Hitchens v. Blair: Is religion a force for good or ill?
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair is to take on columnist Christopher Hitchens in a televised public debate for and against religion
Belief, Debates 26 Nov 2010
Source: BBC, 26 November 2010.
Mr Blair, a Catholic convert, will argue that faith is a force for good.
Mr Hitchens, terminally ill with cancer, is expected to argue it is the world’s “main source of hatred”, as he did in his 2007 book God is not Great.
A 23-country poll paid for by the debate’s Canadian organisers suggests the world is evenly split on the issue.
Some 48% of the 18,192 people questioned by Ipsos took the view that “religion provides the common values and ethical foundations that diverse societies need to the thrive in the 21st Century”.
Fractionally more – 52% – supported the view that “religious beliefs promote intolerance, exacerbate ethnic divisions, and impede social progress in developing and developed nations alike”.
Ahead of the debate, which will take place in front of a sell-out audience of 2,700 people in Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, Tony Blair said: “The good that people of faith all over the world do every day, motivated by their religion, cannot be underestimated and should never be ignored.”
It could, and should, be a force for progress, he said.
Christopher Hitchens – who has described Christianity, Judaism and Islam as the “real axis of evil” – has continued his outspoken attacks on religion in interviews as he is treated for cancer of the oesophagus.
He is scathing about those who suggest his illness might lead him to retract his atheism.
In a BBC Newsnight interview to be broadcast on 29 November, he says he is not afraid of death, but regrets the fact that it will cause distress to friends and family.
In comments released by the debate’s organisers he said it was “bizarre” that Mr Blair, a Catholic since 2007, had converted “at one of the most conservative times for the Catholic Church, under one of the most conservative popes”.
Both men have recently published autobiographies.
Tickets for the debate – the sixth in a semi-annual series of Munk Debates – sold out within hours of going on sale.
The event will also be available to watch online, on a pay-per-view basis, on the Munk Debates website.
The Ipsos poll, conducted in September, found that Europe was the region most doubtful about the benefits of religion, with just 19% in Sweden agreeing that it was a force for good.
At the other end of the scale, in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, it was seen as a positive force by more than 90% of those questioned.
Within North America there was a pronounced divide. In Canada only 36% agreed with the positive view of religion whereas 64% saw it as a negative force – figures almost exactly the reverse of those in the US.
Posted by N4CM
on 26 Nov 2010. Filed under Belief, Debates and tagged with Criticism of religion.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
The intro went on for too long!
People (humanity) have a positive or negative impact according to their morals, which are gained from experience from family, friends, respected teachers etc, not forgetting their existing prejudices.
The people who do good work for religious organisations, would I'm sure, still do it if they were helping non religious organisations. In my opinion religion (and which of the many thousands of religions are we talking about?) is irrelevant.
Unfortunately, the debate did not live up to my expectations.
Blair I found ineffectual. He seemed to be trying so hard to be moderate that he failed to address the real topic, and at best said that religion is a positive force for some people, though others can do just as well without it, while others use it as a negative force. In terms of the actual topic, I thought Hitchens made mincemeat of him.
Hitchens' strongest point was black humour aimed to dispose of the opposition by mockery. However he did argue the real topic. But in his opening statement, as he laid out what he saw as the basis of religion, my response was: you're against religion because you simply don't have a clue about the meaning of and basis for Christianity. I wasn't taking notes at that point, but there was only one of his list of fundamentals of religion that even came close to anything I and vast numbers of other Christians believe.
Later though he said something very important, I thought. He observed that Tony Blair talks of things done in the name of religion, instead of as a direct consequence of the teaching of the religious writings, and affirmed that the latter was what he thought was important. There I agree with him whole heartedly.
But as to his points?
A primary point for him was that religion proclaims that women are inferior and demeans them. But if you mark on a map the areas in which biblical Christianity has had the greatest influence, and then mark the places where women have been most emancipated, you'll find a very close convergence. The Bible starts by a declaration that male and female were created alike in the image of God, and that is what distinguishes them from all the rest of the creatures. Hitchens is just wrong – though I'll grant he has a point with other religions.
He claimed that religion destroyed freedom. But do the same maps, only this time marking where freedom has grown and been protected – you get the same result.
He says that religion means giving up your reason, your ability to doubt, but a primary reason that I, for one, reject secularism is that my scepticism, my reason, makes it impossible for me to hold secularism as an adequate explanation of the world in which we live.
I could go on and on. I was disappointed because I did not think they truly engaged either the argument or one another. Christopher Hitchens came closer to that than Tony Blair did. But he was allowed to throw in so many mistaken propositions, unchallenged, that he really failed.