God is not Great—Parting Thoughts

I finished god is not Great by Christopher Hitchens today. It took me almost six months to work through it, but I responded to every chapter here on the blog. (You can access them on the archives on the left side of the blog—the first entry is September 30, 2009.)

As you will be able to tell by reading through my responses, I didn’t hate the book. Obviously, there is much in it with which I disagree, and at times I found myself on the defensive while I read. I didn’t plan for this to be the case, but Hitchens’ lively rhetoric and his use of ridicule unexpectedly evoked anger and indignation from me. He’s a great writer and religions give him a lot of ammunition.

Here are some things I walked away with having read the book:

The nature of the debate has changed. In the past, attacks against religion focused on the historical reliability of religious documents or in the philosophical claims of the religions. Hitchens glances by these, focusing instead on the moral deficiencies of religions and religious people, and he has found an audience. He doesn’t care about the cosmological argument or the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, he wants to know why religious people fly airplanes into buildings and why the divorce rate in the church is just as high as that outside of the church. If we continue to focus our apologetics on the reliability of the Scriptures and philosophical proofs for the existence of God, then we are failing to answer the questions that people like Christopher Hitchens are asking.

Religious authority is a major distraction from the Gospel. There is a subtext throughout god is not Great of contempt for authority—especially religious authority. Much of the book has the tone of a rebellious teenager yelling “You’re not the boss of me!” in the face of his bewildered parents who can no longer physically restrain him.

But maybe this is what the church needs to hear.

The Gospel is not about power. It’s not about forcing people to behave a certain way by flexing our political or military muscles. Christian leadership is leadership through service, and the spiritual authority of the church does not extend to the world, which Paul says is under the control of the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2).

When Jesus ministered in the flesh, he was opposed by the religious authorities. He did not try to pull rank on them and insist upon his right to rule over the faith community. He led by service and let the power of the Holy Spirit testify to his authority. The church today needs to follow suit. We need to live like Christ, proclaim the Gospel as the basis for our changed lives, and allow the power of the word and Spirit to influence our world.

Science is portrayed as the primary antagonist to the church. In the final chapter of the book, Hitchens writes:

“Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to be able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard—or try to turn back—the measurable advances that we have made.”

There is some basis to this perception. The scientific community and the religious community offer competing stories of the origins of the cosmos. Personally, I think we need to be careful about making this the battle ground. I don’t think most people can even articulate the theory of evolution, let alone evaluate its tenability. But, they do notice when we offer up junk science as a competing interpretation. That’s not to say that we should abandon the sciences or stop trying to show how scientific inquiry can support our views, but it is to say that we need to be absolutely sure of the soundness of our methods and we need to choose our battles. We can’t make science the enemy. If what we say about the world is true, then we have nothing to fear about honest exploration of it.

Hitchens has not interacted with the greatest Christian minds or the best Christian ideas. One of the frustrating things about reading god is not Great is the feeling one gets that Hitchens thinks that Christians have never read David Hume or that we haven’t updated our apologetics since the Middle Ages. Sure, he quotes C.S. Lewis on occasion, but Mere Christianity was written in 1952. What about 21st century apologetics? Atheists need to react to the work of Wolfhart Pannenberg. He is conversant in particle physics, string theory, evolutionary biology, philosophy of all kinds, ancient Near Eastern religion, biblical theology, systematic theology, and anthropology. His apologetic is postmodern. Even interaction with guys like N.T. Wright or Ravi Zacharias would be better than what we see in god is not Great. While some people’s faith may be shattered by his book, I found that Hitchens didn’t even address the questions that I am asking or the reasons that I believe.

A new approach to apologetics is needed. In “The Grand Inquisitor,” the most famous chapter in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, atheist Ivan and Christian Alyosha debate the existence of God. Actually, the chapter is more of a diatribe by Ivan about why God does not exist. When Ivan finishes, his brother Alyosha responds by kissing him.

I think this is the apologetic that our world needs. They may attack us with ridicule and intellectual arguments, but the most powerful response is not angry retaliation, but love. Like I said above, our culture doesn’t seem as concerned about whether or not Christianity is true, but whether or not it works. If God is real, then Christianity will make a difference in the lives of his followers. (This is also the apologetic of Wolfhart Pannenberg.)

I wish Christopher Hitchens the best. I hope he continues to be open about his doubts, and I hope the Christian community responds to him with compassion. (I think I read that his experience debating Douglas Wilson was encouraging to him. He was surprised at how hospitable Christians were to him.) The only request that I may make of Hitchens is that he tone down the ridicule. No one likes to be mocked by strangers who don’t know them or their stories. He’s a great writer; I hope he can use his gifts to advance dialog rather than impede it.

Christopher Hitchens on "The Last-Ditch ‘Case’ Against Secularism"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city."

In chapter seventeen, “An Objection Anticipated: The Last-Ditch ‘Case’ Against Secularism,” Hitchens deals with the accusation that a secular state will inevitably fall into totalitarianism. On the contrary, argues Hitchens, it’s religious states that most often fall into totalitarianism. He writes:

“Whether we examine the oriental monarchies of China or India or Persia, or the empires of the Aztecs or Incas, or the medieval courts of Spain and Russia and France, it is almost unvaryingly that we find that these dictators were also gods, or the heads of churches. More than mere obedience was owed them: any criticism of them was profane by definition, and millions of people lived and died in pure fear of a ruler who could select you for a sacrifice, or condemn you to eternal punishment, on a whim.”

What about the Stalinists? Weren’t they secular totalitarians? No, says Hitchens. Stalinism was not secular but religious. He writes:

“Communist absolutists did not so much negate religion, in societies that they well understood were saturated with faith and superstition, as seek to replace it. The solemn elevation of infallible leaders who were a source of endless bounty and blessing; the permanent search for heretics and schismatics; the mummification of dead leaders as icons and relics; the lurid show trials that elicited incredible confessions by means of torture . . . none of this was very difficult to interpret in traditional terms.”

What about the Nazis and other post-World-War-I fascists? Hitchens writes:

“Arising out of the misery and humiliation of the First World War, fascist movements were in favor of traditional values against Bolshevism, and upheld nationalism and piety. It is probably not a coincidence that they arose first and most excitedly in Catholic countries, and it is certainly not a coincidence that the Catholic Church was generally sympathetic to fascism as an idea.”

While Hitchens acknowledges that secular humanists have made their mistakes in history and that some religious people have been bright spots in opposing totalitarianism, in general religion has been an embarrassing ally to totalitarians.

It is important to note at the onset that much of what Hitchens has to say is right—religious institutions often have been embarrassing allies of totalitarians. We need look no further than the contemporary situation in some of the Middle Eastern Muslim countries to see what harm can be done when church and state are infused. I have Anabaptist tendencies and affirm the separation of church and state.

But, despite my agreements with Hitchens, there is much to which I object. Unlike the previous chapters that all attack religion, this one sets out to defend secular pluralism against a religious counter-attack. So, when religious people point to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia as examples of what can happen in a secular state, Hitchens responds by saying: (1) religious states are inherently totalitarian, and (2) Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were religious, not secular states. I don’t find either of these arguments compelling.

First, I disagree that a few examples of the church behaving badly prove that religion is inherently totalitarian and that all religious leaders are despots. Hitchens neglects the “Already/Not Yet” aspect of the church and the implications on its decision making. While we insist that the church is indwelt by the Holy Spirit so that we have unprecedented access to the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:30, 2:6–16), we also admit that our indwelling by the Spirit is incomplete. We see as through a mirror dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12). This means that the church does not have inerrant access to the mind of God and that church pronouncements are fallible. Thus, whenever someone is in power—churchman or not—there is the potential for abuse.

Hitchens writes, “Human beings and institutions are imperfect, to be sure. But there could be no clearer or more vivid proof that holy institutions are man-made.” I agree. But just because holy institutions are man-made, doesn’t mean that they are merely man-made. As N.T. Wright describes it, the church is the place where the human and the divine intersect, or where heaven and earth intersect. The church is both a man-made institution and a divine institution.

Second, I object to the way that Hitchens redefines religion in chapter seventeen so that secular states like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia are recast as “religious” states. What makes an ideology a religion? Hitchens has his own ideology. He has his own creation stories and prophecies of doom and gloom. He has corresponding ethics and rituals based on these stories. He even has angels (scientists) and demons (religious people). If Hitchens were put in charge, would he be a “religious” totalitarian?

Is there any middle ground? I think so. I do not think that religious ideas should be codified into public policy simply because they are religious ideas. I am confident enough in the truth of Christianity that I think it should be considered as one idea among many. If we want to call this “secular pluralism,” then I am okay with that. As Christian ideas and policies are tested, the wisdom of God will be vindicated. On the contrary, Hitchens seems to be advocating a different kind of secular pluralism, one in which religious ideas are ignored or suffocated simply because they are religious. That is not pluralism; it’s a theocracy of a different kind.

Christopher Hitchens on “Is Religion Child Abuse?”

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city."

In Chapter sixteen, “Is Religion Child Abuse?” Hitchens questions the authority that religious leaders have over children.

Hitchens begins by recounting several scare stories told to children in order to get them to listen and obey their parents and religious authorities. Hitchens asserts that children are targeted specifically because they have not reached the age of reason. As Ignatius of Loyola said, “Give me a child until he is ten, and I will give you the man.” Since children do not have mature reasoning skills, it is “abusive” to manipulate them to immoral beliefs and practices. Hitchens claims that this is precisely what religions do.

With regard to immoral beliefs, Hitchens cites the church’s position on abortion. I have to admit, I was shocked as I tried to follow Hitchens’ logic here. (I will elaborate below.) Hitchens claims that science has thoroughly discredited the old claim that an embryo was merely part of a woman’s body, comparable to an appendix or a tumor. They are correctly called “unborn children.” However, recognizing this begins a discussion; it doesn’t end it. Since abortions happen naturally (we call them miscarriages), we can only assume that nature or god recognizes that there are certain circumstances in which it is undesirable or less beneficial for a pregnancy to result in a live birth. Contrary to this common sense, religions (and the Roman Catholic Church is the target here) have insisted upon a black-and-white stance on abortion and contraception, making IUDs “murder weapons.”

With regard to immoral practices, Hitchens cites genital mutilation—including both the Muslim practice of female circumcision and the Judeo-Christian practice of male circumcision. He exposes the disinformation about the health benefits of either of these practices and asserts that the “real” reason why they are practiced is to decrease sexual sensation and thus exercise control over the recipient’s sexual behavior.

I see three main points to this chapter. First, the thesis of the chapter is that compulsory religious education of children is child abuse. Supporting this thesis are the claims (1) that religious beliefs are immoral, and (2) religious practices are immoral.

Is compulsory religious education immoral? Is any kind of compulsory education of children immoral? I have two children whom I responsible for raising. Part of my parental responsibility is to teach my children the ways of the world and how they can be successful in it. So, I am teaching them to read, even if they don’t want to learn how to read. I will teach them how to count, even if they don’t want to learn how to count. I will teach them to play nice with others, to share toys, to work hard, to be persistent, to do their best, to be honest, to be charitable, to be a good friend, to look both ways before crossing the street, to wash their hands before dinner, to brush their teeth, to exercise, to pray, to pay their taxes, to participate in the government, to honor the elderly, and a whole slew of other things.

I will also tell them stories. I will tell them about my great grandfather who ended up in Pennsylvania because he got on a train and said, “Take me as far as this money will go.” I will tell them about my parents, and how my dad’s military career took us all around the country. I will tell them how I met their mother at my high school youth group. I will tell them about the founding fathers and how this country was formed on the principles of freedom and equality. I will tell them about human slavery and the racial inequalities that have haunted our country since its inception. I will tell them about how when I was a kid there was this place called the Soviet Union and how we all just assumed that the world would end when we eventually went to nuclear war with them. And yes, I will tell them that God created the world and that Jesus died for our sins.

Some of the things that I will teach my children will come from my religious convictions. Some will derive from my experience living in the context in which I have lived. If it’s not abusive for me to insist that my children get a dental check up every six months and that they get a medical physical every year, than it isn’t child abuse for me to insist that they be in church. Religion is a part of who we are, what we do, and what we believe. What else can any parent teach their children except the ways of the world as they have experienced it? That’s our calling as parents.

If compulsory education isn’t wrong in and of itself, then perhaps it is the religious content of that education that amounts to child abuse. Are the beliefs and practices of religion immoral?

The short answer is “yes, some times.” Any time that you make a broad, sweeping judgment like “religion” or “religious people,” you are going to find a mixed bag of beliefs and practices—some moral; some immoral. (Then again, that does raise the question of the standard for judging something to be “immoral.” Nobody thinks that their practices are immoral.)

So, what about the immoral practices that Hitchens cites? This is a tougher issue than he lets on. All cultures have liminal experiences through which they require people to go in order to become part of the group. Those who go through the process are stressed for a time, but they come out on the other side as “part of the group.” It is the shared traumatic experience that produces group solidarity. The best example that I can think of from our culture is the generation that went through World War II together. They were all stretched, and they have a solidarity that other generations can’t understand. (Think, if you played sports, of how the grueling practices and fierce competitions bonded your group.) Some liminal experiences in American culture are high school, learning to drive, college, and marriage. Other subgroups have experiences that bind them together—things like medical residencies, internships, graduate school, field work, dissertations, fraternity pledge week, etc.

Religious rites are liminal experiences. Some, like baptism, are relatively tame. Some, like female circumcision, are horrific to outsiders. But it’s these shared experiences that produce group cohesion. Groups are defined by insiders and outsiders, and the difference between the two is often determined by going through some kind of rite. So, are the rites abusive? That depends on how you define abuse. Harshness is not the same as abuse. A medical residency that requires you to work 70 hours per week is harsh, but few people would call it abuse. Two-a-days are harsh, but few would call them abuse. Compulsory military service is harsh, but few would call it a human rights violation.

The most extreme religious rite is female circumcision. It is performed on grown, pre-pubescent girls, and it is very painful. Following the procedure, sex also can be very painful. But it is also an ingrained part of some cultures, so that women who refuse to undergo the process are branded “whores.”

If you were a parent of a young girl in a culture that placed a high value on female circumcision, and your daughter said, “I don’t want to do it,” would you force her to do it? (Keep in mind that refusal to undergo the procedure would alienate her from her peers and make finding a husband difficult.) Let’s contextualize to America. What if your child didn’t want to go to school? Would you make him or her? (Of course you would.) What if your child had a physical deformity that could be treated with cosmetic surgery, only your child was afraid to have the procedure done—would you force the child, reasoning “you’ll thank me when you’re older”?

We need to be careful about judging cultures from the outside. We don’t understand why other cultures find female circumcision to be reasonable, therefore we find forced participation to be abusive. But these cultures do find it to be reasonable, or they would abandon the practice (every young girl who undergoes it has a mother who also went through it). Since I don’t come from a culture that practices female circumcision, I find the practice disturbing. But then I think of the Bible and God’s command to circumcise all adult male converts to Judaism. If I was thinking about converting to worshipping the true God, but the catch was that I would have to undergo an operation, would that be a deal-breaker?

I don’t think the question is as simple as Hitchens makes it out to be. As outsiders to the cultures that undergo female circumcision, we look on in disgust and say, “No way! I would never make my daughter do that! Those people are barbarians!” If we were part of that culture, we might think differently.

There is no theological justification for male circumcision in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Apparently, there is no medical benefit to it, either. It was just something people did to identify them as “Jewish”—a liminal experience that produced group cohesion and distinguished outsiders from insiders. (Note also that this practice is not a Christian practice. I don’t know why non-Jewish westerners do it, but the answer is found in history/sociology, not in theology.)

As someone who was circumcised (too much information, I know), I was a bit perplexed at this choice as an example of gross religious immorality. Hitchens writes:

“Full excision, originally ordered by god as the blood price for the promised future massacre of the Canaanites, is now exposed for what it is—a mutilation of a powerless infant with the aim of ruining its future sex life. The connection between religious barbarism and sexual repression could not be plainer than when it is ‘marked in the flesh.’ Who can count the number of lives that have been made miserable in this way, especially since Christian doctors began to adopt ancient Jewish folklore in their hospitals?”

Really? Ruining its future sex life? Do you really think that?

So, Christians are immoral for circumcising their infant males (but people who pierce their daughters’ ears are okay). And what about those immoral beliefs? As I said above, I was shocked by Hitchens’ moral reasoning.

Hitchens grants that an embryo is “a separate body and entity, and not merely (as some really did used to argue) a growth in the female body.” Yet, he insists, “this only opens the argument rather than closes it.” I agree so far. Removal of a tumor is not a moral issue; termination of a human life is. But this doesn’t end the discussion, since termination of a human life may be acceptable under certain circumstances.

So, I was waiting for Hitchens’ argument with regard to when and why abortion is acceptable, and why Christians are immoral for their position. Before I quote Hitchens’ position, I should note that the Christian position is not monolithic. I don’t think there are many people who would argue that abortion is always wrong. In the case of an ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo’s chance of survival is nil and the mother’s life is at risk, abortion seems to be the ethical choice. Other cases in which an unborn baby has a chance at survival and the mother has a slight health risk are grey areas. Most Christians are against abortion for convenience (the vast majority of cases).

I don’t really feel the need to respond much to Hitchens’ moral reasoning. His argument pretty much speaks for itself:

“There may be circumstances in which it is not desirable to carry a fetus to full term. Either nature or god appears to appreciate this, since a very large number of pregnancies are ‘aborted,’ so to speak, because of malformations, and are politely known as ‘miscarriages.’ Sad though this is, it is preferably less miserable an outcome than the vast number of deformed or idiot children who would otherwise have been born, or stillborn, or whose brief lives would have been a torment to themselves and others. As with evolution in general, therefore, in utero we see a microcosm of nature and evolution itself. In the first place we begin as tiny forms that are amphibian, before gradually developing lungs and brains (and growing and shedding that now useless coat of fur) and then struggling out and breathing fresh air after a somewhat difficult transition. Likewise, the system is fairly pitiless in eliminating those who never had a very good chance of surviving in the first place: our ancestors on the savannah were not going to survive in their turn if they had a clutch of sickly and lolling infants to protect against predators.”

Abortion is moral because even nature recognizes the need to eliminate the “deformed or idiot children,” whose “lives would have been a torment to themselves and others.” Adolf Hitler said, “Nature is cruel; therefore we, too, can be cruel.” How is this different from Hitchens’ argument? If this is the basis for making moral decisions, what reason do we have for helping people like this man, who, apart from the benevolence of others would be eliminated by the pitiless system?

Hitchens writes, “If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in quite a different world.” Indeed.

Christopher Hitchens on Unitarians

I ran across this today--a comment by atheist Christopher Hitchens to a Unitarian minister:

"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."

How does this relate to 1 Corinthians 2:14?

HT: Justin Taylor

Christopher Hitchens on "Religion as an Original Sin"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city."

Chapter fifteen, “Religion as Original Sin,” is a series of accusations against religion, painting it not as amoral, but immoral. It is a well-thought-out critique of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Again, Hitchens is a great writer, and one who has put a lot of thought into his disbelief.

Hitchens has three points of contention: (1) the demand of blood sacrifice, (2) the concept of atonement, and (3) the imposition of impossible tasks with eternal damnation as a consequence for disobedience.

Blood Sacrifice. Hitchens tells the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac—that Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his only son, that he went along with it, that he was stopped at the last second (by an angel, not by God himself), and that he was praised for a type of faith that is willing to shed blood in God’s name without questioning. He then goes on to show how adherents to the three Abrahamic faiths continue the tradition by shedding blood in God’s name, even over the right to worship on the very mountain where Isaac was spared.

Atonement. Hitchens grants, for the sake of argument, the historical accounts of the crucifixion in order to evaluate the theology. He writes:

Let us just for now overlook all the contradictions between the tellers of the original story and assume that it is basically true. What are the further implications? They are not as reassuring as they look at first sight. For a start, and in order to gain the benefit of this wondrous offer, I have to accept that I am responsible for the flogging and mocking and crucifixion, in which I had no say and no part, and agree that every time I decline this responsibility, or that I sin in word or deed, I am intensifying the agony of it. Furthermore, I am required to believe that the agony was necessary in order to compensate for an earlier crime in which I also had no part, the sin of Adam. It is useless to object that Adam seems to have been created with insatiable discontent and curiosity and then forbidden to slake it: all this was settled long before even Jesus himself was born. Thus my own guilt in the matter is deemed “original” and inescapable. However, I am still granted free will with which to reject the offer of vicarious redemption. Should I exercise this choice, however, I face an eternity of torture much more awful than anything endured at Calvary, or anything threatened by those who first heard the Ten Commandments.

The tale is made no easier to follow by the necessary realization that Jesus both wished and needed to die and came to Jerusalem at Passover in order to do so, and that all who took part in his murder were unknowingly doing god’s will, and fulfilling ancient prophecies.

Impossible Laws and Damnation. Hitchens mentions several of the commandments that are impossible to obey (thou shalt not covet, love your neighbor as yourself, etc.) and wonders what kind of god would punish these “crimes” with eternal damnation. He writes, “The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. The resulting tyranny is even more impressive if it can be enforced by a privileged caste or party which is highly zealous in the correction of error.”

I think Hitchens correctly articulates the religious beliefs of a lot of people. When this theological system is combined with a hostile or abusive human environment, I can’t help but sympathize with anyone who walks away from the God Hitchens describes. However, my views of God, His laws, and damnation are a bit more nuanced than what Hitchens describes.

First, on blood sacrifice. Why does God demand blood sacrifice? Why did the ancient Hebrews have to slaughter an animal to atone/expiate for their sins? Why couldn’t money suffice, or some other form of penance? The writer of Hebrews wrote, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). Why not? Surely an almighty, omniscient God could have thought of some other plan that didn’t involve escalating violence.

I think sacrifice is an object lesson. The death of an animal is a picture of our own death and the death of humanity, for which sin is to blame. The Apostle Paul wrote, “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12), “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), “if you live according to the flesh you will die” (Romans 8:13), and “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56). Paul saw a cause-and-effect relationship between sin and death—we die because of sin. Death is not a part of God’s creative intent, but an alien element brought in by humanity itself.

When sin is considered something that brings death to the individual and society, then the requirement of blood sacrifice is a little bit more understandable. It was a reminder of the severity of the offense. As Hitchens himself demonstrates throughout his book, we underestimate the effects that sin has on our humanity. It defaces the image of God within us, and it leads us toward death. Animal sacrifice, as horrible as it is, is nothing compared to the effects of sin. Sacrifice is a ghastly reminder of this for our benefit, not something that God enjoys because He is sadistic.

Second, on atonement. Hitchens’ objection to atonement seems more like an objection to original sin. He doesn’t object to people laying their lives down for others, but that things had to play out this way with Jesus. He doesn’t feel that he is that bad of a guy or that Jesus should have had to die for his sin. If he were in charge, he would have found another way to do it.

Did God’s plan of salvation have to play out the way it did? Yes and no. On the one hand, God foreordained before the foundation of the world that it would play out that way, so in that sense it had to. But philosophically, did it have to? I don’t see why it had to.

Again, I think that Jesus death on the cross and subsequent resurrection was a picture of the work that God is doing in individuals and humanity. Jesus’ grisly demise was a picture of the effect that sin has in our hearts and in our lives. His glorious vindication through resurrection from the dead is also a picture of the believer’s destiny. Thus Paul talks about us being “united” to Christ’s death and resurrection in baptism. Jesus died because we’re dying. Jesus rose so that we might rise.

While satisfaction of God’s wrath is certainly one description of what happened on the cross, we can’t downplay the other pictures. Jesus’ death and resurrection is also described as a victory over sin and death (1 Corinthians 15:20–28, 51–57). Death was already a given. The cross made resurrection a part of the picture.

Could God have chosen another way to rescue humanity? Perhaps. But He didn’t.

Finally, on impossible laws and eternal damnation. Hitchens’ seems to understand the doctrine of original sin, but he also seems to forget it at times. No one is condemned for coveting; we are condemned along with Adam for humanity’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden. Our subsequent rebellion is evidence that sin is working in our lives and that we are guilty together with Adam. Thus, the very existence of “impossible” laws testifies against us—they are impossible because we are sinful.

I don’t want to downplay the thoughtfulness of Hitchens’ critique of Christianity in this chapter. Some of the nuances of atonement theory are a little squirrely to human reasoning. But we are reminded that our thoughts aren’t always God’s thoughts (Isaiah 55:8), and God’s wisdom sometimes appears foolish to mere men (1 Corinthians 1:18–25).

Ultimately, I believe that God is not arbitrarily offended by sin, but that He has created us to live in a way that is truly good, just, and beautiful. Sin is a rebellion against such a life and thus it is abhorrent to God. It’s not that God is a fascist and wants us to fall in line with his commandments; it’s that He wants the best for us, and tells us how to live to attain that best. The problem is that we have inherited corrupted minds and corrupted hearts so that we don’t always know what’s best, and when we do know what’s best we don’t always do what’s best.

We’re dying.

God wants to save us from that through Jesus.

Christopher Hitchens on "There Is No 'Eastern' Solution"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city."

In chapter fourteen, "There Is No 'Eastern' Solution," Hitchens turns his sights on to eastern religions and finds that they are no better than the western ones. I am not interested in defending eastern religions, so I am not going to respond.

Hitchens modus operandi is the same with eastern religions as it is with the western ones--pick out a few anecdotes and use them to discredit an entire religious system. The victim here is Buddhism by means of a guru named Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh. Hitchens' main complaint is the eastern notion that religion is a means of escape by checking one's mind at the door. Fair enough.

I loved this:

"Make me one with everything." So goes the Buddhist's humble request to the hot-dog vendor. But when the Buddhist hands over a twenty-dollar bill to the vendor, in return for his slathered bun, he waits a long time for his change. Finally asking for it, he is informed that 'change comes only from within.'

Christopher Hitchens on "Does Religion Make People Behave?"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city."

In chapter 13, “Does Religion Make People Behave Better?” Hitchens answers the objection that atheism encourages immorality. He begins by attacking some of religion’s success stories. He argues that the advances made by Dr. Martin Luther King and other abolitionists came more from their familiarity with humanism than it did their Christian conviction. He continues that Ghandhi’s work has been overrated and that it has even done more harm than good.

Hitchens then turns the argument and recounts examples of how religion has made people worse—specifically in the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur.

Hitchens grants that some religious people are moral, but that religious people are a mixed bag. He received death threats from Muslims who disapproved of his refusal to join their campaign against Denmark, and he witnessed a Muslim cab driver show extraordinary honesty and piety by returning a large sum of money to his wife that she left in his cab. “Which of these to versions of faith,” asks Hitchens, “is the one to rely on? . . . [I]f all Muslims conducted themselves like the man who gave up more than a week’s salary in order to do the right thing, I would be quite indifferent to the weird exhortations of the Koran.”

While Hitchens might be more tolerant to religious people if they were moral, he disagrees that morality can prove religion. People do things with all kinds of strange motivations. Just because a story motivates someone to act morally, it doesn’t mean that the story is true.

The most poignant part of the chapter is in Hitchens recounting a debate between the atheist A. J. Ayer and a Bishop Butler. When Ayer said that he saw no evidence for the existence of any god, Butler responded, “Then I cannot see why you do not lead a life of unbridled immorality.” Hitchens doesn’t defend all of Ayer’s lifestyle decisions, but insists that calling him immoral would be a “travesty of the truth.” On the other hand, Butler’s comments reveal that if Butler didn’t see evidence of god, that he would have led a life of unbridled immorality. Hitchens notes that this is why “When priests go bad, they go very bad indeed, and commit crimes that would make the average sinner pale.”

While there are some good points in this chapter, Hitchens’ argument fails. First, while he may be able to see humanistic principles that could have explained Dr. King’s behavior, this is certainly not the explanation that King himself would have offered for his behavior. The same has to be said for other Christian abolitionists and humanitarians.

But Hitchen’s failure to do Dr. King justice is not the main reason his argument fails. Hitchens’ biggest error is in reading his own atheist worldview into the argument from morality. To Hitchens, the morality argument is only one of motivation. To Christians, the morality argument is one of ability. In other words, Hitchens interprets the morality argument as “The Christian stories we tell motivate us to do good because we are afraid of divine retribution and eager for heavenly rewards.” In reality, the Christian argument is “The Holy Spirit works in people of faith enabling them to do good deeds.” Our faith doesn’t just motivate us to do good; it enables us to do good.

Hitchens’ response to his own argument from morality holds up. Just because someone is motivated by a story doesn’t mean that the story is true. However, his response does not defeat the real Christian argument from morality. If central tenets of Christianity include “The one true God Yahweh is at work in the world through the Holy Spirit,” and “The Holy Spirit enables moral living in the community of faith,” then the presence or absence of morality in the community of faith is evidence for or against the truth of Christian dogma. I’ve mentioned before on this blog that this is part of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s argument for God.

Does religion make people behave better? No. But the Holy Spirit does.

So, what about Hitchens’ question of which examples to choose from? Well, therein lies the rub. Does the Rwandan genocide disprove Christianity? Yes and no. Were those participating Christians? How would we know? They certainly claimed to be. But not everyone who claims to have faith actually has faith (Matt 7:21). Does that mean that no one who participated in the genocide was a Christian? Wouldn’t that reduce the argument from morality to tautology? (God is real because Christians are moral, but only the moral Christians are real Christians.)

The sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit is not complete this side of resurrection. There is a sense in which we are still awaiting our redemption. Thus, while the Spirit makes people of faith more moral, He does not make them perfect. Ultimately, I cling to the sanctifying work of the Spirit as evidence for God. When I see Christians behaving badly, my faith in God is diminished. But, I see far more good than bad in the Christian community and the argument from morality holds up to me.

Christopher Hitchens on "How Religions End"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city."

In chapter twelve, “How Religions End,” Hitchens recounts the story of Sabbatai Sevi, a seventeenth century messianic claimant who was pressured by authorities to either renounce his messianic claims, or submit to a trial by ordeal. Archers would shoot at Sabbatai Sevi, and if God deflected the arrows he would be vindicated as messiah. He did not accept the trial by ordeal, but instead he renounced his claims, embraced Islam, and was deported. His followers, distraught at his apostasy, responded in ways varying from arguing that his conversion was a ruse to claiming that he had ascended into the heavens.

The parallels with the messianic claims of Jesus are noted. Hitchens speculates that had Sabbatai Sevi been executed, we would have another world religion on our hands.

Perhaps. But Hitchens speculation remains just that—speculation.

In The Resurrection of the Son of God, N.T. Wright points out that Jesus was not the only messianic claimant of his day. In fact, even the New Testament attests to others (Acts 5:35–39). Wright argues that people typically did not respond in the way that they did to Jesus’ claims, execution, and supposed resurrection. In most cases, the death of the leader led to the dissolution of the movement. But with Jesus, something else happened. Why?

Whatever happened to Sabbatai Sevi, his disappearance led to the dissolution of his movement. We can speculate about what would have happened had history taken a different course, but that kind of speculation will always be fanciful.

I would refer back to my previous post on “The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell,” that the empty tomb and resurrection appearances are necessary but not sufficient grounds for faith. Yes, there are reports that Jesus rose from the dead, and these reports are integral to our faith. But they are not the only grounds of our faith. The continuing work of the Holy Spirit validates the message of the Gospel.

Christopher Hitchens on "The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin’: Religion’s Corrupt Beginnings"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.

In chapter 11, “‘The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin’: Religion’s Corrupt Beginnings,” Hitchens suggests that religions are started either by superstition or by fraud. (Having attacked Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, he now turns his target on latter-day religious movements like Mormonism.)

The chapter consists of three anecdotes. The first is from the 1964 documentary Mondo Cane, in which Pacific Islanders gave religious significance to American GIs' arrival there in World War II. According to Hitchens, the movie shows the birth of religion right on camera. The second is the story of Marjoe Gortner, whose parents made 3 million dollars forcing him to preach in charismatic churches from the age of four. He escaped the abuse at age seventeen, and then sought revenge by making a documentary in which he pretended to come back to Jesus and then fleeced the faithful for their hard-earned money. The third story is that of Joseph Smith and the origin of The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints.

Hitchens writes:

What interests me and always has is this: Do the preachers and prophets also believe, or do they just ‘believe in belief’? Do they ever think to themselves, this is too easy? And do they then rationalize the trick by saying that either (a) if these wretches weren’t listening to me they’d be in even worse shape; or (b) that if it doesn’t do them any good than it still can’t be doing them much harm?

I am curious about Hitchens’ church background, because he repeatedly returns to the accusation that religious leaders use faith as a means of deceiving people into taking their money. I don’t get that. Either he drastically overestimates how much money people like me make or he is from a radically different tradition than me. If I wanted to make money, I definitely would be in a different career. (Not that my church doesn’t pay me well—they do. But I could definitely make more doing something else.)

This criticism from Hitchens is curious coming from someone who does something almost exactly the same as someone like me. Hitchens reflects on life, writes his thoughts down for people to consider, and receives a pay check from people who read his work. Incidentally, I am willing to bet that Hitchens makes considerably more money than most religious leaders. Are we to suppose that Hitchens is making everything up and that he's only writing what will make money, or is it possible that he actually believes some of what he writes about? Is it possible that he believes that his readers might be happier and more enlightened having read his work? If that's not too much of a stretch, than why is it so hard for him to believe that some religious leaders are genuine in their beliefs and ministry?

Are there bad people who use religion as a means of manipulation? Of course. But do a couple examples of fraud prove that all religions are fraudulent? Of course not. Hitchens even admits, “Jesus, it is true, shows no interest in personal gain.”

The question that Hitchens doesn’t ask (at least not in this chapter) is why people are so drawn to religion. Why does over 90% of the world believe in a god of some kind? Why are educated people drawn to things like Scientology? Could it be part of the human makeup to be “religious”? What might that mean for humanity?

I believe that God has created us with an innate need to know Him. When that part of us is out of whack, we look for other things to replace it. Does it surprise me that religious fraud is a money-making endeavor? No. It would surprise me if it weren’t.

Christopher Hitchens on "Revelation: The Nightmare of the 'Old' Testament."

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.

In chapter 7, “Revelation: The Nightmare of the 'Old' Testament,” Hitchens addresses religion’s claim to authority based on supernatural encounters between God and special men. He reminds the reader that the three major western religions all trace their roots to the Hebrew Bible, and subsequently attempts to debunk the Pentateuch as divine revelation. He uses three main arguments: (1) the laws in the Pentateuch are obviously man-made, (2) the teachings of the Hebrew Bible are immoral, and (3) arguments (1) and (2) don’t matter because none of it happened anyway.

The laws of the Pentateuch are obviously man-made. Hitchens singles out the Ten Commandments as “obviously man-made.” The first three commandments amount to little more than “monarchial growling about respect and fear, accompanied by a stern reminder of omnipotence and limitless revenge.” Then, there is a command “to keep working and only to relax when the absolutist says so.” There is a charge to honor your parents, and then four self-evident ethical admonitions against murder, adultery, theft, and false witness. Finally, there is an absurd command not to desire the things that your neighbor has. We could probably categorize the commandments into three groups: (1) those that put the people in their place, (2) self-evident ethics necessary for a stable society, and (3) and absurd command not to covet that obviously didn’t come from a wise God.

Hitchens reasoning is circular. The premise to be proven is: The Ten Commandments are man-made. The Ten Commandments are consistent with what Hitchens thinks man-made commandments might look like. Therefore, the Ten Commandments are definitely man-made. This is petitio principii, or begging the question.

What would a commandment look like that was definitely not man-made? Love your enemies, perhaps?

The teachings of the Hebrew Bible are immoral. Hitchens cites a number of passages from the Old Testament that are hard for us to read. One will suffice for illustration—Numbers 31:17–18. In the passage, Israel had gone out to battle Midian in retaliation to their leading them into idolatry. The Israelites went out and killed every adult male, and took the women and children captive. Moses was angry with the military officials for sparing the women and male children, and he said to them, “Now therefore kill every boy, and kill every woman who has had sexual intercourse with a man. But all the young women who have not had sexual intercourse with a man will be yours” (NET). Kill the women. Kill the boys. Keep the young girls, presumably as concubines.

Let’s be honest—that’s horrible. But let’s also be honest about war—as General Sherman said, “War is Hell.” Do we think our wars are any more civilized than ancient wars? Is it somehow more moral to bomb innocent women and children than it is to run them through with a sword? Are we really so naïve as to think that there is no collateral damage in modern wars?

Don’t get me wrong, divine ordained Holy War bothers me. It’s one part of the Bible that I don’t “get.” But I accept it as part of our story, even if a puzzling part of the story.

None of the events described in the Pentateuch actually happened. Hitchens writes, “The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.” (A very well written sentence, I might add, and it’s not surprising how well this book has been received.)

Before I get into Hitchens’ critiques of the Old Testament, I do want to mention that theism does not stand or fall with the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. I believe in the inerrancy of the Scriptures, but if that were to be disproven I would not walk away from the faith.

That being said, the specific event that Hitchens attacks is the Exodus. I would probably include the Exodus as one of the “big” historical events, the historicity of which is necessary for faith. Hitchens even quotes Roland de Vaux, “if the historical faith of Israel is not founded in history, such faith is erroneous, and therefore, our faith is also.” If the Exodus were proven to be ahistorical, one would have to seriously reconsider the truth of the Christian religion.

Hitchens cites a study by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman that has “proven” that none of the events of the Pentateuch—from the Exodus, to the wilderness wanderings and the giving of the law, to the conquest of Canaan—ever happened. I had never heard of the study, so I asked my friend John, who has a PhD in Old Testament (from Cambridge, no less) and who teaches Old Testament at a seminary, what he thought of it.

John told me that while Finkelstein’s work represents the opinion of a large number of Old Testament scholars, it is not universally accepted. He referred me to some studies done by James K. Hoffmeier (Israel in Egypt: The Evidence of the Authenticity of the Exodus Traditions and Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition) that best defend the authenticity of the biblical accounts.

While Hitchens claims that there is “no” extra-biblical evidence for the Exodus, John asks what kind of evidence we would expect to find. For instance, Ramses II of Egypt was defeated in a battle at Qadesh, yet the Egyptian accounts of the battle spin it as a victory. Why would we expect these same Egyptians to agree with the biblical account of the Exodus? Further, much of the archeological material left behind by the patriarchs would have been under the water table, and have thus been destroyed.

I don’t know enough about these issues to offer a definitive opinion, but what John told me is consistent with what I see in issues related to the New Testament—there are some places in which the historicity of the text is disputed, even some cases where it is widely disputed, but questions of method and what constitutes “proof” prevent a consensus one way or the other. After all, history is not a "hard" science.

Hitchens goes too far in saying that the Exodus has been disproven. Are there difficulties with the biblical account? Yes. But are there problems with rival reconstructions? Yes. That’s why we will continue to have historical inquiry. John pointed out that in many cases the Bible gives a better explanation of the data than rival reconstructions, and much of what we know about the ancient near east is consistent with what we read in the Bible.

Our faith is based on real history, and we need to continue studying that history to evaluate our faith. If our faith is true, then we have nothing to be afraid of. I, for one, prefer to acknowledge and grapple with difficulties of this nature rather than sweeping them under the rug and pretending they’re not there. Every time we ignore legitimate problems, skeptics bring them back up in books like Hitchens’.

[I previously reacted to the chapters 8 and 10 of God is not Great. Chapter 9 is an attack on Islam. I’m not going to include a reaction to that on this blog, so I will pick up in chapter 11 next time.]

Christopher Hitchers on "The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.

Chapter ten, "The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell," is about miracles. This is the chapter I expected under "The Metaphysical Claims of the Religion Are False."

Hitchens opens the chapter by recounting the fable of a man who couldn't stop telling this story of a miraculous long jump he performed on the island of Rhodes. Eventually his friends grew weary of the story and one of them said "Hic Rhodus, hic salta," "Here is Rhodes, jump here!" In the same way, religions claim validation by miraculous deeds of the past--events like the Exodus, the resurrection of Jesus, or the flight of Muhammed to Jerusalem. "Has the art of resurrection died out," asks Hitchens, "Or are we relying on dubious sources?"

The Scottish philosopher David Hume was the most devastating critic of miracles. Defining a miracle as a disturbance of what is normal or expected, Hume points out that miracles also involve a decision. When Moses saw the burning bush, he had two possible interpretations: (1) the laws of physics have temporarily been suspended, or (2) I am delusional. Which is more likely? Hume continues that when you consider reports of miracles that you didn't actually witness, you have to adjust the odds accordingly. You must further adjust the odds when you are considering reports of miracles by people who lived thousands of years ago and whose testimonies have been past down in books that may or may not have been corrupted.

Hitchens challenges the reader to compare miracle claims with claims of UFO sightings. On what basis can we reject UFO sightings as the ramblings of lunatics, and yet accept testimonies like Matthew 27:51–53 ESV, "And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many"?

Hitchens' challenge is fair, and my response is in two parts. First, the empty tomb and resurrection appearances are necessary but not sufficient for faith. Second, the continuing work of the Holy Spirit is necessary but not sufficient for faith. The three in tandem (empty tomb, resurrection appearances, continuing work of the Holy Spirit) are sufficient for faith.

The empty tomb and resurrection appearances are necessary but not sufficient for faith. Many Christians may be shocked to read that sentence, but I'll explain. First, the empty tomb and resurrection appearances are necessary for faith. N.T. Wright covers this wonderfully in The Resurrection of the Son of God and (the more readable) Surprised by Hope. He argues that the early church needed both an empty tomb and resurrection appearances in order to believe. If someone presented the corpse of Jesus, the resurrection appearances would have been dismissed as delusions. If there were no resurrection appearances, the empty tomb would have been a mystery, but it probably would have been dismissed as grave robbery. But because there was both, the early Christians concluded that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Paul himself notes that if there is no resurrection, there is no Christianity (1 Corinthians 15:12–19).

Hitchens counters that the resurrection doesn't prove Jesus was God. True. But, we have no other record of anyone else raising himself or herself from the grave, so the resurrection of Jesus at least gives us a reason to consider his claims to be unique. When you put that together with the claims that he made about himself, the divinity of Jesus is not a reach (the Transfiguration perhaps is the tipping point). If he's not God, then he is the most supernaturally powerful human being ever, who for one reason or another decided to deceive millions of people throughout history into thinking he was God. As C.S. Lewis noted, this would make Jesus the most demonic figure in human history.

The empty tomb and resurrection appearances may be necessary for faith, but are they sufficient grounds for faith today? I would say that they are not. I think Hitchens (well, Hume really) nails this. Why do we accept the supernatural claims of the Bible and not those of other religions? Why do we believe in the resurrection of Jesus and not UFO claims?

There has to be something in play that makes Christianity's claim of the miraculous more credible than other religions' claims. Richard Dawkins says that most people don't believe in thousands of gods; some people just go one god farther. Along the same lines, Christians reject thousands of miracle claims made by competing religions. What basis do we have to accept the resurrection?

The continuing work of the Holy Spirit is necessary but not sufficient for faith. Galatians 3:1–6 ESV says:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain- if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith- just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"?

Notice in this passage what the basis is for Paul's arguing for justification by faith and not works of the law--they received the Spirit by faith. Reception of the Spirit by faith was evidence that Paul's Gospel was true and the judaizers was false.

In 1 Thessalonians 1:4–5 ESV, Paul writes, "For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake." Paul's preaching was validated by miraculous works of the Spirit.

Finally, in 1 Corinthians 2:3-5, Paul writes, "And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." Again, demonstrations of the Spirit accompanied Paul's preaching, validating his message.

Christianity needs the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the continuing work of the Spirit to be valid. With just the ancient testimonies, there is no reason to accept its claims over those of other religions. With just the Spirit, it is an existential philosophy with no grounds in history. But with both, it is a valid (and in my opinion, compelling) faith option.

Why do I believe in the resurrection of Jesus and not in UFO's? Because the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and in the life of my church validates the message of the Gospel. Could personal transformation be explained by means other than the Holy Spirit? Perhaps. But I don't think so. Maybe I don't have stone-cold logic to prove that it is so, but everything inside of me says that it is so.

Christopher Hitchens on "The Evil of the New Testament"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.

Chapter seven, “Revelation: The Nightmare of the Old Testament,” has specific attacks on the reliability of the Old Testament that I do not know enough to answer. I have asked a much more qualified friend specific questions related to the issue, and I am awaiting his response. More on that later.

Chapter eight, “The ‘New’ Testament Exceeds the Evil of the Old One,” is more up my alley. In it, Hitchens does not discuss the “evil” of the New Testament as much as he does the worthlessness of it. In short, the New Testament documents are late and unreliable when it comes to information about the historical Jesus. He calls it “a work of crude carpentry, hammered together long after its purported events, and full of improvised attempts to make things come out right."

I beg to differ.

The most substantial arguments that Hitchens makes are: (1) the “lateness” of the Gospels, (2) the dubiousness of Jesus’ existence, and (3) tampering charges against the New Testament documents themselves.

The Gospels are late. It used to be theorized that the Gospels were second-century documents written long after the events described in them. This theory has been abandoned by most scholars. The 1935 discovery of P52 showed that the Gospel of John had been in wide circulation as early as the middle of the second century. This means that it could not have been written later than the end of the first century. Most scholars think that the Synoptic Gospels were written between 60 and 90 AD, and John written somewhere in the mid-90s.

The degree of overlap between the Synoptic Gospels and the Jesus material in Paul (1 Corinthians 11:23–26, etc.) demonstrates that accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds circulated early, probably both in written and in oral form. James Dunn’s Jesus Remembered is an excellent source for information on how the Gospels came to be.

Thus, while the Gospels themselves were composed 30–50 years after the events they describe, they were based on records passed down from eyewitnesses. Also, we should not be quick to dismiss the idea that eyewitnesses played a key role in the composition of the Gospels themselves (as tradition tells us they were).

We don’t know that Jesus even existed. There is strong extra-biblical evidence for Jesus' existence. The Jewish historian Josephus mentions him as does the Roman historian Tacitus. These testimonies are especially significant because neither was a follower of Jesus. Josephus says that Jesus was a magician who led people astray. Tacitus says that Jesus was executed by Pilate and that his followers were “hated for their abominable crimes.” John P. Meier’s A Marginal Jew, James Dunn’s Jesus Remembered, and N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God are excellent resources on the historical Jesus. They are tough reads, though, and N.T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, Darrell Bock’s Studying the Historical Jesus, and Ben Witherington’s The Jesus Quest may be better introductions.

The New Testament documents have been corrupted over time. Hitchens cites Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus to demonstrate that the New Testament has become corrupted. Specifically, he mentions John 7:53–8:11, the story of the woman caught in adultery, which scholars have shown “was not a part of the original Gospel.” Ehrman is right—most scholars do not think that John 7:53–8:11 was part of the original Gospel of John. But just about every Bible says that in the margins. It’s a great story. It probably happened. But it’s not part of John.

Hitchens is slightly deceptive when he says that the New Testament documents have been corrupted. It is true that the thousands of manuscripts that we have all include minor variations (i.e. one manuscript may read “he” when another clarifies “Jesus”), but they are over 95% similar and none of the variants affects Christian theology in any way. John 7:53–8:11 is by far the most significant variant. The longer ending(s) of Mark are also significant, as is 1 John 5:8. As with John 7:53–8:11, most Bibles have notes in their margins as to why these passages are included or omitted.

Text critics weigh the textual evidence to try to discern what the original New Testament documents said and how the variant readings came to be. Sometimes scribes made mistakes. Sometimes they tried to “clarify” the text. Sometimes they made outright edits. Thankfully, we have thousands of manuscripts to compare in order to discern the original. (Here is a simplified example of what they might do: if 9,999 manuscripts read "he said" and one says "Jesus said," can you discern what the original reading was and how the 1 variant came to be? Most text critical decisions are far more complicated that this, but you get the idea.) While we will never have 100% certainty of the original documents, we have far greater certainty about the New Testament than we do any other ancient document. We can be sure that the Bible we read is true to the original.

As I was reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but feel that Hitchens attacks were a workshop in missing the point. Let’s say we grant all of Hitchens’ objections. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, we allow that the New Testament is not a product of the eyewitnesses and that in places it is contradictory. Does this destroy its testimony to the significance of Jesus? After all, something happened. We know that Jesus lived. We know that people thought he was an exorcist and miracle worker, and that he preached the coming of the Kingdom of God. We know that he made specific prophetic actions signifying the start of a new religious movement, and that he prophesied the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. We know that he was rejected by his Jewish contemporaries for being a blasphemer and that he was executed by Pontius Pilate for claiming to be the King of the Jews. We know that his followers claimed that he rose from the dead—that his tomb was empty and that there were reports of resurrection appearances. We know that typically, when the leader of a messianic sect was crucified, his followers would scatter and disappear, but that this is not what happened with Jesus’ followers. And we know all of this by the historical method, without considering the Bible as anything special.

Even if we grant all of Hitchens’ objections (which I don’t), we have reason to give special consideration to the Apostle Paul's claim that "There is another king, namely Jesus."

Christopher Hitchens on "Arguments from Design"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.”

In chapter six, “Arguments from Design,” Hitchens tackles the Christian assertion that apparent design in nature proves that there is a Designer, namely God. Personally, I think David Hume and Karl Barth killed this horse, but Hitchens gives its corpse quite a beating.

Though argued throughout history, the argument from design was most famously articulated by William Paley in his fictional account of a primitive person finding a watch washed up on shore. Even though he has never seen a watch before, nor does he know its function, he concludes that there has to be a watchmaker—that the pieces did not randomly come together and form a watch. In the same way, we look at the delicate balance of life-sustaining forces in the world, and how each species seems perfectly designed to thrive in its environment, and conclude that someone must have designed this place we call earth.

Hitchens turns this argument on its head, pointing out all of the flaws in the world—vestigial organs, natural disasters, and adaptations that favor one species over another. God may have designed gazelles with the ability to outrun lions and thus survive, but why didn’t he just design lions vegetarian?

Hitchens writes in response to the inventions argument:

We know the answers in all cases: these were painstaking inventions (also by trial and error) of mankind, and were the work of many hands, and are still ‘evolving.’ That is what makes piffle out of the ignorant creationist sneer, which compares evolution to a whirlwind blowing through a junkyard of parts and coming up with a jumbo jet. For a start, there are no ‘parts’ lying around waiting to be assembled. For another thing, the process of acquisition and discarding of ‘parts’ (most especially wings) is far from a whirlwind as could conceivably be. The time involved is more like that of a glacier than a storm. For still another thing, jumbo jets are not riddled with nonworking or superfluous ‘parts’ lamely inherited from less successful aircraft. Why have we agreed so easily to call this exploded old nontheory by its cunningly chosen new disguise of ‘intelligent design’? There is nothing at all ‘intelligent’ about it. It is the same old mumbo-jumbo (or in this instance, jumbo-mumbo).

I see three major arguments in this chapter: (1) design does not demand a Designer, (2) our imperfect world would have to have been designed by an imperfect or inept Designer, and (3) the theory of evolution more accurately explains the world around us than does intelligent design.

I want to say up front that the evolution/creation debate is not one that I enjoy. I think Christians spend way too much time on it and my interests lie elsewhere.

Design does not demand a Designer. Hitchens’ first point is true. The argument from design is not the best Christian apologetic. In his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, David Hume points out that analogies are only as strong as the things compared are similar. Analogies comparing dissimilar objects are not as strong. For instance, when older students lament “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” I always tell them, “But you’re not a dog and you’re not learning tricks.” Dissimilarities between objects compared make analogies weak.

The question David Hume asks is, How similar is a watch to the cosmos? Therefore, How strong is the analogy of the watch? Not very.

Another weakness of the argument from design is the holiness of God. God is unlike anything else in creation. What can we possibly learn about a holy God from what is created? Even Romans 1:19–20 limits “natural theology” to “eternal power” and “deity.” (And nowhere does Paul say that “design” is the basis of this knowledge.) Karl Barth argued that God is only known through Jesus Christ—God made flesh. I wouldn’t go that far—I think God reveals himself in other ways, too—but I do not think that the Christian God is intuitive from nature. We need special revelation.

The theory of evolution more accurately explains the world around us than does intelligent design. I think this is a bit of a non sequitur, since evolution and design are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of Christians accept the theory of evolution as the means by which God differentiated the species. The question of origins and the question of the differentiation of the species are two distinct questions. I am not a scientist, and like I said, I really don’t care much about evolution, but I don’t think its incompatible with my worldview and I’m not losing any sleep over it.

Our imperfect world would have to have been designed by an imperfect or inept Designer. This point is the most interesting—does an imperfect creation demand an imperfect god? On one level, I would have to say yes. I actually talked about this last Sunday. If this world is all that there is, than we have to conclude that an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God does not exist.

On another level, I have to say no. Christians also believe that the world is not as it should be, and that God is in the process of reconciling it. We have a theological category for “things not operating according to divine intent.” Imperfections and even atrocities are to be expected in the current state of the world (see Matthew 13:24–30 and Jesus’ Parable of the Wheat and Weeds).

While I usually don’t use the argument from design in explaining to people why I am a Christian, I do think it has some value in apologetics. I have heard (but again, I am not a scientist, so I can’t properly evaluate these claims) that the probability of matter randomly coming together to create life is so remote that it is a scientific absurdity. This is why most scientists do not think that there is life on other planets—the probability of it happening randomly is too remote. Further, Hitchens laughs off arguments from irreducible complexity, but they are a damaging critique of the theory of evolution. The best counter I have heard from a scientist to the argument from irreducible complexity is “just because we don’t know how it happened doesn’t mean we won’t know some day.” Fair enough.

Christopher Hitchens on "The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.”

In chapter five, “The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False,” Hitchens argues that religion is the product of a pre-modern people who sought answers to explain the unknown. He writes:

I wrote earlier that we never again have to confront the impressive faith of an Aquinas or Maimonides (as contrasted with the blind faith of millennial or absolutist sects, of which we have an apparently unlimited and infinitely renewable supply). This is for a simple reason. Faith of that sort—the sort that can stand up at least for a while in a confrontation with reason—is now plainly impossible.

After spending a few pages recapping natural phenomena explained by scientists that priests and shamans previously wrote off as “acts of God.” He says that “There would be no such churches in the first place if humanity had not been afraid of the weather, the dark, the plague, the eclipse, and all manner of other things now easily explicable.”

Finally, Hitchens warns us of Ockham’s razor, “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.” We don’t need the god hypothesis to explain the world, so we need to stop pretending that he or she or they are there.

I was prepared for some philosophical discussion in this chapter, but I was let down. Hitchens doesn’t argue the impossibility of miracles—he simply dismisses them. God is not Great is an atheistic book unlike any other I have read. There are no philosophical arguments. There are no attacks on the accuracy of the Bible. Hitchens doesn’t fight with logic or reason; the primary weapons in his arsenal are wit and ridicule.

And he’s effective.

I had to stop and reflect on Hitchens’ attack on the metaphysical claims of religion before offering a response. His argument is, “I don’t need God, so I don’t believe in God.” Do I want to respond to that by saying we need God? Well, in one sense I do think that we need God. But if I am honest, I am not sure that that is why I am a Christian. I am not sure that I am a Christian because I would be in despair if there were no God. It’s not so much that I think there has to be a God, as it is that I think that there probably is a God.

In his book, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton compares materialists to the insane. (Chesterton uses the word “materialist” to describe someone we might call a naturalist—someone who doesn’t believe in God or the supernatural.) He writes:

The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful king of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s.

Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is
not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable mark of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way.

Later he writes:

His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of a madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos so very small. The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Finally:

If the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is not much of a god. And, similarly, if the cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos, it is not much of a cosmos.

In his book, Simply Christian, N.T. Wright writes about four things that a naturalistic universe cannot explain: our longing for justice, our sense of beauty, our desire for community, and our need for the spiritual. Ockham’s razor may imply that Hitchens is right, but his cosmos, the cosmos that cannot explain justice, beauty, love, or the spiritual, looks more like the conspiracy theory of a madman than it does the real world that we live in.

Christopher Hitchens on "Religion Can Be Hazardous to Your Health"

In chapter 4, “A Note on Health, to Which Religion Can Be Hazardous,” Hitchens crucifies the major world religions for the harm they have done to humanity. This is certainly the most powerful of the early chapters of the book. Hitchens recounts some Muslims’ opposition to polio vaccines, the Vatican’s opposition to the distribution of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal to give their children life-saving blood transfusions, the Roman Catholic Church’s protection of abusive priests, and religious oppression of women and homosexuals.

Why are religions so hostile to health and human rights? Hitchens says:

The attitude of religion to medicine, like the attitude of religion to science, is always necessarily problematic and very often necessarily hostile. A modern believer can say and even believe that his faith is quite compatible with science and medicine, but the awkward fact will always be that both things have a tendency to break religion’s monopoly, and have often been fiercely resisted for that reason. What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs and surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystifications? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or the diviner from the heavens when school-teachers get hold of elementary telescopes.

In summary, because religions aim to retain power, they will always oppose scientific and sociological advances that undermine their authority. In many cases, scientists and sociologists have offered better explanations of the world than have their religious counterparts.

Again, Hitchens is right about a lot. (For those of you keeping score, this makes me three-for-three in at least partially agreeing with Hitchens.) There are a lot of religious authorities that feel threatened by scientific and other advances that undermine their authority. Many of Hitchens’ examples are valid.

But, as I was reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of exposure Hitchens had to mainstream religions. I will in no way defend the people Hitchens assaults, but I will say, That looks nothing like my religious experience.

How many hospitals in the United States are run by the Roman Catholic Church or other religious organizations? (If the name of your local hospital begins with “Saint,” be careful about rejecting religion’s involvement in health care.) How much work have organizations like World Vision done globally to combat hunger and preventable diseases? Has Hitchens heard about how much Rick Warren and Saddleback Community Church has done to alleviate the destruction caused by AIDS in Africa? Has he heard of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Desmond Tutu, or Mahatma Gandhi, whose faiths compelled them to champion human rights and racial reconciliation? Has he heard of the International Justice Mission? Where are their stories?

I have seen first-hand the benefits that Christianity can have to society. The local food bank is faith-based and supported mainly by donations and volunteers from local churches, including my own. My church also supports (with money and volunteers) a youth center that recently opened in Tillicum, one of the poorest neighborhoods in our community. Now kids and that community have something else to do rather than wander the streets and get involved with gangs. They have a safe place when they can do their school work or just hang out with adults who care about them. I could go on.

I do not deny that there are some bad apples in the bunch who call themselves “religious.” I won’t even deny that some of those bad apples are of the same variety as me. But there are also some really good apples, and you can’t argue the bad without accepting the good as a counter-argument.

Christopher Hitchens on "Why Heaven Hates Ham"

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.”

In chapter three, “A Short Digression on the Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham,” Hitchens extols the virtues and dietary benefits of the pig, and then lambasts the major western religions for prohibiting its consumption. All religions have these sorts of irrational dietary prohibitions, says Hitchens (for instance, the Roman Catholic Church’s prohibition of eating meat on Fridays).

Hitchens alludes to King Lear, that “the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash.” In other words, we most passionately denounce the vices for which we secretly long (good insight by Shakespeare). So, the reason that eating pork is prohibited is because it is so tasty. Why would a religion outlaw pork when other tasty meats are permissible? Hitchens says that rumor has it that human flesh tastes like pork. Because eating pork reminded the ancient Jews of cannibalism, the food became taboo.

What does clerical porcophobia have to do with atheism? Well, “In microcosm, this apparently trivial fetish shows how religion and faith and superstition distort our whole picture of the world.” In other words, it’s just one more example of how kooky religious people are.

As in my last post, I have to point out that Hitchens accurately debunks the idea that God forbade the Israelites from eating pork because it was bad for them or because they didn’t know how to cook it properly. He points out that one way archeologists can distinguish between excavations of Jewish ruins and those of other groups is the presence or absence of pig bones. In other words, the other people around Israel ate pork, apparently with no detrimental health effects.

Hitchens argument is a straw man, however, since no Old Testament scholar argues that the prohibition of pork was for health purposes. Leviticus 11:7 NET says, “The pig is unclean to you because its hoof is divided (the hoof is completely split in two), even though it does not chew the cud.” The prohibition is based on hooves and cud-chewing, not on health. Old Testament scholars are still searching for a unifying principle behind the various dietary restrictions of the OT, but the best explanation I have heard is that “oddball” animals were restricted. Shellfish live in water, but they are oddballs because they don’t have scales or fins. Pigs don’t eat cud, but they are oddballs because they have cleft hooves.

Do Judaism and Islam’s “irrational” prohibitions against eating pork prove that religious people are kooky? I don’t think so. How would the typical American react if you invited him or her over for dinner and served dog? Do we have a rational reason for our aversion to canine meat? No. It’s a cultural thing. Everybody recognizes that.

I think God prohibited eating pork as a way of setting the Jewish people apart from the pagans around them. Hitchens acknowledges this function: “[Not eating pork] emerged in primitive Judaea, and was for centuries one of the ways—the other being circumcision—by which Jews could be distinguished.” So, when a young Jewish kid asked mom or dad why they didn’t eat ham with their eggs like their Canaanite neighbors, the parents would respond, “Because we’re different.” All cultures have similar mores and taboos that serve the same function.