The below is excerpted from a debate hosted by UC Berkeley between Hitchens and McGrath. Link to full transcript here:
http://hitchensdebates.blogspot.com/2011/10/hitchens-vs-mcgrath-georgetown.html
"Now we're told what we have to believe and this is—I'm coming now to the question of whether or not science, reason and religion are compatible or I would rather say reconcilable. The great Stephen J. Gould—the late, great Stephen J. Gould said that he believed they were non-overlapping magisteria; you can be both a believer and a person of faith.
Sitting in front of me is a very distinguished—extremely distinguished scholar Francis Collins, helped us to unlock the human genome project, who is himself a believer. I'd love to hear from him, I hope we hear from him. I don't believe that he says his discoveries of the genome convinced him of the truth of religion. He holds it, as it were, independently. [to Francis Collins] I hope I do you no wrong, sir, in phrasing it like that.
Here's why I, a non-scientist, will say that I think it's radically irreconcilable, I'd rather say, than incompatible. I've taken the best advice I can on how long Homo sapiens has been on the planet. Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, many others, and many discrepant views from theirs, reckon it's not more than 250,000 years, a quarter of a million years. It's not less, either. I think it's roughly accepted, [to Francis Collins] I think, sir you wouldn't disagree. 100,000 is the lowest I've heard and actually I was about to say, again not to sound too Jewish, I'll take 100,000. I only need 100,000, call it one hundred.
For 100,000 years Homo sapiens was born, usually - well, not usually - very often dying in the process or killing its mother in the process; life expectancy probably not much more than 20, 25 years, dying probably of the teeth very agonizingly- nearer to the brain, as they are - or of hunger, or of micro-organisms that they didn't know existed, or of events such as volcanic or tsunami or earthquake types that would have been wholly terrifying and mysterious, as well as some turf wars over women, land, property, food, other matters. You can fill in—imagine it for yourself—what the first few tens of thousands of years were like. And we like to think learning a little bit in the process and certainly having gods all the way, worshipping bears fairly early on, I can sort of see why; sometimes worshipping other human beings, (big mistake, I'm coming back to that if I have time), this and that and the other thing, but exponentially perhaps improving, though in some areas of the world very nearly completely dying out, and a bitter struggle all along. Call it 100,000 years.
According to the Christian faith, heaven watches this with folded arms for 98,000 years and then decides it's time to intervene and the best way of doing that would be a human sacrifice in primitive Palestine, where the news would take so long to spread that it still hasn't penetrated very large parts of the world, and that would be our redemption of the human species.
Now I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that that is, what I've just said, which you must believe to believe the Christian revelation, is not possible to believe, as well as not decent to believe.
Why is it not possible? Because a virgin birth is more likely than that. A resurrection is more likely than that and because if it was true, it would have two further implications: It would have to mean that the designer of this plan was unbelievably lazy and inept or unbelievably callous, and cruel, and indifferent, and capricious. And that is the case with every argument for design and every argument for revelation and intervention that has ever been made. But it's now conclusively so because of the superior knowledge that we've won for ourselves by an endless struggle to assert our reason, our science, our humanity, our extension of knowledge against the priests, against the rabbis, against the mullahs who have always wanted us to consider ourselves as made from dust or from a clot of blood, according to the Koran, or - as the Jews are supposed to pray every morning - 'at least not female or gentile'.
And here's my final point, because I think it's coming to it. The final insult that religion delivers to us, the final poison it injects into our system: It appeals both to our meanness, our self-centeredness and our solipsism and to our masochism. In other words, it's sadomasochistic. I'll put it like this: you're a clot of blood, you're a piece of mud, you're lucky to be alive, God fashioned you for his convenience, even though you're born in filth and sin and even though every religion that's ever been is distinguished principally by the idea that we should be disgusted by our own sexuality - name me a religion that does not play upon that fact! So you're lucky to be here, originally sinful and covered in shame and filth as you are, you're a wretched creature... but [said with an ironic grin] take heart!! The Universe is designed with you in mind, and heaven has a plan for you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I close by saying I can't believe there is a thinking person here who does not realize that our species would begin to grow to something like its full height if it left this childishness behind, if it emancipated itself from this sinister, childish nonsense. And I now commit you to the good Dr. McGrath. Thank you."
"Religions are merely fossilized philosophies, or philosophies with the questions left out."
- Simon Blackbone