Grasping for Truth

I recently finished Is Christianity Good For the World, which is the debate between atheist Christopher Hitchens and theologian Doug Wilson. On the heat to light ratio it scored well on both counts. They are both great polemicists and so there's enough heat to warm the cockles of your heart. They are also clear thinkers so they, especially Wilson, illuminates the fundamental difference between atheism and Christianity.

In fact, I think Hitchens was put a little off his guard by Wilsons' insistence that he provide an atheistic basis for the distinction between good and evil. I've seen Hitchens debate McGrath and DeSouza and, going by that, I think he expected an evidence war on his own turf. Instead, Wilson took the epistemic ground and made Hitchens fight for the right to call something evil or good. 

Wilson also made the point that without God there's no basis for faith in reason or sense experience. Notice that I used the word "faith." Hitchens doesn't want to admit that his position is equally faith-based. He continually goes back to the position that morality is innate and worked out by trial and error as humans attempt to build a coherent, law-abiding civilization. But this begs the question: Why, if morality is a product of the careless process of evolution, do humans care for coherence or law or beauty for that matter? Why aren't we just content with what is? If evolution were the only reality it could not produce any ideals higher than what is. Wilson says to Hitchens:

Your notion of morality, and the evolution it rode in on, can only concern itself with what is. But morality as Christians understand it, and the kind you surreptitiously draw upon, is concerned with ought. David Hume showed us that we cannot successfully derive ought from is. Have you discovered the error in his reasoning? It is clear from how you defend your ideas of 'morality' that you have not done so.... You believe yourself to live in a universe where there is no such thing as any fixed ought or ought not. But God has gifted you with a remarkable ability to denounce what ought not to be.

Hitchen's is living off borrowed capital any time he denounces anything. If he denounces tyranny, which he often does, he appeals a higher moral law than himself to which the tyrant is accountable. He assumes a moral law that binds himself and the tyrant and all of humanity together. He also assumes that the tyrant has transgressed it and must receive his just desserts. 

But if Hitchen's is right about there being no creator or revealer of right and wrong, then right and wrong is only what Hitchens thinks it is. And whatever Hitchens thinks is right or wrong, cannot be binding on anyone else. As Dostoevsky said: "If God is dead, all things are permissible." Hitchens seems to miss the fact that there can be no right and wrong if there is no standard for right and wrong.

Wilson's reference to Hume's point that "we cannot successfully derive ought from is" is telling for Hitchens. If Hume and Hitchen's worldview is correct there would be no way to tell someone they ought to do something (like help an old lady across the street) because of what is the case (she's old). But the fact that Hitchens and Hume do this kind of thing, shows that they cannot live consistently within their own worldview. In fact, Hume is saying that it is the case that you ought not derive an ought from an is. The philosophy is self-defeating and this is Wilson's point that Hitchens hasn't yet grapsed.