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Entry: Hitchens' Hubris Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/hitchens_hubris#2758 Post contents: <i>I would also direct everyone to the article from Christianity Today linked to above, which deals with the philosophical confusion of Dawkins et al.</i> Plantinga's arguments are also confused, I'm afraid. He argues: 'Dawkins says God is complex [using the word in a scientific sense], but classic theology says He's not complex [using the word in a non-scientific sense]. One in the eye for Dawkins!' Plantinga commits the gross error of failing to distinguish between the two different senses. Then: 'Dawkins says complex entities have parts, but God is immaterial, therefore has no parts, therefore is not complex. One in the eye for Dawkins again!' No, faultily reasoned again: it's proof by definition. If by 'part' one means 'a distinct portion of a material entity', then of course God has no parts. But why must it be an material entity? To take a simple example: the digits of pi are 'parts' of pi and if nothing existed but God, he would still know all the digits of pi. Therefore parts exist within God and he is indeed 'complex'. Infinitely so, in fact. That's quite beside the question of the 'mind' whereby God knows pi, which again must be infinitely complex. <i>As you point out, the multiverse is a theory taken on blind faith, a theory that has arisen because the big bang is uncomfortably close to the creation ex nihilo that atheists have always denied.</i> If Dawkins & Co say the multiverse DOES exist, they have blind faith. They don't: they offer the multiverse as a possibility, as the steady state universe was previously offered as a possibility. Theories aren't dogmas. G.S. -- Yes, thanks for an interesting response. I see I misspelt Scobie, but excuse myself on the ground that I far prefer the conservative Waugh to the (relatively) liberal Greene. Conservatism and theism certainly do seem to foster art in a way liberalism and atheism don't, but I don't regard that as evidence for the truth of theism. Beliefs can be useful without being true and if human beings have evolved to be religious, it's presumably healthy for us to be so, in some sense. Dawkins and Hitchens in fact seem evidence for that: they've filled their God-shaped holes with an ideology allowing them some of the nastier religious comforts: the <i>odium atheologicum</i>, one might say. I don't think Douglas was very convincing, but your response had serious flaws too. To address some of them: <i>Consider the godless Marxism admired by Hitchens and so in vogue among leftist intelligentsia… in its various forms it has murdered over 70 million human beings.</i> Consider the godful Islam so opposed by Hitchens. Many of its adherents, in the name of God, would happily slaughter twice as many. Of course, their idea of God is wrong, but perhaps it's not God or His absence that makes an ideology murderous. In any case, Marxism retains God in the guise of "historical inevitability" etc. <i>If you don’t believe in anything, and don’t think that anything transcends the material world, then you might as well drop the moral pose, given that things like love and justice and reason are just memes full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.</i> Not so. Love, justice and reason are independent of God and supernatural, because He cannot make them other than are: by necessity, love is good, murder is wrong and 13 is a prime number. God cannot contrive that love is bad, murder is right and 13 is evenly divisible by 7. <i>If you are no more than a meat-machine I fail to see why you expect your indignation to register with anyone.</i> Morals do not depend on God: what is good and what bad are independent of Him, because He cannot make them other than they are. <i>As near as I can tell, the sole appeal of the multiverse theory is that people like Hitchens and Dawkins dogmatically rule out any sort of creative will behind creation. I.e., they find an infinite number of Universes an idea easier to entertain than a Creator.</i> It is easier to entertain and by suggesting otherwise you betray your failure to grasp God's greatness. An infinite number of universes are as a speck of dust beside the One Who could create -- and perhaps has created -- them ex nihilo. <i>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.</i> 1) If that were true, it's post hoc, ergo propter hoc. 2) It's not true: Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the Aeneid and very much beside are pre-Christian. <i>If you truly regard religion as poison, then for the sake of consistency and integrity you should stop partaking of that poisoned heritage.</i> <i>If you hate Christendom so much then the right thing to do is reject it rather than derive parasitic pleasure from it. Which means no Michaelangelo,</i> A homosexual whose homosexuality intimately informed his art. Now, if you truly regard homosexuality as poison, then for the sake of consistency and integrity you should stop partaking of that poisoned heritage. If you hate homosexuality so much, then the right thing to do is reject it rather than derive parasitic pleasure from it. So no Michaelangelo for believers in Christian tradition, I'm afraid. <i>And it also means no science—there is a reason it is called Western science, and there is a reason it originated in Europe. I’ll give you a hint: Logos.</i> A term from pagan Greek philosophy. Science took an awful long time to appear and appeared in a very limited area if we assume Christianity has the credit -- or takes the blame -- for it. Seems to me it arose from the same forces as Protestantism, and Protestantism was a heresy that would have been stamped out if its Christian opponents had had their way. Sent at: 2008 07 24