Hitchens – Roberts – Hewitt – wrap up
Before I begin, let me encourage you all once again to vote for atheism on Facebook.
The debate is done – scroll down for audio. Hitchens did well. As I have said before, he’s an uneven debater, but with Hugh Hewitt’s show, he’s on home ground [he's a regular guest on Hugh Hewitt's show].Rather than rambling on with my opinion of the debate I want to just let you see what stood out to me, and let you see the texts to which they referred. Your opinion of the debate is of course welcome in the comments section of the blog.
So to begin with, texts/authors/personalities referred to in the debate:
Next the things that stood out. All quotes are not quotes, I’m paraphrasing.
From Hitchens:
Religon is innately bad and violent if practiced correctly. Why? It’s based on sexual repression,acceptance of absolute authority, claims we wouldn’t act morally without fear.
How do believers know what god is thinking? How arrogant.
What moral action can a believer do that an unbeliever cannot? Unless there is one, then religion is not necessary, it is an optional belief system.
Suppose that from all the discoveries of science you could build a faith. If you were to do this, you would still find that all of your work was ahead of you and that at the present time you could make no authoritative claims about God or his plan. While you may have shown that he could exist, you have said nothing to his plan, his morality, his intimate knowledge of you or his interest in you.
I say the belief is stupid and unfounded and false and latently always wicked. Ad initio a poison. They’re compatible with intelligence and morality – but we would be better if we put it behind us.
God is love? God teaches us, commands us to love? Who needs an order to love? Who needs to be commanded to love?
I’m a polemicist, I need to get people’s attention. One can’t write a book called, God is not that brilliant.
From Roberts [once again, I am paraphrasing - these are NOT quotes]:
I never use the fear card or the eternal reward card. Eternal damnation is not a motivating factor for morality. People do what is right in honour of the truth of God.
As an historian, I believe that the mass resurrection of the dead and their walk through Jerusalem described in Matthew (referring to the actions following the murder of Jesus) is while unlikely, probably true as Matthew was a credible historian .
We as Christians must believe in the Old Testament as it is the soil from which sprang the New Testament. While it is difficult to accept many of the cruelties described in the first books, one must understand it through the prism of history and with an understanding that the world is ‘broken’. Understand that and God’s actions can be seen as attempts at repairing this broken world.
Hitchens is partly right in that ’something’ poisons everything. It’s not religion though, but a deeper problem of humanity and our not-fully evolved rationality.
Hitchens is a man of high morality, I am happy to see that he hasn’t fallen in the trap of moral relativism.
There was one final point of Roberts that I had never heard before and that was the dichotomy between God and Nature. I asked him about this on his blog. Here is that exchange:
Here’s the audio of the debate.
Hour 1
Hour 2
Hour 3
The transcript can be found here Downloads: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
PS – If you want to see Hitchens in full form, take a look at his debate with Chris Hedges. I’ve read Hedges’ “War is a Force That Gives us Meaning” and I enjoyed it. That said, from what I’ve seen of that debate, I can’t say that Hedges is a moral man and I wonder if he’s even an honest man, so if you’re an atheist looking for arguments for the non-faith, I would avoid the battle of the Chrises. It’s for entertainment value only.
One Response
-
[...] Dime A Dozen: Hitchens – Roberts – Hewitt – wrap up [...]
June 5th, 2007 at 11:16 pm Dr. Roberts,I appreciated your effort on the Hugh Hewitt show and your debate with Christopher Hitchens. One thing you said confused me.While refuting Hitchens you referred to ‘Acts of God’. You said those things that your insurance company referred to as ‘Acts of God’ are in fact just ‘Nature’.I’ve never heard a Christian talk about a dichotomy between God and Nature. Would you please explain this dichotomy?
June 5th, 2007 at 11:57 pm Robert: Sure. God created the natural world, but is separate from the world. So things can happen in nature that aren’t necessarily acts of God. God doesn’t send every snowflake. Clouds do that when it’s cold. This is especially true given the fact that nature is fallen and “in travail,” which means that things happen in nature which are not what God had orginially intended, though everything that happens is still encompassed by God’s overall will. Does this help?