tonight, strong men with a strong opinions. you see the country tanking again? >> is this coming to praying? >> again? >> if it helps do more, because you are telling me that people are not praying enough? >> and remember this -- >> i have been unfaithful to my wife. i have developed a relationship which started out as a dear, dear friend from argentina. >> that was the beginning of a long two years for mark sanford, disgrace and divorce and the end of any hope for the white house. tonight, mark sanford, the former governor of south carolina inside of his private life today. >> over the course of my life, there needed to be some healing there. >> and the potential come back, this is "piers morgan, tonight." the outspoken half of the larger act of pen and teller "god, no!" signs you are an atheist and other pendulum tales. >> "god, no." i should have had the book on tape and you should have released the title. >> here is the thing about you, i read the little intro here, you may already be an atheist, if god, however you perceive him, her, it, as you say, told you the kill your child, would you do it? if you answer no, then in my book, you are an atheist. there is in doubt in your mind, love and morality are your faith. that is strong stuff. even by your standards. >> well, the point is always to be an atheist, i think that you have to be a tremendous optimist. and i think that the way to turn someone to an atheist is to just flood them with love. i had a beautiful -- >> and you used to be a tremendous pessimist, because many atheists declare my colors here, i believe in god and i was reared an irish-catholic boy. >> there is no hope for you. >> i had spiritual education from nuns and so i'm a believer. >> i love it when you call them the monkees. i loved it. >> and here is the things i have always had a belief about the atheists that my irritation with atheists is that their belief is a non-belief. and when you write a book about it, you are basically writing a whole book telling a bunch of people who have a genuine sincere faith in something that you don't believe what i believe in. and you don't believe in something to rival it from what i can gather, but you just don't believe in their belief. it is a negative thing, isn't it? >> i don't believe that is true. i don't find it negative at all. that is one of the points of this. one of the important things when people come up to me about atheism, and they do, is that they talk about the bitterness and the having all of the answers and the hubris of thinking that we can know everything. >> you talk about alternatives being love, family, spiritual things. >> that is not spiritual. that is real. >> well, most people who believe in god also believe in love and family and all of the things that you offer as some kind of strange alternative. >> absolutely. >> by the way, i say this to you as a huge fan of you as a magician. you have been on "america's got talent" and i urge everyone to go see you, but when it comes to god, you anger me. >> do i really? >> yes, because i believe it is a deliberately provocative stance that you take and it is designed to annoy and agitate people who have a sincere belief. >> i don't believe so. you won't find anywhere in this book any attacks on people. i don't know if you have seen the book of mormon of matt stone and trey parker which they describe as a love letter to religion from an atheist. and that's one of the things that matt said about it, and a lot of the talking, and i have been talking to matt and trey for years about this, and when they did the richard dawkins episode of "south park" one of the things that we talked about was that idea of bitterness and the idea of the anger that comes from that. i am a huge fan of proselytizing and a huge fan of speaking your mind, but the only way that we can share the universe, the only way that we can share humanity is by talking very strongly about what we believe. >> you are the chief atheist out there. how did you get here? how did we get here? >> well, let me ask you, how did we get here? >> i believe in this superior being, a god. >> of course. >> and therefore the questions which always baffle atheists, the hard reality of life, i believe there is something greater out there. there is a greater entity which is a spiritual being that allows comprehension on a scale that we could never understand. >> exactly, but the comprehension -- >> but you don't believe it. so what do you believe happened? >> if it is comprehension on a scale that we can't possibly understand, then aren't you done? why do you need to label that as something that is god or something? >> because i have never heard an atheist explain to me -- >> why is there a humility to say we don't know. >> i have never heard an atheist say how did we get here and what happens at the end of our lives? >> well, the answer to saying we can't understand it is not an answer. >> right. so how do you think that we got here? >> i don't know. >> what do you think happens when we die? >> nothing. there is no evidence at all. >> where do you go? >> where do you go? >> i mean when you die. you must be terrified of death? >> not at all. not even slightly. how scared are you of 1890. does 1890 terrify you? >> 1890? >> you weren't alive then, right? >> no. >> you weren't alive and you didn't exist in any way and is that a horror to you? >> no. >> so why is 2090 any worse than that? >> i'm not horrified of dying, because i believe you go on to a celestial place that is beautiful and for you, atheist, you must be miserable. >> and how do you know that place is there? >> because i come back to the issue of creation, and where do atheists -- >> well, all you have answered with the issue of creation is that you have answered, the answer to my answer is that i don't know, and your answer is, something beyond comprehension. aren't those the same answer? >> you cannot write a book basically telling a bunch of people around the world, billions of people, who believe in god, that you are wrong. you don't have any other answers. >> well, you are. >> and however, there are many, many christians who are watching this who find it offensive that you would write a book called "god, no!" and no, i don't have any explanation for anything, but you are not barking mad. >> and you say the same thing and i never said i am barking mad, and that is kind of english. >> we are a bit crazy though, a bit nuts? >> no, not at all. one of the things that is so important to me and maybe you are wrong about americans here. i did a show called "b.s." for eight years where i said this stuff that was very, very provocative, and when i pitched this show to showtime, i say with embarrassment that i pitched it kind of cynically. i pitched it saying, you know, that the people will hate us, and it will drive the whole thing, but what i found out is that when we would do shows that were, that were strongly atheist, we would get hundreds of letters from christians saying, it is nice that people are being passionate and saying what they believe from their heart. >> that is my point. i have a spiritual and religious belief -- >> i don't believe it is a belief. >> and the same way with prayer and faith, and -- it is a belief. you believe in god. your belief is a non-belief. it is an anti-belief. you don't have a belief. you just don't believe that what i believe is right. >> let me just ask you. do you believe in thor? >> thor? >> yeah, thor. >> no, because that is not the type of god they believe in. >> but you are an atheist on every single god except for the one that you happen to be taught when you were a child. on everything else, you are an atheist. everything that you believe is a negation of every other god that ever existed. >> it is interesting that you compare thor to god. >> why? >> because it is not the same thing and you know it, and you are being deliberately perverse. >> okay. pick any god. >> i think that a soccer player henry therrie is god -- >> well, you are saying that god of catholics and protestants are all the same god, but different rules? >> i have a respect for anybody from any religion who has a spiritual and religious conviction and belief of any god entity in their lives. >> are you as active as garth brooks or -- it is a relative term. >> probably not as active as garth brooks. >> so you will have people on every spectrum and the most important part of this is that i believe that proselytizing is good. i love the jehovah witnesses saying what they believe. if you believe in your god, tell people about it. pray for me, and explain it to me. >> what if you were dying, hypothetically. >> i am dying, and so are you. >> you but a hypothetical in here, and i can be horrendous to you. say you have a week to live -- >> wait, do you know this? because i have other stuff to do. you are not packing are you? because i mean, sometimes people like you pull a gun and shoot you in the face. you are dying, bang, i'm dead. >> i can reassure you, i am not about to shoot you. >> you are not packed. >> no. you have a week to live and you have two young children. >> yes, i do. >> and you need to explain to them what is going to happen to daddy, and what do you say? tough to comfort them in this terrible time? >> i don't think that to comfort them i lie to them, and i don't think that i have the immodesty to say that i know. i say that they will miss me and hope they will remember me. i have lost my mom, my dad, and my sister and the love will live on as long as i do. there is not a second in my life that i will not love my mom, my dad, my sister and everybody that i have loved that has died. >> we will take a short break and the good news for you is that it does not have the finality of everything else in your life. we will be back in a moment. 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no. you know... ♪ we're not magicians ♪ we can't read your mind ♪ ♪ read your mind ♪ we need your questions ♪ each and every kind ♪ every kind ♪ will this react with my other medicine? ♪ ♪ hey, what are all these tests even for? ♪ ♪ questions are the answer ♪ yeah ♪ oh so, look, you live in las vegas. >> yes. >> sin city. and you have never touched alcohol. >> i believe touching it might be wrong. >> but you don't drink it? >> no. >> you don't do drugs? >> i don't drink caffeine. >> you don't fornicate with ladies of the night? >> although my wife exists in the night. >> you don't gamble? >> when i say i haven't drank, i mean it, but when i say i haven't gambled, that is not true, because i have put $5 or $10 in the slot machine. >> and why would you live in las vegas? >> because there is nothing more than i like than my show and in new york we had two broadway runs that were successful and two off broadway are successful, and that is pushing your luck. so in las vegas, we have a penn and teller theater, and we were told that a cheap theater in some ways, but las vegas can seem that way, but i park very close to my dressing room. i don't even walk through a casino and i walk to my dressing room and do the show, and i'm also very much in favor of people living their lives in different ways than i do. so the fact that other people drink does not bother me. >> when you see the state of the economy so completely tanking and the politicians squabbling like little children, and no one seems to really have an answer to how to get out of this, you are a successful business guy. >> it is going to come to praying again? >> well, praying does help. >> well, do more. do more. if it helps, do more. we haven't -- i mean, you are telling me that people are not praying enough. that's what's wrong? >> give me the atheist way of how to get out of economic strife? where has america gone wrong and what is the answer? >> i always seem to think that the most important thing is individuals and the most important thing is diversity and the most important thing is to have someone like you, someone like me who disagree on a very important issue constantly talking, constantly working it out. i think that the problem is maybe thinking that somebody above us, someone in power can take care of all of us, can fix everything. >> well, they should, because it is their job in government, isn't it? it is why you vote people, and why they get elected and run for office? >> i am not sure that is exactly the way i see it. >> you know, america has been revived in the past whether it is fdr or harry truman or john f. kennedy or bill clinton or ronald reagan and when you have had great recoveries from difficult times they have come from great leadership and government and ideas. >> well, that is not the way it feels to me is because when you wait for a decision to be made from someone in power above you and you give up the personal responsibility you give up your own power, and that is where the danger comes from. >> and right now, small business people right now, they have absolutely no mechanism out there to get the businesses going again. they just don't. it is not there. >> right. >> so what do you say to those people? how do they operate? and unless government -- >> for the government to give them money? >> i think that the solution is to do a little bit of that, and the solution is to raise taxes and cut spending and do special incentiviing business people. >> and you think that not raising the taxes on the business people. >> well, get revenues from the higher income -- >> well, it is the middle-class to pay. you can't get the money are the rich, because even if you tax them 100% -- >> yes, i come from a quaint old fashioned view, you look after the poorest people in the community first, and they are the biggest problem in america right now. i don't worry about whether the middle-class is going to have two holidays or one, but i saw that there has been a 70% increase in families living off of the stamps in the last five years i think it was. shocking statistics, and those are the people that i care about. >> and i assume that you are helping them. >> well, i'm talking about it. >> and you do give money? >> yes. i won't say i don't give the money directly to the people, because i don't know who they r but i can tell you yes. >> there is a place for clarity, and there is a place for compassion. >> this is not charity, is it? that is the wrong response it is not about you and me giving a handout, because it is about a system in america that is going horribly wrong, and there are six or seven americans in ten who are doing okay. >> well, that is six or seven people who can help. >> and you have seen -- >> yes, i believe so. >> on a mass scale? >> yes, kiva making microloans all over the world without any government force at all, and they have done huge things overseas and working a bit in the usa. >> so if you were president, what would you do to get americans back to work? >> i think i would make the government much, much smaller. i think that i would give people more individual responsibility and give them more money back, and i don't have to worry about this, because me being president is as likely as your god being 100% right. exactly, precisely. >> we will take another break just to shut you up. >> just to shut me up? >> let's talk magic. >> just to shut me up! you asked me on your show. >> you don't need prayer. >> you asked me on here. you don't want to shut me up. su! a mouthwatering combination of ingredients... i know you're gonna love. 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