RE: Happy Birthday, Hitch!
April 15, 2020 at 2:57 am
(This post was last modified: April 15, 2020 at 3:01 am by Belacqua.)
Let's take one of Hitchens' well-known claims and examine why it is either ignorant or deceitful. His famous assertion that the Christian heaven is like North Korea is a catchy analogy, a bit of wit, and some people have actually been fooled by this rhetorical device into thinking that it makes sense. Someone quoted it earlier on this thread.
First, to show that what he is saying is true, we would have to find a Christian who says that heaven would be like North Korea. I am doubtful that anyone would make this claim. And since the first rule of honest debate is that you have to be able to present your opponent's position in a way that he would agree with, Hitchens fails right out of the gate. No one I have ever heard of says that he thinks of an ideal afterlife as being like North Korea.
It is possible that some Christians think that heaven would be a place that God rules over with complete control. The whole point of heaven, though, is that it is supposed to be a happy place. So however it's supposed to work, it is not a miserable country of arbitrary laws but a place in which everyone is happy. The idea is that because God is an ideal ruler, not a selfish pseudo-communist, it is a good place to live.
It's not clear to me how many Christians would agree with the above image of heaven, however. Not all of them see it as a place where we live as we do now only more happily. So Hitchens fails again, by asserting that Christians believe something when in fact only some percentage of them do. It may be a majority, I don't know, but it is false to claim that it is an essential belief of Christians. It would be similar to claiming that all Americans are Christian. Yes, the majority are, but I'm not Christian, and I'm American, and I would find it false and offensive for someone to claim that one part of the population equals all.
As I have written before on this forum, it is bigoted to look at a large and diverse group and claim that they are all alike.
In The Great Chain of Being, Arthur Lovejoy describes how Christians have imagined heaven. This book is safe for atheists to read, because the author is not trying to persuade us of the truth of Christianity. He is describing other people's beliefs and, unlike Hitchens, he is able to describe them accurately. He is a careful scholar, not a propagandist. Lovejoy makes the point that views of heaven traditionally break down into two types: in one kind, heaven is thought to be similar to our own world, but better. That is, we move around and think, but we are happy. In none of the traditional views is heaven like North Korea. The other general type of view is that heaven is fundamentally unlike our own world. This, as far as I can tell, is the view of the intellectual Christians and others who base much of their reasoning on Plato and Aristotle. At no point does Hitchens indicate that he has the slightest notion of this strong tradition which, again, may be in the minority, but is nonetheless important in Christian doctrine.
The most famous description of heaven as entirely unlike our own world is in Dante. I would have thought that a graduate of Oxford would have some passing acquaintance with The Divine Comedy, but Hitchens clearly has understood nothing of it.
Dante's heaven is generally Platonic. In this view, God is the Good. God does not issue arbitrary decrees as Kim Jong Il does. The phrase "God wants this," just means "this is what it's good to do." Dante goes to great lengths to show that if we are not neurotic or misled, it is natural for us to do what is best for us, and this is exactly equivalent to doing what God wants. The idea of arbitrary and painful decrees has no place in this important Christian tradition. Heaven, on the other hand, is not in the world of time and space, so there is no possibility of issuing or obeying laws. Heaven is eternity, which has nothing to do with the passing of time, with getting bored or wishing to do something else. It's hard to picture, and Dante makes extensive use of the inexpressibility topos in order to talk about it, but the idea of it being like a closed country of obedient servants is ridiculous.
So Hitchens has taken the beliefs of one popular, less-educated segment of the Christian population, mischaracterized it, and claimed that this is an essential part of Christian belief. Either he knows he's wrong and doesn't care, or he's just ignorant and shouldn't be talking about things he knows nothing about. It's possible that he just wanted to score rhetorical points, and so he went with whatever made the best sounding speech, and he didn't much care about an accurate portrayal.
The trouble is that because his words have rhetorical force, some people who don't know better are persuaded that he knows what he's talking about. The sophistry has power. In this way, he makes the world stupider by making people believe something that isn't true, by leading them to believe that many many Christians are dumber than they are, and that we atheists are just better because we don't want to live in permanent North Korea.
He has harmed public understanding.
First, to show that what he is saying is true, we would have to find a Christian who says that heaven would be like North Korea. I am doubtful that anyone would make this claim. And since the first rule of honest debate is that you have to be able to present your opponent's position in a way that he would agree with, Hitchens fails right out of the gate. No one I have ever heard of says that he thinks of an ideal afterlife as being like North Korea.
It is possible that some Christians think that heaven would be a place that God rules over with complete control. The whole point of heaven, though, is that it is supposed to be a happy place. So however it's supposed to work, it is not a miserable country of arbitrary laws but a place in which everyone is happy. The idea is that because God is an ideal ruler, not a selfish pseudo-communist, it is a good place to live.
It's not clear to me how many Christians would agree with the above image of heaven, however. Not all of them see it as a place where we live as we do now only more happily. So Hitchens fails again, by asserting that Christians believe something when in fact only some percentage of them do. It may be a majority, I don't know, but it is false to claim that it is an essential belief of Christians. It would be similar to claiming that all Americans are Christian. Yes, the majority are, but I'm not Christian, and I'm American, and I would find it false and offensive for someone to claim that one part of the population equals all.
As I have written before on this forum, it is bigoted to look at a large and diverse group and claim that they are all alike.
In The Great Chain of Being, Arthur Lovejoy describes how Christians have imagined heaven. This book is safe for atheists to read, because the author is not trying to persuade us of the truth of Christianity. He is describing other people's beliefs and, unlike Hitchens, he is able to describe them accurately. He is a careful scholar, not a propagandist. Lovejoy makes the point that views of heaven traditionally break down into two types: in one kind, heaven is thought to be similar to our own world, but better. That is, we move around and think, but we are happy. In none of the traditional views is heaven like North Korea. The other general type of view is that heaven is fundamentally unlike our own world. This, as far as I can tell, is the view of the intellectual Christians and others who base much of their reasoning on Plato and Aristotle. At no point does Hitchens indicate that he has the slightest notion of this strong tradition which, again, may be in the minority, but is nonetheless important in Christian doctrine.
The most famous description of heaven as entirely unlike our own world is in Dante. I would have thought that a graduate of Oxford would have some passing acquaintance with The Divine Comedy, but Hitchens clearly has understood nothing of it.
Dante's heaven is generally Platonic. In this view, God is the Good. God does not issue arbitrary decrees as Kim Jong Il does. The phrase "God wants this," just means "this is what it's good to do." Dante goes to great lengths to show that if we are not neurotic or misled, it is natural for us to do what is best for us, and this is exactly equivalent to doing what God wants. The idea of arbitrary and painful decrees has no place in this important Christian tradition. Heaven, on the other hand, is not in the world of time and space, so there is no possibility of issuing or obeying laws. Heaven is eternity, which has nothing to do with the passing of time, with getting bored or wishing to do something else. It's hard to picture, and Dante makes extensive use of the inexpressibility topos in order to talk about it, but the idea of it being like a closed country of obedient servants is ridiculous.
So Hitchens has taken the beliefs of one popular, less-educated segment of the Christian population, mischaracterized it, and claimed that this is an essential part of Christian belief. Either he knows he's wrong and doesn't care, or he's just ignorant and shouldn't be talking about things he knows nothing about. It's possible that he just wanted to score rhetorical points, and so he went with whatever made the best sounding speech, and he didn't much care about an accurate portrayal.
The trouble is that because his words have rhetorical force, some people who don't know better are persuaded that he knows what he's talking about. The sophistry has power. In this way, he makes the world stupider by making people believe something that isn't true, by leading them to believe that many many Christians are dumber than they are, and that we atheists are just better because we don't want to live in permanent North Korea.
He has harmed public understanding.