Christopher Hitchens: Defender of Orthodoxy, Scourge of Liberalism

Seminary-trained Unitarian minister Marylin Sewell interviews Christopher Hitchens. An excerpt:

Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

Sewell: Let me go someplace else. When I was in seminary I was particularly drawn to the work of theologian Paul Tillich. He shocked people by describing the traditional God—as you might as a matter of fact—as, “an invincible tyrant.” For Tillich, God is “the ground of being.” It’s his response to, say, Freud’s belief that religion is mere wish fulfillment and comes from the humans’ fear of death. What do you think of Tillich’s concept of God?”

Hitchens: I would classify that under the heading of “statements that have no meaning—at all.” Christianity, remember, is really founded by St. Paul, not by Jesus. Paul says, very clearly, that if it is not true that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then we the Christians are of all people the most unhappy. If none of that’s true, and you seem to say it isn’t, I have no quarrel with you. You’re not going to come to my door trying convince me either. Nor are you trying to get a tax break from the government. Nor are you trying to have it taught to my children in school. If all Christians were like you I wouldn’t have to write the book.

'tis a curiosity of capitalism...

...that I can buy a can of prunes with pits.

A Scene From a Film

WALLY: Let's say: if I get a fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant, I mean, of course, even I have a tendency, I mean, you know, I mean, of course, I would hardly throw it out! I mean, I read it, I read it, and I just instinctively sort of, you know, if it says something like: "Conversation with a dark-haired man will be very important for you," well, I just instinctively think, you know, who do I know who has dark hair? Did we have a conversation? What did we talk about? In other words there's something in me that makes me read it, and I instinctively interpret it as if it were an omen of the future, but in my conscious opinion, which is so fundamental to my whole view of life, I mean, I would just have to change totally to not have this opinion, in my conscious opinion, this is simply something that was written in the cookie factory, several years ago, and in no way it refers to me! I mean, you know, the fact that I got--I mean, the man who wrote it did not know anything about me, I mean, he could not have known anything about me! There's no way that this cookie could actually have to do with me! And the fact that I've gotten it is just basically a joke! And I mean, if I were to go on a trip, on an airplane, and I got a fortune cookie that said "Don't go," I mean, of course, I admit I might feel a bit nervous for about one second, but in fact I would go, because, I mean, that trip is gonna be successful or unsuccessful based on the state of the airplane and the state of the pilot, and the cookie is in no position to know about that.

And I mean, you know, it's the same with any kind of prophecy or sign or an omen, because if you believe in omens, then that means that the universe--I mean, I don't even know how to begin to describe this. That means that the future is somehow sending messages backwards to the present! Which means that the future must exist in some sense already in order to be able to send these messages. And it also means that things in the universe are there for a purpose: to give us messages. Whereas I think that things in the universe are just there. I mean, they don't mean anything. I mean, you know, if the turtle's egg falls out of the tree and splashes on the paving stones, it's just because that turtle was clumsy, by accident. And to decide whether to send my ships off to war on the basis of that seems a big mistake to me.

ANDRE: Well, what information would you send your ships to war on? Because if it's all meaningless, what's the difference whether you accept the fortune cookie or the statistics of the Ford foundation? It doesn't seem to matter.

WALLY: Well, the meaningless fact of the fortune cookie or the turtle's egg can't possibly have any relevance to the subject you're analyzing. Whereas a group of meaningless facts that are collected and interpreted in a scientific way may quite possibly be relevant. Because the wonderful thing about scientific theories about things is that they're based on experiments that can be repeated! [Long pause while coffee is being served.]

ANDRE: Well, it's true, Wally. I mean, you know, following omens and so on is probably just a way of letting ourselves off the hook, so that we don't have to take individual responsibility for our own actions. I mean, giving yourself over to the unconscious can leave you vulnerable to all sorts of very frightening manipulation...

But I mean, the thing is, Wally, I think it's the exaggerated worship of science that has led us into this situation. I mean, science has been held up to us as a magical force that would somehow solve everything, but quite the contrary, it's done quite the contrary, it's destroyed everything. So, that is what has really led, I think, to this very strong, deep reaction against science that we're seeing now. Just as the Nazi demons that were released in the thirties in Germany were probably a reaction against a certain oppressive kind of knowledge and culture and rational thinking. So, I agree that we're talking about something potentially very dangerous, but modern science has not been particularly less dangerous.

WALLY: Right. Well, I agree with you, I completely agree. [Pause.] You know, the truth is, I think I do know what really disturbs me about the work you've described, and I don't even know if I can express it. But somehow it seems that the whole point of the work that you did in those workshops, when you get right down to it and you ask: what was it really about; the whole point really, I think, was to enable the people in the workshops, including yourself, to somehow sort of strip away every scrap of purposefulness from certain selected moments. And the point of it was so that you would then all be able to experience somehow just pure being. In other words you were trying to discover what it would be like to live for certain moments without having any particular thing that you were supposed to be doing. And I think I just simply object to that. I mean, I just don't think I accept the idea that there should be moments in which you're not trying to do anything! I think it's our nature to do things, I think we should do things, I think that purposefulness is part of our ineradicable, basic human structure, and to say that we ought to be able to live without it is like saying that a tree ought to be able to live without branches or roots, but actually, without branches or roots it wouldn't be a tree. I mean, it would just be a log. You see what I'm saying?

Religion, the New Atheism

"For 50 years, the big enemy out there that was against our way of life was communism, which was atheistic, so the average American saw secularism and atheism as being attached to a hostile force. Now the forces that are arrayed against our way of life are religious...it's militant fundamentalism, and now the average person in our society is attaching the idea of religion with being anti-democratic...and because of that, increasingly people are saying, "If you understand that Jesus is the only way, you're not going to be a good citizen in a pluralistic, democratic society; you're going to impose your views on people." And that has really, really gained a lot of traction with the average non-Christian in a place like New York since 9/11."

–Tim Keller, author of The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism in an interview on The White Horse Inn, November 1, 2009.

On Thankfulness

It's Thanksgiving once again, and once again I want to express my thankfulness to and for my blog acquaintances and friends, especially Cyberkitten, Kevin and Cori, Mike, and CRL.

One day last week during my morning commute I got to thinking about being thankful. What is required to give thanks? I decided that the most fundamental requirement is two persons, one to give thanks and one to receive it. Implied in this is that the person receiving thanks first acted graciously and thus deserved being thanked. This seems obvious and uncontroversial. You do something for me and I give you my thanks in return. But many times, seemingly without thinking, we give thanks for things that aren't the gracious act of another person.

I am thankful for my health, but to whom do I give thanks? Myself? My parents? Neither seems reasonable. I may be responsible in part for my health, but being thankful to myself seems odd. Do my parents deserve being thanked for involuntarily passing on to me a decent set of genes which, so far, have not lead to much in the way of significant health problems? That seems odd as well. Perhaps my health isn't something for which I can be properly thankful.

I am thankful for sunny days in the 70's with low humidity, a gentle breeze, and the opportunity to be outside and enjoy it. When I say I feel thankful, I really mean it. There is an undeniable sense of appreciation for receiving a gift graciously given. But is this another case of misplaced emotions? Is this inappropriate thankfulness a result of my early indoctrination into theism without which I would not have such feelings?

Since I can't undo my upbringing I guess I'll never know, but it seems that I'm not alone in feeling this "broad brush" thankfulness for things and circumstances that can't be attributed to another person; it seems pervasive throughout the human race. Perhaps we are being loose with our language. Perhaps we are transferring commonly experienced interpersonal thankfulness onto the impersonal.

Or perhaps we are not mistaken. Perhaps we share a deeply ingrained tendency to be thankful because the foundation of reality is a Personal Being. And, perhaps, if we are among the realities that have sprung forth from this Person, we naturally return thanks for the graciousness first shown to us.

It was dark, rainy, and there were many distractions during that drive to work, so maybe I was not thinking clearly. But I made it to work and, later, back home safely. And for that I am thankful.

It's a Church and State thing, you wouldn't understand.

Last week it was reported that, in 2007, Rhode Island's Bishop Thomas Tobin requested of Rep. Patrick Kennedy that he refrain from receiving Communion in light of Kennedy's position on abortion (he's for it). Some people felt the Bishop violated the separation of Church and State. Do you think it was, and, if so, why?

Saladin's Stumbling Start

I am reading a debate between Young-Earth Creationist Duane Gish and Evolutionist Ken Saladin. Gish has a Ph.D. in biochemestry from UC Berkeley and Saladin has a Ph.D. in parasitology from Flordia State.

Early in Saladin's opening comments he states:

"...science is empirical. That means it's based entirely on things that can be observed. Science is not based on revealed truth or idle speculation."

The first link in his chain of evidence for Evolution is the well-know story of the peppered moth:

"In any college biology textbook you can read the story of the peppered moth, which made a visible evolutionary change in a few decades under the influence of pollution and predators. That's what evolution is: the ability of a population to adjust genetically to environmental changes."

I assume Saladin relates the peppered moth story simply because it is well-known. However, I was surprised that he gives the peppered moth such a high profile (Exhibit #1, one minute into a 45 minute introduction). Why?

1) Because the peppered moth experiments Bernard Kettlewell conducted in the 1950s have been shown (by devout Darwinists) to have serious methodological flaws.

2) The experiments have no relevance to the controversial Darwinian claim of explaining how species originate.

3) In order to extrapolate proof of Darwinism from what valid evidence we can gather from the peppered moth (if there is any) requires a truckload of the very speculation Saladin labels anti-empirical and anti-scientific.

Now Saladin gets a pass on the first point. The peppered moth story was not widely debunked until the late 1990s; the debate in question occurred in 1988. However, I highlight the debunking since the peppered moth story is still widely purported to be clear evidence for—if not proof of—Darwinian macroevolution.

This brings me to my second point. Even if we overlook the problems with Kettlewell's experiment, what does it teach us about evolution? As the moth's environment changed from lighter lichen-covered trees to darker soot covered, lichen-free trees, the darker moths became a greater percentage of the general peppered moth population, probably because the lighter moths fell prey more easily to birds. From this we are supposed to be convinced that all the diversity of life on earth could spring forth from one primitive form. But this story sheds no light on the origin of either the light or the dark moths. From the industrial revolution to the mid-20th century the darker moths survived in greater numbers, but the members of the species experienced no evolutionary change whatsoever. Genetically, they exited the period of evolution exactly as they had entered it. After Clean Air laws passed, the environment reverted back to favor the lighter moths, and, as a result, their percentages increased. The peppered moth story may serve as an example of how a species may go extinct, but what does it tell us about how species arise, which is what Darwinism is purported to do?

So how did the fabled Peppered Moth become Exhibit #1 in the case for Darwinism? By way of that noxious mixture of revealed truth and idle speculation. In this case the "revealed truth" is that God does not exist, therefore, life must have evolved from non-living matter by purely naturalistic means. The idle speculation is that any variation within a population brought on by environmental conditions is evidence that large scale genetic changes are also possible in the same way—despite the fact that the empirical evidence gathered throughout human history shows that such variation has narrowly defined limits even when guided by intelligent minds under ideal conditions.

So why does Ken Saladin give such prominence to such flimsy evidence? Could it be that's all he has? I have little expectation that better evidence is forthcoming.