Last week I attended the debate and discussion at Gaston Hall sponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs as well as something called the Ethics and Public Policy Center, with which I was unfamiliar. The title of the debate was Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World. I take it from the program that the Ethics and Public Policy Center, unlike the Berkley Center, is perhaps more of a Christian evangelical think tank. Fortunately, the Berkley Center is a pluralist and scholarly center; otherwise I think the sponsorship would have made the event appear to someone like me to be less seriously open-minded. Even so I wish that Tom Banchoff of the Berkley Center had been moderating the discussion and not just introducing the event.
In preparation I read Vol. 1 of Alister McGrath's A Scientific Theology, Nature and found it intriguing if slow-paced. It assumed a desire to see a parallel view of "nature" (contested, but the historical versions of the term were reviewed) and Christian belief in a salvific presence and history. He never really got to a proper attempt at a theodicy. This is a pity, as he could have attempted it and been more forceful and clear in the debate with Hitchens. I did not get a chance to read Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything before last night so I may try to do that soon- it may answer some of the questions I will put here.
Hitchens had a typcially theatrical and bold "take no prisoners" approach to what he sees as the horrors of religion and the immoral implications of the doctrines of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The debate was not fully joined insofar as McGrath spoke only of Christianity. Hitchens said at the outset that he would not deal with other monotheisms, then went on to stray from his own limitation to address them all in the course of the evening.
Here are the questions I might have put after hearing the debate:
To Hitchens: Many scientists have been amazed by the success of mathematics and is predictive powers in applied physics and the like. What do you make of it? Not a loaded question but one he should have been asked since he is a journalist and McGrath a scholar of both biochemistry and theology.
To Hitchens again: You stated that even many people who call themselves religious confess that the scriptures of their faith are really metaphorical in most parts or embody myth or legend. However, exegesis of these texts uses the same method of "peeling the onion" as is used in other textual criticism without implying, as you do, that such a method calls into question the truth value or legitimacy of the ideas contained therein. It does so no more than learning (as we did) that Thomas Wise, a bibliographer and (later revealed) con man forged a first edition of Jane Austen's work. Discovering that made the nature of her work more clear and interpretation more sound. It did not call into question the value of studying the works of Jane Austen.
To McGrath: Is religion really the only source of morality?
To McGrath again: do we not have to answer to the apparent indifference of a loving God to suffering? Is this not still the greatest barrier to the moral rationality of monotheistic belief? Is the sacrifice of Jesus (as opposed to his teaching) not violent and hard to explain since it must be at once foreordained and yet freely chosen by him in some way?
McGrath puts much store on the Incarnation and the Logos in the first volume of his study and the latter notion carries many interesting implications. I am still peeling this onion myself.
Finally, Hitchens said in a quick response that he did not want to endorse any confusion between the supernatural and the transcendent or "numinous," implying his disbelief in the former but leaving me with the impression that he had something more to say about the latter. I hope that the moderator's closing suggestion that we "do this again" by having a "part II" of the debate with the two adversaries might actually take place so that Hitchens might develop this with more scholarship (as opposed to mere cleverness)and McGrath might take a stronger stand in some areas, perhaps more like Dorothy Sayers in The Mind of the Maker. Still some real problems there but strong overall.
I will post link to the webcast which they said would be up by sometime this week.
In preparation I read Vol. 1 of Alister McGrath's A Scientific Theology, Nature and found it intriguing if slow-paced. It assumed a desire to see a parallel view of "nature" (contested, but the historical versions of the term were reviewed) and Christian belief in a salvific presence and history. He never really got to a proper attempt at a theodicy. This is a pity, as he could have attempted it and been more forceful and clear in the debate with Hitchens. I did not get a chance to read Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything before last night so I may try to do that soon- it may answer some of the questions I will put here.
Hitchens had a typcially theatrical and bold "take no prisoners" approach to what he sees as the horrors of religion and the immoral implications of the doctrines of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The debate was not fully joined insofar as McGrath spoke only of Christianity. Hitchens said at the outset that he would not deal with other monotheisms, then went on to stray from his own limitation to address them all in the course of the evening.
Here are the questions I might have put after hearing the debate:
To Hitchens: Many scientists have been amazed by the success of mathematics and is predictive powers in applied physics and the like. What do you make of it? Not a loaded question but one he should have been asked since he is a journalist and McGrath a scholar of both biochemistry and theology.
To Hitchens again: You stated that even many people who call themselves religious confess that the scriptures of their faith are really metaphorical in most parts or embody myth or legend. However, exegesis of these texts uses the same method of "peeling the onion" as is used in other textual criticism without implying, as you do, that such a method calls into question the truth value or legitimacy of the ideas contained therein. It does so no more than learning (as we did) that Thomas Wise, a bibliographer and (later revealed) con man forged a first edition of Jane Austen's work. Discovering that made the nature of her work more clear and interpretation more sound. It did not call into question the value of studying the works of Jane Austen.
To McGrath: Is religion really the only source of morality?
To McGrath again: do we not have to answer to the apparent indifference of a loving God to suffering? Is this not still the greatest barrier to the moral rationality of monotheistic belief? Is the sacrifice of Jesus (as opposed to his teaching) not violent and hard to explain since it must be at once foreordained and yet freely chosen by him in some way?
McGrath puts much store on the Incarnation and the Logos in the first volume of his study and the latter notion carries many interesting implications. I am still peeling this onion myself.
Finally, Hitchens said in a quick response that he did not want to endorse any confusion between the supernatural and the transcendent or "numinous," implying his disbelief in the former but leaving me with the impression that he had something more to say about the latter. I hope that the moderator's closing suggestion that we "do this again" by having a "part II" of the debate with the two adversaries might actually take place so that Hitchens might develop this with more scholarship (as opposed to mere cleverness)and McGrath might take a stronger stand in some areas, perhaps more like Dorothy Sayers in The Mind of the Maker. Still some real problems there but strong overall.
I will post link to the webcast which they said would be up by sometime this week.
