Hitchens vs D'Souza

So just this afternoon I watched two debates on religion between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza (youtube is a wonderful thing. Here and Here). A rather exhausting exercise in its own way, to be honest. I recently read Dinesh's book Life After Death, and had heard from fellow believers that he was an excellent debater, and wanted to see him in action. I've watched other people debate Hitchens on this topic, both before I became a believer and after, as of all of the atheist commentators, he has been and is still my favorite, his rather dismissive, at times insulting rhetoric aside. None of his opponents have ever, in my best estimation, really put up a good fight. D'Souza certainly did better than most, but on balance I'd still have to say that I find Hitchens' arguments more convincing on their face, in spite of the fact that I'm thoroughly on D'Souza's side. Here's what I see as the problem:

D'Souza co-opts science for his own ends without, I think, properly allowing that just because our current best knowledge of science leaves room God, God is not inevitably going to be the conclusion. He is correct in pointing out that modern scientific knowledge in no way disproves God, but this is not a difficult point to make, and of course Hitchens jumps all over it.

Strangely enough, I've never seen any of Hitchens' opponents point out perhaps the greatest flaw in his arguments: that so many of the atrocities and attitudes in religion that he is pointing to that cause human misery are simply espoused nowhere in the New Testament.

Now, there is of course the main point to be had that he simply doesn't agree with the idea of giving one's will over to a supreme being, and that of course is the ultimate hurdle, and at its core the truest critique of Christianity (and I'd say the root of most objections to it). I'm not saying that is the reason he has rejected Christianity, as that would be doing him an immense disservice, but theologically speaking, at least in that sense he seems to understand the religion quite well. However, in so many others he falls completely short.

For instance, he loves to point out events where various branches of Christianity have sanctioned the behavior of one tyrant or another. Two examples from the debates I watched today: the Catholic Church allowing Robert Mugabe to come and receive sacraments at the Vatican while excommunicating a bishop for having a sexual relationship with his housekeeper. Another example he gave was the Russian Orthodox church sanctioning the recent Putin regime and allowing itself to become the only religion (and, for that matter, branch of Christianity) legal to be practiced in Russia.

The salient point to be made here is that there is nothing in the bible that sanctions these sorts of things. In fact, Paul is very clear in this, that the only way to pursue God in this world is from a position of weakness, not power, and so any branch of Christianity tying itself to a state government has no theological basis. The original model for Christianity was small communities getting together to strengthen one another in their way of life, to be a model in opposition to the ways and power structures of the world. Admittedly, I can see why D'Souza would hesitate to make these arguments, as it brings up difficult doctrinal points, and that many Christian thinkers disagree with me on this. That said, I can't find any places in the New Testament where we are told, as believers, to aspire to positions of earthly power. In fact, we are told that such things are dangerous, and make it more difficult to enter the kingdom of God. And I have no clue by what theological basis the Catholic Church allows Mugabe anywhere near its premises, given his track record of tyranny. The reality is that the Catholic Church is a man-made institution (no matter what some might say to the contrary) and thus vulnerable to all of the same corruptions and frailties that every power structure has. Power has and always will bring out the worst in a great many people. In this case, Mugabe remains quite popular in many parts of Africa, and the Catholic Church is busy establishing a heavy presence there. Thus, politically speaking, it makes sense to maintain ties with him, despite the fact that they have threatened excommunication to public figures for far less heinous crimes (Catholic statesmen in America being in favor of the legalization of gay marriage and abortion, for instance. Now, no matter what your opinions on the issue, and I happen to be very much against abortion, the "crime" of being able to separate your beliefs as a Christian from your vocation as a statesman in a pluralist nation is in no may comparable to the massive plundering of the resources of an entire nation, so much so that its people are literally starving to death).

So where is the fault of Christianity in all of this? Nowhere, of course; the fault lies with people; frail, broken people. And so goes the way of most of Hitchens' arguments. They either rely on massive misinterpretations of scripture (I don't want heaven to be sitting on a cloud singing praises all day for all eternity, either) or simply a thoroughly flawed concept of what the bible actually commands. For another example, he points out that Christianity really espouses an "us against them" mentality, that heaven is for "us" and hell for "them", that there is really a great pleasure to be had for believers knowing that their enemies will be tormented in hell. To me, this is an incredibly insulting caricature of my religion - I know that there are believer out there who do feel this way (sadly), but I've never met them. It actually fills me with a great sadness that many people will simply never accept God (both on the human and spiritual level), because I believe that it means most will never find their true calling, find what it means to be truly human. For, if God created us, and created us in his image, then we are meant to exist with His grace at the forefront of our minds - nothing less will ever fulfill us. I know this will be seen by many as extreme arrogance on my part ("I know how to live better than you so listen up"), but arrogant or not, it is the only tenable conclusion one can arrive at after accepting the core tenets of the Christian faith.

Now, clearly, as for Hitchens' primary objection, that Jesus' command to give no thought for family, for tomorrow, and simply to follow Him, is insane and evil, well, of course, if God is not God, Hitchens is certainly right. If God in fact does exist, however, and if He created all of us, it is not a crazy assumption at all. In fact, it is crazy NOT to do exactly that, as we know that nothing less will ever bring us true fulfillment. And furthermore, as to Hitchens' idea of most believers as weak and looking for answers and simply too gullible to find something better, well, I hold myself up as an example of another model. I tried looking for answers everywhere else, but found nothing until I found God. I also can say confidently that I have experienced the presence of God directly in my own life, and have had experiences that I would call supernatural, so much so that I would consider it INSANE for me NOT to believe in God. Now, clearly, this is never going to convince a hard-core skeptic, people so convinced of a certain reality (or perhaps too terrified of another one) that it would be easier for them to say that I made up all of these experiences, that I just imagined them, than actually admit that there may be something to all this. And D'Souza, in what I think is his best argument, points this out: that 95% of the world believes in a God of some sort, believes in the supernatural. Is this because 95% of the world is gullible, uneducated, stupid? Or is it because they all know people who have told credible stories of things just a little bit too strange to really be a coincidence? Try reading Augustine's Confessions, where he lays bare his life story, warts and all, and then tell me he is merely making up the very few accounts of miraculous events that occur in bits of his writings (one notable, and very detailed, account can be found in The City of God, Book XXII, Chapter 8). To call all of us who experience the miraculous at best gullible, at worst liars, really strains credibility.

Of course, I've come to the conclusion that apologetics, arguments, accounts of the supernatural - none of them have the power to convince anyone that God exists, still less the power to convince someone to follow Jesus. The same holds true for Atheism in many ways: try to convince a life-long believer that God doesn't exist, even if said believer has no real concrete evidence that He does, and you're likely to get nowhere. And so the two sides continue to talk past one another, D'Souza (I believe incorrectly) co-opting science to make his points, and Hitchens unfairly abusing Christianity to make his.

Unfortunately, there's very little to be done about this. It's a reality of our modern world that people tend to take seriously the beliefs that reinforce their own world-views, and screen out or laugh off the ones that don't. I only converted after being saturated in the ideas of Christianity week in and week out for 18 months, after being a committed skeptic for most of my life. Some might well claim I was just manipulated. I'd say that, being an atheist for so long, I had a pretty strong resistance to Christian ideas to begin with, and it was only their quality and truth that eventually won out.