The following is an outline of my review of Christopher Hitchens’, “God is not Great”

Part I – Chapter One
The definition of Atheism. Do “the faithful” commit more crimes? Are atheist dogmatic?

Part II – Chapter One
the “four irreducible objections to religious faith.”  Religion and sex

Part III – Chapter One.
Do believers claim to know everything?  “essential knowledge”

Part IV – Chapter One
Are we evil, or just partly rational?  What is ‘reason.’ Worldviews.  Reason and the existence of God.

Part V – Chapter One
 The core weaknesses of atheism: rational evil.  Eugenics and Social Darwinism.

Part VI – Chapter One
the “Secular injunction” in Philippians 4:8  Truth, Justice, Lovely, Pure, and Virtue.

 Part VII– Chapter Two
Why aren’t believers happy?  Christians who interfere in the lives of others? Charitable giving.

Part VIII – Chapter Two.
Hitchens and Dennis Prager.   Northern Ireland.

Part IX – Chapter Three.
Jews, Muslim and Pork.  Do prohibitions grow out of repressed desire? Being Holy.

Part X – Chapter Four.
Religion and Health.  Conspiracy theories. the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc or false cause.

Part XI – Chapter Four.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez de Trujillo and condoms, and the politicization of science.

Part XII – Chapter Four.
Religion and Medicine, The fallacy of Hasty Generalization, the Black death. The germ theory of disease. 

Part XIII – Chapter Five
The Metaphysical claims of Religion. Atheist’s demand for proof. Religion vs. the behavioral sciences.

Part XIV – Chapter Five
The secularization of society.  The fallacies of appeal to the people and appeal to misplaced authority. Ockham’s razor.  Do we need God to explain the universe? probable arguments. deductive logic and inductive logic.

Part XV – Chapter Six
Hitchens distorted view of religion. Religion and Superstition.  Miracles, evil, and the problem of evil.

Part XVI – Chapter Six
Arguments from design. Paley. Hitchens argument concerning death and the universe.  Design and purpose.

Part XVII – Chapter Six
Specific arguments for Design.  Myths used to support evolution. evolution is unfalsifiable.

Part XVIII – Chapter Seven
The Old Testament.  Hitchens view of revelation. The Ten Commandments. Slavery. stoning of children for disobedience

Part XIX – Chapter Eight
The New Testament. “if English was good enough for Jesus…”  The flat earth.  Biblical scholarship.  Dating the New Testament.

Part XX – Chapter Eight
Reliability of the Gospels, Liberal Scholarship. Two major Errors of Hitchens.  The “other gospels.”  Virgin birth. Bart Ehrman.

Note:  I skipped chapter Nine as it dealt with the Koran.

Part XXI – Chapter Ten 
Miracles.  Hume. The resurrection. The nature of miracles.  Freewill.  Proof and evidence.

Part XXII – Chapter Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen    
Chapter 10: The lost of belief.  
Chapter 11:  The origin of religion. The Melanesian “cargo cult” Marjoe Gortner. Mormonism. Chapter 12:  The end of religion
Chapter 13: Does religion make people better? Martin Luther King.  Abolition.   

Part XXIII – Chapter Thirteen   
Who is a Christian. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Hitchens refutes the majority of his  own book.

Part XXIV – Chapter Thirteen   
Are atheist immoral? The foundations of morality. Marriage.   

Note:  I skipped Chapter Fourteen as it deals with eastern religions.

Part XXV – Chapter Fifteen
Is Religion Immoral? Presenting a false picture of the world to the innocent and the credulous. doctrine of blood sacrifice. Atonement.  Anti-Semitism. Corporate Guilt.

Part XXVI – Chapter Fifteen
Atonement. religious laws that are impossible to obey.

Part XXVII – Chapter Sixteen
Is religion child abuse. Abortion.  Evolution myths. Eugenics. Circumcision.

Part XXVIII – Chapter Seventeen
Atheists and the evils of the 20^th century.  The definition of religion. “the totalitarian mind-set.”

Part XXIX – Chapter Seventeen
Hitchens attempts to link 20^th century evils to religion. Christians who risked their lives to save others.  Fascism and Christianity.

Part XXX – Chapter Seventeen
The problem with focusing on the evil in others.  

Part XXXI – Chapter Eighteen
The Resistance of the Rational.  Galileo. Socrates. Gibbon. The Fall of Rome.

Part XXXII – Chapter Nineteen
A New Enlightenment.  Lessing. Faith and Reason. Worldviews.

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Chapter sixteen of Christopher Hitchens book “God Is Not Great,” deals with a question, one  now routinely raised by the neo-atheists, of whether religion is child abuse.  Hitchens starts with, “the imponderably large question.  How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith?”  (pg 217)  Of course one could also ask the equally imponderably large question,  how can we know how many children found comfort and joy in their faith? 

I would suspect that it was far larger, but either way what Hitchens question once again reveals is the illogical nature of his approach,  particularly  how Hitchens attempts to jump from antidotal stories to grand universal conclusions. As a result the reader is often left agreeing with Hitchens condemnation of  particular practices yet puzzled as to how this affects even Christianity in general, much less religion as a whole.

To see the problem  consider  the fact that all the hype surrounding  Global Warming is causing many children to be worried some to the point of losing sleep and having nightmares.   Now it would be quite reasonable to question the amount and types of information we are exposing our children to when it comes to the issues such as Global Warming. Yet  if we were to apply Hitchens reasoning to this, we would conclude that we should not teach our children about science at all.

Still Hitchens argument get even stranger.  As examples of immoral teaching inflicted on children Hitchens points to abortion.   It is to his credit that Hitchens acknowledges the fetus to be an “unborn child” and not just a mass of flesh, and he is also correct that “this only opens the argument rather than closes it.” (pg 221)  But from this he moves to justify abortion by pointing to the fact that there are miscarriages as if abortions were just another type of miscarriage.  Frankly this would be like pointing to the fact some children die naturally before reaching adulthood and thus infanticide is just another form of infant mortality.

To make matters even worse Hitchens attempts to justify his view by pointing to evolution.  Hitchens claims, “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.”  (pg 221) At first I did not fault Hitchens here.  This myth was invented by Haeckel who deliberately distorted his drawing of the embryo to show a progress that in reality does not happen. While this has been known to be false for over a century, it continue to appear in textbooks, and so I was willing to give Hitchens a pass on this one.

But later in the book, Hitchens mentions Jonathan Wells and his book, Icons of Evolution, which details this fraud. Whether Hitchens’ rejection of Wells’ book is based on having read it, of if he just reflexively rejected it simply because it was critical of evolution is unclear. But either way he has no excuse for continuing to spread such a myth.

But things get even worse for Hitchens goes on to write concerning evolution, “the system is fairly pitiless in eliminating those who never had a very good chance of surviving in the first place.”  When talking about natural processes, this is one thing but when this is used to justify family planning it comes dangerously close, if not to, eugenics. Ultimately there is a very strange paradox in this argument that Hitchens seems to be completely unaware of, for one of the major pieces of evidence that religion is child abuse that he gives is that religion opposes killing children in the womb.

From there he move to “the mutilation of infant genitalia.”  While he attempt to equate the male and female circumcision, there is hardly any equation as they have different purposes and results.  Female circumcision is really an attempt to eliminate any pleasure from sex. In addition, it is a social custom found in Northern Africa more than a religion custom,  though it is often linked to Islam as that is the dominate religion in the area. But it is found among non-Muslims in the area, and is generally not practiced by Muslims outside of the area except among those who have immigrated.  So the common link would be the culture for the area more than religion.  

When it comes to male circumcision, there things are hardly as clear as Hitchens states. While there is a clearly Jewish injunction to be circumcised, there is no such Christian injunction as Acts 15 makes clear. As for the secular reasons for circumcision, the best one can really say is that this is a hotly debated topic. While Hitchens writes concerning the secular reasons for circumcision that, “Medicine has exploded these claims” (pg 226), a quick web search took me to the Mayo Clinic and a page to help parents with the pros and cons.   

In the end Hitchens’ claim that Religion is Child Abuse like the previous claims is seriously flawed.  However, his use of myth as if it were science, his flirting with eugenics type reasoning,  and his strange claim that opposing abortion is an example of child abuse make this chapter one of his worse.  If this chapter were indicative  of secular rational thought, it would itself be a strong argument for religion.   But in the end he simply fails to make his case.

This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.

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This week I conclude my discussion of the development of secular thought following the holocaust by looking at one final disturbing trend.  So far I have looked at how in the attempt to maintain a belief in Human Rights apart from a belief in God, equal in the eyes of God became merely equal; where the differences among people were equated or just ignored.  

But Human rights was founded on another concept in addition to the belief that we are all equal in the eyes of God.  It was also based on the belief that we are special creations of God, created in his image. To remove God from the definition of Human rights mean also tossing out the idea that people are special creations of God. 

This was the most dangerous development for as we saw, the competing view is that rather than special creations of God, we are just animals that happen to have resulted from the undirected process of evolution.  But if this is the case, why should humans have any rights at all?

This of course would bring us right back to the thinking of Social Darwinism and Eugenics, the very thinking that led to the holocaust in the first place. No, a concept of Rights had to be maintained. But if we are nothing more than animals that resulted from the process of evolution, how could a concept of rights be restricted just to us? Wouldn’t other animals have rights as well? 

Thus was born the belief in animal rights.  While most people are still shocked by PETA’s campaign likening eating meat to a “holocaust on your plate” it is merely the logical outgrowth of the attempt to maintain a concept of rights apart from God.

While, extending the concept of rights to animals may be a logical step, it does not really solve the problem, but rather creates many more. If animals do have rights, how do these rights come into play when the lion kills a gazelle?  The normal answer is that the lion does not know any better, we do. But this has the effect of putting us below the animals, not equal to them.  Animals are free to do whatever they do, but our actions must be constrained by a notion of rights. 

In short animals and in a more general sense nature, over time came to be more valued than people. Worst still, since virtually anything we do has some effect we become a problem. In its most extreme form people rather than being a part of the environment came to be seen as a disease that must be controlled, or in some cases removed, as in the case of the Texas scientist who calls for the creation of a genetically engineered version of the ebola virus, that would kill 90% of the people on the earth, so as to lessen our damaging effect.

But these threats are not just theoretical.  One of the key aspects of the Judeo-Christian worldview is that people, as special creations of God, are more valuable than animals.  But in the new secular view people are less valuable, and for some even a problem. While rarely directly stated, it nevertheless works itself out in a myriad of ways.

For example, the major reason energy prices such as the cost of gas, heating oil, and electricity, are so high is because concerns for the environment restrict our ability develop energy. Most of these environment concerns make no sense apart from an absolutist view that people represent a danger to the planet and that anything we do would damage to environment, often despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Most of the real damage of this inversion of rights, are indirect and often do not appear until years later. Thus the limitation on oil drilling for the last several decades is only now beginning to have a real effect on the price of gas as the excess capacity that had existed in the system is now gone, and demand is beginning to exceed supply.

One of the clearest examples of the valuation of nature over people is also one of the earliest; the concern over insecticide DDT during the 1960s.  During the 1960s it was alleged that DDT caused the shells of some birds to weaken making it difficult for them to reproduce.  In order to protect these birds, DDT was ban. At the time of the ban it was pointed out that DDT was very important to controlling the spread of mosquitoes, which spread deadly diseases such as malaria. But these arguments had little effect; the birds were more important than the people, and had to be protected.  After all, at the same time over population was also seen as a major problem.

It is now known that DDT was not the cause of the problems with birds, and in fact is really very safe. The effects of the ban are also clear.  Diseases that had been virtually eliminated in places have now returned.  Malaria alone kills between one and two million people a year. Yet despite the evidence to the contrary, for many a theoretical threat to the environment, is more important that the actual deaths of tens of millions and the ban remains in effect.

The first attempt to reconstruct society based on science rather than God, ended in the holocaust.  The subsequent attempt of reconstruct a concept of rights apart from God has resulted in not only more pain and suffering, but millions of deaths. Just perhaps the real problem is the attempt to remove God.

This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.

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This week I continue my discussion of the development of secular thought following the holocaust. To briefly summarize, the Holocaust had its roots in the attempt to apply the principles of evolution to society, from which the sciences of Social Darwinism and Eugenics flowed.  These new sciences were rightly rejected following the holocaust because the results they produced conflicted with Human Rights, a concept grounded in the belief that we were created by God and are equal in his eyes.

As society became more secular the religious foundations of Human rights was abandoned and equal in God’s eyes became merely equal; but such an undefined equality is threatened by our clear individuality, which is defined by our differences. This attempt to maintain Human Rights in a secular worldview defined by evolution has resulted in a number of competing, and at times contradictory, lines of thought.

The first has been that since differences pose such a danger, their existence is simply denied, or at least relegated to insignificance. In short, despite any differences, we are all really the same, and therefore since we are the same, we are all equal. A whole range of absurdities have flowed from this intellectual strategy, not the least of which is the belief that there is no difference between men and women.

While historically women have not had equal status in virtually any society, that seems to have come from the importance of strength in early cultures and the role it played in survival, and from the fact that in general men are stronger than women.  It did not come from the religious teachings of the Bible, but ran contrary to it. Starting in the first chapter of Genesis, God has made it clear that He views men and women as equal, and both are created in his image.   As Genesis 1:27 says,

So God created mankind in his own image;

in his own image God created him;

male and female he created them.
                                                           (ISV)

In the New Testament, Paul also makes this explicitly clear. “Because all of you are one in the Messiah Jesus, a person is no longer a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a male or a female.”  (Galatians  3:28 ISV)

Men and women have different strengths and different weakness. They react to things differently, and have different natures. But despite all of our differences, men and women are equal it the place that it matters most, in the eyes of God. Human nature being what it is, this core equality has not, and in some places today is not, always recognized, but where and when it has been, it has not been contrary too, but in line with, Biblical teaching.

But as equal in God’s eyes, became merely equal, this equality was difficult to maintain given all the clear differences. Something had to go, and since equality was needed for human rights, even though the differences are pretty clear to most, not to mention common sense, they were simply denied.

But then common sense was one of the first things that had to be tossed out, if one is going to maintain equality among differences that are clearly not equal. So common sense was rejected as unscientific and untrustworthy. In its place was the study. In fact I have heard more than one college professor say that they won’t believe anything unless there is a study to support it.

Such thinking, (or unthinking as the case may be) has been very convenient for secularist as the results of studies are very strongly influenced by what questions researchers seek answers to.  There are pros and cons to most things. Look for the pros of any given issue and you can probably find supporting evidence.  Look for the cons, and you can find negative evidence.  Thus what “the research” states for any given issue will be strongly influenced by what questions the researchers are asking.

Another factor for men and women being the same was that it was so taken for granted, that it had not really been studied. Thus through a mixture of scientific mumbo-jumbo, and an absence studies showing they were different, men and women were proclaimed to be the same. 

This thinking so strongly influenced people that parents began giving their boys dolls, and their little girls trucks.  Distinctions in clothing began to disappear as did any distinction in roles.  Those who tried to point out differences were shouted down as sexists.

Of course the problem is that men and women are different, not just in their biology, but in their natures.  But the belief that men and women are the same still remain entrenched in many universities and still has a strong influence over social policy, as for example in the same sex marriage debate.

It has been one of the ironies that while we were supposedly throwing off the chains of sexual repression so as to allow boys and girls to be what they wanted to be, society was at the same time very strongly pushing them to be something they were not: the same.  The result has been untold unhappiness and pain.

But this was not the only absurdity to develop out of the post WWII secularist attempt to maintain human rights apart from God. Next week I look at a different approach that has also led not only to absurdity, but also to unhappiness and pain.

This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.

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In my review of Christopher Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great” I was discussing the relationship of reason to evil, which has taken me beyond the scope of Hitchens’ book. So I have decided to make this an independent series of posts, and will return to my review of Hitchens’ book when I am done. To summarize for those who have not read my comments on Hitchens’ book that got me here, I looked at how reason, unguided by moral values, can result in great evil, in particular how the secular evolutionary worldview when applied to society and culture resulted in Social Darwinism and Eugenics which supplied the rational underpinning for the Holocaust. 

After the holocaust these sciences were rightly rejected. Yet they were not rejected for the normal scientific reasons. At the time the Judeo-Christian worldview still held great influence even if many were beginning to reject its underlying foundation. As such, these sciences were rejected more for the result they produced than any new scientific discovery that showed them to be wrong.  

More importantly people embraced the Judeo-Christian based concept of Human Rights a concept developed from the beliefs that we are all created in the image of God and are all equal in God eyes. Human Rights stem from this, as not even a King has the right to interfere with what God has given.

As the Judeo-Christian worldview weakened in the decades since WWII, so did the foundation of Human Rights. What does it mean to be equal in the eyes of God, if there is no God? Worst, the underlying rational of secular evolution remained in a question few would dare to seriously ask:  If evolution is true, and we are just animals why shouldn’t we treat each other as the animals we are and order society on the principles of evolution; on survival of the fittest?

To avoid having to deal with this question, a number of strategies have developed over time; all with their own serious problems.  Most seriously, reason itself was depreciated, replaced instead by emotion. Thinking implies thought, questions, examination, contemplation, analysis. Express a thought and people are libel to ask you what you mean, and worse, they might ask you to justify your thoughts, to back them up, with the simple question: Why? Feelings need no justification, they just are. “That’s just how I feel about it” is a perfectly acceptable emotional answer to the question: Why?

As a result, we normally do not ask people what they think about something we ask them how they feel about it.  To be sure, the avoidance of the implications of secular evolutionary thought has not been the only factor in this or the other things we will look at.  Here for example, there has also been the rise of the importance of visual media (which appeal first to the emotions), and the corresponding drop in reading (where symbols must first be process intellectually to be understood). Still, the avoidance of the implications of secular evolutionary thought have not only been a factor but also a unifying principle.   

The depreciation of reason in favor of emotion meant that uncomfortable questions and implications could just be ignored and thus avoided. But the attempt to avoid the rational implications of secular evolutionary thought through depreciation of reason resulted, not too surprisingly, in considerable irrationality.

As the foundation for Human Rights was rejected, equal in the eyes of God, became merely equal, which may sound good to those influenced by modern post WWII thought, but what does it mean to be equal? Equal in what sense?

I am certainly not equal with Tiger Woods when it comes to playing golf, and perhaps it is just my vanity, but I like to think that there are probably a few things where he is probably not my equal. In sports, work, knowledge, background, illnesses, health, in virtually every aspect of life equality is the rare exception if it exists at all. Each of us is different. Each of us is an individual with different strengths and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages. So in what sense are we equal?

For the Judeo-Christian worldview this is not a problem. God transcends all of this.  Thus to be equal in his eyes is far more important and transcends any of the differences among us. To be a better golfer, or have more knowledge of history; to be taller or faster; to have more money or power all may show a lack of equality in these areas, but the equality before God, is an equality of worth that transcends everything else. It can transcend everything else, because it is based in God who transcends everything.

But the secular worldview does not allow for God. Thus there is no transcendant equality, because there is nothing transcendent in which to base such an equality.  More importantly survival of the fittest argues strongly against equality in the first place. Therefore the question, and thus the problem remain.

Normally the question has been answered with dogmatic and undefined statements of equality. We are equal just because we are. But with such an unthinking approach, the differences among us become an ever present danger, lurking in the shadows threatening to bring the whole system down.  Next time we will look at how the attempt to avoid this danger has changed how we look at everything, often with very negative effects.

This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.a

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Last time I discussed Christopher Hitchens’ contrasting of reason and religion in his book, “God Is Not Great.”  In addition to the problems mentioned last time, Hitchens premise that atrocities, religious or otherwise occur because people are not completely rational is itself flawed. Some evil can be very rational, as modern history has shown.

This is one of the core weaknesses in atheism and thus it is not too surprising that atheists try to avoid its implication, as Hitchens does later in the book. I will discuss Hitchens’ defense when we come to it, but here I want to lay out the problem and why it is so difficult for atheists.

In simple terms, atheists as a general rule see the conflict between atheism and religion as at its core one between the rational and the irrational, with atheism being on the side of reason.  If humanity would only abandon its irrational, that is religious, past, we could establish a sort of secular utopia grounded on the principles of science.

This all sounds very good and wonderful but in this sense atheists are sort of like use car salesmen selling an old clunker that will hardly make it off the lot, as if it were a new sport car.  It all sounds so nice as long as you don’t look too closely or ask too many questions.  The main difference would be that unlike a shady used car salesman, the atheist is being completely honest for they really believe what they are saying.

As we pointed out last time, reason is merely a tool, and is only as good as the data it has to work on and the framework in which it works. With the right data and the right framework, tremendous evil can be very rational. Atheists are often allowed to avoid this problem because making it involves pointing out how rational evil can be, and thus this often puts the theist in the position of seeming to argue for evil.

However, I believe that such arguments are important for two reasons. First, it shows the serious problems with relying only on reason as the atheist claim we should.  Second, and more important is that these argument are effectively being made today, even if not directly. In short as society is becoming more and more secular we are moving slowing and incrementally in this direction as each small step is justified with this reasoning, even if few are willing to point out where this line of reasoning will ultimately lead.

A key difference between the Judeo-Christian world view and the atheistic worldview is over the view of who we are. The Bible teaches that we are not only creations of God, but that we are created in his image. In fact it is from this view that the entire concept of human rights was developed for what right does anyone have to interfere with what God has given, even if they are the King?

The atheistic worldview, on the other hand, sees humanity as simply another animal, the result of a long series of random mutations and chance happenings that have resulted in human beings. In short we were the result of a process governed by the survival of the fittest.

From the time that Darwin published the Origin of the Species; the concept of evolution by natural selection was embraced by atheists. Not only did they immediately incorporate it into their attacks on Christianity, they also began to look at ways they could apply these new scientific principles to governing humanity. The result was the now discredited sciences of Eugenics and Social Darwinism. 

Where Christianity teaches we are to care for the poor, the weak and the infirmed, Social Darwinism taught that those that succeeded in life must be the fittest. Those that didn’t were being selected out and little or nothing should be done for them as that only weakened society.   The science of eugenics applied the principles of evolution to procreation arguing that by limiting procreate among those that were deemed inferior on the one hand, and the use of selective breeding on the other we could make better people.  In fact, it was the science of eugenics that spurred efforts for birth control and were a major factor in formation of groups such as Planned Parenthood.

Ultimately these new sciences were discredited when Hitler and the Nazi’s took them to their ultimate conclusions in the Holocaust.  While atheists frequently attempt to find a link between Hitler and religion, Hitler did not want to exterminate the Jews for religious reasons; he wanted them exterminated because he believed them to be inferior people who were contaminating the pure Arian or master race.

More importantly, his choices were not all that irrational, when seen in framework of Social Darwinism and Eugenics. After all people have selectively bred and or destroy animals for thousands of years so as to enhance certain traits and eliminate others. If the atheists are correct and we are just another type of animal, why not do the same with people?

The answer initially was that people have rights. But human rights are an inherently religious concept grounded in the belief that we are created in the image of God. As that foundation has been weakened the evolutionary rational of Eugenics and Social Darwinism is reemerging and next time I look at this in more detail.

This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.