Well, my thanks to the noble Sharif for that suspiciously terse introduction and for his kind remarks about my agelessness. I have to confess that there is a portrait in my attic that’s beginning to look distinctly seedy.

I haven’t been here since I came to hear Claude Lévi-Strauss give his wonderful lecture on the scope of anthropology. But Oxford is my town, it’s my family’s home and my university. Bay Lille just down the road. And before you get to Bay Lille, you get to the towel, where my mother once swore that she heard the following from a bewildered American tourist who said, “I can never tell which is Lincoln and which is Jesus.”

To which someone returned, “That’s a problem with all you Americans.” Now, we’re not supposed to do God this evening. Strangely enough, it’s one of the very few occasions I’ve been asked to debate religion not doing God, but I can’t avoid a slight reflection by way of introduction because I want to talk about the American experience in the secular square and sphere.

When Abraham Lincoln was dying in a room just off Pennsylvania Avenue, with a terrible wound in the back of his skull inflicted by a racist lunatic, he was living in the age of newspapers and print. There was a newspaper published just around the corner, The Washington Star. In the age of photography, we have Matthew Brady’s photographs of him and of the Civil War, not in the age of tape recording exactly, but in the age of very, very good stenography.

We still don’t know when his cabinet gathered around him and saw him die. I think Seward was there, the man who later bought Alaska. I’m sure Herndon was there. I haven’t looked this up. You can. It doesn’t matter particularly which of them said this, but one of them said either, as he died, as he drew his last breath, either now he’s with the angels or now he’s with the ages.

We still don’t know, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t. Eyewitnesses, literate men, practically contemporaries of ours, in the age of print, in the age of photography, and nobody knows which thing Seward or Herndon said. Yet we’re expected to take at face value the statements of illiterate, stupefied, terrified peasants from the most benighted part of the Middle East who founded monotheism.

I say this not to break the rule about not doing God, but because until that kind of conflict’s been resolved, and on the principle of a necessary uncertainty about the recording of these myths and the hostage it’s made us, all of us, since, to village squabbles and clan wars in the desert, all of us, all the time, are being forced to consider the outcomes of these irrelevant combats.

Until that’s the case, it seems to me the burden of proof is and always will be and has to be with those who say, “No, only if you believe all of it can you hope for salvation, redemption, and afterlife, eternity.” Those of us who say that the rule of doubt and uncertainty, which also governs all other observable principles in the universe, I think are entitled to say that until something like evidence is produced, we’re entitled to be free of it.

You can’t make us believe it. If you want to believe it, that’s fine. We hope it cheers you up. We hope it comforts you in your last hour. But we don’t want to hear about it. We don’t want to have to be told about it. We don’t want the queen to be the head of the church, as well as the state and the armed forces.

We don’t want the ridiculous situation that will occur as our sovereign lady draws, may it be a long time distant, her final breath and her bat-eared, Muslim-fancying, no-choice, no-taste-in-women son becomes, at that moment, the head of the church and the armed forces in the state.

Now the great breakaway, the great English revolutionary breakaway from this was the American Revolution, which was founded on two principles. One was adumbrated just after the revolution and one was enshrined in the Constitution consequently. I’ll just take a moment to describe it.

The Church of England was expelled from the United States, at least as an established church. It no longer had a monopoly. Up until then, therefore, if you’d been, and after the revolution, if you were a Catholic in Georgia, you couldn’t run for office. If you were not a Catholic in Maryland, you, rather if you were a Catholic in Maryland, you were the only person who could run for office.

Jews were forbidden to run in New York. Everyone was different. The state religion of Georgia was pronounced to be Protestant with no further definition. In Virginia, after the scrapping of the established church, it was decided to have a debate. Patrick Henry, great revolutionary, said, “We should now subsidize all churches from the taxpayers’ money, not just the Anglican one, the Episcopalian one.”

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison made the first ever statement of this kind in human history. They said, as a matter of fact, no church should be subsidized. All churches should be allowed from Muslim, there were no Muslims in Virginia then, to the synagogue, to the Catholic, to the Presbyterian, and so forth, but no church should receive the favor of the government.

That Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, which guaranteed, by being secular, here’s my point, obviously, by being secular, guarantees religious pluralism. There is no guarantee of religious freedom without a secular system, but came enshrined as what we now know as the First Amendment to the Constitution.

As a result, the persecution of Catholics in Georgia ceased, the persecution of Protestants in Maryland ceased, and you may remember, some of you will already know, that Jefferson, as president, was sent a letter from the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut. It’s a very famous letter.

They wrote to him saying they didn’t feel safe in their own state. They felt unwanted, persecuted, put upon. They invited the protection of Washington, the capital, I mean, and of the president, Jefferson. In the famous letter that he wrote back to them, he said, “You may rest assured that there will always be a wall of separation,” you’ve heard the phrase, “that no one, on account of their belief or religion, shall ever feel persecuted in this republic.”

Now, just for fun, is there anyone who knows what the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut were frightened of? Very good. Actually, very bad, because there’s only one, but well done. They were afraid of two. They were afraid of the Congregationalists of Danbury, Connecticut. That’s who was persecuting them.

Now, I actually do understand the difference between a Congregationalist and a Baptist. It’s not a very interesting one. It repays a certain degree of study, but we don’t have to know anymore because that persecution was put an end to. No one shall have any preference on account of their faith. You are free to practice any religion, and you are free from religion as well.

Under this great roof tree of the Constitution, as Jefferson described it, has grown up the most pluralist, the most democratic, the most multi-religious, the most tolerant society in the world, where it is illegal for the government to support the establishment, even indirectly, of a church.

Now, I believe this constitutional principle should be further tested.

I believe, for example, I’m actually bringing a motion about it to their attention, that the Supreme Court in Washington should hear evidence that no United States money can be used for the building of settlements on the West Bank of the River Jordan, that an illegal establishment of the Jewish religion by with American money, unconstitutional, we can’t do it.

I think that the same should be said to the Saudi Arabians, that until they allow synagogues in Saudi Arabia, until they allow Christian churches in Saudi Arabia, and most important, until they allow the Tom Payne Richard Dawkins study library in Riyadh, they’re not allowed to open any more madrasas in the United States with covert Saudi money.

You’ll see why I suddenly shifted the phone arena. I only have three more minutes.

Look to your east, see how the Russian Orthodox Church has become the black cowled guardian and clerical guarantee of the newly revanchist, expansionist, great Russian chauvinist, KGB-like regime of Vladimir Putin. If you haven’t looked at it yet, look at it now. You’re going to be hearing about it very soon. It’s going to be adding to your woes.

Look and see what’s going to happen when a nightmare that was being discussed when I was a young man at this university, what will happen when a crazed regime gets a thermonuclear weapon. We’re about to find out in Persia, when ancient civilization has been blotted out and superimposed upon by a theocratic regime that considers all adults as children and as property of the church.

You’re about to see what happens when the messianic settlers get busy. You’re about to see what happens when, as they never cease to try to do, the Christian right in the United States argues for the teaching of nonsense in school to American children or sometimes, when they’re feeling cowardly, equal time for creationism.

So yes, children, after the chemistry period, we’ll have our alchemy class. After we’ve done astronomy, there’ll be, Mrs. Watkins will take the astrology group after break. We’ll wear out the day in this way. No, we won’t. That’s flat out unconstitutional. We beat them in court every time, every day. They’re never going to get away with it.

Is there anyone here who, when they look around just some of the places I’ve mentioned, wishes that the Israelis were more orthodox, that the Russians were more devoutly committed to their church, which says that not only should Russia be Christian, but it should be Russian Orthodox Christian and ban Baptists and Catholics and any other kind of religion, don’t they see the pearl that they’re throwing away?

Until they understand that secularism is the only guarantee of religious freedom, religious pluralism, there will be no progress. Check it on a graph. Look at the Muslim world. Look at any, actually any country in Western Europe. The further they move away from an established church, the more democratic, the more prosperous, the more pluralist, the more open, the more available to innovation they are.

Do it on a graph for the Muslim world. Indonesia, Turkey, Tunisia, reasonably tolerant places to live precisely because there’s no sharia, precisely because there’s a separation made between church and state. This example works, if you think about it, I’ll leave you with a thought because my time’s up. This works in all countries, in all societies, and at all times.

So not to argue from authority or from a majority, but I really do hope it works with you too. Thank you very much for having me.