Hitchens/Sharpton debate

Slate has posted the video of the recent debate between Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens. I watched it last night. It's pretty good.

This is the debate that caused a one-day furor because of an offhand remark that Sharpton made concerning Mitt Romney being defeated by "real Christians" or something like that. Whatever, it's hardly anything to do with the rest of the debate.

I'd not heard Hitchens speak before. He reminded me a lot of Richard Dawkins. He's clever and has thought out his arguments well. Plus, he has a British accent, which immediately gives him extra credibility and makes his insulting statements sound witty. Well, at least among us hopeless Anglophiles.

Sharpton got in a few good digs, some by recalling Hitchens's stance on the Iraq War, and many others simply by being nimble on his feet. Curiously, he made no effort to defend any particular belief or holy book, and conceded that, yes, people have a long history of doing bad things in the name of God. I'm not completely up on my Protestant sects, but as I understand it, part of what led different branches of Christianity to form and to turn away from Rome was their belief in the ability of the individual to experience and understand God. This may explain Sharpton's point of view -- he is a Pentacostal and was apparently ordained as a minister in his early teens. Another guess is that it may have been merely a debating strategy -- Sharpton seemed solely intent on defending God ("him- or herself" he was careful to say, repeatedly). He also clung to a second major point, that there can be no morality without belief in a higher power. Sharpton said that he'd read Hitchens's new book, and that while he disagreed with it, thought it was good and urged the audience to read it.

As you might expect, there was no "winner." Nor was there much convergence of viewpoints between Hitchens and Sharpton. Almost certainly, you'll finish the debate believing the same thing as you did before. But I found it entertaining, and refreshingly free of the interruptions and general rudeness that characterize most made-for-TV smackdowns these days. It was, in a word, civilized.

On a personal note, I was mostly happy to see another witty and articulate spokesman for the extreme anti-religious point of view. Hitchens did soften his stance a bit at the end. He acknowledged, even defended, the right of others to believe what they will. But he, like me, insists that those beliefs be kept private, and not imposed on him or his children. Also like me, he rejects out of hand the notion that morality requires religious faith, and instead argues that the tendency to behave properly toward others, while perhaps imperfectly developed, is innate in human beings. It is, we believe, a product of evolution, and without it, we wouldn't have lasted as a species. He did not explicitly say, but hinted at, the idea that the altruistic beliefs ascribed to religion must have come from humans themselves. This, to me, seems self-evident. Hitchens made the point most clearly by facetiously wondering if the Jews believed that murder was okay before they received the Ten Commandments.

I know that a lot of people, even some other agnostics and atheists, find the extreme anti-religious point of view offensive, and wish that this point of view would itself be kept quiet. I used to be in that camp, myself. Now, in reaction to the political clout of the other side, I believe it is important to present a firm and vocal disagreement. The philosophy of live and let live is my ideal, but I no longer think that living this way, for the time being, will work.