"Hitchens is Not Great"--God

I wish I had more time to follow and comment on the continuing controversies in the National Post regarding atheism and religion. Work is too pressing—and too much fun. Not to mention a new addition to the family.

Christopher Hitchens’ new book, God is Not Great, was excerpted in serial two weeks ago, and it was an enjoyable read. Hitchens writes well. But his points seemed mostly predictable, familiar to anyone deeply interested in religions. Village atheist stuff, their thinness covered often by bombast. Or does he, methinks, like so many atheists, protest too much?

But in any case, it is the duty of this column to make some comment. So the editorially plural we will.

Let’s take “Abusing God’s Children” (National Post, 12 May, 2007)—Hitchens’ most direct attack, and grand finale. Hitchens begins by citing a Hasidic practice of sucking off a baby’s foreskin. He claims this has led in the case of one mohel to the spread of herpes and even to the deaths of two babies. He intones that “no New Yorker would permit atrocities against infants if not for … the foul practice being holy and sanctified.”

But in fact, fairly obviously, they would. There is an exact parallel here: the vaccinating of babies. This too has, in a similar small minority of cases, caused the spread of disease and even the death of some children. Yet this practice does not attract Hitchen’s censure.

Why? Because Hitchens believes in medical science; he does not believe in Hasidism. The risk, for him, is far outweighed by the potential gains, as understood by modern medicine.

Yet the Hasidic parents could and would say exactly the same thing. They believe in Hasidism, and the potential gains of undergoing this particular procedure—heaven itself—far outweigh the risks.

Hitchens’s point holds, in other words, only if you assume Hasidism is false. His reasoning is tautological.

In seeking to prohibit the one practice, however—circumcision for religious reasons--and not the other—vaccination; or, indeed, circumcision for medical reasons--Hitchens is showing religious intolerance—showing the sort of fanaticism in favour of one’s own world view for which he unfairly blames religions.

Hitchens goes on, even less logically, to blame religion for female genital circumcision. Here he misses the most vital point: female circumcision is not mandated by any major religion. It is a social custom, or indeed a local medical practice. This makes doubly ironic his claim that “No society would tolerate such an insult to its womanhood… if the practice were not holy and sanctified.” The same is true of Hitchens’ condemnation of “Hindu” child brides. Hitchens seizes on the fact that they are Hindu for a post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument: they must then be child brides because they are Hindus.

Leaving aside the question whether marrying young is objectively immoral, or merely a question of cultural prejudice on Hitchens’ part, does being Hindu and marrying young automatically mean Hinduism is the reason one is marrying young? Of course it does not. The practice is not called for by the Hindu religion. It is a matter of custom, economics, and practicality.

Going even further astray from the logically defensible, he then finishes by accuses the Catholic Church of child molestation. This is an even further stretch: the Catholic Church is vocally opposed to child molestation, and always has been. If a Catholic, or even a Catholic priest, is nevertheless guilty of the sin, does that make Catholicism responsible? By the same logic, if an American commits a crime, America and the American government is responsible. This is the sort of corporate guilt that other religious fanatics once used against the Jews.

Hitchens’ other excerpts are even weaker. On May 11, the featured chapter was “Joseph Smith’s Long Con,” in which Hitchens repeats the familiar claims of fraud against the founder of the Mormons.

There is no news here; all the information Hitchens presents was well known in the 1940s. He is wasting our time. Let’s assume, in order to cut to the chase, that all Hitchens says against Joseph Smith is true. That makes Smith rather precisely the religious counterpart to the nineteenth century’s many traveling snake-oil salesmen and medicinal mountebanks. All that distinguishes him, indeed, is his appeal to religious, rather than scientific, authority.

But if one patent medicine does not do what it claimed to do, and was marketed dishonestly, does that prove that medical science is a fraud? Of course not. And it is a double standard to judge religion differently. Hitchens merely believes, a priori, in science, and disbelieves, a priori, in religion.

On May 10, Hitchens argued that the prohibition against eating pork in Judaism and Islam is due to an attempt to prevent cannibalism rather than, as is commonly suggested in scientistic (not scientific) circles, to prevent trichinosis. This at least is a relatively novel theory; I think so too, and have advanced this possibility myself in the past.

But, in terms of Hitchens’ main point, so what? What bearing does it have on whether the practice is or is not divinely sanctioned? God is actually quite likely to be opposed to cannibalism, after all.

In the attempt, however, Hitchens reveals again his general ignorance of his subject. He is unaware, in the first place, that the cannibalism theory is not original with him, as he claims. He seems unaware that the Talmud does not prohibit the eating of pigs per se—a point he surely needs to address. It bans instead the eating of a very broad range of animals, which, apparently arbitrarily, includes pigs—along with most other animals. If the issue were pigs, per se, then why the broader restriction? Hitchens also tosses out as comparison “the now-lapsed Catholic injunction to eat fish on Fridays.” Again, Hitchens does not seem to have done the necessary research. There is no Catholic injunction to eat fish, and never was. The injunction is not to eat meat.

And it has not lapsed.

Hitchens also oddly supposes that a prohibition against eating them shows a hatred of pigs, while freely devouring them slathered with mustard expresses affection.

He must be fun on a date.

Hitchens ends with three conclusions: “religion and the churches are manufactured; ethics and morality are quite independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it; …[and] religion is—because it claims a special divine exemption for its practices and beliefs—not just amoral but immoral.”

Conclusion one he is not entitled to; he can have no idea in principle, for it requires proving a negative. But indeed, even if he could, so what? Some religions, like Buddhism, are quite happy to assert that they are man-made. Others are quite happy to assert that most or all others, saving themselves, are man-made. Hitchens seems simply or willfully unaware of this.

Conclusion two, any good Catholic would happily agree with. Hitchens again does not seem to be aware of this: religion holds that morality is objective, binding on all, and can be demonstrated by reason. It is, surely, the atheists and relativists who sometimes assert otherwise.

However, I am not clear what Hitchens means by saying morality “cannot be derived from” faith. This seems self-evidently false: it need not, but surely it can be, and demonstrably often is. Acknowledging we are all children of the one God goes a long way towards promoting an appreciation for the golden rule, to treat all other people as equal in worth to ourselves. Hitchens again seems to be drawing unwarranted conclusions, missing the distinct difference in meaning between “must” and “can.”

Leaving conclusion three: is demanding a divine exemption for one’s own practices and beliefs immoral? I think not. In social terms, this is merely the doctrine of human rights: the right to choose for oneself what to believe and the right to act on one’s conscience. And in individual terms, it is morality itself: standing on one’s beliefs and the practices they require.

No, it is refusing to do this, and refusing others the right to do this, that is immoral.

This is what Hitchens, ultimately, seems to want. He is, in the end, a fanatic.

There always seem to be proportionately far more fanatics among atheists than among the religious.