Christopher Hitchens was a guest on Sam Smyth’s Sunday Supplement show over the weekend along with David Quinn, Eamonn McCann, Max McGuinness and Brendan Keenan. Hitchens was on the panel to publicise his book “God is not Great” (or “God is not Good” as Sam Smyth mis-named it). Quinn, a Catholic commentator, was somewhat outnumbered, given that Hitchens, McCann and McGuinness are all atheists, but it was nevertheless a robust and entertaining debate.
A lot of the initial discussion centred on the notion of what God is, with Quinn asserting that since the origins of the universe and the origins of matter are still unknown, God must be at least considered as an answer. Hitchens was having none of it. “You’ve got all your work ahead of you still”, he said, as it was up to Quinn to link the origins to why we humans could not eat certains foods on certain days and refrain from certain sexual positions.
Quinn then moved to discussing the religious impulse – “man seeks meaning and purpose and transcendence and a transcendent reference point” – and that this, in some way, directs us to the existence of God. Hitchens questioned this, pointing out that some European societies now had a majority atheist population – they could live their life morally without requiring any significant impulse to give daily praise to a deity.
On at least three occasions, Quinn tried to bait Hitchens into a corner by getting him to take a side on positions such as the existence of atheist fanatics, that some of Hitchen’s heros had crackpot ideas, and that left-wing secularists were teaming up with Islamic fundamentalists. On each occasion, Hitchens failed to take the bait, agreeing with Quinn each time but also exposing the false dichotomy – (these were not either-or questions where you needed to take the wrong side in all cases).
Quinn then brought out the issue of free will. Quinn steadfastly maintains that the existence of free will is proof of the existence of God. I find this deeply unconvincing, as did the other panellists. If I read it correctly, Quinn’s view is that scientific materialism, with its emphasis on thoughts and emotions and impulses being merely chemical in nature, should result in humans being mere automatons, reacting in a predictable way to all events and incapable of awe, wonder and higher thought. Some of the conclusions of 20th century science (chaos theory, quantum mechanics, cosmology) would suggest quite firmly that the Universe is a deeply unpredictable place from a macro, micro and mid-size scale . The clockwork model of the Universe has been shelved for some time, so why should Quinn still hold fast to this idea?
The conclusion of the debate centred around Iran and what a miserable place it was and how religion, given free reign, made a mess of things. The debate, to me, petered out somewhat here with McCann citing deep political roots to the problems of Iran and Quinn trying to get Hitchens to deal with the issue of secular liberals siding with Islamic fundamentalists.
There was definitely a (somewhat successful) attempt in the discussion to move the spotlight from religion to more unanswerable questions, but even still, I don’t think Quinn so much as landed a clear punch.
Anyway, that’s just my view. I’m sure others listening will have taken up things differently.
The podcast is here. The last half-hour is the meaty stuff, so feel free to skip the first hour unless you are a big fan of Beverly Flynn..
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