To The Best Of Our Knowledge; Atheism and Its Critics

- Transcript
From PRI, Public Radio International, it's the best of our knowledge. I'm Jim Fleming. Every major problem that we face in the world interacts in one way or another with religion. There is no document that is more despicable really in its morality than the first few books of the Hebrew Bible. These are diabolical books. The killing never stops. I am in favor of goodness. So if a religious leader preaches goodness, that's great. But you don't need religion in order to be good. The voices of Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. Three of today's most outspoken atheists. They've all written bestselling critiques of religion. And a new phrase has even been minted to describe them. The new atheists. But have these atheists really changed the way we think about religion? Today we'll talk with Richard Dawkins and two of his critics. And we'll get a very different take on religion. From a rabbi who once lived in Hebron in the midst of 100 ,000 Palestinians. One of the sad things
people of faith all share is we have all been bloodied by someone else's religion and bloodied someone else in the name of ours. John Haught is a Catholic theologian at Georgetown University. He's written widely on religious efforts to reconcile evolution and faith. He's also written a more polemical response to Dawkins, Harris, and other secular thinkers. It's called God and the New Atheism. Haught told Steve Paulson that these new critics of religion simply don't measure up to old atheists like Nietzsche and Kamu. The only thing new in the so -called New Atheism is the sense that we should not tolerate the tolerance of faith. Because by doing so, we open people's minds to any sort of crazy idea, including some very dangerous ideas, such as those that lead to 9 -11. My chief objection to the New Atheist is that they are
almost completely ignorant of what's going on in the world of theology. They take as their conversation partners the most fundamentalist and literalist and extremist versions of faith, and they try to hold them up as though that's the normative central core of faith. They miss so many things, but they miss, for example, the moral core of Judaism and Christianity, which is the theme of social justice and taking those who are marginalized and bringing them to the center of society. All of that is simply left out. And you're saying older atheists like Nietzsche and Kamu had a different approach, had a more sophisticated critique of religion? I think they did, because what they wanted us to do is to think out completely and thoroughly with our minds and with unrelenting logic, what the world should look like if the transcendent is wiped away from the horizon. Nietzsche, for example, and Sartre and Kamu
would have cringed at this kind of atheism because they would simply see it as just dropping God like Santa Claus and going on with the same old values. The new atheists do not want to think out what would be the implications of a complete absence of deity. And Nietzsche, I think, and Sartre and Kamu all expressed it quite correctly that the implications should be that word that we call nihilism. Wouldn't they see the death of God as terrifying? Yes, they did. And they thought that it would take a tremendous courage to be an atheist. Sartre himself said that atheism is a long range and extremely cruel affair. And he was applying there that most people would not be able to look at squarely in the face. And my own belief is that they didn't either. Nietzsche and Sartre and Kamu eventually realized that the nihilism is not a space within which we can live our lives. But it was, I mean, it took someone like Kamu. I mean, his project, it seems to me, was that he thought there was no God. There was no transcendent reality. And the
great existential struggle for him was then to create that meaning himself or for human beings to do that. I mean, not to appeal to some higher reality. And it didn't seem like it was a cop out at all. In fact, it was a very profound struggle for him. Yes, it was. And his early life, though, is somewhat different from his later writings in the stranger and the myth of Sissifus. He basically argues that in the absence of God, then there is no hope either. And we have to learn to live without hope. And whatever happiness Kamu thought we could attain is that sense of strength that we feel in ourselves when we shake our fists at the gods, that sense of courage, if you will. But none of the atheists, whether they're the hardcore atheists or the new atheists, I think really examine where this courage comes from in the absence of hope. But why do you think you can't have hope if you don't believe in God? I don't necessarily see that connection. Yes, you can have hope, but the question is whether
you can justify the hope. That's the point I want to make. And at the same time, I believe that you can be a very good person. I don't have any objection to the idea that atheists are morally upright, but we need a worldview that is capable of justifying that confidence we place in our minds and reason, in truth and goodness and beauty. I think all of these are not explained as deeply in an atheistic worldview as in a theological worldview. What do you say to the atheists who demand evidence or proof of the existence of a transcendent reality? Well, oftentimes the hidden assumption behind such a statement is that faith is believed without evidence and that, therefore, since there is no scientific evidence for the divine, we should not believe in God. But that statement itself that evidence is necessary holds a further hidden premise and that's that all evidence that's worth examining
has to be scientific evidence. And beneath that assumption, there's the deeper worldview. It's a kind of a dogma that science is the only reliable way to truth. But that itself is a faith statement, so the proposal by the new atheist, for example, that we should eliminate faith in all of its forms would also apply to scientism and scientific naturalism, but at that point they don't want to go that far, so I think there's a self -contradiction there. John Haught is a theologian at Georgetown University. His books include God After Darwin and God and the New Atheism. The idea that the United States is a country of religious maniacs, it really is a myth. I mean, I think it's something that is aciduously cultivated by religious interests and politicians play up to it. That is the world's most famous atheist, biologist Richard Dawkins. His book The God Delusion has sold millions of copies and he routinely draws hundreds
or even thousands of people to his public lectures. In the writing debate between science and religion, he is religion's chief prosecutor. Darwin's wrought wiler as one magazine called him. Richard Dawkins recently stopped by our studio to talk with Steve Paulson. You clearly have plenty of supporters, and you also, of course, have critics. The charge they typically make is that you are as intolerant as the religious fundamentalists. You criticize, and they say you pick out the worst aspects of religion, especially the violence and intolerance. There certainly is very evident in a lot of religious texts, and you pass these off as the essence of religion, and you don't focus on the more positive messages of religion, love, justice, compassion. How do religious people decide which bits of the Bible to pick out? I mean, obviously, love, compassion, tolerance. These are all virtues that we all share, and we all try to live up to those. We do it whether we're religious or not. What can it possibly add to your love and compassion and tolerance
to say that you're, say, a Christian? When in order to do that, you have had to go through the Bible and strike out the many, many, many verses that preach the opposite of love and tolerance, and pick out the few that do preach love and tolerance. So if they can cherry pick the Bible on the basis of the modern liberal consensus that we all share, whether we're religious or not, why bother with the Bible at all? Let me take what I think is the traditional liberal religious response to what you're saying, and that's don't even try to read the Bible literally. Many early Christians didn't want to try to read the Bible literally either. You need to read the Bible more as allegory, and they would say that ultimately the understanding of God is beyond language. That's what the Bible is about. It's searching for some sort of truth, but it's not obvious. You can't take anything. So why bother with the Bible at all then? I mean, if you know which bits you're going to pick out as truth, which bits you're going to say are just allegory, which bits
are so horrible that you just cut them out, which is a lot, by the way. On what criterion do you decide which bits to throw out, which bits are allegory or what? The criterion by which you decide is the modern liberal decent consensus. Let's just go for the modern liberal decent consensus and leave the Bible out altogether. What's the point of dragging the Bible in? Because there are many people who do believe in God and find inspiration in the Bible. Well, what kind of an argument is that? That's why they keep going back to the Bible because... Well, that's not my fault. That's their problem. I'm saying you cannot use the idea that you can find goodness in the Bible as a justification for the Bible, because you've already decided which bits of the Bible to decide a good on other criteria. Well, let's talk about the figure of Jesus, the central figure for Christians today, who the vast majority of Christians would say is the great symbol and messenger of peace and tolerance and compassion for those in need. Let's take the
central message of the New Testament then. Central message of the New Testament is that we needed our sins redeeming, not our sins, Adam's sin. Adam's original sin, Adam whom we now know never existed. So because a man who never existed sinned, God sent his son to be tortured and die on behalf of Adam and on behalf of the rest of us. What a disgusting idea, what a truly revolting idea, and yet that is the central idea of the New Testament, that a man Jesus was punished for everybody else's sins, the most primitive blood sacrifice, the most primitive piece of scapegoating, and that's what we're supposed to regard as a decent moral doctrine. But if you look at the passages describing what Jesus talked about, he certainly talked about caring for those people who had been shunned by the rest of society. Isn't that a very worthy message? Of course it is, but you've just ignored what I've
said. I mean, he was a decent man, he said nice things, lots of other people have said nice things, Socrates said good things, Buddha said good things, lots of philosophers down the ages have said good things, Jesus was one of the people who said good things, but so what? So from your perspective, you sort of can't get past the whole point of the resurrection. I mean, that's the thing that sticks in your craw. Well, I didn't actually mention the resurrection. Well, but I mean, the point of Jesus dying for our sins. I think that is a revolting idea. I don't think Jesus himself ever said it, by the way. I think it was an invention of Paul. Jesus, probably, if he existed, was probably a rather good man, a some kind of a wandering preacher who was way ahead of his time in terms of moral philosophy. However, we moved on since then, and we don't actually need Jesus in order to get good morals, such as, well, going back to the Golden Rule, which is, of course, universal, do as you would be done by. Behave unto others as you would wish them to behave unto you. That piece of wisdom has cropped up in civilizations all over the
world. What do you make of the concept of sin? I think it's one of the things that religious people get obsessed with. It nearly always means private sin rather than public. It nearly always means something like evil thoughts or sexual thoughts or deviant thoughts or thoughts that they disapprove of in their private morality. It rather seldom means actual crime. It rather seldom means stealing or killing or being unkind, being cruel. My view of what's right and wrong is largely based upon what hurts people or living things, sentient beings. So I want to minimize suffering and increase joy, increase happiness. And I'm not the slightest bit interested in private sin. I don't care if somebody has thoughts that are regarded by some priest as being evil. Are you more sympathetic to some of the Eastern religious traditions of thinking of Buddhism, for instance. I mean, the Dalai Lama has come out and talked about how happiness should be one of the purposes of human existence. Is it in any downplay? Yes, I know. I
think we're talking across purposes because I am in favor of goodness. And so if a religious leader preaches goodness, that's great. But what I'm against is the idea that you need a religion in order to be good. And therefore if it happens to be true that the Dalai Lama preaches goodness, then bully for him. That's very nice. Lots of other people preach goodness, but you don't need religion in order to be good. So why say, well, which of these religion do you favor Buddhism? Do you favor Hinduism? Do you favor Confucianism? And kind of look them over and say which one is most likely to lead to goodness? Why not just go straight for goodness and throw out the religion? We can do goodness. We don't need religion in order to be good. I want to, I came across a book that has just come out by Chris Hedges, the former New York Times reporter who the book is called, I don't believe in atheists. And I want to quote a passage from his book and get your reaction. He writes,
the question is not whether God exists. It is whether we contemplate or are utterly indifferent to the transcendent. That which cannot be measured or quantified, that which lies beyond the reach of rational deduction. We all encounter this aspect of existence in love, beauty, alienation, loneliness, suffering, good evil, and the reality of death. These powerful, non -rational, super real forces in human life are the domain of religion. What do you make of that assessment of religion? Bullshit. I mean, let's go through that. Was the word transcendent? I've forgotten the word transcendent was one of his words. In science, there are plenty of things that we don't know. So that's the first thing to get out of the way. Science is not a kind of know -it -all. We've got it all taped. There are going to be, in the next few hundred years, new scientific discoveries, new scientific insights, new scientific ideas, theories, which will be mind -boggling. They will be beautiful, they'll be elegant, and I wish I could live long enough to see them. That's the first point. Now,
he then went on to things like alienation, suffering, reality of death. Now, that's a miscellaneous list of things. Love, emotion, generally, subjectivity. These are, of course, not immediately understandable by science in detail. Just as when I look at a computer, I don't actually understand every detail of how it's doing, what it is doing. That doesn't mean that anything mystical is going on. That passage you read to me is obscure -antist rubbish, because it implies that that which is complicated, and therefore hard to understand, is therefore in principle impossible to understand, which means there's got to be something supernatural going on. Actually, I have a different interpretation. I think what Chris Hedges is getting at, and I think this view is shared by a lot of people with a religious or spiritual bent, is that a lot of the most important parts of reality are beyond the scope of science, and they would say of reason. And these people are not irrational, but they're saying there are lots of the most
important parts of our existence that are really - You can't get out through rational stuff. Well, let's say what that beyond the scope means. Beyond the scope in practice, certainly. If I want to interact with another person at an emotional level, if I want to read a poem, if I want to listen to a Schubert quartet and feel my own welling up of emotion, I do not analyze that in a scientific way. So to that extent, it's beyond the scope of science. But you haven't really said very much when you've said that, because that doesn't mean that it's supernatural. It just means that it's very, very complicated, and you wouldn't use scientific analysis, at least present -day scientific analysis, to attempt to understand that. It's a logical fallacy and a pernicious logical fallacy, to say that because it's beyond the scope of science, therefore we've immediately jumped the gap, to say that it's supernatural. Because supernatural means nothing, it explains nothing, it's a cop out. Do you think science and religion are just fundamentally
incompatible? Incompatible could mean two different things. One thing it might mean is that they have no connection with each other. I think that religious claims are scientific claims, because religious claims, they often include, for example, miracles. And resurrection and virgin birth and appealing, and God reading your thoughts and God listening to your prayers and things. All that is a claim about science. All that is claiming that something is happening in the real world, maybe God intervenes to heal somebody of cancer, maybe God intervenes to part the Red Sea, whatever it might be. That's got to be science, because it actually is interfering with the real world. By the real world, you're talking about the physical world, the natural world. What other world is there? Well, it's a good question. I guess the other world would be the world of the mind. Well, either Jesus had a father or he didn't. That's the real world. So you cannot get out of it by saying, oh, this is a
purely spiritual thing. It's nothing to do with science. Of course it's to do with science. If Jesus is thought to have had no earthly father, then that is a scientific claim. So in that sense, religion and science are compatible in the sense that when religion makes scientific claims, then it sciences business to evaluate those claims. So to that extent, they're compatible. There's another sense in which you might say science through religion are incompatible, which would be the sense in which you cannot be a decent scientist and be religious at the same time. And that, of course, is a separate question. And you would say that you can be a good scientist and also be religious. Clearly, the evidence of individuals is such that you can't. I mean, there are some very highly regarded scientists who are religious, yes. It doesn't mean I understand that, but they do exist. Richard Dawkins, author of the best -selling book, The God Delusion. Like Richard Dawkins, theologian Alistair McGrath teaches at Oxford University. And like his atheist
counterpart, he has a background in science. But there the similarity ends. McGrath is no fan of Dawkins. In fact, he's written not just one, but two book -length critiques of the famous atheist. Steve Paulson talked with McGrath the day after he debated another prominent atheist, Christopher Hitchens. Steve was wondering, can't we blame religious zealots for much of the violence in the world today? Well, a certain affair to blame zealots, and those zealots on all sides of all debates. I think what I would want to say is, as a Christian, for me, it's enormously important to go back to the example of Jesus of Nazareth. And when we look at Jesus, we see someone who estued violence. He would do no violence to anyone, if anything, violence was done to him. And I appreciate that Christians may depart from that norm. But in many ways, they're being challenged by the ethical example of Jesus. To say, look, there's the way you're meant to be. If you think of the Amish schoolhouse killing back in 2006, they had this dreadful episode where a crazed government buss into the schoolhouse and shoots five schoolgirls. The
Amish said, look, Jesus would want us to forgive. So there's going to be no retribution. We're just going to forgive this unfortunate person. And his widow and her family would say, look, this really was a lifeline to us, enabling us to begin all over again, and it broke the cycle of violence immediately. I have to ask you, do you enjoy debating atheists? Well, I do, actually. I used to be an atheist myself. And actually, it's a bit nostalgic very often. I hear views being thrown at me, which I know I once held myself, and it's like being taken back in time. And I do like that where you have written two book length critiques of the world's most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins. Where are you so worried about what he says? Well, I'm not worried by what he says. I'm interested by what he says, and I want to engage with it. And I think I'm interested because a, like him, I used to be a scientist. And therefore, for me, the interaction of science and faith is very, very interesting. And Dawkins is a scientist who became an atheist because of his science. I was an atheist who actually became a Christian because of science. Can you explain that? Yes, well, I was growing up in Northern Ireland. I studied the
sciences at high school. I knew I was going to go on to university, study them in great detail. But at that time, it just seemed to me to be obvious that the natural sciences left no space for God whatsoever. So it seemed to me that atheism was just the natural frame of mind for a scientist. When I actually got to Oxford to begin studying science seriously, I found myself very challenged by this. I discovered that actually the history and philosophy of science really made my childhood atheism a little bit simplistic. What specifically led you to religion? To come to the conclusion that science could only say so much, could only answer so many questions. Well, I think one very important point here is simply that it is fairly clear that science is limited in terms of what it can tell us. It is marvellous in clarifying the relationship between entities and forces in the material world. But when it comes to questions of value or meaning, actually, it isn't really quite so good. In fact, Dawkins and I disagree on many things. But on that point, I think we are agreed. He says, science cannot tell us what is ethical. But I mean for me, and I'm sure for
everybody listening, what is ethical is actually enormously important. So I'm not critiquing science in any way. I'm just saying it has its limits. And for me, the Christian gospel seemed to offer a very intellectually robust and also spiritually significant account of who we are as people and what life is all about. And in fact, I have to say I think I find my scientific interest in my Christian faith resonating very, very strongly indeed. It's so interesting to hear you say that because of course the claim that a lot of atheists make is that religious faith is an abandonment of reason. I mean because people believe in God without any direct evidence. In response to my atheist critics, I would just want to make this point. Actually, when I think about maybe their atheism is a faith as well. It's their way of seeing things which they believe to be right but cannot show to be so. And I think the real issue here is which of our faiths actually matches best with what we know and understand and see in the world around us. A lot of atheists will bridle
at what you just said. I mean they say that what they're doing is they're looking at the evidence. They're sifting through the available facts, the available theories. They're picking out what seems to be most supportable and they are building their beliefs on that. Absolutely and they are beliefs. I fully accept that. If an atheist says to me I don't believe in God, I will say that's fine. But if an atheist says to me I know there is no God. I don't say I think I need to challenge you on that point. You may believe that to be the case but actually you can't really take me the full way and show that is the case. Do you think to be moral to act ethically in the world you need religious faith? I think the answer is no. I think every human being has their own ideas of what is right and what is wrong. I think every human being genuinely wants to do what is right. The real issue I think is how we defend our notions of right and wrong. Are these simply the way we feel about things? Or is it something deeper, something embedded within the way the universe is, the way we are? Which makes us say this is the
way we ought to behave and it's not simply my feeling it's something much, much deeper than that. And for me that quest for some sort of objective morality is enormously important. And for example if you take a writer like Iris Murdoch who was a well known British atheist some years ago, even though an atheist you would make it very, very clear that there has to be some transcendent ground for righteousness. Otherwise we are simply left with endorsements of what one particularly powerful community or vested interest group thinks ought to be the case. Alistair McGrath thought was Steve Paulson. McGrath teaches historical theology at Oxford University. His books include The Dawkins Delusion and Christianity's Dangerous Idea. What do you think of Richard Dawkins and The New Atheists? You can let us know by emailing our website at ttbook .org. We'd love to hear from you.
I'm Jim Fleming. It's to the best of our knowledge from PRI Public Radio International. It's easy to get lost in theoretical debates about religion and atheism. So here's a story about the very real impact of Buddhist meditation. Whether it's a story about religion, you can be the judge. Donaldson Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison in Alabama that holds 1500 of the state's most dangerous criminals, many are on death row. A few years ago several Buddhist teachers came into the prison to
lead a meditation class for inmates and not just any kind of meditation. But Vapassana, a grueling course of silent meditation that lasted 10 days. Each time we start a group sitting, we'll start off with chanting. The chanting is to help create and to preserve a good environment for you to work in. Being someone as talkative as much as I am, shutting up for 10 days is just critical mass. You know, I'm serious. That's almost a drive you into hysteria by itself. 36 prison inmates studied meditation. For some, their lives were never to be the same again. The story is told in the documentary film The Dama Brothers. Anne Strangehamps asked the film's director, Jenny Phillips, to describe Vapassana meditation. You practice focusing on the breath, focusing the mind over a period of days, actually.
And then you follow the sensations in the body and you're at that point deeply internally focused after many, many hours of meditation. And as you sort of run your awareness through different parts of the body, things come to the surface that have been kept out of your conscious awareness for many, many, many years. And I guess you could call it the subconscious mind. And as they come to the surface, you're able to focus on them in an objective way without reacting to them. Then prisoners are the most reactive of all populations. You know, they're often not aware of their emotions and they often don't know how to handle their emotions. They often have traumatic past histories. So teaching them this meditation technique really allows them to focus and concentrate and become aware of their emotions. And then to look at things as they come to the surface. I knew that I had to kind of let things go.
And I realized that I was holding onto things too strongly. And that became very funny. You know, I started laughing about the way I was reacting to everything. I started laughing because I was angry. And in the midst of the laughter, it changed to tears. I was like, whoa, and the big image, you know, you're not supposed to cry. I wanted somebody to see you cry. It turned out that it was okay, actually. And I just didn't care anymore. And I just let the tears roll like right. I don't know what else crying about, but it felt good to cry. You know, it had been quite some time. Some of the prison guards were pretty skeptical about the program. I mean, they thought the prisoners were just getting an excuse to escape from daily prison life for 10 days. But in fact, some of the prisoners who took part in the program said it was harder than prison. Maybe the hardest thing they'd ever done. It was horrible. It was probably the worst experience I've ever been through. I spent eight and a half years on death
row, and this was harder. All the stuff that's buried down deep, they come up gradually. And most of them are small things, and you can deal with them. You recognize them, you look at it, and you move on. But I never felt anything like that, that fifth day. It was hard to keep composure. Stay on the mat. I wanted to jump and run back. I've always justified some of my behavior during that crime. And on day five, I just couldn't get away from myself. I had to actually sit. Things don't just happen. And your behavior causes the actions that you get into, so I am guilty. You know, I think often we run away from our problems, we don't want to face them. We certainly do that in the so -called free world. Imagine if you're in prison, and you have a past history that you're frightened of looking at. You have crimes that were inflicted upon you, and of course crimes that you inflicted upon others. And in the
distracting world of prison, you're able to avoid looking at that. And you want to look at it, you want to look at your crimes, you're looking for redemption, but you're terrified to do it. I've been locked up for 16 years, eight and a half years on death throwing that five -eighth cell. And every morning I'd have to get up and live with the fact that I have isolated myself from everybody that I loved. I isolated everybody I loved from me, and pretty much wrecked their lives. I had small children, and they had to grow up in this community where their father has done this horrific act. You know, they had to go to school with kids that your father is a murderer. I thought I had a real good life going, and I blew it. Some of the prisoners encountered things that they'd never allowed themselves to look at before. They found themselves shaking and sweating and weeping, and some of them
tried to run and get out of the door. You know, the door was locked, and they tried to run down the hallway, but they couldn't. But they were always comforted and nurtured, and reassured that this was what they needed to do. The truth shall set you free, and I think they found that by facing their truths, they were able to find some kind of sense of inner peace, some more than others. What did the guys say themselves about the experience? They've said many things. I've received over 200 letters from them. They've given me all kinds of stories about how, you know, when they would be ready to fight before, or somebody would say something insulting to them, and anger would mount up. They were able to focus on their breath. They were able to observe themselves, because really, I think that's probably the most powerful thing. The thing that one takes away from learning to meditate is you're not just your anger, you're also knowing I'm angry right now, and it gives you a choice of how to react. So there are many
stories of moments in which they previously would have gotten into fights. They would have ended up being sent into a segregation cell. They've been able to just breathe, relax, and move on. I had to go tell these gang members, you go ahead and go your way, and I'm gonna go my way, and hoping that I'm kissing a rep question behind it. This I have known for passing a word. When they call me a thump, they call me a negative word, breathe a little bit, and I was cool. There's another story you tell in the film. It's a prisoner, Grady, one of the inmates. You followed from the beginning who says that while he was in prison, he learned that his adult daughter had been murdered, and that thanks to all the meditation training, he feels that he is able to feel compassion for her murderer,
which is an extraordinary thing. Grady is a very sad case of, and we show some of his childhood history in the film, that he was abandoned as a child, out in a deserted house in the countryside with his little brother, Danny, and his mother dressed them up in their best clothes and took them out to the end of a long driveway to an abandoned house, stood them on the porch and told them not to move and to stay there, and she would be back. And she never returned, and he managed to keep his little brother alive and survive on whatever he could, he found a dead bird and hubcap filled with water, and they survived for about three days. Danny later died, and Grady always felt responsible for the death of his little brother, and he had a very rough childhood. And later on witnessed a very violent crime in which he stood by while somebody was killed and left with the murderers, had never raised a hand to this person that was murdered, and unfortunately ended up on death row, and he
struggled with so much over the years, and went through the Vipassana course, and found that meditation has been extremely helpful to him, and after the course, yes, he was watching television one day, and on the television set, he heard about the death of his daughter, Brandy. She had been murdered. My first reaction was, boy, if I could just get my hands on this cat, but that only lasted a few minutes, and it's like, what are you talking about, Grady? I can't feel that way. I don't like anything that he did, makes me physically ill to think about what my daughter went through. But I got to still love the guy. He's still a human, just like the rest of us. I don't like what he did. I hope he can never do that to nobody else ever again, but he's a human being. I'm curious, what do you say to the people, and I'm sure there are many who
say to you, men like this don't deserve nurturing or kindness. They committed terrible crimes against other people, and they're in prison to be punished. Well, I do get asked that question a lot, and even if you only want to look at protecting officers who work in prisons, and helping prisons be a more peaceful, healthy environment, and protecting our streets when 97 % of the over 2 million people that are incarcerated today in the United States return to those streets. If nothing else, I think there's a strong public safety argument. You know, I also have to admit I do believe the prisoners are human beings, and that let's let them move on beyond their crimes. Let's let them look at their crimes, take responsibility for their crimes, be imbued with a sense of healthy, healthy guilt, not unhealthy guilt. Unhealthy guilt, I think it erodes self -esteem and makes people more
capable of acting out and becoming violent, but healthy guilt, which means taking responsibility and understanding how you came to be where you were that day that you did those things that brought you to prison. Jenny Phillips directed the documentary film The Dama Brothers. She spoke with Anne Strange Shams. I'm Jim Fleming. It's to the best of our knowledge from PRI Public Radio International. If you are not in regular conversation, respectful conversation, with someone who
doesn't share your book, I promise you, whoever enlightened you think you are, you're a fanatic. Brad Hershfield knows what he's talking about. He admits that he himself was once a religious fanatic, one of a small number of Jewish settlers in Hebron, trying to impose their will on the Palestinians around them. Today, he's a rabbi, preaching a message of faith without fanaticism. Hershfield stopped by our studios to talk about his book, you don't have to be wrong for me to be right. Religion is killing more people now, it seems, than any time since the Crusades. On the other hand, large -scale acts of religious human kindness, social justice, and global concern are more effective now than any time maybe in human history. And so I think what's going on is that we're pulling at the extremes, both ends. People have mobilized faith to feed more hungry people than ever, to
intervene when hurricanes strike, to get people to go to vote. If there's a good cause out there, you will often find religious folks connected to it. On the other hand, if there's a bad cause out there, you'll often find religious folks connected to it also. So who are you to be saying these things? I still love God. The bottom line is, I really do believe still. I really do love both faith in general and my particular tradition, Judaism. It seems to me the test of a genuine love of any tradition, political, religious, the football team you go to cheer for, is if you can't love it, and that love can't include seeing the problems and still loving it, it's not a real love. When did this begin for you? Because the family life you describe doesn't seem fertile ground for the kind of faith that you clearly have. It isn't, it isn't, or it wasn't,
it isn't. I'm not sure which way, since I feel like it's still an ongoing story. I grew up by all accounts in what would be seen as a largely secular, though passionately Jewish home. Now the way in which that was a good preparation for how I am today is that I was shown there are many ways to attach to a tradition and love it. The fact that at the age of 12 I came to my perfectly normal parents on the North Shore of Chicago telling them that I was going to no longer get into a car and the Sabbath from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, that I was going to need to have separate utensils in our home so I could eat strictly kosher. Yeah, that was a little out there for them. But again, it was in the context of a family where I was raised and my favorite food growing up was shrimp cocktail. Not such favorite finding stuff with the rabbis, and yet we said a Jewish blessing, a Hebrew blessing, before we ate that prohibited food. What was your family's reaction when at the age of 12 you said I want to be an orthodox
Jew? I think it evolved slowly. The pivotal moment I think was one day I knocked on my parents bedroom door. My mom was there and I came to her and asked her if I could have separate dishes and pots and pans and two sets of silverware. She looked at me and said why? I decided I'm going to keep strictly kosher and actually it's really important to me to observe these rules. My mother looked at me in one of the most important teachings that I've ever received in my life. She looked at me and said no. And I said no. What do you mean no? You've sent me to this Jewish day school where I've learned all these rules that I know we've never observed but now I've decided I'm going to not only learn them but live them and the answer is no. And she says no. I will not buy you separate utensils. I said but if you will wait until the summer when you go away to camp, I will make
this entire house kosher. But she said with all of your new rules I'm going to add one. I said what's that? She said well as we go to observe all of these new kosher rules along with you. You my son with all of your new rules will still have to figure out how to go out to dinner with your non kosher reading family. Now she couldn't explain what she was doing but what she'd managed to do I believe brilliantly was the two most important things in negotiating religious journeys wherever they take you. She didn't allow her fear of my newfound faith to distance her from me and she refused to allow me to use my newfound faith as some kind of moral high ground from which to distance myself from the rest of my family. You know this is a very moving story and it seems to me that it lays the groundwork for the man that you have become but there is an interval that we haven't talked about. It's clear that that lesson if it was there didn't
attach itself to you for some time because you became increasingly strict about your own rightness in your religion. Yeah, you know the subtitle of the book finding faith without fanaticism is because I was a fanatic. There's no question about it. See what happened is I decided I was going to go off to Israel at 17 and not just go off to Israel at 17 but go off to study the all men's religious seminary known as the Eschiva. But not only find the Eschiva in Jerusalem no no that would have been far too easy. I ended up connected to the settlement community in the city of Hebron. The ancient city which is the traditional burial place of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Leah. Maybe the most hotly contested piece of real estate anywhere in the Middle East if not the entire world. And I moved in an often on basis over the next number of years as one of a hundred settlers living amongst a hundred thousand Palestinians. In that community of Jews who like
me believe this was it. God had commanded us to be there. This was our destiny. Every Jew was going to come home to every part of the biblical land of Israel and it didn't matter who was living there. It was irrelevant that there were a hundred thousand Palestinians there. And so in the first go around in that kind of passion that you can only have when you're 17, 18, 19 years old. I mean that kind of intensity and passion and absolute certainty and it's intoxicating but it included my entire family. What it failed to include and what took me some years to understand was that in its brilliance to include all of the people who were known as Jewish it was absolutely tone death to everyone who wasn't. Well forgive me it sounds as though you were at 17 were the same as you were at 12 only instead of your mother saying wait you were in the midst of a hundred thousand Palestinians who said to how with you. Living amongst those hundred thousand Palestinians and it's why
I believe actually as much as I still believe in the goal of allowing Jews to live in Hebron I believe it's not possible to do. Because there is no way for a hundred people to live amongst a hundred thousand who don't want them without that hundred beginning to see that hundred thousand is less than fully human. Well and you experienced this that's when they became like my mother when I began to see the cost that was being paid by people who are in fact fully human. Who are within the teachings of my own tradition every bit is sacred whose lives are every bit is important whose dignity is every bit is needs to be as assured. But it took the extreme acts of people I admired it took seeing rabbis and officers in the army stealing weapons and becoming vigilantes and ultimately murdering in the name of this vision. And again I want to be absolutely clear because someone will listen and say well you're talking about the story of a couple of murders versus a
culture that's produced many many more murders. So I want to be clear I'm not talking about moral equivalency based on the numbers of dead. But here's what I know if it's your kid who's been murdered it actually doesn't matter how many of the other side is killed. So tell me what happened in the book you describe a day I guess the first inkling perhaps you had was standing in crowd control with a friend who was mad at his uzi because he couldn't cock it. Yeah we weren't even actually I'm doing guard duty this was that we were we had gone to pray in the mahpe la which is a kind of a mosque which also has a synagogue section there was a scuffle in this vast courtyard this kind of public square in front of this big mosque that sometimes a synagogue. And the guy was with was furious that he didn't have the opportunity as the crowd got out of control and would have to be certain been gotten under control by the army whose job it is to do it. That his weapon didn't
function because he was absolutely ready to start shooting at civilians who he saw as troublemakers and then there was the incident that perhaps drives the rest of your life. There wasn't actually you weren't there I was not in the Islamic College when it happened look this was living in a battle zone. I mean settlers were were knife and shot all the time and the rage just started to build and it built to the point after one series of attacks when a group of guys was then called the underground there was a Jewish underground movement composed of extremist religious settlers. When in their rage after an attack pursued who they thought was never even confirmed who they thought was one of the attackers. But rather than chase him down as he ran into the Islamic College not too many blocks from where most of us lived in the city of Hebron they opened fire and through
hand grenades into the school. Two were killed and somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 were wounded. The two children yeah they were late teens but two innocent civilians would struck me even wasn't that they were killed because I said it was like living in a war zone and when you live in a war zone innocent people get killed. I want to explain that can sound very harsh and I don't mean it that way. Though I think it's important right now is an American if we're going to be involved in a war because anyone who ever markets any war by saying the good guys will go kill the bad guys is wrong. That doesn't mean that wars aren't worth fighting I'm not actually a pacifist but anyone who sells a war saying this will be clean because the good guys will just kill the bad guys is a fool or a liar. This is Brad Hirschfield at the age of what 40 43 talking now but you were 17 18. Yeah this happened 19 so what happened was that I didn't feel that because of their deaths.
I went to one of my teachers because I knew something was wrong this was boiling over and when you see the faces of people you love and respect twisted and anger and all the time you know something's off even if the cause is good that can't be right. That's not the face of love and the face of doing the right thing. And I remember he said to me look it's a tragedy because parents are bearing their children and the fact that their Palestinians does not make it any less tragic. It's a tragedy but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with what we're doing and now is not the time to be asking big questions. And that's what got to me. See if he had said it's a tragedy and now we have to rethink everything we're doing we're going to stay committed to this cause but you're right the cause will be different because of this. I'd probably still be living in a settlement in Israel but the moment he was able to say bury those questions I knew something was going badly wrong.
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. His book is called You Don't Have to Be Wrong For Me To Be Right. It's to the best of our knowledge and Jim Fleming. If you'd like to comment on what you've heard we'd love to hear from you send us email through our website at ttbook .org. You can buy a CD of the show by calling the radio store at 1 -800 -747 -7444. Ask for the program atheism and its critics number 622 -A. To the best of our knowledge is produced at Wisconsin Public Radio. This hour was put together by Steve Paulson with help from Mary Lou Finnegan, Charles Monroe Cain, Veronica Rickert, Doug Gordon and Anne Strange Shamps. Our technical director
is Carilloan. You can stream to the best of our knowledge on our website at ttbook .org where you will also find a link to the weekly podcast.
- Series
- To The Best Of Our Knowledge
- Episode
- Atheism and Its Critics
- Producing Organization
- Wisconsin Public Radio
- Contributing Organization
- Wisconsin Public Radio (Madison, Wisconsin)
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- Description
- Episode Description
- Atheists have been called the most hated minority in America, but recent atheist manifestos by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have all made the bestseller list. Have these atheists changed our thinking about religion? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the New Atheism with Richard Dawkins and two of his critics.
- Episode Description
- This record is part of the Spirituality section of the To The Best of Our Knowledge special collection.
- Episode Description
- This record is part of the Arts and Culture section of the To The Best of Our Knowledge special collection.
- Series Description
- ”To the Best of Our Knowledge” is a Peabody award-winning national public radio show that explores big ideas and beautiful questions. Deep interviews with philosophers, writers, artists, scientists, historians, and others help listeners find new sources of meaning, purpose, and wonder in daily life. Whether it’s about bees, poetry, skin, or psychedelics, every episode is an intimate, sound-rich journey into open-minded, open-hearted conversations. Warm and engaging, TTBOOK helps listeners feel less alone and more connected – to our common humanity and to the world we share. Each hour has a theme that is explored over the course of the hour, primarily through interviews, although the show also airs commentaries, performance pieces, and occasional reporter pieces. Topics vary widely, from contemporary politics, science, and "big ideas", to pop culture themes such as "Nerds" or "Apocalyptic Fiction".
- Created Date
- 2009-05-31
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- Episode
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- Sound
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- 00:53:00.800
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Producing Organization: Wisconsin Public Radio
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Wisconsin Public Radio
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- Citations
- Chicago: “To The Best Of Our Knowledge; Atheism and Its Critics,” 2009-05-31, Wisconsin Public Radio, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed August 23, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-5e31b30ccd0.
- MLA: “To The Best Of Our Knowledge; Atheism and Its Critics.” 2009-05-31. Wisconsin Public Radio, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. August 23, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-5e31b30ccd0>.
- APA: To The Best Of Our Knowledge; Atheism and Its Critics. Boston, MA: Wisconsin Public Radio, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-5e31b30ccd0