Christopher Hitchens on “Atheism”

By -
Christopher Hitchens (ed.), The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press, 2007), xx-xxi.
There is an argument within the community of those who reject…this fantasy about the utility of the word “atheist.” For one thing, it is a pure negative: a statement of mere unbelief or disbelief. Dr. Jonathan Miller, for example, a distinguished physician and theater and opera director, is uneasy with the term for this reason: “I do not have,” he once told me, “a special word for saying that I do not believe in the tooth fairy or in Santa Claus. I presume that my intelligent friends do not suppose that I believe such things.” True enough—but we do not have to emerge from a past when tooth fairies and Father Christmas (both rather recent inventions) held sway. The fans of the tooth fairy do not bang on your door and try to convert you. They do not insist that their pseudo-science be taught in schools. They do not condemn believers in rival tooth fairies to death and damnation. They do not say that all morality comes from tooth fairy ceremonies, and that without the tooth fairy there would be fornication in the streets and the abolition of private property. They do not say that the tooth fairy made the world, and that all of us must therefore bow the knee to the Big Brother tooth fairy. They do not say that the tooth fairy will order you to kill your sister if she is seen in public with a man who is not her brother.

==================================


Comments

Scott Rice said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
April 16, 2012 1:34 PM
Scott Rice said…
"True enough—but we do not have to emerge from a past when tooth fairies and Father Christmas (both rather recent inventions) held sway."

What do you think this means?
April 16, 2012 1:36 PM
W. Travis McMaken said…
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here, Scott. Can you say a bit more?
April 16, 2012 1:53 PM
Wayne Stokeling said…
Mr. Miller and Mr. Hitchens has attempted to trivialize our belief in God and their lack thereof.

Scott, he is projecting that our belief is just an older myth that was started in the same manner as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.
April 17, 2012 10:29 AM
W. Travis McMaken said…
One can hardly blame him for such a view, even if one would disagree.
April 18, 2012 10:03 PM
Scott Rice said…
Just clarification. Thanks.
April 19, 2012 4:03 PM
Scott Rice said…
Travis, I am interested to know why you say that one can hardly blame him for holding the view that the Christian faith's (I assume this one) origins are likened to belief in one of Hitchen's examples. Do you simply mean its basis is non-foundational, i.e., not empirically provable?
April 19, 2012 4:18 PM
W. Travis McMaken said…
I would hardly attach the word "simply" to that sentence. Religion developed as an attempt to explain things in the world for which we had no other explanation. Basically, our brains are wired to explain things and they will make "educated guesses" (i.e., make stuff up on analogy to things we do know) if they have to. What happens in modernity is that the list of things we need explanations for gets really short, and shorter every day. We've moved well beyond a number of the old religious explanations (on thinks of Zeus' relation to lightning). We would generally look down on an adult who went around talking to an imaginary friend. There is not a single generally accessible and objectively verifiable reason to affirm God's existence.

Throw on top of that the negative side of religion (oppression, social control, etc.) and...one can hardly blame Hitchens for such a view.

My own personal view is that one is not truly a Christian if one has not woken up one day to the realization that the whole thing is really rather nonsensical.
April 19, 2012 4:26 PM
Post a Comment

Popular Posts

So You Want to Read….Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

By -
Image
"I fear that Christians who stand with only one leg upon earth also stand with only one leg in heaven." "The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community…may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door." "Since ethical thinking in terms of realms is overcome by faith in the revelation of the ultimate reality in Jesus Christ . . . there is no real Christian existence outside the reality of the world." "People who reject their bodies reject their existence before God the Creator." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer Prelude Andreas Steinhoff [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons I envisioned having a lot of time for blogging this summer, but that simply has not been the case - the last month has been a crazy one, to say the least. For two weeks, I was working at a theology summer camp of sorts, the Duke Youth Academy, and s...
Keep reading

So, You Want To Read Karl Barth?

By -
Image
Every now and then I am asked for advice about studying Karl Barth. So, I thought that I would share some of my standard advice here. But, before I do that, let me just say that I am by no means a Barth expert as compared to the people whose books I will mention below. I would be thrilled to find myself in their league one day, but as of yet that remains a distant dream. Still, I have been reading Barth for long enough, and under the supervision of a number of the scholars that I will mention below, that I think I can provide a decent orientation. I have never read Karl Barth before. Which of his books should I read first? Barth’s most famous work is the monumental 13-volume Church Dogmatics . Reading the CD with understanding is not an easy thing, so you definitely do NOT want to start here. Luckily, there are two smaller works by Barth that serve as helpful introductions to his work. Evangelical Theology: An Introduction - Based on the lectures that Barth delivered duri...
Keep reading

Karl Barth on Hell, the Devil, Demons, and Universalism – A Florilegium

By -
Image
You know, all the most interesting topics. Although Barth often confessed that he didn’t find these questions particularly interesting. At best they might draw sideways glances, as it were, as one travels the theological road. But I found a number of places in the records of Barth’s later conversations that I thought folks might find interesting, so I’ve collected them here. And if you aren’t familiar with the term “florilegium,” here you go ! All these texts are from the first volume of Barth in Conversation , with pages numbers given in parentheses along the way. As usual, italics are in the text and bold is mine. Hell “Now we come to hell. You shouldn’t laugh! There is nothing to laugh at! What does hell mean? I think hell means to be in the place where you are once fore all damned and lost without ceasing to exist, without losing the image of God, being what you are but being damned and lost, separated from God, whose creature you are, separated also from your neighbor, from...
Keep reading

George Hunsinger’s gloss of the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2

By -
Image
I’ve been reading George Hunsinger’s (my doktorvater , for anyone who might be new around here) entry in the Brazos Theoloical Commentary on the Bible series on Philippians. Anyone who has studied with George will find this book to be a compendium and application of many of his most characteristic and beloved analytical tools and patterns, and I’ve been enjoying it immensely. But one of the things that really stood out to me was how he glossed the so-called “Christ hymn” of Philippians 2. George Hunsinger, Philippians , Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: BrazosPress, 2020). The gloss that Hunsinger provides is not a historical-critical interpretation. Rather, it is an ecclesial, ecumenical, and theological interpretation that attempts to fill in the blanks for how to understand this proto-liturgical formulation in light of the later formulations of the ecumenical creeds. In order to achieve this gloss, Hunsinger engages in “ecclesial hermeneutics” and makes “...
Keep reading

2010 KBBC: Week 3, Day 1

By -
On the Monstrosity of Christ : Karl Barth in Conversation with Slavoj Žižek & John Milbank By Paul Dafydd Jones For a while, I hoped to frame this conversation in terms of a dramatic interchange – something along the lines of “A Slovenian philosopher, a British theologian, and a Swiss dogmatician walk into a bar…” Alongside an eye-wateringly hip assemblage of cinematic references, literary allusions, and comedic scenes – my early favorites being when Barth imagines a young adult novel, entitled Are you there God? It’s me, Žižek , and when Milbank waxes poetic about the Twilight movies – I wanted to engage some topics that would likely receive attention, were the authors to meet for drinks. Primarily, I envisioned an intense discussion of the logos asarkos and the logos ensarkos , with Milbank talking up the former category, Barth emphasizing the latter, and Žižek asking whether recent debates are but symptoms of secret puzzle, embedded in the Church Dogmatics – a puzzle that...
Keep reading