[RD] Yes, it's almost patronising to suggest that we couldn't and to suggest that it shouldn't. On the other hand, I think we all know people who seem to manage this kind of split brain feat of, as Sam said, believing one thing on a Sunday and then something totally contradictory or, incompatible the rest of the week. And there's nothing I suppose neurologically wrong with that, I mean there is no reason why one shouldn't have a brain that's split in that kind of way …
[DD] But it is unstable in a certain way but, and I'm sure you're right, that people do this and they're very good at it, and they do it by deflecting attention from it. Let's start focusing attention …
[RD] But how you can live with a contradiction? How you can live with it?
[DD] by forgetting that you're doing this and by not attending to it. I think, what I would love to do is to invent a memorable catchphrase or term that would rise unbidden in their minds when they caught themselves doing it, and then they would think oh, this is one of those cosmic shifts that Dennett and Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens are talking about. Oh! right! and they think this is somehow illicit, just to create a little more awareness in them of what a strange thing it is that they're doing.
[CH] I'm afraid to say that I think that cognitive dissonance is probably necessary for everyday survival. Everyone does it a bit.
[DD] You mean tolerating cognitive dissonance?
[CH] No, practicing it.
[RD] Actually practicing it.
[CH] I mean take the case of someone who’s a member of moveon.org. They think that the United States government is a brutal, militaristic, imperial regime who crushes the poor and invades other peoples' countries, but they pay their taxes and, it's very, very rare that they don't. They send their children to school, they do their stuff, you know, they don't act all the time as if ten percent of what they believe is true. Partly because it would be impossible, say, with people in the fifties who were members the John Birch society, who thought President Eisenhower was a communist. Okay, you get up in the morning, you believe that. The White House is run by the Kremlin but then you have to go and get the groceries, and do all that stuff. You still have to go and do it.
[SH] Too many commitments, yeah.
[CH] But you absolutely wouldn't be challengeable in your belief. It'd be very, very important to you, but there would be no way in your life, your real life, of vindicating or practicing the opinion that you have. And I'm sure the same is true of people who say well I shouldn't really prefer one child to another or one parent to another but I do, I'm just not gonna act as if I do.
[SH] Right.
[CH] All kinds of things of this kind.
[SH] But what do you think, as educators …
[CH] Or Senator Craig saying he is not gay. Thinking in his own mind he's absolutely sure he's not, but he can't manage his life by saying he is or that he isn't. So, a question I wanted to ask was this: we should ask ourselves what our real objective is. Do we, in fact, wish to see a world without faith? I think I would have to say that I don't. I don't either expect to, or wish to, see that.
[SH] What do you mean by 'faith'?
[CH] Well I don't think it's possible, because it replicates so fast, faith. As often as it's cut down, or superseded, or discredited, it replicates, it seems to me, extraordinarily fast, I think. For Freudian reasons, principally to do with the fear of extinction, or annihilation
[SH] So you mean faith in supernatural paradigms?
[CH] Yes, the wish. Wish thinking.
[RD] Then why would you not wish it?
[CH] And then, the other thing is, would I want this argument to come to an end, with all having conceded that …
[SH] You wouldn't like to retire and move on to other stuff?
[CH] 'Hitchens really won that round, now nobody in the world believes in God'? Now, apart from being unable to picture this, I'm not completely certain that it's what I want. I think it is rather to be considered as sort of the foundation of all arguments about epistemology, philosophy, biology, and so on. It's the thing you have to always be arguing against, the other explanation.
[RD] It's an extraordinary thing. I don't understand what you're … I mean, I understand you're saying that it'll never work, I don't understand why you wouldn't wish it.
[CH] Because, I think, a bit like the argument between, Huxley and Darwin. Sorry, excuse me, Huxley and Wilberforce, or Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, I want it to go on.
[RD] Because it's interesting.
[CH] I want our side to get more refined, and theirs to be ever more exposed. But I can't see it with one hand clapping.
[SH] I mean, you don't want it to go on with the Jihadists, I mean, there's a certain face of this …
[CH] No, but I don't have a difference of opinion with the Jihadists.
[SH] Well, you do in terms of the legitimacy of their project …
[CH] No, not really, no, there's nothing to argue about with that, I mean, there it's a simple matter of survival. I want them to be extirpated.
[SH] Alright, well move it down to the people who are blocking stem cell research.
[CH] No, that is a purely primate response with me, the recognising the need to destroy an enemy in order to assure my own survival. I've no interest at all in what they think.
[RD] Sounds like you're (inaudible)
[CH] No, I mean, really … we haven't still come to your question about Islam, but no interest at all in what they think. Only interested in refining methods of destroying them.
[SH] Okay.
[DD] In other words, you've simply given up.
[CH] A task in which, by the way, one gets very little secular support.
[SH] Yes, that's notable.
[CH] Most atheists don't want this fight. The most important one is the one they want to shirk. They'd far rather go off and dump on Billy Graham, 'cause on that they know that they can't, so there's no danger.
[DD] Well I think that because we find the idea of exterminating these people just abhorrent, and we think that, besides, it will (inaudible) them.
[CH] No, I said 'extirpating'.
[DD] Extirpate?
[CH] Yes, complete destruction of the Jihadist forces. Extermination, I think, has to be applied more as a species, or, sort of …
[RD] No, but Christopher, it sounds as though you like argument. You like having … it's almost the theatre of having an intellectual argument, which would be lost.
[CH] Well, I'd rather say the dialectic actually, Richard. In other words, one learns from arguing with other people.
[RD] Yes.
[CH] Now I think all of us around this table have probably enhanced, or improved, our own capacities as reasoners.
[RD] Yes, but I mean, there are plenty of other things to reason about. Having won the battle against religion, we can go back to science, or whatever it is we practice. And we can argue and reason about that, and there's plenty of arguments, really worthwhile arguments to be had.