Giving atheism a bad name, part two

Atheism is a thin broth whose flavor is not improved by whine and poses, but Christopher Hitchens and a few other authors have lately been peddling that old-time irreligion with the zeal of door-to-door salesmen from the glory days of engineless lawn mowers, home dairy delivery, and subscriptions to annual updates from the encyclopedia company.

I mentioned in my previous post on this subject that apart from his full speaking calendar, Hitchens also had a debate going with Douglas Wilson in the pixelated pages of Christianity Today magazine. The proposition that the two men are arguing about is whether Christianity is good for the world. Hitchens, not surprisingly, says no.

Kudos to the debate sponsors for getting Hitchens to focus his anti-religious animus down to one organized religion. In this format, we're less likely to suffer from the clumsiness with which papers like the New York Times still tiptoe around atrocities committed or imagined in the name of Islam.

Hitchens himself is not given to tiptoeing around anything. I suspect his latest book title ("God is Not Great") is a conscious, albeit translated, echo of the Arabic "Allahu Akbar" that murdering "militants" of our time have been known to shout while blowing themselves up or sawing the heads off their hapless captives. Nevertheless, Hitchens' scorn for the religous impulse is such that he consistently conflates faiths that should not be conflated. It is to their credit that neither Douglas Wilson nor his editors let Hitchens get away with that.

In their first exchange, Hitchens opened festivities with a three-part claim: that morality is rooted in man rather than in God, that many Christian teachings are both incredible and immoral, and that Christianity must acknowledge its sinners as well as its saints.

Even in my paraphrase, it should be obvious that the third point is moot, because Christianity already does that. Hitchens wants to use Christian honesty as a cudgel with which to beat the faithful for our alleged shortsightedness, however:

"Every Christian church has had to make some apology for its role in the Crusades, slavery, anti-Semitism, and much else. I do not think that such humility discredits faith as such, because I tend to think that faith is a problem to begin with, but I do think that humility will lead to the necessary conclusion that religion is man-made," Hitchens opines loftily, in blithe ignorance of how much he flirts with the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

His chief example of an "immoral" Christian teaching is the concept of vicarious redemption, "whereby one's own responsibilities can be flung onto a scapegoat and thereby taken away." This is problematic, Hitchens says, because "In my book, I argue that I can pay your debt or even take your place in prison but I cannot absolve you of what you actually did." Accordingly and by his lights, forgiveness is an "exorbitant fantasy."

More liberal Christians have trouble with the same idea. At least one Episcopalian pastor worked himself into an operatic fit of indignation to exclaim that "the idea of God murdering his son for the salvation of the world is morally indefensible." Christopher Johnson had a pithy rejoinder (so then God letting His Son die for no reason at all is morally defensible?), although one imagines Hitchens applauding the pastor in question.

Ironically, the argument that Hitchens cites from his own book is actually right, as far as it goes, but only because Hitchens is not the second person of the Most Holy Trinity.

Douglas Wilson answered Hitchens by pointing up front to the contradictions in the atheist's thought:

"Your first point was that the Christian faith cannot credit itself for all that "Love your neighbor" stuff, not to mention the Golden Rule, and the reason for this is that such moral precepts have been self-evident to everybody throughout history who wanted to have a stable society. You then move on to the second point, which contains the idea that the teachings of Christianity are "incredibly immoral." In your book, you make the same point about other religions. Apparently, basic morality is not all that self-evident. So my first question is: Which way do you want to argue this? Do all human societies have a grasp of basic morality, which is the theme of your first point, or has religion poisoned everything, which is the thesis of your book?"

On the second objection, Wilson said basically "What does it matter if you think some Christian tachings are immoral if there is no God? Who are you to judge, and by what authority?"

That's an interesting response for a Protestant to make, but after a bit of exposition from the Old Testament, Wilson went on to the third point by taking exception to the way Hitchens had tried to lump saints and sinners.

As a Catholic, I'd have taken a different tack. Wilson presumably puts more stock in being among the elect, so he frowned on fraternization: "What you are doing is saying that Christianity must be judged not only on the basis of those who believe the gospel in truth and live accordingly but also on the basis of those baptized Christians who cannot listen to the Sermon on the Mount without a horse laugh and a life to match. You are saying that those who excel in the course and those who flunk out of it are all the same."

At this point, my scorecard had Hitchens and Wilson even with each other, chiefly because Wilson missed several opportunities to expose the shallowness of the preparation that Hitchens had done, or defend core Christian beliefs.

Hitchens squibbed the kickoff in round two: his only substantive point thanked Wilson for having made so many concessions. Wilson claimed not to have made as many concessions as Hitchens thought he had. In sum, he said, "The Christian faith is good for the world because it provides the fixed standard which atheism cannot provide and because it provides forgiveness for sins, which atheism cannot provide either." Fair points both, but because Hitchens had already revealed an unwillingness to understand the mechanics of forgiveness, and because he had already alluded to "human solidarity" as a workable if nebulous substitute for Christianity's fixed standard, I do not think Wilson was convincing. This was the "coulda been a contenda" round, with no change in the relative standing of the opponents.

Round Three was more entertaining. Hitchens imploded:

On the matter of Stalin and the related question of secular or atheist barbarism, I shyly call your attention to chapter seventeen of my little book, which attempts an answer to this frequently asked question. Until 1917, Russia had been ruled for centuries by an absolute monarch who was also the head of a corrupt and bigoted Orthodox Church and was supposed to possess powers somewhat more than merely human. With millions of hungry and anxious people so long stultified and so credulous, Stalin the ex-seminarian would have been a fool if he did not call upon such a reservoir of ignorance and servility, and seek to emulate his predecessor. If Mr. Wilson would prefer to compare like with like and point to a society that lapsed into misery and despotism by following the precepts of Epicurus or Spinoza or Jefferson or Einstein, I will gladly meet him on that ground.

Fortunately, Wilson had the wit to recognize the opening Hitchens had given him. More on that in the next post of this series.

Looking back: Part One

Looking ahead: Part Three; Part Four