Peter J. Thompson/National Post
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, left, and author Christopher Hitchens ahead of their debate on the motion "Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world."
November 26, 2010 – 10:58 pm
By Tamsin McMahon in Toronto
There was a moment in Friday night's debate between avowed atheist author Christopher Hitchens and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a latecomer to the Catholic Church, but no less committed to it, that threatened to derail the polite, witty but somewhat circular arguments made by both.
A student invited to pose a question asked both men to explain an argument of the other that they could agree with.
It could have been taken as a subtle nudge toward the ultimate unasked question at the sold-out event at Roy Thomson Hall, broadcast around the world online and on the BBC: Would the 61-year-old Mr. Hitchens, who is battling end stages of esophegeal cancer, conceed to a deathbed conversion?
There are aspects to religion that Mr. Hitchens — whose best-selling book God is Not Great is subtitled how religion poisons everything — wrestles with, he admitted.
There is the Parthenon, that gorgeous Athenian temple, that Mr. Hitchens confesses he "could not live without."
Religion, said the Vanity Fair columnist in a debate in which he was arguing that religion is in no way a force of good, has produced its fair share of the transcendent.
That there is, he said, "the sense that there is something beyond the material, or if not beyond it, not entirely consistent with it, is, I think, a very important matter of what you could call the numinist, or the transcendent or at its best, I suppose, the ecstatic. I wouldn't trust anyone in this hall who didn't know what I was talking about."
But those who were expecting a religious epiphany from Mr. Hitchens would leave disappointed, and as the results of the debate suggested — 68% of the audience agreed with him — most left more convinced of Mr. Hitchens' belief that religion destroys more that is good in the world than it creates.
The real question Mr. Hitchens faces, he said, is not whether religion is good, but how to distinguish the beautiful material artifacts that religion has produced — its art, architecture and music — from "the superstition and the supernatural which are designed to make us fearful and afraid and which sometimes succeed only too well."
If anyone was hoping to find Mr. Hitchens more humbled as he battles cancer, his face pale and drawn, his trademark mop of unruly hair gone, his frequent bouts of coughing, they were wrong. He jumped around the stage in the cathedral-like hall, mocking the faithful for their belief in a "celestial dictator … a kind of devine North Korea."
At one point he turned to Mr. Blair and asked him whether the two should dispense with their closing remarks in favour of more audience questions — then interrupted the former head of state to declare that it would be so. Mr. Blair admitted there are inconsistencies in religious faith that he, too, struggles with, namely religious fundamentalism.
"The bad that is done in the name of religion is intrinsically grounded in the scripture of religion," said Mr. Blair, 57, the son of an atheist who converted to Catholicism in 2007 and opened the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in 2008. "The most difficult thing for people of faith is to be able to explain the scripture in a way that makes sense to people in the modern world."
Beyond that, the two found little to agree on and their arguments went round in irreconcilable circles.
Of course terrible acts of evil have been done in the name of religion, Mr. Blair said, but terrible acts have likewise been done in the name of man, as evidenced by totalitarian regimes who have opposed organized religion.
Of course works of charity have been done in the name of the religion, said Mr. Hitchens, but "love thy neighbour" is a concept embraced equally by humanists.
The two have had brief meetings of the mind in the past — both were committed to the British labour movement and to the invasion of Iraq.
But Iraq, said Mr. Blair, was solely "decision based on policy," one separate from his faith.
Mr. Hitchens found merit in the Iraq war because of the "unanimous opposition of every single church to it."
National Post
Posted in: Holy Post Tags: Christopher Hitchens, Monk Debates, Tony Blair
Read more: http://life.nationalpost.com/2010/11/26/sparks-fly-as-blair-hitchens-talk-religion/#ixzz16VX858yy