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Paradoxically, Christopher Hitchens must be due for canonisation as a secular saint. In the broadcast snatches of his Toronto debate against Tony Blair on whether religion is a force for good, Hitchens assumed a kind of divine grandeur.
His physical frailty is countered by an intellectual ferocity, wit and sonorous clarity. His refusal to seek religious comfort, even in the shadow of death, looks very like moral courage.
The debate was billed as a heavyweight contest but Blair was strangely lacklustre. The former prime minister fell into the same trap as other defenders of the faith, which is to argue social good rather than religious wonder.
Perhaps Blair still hears Alastair Campbell's voice in his head: “We don't do God.” Easier to list charitable initiatives and the size of the constituency.
Blair argued that a lot of people were religious so why not reform and improve rather than abolish. This is an echo of his election promise to “sort the world”.
I am no theological expert but this seems to overlook the religious virtue of humility. When G K Chesterton was asked by The Times to write on the theme, “What's wrong with the world?” he submitted the following: “Dear Sirs, I am. Sincerely yours, G K Chesterton.”
Religion may do more good than harm in general but the exceptions are dramatic enough to hand Hitchens his irresistible flourishes. He shares the Philip Pullman vision of religion as a capricious dictatorship, strengthened by a wicked and powerful church hierarchy.
Hitchens did not refer explicitly to his own illness, yet he used it to tremendous rhetorical effect. Why should we wish to live under a celestial dictatorship, “a kind of divine North Korea ... where we are created sick and commanded to be well”.
Why was Tony Blair so ineffectual in response?
Was it that he dared not retaliate against a sick man, in which case he did Christopher Hitchens a disservice, or that faith is indefensible? This is the third high-calibre debate on religion I have followed — Intelligence Squared staged two major ones. Each time, I have switched to the side of the atheists.
Clearly, the social welfare argument is not working, so why not go for broke with sacred awe?
Why didn't Blair produce Handel's Messiah as his witness? Perhaps followed by the Liberian war- lord, General Butt Naked, interviewed at the weekend, who apparently turned from inhuman slaughterer to meek and repentant sinner after a blinding vision of Christ.
G K Chesterton advised the use of “fairytale” language properly to evoke the nature of the world. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. Hitchens and his fellow atheists talk of the superiority of reason over faith.
Chesterton countered that “reason itself is an act of faith”. Demonstrating this should be Blair's Bewitched project.
Theatre's female ascendance
The American winner of the Evening Standard award for Best Play, Bruce Norris, explained why he agreed to stage Clybourne Park at the Royal Court theatre.
When he was first approached by the Royal Court's artistic director, Dominic Cooke, he hesitated.
Norris was used to working with female directors, and worried that the relationship with Cooke might be competitive. Cooke reassured him that he was “a very submissive male”.
It still sounds novel in Britain for women directors to be in the ascendant but not for much longer. Women directors — and designers — are emerging powerfully into their own.
Thea Sharrock, Josie Rourke and Sacha Wares are exciting and daunting. And having spent an evening in the company of the delightfully level-headed 19-year-old award-winning playwright Anya Reiss, who said that she was “hoping” for a place at Cambridge, I am cheered that the future looks female.
Don't panic, it's only a few WikiLeaks
All journalists are dazzled by leaks, and the internet gives us a new sense of scale.
I will happily read every WikiLeak going but the latest batch shows the strength and the weakness of the internet. There is authenticity, immediate access and volume. But it lacks context and studiousness. I have learned much more from Bob Woodward's book, Obama's Wars, about this administration's world view, and some of it is far more scathing.
The response so far to WikiLeaks has been entirely correct: wounded dignity. I especially liked the quote from Afghanistan: “We feel OK because we are part of a large community of victims.”
Iran, meanwhile, feels short-changed by its neighbours and claims the leaks are a conspiracy.
Hillary Clinton must feel a little like David Blunkett facing the tight smiles of the Labour Cabinet after he had given the journalist Stephen Pollard an exhaustive analysis of his colleagues' personal faults.
It is awkward. But to call it a “diplomatic 9/11”, as has an Italian minister, suggests that world leaders are a bunch of crybabies.
The one thing that would aid any party
I have been slightly involved in the organisation of the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. The hardest bit is party planning. I see how the Middletons have acquired Noh-style inscrutable expressions and nerves of style. Few could run a company called Party Pieces without Valium.
I asked one of our theatre awards organisers what would be the single thing that would make life easier. RSVP, she said. It doesn't matter yes or no, just RSVP.
Reader views (9)
There's a reason religion keeps losing. You don't need me to point out the obvious answers as to why it keeps losing.
Debating is essentially easy when debating on the side of atheism.
Hitchens is highly intelelctual yes, but there's soooo many resounding arguments against religion, a moderately educated and informed 12 year old would defeat a religious nut!!
- Indy, London, 15/12/2010 11:18
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I have yet to see the debate, interview, chat show or public lecture where Hitchens does not win the argument hands down.
"Was it that [Blair] dared not retaliate against a sick man, ... or that faith is indefensible?"
The latter point is the one that seems to be borne out by watching such debates. I think that the 2 reasons that faith persists are:
1) people, very understandably, seek comfort in their lives at difficult times, and
2) people find it hard , again very understanably, to question things that they have been told by adults whom they trust from a very young age.
If you have not been brought up with, or engulfed by religion, then it is virtually impossible to watch debates where the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins put forward such logical and well reasoned arguments and not find the replies that they are given to be obviously flawed and closed-minded.
Religious ideas originate from times where people new far less about the world than we do today. Knowing what we now do about the Universe we can surely do much better. We no longer need fairy tales to explain why we have night and day, or land and sea. Although I for one would feel bad about offending or rubbishing the beliefs of good religious people, I think that we need to move on as a species and seek new knowledge rather than accept nonsensical myths. I think that rather than being arrogant or smug, Dawkins, Hitchens, Pullman, Harris etc are brave and sensible and say what they say with v good motives
- Robert, Cambridge, UK, 06/12/2010 18:56
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Noel, your grip on history is interesting to say the least. Yes, Christianity has had an often uneasy relationship with science since the late renaissance and, particularly, the Enlightenment. But human progress didn't start in the seventeenth century. Who defended reason and progress in Europe throughout the so called Dark Ages? It was the monasteries, followed by the Catholic universities of the Middle Ages. You'll never 'defeat' religion if you view it as superstition. Christianity is a world view based on a narrative rooted in the person of a first century religious teacher, filtered through classical philosophy and centuries of reasoned discourse. And how about the horrific perversions of science perpetrated by atheist regimes in the twentieth century?
- Edward Bell, London, UK, 01/12/2010 11:14
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If we were living in a world still governed by religion, I would likely not be writing this email, watching TV, or using a mobile etc. as religion has always sought to kill off reason and scientific progress. Reason and science have gradually eroded the superstitions on which religion is based. Religion has killed many a scientist or 'wrong thinker', and still does in some parts of the world. I also find huge irony that religious proponents make use of modern technology to spread their delusion. These tools would not exist if they had succeeded in their attempts to suppress progress. Reason is not an act of faith, reason does not need faith, that's why it works.
- Noel, London, 01/12/2010 10:23
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One of the problems with these debates is that they don't put up real Christian intellectuals to defend the compatibility of faith and reason, e.g. the likes of Alidair MacIntryre, John Haldane, John McDade or Aidan Nichols, who would have little trouble standing up to Hitchens' nursery book atheism. We get celebrities like Blair. However clever a politican Blair may have been he isn't a heavy weight thinker.
- Edward Bell, London, UK, 01/12/2010 10:14
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"Hitchens did not refer explicitly to his own illness, yet he used it to tremendous rhetorical effect. Why should we wish to live under a celestial dictatorship, “a kind of divine North Korea ... where we are created sick and commanded to be well”."
I fail to see how this relates to Mr Hitchens' illness in any way? This is clearly a reference to the absurdity of religion where a divine 'creator', having first created mankind with the capacity to kill and to commit adultery, then commands them not to do these things. Similarly (taking the Christian narrative), if God created mankind, why did he allow many millenia to pass by with all the attendant killing, disease and suferring, idily standing by, before saying 'enough' and sending his son to preach to few thousand people in an obscure part of the middle east?
This quote you mention in your article is Hitchens referring to the contradiction between the belief in a divine (benevolent) 'creator' and the 'sins' and suffering we see observe all around us. Hitchens' does not believe in a creator, so this cannot relate to his own illness.
The fact that he is not embracing religion ('refuses' suggests there is an impulse to fight against) in the face of death does not 'look like moral courage' -it is completely unremarkable.
Hitchens' illness is clear for anyone to see (and is undoubtedly sad). But it takes a more discerning commentator to see his arguments clearly.
- Megan Harrison, London, UK, 30/11/2010 23:37
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Bill Green wrote:
"For evidence just look at the fact that the best places to live in the world are the ones with the least religion."
I would welcome a list of such places please.
- Tony, Aylesbury, 30/11/2010 18:12
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Chesterton did not understand the difference between BELIEF and FAITH. None of us could function without the former. I believe that my flight to Paris will not crash into the sea (or at least there is a very low risk of this; if it takes off at all), based on the fact that the plane has been examined by scientifically trained engineers (using reason, not prayer). That belief is always contingent. Faith on the other hand requires one to accept a proposition without the least evidence. It is not contingent. By eliding the two concepts Chesterton indulged in a act of sophistry (or maybe he just didn't reason through what he was saying!).
- Alan J, London, 30/11/2010 17:31
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Yes religion MUST keep losing the argument because any rational and logical examination (not emotional and theological) shows the whole thing to be based upon a pack of lies, deceptions and inconsistencies that any 8 year old child can easily see. However in religious families and societies if the 8 year old raise any challenges to the accepted view they are brow beaten into submission with physical and psychological threats of what will occur to them and their mommy and daddy and everyone they know if they do not believe. And for this reason alone (there are many others) I dispute your observation that religion 'may do more good than harm'.
For evidence just look at the fact that the best places to live in the world are the ones with the least religion.
- Bill Green, Birmingham, 30/11/2010 11:35
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