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Real Answers™
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Copyright: © 2007 Tom Flannery
700 words

TAKING THE HITCHENS CHALLENGE

By: Tom Flannery

In his introduction to the new book "The Portable Atheist," Christopher Hitchens issues his now-familiar challenge to theists:  "Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer."
 
He obviously sees this challenge as the silver bullet that finshes off any and all defenders of religious faith, boasting how he's used it in debates with believers across the country and is still waiting for someone to answer it.  He exults:  "As yet, I have had no takers."  
 
Well, in a philosophical debate of any kind, the skeptic (in this case Hitchens) must give the presumption of truth to his adversary.  He must presume that the philosophy or worldview he is opposing (in this case the Christian faith) is in fact true, and then debunk it on that basis if he is to cast any doubts upon its veracity.
 
In the case of Christianity, if its claims are true then the greatest moral law of all is to love God with all of one's heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30).  That's something an unbeliever, by self-definition, could never do.   
 
The good news is that an unbeliever can love God in truth if he becomes a believer -- but, then again, if any ethical act or statement were completely unattainable by any single person then God would be guilty of making it impossible for that person to obey and follow Him, which would make God by nature unjust when in fact He is perfectly just.
 
Hitchens' point, of course, is to demonstrate that a divine imperative is not necessary for the purposes of morality or the common good.  He believes that something he calls "human solidarity" will serve just fine in providing a moral framework for life, apart from any notion of (or certainly obeisance to) God. 
 
The problem is that "human solidarity" as Hitchens envisions it simply does not exist.  That's why we're fighting a global War on Terror; when untold millions of people around the world believe it is not only acceptable but virtuous to hijack commercial airliners and fly them into buildings killing thousands of innocent people in an unprovoked attack, we know that we cannot rely on any inherently human impulse to tell us how we should live.  There must be an ultimate standard outside ourselves, a higher law.
 
Hitchens would point to the homicidal use of those hijacked airliners and say:  "That's religion for you."  To which true believers would respond:  "No, Christopher, that's false religion for you."  He doesn't seem to understand there's a difference, nor where his goal of "human solidarity" would take us.  
 
Without an objective standard of right and wrong, of good and evil, of truth and falsehood, then such concepts become utterly meaningless.  They simply cannot exist in a Darwinian, chance-plus-time world where men are no more than animals walking upright.  In that kind of world, every moral choice becomes a matter of individual interpretation and personal preference.
 
Indeed, without an objective standard by which we are all governed and to which we are all accountable (that is to say, absolute truth), then how can any one person or any group of people authoritatively say that what any other person or group of people think, say or do is wrong?  The obvious answer is, they can't.  They would have no objective basis for doing so.  
 
Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias once spoke at a university in defense of truth and was accosted afterward by a group of angry students who insisted there is no such thing as absolute truth.  Zacharias challenged the leader of the group by asking him, "If instead of giving a speech today, I came out and cut a newborn baby into pieces on the stage, would that have been wrong for me to do?" 
 
The young man thought for a moment, realizing that if he said it was wrong he would be acknowledging the existence of truth.  Then he tellingly replied:  "I may not have liked watching you do it, but at the same time I can't say that it would have been wrong."  
 
That's what we're dealing with today, on our college campuses and in the culture at large, and it is why Hitchens' empty promise of "human solidarity" will never suffice.

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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