Tags: 2007, Al Sharpton, atheism, belief, christianity, Christopher Hitchens, debate, fora.tv, religion
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Tags: 2007, Al Sharpton, atheism, belief, christianity, Christopher Hitchens, debate, fora.tv, religion
1 September 2008 at 12:44 am
I have viewed in person or online four of Hitchens’ debates over God and religion and this is not one of the better ones. His debate in Atlanta with Timothy Jackson, Professor of Christian Ethics at Emory University, is easily the best on both sides. Unlike Sharpton who is wholly unfamiliar with the philosophical literature in ethics and philosophy of religion and had little to say, Jackson does as well as one can in defending what is probably not defensible. But Sharpton offered almost nothing in the way of argument for his main claims: God exists, ethics requires God in order to avoid moral nihilism, we obtain our knowledge of morality from God. In the latter case the sacred texts are the usual vehicle offered for the communication of this knowledge and Sharpton offered no defense or argument for these texts at all. He relies on his “own experience and relationship with God” but dismisses the rest as dogma. So, how did he manage to justify God as necessary for a morality which ostensibly binds all of us? How does his piety provide us with moral knowledge or make any moral demands on me? And I can think of better human beings, intellectually and morally, to offer advice to the rest of us than Sharpton who has been convicted of four felonies. He is a charlatan, fraud, and a demagogue.
Hitchens made his usual points but was not in his best form. He is at his best with a more worthy opponent who possesses and intellect and education with Timothy Jackson. Again, I would again recommend that debate as the best of the lot.