Huck got his degree in religion, rather than his intended field of study, at a small college. Sure it’s a well regarded small school for the region, but let’s not try to pretend that Huck is some sort of intellectual giant. He took a less than challenging major at a lower tier school (all small schools are at a lower tier – Wellesley et all are lower tier as well). Getting decent grades in a shallow raindrop of an intellectual environment is nothing to brag on.

If you are an intellectual giant, you go to a top tier national or international school. Your rank out of your program then means little, except for how much you loved your course of study. Oachita isn’t LA community college but it also isn’t Cal-Tech or Oxford.

I do like the high level of proof above – and it is funny to see how some of the commenters here are exceptionally unfamiliar with formal logic and rules of proof. Any good empiricist knows that it is essentially impossible to prove a negative, and that there are far too many arguments over unproveable statements.

The main thing about good science is the use of a testable hypothesis. If you have a good theory, it has to have some implications that can either be proven or disproven. The strong form of atheism is simply another religion, fervent belief in something that is outside the bounds of reason and our perception. Agnosticism is the only rational and scientific stance – the acknowledgement that one doesn’t know and cannot know the answer. Any positive belief in the existence or nonexistence of God(s) requires a leap of faith outside of logic and argument.

I agree that if Mr. Hitchens is mistaken, he should correct himself. However, we all make mistakes, even you will make quite a few in what I wish to be a long and productive life for you. One mistake doesn’t negate a man’s labor, even if you philosophically wholeheartedly disagree with him. Life will teach you the hard way, “you’ll see”, as Professor Blather says. Where is our Professor Blather, lately? I miss him.

Um, check the U.S. Constitution.

baldilocks on December 18, 2007 at 12:12 PM

Among so many things I admire about you J, is that you are so informed and quick to set the record/s straight. Thank you,

I’d just love it if Mr. Steyn would go for the U.S. citizenship. That he, Mr. Hitchens and Ayn Rand graced us with their presence and their minds is a blessing, for different reasons, agree or disagree with any of them. This is the only country on Earth which’s citizenship they enhance, and which really deserves them.

The believers are often as intolerant as the ‘totalitarian’ atheists.

When it comes to the roles religions played in each society, then Hitch is entirely correct. That’s an essay in and of itself.

His interpretation of Hanukkah is wrong. For some reason, he’s blaming the Macabbes for the doings of Antiochus. I don’t know how much truth there is to Hellenized Jews getting curb-stomped by their more strict countrymen, but he’s used that theme a couple of times.

That doesn’t make him constantly wrong with regards to history.

However, it does annoy me when some bloated, smarmy, sniffy Brit uses the word “hick” to describe any Southerner.
Renae on December 18, 2007 at 10:54 AM

Thank you.
I take exception to a member of the British pseudointelligencia, who at best graduated cum laude, referring to someone who graduated magna cum laude as a “hick”. From the little I’ve seen of Hitchens, I have no doubt that he would be one of those broken down British drunken aristocrats, crying in his gin and tonic in an Algerian bar if someone didn’t think his “airs” were amusing enough to pay him. I also have no doubt that when he was in school, he was a type of “Draco Malfoy”.

Hitchens for president ! :)

Syndic Nuruodo on December 18, 2007 at 9:53 AM

Um, check the U.S. Constitution.

As for the limited grasp of history, would you care to provide examples?

Krydor on December 18, 2007 at 9:04 AM

A couple of weeks ago Hannukkah and Judaism were in Hitchens line of fire as The Crusade Against The Great Evil of Religion continued and he had the audacity to claim the Greeks were secular compared to the Jews. Along with, of course, getting the entire Hannukkah thing wrong.

Hitchens apparently skipped over the “pantheon of Gods” part of Greek history in his haste to lambaste the foolishness of Hanukkah or whatever more venomous adjective(s) he used.

If Hitchens’ writing is brilliant, Amanda Marcotte must be writer of the year. The only difference between the two is that Marcotte makes more references to lewd sexual acts and human genitalia and has the same lack of knowledge and the same bitter hatred flowing through every syllable.

Despite my inability to prove that there aren’t pink unicorns in my bathtub, I doubt most people would have much problem with me baldly asserting that there are absolutely no pink unicorns in my bathtub. And I would be utterly unwilling to characterize my anti-pink unicorn stance as an act of faith.

thuja on December 18, 2007 at 12:26 AM

I must confess, I always find the pink unicorn analogy outrageously funny. Not because it has any logical validity, it doesn’t. The discussion of god’s existence is impossible because of the size and number of data sets involved. They are unquantifiable. The size and number of data sets involved in the pink unicorn question are merely cumbersome, rendering the analogy false.

Your bathtub is a very finite and definable space, whereas the universe is not. Thus the analogy dies a miserable whimpering death. What we cannot do is define the volume of the universe, let alone quantify it down to the micron cubed, nor can we define the duration of the universe to the century, let alone the fermi second.

All of human existence, let alone the minute duration for which we have possessed the capacity to semi accurately record and measure our observations doesn’t even represent a blink of the proverbial eye of the universe. To imagine that the data sets we have thus far recorded could even remotely be employed to determine the positive or negative value associated with god’s existence is nothing less than ignorance compounded by arrogance bordering on insanity.

MB4 on December 18, 2007 at 3:05 AM

Ah…Much Beaming there is in that statement young padawan… Far more Jim Beam I sense however involved in this beaming than reason or logic.

BKennedy

Really? I liked him before he really started to go after Islam. The man, regardless of his political leanings, is a brilliant writer. Probably one of the best of his generation.

As for the limited grasp of history, would you care to provide examples?

–George Orwell

Nothing logically precludes the pink unicorns from being in the bathtub and hiding when I come to look. I couldn’t prove that that is not the case.

thuja on December 17, 2007 at 11:19 PM

That could explain a lot.

Maybe those tricky pink unicorns that were hidding in your bathroom beam over to my living room every time you go into your bathroom to look for them.

I thought I heard something from downstairs but when I went downstairs to look in my living room I didn’t see any pink unicorns.

Maybe they beamed back over to your bathroom and you had left by then so you didn’t see them either. Could you please check your bathroom again. Try tip toeing up to your bathroom and then rush in real quick.

I am beginning to worry about them. With all the beaming back and forth between your bathroom and my living room, they must be getting pretty hungry by now and one of us should probably feed them something.

“Well, I’ll show you, you English public school snob!”

hillbillyjim on December 18, 2007 at 12:38 AM

Good point. What was I thinking? :-)

Hitch is not doing us a favor here and should STFU!

Hitch?

STFU?

Bwahahahahahaha!!!!!

Bhwahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!! (wiping laughtears from eyes)

Despite my inability to prove that there aren’t pink unicorns in my bathtub, I doubt most people would have much problem with me baldly asserting that there are absolutely no pink unicorns in my bathtub. And I would be utterly unwilling to characterize my anti-pink unicorn stance as an act of faith.

Anyway, I’m going to go on to absolutely assert that this little word game you’re playing here isn’t where atheist/believer argument is interesting. No one is by definition wrong in this debate–barring those on both sides who define God badly. Thus, the debate is better served by arguments for God and rebuttals, or arguments against God and rebuttals.

Your logic is twisted. When atheist say god doesn’t exist they mean it in exactly the way I mean that pink unicorns don’t exist in my bathtub. Nothing logically precludes the pink unicorns from being in the bathtub and hiding when I come to look. I couldn’t prove that that is not the case. Atheist simply mean that God is as unlikely as those tricky pink unicorns.

thuja on December 17, 2007 at 11:19 PM

No, that would be a willing suspension of belief/disbelief. It is one thing to assert that you believe that the probability of god existing is extremely/infinitesimally low and another thing altogether to assert as a fact your personal belief that god categorically does not exist.

One is an acceptance that the answer to the question has far to many variables for an meaningful answer to be derived from it, while the other is a straight out assertion of fact lacking valid data to substantiate it.

From a strictly logical point of view you have to actually have the data to either prove or disprove something before you can assert it in absolute terms. Making an absolute assertion without the data to prove that assertion is illogical and irrational. It is something generally referred to as an act of faith.

“smirking hick”

I would have gone with “wall-eyed do-gooding progressive neocon.” I’ve not seem him smirk so much, but I swear the man could stand at the end of the reflecting pool and see both the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial without turning his head. Maybe he should work that into his standup routine. Something about being able to keep an eye on the Left and the Right without getting a sore neck?

Plus, doesn’t Bush have a lock on the “smirking” adjective? Seems lazy to recycle.

The question of god’s existence is not a question that can be answered, one can no more prove the existence or non existence of god, than one can search every square meter of the universe to determine if pink unicorns exist. Falling this burden of proof required for an absolute statement in either direction it becomes logically impossible to assert that god does not exist.
doriangrey on December 17, 2007 at 10:59 PM

Your logic is twisted. When atheist say god doesn’t exist they mean it in exactly the way I mean that pink unicorns don’t exist in my bathtub. Nothing logically precludes the pink unicorns from being in the bathtub and hiding when I come to look. I couldn’t prove that that is not the case. Atheist simply mean that God is as unlikely as those tricky pink unicorns.

There is a further subtlety. Atheist do mean that for some description of God that is impossible that God exist, as it is impossible for invisible, pink unicorns to exist. These atheists are by definition right in some of their arguments, as some really lousy attempts at defining God have been made by theists. But you are right about the most common atheist proof of the non-existance of God: atheist theodicy arguments. These arguments basically claim that because evil exists, God doesn’t exists. These arguments are fantasy in exactly the manner of socialist economics. It’s sad that people who think themselves clever can believe such tripe.