‘Do you believe in God?’
‘A question of little value. Which god? Ganesh? Osiris? Jove? Jehovah? Or one of the tens of thousands of animist gods worshipped every day around the globe?’
‘Oh, very well then, if you’re going to get clever — any god?’
‘Do I believe in “any god”?’
‘Look there’s a creation, isn’t there? Therefore there must be a Creator. Nothing comes from nothing. Something must have started it all.’
‘I’ll overlook your reckless use of “therefore” and go along with you, out of interest. Just to see where it gets us.’
‘Well then.’
‘Well then, what?’
‘You’ve agreed there’s a Creator.’
‘Well, I haven’t “agreed”, but I’ve come along with you to see where it’s going. Who is this Creator you have conjured up on the grounds that they “must” exist?’
‘Well, we can’t say.’
‘And more important, who created this Creator?’
‘That’s just silly.’
‘But you’ve just told me that nothing comes from nothing and something must have started it all. Why am I not allowed to use this principle to wonder where your Creator comes from?’
‘Well, you must admit that Love and Beauty can’t be explained by science. That there’s something other…’
***
We have all had heated, sophomoric and ultimately futile conversations like this as students — quibbling and quarrelling earnestly about turtles-all-the-way-down regress and challenging each other to prove the unprovable, long into the wine-fuelled night. We have all listened to those of faith stating their position, first by adducing half-understood scientific thinking and discovery –‘Quantum physics itself shows that we can’t be certain of anything.’
'Quantum physics itself shows that we can't be certain of anything.'
— then dropping them contemptupusly:
'Science doesn't have all the answers. It can't even explain what most of the universe is made of! Anyway, they're only theories.'
To this day, the ‘No true Scotsman’ fallacy is alive and well:
'Buddhism has a lot to teach us, you know. It's been shown to have real psychological and cognitive value.'
'You mean like those Buddhist monks who helped the Burmese army ethnically cleanse the Rohingya to the point of genocide?'
'Oh, but they were not proper Buddhists.'
***
Such scenes play out every day, and it is important that they should. The rounds of punch and counterpunch may get wearisome, aggressive and tiresomely circular, but let us never forget that this is a big subject and the claims made by theists, religionists and believers are the most momentous claims there can be. About anything. You don’t have to boast a PhD or have read Thomas à Kempis, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, and the teachings of Siddartha (or indeed On the Origin of Species) to be able to take part in such wrangling and disputation. But boy, isn’t it wonderful when you can eavesdrop on four who have. It warms the heart, tickles the soul and fires up the synapses. And that is exactly what the book The Four Horsemen allows us to do — listen in on four people who have thought hard and fought hard (for they have been publicly battered and battled like few intellectuals in our time) without losing their wit, humour and sense of proportion.
***
The above text is written by Stephen Fry. The book he is mentioning here, The Four Horsemen, captures the landmark discussion that the four new-age atheists (Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett) had in 2007.
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