In the first decade of the 21st century, Christopher Hitchens, along with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, really made a splash with what has been labeled “The New Atheist Movement.” I am currently in the midst of sharing my analysis of Hitchens’ book, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. There is no need to explain what the book is about—the title pretty much gives it away.
In the course of his book, Hitchens proves himself quite adept at impressive broad-brushed statements and inflammatory rhetoric. Occasionally though, he actually gets around to something specific. In chapter 13 he discusses Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the man who is most associated with the Civil Rights movement, and the man who couched every speech and sermon with language from the Bible to make the point that God has created all men equal. Given those undisputable facts, Hitchens’ take on MLK is quite breath-taking…
He begins with a ridiculous accusation that it was Jesus who began the concept of hell, where the dead are further punished and tortured: “Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead.” Let’s put aside for the moment that Hitchens is completely and historically wrong on that point. The reason he makes that statement (i.e. Jesus and Christians love to punish and torture everyone) is that he is really wants to say something about MLK: “In no real as opposed to nominal sense, then, was a Christian.” (176)
If you are like me, you probably just said, “What?” Did Hitchens just claim that the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was not a Christian? Yes he did! All it took for him to make that claim was for him to completely re-define “Christian.” How convenient! “Being a Christian” to Hitchens means “being a sadist and lover of torture.” Therefore, by that definition, MLK was not a “Christian,” because MLK cared for the oppressed and wanted equal rights. This, boys and girls, is what we call tortured logic.
This tortured logic, though, clearly doesn’t rest well for Hitchens. Despite claiming MLK wasn’t really a Christian, he still feels the need to accuse MLK of plagiarizing his doctoral dissertation, and to paint him as a boozing skirt-chaser. In a similar way, Hitchens, in his book entitled, The Missionary Position, completely ridicules Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to caring for the poorest and sickliest people of Calcutta. Why? She was a committed Christian, of course. Hitchens cannot tolerate the reality that there are Christians out there who devote their lives to caring for the poor and marginalized, because that interferes with his delusion that “religion poisons everything,” and that Enlightenment atheists are all good and rational.
And since he was on the topic of MLK, Hitchens decided to put in his two cents regarding slavery—he claims that black people in America were “captives” of “several Christian states” (176). Now this fact is true: black people were brought from Africa and enslaved throughout the South, and many claimed Christianity endorsed slavery. The problem with Hitchens’ claim, though, is that earlier in his book he went at great lengths to argue that America wasn’t a Christian nation to begin with. Rather, it was rather a bastion of Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson and many other founding fathers.
Well, Hitchens is sort of right—Jefferson was a thoroughly Enlightenment thinker, and Enlightenment ideas did have a shaping influence on our country. Yet…Jefferson, the Enlightenment thinker, was actually a slave owner, as where many of the Enlightenment founding fathers. Furthermore, Hitchens also fails to mention the countless number of abolitionists who fought against slavery, precisely because of their Christian faith. His claim, therefore that “Religion alone is the cause of slavery in America,” is false. It is quite clear that both religious people and Enlightenment thinkers fell on both sides of the issue of slavery.
At the end of his chapter on MLK, Hitchens notes that some groups who supported MLK in his quest for equal rights were communists. But then astonishingly he claims that it was the communists and other “humanist groups” that were really the driving force behind MLK’s quest for civil rights! Hitchens actually says, “When Dr. King took a stand on the steps of Mr. Lincoln’s memorial and changed history, he too adopted a position that had effectually been forced upon him. But he did so as a profound humanist and nobody could ever use his name to justify oppression and cruelty. He endures for that reason, and his legacy has very little to do with his professed theology. No supernatural force was required to make the case against racism” (180).
My question is simple: Does any rational person think that MLK’s Christianity had nothing to do with his civil rights work? A quick read of any of MLK’s speeches and sermons proves the exact opposite. Now of course, an atheist can also be against racism; but Hitchens’ attempt to paint MLK as not really a Christian, but really an ideal humanist (and closet communist?) is ridiculous. I am truly baffled how anyone could take someone who makes such outrageous and demonstrably false statements seriously.
Hitchens then ends his discussion of MLK with this: “Anybody, therefore, who uses the King legacy to justify the role of religion in public life must accept all the corollaries of what they seem to be implying. Even a glance at the whole record will show, first, that person for person, American freethinkers and agnostics and atheists come out the best. The chance that someone’s secular or freethinking opinion would cause him or her to denounce the whole injustice was extremely high. The chance that someone’s religious belief would cause him or her to take a stand against slavery and racism was statistically quite small” (180).
Let’s doing something crazy: let’s look at the facts of reality. First of all, MLK’s legacy does indeed show that religious conviction can have a positive impact on public life and policy. So Hitchens is wrong there.
Secondly, a quick glance at the abolition movement, charities, homeless shelters, hospitals, and other organizations that help the poor and unfortunate, unequivocally prove the tremendous positive influence Christian faith and action have had throughout human history. Now of course, horrible things have been done in the name of Christianity from time to time, but a logical person will still acknowledge the tremendous good that has been done in the name of Christianity as well. And so, once again, Hitchens is wrong here.
Thirdly, although it is certainly true that atheists and agnostics have often taken part in the fight against injustices like racism, I don’t remember any “atheist” or “agnostic” movement in the 1800s that led the fight against slavery. What “record” does Hitchens have in mind?
Ultimately, Hitchens’ argument can be paraphrased like this, “Well, gee, everybody knows religious people are racists who want to enslave black people! It’s so obvious that atheists and agnostics are the only ones who are against racism!” But where is his evidence? Oh, that’s right, the great Communist, Martin Luther King Jr. was responsible for the civil rights movement! Perhaps we should also mention the great atheist leader, William Wilberforce, who helped abolish the slave trade in England due to his atheistic convictions, as well as Fredrick Douglas, the disciple of Rousseau, and Abraham Lincoln, who got his inspiration from his correspondence with Karl Marx.
Excuse the sarcasm, but it should be obvious that the problem with Hitchens is that he really isn’t concerned with the truth. He is arguing for a preconceived ideology and agenda, an atheistic Enlightenment worldview, and is willing to resort to wild caricatures, overly-simplistic generalizations, blatant distortions, and outright lies to prove his point. It is propaganda, pure and simple.
The reason I am analyzing Hitchens is the same reason I’m writing my book on Ken Ham: I am alarmed at how little people seem to be concerned with actual truth. Ken Ham talks about “presuppositional apologetics,” which is really a fancy way of saying, “We already know that Genesis 1-11 is doing modern science, so damn the actual scientific evidence that proves our assumption wrong; we’ll just distort the facts to make them fit our “presuppositions.” Christopher Hitchens does the exact same thing with his atheism: “I already know that religion ‘poisons everything,’ so I’ll distort the facts and make them fit my own atheistic presuppositions.”
In the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche saw this sort of thing coming. Radical Enlightenment skepticism took a jackhammer to the very concept of “truth.” Nietzsche concluded that “truth” really didn’t exist. All that was left was manipulation and power-plays by which people grasp for power and control. Unfortunately, Nietzsche has proven himself to be quite the prophet. What we see in the likes of “New Atheists” like Christopher Hitchens and “Ultra Fundamentalists” like Ken Ham is that they are both children of Enlightenment thinking. Neither one is really interested in truth; neither one is willing to let the facts of history lead them to a deeper understanding of truth and reality.
Such is the state of Western culture today. And a sad state it is when both atheists and Christian fundamentalists are found in the same Enlightenment bed. To use a biblical metaphor, that bed is in Sheol, and our culture is feeling its deadly effects.
That’s why we need to show enough faith to allow Christ to work through us so we can work toward resurrecting Orthodoxy.
