Chris Williamson

And it is Richard Dawkins speaking to Ayaan Hirsi Ali on stage.

And Ayaan was supposed to be the fifth horseman of the Atheist Apocalypse, but she couldn't make the meeting that day.

And then Ayaan is on stage talking to Richard and the audience is sort of half her fans and half Richard's.

And she said, I wanted to take my own life not long ago.

I was really low and...

Religion found me, Jesus found me, Christianity found me, God found me.

And after the lowest moment that I had, I'm really, really happy to say that my mental health's in a better place.

and I'm religious.

And you get the sort of smattering of kind of like empathetic applause around the room.

And Alex told me that Richard's almost immediate response was, yes, but do you really think that Jesus moved the stone out of the way on the third day of Aramea?

And what you see is a guy who is playing a game of optimizing for rationality whilst ignoring effectiveness.

And you go, how can you say that it's anything but a positive when this person's life essentially was saved by this thing?

And it makes me... And this is one of the reasons I think that atheism is not cool at the moment, that it feels in a world that's increasingly bereft of meaning, it feels like really sterile and quite judgmental and quite harsh.

And it makes me, when I think about it, I'm like...

It just doesn't seem very nice to me.

And I'm aware, removing comforting delusions, why should you allow someone to indulge in their silly fantasy?

I'm like, bro, I think we're getting toward the stage where comforting delusions are allowed.

Because if not... So maybe it is Mormonism all along.

Have you been around anybody over 65?

Richard Dawkins.