I have to be honest this chapter was a pretty big disappointment. It was kind of like listening to people argue about which music is better or should I drink Coke or Pepsi. I mean when a person looks at a creature and one says look a t how intricate than well put together that is and another says look at all the flaws and false ends it really sounds like that. I have long had a problem with any of the origin theories using science to support their claims for a long time and this chapter just reinforced my notions. I simple don’t see that science has designed or based on its elements to do anything more than make educated guesses about the past. It is kind of like history looking at an event with nor records form any person. You are always going to miss something or have something wrong and the farther back you go in the past the worse the error will be.
Right out of the gate, Hitchens lost me. I know this is kind of his style but he pretty much labeled people who believe in intelligent design as stupid, yokel, etc. As if the only people who believe in intelligent design were back woods people who interbred with their first cousins. Real logical stuff this attacking a person’s character or intelligence stuff all the way through (please note my sarcasm) . More emotion than reason in my mind on this chapter. I am beginning to think that Hitchens never intended this to be read by anyone but the ‘choir’ so to speak. He was definitely assuming that people who agreed with him would be reading this. It comes off as more of a sermon to the ‘faithful’ rather than a reasoned argument to convince people of the truth of his position. This is particularly true so far of this chapter.
The other disappointing thing was the absolute lack of taking on the reasoning of people who believe in intelligent design. I didn’t see him responding to their argument so much as just calling them names and quoting a bunch of other people who make arguments against intelligent deign. He wants to call people stupid and so he goes through great lengths to do so? The problem here is quoting authority figures does not really an argument make. Appeal to authority is still logical fallacy if that is all you base your argument on. Put the actual argument for intelligent design on the block and then make your case against, don’t just appeal to people you consider authority figures. Disappointing for me as I was hoping to actually see Hitchens argument against intelligent design but it really isn’t there.
This becomes problematic for me based on some of his own arguments. He starts out by pointing out that religions have this great paradox of belief that we are slimy sinful worms but engage in this belief that we are so special in God’s eyes that he loves us individually. I agree this theology is overly simplistic but then again he is in a form engaged in a similar idea. He on the one hand to get past intelligent design he has to point to human flaws in ‘design’ and our deficiencies, but somehow he and his fellow evolutionists/atheist don’t have these deficiencies which allows them to see clearer than the rest of humanity to see that we are the product of evolution. He also has this ‘we are evolutionary garbage’ but we are ‘special because we see the truth’ paradox.
He never really addresses the arguments of intelligent design nor does he show that all those arguments are derived from religious sources. I know many intelligent design scientists and Ben Stein in his movie Expelled tried to point that do exist and they are not all religiously motivated. Stein pointed out the dogmatism of the evolutionists in the scientific community who will use politics, cut funding, etc. to make sure their point is never challenged.
The final problem is that whenever he does engage the Bible he assumes that his interpretations of the Bible are all correct. As a guy with a Biblical studies degree myself, I see Hitchens pull passages out of context or put interpretive spins on them that the original authors never intended and many would disagree with his interpretations. For instance he grossly misinterprets the idea of mankind given dominion over the earth to mean absolute superiority over every other creature. It was also a dominion that had to be earned according to the passage with the line – ‘fill the earth and SUBDUE IT” The idea being that they had to go and take dominion, it was not something inherent to their being. The Bible does not present the pre fall world as something just given to humanity but rather as something that had to be tamed. If your going to use the Bible to make an atheist point please use proper hermeneutics. Otherwise, I and others will call you on it every time because at that point your creating straw man argument and not actually addressing what believers are saying or the Bible for that matter.
As a matter of faith, because that is what all views on origins amount to, Hitchens seems to be trying to distance himself from the idea that evolutionary scientists are like the religious shamans of old. Sitting in their cave, and coming out with holy decrees that no one understands. The problem is that this image does in fact stick with evolutionists because the scientists come out and say something that even atheists do not understand but accept because they want to. Sorry I have studied religious anthropology too long to not see that mankind, including atheists, are incurably religious. To really get over this someone needs to be able to come forward and explain in more standard language what the scientist are saying. Otherwise what it looks like is we have done nothing more than exchanged religious gobbledygook for scientific gobbledygook with the same result of blind faith.
Hopefully Hitchens will address these issues as we go along but I am reading the title for the next chapter and I think he has decided to take on the Bible on which most religions move forward to make their claim. Now this might get fun given I already find Hitchens’ hermeneutics questionable.
Next: Revelation: The Nightmare of the ‘Old’ Testament