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you're just recently I was in a
bookstore and I looked at the religion
section and three shelves of the
religion section were devoted to books
on atheism so it's kind of flavor of the
month right now intellectually a lot of
atheist coming forward to critique the
whole idea of God you have sam Harris's
book led her to a Christian nation you
have Richard Dawkins book The God
Delusion the one I want to focus on
today is Christopher Hitchens book God
is not great Hitchens is a very lively
writer and his arguments are very
provocative and the book has a very
polemical focus what I'm going to do is
respond to three arguments I think are
really essential in Hitchens approach
the first one and an awful lot of the
space the book is taken up with this
religious people behaving badly
Hitchens rehearses for us over the 2000
years let's to say of Christianity the
number of cases of people in the name of
religion doing outrageous barbaric
terrible things you know from the
Crusades to witch hunts to persecutions
to the Inquisition etc etc and I
wouldn't really want to contest him on
empirical grounds yes over the two
thousand years of Christianity lots of
people have behaved very badly often in
the name of religion I'd also too like
to turn the tables a bit on mr. Hitchens
can you say that an awful lot of people
inspired by the Enlightenment inspired
by modernity have acted badly yes indeed
go back to the very beginnings of
enlightenment go back to the French
Revolution look at the terror that
followed the French Revolution when in
the name of equality in the name of
justice and reason thousands of people
were put to death move into the 20th
century the worst century on human
record 50 million people are killed by
whom not by religious people but killed
by the Pol Pot's and the Mao Zedong's
and the Joseph Stalin's and the OTO of
Hitler's
people who were fiercely anti religious
and it will often claim the mantle of
reason justice if we were to say I'm the
basis of those figures and their
violence the Enlightenment is a waste of
time the Enlightenment is a big mistake
well we'd be unjustified have religious
people behave badly of course even more
badly have avatars of modernity and the
Enlightenment behaved that in itself
though should not consume argument
against the Enlightenment nor should the
bad behavior of religious people in
itself constitute an argument against
religion at the very heart of
Christianity is the claim that God is
most fully revealed in Jesus Christ
crucified Jesus who takes upon himself
the violence hatred dysfunction
intolerance stupidity injustice of the
world in our language he takes upon
himself the sins of the world responds
not in violence not in hatred not in
answering injustice but he responds
precisely through forgiveness Father
forgive them they know not what they do
the cross is the great act of
non-violence that stands at the heart of
Christianity therefore we know that when
Christians behave in unjust and stupid
and vile ways that they are operating
out of step with our own best tradition
and so it's not so much an argument
against Christianity but now our own
violence which is undoubtedly there
should be read and jobs in light of what
stands at the heart of Christianity
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