Christopher Hitchens Has Died

From the obituary in Reuters:

As a journalist, war correspondent and literary critic, Hitchens carved out a reputation for barbed repartee, scathing critiques of public figures and a fierce intelligence.

In his 2007 book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," Hitchens took on major religions with his trenchant atheism. He argued that religion was the source of all tyranny and that many of the world's evils have been done in the name of religion.

Hitchens often took on creationism, debating William Dembski, and David Berlinski along the way. While I did not share his theological leanings , he was an extraordinarily good writer and, even in his criticisms of religion, often had at least one blow that hit the target. He will be missed.

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Dembski/Hitchens Debate

Christopher Hitchens, who is battling esophageal cancer, and William Dembski will debate whether or not God is good at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, TX on November 18. Here is the blurb in the campus newspaper from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. It reads, in part:

Dembski and Hitchens will debate the existence of a good God during a conference for the Biblical Worldview Institute at Prestonwood Christian Academy in Plano, Texas. The debate will be hosted in the worship center at Prestonwood Baptist Church from 8:40 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. It will also be webcast on www.pcawebcast.com.

I hope that Dembski can go toe to toe with Hitchens but given his reluctance to defend his own research from criticisms, I fear the worst.

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Christopher Hitchens Takes On David Berlinski

Christopher Hitchens, the outspoken atheist, who is battling esophageal cancer reserved special energy for a debate with the Discovery Institute's David Berlinski. Berlinski occupies that niche that is even stranger than evolutionary creationism: an anti-Darwinian secular Jew. The account, by Greg Garrison, is in Al.com. He writes:When

Berlinski linked Nazism and Darwinism while connecting atheism with violent government regimes of the 20th Century, Hitchens bristled and went on the attack in his next turn at the podium.

Connecting Nazism with Darwinism "is a filthy slander," Hitchens said. "Darwinism was derided in Germany."

Hitchens said Adolf Hitler claimed in "Mein Kampf" that he was doing God's work with his policies against the Jews and that the first Nazi treaty was with the Vatican.

"To say that there is something fascistic about my beliefs, I won't hear said, and you shouldn't believe," Hitchens said to the audience, almost thundering despite his diminished voice.

Berlinski responded that fascist and Communist governments including Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia held in common the proposition that "No power was greater than their own, and they acted on that." They were godless governments, despite some "infiltrations of religious thought," he said.

This seems to be a particular sticking point with the Discovery Institute and several posts here and elsewhere have dealt with this subject. Writers such as Berlinski and David Klinghoffer (and here, also) seem compelled to ascribe all of the world's evil to evolution and they do not seem to care how much they get correct or how much academic and intellectual dishonesty they commit in the process.

It has been established that Hitler did not use Darwinian principles during the Third Reich. The problem is that if the Discovery Institute admits that, then it is hard to paint evolution in a moral light. It becomes what it should have always been: a scientific theory. Nothing more, nothing less. I am not a fan of Hitchens' theology. In many ways, he gets exactly the same things wrong for different reasons. He accuses Berlinski of using Darwin as a scapegoat for the world's evils then proceeds to argue the same thing for religion. The truth is that violence is committed both for secular and religious purposes and it is simplistic to point to one or the other as the culprit.

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"Stupid Things Christians Say."

Michael Riley of MyCentralJersey.com has some amusing thoughts on the kinds of things that Christians say. Along the way, he hits of my favorite subject:

"I don't believe in evolution." How about gravity? Is gravity workin' out for you? Evolution isn't a matter of belief; it's a scientific fact, an accurate description of the way the world works. And proponents of Intelligent Design (and its ugly, red-headed stepchild, Creationism) forget that religion and science work different sides of the street and reveal different kinds of truth. Muddying the differences always leads to bad theology and scientific illiteracy.

Right on both accounts!

Raining on Other Writers' Parades

Josh Rosenau wonders why people who write books about evolution are both critical of a book lamenting the state of U.S. science education. PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne are both critical of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, despite agreeing with the premise. He writes:

I find it odd that the author of a book intended to bring already published information to a new audience would criticize another author for publishing material already available in the technical literature in a way more accessible to the general public.

I find it doubly odd that PZ would echo this criticism. Not only did PZ rise to fame by rendering the technical literature in developmental biology accessible to those outside his field (adding not argument, but clarity), he is now famous for plowing the fields of atheism with arguments not dissimilar to those already made famous by recent writers Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Chris Hitchens, Vic Stenger, etc. He is (I believe) writing yet another book in that vein. It is a well-worked vein, with works touting evolution as an attack on theism dating back to Darwin's day, and no discernibly novel arguments in these popular atheist writings since that time. As one student of the field writes: "There's really only a handful of arguments for atheism in the first place."

This kind of squabbling is not helpful at a time when it is becoming clear that the average person knows little about science, even less about biology and next to nothing about evolution. That is exactly the way that groups like the Discovery Institute, the Institute for Creation Research, and Answers in Genesis want it. Why are we trying to help them? A book that is well-written and sourced that is supportive of evolution should be trumpeted.

Furthermore, I have no sympathy for arguments for atheism by evolutionary biologists in the first place. All they do is cement in the eyes of the general public the already perceived link between evolution and atheism. This just makes it harder for everyone concerned who think that evolution and faith can coexist.


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