A Night at The Opera: Christopher Hitchens versus God at the Dublin Writer's Festival

The Washington D.C. based English journalist, author, and intellectual Christopher Hitchens faced a sometimes vocal audience from the stage of 'The Gate' theatre, an appropriate position given the performances to come. The 'Irish Times' journalist John Waters debated with Hitchens on the subject of his recent book 'God is not Great'. His presentation of its thesis that 'religion poisons everything' seemed to reveal some consanguinity with Ludwig Feuerbach's 1841 classic 'The Essence of Christianity' that condemned religion for denying humanity's ability for moral autonomy and prostrating us before a supernatural being. Other objections: the claims to know that there is a God and that one has privileged knowledge of its will are both conceited and hugely improbable; religion wrecks human relationships by inciting us to acts of violence both in conflict with other religions and ritualistically as when there is human sacrifice or genital mutilation; religion is masochistically self-condemning; religion is based on misogyny and fear of female sexuality, hence the frequency of virgin births.

The thesis substantiated he finished by denying that religion has any positive value, asking the audience a question he has asked around the world and found no answer to: can you think of any moral act or statement that believers are able to make that atheists cannot? It might be thought that Hitchens has been stating the obvious by synthesising previous atheistic positions into a familiar brew but most of the world remains religious, so clearly he is preaching to the unconverted. Anyway, the atheist idea gains from his presentation, Hitchens is one of the most effective public speakers I've ever witnessed, charming and amusing and conniving with the audience in turn, presenting his ideas with brio, clarity and supple force. Perhaps at times the performance crosses the line between exposition and theatrical sophistical demagoguery but one doesn't really feel manipulated, his arguments do the real work.

By contrast Water's presentation and ideas were weak and unconvincing, the only striking thing being his evident goodness. Following the now standard path he said belief in God is because of faith and that is different from reason so therefore not understandable by it. This has always struck me as a peculiar belief because something like 'God' can either be known to exist or it cannot be known to exist, there is no middle way and these two positions are the facts of the matter so faith can be understood as a belief that something that cannot be known to exist does exist. This seemed to be the extent of what Water's had to say, he mainly ran parallel to Hitchens' arguments without actually engaging with them. He almost gave the game away at the beginning by saying that it's important to examine ideas contrary to one's own so that one's belief can be stronger and 'more vibrant', yet surely the reason we entertain contrary ideas is to discover whether or not our own ideas are true or false? He may wish to reread that section from Mill he seems to have missed something.

He found no reply to Hitchens' question either, nor did anyone from the audience, many of who turned out to be Christian, or anti-Iraq war and therefore anti-Hitchens, so focus on the debate was lost in the tense and heated environment as some people walked out and others heckled. Aside from the emotive subject matter the heat arose from Hitchens' theatrically forceful sometimes even insolent manner that rendered the scene reminiscent of that famous opera 'Jerry Springer' at the moment when his first critic was rejoined with 'fuck off...fuck you'. He might be accused of being too emphatic in his denunciations, or overly aggressive, even crass perhaps.

Afterwards I approached Hitchens - who emanates a yet greater power of presence when proximate - with a possible reply to his question: any act performed for religious reasons is an act an atheist would not perform unless they had the equivalent secular belief - indeed this is what the religious seem to be saying religion's value is, although as Hitchens pointed out there are secular equivalents and religious belief is neither necessary or sufficient for the ideal they embody. He could see the idea was flawed, which admittedly I didn't (it doesn't identify a moral action or statement available exclusively to the religious) but he didn't identify exactly why, saying it was 'too much like eschatology' which created the paradox of him being right but wrong (or not obviously right) about why. So as both our beliefs show perhaps a small degree of faith is necessary for the human mind, although faith founded on good reason is very different from faith for no good reason.

Postscript

The following weekend there was a review of 'God is not Great' in the UK newspaper 'The Guardian' by the former Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries. He points out that the majority of philosophers, scholars, and artists have been devout believers as though this proves the existence of God. It does not, what explains their belief is that they either lived in times when knowledge was weak, or times when because a majority believed, it was still possible to take that belief seriously. Or perhaps they had to profess faith for fear of the consequences of not doing so. He then quotes a sociologist who has judged that modern war is not caused by religion but is generally a pretext, conveniently ignoring all the pre-modern religious conflicts and the fact that there is nothing to stop religions becoming a direct reason for conflict at anytime. Wars happen for other reasons but if in these cases religion is both necessary and sufficient (sorry to labour this tool of assessment) and that often seems to be the case then it is religion's fault.

Harries criticises Hitchens and other 'fundamentalists' for giving religious fundamentalists a persecution complex and alienating the moderate faithful when positive dialogue between them and unbelievers should be encouraged instead. Perhaps it should, but doesn't warranted criticism count as participation in a dialogue? Can a dialogue progress without answering Hitchens? His question shows the faithless appear to have little to discover and the religious assert supposed objective moral truths which drastically limit the range of moral considerations and which they cannot discard without losing what gives their systems of ideas coherence and identity, can they really follow truth and reason wherever they may lead?

Sean O'Toole is writing a novel.

© For/Against 2007