Did religion play a role in the events of September 11th, 2001? Andrew Klavan argues that of course it did, but while the Left says they remember the day, they do seem to omit this crucial fact – why would they do that? Andrew explained on “The Andrew Klavan Show.”
“I’ll tell you something – the people who flew those planes into those buildings, and into the Pentagon, and who tried to fly into other buildings in Washington – they and I agree on one thing: We agree on the idea that the government is meant to enforce the will of God,” Klavan said. “They think the will of God is that you should be slaves, I think you should be free, and that the government is there to ensure that you are free, to ensure the rights God gave you are put in place. “
Video and transcript below:
I’ll tell you something – the people who flew those planes into those buildings, and into the Pentagon, and who tried to fly into other buildings in Washington – they and I agree on one thing: We agree on the idea that the government is meant to enforce the will of God. They think the will of God is that you should be slaves, I think you should be free, and that the government is there to ensure that you are free, to ensure the rights God gave you are put in place.
There’s no getting out of that, there’s no getting out of that conflict. I mean, that is a conflict in two ways of looking at the world. When you point out to people who are so advanced, and have gotten so far in their intellectual journey, that they realize this “God stuff” is all primitive nonsense, and you say: “Well, what about the Communists?” The Communists in China and in Russia enforced atheism and slaughtered more people in about 20 minutes than all the religious wars on earth had ever slaughtered anybody. Their answer is always Sam Harris – big atheist guy – says “Well, communism is a religion too.” But communism is not a religion, atheism is the religion of communism, and it must be – because it is completely a materialist way of thought.
When you look at people who are atheists, that is also a religion, it’s a way of confronting the unknown, the eternal, your creation. Now, I read a lot of scientific books, and a lot of scientific books that come out now put forward the idea that science has taken us beyond the idea of God, and that has consequences. Let me read you a little portion of a book called “Sapiens.” “Sapiens” is a huge bestseller, Bill Gates thinks it’s the most brilliant thing ever and it’s all about the fact that we are human beings because we tell these fictions, untrue stories, and they bind us together. The author, Yuval Harari, says:
Yuval Harari: “If you think about human rights, human rights are a fictional story, just like God in heaven, they are not a biological reality. Biologically speaking, humans don’t have rights, if you take Homo sapiens and look inside you find the heart and the kidneys and the DNA, you don’t find any rights. The only place rights exist is in the stories that people have been inventing.”
If you don’t believe in God, that is absolutely right. But I am a fiction writer, I’m a writer of stories, and stories are not made up, they are ways of communicating truths that you can’t say in any other way. We all do it, we all use metaphors to say: “What was it like to pitch a no-hitter?” You say: “Well, it’s like waking up on Christmas morning,” because there’s no words, there’s no words to say what it’s like, what the experience of being a human being is like, so we write stories, we use art to communicate these things.
So, when you write a story, the question is: Is the story true? That is the question that Yuval Harari doesn’t have to ask. But, if we lived in Yuval Harari’s world where human rights were fiction, how hard is it to guess what that world is gonna look like about 10 seconds after it gets founded? Because how do you defend your rights if they’re just a fiction? He has a better fiction, his fiction is that the world is going to end through climate change and so you have to give up your rights. You know, somebody else’s fiction could be something else.
The question is not whether we’re telling stories – of course we’re telling stories – there’s no way to communicate the essential facts of life without telling stories, but are the stories true? That is really the question we’re asking. Harari’s religion is atheism, so is Steven Pinker’s, another science writer that I like, and so he thinks our rights are a fiction. I don’t have to quote the Bible, but I believe in a God who made us in His image and wants us to be free and I don’t have to quote the Bible to prove that because I think all of nature cries it out, all of the human heart cries it out.
So, the objection to this, the thing that makes people so upset when you start talking about religion is they say: “Well, wait, wait, are we gonna have holy wars? Are we gonna go back to the world of holy wars?” I remember I was judging a journalistic contest and I was on the phone with other journalists who were also judges in this contest and one of these women, I won’t give her away but it was a very big journalist, and she said “I heard that George W. Bush prayed before he went into Iraq, so this is just a holy war, he’s no better than bin Laden, you know bin Laden prays to his God and George W. Bush prays to his God, what’s the difference?”
Well, that’s a good question, what’s the difference? If the difference is our God wants us to be free, and their God wants to enslave us, that’s a big difference. So, I never want to attack anybody because of his religion, I never wanted to fight with anybody because of his religion, but if somebody attacks me because of his God I do want to fight back, and I do want to fight back in the knowledge that freedom is better than slavery. Why is freedom better than slavery? Because we are created beings with God-given rights.