Don't miss new Big Think videos! Subscribe by clicking here: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5<br /><br />Religion can cause "good people to do bad things," but Penn Jillette gets along better with fundamentalists than with liberal Christians who preach easy tolerance.<br /><br />Question: Is religion responsible for a lot of the world's <br />problems?<br />Penn Jillette: What you've said, "a lot," sure. If you want to go to<br /> "most" or "all," then no but there is certainly people... there's a <br />great quote by the physicist... What's his name? Weinberg. Steve <br />Weinberg. The quote of with or without religion good people do good <br />things and bad people do bad things but for good people to do bad things<br /> that takes religion. I'm not sure that's word-for-word, almost certain <br />it isn't, but it's important. I think it's not religion. It's much <br />deeper than that. My beef is not with religion per se; my difference of <br />opinion is with objective and subjective reality.Einstein said <br />the big question is when you turn away is the tree still there? And I <br />talk to Richard Feynman about this and Murray Goodman, there's a feeling<br /> that in particle physics the "experimenter effect," a lot of that stuff<br /> is distorted. I believe very strongly that there is a physical reality <br />that my perception does not change. Now you can make the argument that <br />we're all just brains in jars, the Matrix, and all of this is an <br />illusion and that is an airtight argument. You can't refute it but let's<br /> just say it's not that. I think there's a real reality out there and <br />the people who say "I believe in God because I feel that there's some <br />higher power in the universe"—the problem I have with that is that once <br />you've said you believe something that you can't prove to someone else <br />you have completely walled yourself off from the world.And <br />you've essentially said no one can talk to you and you can talk to no <br />one. You've also given license to everybody else who feels that. If you <br />say to me "I can't prove it Penn, but I have a feeling in my heart that <br />there is a power over everything that connects us," why can't Charlie <br />Manson say "I can't prove it but I can have a feeling that the Beatles <br />are telling us to kill Sharon Tate and that the race riots are coming?" <br />Why can't Al Qaeda say "I have a feeling in my heart that we need to <br />kill these particular infidels?" Why can't the men who tortured and <br />disfigured Ayaan Hirsi Ali—why isn't what they feel in their heart <br />valid?The problem is if you have a sense of fairness simply by <br />saying you believe in a higher power because you believe in it, you've <br />automatically given license to anyone else that wants to say that. So I <br />would rather be busted on everything I say and I am, you know, when <br />you've put yourself out on television and on radio as someone who really<br /> does believe in objective truth there is not a sentence that I will say<br /> in this interview that won't get three or four tweets of somebody with <br />information busting me on it. And they're right, you know, very rarely <br />am I busted on something where I'm right. If someone is taking the <br />trouble to let me know I've said something wrong, chances are I'm wrong.But<br /> that's the world I live in. I want to live in a world of a marketplace <br />of ideas where everybody is busted on their bullshit all the time <br />because I think that's the way we get to truth. That is also what <br />respect is. What we call tolerance nowadays, maybe always—I'm always <br />skeptical about the "nowadays" thing. I don't think things get that much<br /> different. What we call "tolerance" is often just condescending. It's <br />often just saying, "Okay, you believe what you want to believe that's <br />fine with me." I think true respect... it's one of the reasons I get <br />along so much better with fundamentalist Christians than I do with <br />liberal Christians because fundamentalist Christians I can look them in <br />the eye and say, "You are wrong." They also know that I will always <br />fight for their right to say that.And I will celebrate their <br />right to say that but I will look them in the eye and say, "You're <br />wrong." And fundamentalists will look me in the eye and say, "You're <br />wrong." And that to me is respect. The more liberal religious people who<br /> go "There are many paths to truth you just go on and maybe you'll find <br />your way"... is the way you talk to a child. And I bristle at that, so I<br /> do very well with proselytizing hardcore fundamentalists and in a very <br />deep level I respect them and at a very deep level i think I share a big<br /> part of their heart. I think in a certain sense I'm a preacher. My <br />heart is there.Recorded on June 8, 2010Interviewed by Paul Hoffman
