As if you don’t already know, Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of the best seller : GOD IS NOT GREAT
The fool has said in his heart, “there is no God”.
Hitchens = fool
It’s hard to do much for Hitchens than pray for him. If I’m wrong, neither of us will know. If he’s wrong....I really don’t even like to think about what’s in store for him. I’m not one of those who relish the thought of Hell for non-believers.
Christopher Hitchens is a bit of deranged when it comes to religion. I pay no more attention to his frothings than I do to my dog’s barking at squirrels.
I read that book, and IIRC actually enjoyed it.
Mr. Hitchens is so clear on the idea that people are capable of great evil and he is justifiably appalled. Perhaps that means he is half way to faith.
I read once that a cynic is a heart-broken idealist. I think maybe somewhere under there is a guy who deeply wants there to be a God who cares, and hope, and a divine purpose, or he wouldn’t be so bitter about not having found Him.
If he were truly a godless unbeliever, he wouldn’t even care about this subject. He’d be doing something else entirely.
Hitchens then goes on to list every excess ever committed in the name of religion, including a few canards. Well and good.
NOW, is Hitchen, as an atheist, ready and willing to assume personal responsibility for all the crimes against humanity committed in the name of atheistic philosophies, mainly Communism? There is enough inhumanity of man toward man to condemn us all, whether we worship one God, many gods, Nature, or nothing at all.
I suppose Hitchens would fairly bristle at the suggestion that he is implicated in the Bolshevik purges and mass starvations, Pol Pot's murderous rampage, or the excesses of the French Revolution. But he doesn't mind dishing out disdain for all religious belief on precisely the same reasoning. But can one call such childish ravings 'reasoning'? I don't.
Jumping through hoops to prove that Something does not exist. What a waste of energy.
The argument about the Moral Law is not that only Theists have the Moral Law, but that everyone has the Moral Law. The Scriptures make it plain that the law in written into everyone’s heart. An Atheist has a sense of right and wrong, moral and immoral, and good and evil precisely because God has written his law into their hearts. An Atheist can be as moral or immoral as a Theist. This is the reason that attacking Atheists as being less moral than a Theist is counterproductive and just not true. The questions for the Atheist is where does this sense of right and wrong originate, and why care about ethical issues? According to Darwinian evolutionary beliefs, morality does exist in nature. Morality and free choice are only illusions. We are controlled by our genes for the purpose of reproduction or survival of the species. This view does not explain why human beings do things which are contrary to our survival. For instance, why would an Atheist care about genocide? In nature, genocide could be a very good thing in which it opened up areas for growth and with less competition. Maybe it would be good thing to wipe out South America? We would have more resources and more opportunities for growth. Without a belief in God, there is nothing intrinsically good or bad. All morality is relative based upon individual or cultural beliefs. If a culture believed that the Jews were subhuman, such as we see with the Nazis, extermination of the Jews would be a moral act. Without God, there are no moral absolutes.
Well yea...when your Euro buddies made Religion into a political movement for their own personal power...it pretty much went down from there. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.
I was hoping that the "gauntlet" would be defined somewhere, and that it would make sense.
Without enering the labyrinth of phylosophy and metaphysics wich leads nowhere, since it can never be as conclusive as math or physics and further is a waste of time for people who actually have a life and must make a living, the only thing left is to respond to the absurdity of the challenge.
The briefest way to explain the absurdity is to simply rephrase the question thusly :
Name one horribly heinous mass murder or bloody crime that could not have been committed by an otherwise ordinary person.
The problem with hypotheticals is that it's impossible to separate the rational from the absurd. Anything is possible.
If there is a worthwhile challenge there, I fail to see it.
Christopher Hitchens does need someone to tell him what is right and wrong. For all his ranting about not needing a divine being to establish a morality, Hitchens has not provided a basis for any morality.
And he cannot. He cay say, “I say.” He can say “We say.” He can even say, “History says.” And all of those are changeable.
Bottom line is that not only does he need to be told what is right and wrong. He’ll also need updates. :>)
I would submit that The United States, which Hitchens chooses to be a citizen of, could not have been founded by nonbelievers.
Time to bring back this old tagline...
ping to read manana.
Sounds to me like a nerve was struck...
I see that Hitchens recognizes the absurdity of predestination, so in essence admits the existence of free will, but then denies or ignores the possibility that we were created whole and well but free and then used our freedom to do what we knew was wrong (Garden of Eden story) and began a self-perpetuating disease of humanity that then had to be healed.
I’m not an atheist, but I like Hitchens and his essay. He’s using his God-given brain to confront reality as best he can. Not very different from a religious seeker in my opinion.