religious themselves that, "Well it may not be really true, the stories may be fairy tales, the history may be dubious, but
it provides consolation." Can anyone hear themselves saying this or have it said of them without some kind of embarrassment?
Without the concession that thinking here is directly wishful, that, yes, it would be nice if you could throw your sins and your
responsibilities on someone else and have them dissolved, but it's not true and it's not morally sound and that's the second
ground of my indictment. [To Michael Cromartie] (Michael, you will tell me when I'm trespassing on the time of Dr. McGrath,
won't you?) On our integrity, our basic integrity, knowing right from wrong and being able to choose a right action over a wrong
one, I think one must repudiate the claim that one doesn't have this moral discrimination innately, that, no, it must come only
from the agency of a celestial dictatorship which one must love and simultaneously fear. What is it like, I've never tried it,
I've never been a cleric, what is it like to lie to children for a living and tell them that they have an authority, that they
must love—compulsory love, what a grotesque idea—and be terrified of it at the same time. What's that like? I want to know. And
that we don't have an innate sense of right and wrong, children don't have an innate sense of fairness and decency, which of
course they do. What is it like? I can personalize it to this extent, my mother's Jewish ancestors are told that until they got
to Sinai, they'd been dragging themselves around the desert under the impression that adultery, murder, theft and perjury were
all fine, and they get to Mount Sinai only to be told it's not kosher after all. I'm sorry, excuse me, you must have more
self-respect than that for ourselves and for others. Of course the stories are fiction. It's a fabrication exposed conclusively
by Israeli archaeology. Nothing of the sort ever took place, but suppose we take the metaphor? It's an insult, it's an insult to
us, it's an insult to our deepest integrity. No, if we believed that perjury, murder and theft were all right, we wouldn't have
got as far as the foot of Mount Sinai or anywhere else. Now we're told what we have to believe and this is—I'm coming now to the
question of whether or not science, reason and religion are compatible or I would rather say reconcilable. The great Stephen J.
Gould—the late, great Stephen J. Gould said that he believed they were non-overlapping magisteria; you can be both a believer
and a person of faith. Sitting in front of me is a very distinguished—extremely distinguished scholar Francis Collins, helped us
to unlock the human genome project, who is himself a believer. I'd love to hear from him, I hope we hear from him. I don't
believe that he says his discoveries of the genome convinced him of the truth of religion. He holds it, as it were,
independently. [to Francis Collins] I hope I do you no wrong, sir, in phrasing it like that. Here's why I, a non-scientist, will
say that I think it's radically irreconcilable, I'd rather say, than incompatible. I've taken the best advice I can on how long
Homo sapiens has been on the planet. Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, many others, and many discrepant views from theirs, reckon
it's not more than 250,000 years, a quarter of a million years. It's not less, either. I think it's roughly accepted, [to
Francis Collins] I think, sir you wouldn't disagree. 100,000 is the lowest I've heard and actually I was about to say, again not
to sound too Jewish, I'll take 100,000. I only need 100,000, call it one hundred. For 100,000 years Homo sapiens was born,
usually, well not usually, very often dying in the process or killing its mother in the process; life expectancy probably not
much more than 20, 25 years, dying probably of the teeth very agonizingly, nearer to the brain as they are, or of hunger or of
micro-organisms that they didn't know existed or of events such as volcanic or tsunami or earthquake types that would have been
wholly terrifying and mysterious as well as some turf wars over women, land, property, food, other matters. You can fill
in—imagine it for yourself what the first few tens of thousands of years were like. And we like to think learning a little bit
in the process and certainly having gods all the way, worshipping bears fairly early on, I can sort of see why; sometimes
worshipping other human beings, (big mistake, I'm coming back to that if I have time), this and that and the other thing, but
exponentially perhaps improving, though in some areas of the world very nearly completely dying out, and a bitter struggle all
along. Call it 100,000 years. According to the Christian faith, heaven watches this with folded arms for 98,000 years and then
decides it's time to intervene and the best way of doing that would be a human sacrifice in primitive Palestine, where the news
would take so long to spread that it still hasn't penetrated very large parts of the world and that would be our redemption of
human species. Now I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that that is, what I've just said, which you must believe to believe
the Christian revelation, is not possible to believe, as well as not decent to believe. Why is it not possible? Because a virgin
birth is more likely than that. A resurrection is more likely than that and because if it was true, it would have two further
implications: It would have to mean that the designer of this plan was unbelievably lazy and inept or unbelievably callous and
cruel and indifferent and capricious, and that is the case with every argument for design and every argument for revelation and
intervention that has ever been made. But it's now conclusively so because of the superior knowledge that we've won for
ourselves by an endless struggle to assert our reason, our science, our humanity, our extension of knowledge against the
priests, against the rabbis, against the mullahs who have always wanted us to consider ourselves as made from dust or from a
clot of blood, according to the Koran, or as the Jews are supposed to pray every morning, at least not female or gentile. And
here's my final point, because I think it's coming to it. The final insult that religion delivers to us, the final poison it
injects into our system: It appeals both to our meanness, our self-centeredness and our solipsism and to our masochism. In other
words, it's sadomasochistic. I'll put it like this: you're a clot of blood, you're a piece of mud, you're lucky to be alive, God
fashioned you for his convenience, even though you're born in filth and sin and even though every religion that's ever been is
distinguished principally by the idea that we should be disgusted by our own sexuality. Name me a religion that does not play
upon that fact. So you're lucky to be here, originally sinful and covered in shame and filth as you are, you're a wretched
creature, but take heart, the Universe is designed with you in mind and heaven has a plan for you. Ladies and gentlemen, I close
by saying I can't believe there is a thinking person here who does not realize that our species would begin to grow to something
like its full height if it left this childishness behind, if it emancipated itself from this sinister, childish nonsense. And I
now commit you to the good Dr. McGrath. Thank you.
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Neil Rieck (rationalist, humanist, deist)
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.