I have to apologise for the delay in getting this up, since it has been available for several days. Tom Piatak, who also often writes for Chronicles, has a superb, devastating review of Hitchens’ God Is Not Great. If you haven’t already done so, you should read it.
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August 2nd, 2007 at 3:56 pm
byrneseyeview
I found Piatak’s response as limited as Hitch’s attack: it’s one thing to call Hitchens on his florid rhetoric, but it’s quite another to pretend that his vision is ‘bleak’ because he finds inspiration in nature, art, and his family, rather than in a God in whom he doesn’t believe.
On the other hand, this is beautiful:
Hitchens doesn’t offer much to replace the role that Christianity has played in the arts and in sustaining human rights, but that’s probably because he’s talking to atheists in general, not Marxists or Secular Humanists or Objectivists in particular. It’s no worse than an apologetic that doesn’t specify whether it refers to Jehova or Thor or Zeus.
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:06 pm
MDCLXVI
byrneseyeview: Funny you use the word “inspiration.”
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:13 am
Tom Piatak
I did not criticize Hitchens for finding inspiration in his family, art, or nature. What I did criticize was his claim that the sort of materialism he believes in is inspirational. That was the point of contrasting Hitchens’ statements about how life is random and contingent with the vision presented by Benedict XVI in his inaugural homily as Pope. And I also pointed out that the sort of art Hitchens finds inspiring is less likely to be produced by those who share his materialism or in places where such materialism is ascendant.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:19 am
Tom Piatak
I did not criticize Hitchens for finding inspiration in his family, art, or nature. I did criticize him for claiming that the type of materialism in which he believes is inspirational. That was the point of contrasting Hitchens’ statements about how life is random and contingent with the statements made by Benedict XVI in his inaugural homily as Pope. And I did point out that the type of art Hitchens finds inspirational is less likely to be produced by materialists or in places where materialism is ascendant.