Penn Jillette on Atheism and Islamophobia | Best of '16 | Big Think

Penn Jillette on Atheism and Islamophobia

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Penn Jillette just uttered the words: "I opened my heart to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit filled me." What does it mean? Will the magician, champion of atheists, and passionate Libertarian really live the rest of his life as a Christian in service to the Lord, and abracadabra open the gates of heaven when they rightly hesitate to let him in?

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PENN JILLETTE :

Penn Jillette is a cultural phenomenon as a solo personality and as half of the world-famous Emmy Award­-winning magic duo Penn & Teller. His solo exposure is enormous: from Howard Stern to Glenn Beck to the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on Dancing with the Stars, MTV Cribs, and Chelsea Lately and hosted the NBC game show Identity. As part of Penn & Teller, he has appeared more than twenty times on David Letterman, as well as on several other TV shows, from The Simpsons and Friends to Top Chef and The View. He co-hosts the controversial series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, which has been nominated for sixteen Emmy Awards. He is currently co host of the Discovery Channel's Penn & Teller Tell a Lie and the author of God, No! and Presto!

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TRANSCRIPT:

Penn Jillette:  About three years ago I came in to Big Think and I talked very strongly and very passionately about atheism, how I did not believe in God. And over the past three years I opened my heart to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit filled me. And all of a sudden I realized that everlasting life is possible by following in the ways of Jesus Christ our Lord. I have since then dedicated my life to Jesus Christ. I have joined the Church and I will live the rest of my life and die as a Christian in service and in joy with Jesus Christ Our Lord. I’m just fucking with you. For a minute, just for a minute did I – just for a second did I have you going? Just for a minute? Can you imagine how much money I would make if I could just convert to re – I don’t have to convert. If I just pretend to convert. Can you imagine if I just took and threw away my atheism, if I threw away my morality and said I was religious and went out and started preaching? Can you imagine the amount of money I would make. But what good if a man gained the whole world but lose his soul. No. I’m still an atheist. I’m still doing fine. I just spoke at a Young Americans for Liberty conference, you know, a lot of conservatives, a lot of people that are too young to be wearing suits were wearing suits.

I liked them. And afterwards a man came up to me probably 20 years old and he was slight in build, very dark complected and he said to me I wanted to talk about this during your lecture but I was very, very frightened that there were cameras there. And I said well there were cameras there so at least you’re not frightened by UFOs. You’re frightened by spiders, something that’s real. I can respect that. I made this kind of light of his wording there. And then he shut me up because then he said my family is from Pakistan and everybody in my community is a devout Muslim. And my mom and dad are devout Muslims. And I’m an atheist. And if I said that while you were speaking, if I raised my hand and said that with the cameras on, said that declared a statement I’m an atheist. My mom and dad would not kill me but they would disown me and they would never speak to me again. And I would be an apostate and it is not unlikely that someone in my community would kill me.

And he didn’t mean that figuratively. He didn’t mean that word kill like comedians mean it. He meant they would take his life away. Now I know Ayaan Hirsi Ali so I know he wasn’t bluffing. And then it got worse because then he said and yet with my dark skin and my straight black hair the other side considers me Muslim and wants to get me out of the country and treat me badly. And I hear Trump giving his speeches against people of my ancestry. And I realize that there’s nobody for me.

Nobody. And he said I want to talk to you because – and this is him saying this – he said some stuff about me being the only one who would understand which is clearly not true. Everybody understands. Virtually everybody understands. But, you know, as an atheist Christopher Hitchins, my friend, my hero, my mentor even though he isn’t much older than me but he’s so much smarter. He used to say, you know Penn, if you dislike C...

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