The Princeton professor was an extreme disappointment, creating his own mock arguments quite independent of Hitchens’ objections or main thesis. He also got sensitive when he got an honest answer, why was he not getting through to the guest — he was (in fact) ingratiating and unctuous and ultimately condescending, as if there was no toleration for an anti-religion position. He didn’t appear to get what Hitchens was claiming.
With an ad hominem argument that spoke volumes, saying Hitchens would “fail” his course (WITHOUT EVEN TAKING IT??) said a great deal more than he intended about his intellectual limits than what is true about an obviously brilliant polemicist. That is, if Hitchens would be failed for challenging the assumptions (and presumed authority) of a professor pushing tolerance, I must say this is eloquent proof the professor was badly outmatched and that religious-types do incline to the dogmatic.

I hardly agree with all of Hitchens’ anti-theist (not atheistic) points (and not at all with him about the Iraq war) but he has done his homework on the oppressiveness (and diceyness) of organizing God’s word, trying to fix “truths,” and you did not adequately challenge his powerful equation (linking organized religion with some dogma which claims something about the intentions or value of a higher source — let alone the pushy mandate to spread the gospel) by presenting the hash from the professor. Mr. Lydon was not as precise or grounded as he usually is. Hitchens’ core point, that religion is man-made and that its creators were intellectually out of date is not a trivial objection, nor that morality is not dependent on old-time religion.

Declaring pluralism exists, and everyone necessarily should interpret “sacred” texts (by definition arguing for something beyond human influence), and that some of faith are tolerant or open-minded, speaks only to one form of radically-individualized Protestantism — and bears not at all on Hitchens’ general point there is something arrogant or imperious or even moralistic about the core of 98% of church-based religion. How many religions even allow, let alone encourage individual interpretation or relationship with the godhead?

When Christopher H. (and really, find out how he calls himself before the show! yikes, he’s the guest) said the professor was talking in a way that he couldn’t respond to or understand, I knew exactly what he meant — the academic was pouring out mushy pap and offering neither agreement or disagreement at a level that encouraged meaningful exchanges.

The way to argue against Hitchens is to show his terms are not as meaningful or comprehensive as he claims — and he admitted to blurring at times his use of the world religion with faith with God, etc. It’s not a useful argument to say, as Christopher Lydon did, ideologues don’t go to his church or he doesn’t recognize dogmatic leaders in his world (how about the Pope!!).

If religion is an open-ended field without ideology or dogma or some kind of authoritarian structure that enforces the set of beliefs the faithful hold to be “sacred,” then it’s no more than an intellectual grab bag without any transcendent authority — and all its benefits (music, art, literature) are somewhat co-incidental or secondary.

Robert Becker, Ph.D.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2007/1919949.htm

I remember watching a fascinating ‘interfaith’ dialogue not long after 9/11. While members of each of the three faiths talked about how they could come together, lurking in the hearts of each were the doctrinally chauvanist notions that would make, unless they, like I, abandoned their respective faiths entirely, a true comprimise unworkable.

Christians and Moslems are particularly problematic because while in public, they will espouse in ‘good faith’ their respect and tolerance of the other two, in private, their ruminations will unfortunately, at the crux of it all, prove these dialogues to be ultimately fruitless. Paramount is that for Christians, Christ, and for Moslems, Mohammed, are the final arbiters of faith. Anything else would mean the rejection of Christ’s divinity and the all too static notion that Mohammed is the last and final prophet. And Jews welcoming Christ and more improbably, Mohammed along side their pantheon of prophets?

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/opinion/25brooks.html?hp

i felt like the host was inarticulate and out of his element, but that recording is a new hitchens classic in my collection.

Is Jesus a myth? TheStar.com – Life – Is Jesus a myth?
Religious stories are allegorical, not literal, author contends
May 12, 2007
Stuart Laidlaw
Faith and Ethics Reporter

There are no easy answers in religion, whatever fundamentalists of any stripe might tell you. True spiritual awakening is hard, hard work and will most likely never be achieved, one of Canada’s most famous religious thinkers says.

But for the sake of all of us, it’s worth trying. And the first step is to realize that the stories in the scriptures are simply not true.

“Religion generally – particularly North American Christianity – is drowning in an ocean of literalism,” says Tom Harpur, author of the newly released Water Into Wine: An Empowering Vision of the Gospels.

Harpur challenges readers to spurn the “easy answers” of fundamentalist movements offering salvation to those willing to hand themselves over to the church completely – accepting Jesus as a personal saviour, for instance.

Instead, he argues, the true message of the Bible, and the Jesus stories in particular, is that there is a divine spirit in all of us that can be drawn out if we work hard enough. By examining the similarities of the Bible stories to those in other faiths, Harpur argues that this is perhaps the true message of all religions.

“Most of the abuses of religion today arise from taking the text – whether it’s the Q’uran or the Bible or whatever – as literal history,” he says. “Religion doesn’t speak that language.”

The language of religion, he says, is myth, metaphor and allegory. The stories in scripture are not meant to be seen as history, but as ways to understand the private struggles needed to bring about personal enlightenment.

Harpur’s latest book is in many ways a follow-up to his bestselling The Pagan Christ, a 2004 book in which he argues that Jesus never existed, but was invented by early gospel writers drawing on pagan myths from many cultures and countries, especially Egypt.

Paradoxically to many, the former Anglican minister and one-time fundamentalist does not argue that the most sacred stories are fiction to turn people away from religion, but to help them see the real meaning behind the stories.

“The stories are about you. They’re not about some person 2,000 years ago,” he says.

This is a key point for Harpur. In many ways, everything hinges on it.

If Jesus was a real person, and all the stories about him are true, then he is the saviour the fundamentalists put him forward to be. All anyone has to do to be saved is give themselves over to Jesus.

“You literally do nothing. Somebody else does all the heavy lifting,” says Harpur.

But if the stories are myths, if Jesus is a purely fictional character, then there’s no one coming to save the faithful. They are forced to save themselves by discovering their inner divinity, Harpur says, rather than looking for a “magician” from 20 centuries ago to do it for them.

In this light, he says, the stories from the life of Jesus (or Buddha, or any other Christ-like figure found in virtually every religion) are allegorical tales about how to achieve that person salvation.

Take the story of Jesus healing the lepers. Read literally, this is evidence that Jesus was a God-man, since he could cure the incurable.

But for Harpur, there’s a much deeper meaning.

Leprosy itself was a “symbol for man’s need for the healing and cleansing touch of the divine,” which Jesus cures by simply telling the lepers to present themselves to the priests. As they go, they are cleansed of the disease.

It was by facing up to their ailment, Harpur says, and no longer hiding it, that they were cured.

“It’s not a case of sitting around waiting for our prayers to be answered, of keeping everything on hold while we wait for some special sign or epiphany to inspire us,” he writes.

Harpur says this is a much more inspiring message than tales of a god in human flesh saving lives and performing miracles.

“I believe I am close to the spirit of the early Christians,” he says.

Harpur believes the gospel writers never meant their stories to be taken literally. Instead, they were an attempt to tell in narrative form the personal and spiritual struggles necessary to achieve individual divinity.

The struggles Jesus faces, and the parables he tells, are all a lesson in how to handle the moral quandaries and temptations that make each person’s spiritual journey such a challenge, Harpur says.

“It’s about transformation,” he says, adding that to read the stories literally is to obscure this message.

That message is needed now more than ever, he says, as we live in an “age of literalism” in which fundamentalists of all faiths seem to be determining the fate of so many.

Harpur has been the target of much scorn from those who prefer literal interpretations of the Bible, but remains optimistic that their days are numbered.

He believes, too, that the prodigal generation that turned its back on religion will return if offered a deeper interpretation of gospel stories than provided by fundamentalists.

“It’s at a peak right now,” he says of fundamentalism. “But it hasn’t got the intellectual depth to sustain itself against the flood of knowledge.”

The quote comes from Devorah Baum’s review of Leora Batnitzky’s Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation. It goes:

The philosopher, because he is always parasitic on society, occupies the position of someone persecuted. Esoteric writing thus reflects the tension between theory and practice since, Strauss argues, the wise philosopher will wish to avoid cruelty. He will take care, in other words, to propel his interlocutor toward a greater critical stance without imprudently (or cruelly) destroying his worldview. And so, rather than being the elitist or even fascist idea that has enraged so many of his critics, Strauss’s notion of esotericism is simply, according to Batnitzky, an entirely sensible and even generous educational tool.

Found this passage on the literary blog, This Space, http://this-space.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html:

I submit that if there is a case for zero proving the existence of the non-material, you haven’t made it. Nor have you countered my assertion that it points only to the absence of material which is not the same. You have conflated my observation that thoughts and concepts are materially represented in our brains to imply that such concepts have a real existence in the real world. With Capitals No Less. Then claimed that I am being obtuse somehow.

Make your argument in plain language and I will respond in kind.

I think that the science you see as cold, impersonal and heartless is outmoded and no more accurate than Hitchens’ view of religion as bloody-minded and self-serving superstition. Why do we resort to these caricatures? Children and sick people as nuisances is ridiculous on the face of it. The dramatic reduction of child mortality and the explosion of therapeutic treatments is wholly attributable to materialism, often against the teeth of religious opposition.

We are unique.

But then, so is everything. Experimental science is only one aspect of materialist methodology. Indeed, observational science is just as important. But sometime in the near future a doctor is going to hand you a drug tailored specifically to your DNA. Or perhaps your wife, or child will need the drug. Upon receiving this chemical salvation, you might be tempted to thank god for the miracle that it addressed your particular prayer in your particular moment of need. Like the lady in the post-tornado trailer park, who thanks god for sparing her, particularly, from the devastation, the implication is that her destroyed neighbors did not share in His concern.

I could hardly counter the utility of a personal relationship with god, especially with regard to large life issues, if that relationship was not purely imaginative. But just because such a thing is potent and desirable does not, in itself, offer veracity. By you pointing to it as evidence, I am required to ask about those whose personal relationship with god does not translate into a successful marriage, healthy children or fair weather. I expect that there is a spiritual reply, but I doubt that it can support your original contention.

The expectation that immortal science will someday cure cancer seemingly has nothing to offer to the particular mortal who is dying of it now. Perhaps. But the truth is that the particular mortal would have probably already died from something else that science has already dealt with. And some particular persons down the road will get science for their cancer and push the need for god further down the road. We owe more thanks to Marie Curie than the Holy Spirit.

I don’t reject all normative beliefs without empirical evidence, but I don’t accept all of them either. “The Truth” does not describe the ones I do accept in my way of thinking. “Faith” describes them. I “know” (or “observe”) empirical truths. I “accept” faiths. I don’t much believe in immortality of the soul, but Solomon (traditionally the author of Ecclesiastes) doesn’t either, so I’m not outside of theological tradition in this regard. I do accept other faiths.

I have faith that a certain amount of what we could call “Christian charity” is ultimately beneficial, and I value the Christian tradition for this reason. We can discuss this concept more specifically, but I suppose we don’t radically differ in our usage of “charity”. I’m happy to live in a culture heavily influenced by this tradition rather than certain others. I don’t need to interpret Genesis literally or to defend every act of Moses or even to defend every assertion attributed to Jesus in the canonical Gospels to reach this conclusion about the tradition. Genesis is very plainly allegorical by design, and people who believe otherwise are simply mistaken. Moses is positively Hitlerian in many respects, and I can dispute Jesus much as Hitchens does, but I don’t get to choose the ideological sea I swim. I’m dropped into this one. So be it.

On the other hand, I don’t believe that waging war to invade and occupy Iraq is ultimately beneficial on balance. I disputed this faith from the outset, and I believe subsequent events bear out my contrary faith in peace or the strictly defensive application of military force. We can discuss Iraq and imperialism more generally in detail as well, but my point is not to change the subject. My point is that “faith claims” are legion, and “truth claims” are not. Atheists like Hitchens certainly are not faithless, and their zealous faiths can do as much harm as any theistic faith.

Some people don’t identify “religion” strictly with theism. If “religion” is systematic propriety, then I suppose religion is the root of all “evil”, but then it’s also the root of all “good”. Do you understand that Genesis teaches this lesson? Sure, lots of people will tell you that Genesis I is a literal, historical account of how the heavens and the Earth and its creatures materialized, but these people are very plainly mistaken. The story is an allegory !about! religion (about systems of “good” and “evil”). Man falls when he gets religion! The story is absolutely wonderful, not so much because it’s a great read in isolation but because it’s so marvelously ironic in context.

About mcoverdale’s above comment: I don’t think Christopher was wrong to let the two “go at it” for an extended period of time. Firstly it lead to Hitchens getting his panties in a bunch, which is tough to do, he’s usally keeps his cool. Also it’s Christopher Lydon’s style, compared to EVERY other NPR host, as well as all other contemporary radio hosts, he’s less likely to interupt a guest, less likely to keep the show on his own opinions and subjects, and he seems to let it flow, which seems to work rather well. It’s a welcome alternative to the “shock jock” discourse that has become common place in radio. Of course on NPR is “wisper-tone shock jocking” but it’s a style when the directions of a show, statements of the guests, and direction of the conversation must go the way the host wants. This is not the case on Open Source, and I think that’s a postive thing.

Many, many beliefs are not empirical. I’ll say that most beliefs are not empirical. I don’t know that I’ll wake up tomorrow, but I believe I will. I personally expect someday to enter an eternally dreamless sleep, a permanent cessation of consciousness, but other people expect somehow to wake from death. I must doubt this belief, but I can’t prove that a reawakening or reincarnation of someone’s consciousness is impossible, because I don’t have a firm enough grasp of the nature of consciousness myself.

Why am I a conscious being rather than an unconscious automaton? I can’t answer this question. I only know that I am. The human condition leaves room for this faith, and I see no harm in particular forms of it, but I make no Truth claim here. My expectation of mortality is not a Truth claim either, because I can’t prove to you that my conscious is not somehow reincarnated in another form after my death. I don’t see how memories of this life could survive the disintegration of my neural network, but I’m not sure memories of this life are necessary for a reincarnation of my consciousness.

When I say “God helps people who understand gravity not to leap off a skyscraper”, I’m simply making an existential statement about the presumably inevitable consequences of leaping off a skyscraper and the related benefits of understanding these consequences. Since I identify “God” with existence itself, inevitable consequences are reasonably called “God’s will”. but this statement involves no Truth claim either. I’m only telling you what I mean by “God’s will.” If it happens, it’s God’s will.

You can call this what you like, but as I’ve defined it above, you’re making an empirical Truth claim. You have no evidence for that empirical Truth claim. The absence of evidence need to persuade you to abandon your Truth claim. But it will not persuade me, or other people like me, no matter how many times you repeat that Truth claim. That’s the problem. Except that as I’ve defined things, it doesn’t have to be a problem: So long as you won’t expect me to act differently because of your belief that God helps me do to this or that, it doesn’t matter to me that you hold this belief, and it shouldn’t matter to you that I do not.

Describing Melville’s quarrel with God, he says that Melville “needed to be braced against the flickering horror of his refusal to believe, and then braced against the sour clarity of his refusal entirely to unbelieve.”

I’m tired of Christopher Hitchens. He makes his living blowing smoke.

Practically all law and all politics involves normative assumptions. Why shouldn’t I shoot you for any reason or for no reason if you walk onto my land? Why shouldn’t I rape my sister or stone her for adultery or rape her and then stone her for adultery? We likely answer these questions similarly, because we share assumptions about the propriety of individual autonomy and the priority of life over a title to land.

That I wouldn’t jump off a skyscraper says something about the nature of faith. Faith fills gaps in our understanding of the way things are, but there happen to be a lot of gaps. I’m reasonably certain that jumping off a skyscraper without a BASE rig would kill me, and I probably wouldn’t do it with a BASE rig either, because BASE jumping is far more dangerous than jumping from a plane at 14,000 feet. The difference is only a matter of degree, but both jumps require an element of faith.

Again, the Iraqi occupation example is more to the point. Any state action of this kind requires tremendous faith that the benefits ultimately outweigh the enormous costs, a faith I don’t share in this case. We don’t have the luxury of recalling the last ten times we occupied Iraq and successfully established a liberal democracy there. Life often is not so simple.

I identify “God” with the way things really are and don’t presume to tell God how He really is (speaking anthropomorphically). God helps those who understand gravity to avoid jumping from skyscrapers without a BASE rig, and he helps those jumping with a BASE rig a bit less, but something like faith operates in all BASE jumpers regardless, even if they call it something else.

I haven’t made many Truth claims at all. Faith is not a Truth claim. It is a suspension of disbelief. Skepticism is the refusal to believe without evidence. Faith ideally is a willingness to believe without evidence but not in the face of clearly contrary evidence. Reality leaves plenty of room for faith within these limits and not a little human need for it.

A simple act of charity requires faith that the person I help isn’t conning me and needs the five bucks more than I do, particularly since I never know how much I’ll ultimately need the five bucks in my pocket right now. People exhibit a little faith in charity regardless, and I think that’s a good thing. This conclusion is not strictly scientific, and I’m not sure it ever could be.