Varieties of Anti-theism

In the not too distant past, my favorite agnostic asserted strongly that he was not an anti-theist.  In the context of the discussion, I knew he was talking of militant atheists, such as Dawkins, Hitchens, et al., and that he was not of their ilk.

That definition of anti-theism is very narrow.  My preference is to refer to Dawkins as a "militant atheist," and reserve anti-theism for any position or thought that stands in opposition ("anti") to theism.   That is how I have used the word in my essays.

For a comprehensive survey of "anti-theism" refer to this wikipedia entry, particularly the section titled, "Opposition to the idea of God."   There, the Chambers Dictionary defines anti-theism as:  "1. doctrine antagonistic to theism; 2. 'denial' of the existence of a God; 3. opposition to God."

Within the broader definition of anti-theism in the first definition, agnosticism and even some religious positions/postures are anti-theistic.

A particular case of the latter is the concession to the "myth of neutrality" on the part of Christian "evidentialist" apologists who debate atheists on the supposed "neutral" ground of "reason" in an attempt to "reason" to a probable God.  However, to debate in that way is to presuppose that reason exists in a possibly godless reality -- that presupposition is anti-theistic.  By adopting the epistemological standards of the unbeliever, the evidentialist violates Prov. 26:4, "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him."

Here is the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen's discussion of the "myth of neutrality":

[Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic Readings and Analysis, p. 146.]

"... the epistemological disagreements between believers and unbelievers [can] not be resolved in a neutral fashion, as though the issue of God's existence and character ... [can] be treated as secondary ­ and thus temporarily set aside without any commitment one way or another ­ while abstract philosophical issues [are] debated and settled. It is often, but vainly, imagined that once we come to agreement on our epistemology, we can apply those epistemological standards to the questions of whether God exists, whether miracles occur, whether the Bible is true, etc. By contrast, Van Til taught that abstract epistemological neutrality is an illusion and that, given the kind of God revealed in the bible, imagined neutrality is actually prejudicial against God.

"If God exists and is as the Christian world view claims, then His existence has an undeniable bearing on how we understand the process of knowing, the standards of truth and evidence, ultimate authority, and other crucial matters in epistemology.

"There is no pristine, religiously neutral, abstract 'reason' to which all men first swear their allegiance, only then to turn to such secondary matters as man's nature, moral character, relation to God, destiny, etc. The kind of man who is doing the reasoning already determines something about the way in which he thinks about reason and engages in reasoning. Thus Van Til stated, 'It is impossible to speak of the intellect per se, without taking into consideration whether it is the intellect of a regenerated person or of a non-regenerated person.'

"Van Til simply called for honesty and realism here. The metaphysical situation and object of knowledge (e.g., God's existence, the relation of created things to Him), as well as the psychological/moral situation and the subject of knowledge (i.e., man as a knower, someone using reasoning ability), cannot be ignored as we develop our views of knowing. 'Reason' is simply an intellectual tool, rather than an ultimate standard of knowledge (more authoritative even than God), and as such will be affected by the regenerate or unregenerate condition of the man using it. A person's epistemological behavior and commitments are ethical in character. According to Van Til, one's theory of knowledge is not neutral, but subject to moral assessment in terms of the ultimate authority to which one submits and which one attempts to honor."

Remarks on Transcendental Arguments

Choosing Hats posted a link to a new web site discussing transcendental argument (TAs).  That posting, which can be found here, has prompted me to add my proverbial 2 cents to the discussion.

In reflecting on TAG (Transcendental Argument for God) and its use over the years, I have come to realize that many are unable to recognize a transcendental argument.  There are probably several reasons for this, but one reason may be that most people who have exposure to logic are reared on the classic syllogistic form. TAs are not properly syllogistic and thus cannot be written as such.  (Though syllogistic schema have been employed.)
 
Transcendental arguments have a self-reflective property.  Typically, they consist of statements for which the speaker is under pain of self contradiction when uttered.  Some perennial examples are the so-called liar's paradox: "I always lie."  That statement, if true, would necessarily be false, and so it must be false.  The person speaking such is a liar -- just not a constant one!  Another example, pronounced a few months ago by my favorite agnostic, is: "There are no answers to Big Questions." That statement is an answer to a "Big Question," and thus self-refuting.   Finally, Descartes' dictum, "I think, therefore I am" is, in my mind, more forceful when stated transcendentally as,"I don't exist" --  a blatant self-contradiction.

The above TAs I will call "first-order" transcendental arguments, since they consist of statements that are directly self-referencing and self-refuting.   This type of argument is sometimes called "retortion."   TAs were recognized as destructing the very foundations of Logical Positivism which scoffed at "metaphysical" inquiry (one should raise an eyebrow immediately) and tried to base its epistemology (without metaphysics!) on the premise that all truth is either empirical or logically derived (i.e., tautology).   All else was metaphysical nonsense. The problem, of course, is that the foundational premise of Logical Positivism is neither a tautology nor an empirical truth.  Thus, Logical Positivism is metaphysical nonsense of the very sort they decried.  

Let's consider TAG.  In a nutshell, TAG is the statement that "There is no God" is self-refuting.  This is not direct retortion since it is not directly self-refuting, but the unbeliever carries a host of beliefs that would only be true in the Christian worldview, and thus when he utters "there is no God," he should abandon any of his beliefs that are only true in Christianity.  Some examples of those beliefs would be morality, the invariant laws of logic, justice, human independence from physical determination, and so on.  The list is long.  The unbeliever's worldview is ontologically, epistemological and ethically self-contradictory.  Since the unbeliever holds to contradictory thought, his worldview is irrational.

The fact that the unbeliever adheres to belief in the concepts mentioned above is another aspect of transcendental arguments: the idea of the stolen concept.

The unbeliever rails against God using beliefs -- such as morality -- that would not exist in the atheist world.  The claim that Christianity holds to beliefs that are immoral is an old line of attack, and one which Bertrand Russell attempted in "Why I Am Not a Christian."   It is a fallacious and self-defeating argument which also has been continued by some of the "new atheists," such as Christopher Hitchens, who attempt to use the concept of "evil" to deny God.  These arguments fail because "evil" would not even exist in an atheistic world, for there would be no such thing (!). As Bahnsen pointed out against Russell's "Why I Am Not a Christian" (and which holds equally against Hitchens et al.):

     "On what basis, then, could Russell issue his moral evaluations and judgments? In terms of what view of reality and knowledge did he assume that there was anything like an objective criterion of morality by which to find Christ, Christians, and the church lacking? 

       Russell was embarrassingly arbitrary in this regard. He just took it for granted, as an unargued philosophical bias, that there was a moral standard to apply, and that he could presume to be the spokesman and judge who applies it." [Always Ready, p.156]

In fact, I recently corresponded with an agnostic who railed against God because he thought it seemed "unjust" that God would send a "good" atheist to hell.  His example was an atheist who did all sorts of "good" but only failed to believe in Christ.  That example is, of course, a specious argument since it conveniently ignores the issue of the evil acts of the hypothetical perfect atheist.  But regardless of that glaring oversight, the question that must be pressed is where does an agnostic's idea or standard of absolute "good," "evil" and "justice" come from?  There simply is no such thing in the atheistic world -- they are "stolen" concepts (or as Van Til said, "the borrowed capital of Christian theism") and thus that argument fails!

Then we have the case of Prof. William Provine, a material monist, who thinks he is "rationally" asserting that there is no human free will. Provine, as I previously pointed out, is consistent with his material monism when he reasons that human beings -- being no more than physical systems propelled by inviolable physical forces --  cannot be autonomous.  Yet, rationality presupposes freedom to be guided by violable laws of logic.   We have the picture of irrational physical forces compelling  "free" and "rational" actions -- actions that Provine has claimed are not possible!  Thus, Provine is self-refuting by way of a TA.  

I recently discovered that Epicurus stated the original transcendental refutation of Provine many years ago. Epicurus stated that one cannot rationally deny free will, since rationality (i.e., adherence to laws of logic) presupposes free will.  The argument as stated on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy ( link) is:

"Transcendental arguments can be characterized as demonstrations that the skeptic’s articulation of her own position is self-defeating in some way. These arguments imply that the skeptic cannot even coherently articulate a given position. Epicurus is reported to have argued that, without free choice, one assents to propositions only because one is determined to do so. Without free choice, then, it would be impossible to rationally assent to any proposition—that is, to assent to it because one has good reasons to think it is true, rather than because one must. The proposition that one has no free choice is thus self-stultifying, in that, if true, it cannot be warranted. This reasoning implies the following argument:

    (1) I am able to rationally assent to the proposition that there is no free choice.
    (2) I could not rationally assent to any proposition if there were no free choice.
    (3) Hence, there is free choice."

"That which cannot be true, must be false," and that is exactly what atheism is!  It asserts an impossibility.  It is a world that fails ontologically, ethically, and epistemologically. It is a world without rationality, ethics, or human freedom, yet the atheist presupposes such must be.  And since atheism is impossible, then agnosticism, too, is untenable.  The agnostic should immediately abandon his skepticism regarding God, since the skeptical agnostic essentially asserts that God's existence is unknowable and, thereby, it is possible that there is no God.  We might wonder just what metaphysical law of "possibility" exists that would demand such! If the only possibilities are dictated by the physics of material monism, then one has a most baldly vicious circular argument.

We also have the skeptic.  The global skeptic claims "nothing is knowable," and as shown above, he has been summarily defeated by a first-order transcendental argument. "I don't know anything" is refuted by the unintelligibility of the utterance.  So, what we really have is the relentless unbeliever who doubts everything except the power of his autonomous reason from which he launches his skeptical attacks.  He ought to wonder why his own reason is immune (!), and if he will admit that it is not, he ought to wonder why he busies himself with his skeptical arguments against Christian theism, all the while acting as if "his" reason is the ultimate authority!  In the last case, we see another person who should shut his mouth.  The fact that he does not is a testimony to foolish pride of the agnostic's heart and his reliance on his supposed self-sufficient autonomy.

In summary, all unbelievers have a prideful, irrational adherence to the power of their own autonomy and their autonomous reason. But such autonomous rationality would not exist in a reality wherein all acts are no more than the compelled effects of ultimate irrational quantum mechanical chance events. According to the atheist, man himself is nothing more than a manifestation of that ultimate irrationality and, thereby, the metaphysical equivalent of "sock puppets."

Hitchens on Deathbed Conversion. Did Hitchens just say he has a soul?

In a recent interview, which you can view here, Christopher Hitchens, who is dying from esophageal cancer, was anxious to dispel, ahead of time, any possibility that some religious groups might try to exploit a "supposed" death-bed conversion.  He wants to assure us that even if he should utter such a conversion, it would be the chemicals in his brain speaking rather than himself.  As he put it, “It would not have been made by me.  The entity making such a remark might be -- you know -- a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain.”

So, he tells us we can rest assured that despite such an event, the real Hitchens is as unrepentant yesterday as he is today, and so shall he be forever.  Any such turn to Christ would be a "fake" C. Hitchens -- a Hitchens controlled by chemicals.  Which brings us to the inconsistency of Hitchens' claim. 

He acts and speaks as if there is a "real" C. Hitchens distinguishable from chemistry in his brain -- but on Hitchens' account of reality, "he" is only matter controlled by physical laws, and he has always been controlled by physics.  The only way to make sense of his statement is that he believes there is a part of himself that is independent of physical laws and immune to changes in his physical state, and "that" C. Hitchens  is the one he feels compelled to assert is real and unrepentant to the end. But such a part -- a persistent, rationally reasoning part that is independent of physical laws and material reality --   is an immaterial part that Christian theism calls his soul.

But that places him on Christian ground -- a ground that he irrationally denies.   Christopher Hitchens is still suffering from intellectual schizophrenia.  Such are the self-contradictions and the absurdities of atheism.

Authority and the "Heathen"

An agnostic friend has suggested that quoting Scripture in this blog is "preaching to the choir," and that if I really want to reach the heathen I should consider omitting it.  However, the theme of this blog is the presuppositional defense of Christianity.  Christian theism is defended as a whole, and is not a hypothesis to be established by anti-theistic and anti-Christian methodologies. Christian theism rests upon God's revelation in the Bible -- so I am perplexed as to how one can defend Christian theism without a Bible!  Would I first demonstrate the truth of the Bible based on a higher authority than God - an authority that exists independently of God, whether He exists or not?

My friend's suggestion is even more confusing given that he asserts, as do all agnostics, that there are no demonstrations or proofs of theism, or more generally that knowledge of God is not possible -- and so then, by a stronger argument, there could be no demonstrations or proofs of Christian theism.  On that view, don't quote the Bible and don't present any reasons for the defense of Christian theism, because the Bible may be false, reason is supreme and, thus, there is no defense of Christian theism.


That point of view sets up a game with a stacked deck.  How can one "reach the heathen" on such terms?  It's impossible!  On those terms, the heathen are unreachable -- by definition. Of course, the agnostic's assertion of "no proof" is itself a very huge claim about the nature of ultimate reality and of God's place (or non-place) in that reality (to be expanded at a later time).  As Van Til aptly put it, the issue is not between saying something about ultimate reality or saying nothing.  Rather, the issue is between saying one thing or saying something entirely different.  So then agnosticism, as a philosophy, is not "neutral" -- it has said everything about the type of God it might allow. And that God is emphatically not the true God of Christian theism. So much then for the supposed noble "open mindedness" of agnosticism.

You see, agnostics have an ultimate authority, too.  Agnosticism rests on the presupposition of the reliability and authority of autonomous human reason.  But when you challenge an atheist or agnostic to provide the basis for that authority, you will very likely be presented with a look of incredulity.   Some may even think you are denying logic and reason when you challenge them to provide the reasons (on the terms of their worldview) for the authority of reason. Of course Christians are not denying logic and reason.  Again, it is an issue of saying one thing or something entirely different.  On the agnostic's side we have autonomous human reason; on the Christian side we have reason as created in man's mind by God.  The latter is intelligible, the former is not.

Of course, material monism provides no basis for the existence of human reason.  In material monism -- in which all that exists is matter-in-motion evolving in time by way of random physical forces -- there is no room for human freedom.  And what is more, if there is no room for human freedom, there can be no room for free human thinking and reason, either.  So then, no matter how much Dawkins, Hitchens and others appeal to their "independent thinking" guided by the scientific method that led them to their "beliefs"  -- their "appeal"  is incredible and inexplicable.

Furthermore, material monism cannot account for human intentionality guided by adherence to abstract laws of logic/reason.  For in that view, all human "motions" are forced motions produced and determined by ultimate irreducible blind chance.  This "human reason" would have developed from a mindless and unguided universe of matter evolving by chance over time.  On that view, the material universe is mindless, purposeless, alogical, and absent of morals.  So then, materialism not only has no absolute morality and purpose (of all varieties), but it cannot even provide a basis for the existence of subjective morality and relative purpose that the atheist and agnostic alike fall back upon!

So then on the above analysis, neither atheists nor agnostics can account for the existence of reason and the scientific method that are their authorities.  A previous blog entry mentions Professor William Provine, an atheist who -- to his credit -- states openly that materialism leaves no room for human freedom.  As a typical atheist scientist who employs and  relies on the scientific method, he is an example of a walking, talking self-contradiction of atheism.  Professor Provine cannot, on one hand, be a free, independent thinker, guided by logic and the scientific method, and also be a purely and absolutely dependent physical system guided solely by mindless quantum mechanical chance. These two views are antithetical.  Materialism and physical laws are fundamentally a-teleological, while human planning and human reasoning via abstract logical principles are teleological.  Men do actions "in order to...."  Such are the internal contradictions of atheism.

Atheists and agnostics (the "heathen") are sinners in God's creation and need to be presented with their sin in all its manifestations.  Their prideful and irrational faith in autonomous reason and consequent unbelief and rejection of God is sin.  Whether they are "reached" is by grace -- and that grace comes from the God of the Bible.  So then, there are two issues at work here.  There is the apologetic task and there is evangelism -- both require the Bible.  It is true that in the course of the apologetic task, evangelism may also occur, but conviction and conversion are in the hands of God.

Should I not quote Scripture to defend the truth of Christian theism, and should I not quote Scripture to reach the heathen? What does God say?

"So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God."  Romans 10:17.

Asking the wrong question.

At the end of the movie Collision, Hitchens was asked whether he believes there is “cosmic justice” at the end of time. Hitchens – being somewhat consistent with his materialist worldview – replied that there is none. However, this is not really the right question to ask him, because such a question presupposes that there is such a thing as justice and does not challenge Hitchens to account for justice on his presuppositions.

The question should be not whether there is such a thing as justice whose demands are not satisfied, but rather that in Hitchens' materialist atheism, the world is intrinsically and fundamentally amoral. There is no such thing as "right" and "wrong" inherent in physical processes, and, hence, there is no such thing as justice. Period.

Hitchens – when he attempts to attack Christianity as immoral – is appropriating absolute moral laws which would not exist according to his material atheism.

That was one point Cornelius Van Til made regarding unbelievers – they finance their worldview / philosophy using the borrowed capital of Christian theism. They oppose Christianity by adopting the truths of Christianity. However, such opposition is thereby self-defeating.

When Hitchens attempts to use logic/reason to attack Christianity, he is again using Christian capital to assail Christianity. Logic does not exist in the atheist's world of material monism.

Hitchens' materialist world is not only amoral, it is also a-logical, and a-mathematical. It is impossible to climb the ladder of physicalism -- in which every rung is physical causation via inviolable physical laws – and reach the non-physical “Platonic” heaven of logic and mathematics. Such realities cannot emerge from physical processes. There is an infinite, insurmountable gap.

The alternative, some form of Platonic atheist pluralism (as held by atheist Michael Martin)- in which there are equal absolutely independent ultimates of matter, logic, moral laws, and mathematics - is just as contradictory and incoherent.

Atheism – whether of the material monism variety or a godless pluralism – is irrational belief in the impossible. But more on that another time.

You Can’t Oppose Something with Nothing! (Part 2)

In a previous post, I briefly commented on the Hitchens-Wilson interview on Imus. No doubt the condensed exchange will not convince any atheist that atheism is irrationalism in its most advanced and refined form. But to those who know the truth and who “are ready always to give an answer to every man that asks a reason of the hope that is in you,” Hitchens' abject failure is palpable. In addition to failing to provide a rational account of how a naturalistic metaphysics justifies his epistemology and ethics, Hitchens commits several faux pas in the interview. The failure to provide rational accounts for the foundations of one's epistemology is the “epistemological loafing” of all atheists. The two faux pas are Hitchens ' blatant “unscientific science” (a symptom of his epistemological loafing) and faulty reasoning as to what constitutes “sufficient proof.” (I’ll pass commenting on the straw man of lumping all religions into one basket and using non-Christian beliefs to attack Christianity.)

Epistemological loafing.

Hitchens continues the myth that atheism need not prove anything – that it is the theist who must prove God’s existence. According to Hitchens, the theist has the “tougher job.” The theist must prove God’s existence and until such proof is presented, then Hitchens and his “reason” can exist quite well without God. The problem with this mistaken notion is that the atheistic “scientific” worldview purports to explain everything in terms of matter which is governed by the laws of physics (reductionism). But if that is so, then Hitchens must provide the reductionistic explanation for his “reason” (epistemology). An impossible task that Hitchens conveniently ignores!

Hitchens’ view is symptomatic of atheists and is a case of what Cornelius Van Til called “epistemological loafing.” Put succinctly it is the idea that epistemology requires no metaphysical foundations and that such realities as consciousness, minds, laws of logic or even mathematics and the scientific method require no explanation. Such a view just posits these as unexplained and unrelated brute facts. This is a view that is fundamentally at odds with the supposedly “scientific” atheist philosophy.

Scientific reductionism – that everything springs from matter in motion and physics – requires a scientific explanation tracing the observed realities of consciousness, minds, laws of logic, etc., back to the material foundation. Hitchens refuses to answer or explain how logic arises from “colliding billiard balls” (as Wilson described the reductionist world view) – and thus indeed Hitchens' epistemology is suspended from a quite unscientific “sky hook." Hitchens' methodological presuppositions are impossible in the godless reality posited by his metaphysical commitments. Again Hitchens continues the atheist tradition of ignoring such and refusing to address the tough questions.

Unscientific Science! Or Hitchens does believe in the “Sky Hook!”

Hitchens totally ignored Wilson’s “sky hook” challenge. In an amazing sequence, Hitchens’ defense of reason is nothing more than a statement of the empirical fact that he is reasoning! But the scientific method does not account for phenomena by merely restating the phenomena! That is no explanation and is a vicious circularity, which I demonstrate with a hypothetical example. My hypothetical neighbor is a radical “afordist” – that is he denies that there is a Ford Motor company. Yet he owns and drives a Ford motor vehicle. One day as my neighbor pulled into his driveway in his Ford, I challenged him to account for the existence of his Ford in his "Ford-Motor-Company-less" reality. He responded,“Speaking of Fords, nonetheless here I am driving one!” We would certainly be amazed at such a statement, and, no doubt, marvel at the audacity that such was proffered as an explanation! Yet, Hitchens offers the same response! An observation is not an explanation of an observation – science does not work that way. . . .So much for Hitchens ' “scientific” worldview. Reason is just a “brute fact!” Wilson is right – Hitchens believes in “sky hooks!”

Even worse, however, is Hitchens’ view of “reason,” which is even more bankrupt. Hitchens called his “reason”, a “dim candle” and called it the only candle he has. He then conceded that it may “yield paradoxes and contradictions”! And as above, Hitchens and all other atheists have yet to provide an account of how logic arises from the motion of matter. Logic, being non physical, cannot emerge from a long chain of physical processes. The physical only begets the physical – to believe otherwise is to believe in the impossible. Yet, unbelievers continue to believe in realities emerging from the “void,” rather than acknowledge God, their Creator.

Sufficient “Proof?”

Amazingly, Hitchens seemed to be pleased that the empirical fact of the many divergent and contradictory religions in the world is a “sufficient proof” of atheism. Wilson handily disposed of Hitchens by responding that the Biblical account of sin also explains the existence of divergent religions. So much for the “sufficiency” of Hitchens' “proof.” The important point: That Hitchens thinks this is a sufficient proof reveals much about the shallowness of his beliefs.


What is it about “Reductionism” that Hitchens doesn’t grasp?

Reductionism asserts that all that exists is the material universe governed by the laws of physics. So, it should go without saying that the only laws that exist are physical laws. According to reductionism, everything else is explained by, and emerges from, matter-in-motion.

Written in terms of scientific “disciplines,” we would have:
Physics –> Chemistry -> Biology -> Consciousness –> “Reason” / “Logic” –> Ethics/Morality, and so on.

The only laws are those at the bottom (i.e. physical laws). We have yet to see the explanation of how nonphysical immaterial realities such as mind, reason, laws of logic and mathematics, for instance, arise from the random collocation of physical matter (“clatter of billiard balls”). Wilson challenged Hitchens to explain such. Hitchens declined.


Innate Morality?

Hitchens would be closer to an intelligible statement if he claimed that the laws of physics are a brute fact and innate to matter – those laws being inviolable and universal in space and time. But as above, in the atheist reductionist worldview, the only reality is matter in motion (a la Wilson’s billiard ball illustration) and the only laws are the inviolable laws of physics – there are no moral “laws.” Wilson effectively rebutted Hitchens when he pointed out  that according to Hitchens evolutionary worldview there are no constant, universal moral laws; thus, in the evolutionary worldview there is no innate morality -- so Hitchens contradicts himself yet again.

According to physics, all that exists is a variety of physical activities of random material subsets of the universe. The random “moral” behaviors are the natural effects of random physical processes. Some subsets act one way, others some other way. We would expect diverse “biological” systems to exhibit diverse non-invariant, non-universal “norms.” For some female organisms, males are a tasty post-coital meal. And there are humans who eat other humans. Now Hitchens may object to such for humans (but arbitrarily so in his godless universe), but it is clear such is not “innate” in the world Hitchens posits. There is nothing reprehensible or commendable about physical systems evolving according to strict physical laws. One man likes Coca-Cola, another likes Pepsi – some men consume other men, some men don’t. So then, there may be behaviors of atoms that are what Hitchens would like to call “moral” – but such is mere nominalism. Such “laws” change through time, and vary in different locales. Thus, there are no absolute moral “laws” – societal norms are arbitrary and relative to the local society – one man’s law is another man’s oppression, one group’s “good” is another group’s “evil.”

Such “laws” are, of course, violated repeatedly, both within and between “societies” (and necessarily so, since such “violations” are caused by the underlying inviolable physical laws)! In the atheist worldview all we have is one piece of the universe “complaining” about the physically determined “behavior” of another piece of the universe. This is absurd. Such moral “concepts” are, at rock bottom, meaningless in the atheist worldview.

Of course, men do have a sense of morality because they are created by God.  Hitchens relies on a perverted use of such when he rails against Christianity.  Hitchens, like all atheists, attacks Christianity using moral precepts that are only intelligible in the Christian wordlview.

You Can’t Oppose Something with Nothing! Or How to lose a “Debate” in a 15-Minute Interview.

This is the inaugural posting from Theophilus on the recent Hitchens-Wilson interview as seen on “Imus in the Morning.” Although the segment was a promotional interview for the release of the documentary, Collision - the interview contained, in condensed form, all salient points of the debate between any atheist and a presuppositional defense of Christian theism.

It was nice to see Wilson’s presuppositional – and uncompromising – defense of Christian theism dismantle atheistic reductionism. To summarize the interview, Hitchens continued the atheist tradition of total failure to answer challenges to reductionism.

There was one point where I felt Wilson fell short, and that was in his concession to Hitchens' definition of atheism – that atheism is no more than the belief that there are no valid “proofs” of God’s existence – a view that equates atheism with agnosticism and sets up the mistaken notion that atheism has no burden of proof.

You can first view the interview here in these two parts.

Imus Interview Part I



Imus Interview Part II