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Ladies and gentlemen,
we're moving into our rebuttal round,
and I'd like the audience to get engaged,
to applaud when they hear something that the debaters
say that they like
and also to help me enforce our time limit.
So, when you see that clock ticking down
start applauding and that will move us through this in an orderly fashion.
So, Christopher, it's now your opportunity,
in our first of two rebuttal rounds,
to respond to Mr. Blair.
I've got four, is that right?
There are two rounds of rebuttals.
Each of you has the opportunity to go back and forth.
Yes, four minutes for each speaker within each of those rounds.
That's much to confusing.
That sounds all I've got is four minutes?
- Yes. - You're, good.
Then hold your applause, for heaven's sake.
Well now, in fairness, no one was arguing that
religion should, or will, die out of the world,
and all I'm arguing is that it be better
if there were a great deal more by way of an outbreak of secularism.
Logically, if Tony is right,
I would be slightly better off, not much,
- but slightly better off -
being a Wahhabi Muslim,
or a Twelve Shia Muslim,
or a Jehovah's Witness, than I am, wallowing as I do,
in mere secularism.
What I'm arguing,
very seriously, is what we need is a great deal more of one
and a great deal less of the second.
I knew it would come up
that we would be told about charity,
and I take this very seriously,
because we know, ladies and gentlemen as it happens,
we're the first generation of people who do really,
what the cure for poverty really is.
It eluded people for a long, long time.
The cure for poverty has a name, in fact.
It's called
the empowerment of women.
If you...
If you give women some control
over the rate at which they reproduce,
if you give them some say,
take them off the animal cycle of reproduction,
to which nature and some religious doctrine
condemns them,
and then if you'll throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit,
the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty,
but education, health, and optimism will increase.
It doesn't matter - try it in Bangladesh, try it in Bolivia,
it works, it works all the time.
Name me one religion that stands for that or ever has.
Wherever you look in the world
and you try to remove the shackles
of ignorance and disease and stupidity from women,
it is invariably the clerisy that stands in the way,
or in the case of them...
Now, furthermore, if you are going to grant this to
Catholic charities say,
which I would hope are doing a lot of work in Africa,
if I was a member of a church
that had preached that AIDS was not as bad as condoms,
I would be putting some conscience money into Africa too.
I must say.
But it won't bring... I'm sorry.
I'm not trying to be funny.
If I were trying to be funny, you mistook me.
It won't bring back the millions of people who have died
wretched deaths because of that teaching, that still goes on.
I'd like to hear a word of apology from the religious about that,
if it was on offer.
After all, otherwise, I'd be accused of judging them by the worst of them,
and this isn't done, as Tony says so wrongly, in the name of religion.
It's a direct precept, practice,
an enforceable discipline of religion.
Is it? Not sir! In this case.
I think you'll find that it is.
But if you're going to say, all right,
the Mormons will tell you the same,
you may think it's a bit cracked to think
Joseph Smith found another bible buried in upstate New York,
but you should see our missionaries in action.
I'm not impressed.
I'd rather have no Mormons and their missionaries, quite honestly,
and no Joseph Smith.
Do we grant to Hamas and to Hezbollah,
both of whom will tell you and incessantly do,
look at our charitable work?
Without us effendi,
the poor of Gaza, the poor of Lebanon, where would they be?
And they're right.
They do a great deal of charitable work.
It's nothing compared to the harm that they do,
but it's a great deal of work all the same.
I'm also familiar with the teachings of the great Rabbi Hillel.
I even know where he plagiarized that story from,
if he had access to a staff.
The injunction not to do to another
what would be repulsive done to yourself
is found in the analects of Confucius, if you want to date it.
But that truth is found in the heart of every person in this room.
Everybody knows that much.
We don't require divine permission to know right from wrong.
We don't need tablets administered to us
ten at a time in tablet form
on pain of death
to be able to have a moral argument.
No, we have...
...we have the reasoning and the moral suasion of Socrates and our own abilities,
We don't need dictatorship to give us right from wrong.
And that's my lot, thank you!
In the name of fairness and equity Mr. Blair,
I'm going to give you an additional 25 seconds for your first rebuttal.
First of all,
I don't think we should think
that because you can point to examples of
prejudice
in the name of religion,
that bigotry and prejudice and wrong doing
are wholly owned subsidiaries of religion.
There are plenty examples of prejudice against women,
against gay people,
against others
that come from outside the world of religion.
And the claim that I make is not that everything
the church has done in Africa is right,
but let me tell you one thing it did do
and it did it whilst I was Prime Minister the UK,
The churches together
formed the campaign for the cancellation of debt,
they came together, they succeeded,
and the first beneficiaries
of the cancellation of debt
were young girls going to school in Africa,
because for the first time, they had free primary education.
So I agree
that not everything the church
or the religious communities have done around the world is right,
but I do say at least accept
that there are people doing great work day in, day out -
who genuinely are not prejudiced or bigoted,
but are working with people
who are afflicted by famine and disease and poverty
and they are doing it inspired by their faith.
And of course it's the case
that not everybody...
...of course it's the case
that you do not have to be a person of faith
in order to do good work,
I've never claimed that, I would never claim that.
I know lots of people, many, many people,
who are people not of faith at all,
but who do fantastic and decent work
for their communities and for the world.
My claim is just very simple,
there are nonetheless
people who are inspired by their faith to do good.
I think of people I met
some time ago in South Africa -
nuns who were looking after children who were born with *** AIDS.
These are people who are working and...
...and living alongside and caring for people
inspired by their faith.
Is it possible for them to done that without their religious faith?
Of course,
it's possible for them to done it.
But the fact is that's what motivated them.
So what I say to you is at least look,
what we shouldn't do is end up in a situation where we say,
we've got six hospices here,
one suicide bomber there,
and how does it all equalize out?
That's not a very productive way of arguing this.
Actually, I thought one of the most interesting things that Christopher said
is that we're not going to drive religion out of the world,
and that's true, we're not.
And actually, I think for people of faith to have debates
with those who are secularist, is actually good and right
and healthy and it's what we should be doing.
And I'm not claiming
that everyone should congregate on my space,
I'm simply claiming one very simple thing,
that if we can't drive religion out of the world
because many people of faith believe it and believe it very deeply,
let's at least see
how we do make religion a force for good.
How we do encourage those people of faith who are trying to do good,
and how we unite those against those
who want to pervert religion
and turn it into a badge of identity
used in opposition to others?
So...
...I would simply finish by saying this:
there are many situations
where faith has done wrong,
but there are many situations
in which wrongs have been done,
without religion playing any part in it at all.
So let us not condemn all people of religious faith
because of the bigotry or prejudice shown by some,
and let us at least acknowledge
that some good has come out of religion,
and that we should celebrate.
Christopher, your second rebuttal, please.
- Do I have a second one? - Yes, certainly!
O my God!
Amazing test of audience tolerance, well.
All right, well, how splendidly you notice we progress,
ladies and gentlemen.
Now it's okay, some religious people are sort of all right.
I think I seem to be bargaining
one of the greater statesmen of the recent past down a bit.
Not necessarily opposed to that.
Just to finish on the charity point,
I once did a lot of work with a man called Sebastiao Salgado,
some of you will know him, great man,
great photographer, who was the UNICEF ambassador on polio questions.
I went to Calcutta with him and elsewhere.
Nearly got rid of polio, nearly got rid of polio,
nearly made it join smallpox as a disease,
a thing of the past a filthy memory
except for so many religious groups in Bengal and elsewhere,
Afghanistan, west Africa, so telling their children,
don't take the drops.
It's a conspiracy, it's against God,
it's against God's design.
By the way, that argument isn't terribly new.
When smallpox was a scourge,
Timothy Dwight, the great divine who was the head of Yale,
said taking Dr Jenner's injections was an...
...was an interference with God's design, as well.
That's sort of by the way,
you need something like UNICEF to get
major work done if you want to alleviate poverty and misery and disease.
And for me, my money will always go to organizations like
Medecins Sans Frontieres,
like a...
like Oxfam, and many others, who strangely enough
go out into the world,
and do good for their fellow creatures for its own sake.
They don't take...
They don't take the Bible along as people do to Haiti all the time.
We keep catching them doing it.
Their money is being...
Their money is being spent flat out on proselytization.
It's a function of the old thing that was hand in hand with imperialism,
it's the missionary tradition.
They can call it charity if they will,
but it doesn't stand a second look.
So much for the business of doing good, except perhaps to add,
since I have you for some extra minutes,
that both Mr. Blair and I at different times gave a lot of our years
to the Labour Party and to the labour movement.
And if the promise of religion was true, had been true,
right up until the late 19th century in, say, Britain,
or North America or Canada,
that good works, so what's required
and should be enough,
and those who give to charity should be honoured,
those who receive it should be grateful
two rather revolting ideas in one, I have to say,
there would be no need for human and social and political action.
We could rely on being innately good,
which we know we can't rely upon,
and which I never suggested that we could, or should.
So now, what would were then I'm intrigued now,
so religion could be a good thing after all,
sometimes, we think, is another proposition.
What would religion have to do to get that far?
I think it would have to give up all supernatural claims.
It would have to say...
It would have to say, no, you are not to do this
under the threat of reward heaven, or the terror of punishment hell.
No, we can't offer you miracles.
Find me the church that will say, forget all that.
Faith healing - no.
It would have to give that up.
It would have to give up the idea of an eternal,
unalterable authority figure,
who was judge, jury and executioner
against whom there could be no appeal
and who wasn't finished with you
even when you died.
That's quite a lot for a religion to give up, don't you think?
But who would not say we'd be better off without it?
If it was what Tony Blair would like it to be -
an aspect of humanism,
an aspect of compassion,
an aspect of the realizations of human solidarity,
the knowledge that we are in fact all bound up
one with another,
that we have responsibilities one to another,
and as I do when I give blood,
partly because I don't lose the pint forever,
I always get it back,
but, that there is actually a sense of pleasure to be had
in helping your fellow creatures.
I think that should be enough.
Thank you.
Tony, it must feel like the House of Commons all over again.
I don't know. So far they're a little politer.
Your final rebuttal, please.
It all depends, I guess, on what your experience of religious people is.
I mean, my experience of the people
I was with last week in Africa,
and that included deeply religious people,
is not actually that they're doing what they're doing
because of heaven and hell.
They're doing it for the love of their fellow human beings.
And that is, I think, something very fine.
What's more that they believe
and that this love for their fellow human beings
is bound up with their faith.
So it's not something, you know,
yes, of course, it is absolutely true, they might decide to do this,
irrespective of the fact that they have religious faith,
but their faith,
they feel,
is an impulse to do that good.
And...
...you know, I don't recognize the description of
the work that they do
in what Christopher said.
In Sierra Leone, where I was,
you have Christians and Muslims working together
to deliver healthcare in that country.
That's religion playing a positive role.
They're working across the faith divide and doing it,
because they, again believe that their faith impels them to do that.
When we look back in history, yes of course you can see plenty of examples
of where religion has played the negative role.
You can see great examples, for example in the abolition of slavery,
where religious reformers joined with secular reformers
in order to bring about the abolition of slavery.
And let's get away from this idea that religion created poverty.
There are bad things that have happened in the world outside of religion.
And when you look at the 20th century
and you see the great scars of political ideology,
around views that had absolutely, dramatically at their heart -
fascism, the communism of Stalin
absolutely at their heart was the eradication of religion.
What I would say to you is, get rid of religion,
you're not going to get rid of fanaticism
and you're not going to get rid of the wrong in the world.
So the question is...
...the question is...
...how then
do we make sense
of religion having this vital part in the world today,
since it is growing and not diminishing?
How do we make sense of this?
And this is where, yes, there is an obligation on the people of faith
to try and join across the faith divide with those of other faiths,
that's the reason for my foundation.
We have people of different religious faiths,
we've got a program where young people team up with others of different faiths,
and work together in Africa on malaria,
back in their own faith communities, and here in Canada.
We have a schols program that allows schools to link up
using the technology, so that kids of different faiths
can talk to each other across the world.
And here's the thing:
when they start to talk about their faith,
they don't actually talk in terms of heaven and hell
and a God that's an executioner of those that do wrong.
They talk in terms of their basic feeling
that love of God can be expressed best through love of neighbour,
and actions in furtherance of the compassion and help needed by others.
And this is...
...this is...
In 2007,
religious organizations in the U.S. gave one and a half times
the amount of aid that US AID did it.
Not insignificant.
So, my point is very, very simple,
you can list all the faults of religion, just as you can list the faults of the politicians,
the journalists, and any other profession.
But for people of faith,
the reason why they try to do good,
and when they do it,
is because their faith motivates them to do so,
and that is genuinely the proper face of faith.