My small mind, something about Christopher Hitchens.

If I were truly well adjusted and believed that my thoughts and ideas carried as much value as the intellect of Christopher Hitchens or my photography was good enough to be published in the National Geographic then I would write more and photograph constantly. But I am not that well adjusted, perhaps.


In his lecture to the Royal Ontario Museum entitled "The Three New Commandments" in conjunction with the exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls on June 2, 2009 prefaces his lecture with this statement (quote transcribe from the audio):


"All the great questions that divide theology from philosophy are finally, I think, are reducible to two questions. First; is it true, as it is definitively stated in Genesis chapter 1 verse 27, that at one time, one god, created man or mankind in his own image or, is it rather the case that many men at several times and in many cases, created many, many gods and continue to create many gods in their own images? As you will see a lot more hangs on that then just the very important shift from the singular to the plural. Second question is this; is our sense of right and wrong, our knowledge of right and wrong, if you prefer good and evil, is it proper to ourselves, is it innate to us, is it our pride, our property or does it come to us as a gift, from revelation? Is it a part of a covenant with a supernatural authority? So you will pleased to bear in mind that as I go on, that those two central questions underlie every word of this text and every examination of it."

Podcast available here: http://www.tvo.org/TVOspecial3/WebObjects/TVOMedia.woa?bigideasfeed

Mr. Hitchens is speaking of the Ten Commandments. In the rest of the presentation is focused on how the Ten Commandments are implausible, incoherent, contradictive and unbelievable as being inspired by a superior being in the context of the rest of historical Scripture and further commandments.

Mr. Hitchens concludes:

"... if we make the assumption that this mass of unresolved contradictions was the outcome of the ignorant struggles of a semi-literate, frightened species of primates then the mystery clears up all by its self."

Since he sets the foundation for his argument on the first two premises; that man creates god in his own image and that morality is innately found with in man or mankind then lets examine these two proposals.

In the first question, one argument does not exclude the other. Man or mankind could have at one time been created by one God in His own image and man or mankind could still have created many, many gods throughout history and even today in their own images. I don't see this as a dilemma, but in fact a valuable truth. I think a more accurate proposition is that man or mankind by nature must either accept a superior creator(s) or become forced to invent one or many based on the highest order of perceived existence, his own image. This he must in order to explain his own existence and purpose. The man that denies any god cannot adequate explain his own existence or purpose beyond the simple 'it is what it is'.

The second argument is again not mutually exclusive, especially if we cannot confirm the first. We do properly posses a sense of right or wrong, good and evil innately simply because that sense of good and bad was created in us. To be more theologically correct, mankind was created with the knowledge of good and acquired the understanding of evil when he disobeyed. So I can agree with the atheist, mankind does innately posses a sense of morality but the atheist cannot explain its origin or purpose.

Christopher Hitchens is a great intellect and I am sure he could argue rings around my profoundly less educated intellect, even on biblical terms. I just needed to put these thoughts down to justify my own intellectual existence.

Zoe Perissos