The Four Horsemen: The discussion that sparked an atheist revolution
A review of 'The Four Horsemen: The discussion that sparked an atheist revolution' by Richard Dawkins, Daniel C Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens (and Stephen Fry).
In 2007 Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens – the ‘four horsemen’ of new atheism – sat around a table and recorded a two-hour conversation. This recent book is the transcript of that recording, with brief introductory essays by the three still living (Hitchens has died) and a foreword by Stephen Fry.
As might be expected, it is a provocative read. Here is one point made by Harris: ‘Whatever people are experiencing in church or in prayer, no matter how positive, the fact that Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and Christians are all experiencing it proves that it can’t be a matter of the divinity of Jesus or the unique sanctity of the Quràn.’ The point comes through sharply if we narrow the examples. Christian and Muslim mysticism are not very different. It comes mostly from ‘love mystics’ with a fair sprinkling of neoplatonism deriving from Plotinus, who was influenced by meditation spirituality. The fact that non-Christians have these experiences shows that it is not necessary to be a Christian to have them, and the fact that Christians have them shows that it is not necessary to be a Muslim to have them. As people notice this, a universal church emerges.
Something else causes consternation among the four. Harris tells the story of the radical Islamic philosopher Sayyid Qutb, who spent two years in the US in 1949-50. He was so appalled by his hosts’ preoccupation with movie stars that he became convinced that the west was so trivial that it should be destroyed. Harris comments: ‘There is something trivial and horrible about the day-to-day fascinations of most people most of the time. There is a difference between using your attention wisely, in a meaningful way, and perpetual distraction.’
So we should have more serious interests. Harris recommends ‘self transcending experiences’. Hitchens makes that more specific: ‘With devotional poetry, like, let us say John Donne or George Herbert, I find it very hard to imagine that it’s faked or done for a patron.’ Dawkins, perhaps alarmed by this apparent lapse, interposes: ‘But… what conclusion would you draw? If Donne’s devotional poetry is so wonderful, so what? That doesn’t show that it represents truth in any sense.’
It represents something: a place in the soul where intimate transactions take place. John Donne’s poetry illustrates what place that is: ‘Thine, in my heart, where my soule dwells, shall dwell’. He also writes of a love that ‘interanimates’ two souls. Heartfelt prayer and devotional poetry come from a space close to that.
Hitchens comments: ‘I do think it is feared of us… that we wish for a world that’s somehow empty of this echo of music and poetry and the numinous.’ This is met with a chorus of ‘No’ from Dawkins, Dennett and Harris. So they are not cold blooded romantics of the machine. But they are not prepared to follow the inner numinous to God. Hitchens insists that it is necessary to separate the numinous from the religious. Perhaps we may anticipate offerings on the secular sacred.
