Here are a couple of quotes from Christopher Hitchens:
If you say you don't believe, which is what an agnostic has to say…because an agnostic says "I can't decide it"…you're an atheist. QED.
And:
You should take the risk of believing that if you're the only person who thinks what you think, that still might well mean you were right.
First quote: disagree. Come on, I hope Hitchens doesn't expect us to take this word game seriously. My impression is this: Hitchens wants a fight, and, in order to make conditions more conducive to fighting, he has to frame the world in black and white. Therefore there are atheists and there are religious fundamentalists, and (here he has something in common with Bush etc. in the war on terror) "if you're not with us you're against us". But, since Hitchens is a considerate and indulgent man, he'd rather not be fighting the wrong people. So, rather than paint the grey people black in his picture of the world, he paints them white, to ensure that they're all honorary atheists, kind of affably press-ganging them into his cause.
I can do better than that: If being agnostic means you don't know if there is a god, and atheist is the alternative among non-believers, that means atheists must know that there isn't a god. If someone can give an airtight reason as to how they know there isn't a god (as opposed to belief) etc., then the distinction of 'atheist', as opposed to 'agnostic' is valid. Otherwise all non-believers are agnostics, or, if they say they are atheist, they are lying.
Second quote: agree. Oddly, the second quote seems to contradict the first in spirit. The first quote seems very much in the "everyone has a right to my opinion" vein.
More Hitchens quotes:
A fundamentalist says that they believe what the books say; if you don't believe what the books say, why are you saying you're a Christian?
Again, more sophism in order to divide the world into enlightened atheists and religious fundamentalists. You can only be a Christian if you're a fundamentalist, apparently. Only the stupidest and most literal level of truth in any religion is religious. It's just a way of shifting labels about, but one has to ask why. In order to advance a particlar battle-plan, that's all.(Note: It's just occurred to me that the more pertinent question is why it is obligatory to have the atheist label if you're not a fundamentalist whereas choosing to have the Christian label apparently is indefensible.)
Civilization begins where reason kicks in, and where there are no unexamined assumptions.
What about the unexamined assumption that Hitchens knows what god is. You can only disbelieve something if you know what it is, after all.
Try & live your life as if you were a free person; that you didn't have to wonder what anyone else's opinion was…
Thank you for your permission to think for myself, Hitch. I hope you're not going to revoke it again when I actually make use of it.
[Spinoza] was a pantheist. What he said was 'God is everything and everywhere' … I don't mind people saying that at all.
After all, as Dawkins has also said, pantheism is just sexed up atheism. What a relief it must be for pantheists to know they're on the right side in this war. Things begin to boggle when we apply statements such as that made by Ghandi that "God is the very atheism of the atheist". Personally, I quite like boggling.
Etc.
“Civilization begins where reason kicks in, and where there are no unexamined assumptions.”As far as I’m aware, there’s never been a society in human history that hasn’t had a religious underpinning in its original stages. Perhaps Hitchens should also reflect on the fact that instrumental reason let loose has led to the uninhibited use of science as a means to perfect techniques by which one group of humans can destroy another with ever greater efficiency. (Hitchens himself has called for the use of nukes on Iran.)As for the war over religion, if I had to choose (as Hitchens seems determined to make us do so) I’d sooner believe in a loving deity than worship the smug and ultimately vacuous self-certainty of Dawkins, Hitchens, A.C. Grayling and co.
Them’s fightin’ words!!! :knight: Civilization begins where reason kicks in…Seriously? I have to assume that he is using ‘civilization’ in opposition to ‘barbarism’. If you think about it, the hard and fast nature of using these labels the way that he does seems to smack of the “reification fallacy”.
I read this recently, which seems related:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/19/evolutionary-theorists-religionAs I said somewhere else recently, I’ve never found it at all convincing the idea that religion came about because some caveman was trying to explain things. Explainers, however, think that everyone shares the same dry old explaining motive.Originally posted by karl11:As far as I’m aware, there’s never been a society in human history that hasn’t had a religious underpinning in its original stages. Perhaps Hitchens should also reflect on the fact that instrumental reason let loose has led to the uninhibited use of science as a means to perfect techniques by which one group of humans can destroy another with ever greater efficiency. (Hitchens himself has called for the use of nukes on Iran.)As we know, many terrible things have been done in the name of religion, but there are people who subject religion to a peculiar kind of criticism that they don’t use upon any other aspect of human society. By Hitchens’ standards, everyone leftward leaning in politics would be considered to be supportive of and associated with Stalinist and Khmer Rouge purges, and everyone leaning to the right with Nazism. I would say that in the very peculiarity of this criticism of religion there are a great many “unexamined assumptions”. What I mean is not the vapid and general idea that everyone is the same, or that there is good and bad in everyone, so we shouldn’t criticise. What I mean is that it is precisely Hitchens’ form of criticism that is vapid and general, and which doesn’t take into account actual and specific realities. I think it happens because people have a lot of historically based anger, and personal anger, which is fine; I just wish they’d be honest about it instead of trying to dress it up as rationalism, which it most certainly is not.Originally posted by JohnRenard:Seriously? I have to assume that he is using ‘civilization’ in opposition to ‘barbarism’. If you think about it, the hard and fast nature of using these labels the way that he does seems to smack of the “reification fallacy”. I think that when you get into abstracts reification is always a danger… which doesn’t mean you should forget about it, of course. Some people, as you know, hold to the view that all abstract thought is nonsense. I’m not sure I’d go that far. But I would say that all abstract thought is limited. I think there are different views of what ‘reason’ means. It’s not a word I’m particularly fond of. But occasionally I find it’s used in a way that makes sense to me. Actually, Chesterton makes some very good points on this particular subject in Orthodoxy starting from the assertion that in his view it’s nonsense that the line between genius and madness is a thin one; it’s the line between reason and madness that is thin. Reason too often becomes an inflexible principle. I suppose where ‘reason’ makes sense to me is precisely when it’s used to mean the ability to step back from inflexible principles. To step back, of course, is precisely to examine assumptions. But to step back, what you need is space – the other kind of reason doesn’t give you space; it just gives you never-ending lines.
There’s an interview with Dawkins in today’s Guardian where he apparently says that “someone as intelligent as Jesus would have been an atheist”. This must come on the longer version as it wasn’t on the 9 minute one. To me, a witless comment like that reveals the dogmatism and intolerance of the “New Atheists” perfectly.http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2011/oct/24/richard-dawkins-video-interviewTellingly, he also states that he disagrees with those who believe that if you took religion away from society you’d have people rioting in the streets. Clearly he wasn’t in London in August!
It’s interesting that the leader on the Guardian thing says that he’s “invited to defend his atheism”. It’s always possible I’m wrong, but I don’t think he was quietly minding his own business in his front room when a bunch of strangers rushed in demanding why he’s atheist. He is of an older generation than myself, and I do think things are changing/have changed quite rapidly in Britain. The Life of Brian was banned, apparently, when it first came out, which is ludicrous, and I have seen the footage of some ridiculous sacerdotal personage offering John Cleese ’30 pieces of silver’ – a truly despicable and truly pathetic act. But Dawkins is not getting that treatment from anybody, is he? To the best of my knowledge, he is, instead, being offered cameo roles on Doctor Who, while the entire cast grovel at his feet, etc. If it were a matter of defending, who could complain? I don’t think atheism should need defending, and I don’t think religion should need defending. With the possible exception of when we’re on some kind of debating circuit and the whole pageantry of agreement and disagreement is formalised. This very morning I’ve actually been thinking about a number of things that seem related to this. When I’m on the toilet these days, I tend to be reading Confucianism, by Professor R.K. Douglas. This book is so old that is belongs to a series called ‘Non-Christian Religious Systems’. Writing of ‘Laou-tsze’ (as he spells it), he says, “His was not a spiritual religion, but was a species of Mysticism, begotten of heart-weariness at the hopeless prospect he saw before him in his country…”This led me to think, “Well, what is the distinction being made here between a spiritual religion and Mysticism?” The comma after ‘Mysticism’ is his, so the following clause does not essentically modify that noun as part of the distinction. Prior to this he states, “Of a personal God Laou-tsze knew nothing, as far as we may judge from the Taou-tih king…” Then he goes on to say of the ‘Taou’ as portrayed in that work: “Like a loving parent, it watches with a providential care over all created things.”Now, irrespective of whether Prof. Douglas’ interpretation of Daoism is accurate or not, what we can deduce from the above is that, for him, a power that watches over all things like a loving parent is still not the definition of a personal God. When I observe this kind of obscure distinction being made – and such distinctions become very convoluted in religion – I conclude that this is the culture from which people like Richard Dawkins have emerged. I think John is right to bring up reification. One has to wonder whether the only real difference between a personal god and the tao was that one was called “God” and one had some Johnny foreigner kind of name that was therefore harder to relate to. But people fight over this kind of thing. And if one has not been brought up to care whether you call something ‘God’ or call it ‘Tao’ or call it ‘the universe’, and if one, further, finds people tugging at one’s elbow to join in a fight over such things, the battle begins to look disgusting in some indescribable way.Well, must work. Possibly more later…
Yes, it certainly appears that Dawkins’ main target is the loving, designer, providential god of the Christian tradition. He doesn’t appear to be familiar with any other kind. It puzzles me that these people can’t see that there’s absolutely nothing in mechanicistic materialism that would definitively rule out the concept of a deity getting the ball rolling and then taking him/her/it self out of the scene entirely as, I believe, David Hume suggested somewhere. To my mind, the finest critic of the New Atheist brigade is John Gray. Here’s a magnificent article:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/15/societyIn regard to the fawning that goes on in regard to Dawkins, I can’t help but recall attending the launch of “The Atheists Guide to Christmas” in Foyles two years ago. Dawkins, Grayling and the illusionist Derren Brown were the speakers. The manner in which the young female publicist gushed over Dawkins in her introduction was one of the most embarrassing spectacles I’ve ever witnessed, although, to be fair to Dawkins, it was Grayling’s arrogance that took the biscuit. He roundly announced in his inimitably humourless manner that he had just written the first book in human history that “proved” God did not exist. Brown, by contrast, was quite modest and human.Anyway, I’ll stop, as these people have the tendency to get me foaming at the mouth, as you can see!
That seems fairly comprehensive for a relatively brief article. I like this bit:The problem with the secular narrative is not that it assumes progress is inevitable (in many versions, it does not). It is the belief that the sort of advance that has been achieved in science can be reproduced in ethics and politics. In fact, while scientific knowledge increases cumulatively, nothing of the kind happens in society. Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today. Torture was prohibited in international conventions after the second world war, only to be adopted as an instrument of policy by the world’s pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century. Wealth has increased, but it has been repeatedly destroyed in wars and revolutions. People live longer and kill one another in larger numbers. Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same.Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would start by questioning it. This is what Nietzsche did when he developed his critique of Christianity in the late 19th century, but almost none of today’s secular missionaries have followed his example. One need not be a great fan of Nietzsche to wonder why this is so. The reason, no doubt, is that he did not assume any connection between atheism and liberal values – on the contrary, he viewed liberal values as an offspring of Christianity and condemned them partly for that reason. In contrast, evangelical atheists have positioned themselves as defenders of liberal freedoms – rarely inquiring where these freedoms have come from, and never allowing that religion may have had a part in creating them.
Yes, can Liberal values function without the metaphysical underpinning that comes from Christianity? The latter believed all beings were equal due to being emmanations of a divine will; mechanistic materialism tells us that people are clockwork cabbages, determined by impersonal forces beyond their control. Therefore there seems no reason from that perspective why those with political and scientific power shouldn’t use that power as they see fit. Whenever I see Dawkins and co. in action, I’m irresistibly reminded how wonderful a writer Lovecraft is. He seems to have been the only author of the modern age to take mechanistic materialism through to its logical and aesthetic conclusions. Dick Dawkins, Hitch et al. seem like naive Lovecraftian narrators, whose faith in reason is threatened by forces they can’t control and whose existence they can barely bring themselves to acknowledge.
I think, more than anything else, my impression is that he belongs to a totally different England than I feel myself to belong to. This quote from the John Gray article strikes home:Refreshingly, Onfray recognises that evangelical atheism is an unwitting imitation of traditional religion: “Many militants of the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of clergy.”Dawkins’ manner and conceptions are of a kind of upper middle-class England that I have never known except as a peculiar sort of rumour. The idea that religion is synonymous with ‘faith schools’, for instance, that emerges in the interview… it’s really a world whose social definitions and so on are alien to me. The odd thing is that Dawkins seems to think that his parochial social conceptions of what religion is are somehow universal.
I’ve managed to watch the Dawkins clip now (not easy to watch clips on my computer). It’s fairly mild, but there are the usual things that I find downright odd. The equation of god with fairies (which is just something people like Dawkins seem to mumble in their sleep), the idea that religion (in Britain) is too respected (in my experience, mixing with different groups of people, no one is afraid to say that God and all that is a load of rubbish, but people shrink in terror from saying anything in the opposite direction), he accuses people of being patronising for thinking that it’s good that religious people exist, and yet he calls Church of England believers “harmless”, which apparently is not patronising at all, and apparently the way not to patronise people you don’t agree with is to work towards making sure they don’t exist, being a 50/50 agnostic is also, apparently, no good, and apparently you can calculate the probability of the existence of God (based on what data, I wonder), and he thinks that science explains why we’re here, which is bizarre. Anyway…
I mostly agree with your criticisms of the Hitchens statements you quoted. What I like about Hitchens’ writing has little to do with my being in exact agreement with his major positions, either regarding religion or politics. This curious fact has started me thinking about how little I agree with the major positions of most of my favorite writers! Often there is some overlap of my opinions with theirs, in one way or another, but seldom strict agreement. Hmm… I like the word “agnostic.” I suppose I would say I’m an agnostic in a stronger sense than I am an atheist, although I am an atheist, too. I would like to be able to call myself an agnostic, though, to put the emphasis on how little we can actually claim to know about metaphysical questions. It seems to me that the word “atheist” often connotes not only non-belief but a polemical position which gives only lip service to the agnosticism it claims to encompass.And I think we all have far more unexamined assumptions than we could ever begin to be self-aware enough to fully know and catalogue. If civilization depends on our being explicitly aware of all our assumptions, we’re in deep trouble!My strongest disagreement with your comments is that I’m in favor of challenging and even mocking religion (in public argument, that is; I never go up to anyone in person to pester them about this, and I give my own opinion in conversation only if asked). Where I live, religious people are throwing their weight around constantly, often using the most ridiculous opinions to dubious ends, and this has gotten a pass for far too long.
Originally posted by gveranon:I mostly agree with your criticisms of the Hitchens statements you quoted. What I like about Hitchens’ writing has little to do with my being in exact agreement with his major positions, either regarding religion or politics. This curious fact has started me thinking about how little I agree with the major positions of most of my favorite writers! Often there is some overlap of my opinions with theirs, in one way or another, but seldom strict agreement. Hmm… Just about to go to bed, so will only answer briefly. A while back I read some of the work of Joseph de Maistre and found it a very compelling read – quite fascinating. I actually chose the book deliberately because it looked like something I wouldn’t agree with (I’m not generally a fan of capital punishment, which he endorses entirely). So, I am well aware that even in philosophy or other non-fiction genres, one can deeply appreciate writing even while vehemently disagreeing with it. Joseph de Maistre is possibly (not sure) the most striking case of this for me, but there are plenty of other cases, to varying degrees either of appreciating or disagreeing with (various ratios of the two, that is).Originally posted by gveranon:My strongest disagreement with your comments is that I’m in favor of challenging and even mocking religion (in public argument, that is; I never go up to anyone in person to pester them about this, and I give my own opinion in conversation only if asked). I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with challenging or mocking religion. I suppose the fact that my criticisms above are of Hitchens and Dawkins, and that the most salient characteristics about these two people, for many, is that they are outspoken atheists, might lead to the conclusion that I believe that criticising religion is wrong, but I don’t. Rather, I do see in the proselytising of Hitchens and Dawkins what I have never liked much in religion. That’s not all I see in them, and there are disagreeable things in religion that are not found in them, but the overlap, to me, is significant.
Someone sent me this last night:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1655720,00.htmlI've never had any interest in Mother Teresa, and, consequently, apart from the barest facts of her life, have known nothing about her. I found this very interesting, however. Coincidentally, the article also contains a couple of quotes from Christopher Hitchens.
Thanks for linking that, Quentin. I found Hitch’s take annoying. As per usual, he’s trying to claim Mother Teresa as “one of us”. The either/or aspect of his take on religion is so drearily binary. A more interesting problem for the die-hard atheist brigade, I think, is the fact that it was her religion that made MT devote her life to the poor and helpless, and that she carried on regardless of her doubts. This is surely laudable by anyone’s standards. Maybe I’m doing them a disservice but I don’t see Hitch, Dawkins and co. manning the soup kitchens and helping the homeless.
There is something of a sense of gleefully pouncing to the two quotes. I would have thought that anyone actually interested in what it is to be human, rather than in nailing home a pre-packaged agenda, would have paused and put aside preconceptions for a moment when confronted with what appears to be an exceptional human life.I think there is something ‘threatening’ about MT’s life, certainly in this account of it, and in general, and I have a notion that one threatening aspect of that life is the implication that being a good person either involves great suffering or great sacrifice. I don’t mean to promote that as a necessary truth, but I think that many people examining her life might feel uncomfortable because of this inference on their part.Of course, no one can be above criticism (and I have to admit that I’m not big on self-sacrifice myself), but there is such a thing as complacency, and generally it’s easier (and in my view less admirable) to criticise someone because they did something but were not perfect than to actually do something oneself.
Something that annoys me a lot about Hitchens and Dawkins is the constant shuffling of the definition of atheism to exclude unwanted people and include desirables. So, for instance Stalinist Russia wasn’t REALLY atheist, but actually religious because people worshiped Stalin like a God, and Jesus/The Buddha would have been an atheist if they lived today and had access to modern scientific knowledge.I suppose that other ideologies tend to do this too, but they generally have more positive content to actually argue over. Two people arguing over who is living up to Christ’s teachings seem less ridiculous to me than two people arguing over who has purged more of the idea of God from their minds.
I’m no prude, but I found the title of Hitchens’ book on MT, ‘The Missionary Position’, a real reflection of the snide, drearily empiricst take he and his co. atheists have on anyone who doesn’t immediately jump into their camp. (As well as reflecting an irritating Oxbridge, clever-clever mindset.)Speaking of ‘an exceptional human life’ here’s a transcript of a recent John Gray piece on religion. The account of Graham Greene’s conversion seems relevant here, I think:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14944470
Originally posted by myrzipan:Something that annoys me a lot about Hitchens and Dawkins is the constant shuffling of the definition of atheism to exclude unwanted people and include desirables. So, for instance Stalinist Russia wasn’t REALLY atheist, but actually religious because people worshiped Stalin like a God, and Jesus/The Buddha would have been an atheist if they lived today and had access to modern scientific knowledge.Yes, I agree. Words do change their meaning, of course, because the world is a slippery place and the things we apply words to are in motion. However, the shuffling employed by Dawkins and co takes on an aspect of conscious or unconscious deceit because some of the values are always kept fixed. It’s not “If god means such and such, then such and such”; it’s “Atheists are by definition good, therefore everyone else is bad, or if they’re not bad, they’re atheist.” Originally posted by karl11:Speaking of ‘an exceptional human life’ here’s a transcript of a recent John Gray piece on religion. The account of Graham Greene’s conversion seems relevant here, I think:I shall have to have a read. Thank you.
Might write more later. Flat-hunting at present…I suppose, perhaps, what it boils down to for me is that I can’t understand why some people find it so hard to say, “I don’t know.” Anyway, must dash. Maybe more later.
Originally posted by quentinscrisp:Might write more later. Flat-hunting at present…That’s one thing that will either make you pray to a god, or abolish any possible existence of a benevolent tutorial deity from your mind.Good luck!:up:
I’ve actually been having all kinds of complicated thoughts on the topic of conversation (yes, I have!!!), but don’t currently have time to put them in clear and coherent order here in the comments.One thing I will say, which is tangentially related, I’ve been reading Boethius, and he makes the assertion (not original to him, I don’t believe) that ‘good’, ‘God’ and ‘happiness’ are all one and the same thing, so that good people are happy by definition, and happy people good (incidentally, there’s a wonderful example of the reification fallacy in the text, which I might give later), and it occurred to me that somehow this seems at odds with a lot of Catholic culture, where unhappiness (or at least suffering) seems itself a form of good, as if something can’t be really thought to be good if it is rewarded in any way, even if only by the warm glowing of knowing that you are good – you have to constantly chastise yourself for fear of pride, etc. I dare say that someone would be able to come up with an argument to make the two consistent, but even if they did, the example of Mother Teresa seems like one that might be used to challenge Boethius’ assertion.I’ve put a deposit down on a flat, but since I think I’m being stalked at present, I won’t say where it is.
Okay… having problems with this whole moving-from-one-flat-to-another thing, so I think I need to take my mind of it for a while by writing about something inconsequential. So…The title of this blog post was really meant to indicate, among other things, that I’m not into the whole thing that seems so prevalent where people simply choose what side they’re on in an argument, and stick to that side no matter what. I do have the impression that Hitchens does do this. However, I feel I should acknowledge that there are things he says with which I am in sympathy, just in order to forestall any danger of disagreeing with him merely on principle. (The ‘debating society’ principle of disagreement in order to win an argument, that is.)Having got that out of the way, let me turn to Richard Dawkins, though not for succour. I think one of the things that I found most striking about the video interview with him was the end, where he talks about science being something that wakes you up to being alive. Although, for me, this has a “Come to church, kids, we play guitar, you’d like it” kind of feel about it, nonetheless, he is a more interesting person talking about what he loves than about what he despises.It’s very odd because science has, for the most part, the opposite effect for me than that he claims it has for him. For me, science is not the great awakener, but the great deadener: we’re all automatons, everything is predictable, nothing exists if it can’t be proven, etc.Now, I certainly don’t begrudge people what might be called their passion, that thing that makes them feel awake and alive. No. Quite the opposite. But the fact that Dawkins feels alive through things that make me feel dead suggests to me very strongly that there are very different types of human mind at large in the world. I think we have to accept that fact. If we can, I think we should embrace it. (Easier said than done.) Embracing the fact of different human minds, however, or even accepting the fact, is precisely what I do not see people like Hitchens and Dawkins doing.It seems to me that a significant proportion of people with a science background, and of their camp followers, have the notion that their kind of mind is the only legitimate kind, and to reinforce this viewpoint they fly the flag of ‘objectivity’ and so on. I think this is a great and dangerous deception.To illustrate:I don’t believe in evolution.I have said this to science people and their camp followers, and the response has always been a kind of incredulous repugnance. They insist that I must believe. They assume – immediately – that I must be a creationist or an advocate of intelligent design – they are completely locked into the dichotomies of conflict that they have created. So, I ask them why I should believe. Isn’t evolution just a theory? “Yes, but it’s the most widely respected theory in the whole of science.” But it’s just a theory, right? “Yes, but we have loads of evidence for it. Loads. Really too much for me to list right now.” But it’s just a theory, right? “I suppose you believe the world was created in seven days!” No. All I’m saying is that evolution is just a theory. Do you believe in it? “Of course I do.” I thought that science was not about believing in things. “Evolution is as certain as certain can be.” And so on, and so forth. First these people protest that the great thing about science is that everything is provisional and up for revision, and then they stigmatise you as a drooling, superstitious idiot if you refuse to say you believe absolutely in their theories. Why can’t I just say evolution is a theory that fits the facts as we currently know them, but I don’t believe in it? “Because… because… you have to believe in it. It’s perfect. It’s the best theory ever.” And other such highly scientific and rational expostulations.These are some of the most pathologically devious people on Earth.Okay, I’m going to have a shower and breakfast now.
Originally posted by quentinscrisp:I have said this to science people and their camp followers, and the response has always been a kind of incredulous repugnance.Did any of them do a spit take? Because that would have been hilarious!
Well, sometimes it seems close.
A surfing YouTube wave led me here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPJQw-x-xho&feature=relatedI thought, at first, that this was a joke – someone impersonating Dawkins’ voice and giving a silly nonsense answer to a question in order to take the piss out of his preoccupation with pink unicorns, etc. But APPARENTLY IT’S NOT! Apparently it’s a real recording of Dawkins. Or is it? Can’t work it out.
This probably explains it. Completely spot on:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlLyoKFq9G8&feature=related
By the way, look at the comments under that clip. Fer fuck’s sake:”WOW, So those South Park guys who claim to be so wise and make fun of everybody , Believe in the Stupidest oldest trick in the known world? Jesus Christ Guys guys?!!! C’mone I hope this is all a joke??”Yeah, better not cross those mature and tolerant atheists.