The Four Horsemen: The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution

by Christopher Hitchens

Ignorance, to a scientist, is an itch that begs to be pleasurably scratched. Ignorance, if you are a theologian, is something to be washed away by shamelessly making something up.

Science combines a massive contribution, in volume and detail, of what we do know with humility in proclaiming what we don’t. Religion, by embarrassing contrast, has contributed literally zero to what we know, combined with huge hubristic confidence in the alleged facts it has simply made up.

Atheists have the intellectual courage to accept reality for what it is: wonderfully and shockingly explicable. As an atheist, you have the moral courage to live to the full the only life you’re ever going to get: to fully inhabit reality, rejoice in it, and do your best finally to leave it better than you found it.

I regret the residual irrationalism valorized by almost all religion, but I don’t see the state playing the succouring, comforting role well, so until we find secular successor organizations to take up that humane task, I am not in favour of ushering churches off the scene.

religious dogmatism hinders the growth of honest knowledge and divides humanity to no necessary purpose. The latter is a dangerous irony, of course, because one of religion’s most vaunted powers is that it unites people. It does that too, but generally by amplifying tribalism and spawning moralistic fears that would not otherwise exist.

The facts of a single case dismantle whole libraries of theological hairsplitting and casuistry.

religion keeps stressing how humble it is, and how meek it is, and how accepting, almost to the point of self-abnegation it is. But actually it makes extraordinarily arrogant claims for these moments.

And when you look at the books and ask yourself, ‘Is there the slightest shred of evidence that this is the product of omniscience? Is there a single sentence in here that couldn’t have been uttered by a person for whom a wheelbarrow would have been emergent technology?’ you have to say no.

And it’s such a wonderful experience to live in the world and understand why you’re living in the world, and understand what makes it work, understand about the real stars, understand about astronomy, that it’s an impoverishing thing to be reduced to the pettiness of astrology.

The Creator whose will can’t be challenged. Our comments on his will are unimportant. His will is absolute, and applies after we’re dead as well as before we’re born. That is the origin of totalitarianism.