Hitchens on God

Christopher Hitchens has added his own shrill, annoying voice to the renewed argument about the existence and value of God in his new book God Is Not Great.

My general attitude with all things Hitchens is to ignore them to the degree that I can. Hitchens is such an angry, intollerant, and ignorant buffoon that it usually seems like the sanest course. Yet, for some reason, people keep publishing his writing. He advertises himself as a "contrarian," presumably because, whatever argument he's having, he is determined to pick the wrong side.

And now, he's decided to add his voice to the anti-God chorus. As with the Harris, Dawkins, and Dennett volumes on this subject, I will probably only give Hitchen's book the lightest of reads -- enough to get the gist, because his arguments, like the arguments of his compatriots are simply warmed over versions of arguments that were old when Bertrand Russell was young. Indeed, the most frustrating thing about the popularity of these books right now is how shallow and obvious they are. They aren't adding anything new to the debate, and there are much better arguments against the existence of God than the ones that Hitchens, Dawkins, et. al. are putting forth (as anyone who has studied philosophy of religion would know).

What is interesting about this new wave of arguments against God is that they really aren't interested in the metaphysical questions about God's existence or non-existence. They aren't going to grapple in any meaningful way with the ontological argument or Aquinas's five proofs. They take as their premise the argument that religion is harmful and immoral, and that followers of religion are contributing to the disintegration of the moral base of society. This is interesting only because it is a neat reversal of the usual argument for the existence of God -- namely that God's existence is necessary for morality. Hitchens and gang rightly reject that formulation, and yet don't recognize that the arrow points both ways. Religion neither garauntees morality nor renders it impossible. It is a way of seeing the world, which may be consistent either with morality or with its perversion. Religion is one way of rendering  life as meaningful, but this does not render it as moral. Morality arises from the need for meaning, whether that meaning comes from a belief in God or not.

What is particularly ironic about Hitchens, of all people, making a moral argument against the existence of God, is that Hitchens himself is more or less precisely the opposite of a moral authority. From his character assassination of Bill Clinton to his fossilized and frozenly fanatical support of the Iraq war, and now to his vicious attacks on religion, Christopher Hitchens offers not evidence that he has more moral credibility as an atheist than, say, Jim Wallis does as a Christian. Indeed, in a debate on moral stature between Jim Wallis and Christopher Hitchens, I would give it to Wallis any day of the week.

I raise all of this because I am listening to Hitchens' generally incoherent arguments right now on Christopher Lydon's Open Source. Lydon's show, unlike a lot of talk shows, doesn't take phone calls, but reads comments off of its website. One in particular caught my attention:

I would argue though, that it isn’t religion, but self-righteousness, intolerance and bigotry that are the problems and that although bigots like to cloak themselves in religion, atheists can be just as stupid, self-righteousness and intolerant as anyone else.

Beneath this comment should read the following: "See, e.g., Christopher Hitchens."

Comments

[Bob Cornwall]

Yes, you're on the money. After reading half way through Dawkins I had to put it down. It just kept repeating the same old saws, and Harris does his business by insisting that unless you're a fanatic you're not a real Christian, which frees him from having to deal Aquinas or anyone else of stature, ancient or modern!

[CH]

In return for the hospitality of Washingtonpost.com this week, may I be churlish and mention something that has been irritating me about the print version of the paper ever since I moved here twenty-five years ago? The fact is that the objective, detached, independent-minded Washington Post publishes horoscopes.

Harmless enough, you may say. But how true is it that nonsense and pseudo-science are harmless? Astrology is widely considered to be discredited because of certain very obvious objections:

1) It gives people the impression that they are the center of the universe and that the constellations are somehow arranged with them in mind.

2) It suggests that there is a supernatural supervision of our daily lives, and that this influence can be detected and expounded by mere humans.

3) It bases itself on the idea that our character and personality are irrevocably formed at the moment of birth or even of conception.

Who does not know how to laugh at the credulity of those who fall for this ancient hoax? And why would it matter, except that religion, too, believes that the cosmos was created with us in mind, that our lives are supervised by an almighty force that priests and rabbis and imams can interpret, and that – by way of doctrines such as “original sin” – our natures have been largely determined when we are still in the womb or the cradle.

Credulity, in the sense of simple-mindedness, is often praised by those who claim to admire the “simple faith” of the devout. But the problem with credulity is that it constitutes an open invitation to the unscrupulous, who will take advantage of those who are prepared to believe things without evidence. This is why, for so many of us, the notion of anything being “faith-based” is a criticism rather than a recommendation.