Myself and my good friend ‘Pove’ have been engaging a little bit with Christopher Hitchens recently, looking at his debates on Youtube and checking out his book – “God is not great – how religion poisons everything”.
When Hitchens debates/writes he’s really annoying…
- Every sentence includes a word that no one else understands – he lords his intellect over people
- On intellect, he is an intellectual snob, assuming that anyone who lived more than 100 years ago is stupid (oh except Darwin)
- Every argument is actually at least 3 different arguments all splurged together
- He doesn’t honestly engage with Christian beliefs and evidence – rather he just picks on fundamentalists, and makes straw men
- Oh… and he never answers questions… just transfers a different question back
One of my favourite debates is with Doug Wilson, he gets Hitchens on the back foot and exposes some bad arguments and holes in his worldview. The best bit is when they talk about the Amalekites
DW: “Neither one of us has a problem with killing Amalekites. I don’t have a problem killing the Amalekites because God told them to do it. You don’t have a problem because ‘the universe’ just doesn’t care what happens to Amalekites.”
CH: “No that’s not true, what if I was an Amalekite?
DW: “You’re not ‘the unviverse’”
Check out this bit from about 6:30 mins into the video. Doug gets him!
