Bill Moyers and Salman Rushdie
On Friday evening, Salman Rushdie led off Bill Moyers’ Faith and Reason series on PBS. Rushdie talked about being “a hard-line atheist,” discussed signing the manifesto against Islamism, and asked “What kind of a god is it that’s upset by a cartoon in Danish?” about the cartoon controversy earlier this year. The highlight was when Rushdie noted that “morality is previous to religion:”
…it's perfectly possible for me to say that we can as civilized people create moral codes to live by. We do not need that ultimate arbiter. And one answer to the question is democracy. And it seems to me that what happens in a democracy is that we don't have an absolute view of what is right and wrong. We have an argument about it, you know. And the argument never ends.We have a continuing argument about what's okay and what's not okay, you know. At a certain point we believed that slavery's okay, you know. At the later point the argument develops and we decide-- I mean in that case with a lot of bloodshed--we decide that slavery's not okay. At a certain point we believed that women should not have the vote. Or that people-- or that only property holders should have the vote. At another point the, the argument proceeds and we say that that's not right, and that everybody--we have universal suffrage. So it seems to me that that argument is freedom. You know, it's not to win the argument, because actually nobody ever wins that argument. But the argument itself is freedom. [emphasis added]
You can read the first episode’s transcript here. Check the PBS schedule for information about the next episode.