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September 16, 2007 | 8:30 am

The morals of an atheist

In this 20-minute Q & A with the Hoover Institution, atheist spokesperson and journalist Christopher Hitchens takes on “the appalling insinuation that I would not know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided.”

I can’t embed the video, but here is the link. Let me know what you think.

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg in 3 Comments — Leave your comment

Tags: atheism

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Smart discussion. It’s a shame that kind of stuff doesn’t seem to air on television.

I do take as simplistic some of the questions of the interviewer.  The “If we’re all just atoms then whence morality” line is abhorantly facile.

The world is made up of structures on top of structures, and to boil things down to a baser structure is to conveniently discard the actual context that the question should address.

“But officer, if laws are just made up of letters on paper… you can’t give me a ticket!”

“But doctor, if cyanide is just protons, neutrons and electrons, just like pork chops, I can’t possibly be poisoned.”

“But mr loan officer, money is just ink and paper.... I’ll trade you a whole phonebook for some of your green!”

To boil it down to a lower structure in ANYTHING is to ignore, puposefully, the relevant rules, economy, culture, physics, biology, sociology, morality, social-norms, laws, and whatever else that actually exerts driving forces on the situation in question.

Whence MORALITY?  Tell it to the judge “But your honor, I wasn’t stealing the movie.  I just took some spare photons and turned them into electrons with my camcorder!”

It’s such a transparant DODGE that I don’t know how self-respecting intellectuals can peddle it.  Such reasoning wouldn’t cut it in court, but aparantly it works just fine in theology.

Comment by Anonymous on 9/17/07 at 1:31 pm

and apparently I can’t spell apparently.

Comment by Anonymous on 9/17/07 at 2:44 pm

I always identified with C.S. Lewis’ argument that God must exist because how else could man feel an innate sense of right and wrong. I still believe that it is an imprint of God, but Anonymous makes a valid point. We can’t say: Yes, man recognizes the difference between good and evil, therefore God is real.

That may be the reality, but proving one doesn’t prove the other.

Hitchens is a smart man and an interesting voice in this arena. But, in general, I find to be too antagonistic toward religion, and too cynical because of the violence and hatred it inspires.

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 9/17/07 at 3:41 pm

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