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Entry: Hitchens' Hubris Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/hitchens_hubris#2745 Post contents: //Belief in God is, in more general terms, a belief that something transcends material existence. If you accept that something transcends our appetites, that something transcends material world, then you had might as well lighten up about religion. Religion is simply what-one-believes-in.// This is a gross confusion of religion and spirituality. I don't know about Douglas, but many atheists are deeply spiritual in a non-religious way. Spirituality means to consider the possibility of something bigger than oneself and sometimes bigger than everything. Religion means to subscribe more or less doubtlessly to that kind of belief and channel it into an organized system with clearly identifiable deities, rites, and traditions. There is a striking difference. Spirituality is a driving force of humanity, and those who lack it are empty, useless, or bad human beings. Religion is an unwarranted and unjustified assumption on the basis of that spiritual drive. //If we are all meaningless blips in an absurd reasonless puddle doomed toward an oblivion of eternal darkness, I fail to see why you are offended that one blip has written something critical of another blip.// Theists typically make this gross over-simplification: materialism must equal some form of nihilism. Even if we were all meaningless blips, it would still not follow that we must not care about anything. We are not even sure whether we *are* at all blips, or just what kind of blips. But even if it were true, you see that as a hopeless darkness, whereas many non-theists see it as a chance to rule ourselves as a human species, give ourselves hard-earned values and make ourselves follow them. //Do you really think it so obvious that an empty, meaningless infinity is a more plausible origin for Man than Spirit?// It is not a matter of plausibility. It is a matter of evidence. There is much more evidence for natural causes than for the thousands of versions of "Spirit" that people have ever come up with. Besides, I have a problem with the word "Man" the way you seem to intend it--as if there was anything special about us humans. The only beautiful thing that we really have is our intellect. To waste it in pursuit of mindless submission to a flock-leader, warmonger God is criminal. //And in any case, the multiverse picture still doesn’t resolve anything in terms of why there is Being at all.// You're right, it doesn't. Currently, there is no explanation for that sort of question. Does that trouble you so much that you must go looking for answers anywhere? Would it not be more rational, not to mention more mature, to accept one's limits and be confident --hope, or perhaps pray?-- that one day a fellow human will glimpse an answer? //The Christian faith that you regard with such contempt is the creative font of the great works of culture, art, and literature of Western Civilization. If you truly regard religion as poison, then for the sake of consistency and integrity you should stop partaking of that poisoned heritage.// Yesterday an electrician came to my home to install a new wiring system. He did a really fine job of it. But while he was at it, he raped my wife and killed my dogs. Naturally, I had him arrested. Should the cops have grinned and said, "Ahhh but look at those wires! Such a good job!" Clearly, that never happened. But I think you see my point. You committed a false dichotomy. Bad things may overshadow the good ones, or vice-versa. One does not accept or reject *anything* because of a few features. In the case of Christianity (as well as Islam and any other religion), we non-theists would like to keep the art and gradually educate people to learn to do away with the rest. //And the assumption that without Christianity everybody would have spent the last 2,000 years being nice to one another is a problematic proposition, to put it mildly.// "What ifs" are often pointless, but it is easy to see how the obscurantist forces of the Church have slowed down what might have been a faster process. Perhaps only slightly faster, or we might have had the Internet by the year 1600. But certainly it would have been faster had all emerging scientists all the way up to the 1800s not have to deal with religious authorities. //Do you *really* think that greed, hatred, and power-lust are mere side-effects of belief in God?// Those are natural effects that all human beings are capable of. Radical belief in God merely makes them more probable. Sent at: 2008 07 24