Peter Hitchens (the late Christopher Hitchens Brother) on why he wrote The Rage Against God

"I want to explain how I became convinced, by reason and experience, of the necessity and rightness of a form of Christianity that is modest, accommodating and thoughtful - but ultimately uncompromising about its vital truth. I hope very much that by doing so I can at least cause those who consider themselves to be atheists to hesitate over their choice. I also hope to provide Christian readers with insights they can use the better to understand their unbelieving friends, and so perhaps to sow some small seeds of doubt in the minds of those friends."

- Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God

Christopher Hitchens' statement with Pastor Douglas Wilson

Some Questions from David Berlinksi about Scientism - From Justin Taylor

David Berlinski—a secular Jew who is a philosopher and mathematician and is agnostic about God—asks and answers some questions in The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (2011):

Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence?

Not even close.

Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here?

Not even close.

Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life?

Not even close.

Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought?

Close enough.

Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral?

Not close enough.

Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good?

Not even close to being close.

Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences?

Close enough.

Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational?

Not even ballpark.

Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt?

Dead on.

From Justin Taylor 

Irrational Atheism (from a Rational Atheist)

From the Atlantic's Irrational Atheism

"...I'm an atheist because I think of the universe as a natural, material system. I think of it, on the basis of my own extremely limited experience, as an infinitely replete but morally indifferent thing. It isn't bent on saving me, or damning me: It just is. I find comfort in that, as well as pain; wonder as well as loathing. That's my experience, and my atheism is a reflection of that experience. But it's not an argument; it's an interpretation. 

I have taken a leap of atheist faith. 

Religious people sometimes try to give proofs of the truth of their faith—Saint Thomas Aquinas famously gave five in his Summa Theologica. But for many people, belief comes before arguments, originating in family, social and institutional context, in desire and need. The arguments are post-hoc rationalizations. This can be true of atheism as well. For me, it's what I grew up with. It gets by in my social world, where professions of religious faith would be considered out of place. My non-faith is fundamentally part of how I connect with others and the world. 

The idea that the atheist comes to her view of the world through rationality and argumentation, while the believer relies on arbitrary emotional commitments, is false. This accounts for the sense that atheists such as Christopher Hitchens or Dawkins are arrogant: Their line of thinking often takes the form of disqualifying others on the grounds that they are irrational. But the atheist too, is deciding to believe in conditions of irremediable uncertainty, not merely following out a proof. 

Religious people have often offloaded the burden of their choices on institutions and relied on the Church's authorities and dogmas. But some atheists are equally willing to offload their beliefs on "reason" or "science" without acknowledging that they are making a bold intellectual commitment about the nature of the universe, and making it with utterly insufficient data. Religion at its best treats belief as a resolution in the face of doubt. I want an atheism that does the same, that displays epistemological courage... 

...William James—himself an eminent scientist—pointed out that science rests on emotional commitment. "Our belief in truth itself," wrote James, "that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other—what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives. But if a … sceptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition against another—we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he, for his part, does not care to make." 

...By not believing in God, I keep faith with the world's indifference. I love its beauty. I hate its suffering. I think both are perfectly real, because I experience them both, all the time. I do not see any reason to suspend judgment: I'm here, and I commit. I'm perfectly sincere and definite in my belief that there is no God. I can see that there could be comfort in believing otherwise, believing that all the suffering and death makes sense, that everyone gets what they deserve, and that existence works out in the end. 

But to believe that would be to betray my actual experiences, and even without the aid of reasoned arguments, that’s reason enough not to believe."

"Perhaps atheism is an intellectual luxury for the wealthy"

"...They have their faith because what they believe in doesn't judge them. Who am I to tell them that what they believe is irrational? Who am I to tell them the one thing that gives them hope and allows them to find some beauty in an awful world is inconsistent? I cannot tell them that there is nothing beyond this physical life. It would be cruel and pointless.

In these last three years, out from behind my computers, I have been reminded that life is not rational and that everyone makes mistakes. Or, in Biblical terms, we are all sinners.

We are all sinners. On the streets the addicts, with their daily battles and proximity to death, have come to understand this viscerally. Many successful people don't. Their sense of entitlement and emotional distance has numbed their understanding of our fallibility.

Sonya with her cross and rosary. Photograph: Chris Arnade

Soon I saw my atheism for what it is: an intellectual belief most accessible to those who have done well..."

- Chris Arnade "The people who challenged my atheism most were drug addicts and prostitutes" - The Guardian

‘Atheism is to theism as not collecting stamps is to stamp-collecting’

‘Atheism is to theism,’ Anthony Grayling declares, ‘as not collecting stamps is to stamp-collecting’. At this point, we are supposed to enjoy a little sneer, in which the religious are bracketed with bald, lonely men in thick glasses, picking over their collections of ancient stamps in attics, while unbelievers are funky people with busy social lives.

Stamp collecting can be funky too!

But the comparison is flatly untrue. Non-collectors of stamps do not, for instance, write books devoted to mocking stamp-collectors, nor call for stamp-collecting’s status to be diminished, nor suggest — Richard Dawkins-like — that introducing the young to this hobby is comparable to child abuse. They do not place advertisements on buses proclaiming that stamp-collecting is a waste of time, and suggesting that those who abandon it will enjoy their lives more....

...Attempts have been made to answer this attack, the defence usually attracting far less notice than the prosecution. The offensive continues unresponsively, exactly as if no riposte has been offered. As Grayling says: ‘The theists are rushing about the park kicking the ball, but the atheists are not playing. They are not even on the field.’ Like almost all atheists, he tries (and fails) to show that his belief is not a belief, but an obligatory default position...

It is my suspicion that Christians and atheists share one very strong emotion — the fear that God exists. The difference is that Christians also want Him to exist. The truly interesting question, unexplored in this book, is why each side wants what it wants.

Peter Hitchen's review of The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism A.C. Grayling  - The Spectator via Justin Taylor

To Dawkins' Worst Fans, I Say ... (from Cracked.com)

Personally, I don't care whether you believe in God or not. I change my mind on the subject daily. I don't care if you can quote The God Delusion cover to cover as if it were some holy book (although odds are that if you like name-dropping Dawkins every two seconds, you probably haven't even read it). Just do me one favor. If you do quote Dawkins, don't drop the mic and leave the stage like nothing more needs to be said, as if the possibility of the divine -- of some form of something beyond our limited conception -- has been obliterated because a highly educated Englishman has constructed something eloquent, reducing all faith to ignorance and fear. Bertrand Russell did that quite well a century before Dawkins, and millions of believers remain. Some of them have actually read Russell and Dawkins and still think there is much to consider and debate because, after all, we're only talking about a simple thing like the meaning of creation and existence.

From the often hilarious website, Cracked.com and article

Plus another interesting, edifying and amusing article from the same author "4 Things Both Atheists and Believers Need To Stop Saying". An excerpt below commenting on Christopher Hitchen's book "God is not Great":

And given how much we suck, why shut the door completely on the possibility of something in this universe being better, stronger and wiser? Something we could strive to be more like? It's always seemed to me that the most virulent atheists -- not mere nonbelievers, but those who claim to be positive about God's nonexistence and openly hostile to anyone who could think otherwise -- are incapable of believing there could ever be something greater than they. Not a lack of faith so much as humility. Certainly, that's not true for all atheists, but it doesn't help the atheist cause that the three most hostile atheists I can think of are also on the short-list for most overbearingly arrogant.

By What Standard ? - Douglas Wilson

"...The question, “By what standard?” really is a fundamental question. The same question arises in disputes on many playgrounds—it's the same thing as asking, “Who says?” If you claim that I have to do something, the question should come back, "Why do I have to do this?"...

During our three days together making Collision, this was one of the few times where Christopher was brought up short. I think it was because the question here was a complete novelty for him, and he needed a moment to think about it.

When he tries to answer the “By what standard?” question, notice how he smuggles in the assumption that I am asking him to prove. He says that he knows certain (moral) realities because he is among the “higher primates.” But there is a word in there that is value-laden—higher. Higher by what standard? What are we talking about?

Christopher set up the next exchange nicely by acknowledging that as primates, we have a jumble of conflicting instincts. The response I offered was something I first learned from C.S. Lewis. If I have two competing and contradictory instincts, an evolutionary approach can account for each of those instincts (say, self-preservation and herd preservation). What it cannot account for is a third instinct that tells me which of the first two instincts I ought to obey in this instance. I do not have an “umpire” instinct that decides between them.

What I do have is a conscience, which cannot be accounted for apart from God. Christopher tries to take a “conscience vote” among the students there when he brings up the question of eternal torment. But we don’t need a conscience vote. We need to account for why we have consciences in the first place."

- Douglas Wilson discussing his experience with Christopher Hitchens

The Hitchens Brothers Agreement

"My brother and I agree on this: that independence of mind is immensely precious, and that we should try to tell the truth in clear English even if we are disliked for doing so."

- Peter Hitchens, brother to the late atheist Christopher Hitchens, writing in the Daily Mail