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Christopher Hitchens excerpts from “Christopher Hitchens vs William Dembski Debate” mixed to “B.o.B feat. Hayley Williams & Eminem Airplanes part II – Instrumental (With Hook).”
Music Video: http://youtu.be/2hJlLjM7mFo
Lyrics/transcript:
Intro:
The principle of Occam's razor in logic and philosophy, keep it by you at all times. Don't make mysteries when none exist. Don't increase the number of unnecessary and complex questions- very important principle. It's death to religion, that principle.
Verse 1:
I think that there are deformities to the pure Christian religion; a doctrine that I think is strictly immoral. That god invents, makes a human species, takes a brief look at it and decides "it's in rebellion against me." It doesn't know how it's done this, but that's its verdict, "You're in rebellion against me. For one thing, you've broken the rule I gave you, don't think for yourselves. You deliberately went to look for knowledge. Now you're in rebellion, now you're going to suffer. Now there's nothing that won't happen. I made you and I can break you, and I will. I'll flood you, I'll plague you." What-now, what is this? This is like being a terrible insect or a rodent in the, in the laboratory of a cruel and stupid person. And what could be more... what's more nihilistic? What's more nihilistic and alienating than that? It's all summarized in one line: To believe you have to consider yourself created incurably sick, and then ordered on pain of death and eternal torture to be well. This is not morality.
Verse 2:
Mother Teresa was a fanatic, fundamentalist and a fraud. She was not a friend of the poor as she claimed to be, she was a friend of poverty. Preached it as a good thing, as a gift from god, something to be welcomed along with other kinds of suffering, wasn't interested in alleviating it. We all know there is a cure for poverty, it's a rudimentary one. It works everywhere. It's colloquially called "the empowerment of women." It's the only thing that does work. If you allow women some control over their cycle of reproductions, so that they're not chained by their husbands or by village customs to annual animal-type pregnancies, early death disease and so on, if you will free them from that, give them some basic health of that sort, the whole floor, culturally, socially, medically, economically-of that village will rise. It works every time. Mother Teresa spent her entire life campaigning against that outcome. She said that contraception was equivalent to abortion, morally, and abortion was morally equivalent to murder. She was entirely against the only thing that cures poverty. I would say that her preachments led to an enormous increase to the amount of poverty, ignorance, filth and disease in the world.
Verse 3:
In other words, the discussion about what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble, what is pure, and what is true could always go on. Why is that important? Because that's the only conversation worth having. And whether it goes on or not after I die, I don't know. But, I do know that it is the conversation I want to have while I am still alive. Which means that to me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can't give way is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don't know anything like enough yet... that I haven't understood enough... that I can't know enough... that I am always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn't have it any other way. And I'd urge you to look at those people who tell you at your age, that you are dead until you believe as they do. What a terrible thing to be telling to children. ...and that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority. Don't think of that as a gift. Think of it as a poisoned chalice. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.
- Genre
- Hiphop