The fool has said in his heart, “there is no God”.
Hitchens = fool
For Christopher Hitchens (who is presumably not here to defend himself or answer questions):
I must confess that I don’t understand the importance of his challenge. Having spent a lot of time talking with friends who are atheists, and some of them of the very strong variety, it seems to me that the question of atheists and ethics is not:
“Can an atheist be good (i.e. think ethical thoughts; make ethical statements; perform ethical actions)”
but rather:
“Is an atheist LOGICALLY and OBJECTIVELY JUSTIFIED in believing that they are thinking ethical thoughts, making ethical statments and performing ethical actions?”
The answer to that latter question seems to hinge on what you think ethics is. In a materialist/mechanistic universe, there cannot be independently ethical thoughts/statements/acts; there can only be the movements of atoms in particular regions of space that correlate to what we call human brains, and so on.
I don’t think atheists are justified in claiming for themselves ethical thoughts/statements/acts in such a universe.
Such ethics would be a nonsense.
I believe Douglas Wilson challenged Hitchens on this in a previous debate and I have not really seen Hitchens give a logical explanation as to why, given his worldview, ethics -— the one that tells us we OUGHT to do this and OUGHT NOT do that, is objectively binding.
INDEED.
And an arrogant fool.