But do you feel that the religious Right has hijacked the GOP? I mean, is there a place for an atheist in the Republican Party? Sure. Though you certainly cannot be one and have a chance at the Republican ticket. I would say that's absolutely the case.

But do you feel that the religious Right has hijacked the GOP? I mean, is there a place for an atheist in the Republican Party?
Sure. Though you certainly cannot be one and have a chance at the Republican ticket. I would say that's absolutely the case. They insist more and more on piety. But the only member of Congress I know who will not say he is a believer is a Republican. He's a libertarian I think.

Joseph Ratzinger, who now calls himself Pope Benedict XVI and claims to be the vicar of Christ on Earth, doesn't strike me as someone who is up to the average intelligence of most of my friends. If he weren't making these claims about himself, no one would listen to a word he says!I thought the only one was Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA)?
There's another one more recently who said this: Ed Royce (R-CA). He's a very bright guy from some greater Los Angeles district, and he simply says, "I'm not a person of faith." So is Karl Rove for example. [Editor's note: According to the congressman's communications director, Royce is a "practicing Roman Catholic."]

Also, the two leading public intellectuals of the American Right in the last two, three decades are Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss. Ayn Rand raised a huge number of free market concerns and was a libertarian, and Leo Strauss is well known to be the philosopher of what is now stupidly called neo-conservatism. Both had contempt for religion. Their attitudes toward it was the same as mine: that it's a silly man-made illusion.

On the Democratic side, almost all their heroes are religious. Martin Luther King. The Kennedys. People like that. The left is saturated with the religious. A lot of my book is an attack on liberal religious illusions. When people hear I'm writing a book on religion, they think, that Hitchens is taking on the Christian Right now. That's not it. They're hardly worth mentioning. They don't say anything interesting now. They're just sick people.

Both sides attempt to use religion for their own benefit. Do you think the American people will ever accept an atheist president?
Well, we better hope so or we're saying goodbye to Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Jefferson. But I think the answer is yes. If they were satisfied with all the other conditions, sure. The opinion polls are misleading. If you asked someone, "Would you vote for an elderly, divorced, second-rate Hollywood actor for president?" They'd say no. Or, "Would you vote for a Baptist peanut farmer?" Probably not—and I wish they hadn't in that case. Another example, in the case of, "Would you vote for a woman president?" very few people would say no, but a lot of people would say no if it was Mrs. Clinton or Dianne Feinstein. It's the same if you ask, "Would you vote for an atheist?"

Did your upbringing turn you into an atheist?
No, I'm lucky that way. Some people do react very badly to being abused as children, or bullied or terrified by stories of Hell. Not me. What terrified me weren't the Hell stories, but how hellish Heaven sounded.

Why did Heaven sound like Hell?
Eternal penance. You can never stop—like North Korea. In North Korea, they have compulsory worship from dawn until dusk. That's all there is, everything is praise. So now I know what it would be like. I know it must be the most proximate place we have on Earth to being in Hell. But at least you can die and get out of North Korea. Kim Jong-Il does not promise you he'll follow you into the grave. But you can't die and get away from fucking Jesus.

This hatred you have for religion, was it solidified by 9/11?
The terrible feeling I had that day, which occurred when I was entering my 50s, was that what [had] started would go on for the rest of my life. But it wasn't a completely horrible feeling, because I then knew what I was doing—opposing religious evils—and I'm quite happy if that's all I do for the rest of my life.

Do you think we will win the War on Terror and defeat radical Islam?
No, no. None of these wars ever get won, but we're not going to lose the war against Islamic jihad, which is what it really is. I don't know how we will define our victory, but they will lose. It will do terrible damage, but where it succeeds is where it fails. When the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan that was the end of it. Because once they try to run a society out of a Holy Book, they will fail.

Just as, for example, I say this about people who are frightened by the Christian Right, which a lot of people in this country are, that the last time they won a victory was in the 1920s. They had two victories then: they banned the sale of alcohol, and they won the argument over the teaching of evolution—at least in Tennessee. Well, their victory was completely discredited, and they never got over the ridicule they suffered from winning.

If they won, if they elected a president or member of Congress to ban abortion, impose school prayer as mandatory, or instill the teaching of Creationism, that would be the end of it. They would regret their victory forever because it would lead to colossal failure and discredit them. It wouldn't last very long and would, I hope, lead to civil war, which they will lose, but for which it would be a great pleasure to take part. But they're so stupid, they don't think about these things. Likewise, any society conquered by the jihadist will destroy itself.

But are all religions equally reprehensible from a moral standpoint?

Yes, I think so. If not morally, intellectually reprehensible. They all say you should surrender reason to faith, which is what I think the original problem is. Obviously a Quaker is not a jihadist. Quakers don't preach anything evil. But they preach non-resistance to evil, however, which I think is an evil notion, but it's not the same as putting a bomb in a girl's school in Belgium. The surrender of reason to faith is what leads to those bombs going off in Belgium, so I'm opposed to any of those surrenders.

There's been an explosion of books coming out recently on atheism. What kind of impact do you hope yours will have?
Well, I've already had one public event for it, which was in Arkansas, and they gave me a standing ovation and all the books there sold. I think this [sort of reception] wouldn't have been true two years ago, but now a point of resistance has been reached. From the spread of Muslim fanaticism to the West, to the attempt to teach religious nonsense in American schools, to the stupidity of the president's faith-based initiative in handing out subsidies to religious nutcases, to the church saying that AIDS in Africa is bad but that condoms are worse than AIDS, to being told a Danish cartoonist can't do his job without being in danger—things like that. A great number of people who expected they could lead secular lives are fed up and have had enough of the religious bullying.

How do you respond to the argument that atheists are now exhibiting the same characteristics they hate about religion—namely being righteous and dogmatic?
If you ask me, do I dislike Islamic jihadist more than they dislike me? The answer would be, I hope so. Am I as intolerant of them as they are of me? I'm working on it. But that doesn't make me a fundamentalist. If you were a fundamentalist believer in the First Amendment, you are a fundamental believer in the right of other people to have their opinion. That's not the same as saying you're a fanatic who says other people can be killed because of their belief.
At least you can die and get out of North Korea. Kim Jong-Il does not promise you he'll follow you into the grave. But you can't die and get away from fucking Jesus
People attempt to say that we are fundamentalists, too. It sounds clever, but I think it's bound to fail. A fundamentalist is someone who believes in the literal truth of certain text, you're not free not to believe it. But there's not one position that any of us [atheists] hold that's remotely like that. Everything we believe in depends on everything being open to doubt and experiment. If we hold those views very strongly and say that we don't think any other views are valid—a view that isn't in favor of free inquiry and skepticism—that doesn't make us dogmatic. Our belief is in objective scrutiny and evidence—including our own.

But can we survive without religion, or do we need to believe in something no matter what?
We certainly could survive without religion. Religion promises people something it cannot possibly guarantee. In fact—I insist on saying this—there are things that are beyond my knowledge. But religious people aren't saying that. They're saying they do know. Now, I've met a lot of religious people, none of them gigantically more intelligent than me, and certainly none of them smart enough to say they know what God's mind is. I don't grant that any human being could know that. But they insist that they do—they are interpreting His words.

Joseph Ratzinger, who now calls himself Pope Benedict XVI and claims to be the vicar of Christ on Earth, doesn't strike me as someone who is up to the average intelligence of most of my friends. If he weren't making these claims about himself, no one would listen to a word he says! He's a completely undistinguished human being.

So if we could live without God, what would be an atheist society to model ourselves after?
Well, we can't have a state without religion. You cannot prevent people from worshipping in their own way. But I think society could, through its education system and the examples of its politicians, gently suggest that reading Jefferson or Voltaire or Paine wouldn't be harmful to you. I think Einstein was as near as we would have to an ideal person. It's the first time you have someone who is purely mind. But you couldn't have an Einsteinian state ... though there was nearly an Einsteinian society. He was offered the presidency in the state of Israel. But he said no, as one could have predicted he would.

How would Israel be different if he had said yes?
Well it couldn't have been worse. Actually in some ways, I wish that he had said yes because he was a very strong believer in a binational state. And he was against expelling and subjugating the Palestinians. He might have made some difference, though not much, as the presidency is a ceremonial role. But the speeches that he would have made—that he did make—would have gotten more attention if he were the president. He was someone I really, really, really wish I could've met. I don't put pictures up of people on my wall, and I never did even when I was a teenager.

But if you did?
Sigourney Weaver because of Alien.

I had no idea ...
Maybe Sigourney, but definitely Einstein, and maybe Orwell and Camus and Proust. But I don't do that. I think if someone comes into my room, it should take them a while to work out what I think.

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