The Four Horsemen

The Four Horsemen

The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution Foreword by Stephen Fry

Summary

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Includes a foreword by STEPHEN FRY

'A classic for our time...And all time.' - Michael Shermer

'The words of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett are needed more than ever. These are the heirs to Voltaire.' - Matt Ridley


Known as the ‘four horsemen’ of New Atheism, these four big thinkers of the twenty-first century met only once. Their electrifying examination of ideas on this remarkable occasion was intense and wide-ranging. Everything that was said as they agreed and disagreed with one another, interrogated ideas and exchanged insights – about religion and atheism, science and sense – speaks with urgency to our present age.

Questions they asked of each other included: ‘Is it ever possible to win a war of ideas? Is spirituality the preserve of the religious? Are there any truths you would rather not know? Would you want to see the end of faith?’
The dialogue was recorded, and is now transcribed and presented here with new introductions from the surviving three horsemen.

With a sparkling introduction from Stephen Fry, it makes essential reading for all their admirers and for anyone interested in exploring the tensions between faith and reason.

Reviews

  • This transcript is of historical significance and belongs in the library of all thinking people. A classic for our time...and all time.
    Michael Shermer, Publisher Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist Scientific American, Presidential Fellow Chapman University, author of Heavens on Earth, The Moral Arc, The Believing Brain, and Why People Believe Weird Things

About the authors

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is a Fellow of New College, Oxford and both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.
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Sam Harris

Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. His work has been published in more than twenty languages. Harris has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Economist, The Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, Annals of Neurology, and other outlets. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. Please visit his website at SamHarris.org.
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Daniel C. Dennett

Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor Emeritus at Tufts University and the author of numerous books including From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Breaking the Spell, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Consciousness Explained. He lives with his wife in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
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Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011.
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