Mr. Hitchens
Mr. Turek
Though the debate happened a few months ago, I just finished watching the Christopher Hitchens-Frank Turek debate. I’ve read Hitchens’ God is not Great book, though I’ve never read anything by Turek. Watch it here, then add your thoughts in the comments section on this blog. I’d like to get a discussion going.
For what its worth, here are my thoughts:
As far as the overall debate went, I think Hitchens had the upper hand simply because of his style. Turek had the stronger arguments, though. It was just that Hitchens had some witty comebacks that got laughs from the audience. This drowned the strength of Turek’s arguments, so to speak.
Turek was able to communicate his arguments well, just not well enough.
Hitchens made much ado about nothing in his point that Turek was defending Deism instead of theism. Turek was right when he noted he need not defend the resurrection or miracles. He was prepared to (the arguments for those things are very strong, in my opinion), but there was no need for him to overplay his hand. The question was “does God exist?” not “is Christianity true?” Also, no one putting forth the design argument, teleological argument, etc, thinks it *alone* proves the existence of the biblical God. One argument in isolation only gets you part of the way. Putting all of the arguments together, however, makes a strong cumulative case. Turek didn’t miss this, as Hitchens seemed to imply.
Hitchens overplayed his “there are an infinite number of gods” point. The very definition of God as a perfect being worthy of worship would eliminate most other “gods” from consideration, as would a few of Turek’s arguments.
Hitchens really didn’t answer Turek’s arguments. He made plenty of claims, but most of the backing up he did was expressing incredulity towards anyone that disagreed. Incredulity is not a premise; its window-dressing. He made some attempts at answering Turek’s points, but most of them were red herrings (see the “Deist” point above).
Turek’s greatest strength was in the opening statement, when he layed out several strong arguments. Among these were pointing to several things that are recalcitrant facts for an atheistic worldview–morality and consciousness were two examples. These things fit like square pegs in a round hole for atheism, but they fit quite snugly in a theistic worldview.
Perhaps the most disappointing part was Hitchens’ misunderstanding of Turek’s point regarding God and morality. Hitchens expressed outrage; how dare Turek say that atheists don’t have morality?
That was not what Turek said. Turek’s point was a metaphysical one, not an epistemological one. He argued that theists and atheists alike can know the good and behave morally. What atheists have a problem with, however, is *grounding* morality. If atheism is true, then we might *think* we are behaving morally when we love our neighbors, but the words “moral,” “love” and “good” have no real meaning. Those words are either redefined to mean something totally different, or it’s all just a bunch of emoting.
If the universe (and humans) was produced by a mindless, purposeless, undirected material cause, then why think humans have any value? How can we go from a purely material, valueless beginning to–”abracadabra!”–morally worthy human beings who do morally good things? The only thing that separates us from a bag of snakes is how complicated our matter is arranged. Granted, we are more complicated than the snake, but why think that is a good grounds for human rights?
So the question isn’t so much “can we be good without *belief* in God?” The question is “is there such a thing as ‘good’ without God?” Hitchens missed this.
In fact, Hitchens’ worldview undercuts his moral pontificating. He spoke on and on about moral atrocities committed by religious people. He decried evil done by religious people. Turek’s response pointed out that Hitchens was borrowing capital from theism: “Christopher, you are sitting in God’s lap to slap His face.” If God does not exist, then morality is wholly subjective and non-binding, on the level of human convention…kind of like driving on the right side of the road or eating salad with a fork. One might say that 9/11 went against our culture’s conventions, but justifiably calling it evil is hard to do on an atheistic worldview.
Michael Ruse makes this point when he says,
“The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love they neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory . . .” .(quoted in &&Craig&&)
Craig puts the point well:
“If there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved by homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. After all, what is so special about human beings? They are just accidental by-products of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Some action, say, incest, may not be biologically or socially advantageous and so in the course of human evolution has become taboo; but there is on the atheistic view nothing really wrong about committing incest. If, as Kurtz states, ‘ The moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and custom, feeling and fashion,’ then the non-conformist who chooses to flout the herd morality is doing nothing more serious than acting unfashionably.”
William Lane Craig’s whole paper can be found here. It is well worth a read.
To sum up: Hitchens’ style can be very intimidating. He is a hard guy to engage with. He jumps around (not physically…rhetorically in the debate), interrupts, expresses incredulity regularly, and uses plenty of loaded language (example: he made plentiful use of the word “tyranny” when describing God’s kingdom.). His arrogance can make you shy. Somebody that isn’t used to handling that type of debater can easily get flustered. But at the end of the day, its all just a bunch of flotsam and jetsam. All he has is style. There’s not much meat to back up his witticisms and rhetoric.
Of course, there are responses to Turek’s arguments, and there are responses to those responses, and so on. Rather than me making this long post even longer by addressing them, I’ll let you guys bring them up in the comments. We can go deeper there.
Read Turek’s post debate thoughts.
Here are some thoughts of an atheist who was there (He also has a link to part two of his thoughts).
the position that turek took on moral values is totally understandable, if there were no moral central code given to humans be one supreme perfect creator … then there is no sense in anything…i can just as well have the right to come into another man´s home kill his family take his valuables, and i would not have to worry of repercussions on a moral state, because i fallowed the laws of natural selection and because i could kill him and his family and he could not kill me in defending his home, i have the right to own all that he owned, because i was stronger, it would be illegal but not immoral because any wild beast would do the same to survive or just to display supremacy.
in an atheist point of view of the world morals have no logic and no deep meaning, and human life is totally expendable as we are worth nothing as individuals, we are just one big piece of an evolutionary puzzle, a chaotic dance of chance that is meant to lead to nowhere
Mahatma,
Thanks for your comment!
It wouldn’t even be that you’d have the “right.” “Rights” would be strictly meaningless in a nontheistic universe. At best, they would just be conventions that a group in power chose to give others for conventional reasons, and they could be taken away for conventional reasons. Rights wouldn’t refer to something in reality that we actually possess.
The full MP3 audio of the Turek/Hitchens debate can be found at Apologetics315.
Brian,
I just checked out the apologetics315 site. It has some great speakers and debates on it. Thanks for the heads up.
Hi Rich, I watched the whole debate after opening your post. I always find it interesting to look at people’s arguments. But none of those presented were really speaking to me except one, and that came from Hitchens. What struck me was the absence of the idea of happiness. Both participants seemed to ignore the question of how happiness is possible with their answer of the question presented.
Hitchens is at least aware and clear about the fact that happiness is not possible with a God that created a universe of space and time in which all things die. When God knows of good and evil, then there is no escape from our dilemma, whether we like it or not. Turek missed to rebut Hitchens on his answer regarding the materiality of thought. Hitchens said he will no longer speak to Turek and bother him if he should be shot in the head. Turek seemed to share in this poor perspective that death is stronger than the mind and can really end anything. Turek did not show any real awareness of the implication of the resurrection of Jesus which is a denial of death, not just a denial of death in a very special case, but in all cases, if it be meaningful, true, leading to salvation and happiness.
So, while Hitchens did, as you say, not really answer the question of consciousness and mind, Turek seemed to have these facts limited to such a degree that his position is as meaningless as is Hitchens’s. However, I applaud Hitchens that he does not get tired to repeat passionately that an act of creation that would put you into this space time where all things suffer and get old and sick and die, for what ever reason, is ghastly. Good for him. To believe such thing means to attribute insanity to God.
Are you not in your version of reality really saying that God being responsible for and knowing of you being here, knowing of space time, knowing of good and evil, knowing of death as real and opposed to life, is insane? If death would be as real as life, God would be subject to it as well, which is a contradiction of terms. If, however, as Jesus demonstrated, death is illusion, the whole idea of sacrifice, guilt and finally fear on which all our misconceptions of reality and God are based, become meaningless.
This then leaves us with a tremendous responsibility which is to think like Jesus did. It is all in our thoughts, and we have to heal our minds, or better, to open them for healing. What we thought life and God is, is not so. We are wrong in every regard. The teachings of Jesus are still misunderstood.
Alban,
Thanks for stopping by!
I read your response, and I have a few questions.
When you talk of happiness, do you mean classical or modern happiness? Classical happiness is tethered to a life well lived–a ‘happy’ life is one lived with character and virtue. With this type of happiness, someone can be undergoing intense suffering and still be happy. The modern version, however, focuses on an inner feeling, a subjective state. What do you mean when you say “happiness”?
You say,
>Hitchens is at least aware and clear about the fact that happiness is not possible with a God that created a universe of space and time in which all things die. When God knows of good and evil, then there is no escape from our dilemma, whether we like it or not.
and later
>I applaud Hitchens that he does not get tired to repeat passionately that an act of creation that would put you into this space time where all things suffer and get old and sick and die, for what ever reason, is ghastly. Good for him. To believe such thing means to attribute insanity to God.
I don’t think I understand you here. How would God be evil/insane by putting us in a world with suffering and death? How is happiness and suffering incompatible? Thirdly, I’m not clear what you mean when you say that we have no way to escape our “dilemma” if God “knows of” good and evil?
Aside from a free will theodicy, God might have good reasons for allowing us to suffer, especially if death is not the end and if the goal in life is something other than obtaining modern happiness. Biblically, the chief end of man is to glorify, know, and become like Christ. Given this, suffering serves many redemptive purposes, even leading to happiness (classically construed). In fact, I have never heard any wise person say “the times in life I learned the most came in times of comfort.” Every person I’ve ever talked to/read says that they grew the most in times of trial. So I just don’t see why you agree with Hitchens in saying that God is/would be diabolical for putting us in a world where suffering exists (especially when human choice is the reason why evil and suffering is there in the first place!)
Lastly, when you say
>The teachings of Jesus are still misunderstood.
How do you know this? Seems like you have escaped the mistakes that everyone else has made. How have you managed to see things correctly while others have not? (I’m not balking at your claim to know per se, I just want some justification, that’s all)
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Thanks Rich. By happiness I simply mean undisturbed joy and peace without opposite as God wants it for His creations. To say that He wants otherwise is surely hard to believe even for the most arrogant person who projects his own evil past on God. Yet if He does not want anything but happiness for me and everyone, there can be nothing but this happiness which is obviously not a concept or even virtue, but an all-inclusive experience and reality. Anything else could not possibly be real and true, if God is really the Source of Life and all beings.
There cannot really be an existence of another will that would have the power to cause me to suffer. If so, God would no longer be God, because He would not be sole power, or God would be in conflict with Himself, split between opposing ideas.
The idea of another will that causes suffering is the idea of sin or separation. Jesus is very clear on the division of will. You can will only for this or that, but not for both, neither can you be neutral. Are you allowing for a God being exempt from this law? Unless you do, He can only will happiness for you.
You seem to mean that suffering is caused by human choice and not God. Yet if God knows of this place and still “sends” innocent beings here to undergo whatever forms of suffering, that would have to be evil, wouldn’t it? But if suffering is really a matter of human choice, how real can it be? Is human choice as real as God’s idea about you, or His love for you and everyone? And in what sense can human choice cause suffering if God really loves everyone?
The only answer can be that a mind believes in his own ideas apart from God’s ideas, because he really thinks he is separate. Symbolically you can say that Adam believed the idea that he was driven out of paradise or heaven. He believed he was really separated. By whom and for what? What could one possibly do to justify an act by God like this? He believed the lies of the serpent. A lie is a lie, and cannot cause anything unless it is believed. It certainly does not affect the knowledge or love of God or change reality. How dark and fearful do we paint God when we accept the idea that He punishes us for our mistaken ideas?
There can be no sin or separation being as factual as is God, if God is God, therefore you have to make the UNCOMPROMISING assertion that sin and separation in all its myriads of forms is illusion. You can escape an illusion, you can forgive an illusion, but not a reality. If sin and separation is real, there is no escape. There can be no escape from what is real.
That leaves you with the idea that you are not from here, as Jesus taught it, not from the world, but from Heaven, and will have to return to Heaven. As not from here, you are not known to the world. The world only knows you as a body, not as a mind, and only as a mind. Why? Jesus taught consistently that the world does not know him, therefore, it should be clear that it does not know you either.
Not once is the question of happiness touched by the Turek or Hitchens, although Hitchens touches on the idea of purpose. But as long as you are confronted with anything outside of you, you will always be in conflict and have an enemy. True happiness has to be a dream in this idea.
You ask: “How would God be evil/insane by putting us in a world with suffering and death? How is happiness and suffering incompatible?” I don’t see why you don’t immediately see the absurdity of it. Don’t you call someone evil who is killing his brother, or taking your property away or causing you to suffer by torturing you? Isn’t all that a very possible scenario within the frame of where you find yourself and indeed happening to innumerable people on this planet? Is God as you see him beyond your moral, and exempt from the laws He supposedly dictated to his people? If He put you here, what do you say?
Remember, we talk about ideas. So did Turek and Hitchens. All you ever do is look at ideas. You cannot come up with anything that is not an idea in your mind. The body is an idea. The witnesses it presents to you about an objective world outside of you are all an integral part of the body itself. The (neuro-)signals from your senses to your brain are all interpreted by your mind. So the source of what you think you see outside must be internal, not external.
Jesus said that committing adultery starts with and is given already when you even lust after a woman. This statement is in no way reconcilable with the idea of separation of cause and effect. It emphasizes or gives priority to thought, and traditionally that is totally misunderstood or ignored. Mostly it is misconstrued in that sense that God knows about your impure thoughts and will punish you also for them.
I reject the idea that suffering is necessary for learning. It can, and confronted with it, it has to be used to facilitate learning and make decisions that lead away from suffering, just as Jesus had to decide not to judge his adversaries, but only offer love and forgiveness. We only seem to need or demand suffering to a degree that it is fair to say we are addicted to suffering. We don’t know any better. But consider the lilies in the field, they don’t worry, they don’t plan and fail accordingly, they don’t conflict with each other. They don’t know of suffering as humans do. And yet, aren’t we deserving much more? Aren’t we loved much more than those? So what are you doing here? Suffering certainly is not justified in any way. It has to be a choice, and therefore you can be free of it as God wants you to be and as you are created by Him.
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Did I answer your questions, Rich? Is there nothing for you to say?
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Alban,
Where to start…
There’s a lot in your post that I should comment on. I can’t, though (it would take hours), I’m boiling it down to a select few. This is the main reason I’ve taken so long to respond to you. If you want me to continue dialogging with you, I suggest you make your replies shorter and definitely that you don’t pepper me with so many questions. Just give 2 or 3, and that will make commenting back to you more manageable.
Your words are preceeded by a >, mine by a –
>By happiness I simply mean undisturbed joy and peace without opposite as God wants it for His creations. To say that He wants otherwise is surely hard to believe even for the most arrogant person who projects his own evil past on God.
–Seems like you go with the modern definition of happiness. This is a very thin view of happiness. Even on this view of happiness, though, it is compatible with suffering. Just look at Jesus’ life. He suffered, yet he was infinitely joyful. The suffering he experienced was quite real, it wasn’t just a false idea or lie he believed.
>Yet if He does not want anything but happiness for me and everyone, there can be nothing but this happiness which is obviously not a concept or even virtue, but an all-inclusive experience and reality. Anything else could not possibly be real and true, if God is really the Source of Life and all beings.
–What are you saying here? Can you explain this more clearly?
>There cannot really be an existence of another will that would have the power to cause me to suffer. If so, God would no longer be God, because He would not be sole power, or God would be in conflict with Himself, split between opposing ideas.
–God isn’t ultimately concerned with our subjective happiness. The Bible talks again and again about suffering being real and it being something allowed or even sometimes given by God:
Romans 5:2ff–We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; persevereance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
2 Cor 12: 7ff–To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. (the rest of the section is also worth a read.)
Philippians 3:10ff–I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Also read 2 Cor 6:3-13 and 1 Peter 4:12-14…Peter even calls his readers “blessed” when they endure insults because of Christ, and he tells them to rejoice in their sufferings!
>The idea of another will that causes suffering is the idea of sin or separation.
–No, this is not the biblical definition of sin. Sin is transgressing God’s law and rebelling against His rule.
>You seem to mean that suffering is caused by human choice and not God. Yet if God knows of this place and still “sends” innocent beings here to undergo whatever forms of suffering, that would have to be evil, wouldn’t it?
–No…see the above Bible verses. God can and does have overriding reasons to allow suffering in our lives (makes us more Christlike, for example…see the Philippians quote and the 1 Peter quote). You don’t even need the Bible verses to see this. Time and time again, the people that are the most deep and thoughtful are those that have experienced a certain amount of trial and tribulation, not the ones who only have comfort and ease to speak of.
>How dark and fearful do we paint God when we accept the idea that He punishes us for our mistaken ideas?
–Why think that God is “dark” and “fearful” if He punishes people for sin? We intuitively want justice for those who are taken advantage of. For example, when a family in Somalia is brutally killed, the daughters raped, the sons sold into slavery by bandits, we instinctively cry out for justice. If God does nothing to those bandits, if He stays inactive or just showers love on them, then He’s not a God of justice worthy of worship. Read the Psalms.
>You ask: “How would God be evil/insane by putting us in a world with suffering and death? How is happiness and suffering incompatible?” I don’t see why you don’t immediately see the absurdity of it.
–Again, its not absurd at all unless you have a worldview that can’t make sense of it. Like I already said, look at Jesus’ life: He experienced suffering, yet he had a deep and abiding joy.
>Don’t you call someone evil who is killing his brother, or taking your property away or causing you to suffer by torturing you?
–C’mon, Alban! You are being very uncharitable. Of course I call someone who’s doing that evil, but that’s not all that suffering is! All torture is suffering, but not all suffering is torture. If I’m undergoing hardship, its not like God’s “torturing” me. In sports, athletes must push themselves hard. Their coach must take them through gut busting and grueling activities. If they don’t, the team ends up weak. Their skills must be formed by persistent hardship in the practice room. Its just the way it is; this isn’t torture…its much the same in life.
–Since you are a fan of ACIM, I think you’ve got quite a dilemma on your hands when it comes to evil and suffering. From what I know about ACIM, it promotes a monistic view of the world and God. Your comments about ideas and such certainly bear this out (of course, if I’ve misunderstood you, please correct me). With this sort of view, you have 2 choices when it comes to evil:
a) evil is real, but it infects the being of God (since God is the only thing that exists, and the world/us are just parts of that one being we call “god.”)
or
b) evil is an illusion of the mind.
Both choices are quite sticky for you.
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Don’t get me wrong, Rich, I don’t want to take suffering or even the idea of suffering away from you. I am also not saying that it is not real to you or anyone in your/his suffering. I am also not saying Jesus faked his suffering.
I am saying, however, that this is a pretty poor perspective on life. Why would God design a situation where his perfect creation would have to learn (why learn in the first place?) and learn through something as ineffective as suffering. Every human relations or human resources guy in a serious company knows that learning through pain is much to expensive.
So? There has to be more to life than this. Don’t you think? But I should answer some questions. Next time, hopefully.
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