It's the most sinister and dangerous thing, and that is a claim that Islam makes that others don't quite make in the same way.
[DD] Well, let me play devil's advocate for a moment on that …
[CH] There's no refutation of Islam in Christianity or Judaism, but there is in Islam. We accept all the bad bits of Judaism, we love Abraham and his sacrifice of his son, or willingness to sacrifice, we love all that, we absolutely esteem the virgin birth, the most nonsensical bits of Christianity. All that's great, you're all welcome to join, but we have the final word. That's deadly. And I think our existence is incompatible with that preaching.
[DD] Let me just play devil's advocate for a moment, so at least we're clear what the position is.
[CH] I'd rather speak for the devil pro bono myself!
[DD] We can all speak for the devil, I'm sure a lot of people think we're doing just that. I, for one, think that the fact that something is true is not quite sufficient for spreading it about, or for trying to discover it. The idea that there's things we should just not try to find out is an idea that I take seriously. And, I think that we at least have to examine the proposition that there's such a thing as knowing more than is good for us. Now, if you accept that so far, then, a possibility we have to take seriously, even when we reject it, we should reject it having taken it seriously, is the Muslim idea that, indeed, the West has simply gone way too far, that there is knowledge that's not good for us, it's knowledge that we were better off without, and the fact that many Muslims would like to turn the clock back, they can't of course. But, I have a certain sympathy for a Muslim who says 'well yeah, the cat's out of the bag, it's too late, it's a tragedy, you in the West have exposed truths to yourselves, and now you're forcing them on us, that the species would be better off not knowing.'
[CH] I'm absolutely riveted by what you say. I'd really love an instance in theory or practice, of something, that you think we could know but could forbid ourselves to know. Because that is harder for me to imagine, than a world without faith, I must say.
[SH] Well, you brought up the bell curve - I mean, if there were reliable differences in intelligence between races, or species, or gender …
[CH] Yes, but I don't think any of us here do think that that's the case. I mean, I'm thinking there must be something, you must've thought of something you could believe, but wish you didn't know.
[DD] Oh, I don't think it's hard to dream up things which, if they were true, it might be better for the human race to go on not knowing them.
[CH] But could you concretise it just a little more? I'm completely …
[RD] I mean, the hypothetical is one thing, but Christopher is asking do you actually … have you ever suppressed something that … ?
[DD] No, no, I haven't.
[RD] No, no.
[CH] Can you imagine yourself doing so, by the way? I mean, I can't.
[DD] Oh, I can imagine it, I hope it never comes up.
[SH] Well, take the synthesising of bioweapons. I mean, should Nature publish the code for Smallpox, where anyone within his lab can …
[DD] Yeah, exactly. There's all those sorts of things.
[CH] Oh, well, all right, but that would be a knowledge of which we should remain
innocent. That would be more like a capacity.
[SH] I think, with foresight, certainly you can conceive of a circumstance where someone can seek knowledge, the only conceivable application of which would be unethical, or the dissemination of which would put power in the wrong hands. But actually, you brought up something which I think is crucial here, because it's not so much the spread of seditious truths to Islam or the rest of the world that I think we're guilty of in the eyes of our opponents, it's the not-honouring of facts that are not easily quantified, and easily discussed in science. I mean the classic retort to all of us is 'prove to me that you love your wife', as though this were a knockdown argument against atheism. You can't prove it. Well, if you unpack that a little bit, you can prove it, you can demonstrate it, we know what you mean by love, but, there is this domain of the sacred that is not easily captured by science, and scientific discourse has really ceded it to religious discourse.
[DD] And artistic discourse, which is not religious, necessarily.
[SH] But I would argue it's not even well-captured by art, necessarily, there's something in the same way that love is not really well-captured by art, and compassion is not … well, I mean, you can represent it in art, but it's not reducible to … you don't go into the museum and find compassion in its purest form. And, I think there's something about the way we, as atheists, merely dismiss the bogus claims of religious people that convinces religious people that there's something we're missing, and I think we have to be sensitive to this.
[CH] Absolutely, that's why they bring up "when has secularism ever built anything like Durham Cathedral or a Chartres? or a devotional painting? or the music of …?”
[DD] Bach.
[CH] Well, I guess it would have to be Bach, yes.
[SH] But I think we have answers to that. I think we have answers to that
[CH] Yes, we do.
[SH] You provide a very good answer to that, if there was secular patronage of the arts at that point, then one, we can't know that Michelangelo was actually a believer, because the consequence of professing your unbelief, in that case, was death. But two, if we had a secular organisation to …
[RD] To commission Michelangelo.
[SH] … to commission Michelangelo, you know, we would have all that secular artwork.
[CH] Though do you … I didn't actually say that the corollary held
[SH] Which?
[CH] I think it's true we can't know with devotional painting, and sculpture, and architecture that the patronage didn't have a lot to do with it. But I can't hear myself saying 'if only you had a secular painter, he would have done just as good work.'
[SH] Oh no, no, I think I'm fusing you and Richard there.
[CH] I don't know why, and I'm quite happy to find that I don't know why, I can't quite hear myself saying that.
[RD] What? That Michelangelo, if he'd been commissioned to do the ceiling of a museum of science, wouldn't have produced something just as wonderful?
[CH] In some way, I'm reluctant to affirm that, yes.
[RD] Really? I find it very, very easy to believe that.
[CH] That could be a difference between us, I mean with devotional poetry, where I do … I don't know much about painting or architecture or music, and some devotional architecture, like, say, St Peter's, …
[SH] It couldn't be done.