Put into readable transcript by: Aesthetic Atheist
From left to right (on screen):
[CH] Christopher Hitchens
[DD] Daniel Dennett
[RD] Richard Dawkins
[SH] Sam Harris
[RD] One of the things we've all met is the accusation that we are strident or arrogant, or vitriolic, or shrill. What do we think about that?
[DD] Hah! Yeah, well I'm amused by it, because I went out of my way in my book to address reasonable religious people. And I test-flew the draft with groups of students who were deeply religious. And indeed, the first draft incurred some real anguish. And so I made adjustments and made adjustments. And it didn't do any good in the end because I still got hammered for being for being rude and aggressive. And I came to realise that it's a no-win situation. It's a mug's game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude.
[RD] Without being rude.
[DD] You know, they sort of play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity, and faced with a choice of, well, am I gonna be rude or am I going to articulate this criticism? I mean, am I going to articulate it, or am I just gonna button my lip?
[SH] Right, well, that's what it is to trespass a taboo. I think we're all encountering the fact that that religion is held off the table of rational criticism in some kind of formal way even by, we're discovering, our fellow secularists and our fellow atheists. You know, just leave people to their own superstition, even if it's abject and causing harm, and don't look too closely at it.
[DD] Now that was, of course, the point of the title of my book is there is this spell and we gotta break it. But if the charge of offensiveness in general is to be allowed in public discourse, then, without self-pity, I think we should say that we, too, can be offended and insulted. I mean, I'm not just in disagreement when someone like Tariq Ramadan, accepted now at the high tables of Oxford University as a spokesman, says the most he'll demand, when it comes to the stoning of women, is a moratorium on it. I find that profoundly … much more than annoying.
[SH] Right, yeah, but I think …
[CH] Insulting, not only insulting, but actually threatening.
[SH] But you're not offended. I don't see you taking things personally. You're alarmed by the liabilities of certain ways of thinking, as is in Ramadan's case.
[CH] Yes. But he would say, or people like him would say that if I doubt the historicity of the prophet Muhammad, I've injured them in their deepest feelings.
[SH] Right.
[CH] Well I am, in fact. I think all people ought to be offended, at least in their deepest integrity by, say, the religious proposition that without a supernatural, celestial dictatorship, we wouldn't know right from wrong. That we only live by …
[SH] But are you really offended by that? Doesn't it just seem wrong with you?
[CH] No. I say only, Sam, that if the offensiveness charge is to be allowed in general, and arbitrated by the media, then I think we're entitled to claim that much, without being self-pitying, or representing ourselves as an oppressed minority, which I think is an opposite danger, I will admit. I'd like to add also that that I agree with Daniel that there is no way in which the charge against us can be completely avoided, because what we say does offend the core, very core, of any serious religious person, (inaudible). We deny the divinity of Jesus, for example, that maybe will be terrifically shocked and possibly hurt. It's just too bad.
[RD] I'm fascinated by the contrast between the amount of offence that's taken by religion and the amount of offense that people take against anything else, like artistic taste. Your taste in music, your taste in art, your politics. You could be not exactly as rude as you'd like, but you could be far, far more rude about such things. And I'd quite like to try to quantify that, to actively research about it, actually test people with statements about their favourite football team, or their favourite piece of music or something, and see how far you can go, before they take offense, compared to … well, is there anything else, apart from say, how ugly your face is, that gives such …
[CH] Or your husband's or wife's, or girlfriend's or partner's faces.
[RD] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
[CH] Well it's interesting that you say that, because I regularly debate with a terrible man called John Donahue, of the Catholic Defence League, and he actually is righteously upset by certain transient modern art, which tend to draw attention to themselves by blasphemy. For example Serrano's '"Piss Christ", or the elephant dung on the Virgin, and so on. And indeed, I think think it's quite important that we share,
with Sophocles and other pre-monotheists, a revulsion to desecration or to profanity, that we don't want to see churches desecrated …
[RD] No, indeed not.
