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INTRODUCTION
Theologian Douglas Wilson and atheist Christopher Hitchens, authors whose books are already
part of a larger debate on whether religion is pernicious, agreed to discuss their views on whether
Christianity itself has benefited the world. Below is their exchange, one in a series that will appear
on our website over the course of this month.
Douglas Wilson is author of Letter from a Christian Citizen, senior fellow of theology at New
Saint Andrews College, and minister at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. He is also the editor of
Credenda/Agenda magazine and has written (among other things) Reforming Marriage and A
Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking. His Blog and Mablog
site inevitably makes for provocative reading.
Christopher Hitchens wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve Books).
Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the
New School. He is the author of numerous books, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Thomas
Paine’s “Rights of Man,” Letters to a Young Contrarian, and Why Orwell Matters. He was named,
to his own amusement, number five on a list of the “Top 100 Public Intellectuals” by Foreign
Policy and Britain’s Prospect.
PART 1
5/08/2007 09:17AM
Christopher Hitchens
In considering the above question (for which my thanks are due to your generosity and
hospitality in inviting my response), I have complete confidence in replying in the negative. This
is for the following reasons.
1) Although Christianity is often credited (or credits itself) with spreading moral precepts such as
“Love thy neighbor,” I know of no evidence that such precepts derive from Christianity. To take
one instance from each Testament, I cannot believe that the followers of Moses had been
indifferent to *** and theft and perjury until they arrived at Sinai, and I notice that the
parable of the good Samaritan is told of someone who by definition cannot have been a
Christian.
To these obvious points, I add that the “Golden Rule” is much older than any monotheism, and
that no human society would have been possible or even thinkable without elementary solidarity
(which also allows for self-interest) between its members. Though it is not strictly relevant to the
ethical dimension, I would further say that neither the fable of Moses nor the wildly discrepant
Gospel accounts of Jesus of Nazareth may claim the virtue of being historically true. I am aware
that many Christians also doubt the literal truth of the tales but this seems to me to be a problem
for them rather than a difficulty for me. Even if I accepted that Jesus—like almost every other
prophet on record—was born of a ***, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father
or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected.
There are too many resurrections in the New Testament for me to put my trust in any one of
them, let alone to employ them as a basis for something as integral to me as my morality.
2) Many of the teachings of Christianity are, as well as being incredible and mythical, immoral. I
would principally wish to cite the concept of vicarious redemption, whereby one’s own
responsibilities can be flung onto a scapegoat and thereby taken away. In my book, I argue that I
can pay your debt or even take your place in prison but I cannot absolve you of what you actually
did. This exorbitant fantasy of “forgiveness” is unfortunately matched by an equally extreme
admonition—which is that the refusal to accept such a sublime offer may be punishable by
eternal damnation. Not even the Old Testament, which speaks hotly in recommending genocide,
slavery, genital mutilation, and other horrors, stoops to mention the torture of the dead. Those
who tell this evil story to small children are not damned by me, but have been damned by history
and should also be condemned by those who shrink from cruelty to children (a moral essential
that underlies all cultures).
The late C. S. Lewis helps make this point for me by emphasizing that the teachings of Jesus only
make sense if the speaker is the herald of an imminent kingdom of heaven. Otherwise, would it
not be morally unsafe to denounce thrift, family, and the “taking of thought for the morrow”?
Some of your readers may believe that this teaching is either true—in the sense of an imminent
redemption—or moral. I believe that they would have a difficult time believing both things at
once, and I notice the futility as well as the excessive strenuousness (sometimes called
“fanaticism” in tribute to the way that the two things pull in opposite directions) of their efforts.
Another way of phrasing this would be to say that if Christianity was going to save us by its
teachings, it would have had to perform better by now. And so to my succeeding point.
3) if Christianity is to claim credit for the work of outstanding Christians or for the labors of
famous charities, then it must in all honesty accept responsibility for the opposite. I shall not
condescend to your readers in specifying what these “opposites” are, but I suggest once more that
you pay attention to the Golden Rule. If hymns and psalms were sung to sanctify slavery—just to
take a recent example—and then sung by abolitionists, then surely the non-fanatical explanation
is that morality requires no supernatural sanction? Every Christian church has had to make some
apology for its role in the Crusades, slavery, anti-Semitism, and much else. I do not think that
such humility discredits faith as such, because I tend to think that faith is a problem to begin
with, but I do think that humility will lead to the necessary conclusion that religion is man-made.
On the other hand from humility, the fantastic idea that the cosmos was made with man in mind
strikes me as the highest form of arrogant self-centeredness. And this brings me to what must be
(within the limits of this short essay) my closing point. We are not without knowledge on these
points, and the boundaries are being expanded at a rate which astonishes even those who do not
look for a single cause of such vast and diverse phenomena. There is more awe and more
reverence to be derived from a study of the heavens or of our DNA than can be found in any
book written by a fearful committee in the age of myth (when Aquinas took astrology seriously
and Augustine invented “limbo”).
I cannot, of course, prove that there is no supervising deity who invigilates my every moment
and who will pursue me even after I am dead. (I can only be happy that there is no evidence for
such a ghastly idea, which would resemble a celestial North Korea in which liberty was not just
impossible but inconceivable.) But nor has any theologian ever demonstrated the contrary. This
would perhaps make the believer and the doubter equal—except that the believer claims to know,
not just that God exists, but that his most detailed wishes are not merely knowable but actually
known. Since religion drew its first breath when the species lived in utter ignorance and
considerable fear, I hope I may be forgiven for declining to believe that another human being can
tell me what to do, in the most intimate details of my life and mind, and to further dictate these
terms as if acting as proxy for a supernatural entity. This tyrannical idea is very much older than
Christianity, of course, but I do sometimes think that Christians have less excuse for believing, let
alone wishing, that such a horrible thing could be true. Perhaps your response will make me
reconsider?
Sincerely,
Christopher Hitchens