3. Have a Better Alternative

Considering Hitchens’ quickness to judge, his profound moral
indignation, and his rejection of religous moral guidance, it is
appropriate to ask: What is the justification for his moral judgments?
From whence comes his own moral compass? What is the grounding of his
ethical rubric? Turns out, it will be difficult to criticize religion
without an ethical system by which to judge it. Hitchens argues that
humans can just see that some deeds are wrong, and others
right. The Golden Rule is just obvious to normal human beings. He
thinks it ridiculous that injuctions like, "Thou shall not murder" and
"Thou shall not steal" needed to be laid out in the Ten Commandments,
as though the Hebrews didn’t know these moral truths already. Hitchens
is on to something here. He is echoing a belief that Christians have
always affirmed, that humans are endowed with a natural moral
apprehension. But if people are as cruel and twisted as Hitchens
describes so devastatingly in god is not Great, what gives?

If Christians are reluctant to follow the evidence where it leads, if
they balk at the truth that is staring them in the face, what can
Hitchens’ say to persuade them to regard truth more highly? If
Christians are prone to divisiveness, to sectarian enmity, what
resources does Hitchens have to show them the error of their ways?
Unfortunately, neither relativistic Postmodernism nor Hitchens’
scientific Modernism have much to contribute. Both of these most recent
developments in the Western zeitgeist have undercut our ability to make
the kinds of moral judgments at which Hitchens is so apt. If we are merely the products of an unguided, material process that resulted from a happy accident, it is a non sequitur to then say, we should be like this or that. Sartre had it right. If there is no design, no intentionality, then there is no way things ought
to be. Furthermore, if the evolutionary story is the whole story,
there’s no reason to think that our need to survive required the
development of a brain that reasons verisimilitudinously. And our
tendency to favor our own over others is a natural corollary of our
inbuilt drive to pass on our genes. With Postmodernsim, our prospects
are equally unpromising. If we cannot really know anything,
moral truths especially, it follows that making moral judgments is
presumptuous at best. I’ve witnessed this debilitating way of thinking
time and again. If you stop a random college student and ask him or her
if the Taliban’s oppression of women is objectively evil, it’s
not unlikely that they will stammer and stutter, stymied by the
cognitive dissonance of what they intuitively know and the
thoroughgoing relativism in which they have been stewed.

It would be one thing if Hitchens was just making the case that
religions are false, but his case against religion is primarily a moral
one. As such, a moral system is 

A Case in Point

For the most part, Hitchens doesn’t provide any rationale for his
particular moral sensibilities. His judgments are delivered as
self-evident, with one exception. In chapter sixteen ("Is Religion
Child Abuse?"), Hitchens enunciates his moral reasoning with respect to
abortion.

To begin with, Hitchens concedes that he was never persuaded by the
pro-choice tendency to characterize the fetus as merely a part of a
woman’s body. In his view, the fetus is undeniably its own entity,
indeed, a living "unborn child". Still, Hitchens points out that nature
itself is unkind toward the unborn. A significant percentage of
pregnancies are miscarried
naturally, without any human intervention. He notes, "the system is
fairly pitiless in eliminating those who never had a good chance of
surviving in the first place: our ancestors on the savannah were not
going to survive in their turn if they had a clutch of sickly and
lolling infants to protect in the first place." (p.221) Therefore, "for
all thinking people", it is reasonable and pragmatic to allow women to
abort their "unborn children" at their discretion, however difficult
that choice may be. Considering Hitchens’ naturalistic worldview, it is
not surprising that he looks to nature to ground his moral judgment.
Unfortunately, this is a woefully wrongheaded way of reasoning. Just
follow the logic for a moment. Nature is also unkind to the young and
the weak. We are most likely to die when we are young or old. The lion
always has his eye out for the newborn or infirm impala. If nature is
to be our source of moral guidance, the young and weak are also
expendable. Indeed, Peter Singer has infamously argued thusly in his
justifications for infanticide and euthanasia. And yet, our moral
intuitions as humans compell us to confer special protection on the
young and weak, to view those who abuse them as the worst kind of moral
monsters. The truth is, our moral intuitions are fundamentally at odds
with the Hobbesian state of nature that Hitchens describes, "red in
tooth and claw".

I am not weighing in here on the morality of abortion. I am only
claiming that the particular moral reasoning Hitchens employs is completely worthless
in evaluating this (or any) ethical issue. I’m reluctant to put it so
strongly, averse as I am to hyperbole when begging to differ. In this
case, I think such an estimation is clinical and accurate.

First, such an ethical compass leads to conclusions that either
offend our actual moral sensibilities or are unenlightening altogether.
Should we also learn something of relationships from the Black Widow’s
practice of cannibalizing her mate? Something of manners from
chimpanzees who eat their own feces? Is the oyster’s ability to
vacillate between male and female relevant to our understanding of
human transexuality? Should we model monogamous beavers or promiscuous
dogs in our views on marital fidelity? These particular examples may
seem absurd, but this impotent species of moral reasoning is not uncommon, and Hitchens is but one example.

Second, a naturalistic view of the world is incapable of
informing the philosophical and ethical questions that actually are at
the crux of the abortion debate. A few examples…

1. Hitchens suggests that the term "miscarriage" is a euphemism,
   that essentially nature is "aborting" vast numbers of "unborn
   children". The different terms, however, allude to a vital ethical
   consideration that is the fundamental distinction: intentionality.
   It is why premeditation is such a central consideration in our legal
   systems. Obviously, a mother who miscarries has not "aborted" her
   child. The distinction is important. Interestingly, intentionality has
   been one of the longest standing enigmas for naturalists. It is on the
   one hand so evidently real and on the other so hard to account for in a
   soulless universe.
2. According to Hitchens, the only
   proposition that is unhelpful is the idea that when the egg and sperm
   are united, a soul is now present and worthy of protection. Fine. But
   the question of to whom or what we grant fundamental human rights, such
   as the right to live, is inextricably wed to the pivotal question of personhood.
   And again, Hitchens’ naturalistic framework cannot inform our thinking
   about what does and does not constitute a person. We are after all
   unexceptional, just animals with big brains.
3. In the end,
   the abortion issue is one of competing moral goods. Autonomy (or
   choice) is a good. The protection of human life is a good. If the
   question of personhood can be answered in the affirmative, then in the
   case of abortion, two moral goods are in conflict. Life or liberty.
   What can Hitchens offer to resolve the dilemma? Can we deduce from the
   animal instinct to pass on its genes that life should take precedence?
   Or, do we learn from animals that eat their young that personal
   autonomy is primary? Both of these examples are so distasteful that
   it’s hard to even mention them. But it is with absurd and conflicting
   natural examples that we are left if we follow Hitchens in his
   deference to nature as a moral guide.

Third, it is a mistake, and logically indefensible, to argue from what is the case to what ought
to be the case. Nature itself. It is human conscience that provides the
additional insight, that though the world may be one way, it should be
another. Not only is nature unkind, but so are humans.

In Search of Moral Guidance 

In a volume so abundant in moral judgments, the one instance in
which Hitchens pulls back the covers and allows us to see an example of
his moral reasoning is quite revealing. The emperor is naked.
If Hitchens’ moral reasoning is so inadequate with respect to abortion,
what are we to make of the thousands of other moral truths that he
takes for granted elsewhere? What is his guiding light, his moral
compass? I suspect, there is no compass. What we have is a collection
of ungrounded moral intuitions, perhaps some the result of an innate
conscience, others the result of education, experience, and personal
taste. Turns out, in the vast majority of cases, Hitchens moral
preferences are my own. Indeed, I think we can discern a large pool of
commonly held moral imperatives by which to govern society.
Unfortunately, these moral truths can be subverted and suppressed, and
not only by religion. And, I’m afraid that the worldview Hitchens
brings to bear is a force of subversion.

The eugenics movement that had its way in the first half of the
twentieth century is illustrative. Hitchens mentions it only in
passing, noting the Catholic church’s opposition to it in some of the
few kind words he has for a religious institution. Inspired in large
part by "social darwinism", eugenicists sought to improve the human
race by sterilizing the "epileptic, imbecile, or feeble minded". At the
time, the "scientific community" largely endorsed eugenics while the
Catholic church and other concerned Christians were chided, once again,
for resisting the progress of science and society. Only when the horror
of the Nazi pogroms and their eugenics experiments came to light,
motivated as they were by the desire for a pure and superior race, was
eugenics admitted to be inhuman (at least for those who are born).
Hitchens disapproval of eugenics is puzzling if we try to place it in a
coherent ethical system, into a system based on the natural order. It
is unsurprising if understood as but one in an unordered constellation
of moral truths to which he has arrived from a lifetime of experience
and learning.

I am grateful that we can apprehend moral truths with or without the
ability to justify them from first premises. Fortunately, most of us
possess a multitude of moral intuitions about what is right and wrong,
though we’d be hard pressed to provide a coherent system of metaethics.
But by advancing an argument that seeks to replace the traditional
grounding of ethics in a good and just God, the bar for Hitchens is
higher. If we are not "endowed by our creator with certain inalienable
rights", then…

In Search of Reason 

In his online debate with Hitchens, Douglas Wilson wittily presses another worldview problem.

This doctrine means […] that you, Christopher Hitchens, are not thinking your thoughts and writing them down because they are true,
but rather because the position and velocity of all the atoms in the
universe one hundred years ago necessitated it. And I am not sitting
here thinking my Christian thoughts  because they are the truth of God,
but rather because that is what these assembled chemicals in my head
always do in this condition and at this temperature… If you were to
take a bottle of Mountain Dew and another of Dr. Pepper, shake them
vigorously, and put them on a table, it would not occur to anyone to
ask which one is "winning the debate." They aren’t debating; they are
just fizzing.

Hear! Hear!

One reason to think that we possess an innate moral intuition is, I
think, the biblical book of Job. Whether you think it legend or
history, it is widely considered one of the oldest texts preserved in
the biblical canon. Therein, as part of his lament to God, Job offers
an extensive defense of his moral rectitude. What is striking in this
context is how progressive is the standard by which Job asks to be
judged. He invites God’s judgment on himself if, and only…

If I have walked in falsehood or hurried after deceit… If I have I
have been enticed by another man’s wife… If I have denied justice to
my menservants or maidservants… If I have denied the desires of the
poor, let the widow grow weary, or not shared bread with the
fatherless… If I have seen anyone perishing for lack of clothing
without warming him with fleece… If I have raised my hand against the
fatherless, knowing that I had influence in court… If I have trusted
in gold for secrity… If I have rejoiced at my enemy’s misfortune…
If I have cursed another’s life… If a stranger had to spend the night
in the street. (Job, chp. 31. Paraphrase mine.)

We often think of early human history as barbaric, when might made
right, and civility was scarce. But in Job’s ancient defense, we meet a
man who is profoundly aware that he is bound to be a truthteller and to
treat everyone, including the weak and poor, with justice and kindness.
It’s not hard to imagine many of Job’s moral precepts as part of
Amnesty International’s manifesto.

What has the Enlightenment wrought. Euthanasia. In the early decades of
the twentieth century, during the heyday of scientific materialism

3. Make Distinctions

begrudging acceptance of MLK. 

Eschew Straw Men and Fear Mongering 

I am not intimately familiar with Wahhabiism or other forms of
extremist Islam, to say the least, but I have no reason to doubt
reports that their mission is to install a global Caliphate, imposing
Sharia law on the willing and on the unwilling. Hitchens, however,
insinuates repeatedly that Christians are similarly motivated. Indeed,
he has a terrible habit of conflating Islam and Christianity without
noting any distinctions. One distinction worth mentioning would have
been the different kinds of lives of Jesus and Mohammed.

One of his favorite examples is the Intelligent Design movement, which
he characterizes as a surreptitious attempt to brainwash impressionable
children. 

Be Self Aware and Self Critical

One need look no further than the shelves at a local Christian
bookstore to find a catalog of all the ways in which Christians fall
short.

Show the Way

One of Hitchens’ final chapters is provocatively titled, "Religion as the Original Sin". 

Selective Reading 

Hitchens scrupulously avoids biblical passages such as these that
resonate with our desire to be good and humane, preferring to dwell on
parts of the Bible that are either strange or, in some cases, repugnant
to our contemporary moral sensibilities.

Different Intuitions

Yes, he has all the right beliefs of a secular materialist orthodoxy, but he does not exemplify careful reasoning.

One of the most striking examples.

It would seem that falling short of God’s ideal and Jesus’ model is
regrettably common, perhaps even the norm, not the exception.

Some Good Criticisms

There is a tendency to see only warts on one’s enemies, and beauty marks on one’s friends.

Jesus and Hell

A Confession 

¹ I’m not suggesting for a minute that those who have been taken in by
Modernism or Postmodernism have unanimously or mostly given up on
ethics. I also acknowledge that the question of whether or not we can
have moral knowledge is deserving of discussion. I only take it for
granted for the purposes of this discussion because Hitchens’
denunciation of religion on moral grounds entails that he does believe
that he knows a great deal about what is right and wrong. I personally
think it prudent to be very circumspect in making most moral judgments.
These caveats noted, the problem is that it is difficult or impossible
to ground Hitchens moral sensibilities in his own worldview. They end
up floating on the side.

As far as I know… (My recently purchased Koran is sitting on the shelf, waiting to be read.)

2 Richard Dawkins treatment of Antony Flew is a corollary here. Condemning him for receicing an award from a "Bible Institute". 

It would be
a shame if religious people missed the opportunity to be chastened
by Hitchens’ valid criticisms.
It is also worth considering, however, whether Hitchens’ own moral
rubric has the necessary resources to tutor religious people in
particular, and humankind more broadly, toward greater humanity. Or —
in the tradition of Jesus, the
prophets, and Martin Luther King Jr. — is what is needed a constant
call to Christians to return
to their own first principles?

In some sense, Hitchens stands in this legacy, as a prophet, speaking
the unpleasant truth, calling religious people on their many failings. God is not Great
is, if nothing else, an expression of the profoundest moral outrage at
the transgressions of religion. And