The Four Horsemen: The Conversation that Sparked an Atheist Revolution

The Four Horsemen: The Conversation that Sparked an Atheist Revolution, with a forward by Stephen Fry, is mostly a transcription of a conversation by the four most famous atheists of our time. The conversation took place on September 30, 2007, and the four horsemen are Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who wrote The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation; Daniel Dennett, a philosopher who wrote Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon; Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist who wrote The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. And Christopher Hitchens, a journalist and essayist who is probably the most famous of this group of thinkers, and he wrote God is Not Great. This conversation can be found on You Tube. The book was published after the death of Hitchens, but Dawkins, Dennett and Harris all provide short chapters before getting to the conversation. This book is really a short monograph, only 134 pages of fairly easy reading. If the topic of atheism interests you, this book deserves your attention.

As a short example about the content of the conversation, Dennett addressed the issue of faith: “Somebody plays the faith card. They say, ‘Look, I am a Christian, and we Christians, we just have to believe this, and that’s it.’ At which point – and I think this is the polite way of saying it – you say, ‘Well, OK, if that’s true, you’ll just have to excuse yourself from the discussion, because you’ve declared yourself incompetent to proceed with an open mind.” The conversation says a lot more about the topic of faith.

Harris says, “We know there’s more than we presently know and are likely to know.” Dawkins talked about a debate that he had in London with Rabbi Neuberger. “And she asked me whether I said grace in New College when I happened to be senior fellow. And I said, ‘Of course I saw grace. It’s a matter of simple courtesy.’ And she was furious that I should somehow be so hypocritical as to say grace. And I could only say, ‘Well, look, it may mean something to you, but it means absolutely nothing to me. This is a Latin formula which has some history, and I appreciate history.’ Freddi Ayer [a philosopher] also used to say grace, and what he said was, ‘I won’t utter falsehoods but I have no objection to uttering meaningless statements.’” Hitchens comments are plentiful and cogent throughout the book.

I know I've wandered, once again, far from your usual genre, and I promise to immediately get back on that horse.