BILL UNTHRILLED | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog.

Just a little holiday cheer from this blog’s favorite author, Christopher Hitchens.

Money’s scarce
Times are hard
Here’s your f******
Xmas card

Slate Magazine

[flv]http://www.mmisi.org/flv/lectures/v000187_cicero_102207.flv[/flv]

Unfortunately, I seem to have stumbled across this debate after-the-fact… but that in no way makes it any less pleasurable for the first-time viewer.  As they say… if you haven’t seen it… you get the drift.  Anyway, here’s a quick teaser:

Christopher Hitchens (a favorite personality of mine) debates Dinseh D’souzda on the topics of Christianity and Faith.  Hitchens gave his usual “rationality alone provides all the answers we need” montra… which was not entirely un-persuasive… and Dinseh countered with scientific metaphysical arguments for a creator and the moral foundation Christianity has given Western culture — a foundation Hitchens almost entirely hijacks for his own purposes.  Dinesh pretty much destroys Hitchen’s premise that Christianity has been behind the horrible evils of the past mellenia… but at the expense of allowing Hitchens to counter with effective attacks on the “vindictive” and therefore undesirable nature of God– criticisms I wish D’souza would have more fully addressed.  

Denish deserves kudos for even attempting this battle and I think he performed very well all things considered.  He is definitely on my radar now as someone to follow closely.

I highly recommend spending 90 minutes and watching this debate in its entirety; it is quite an education to say the least.

I thought it would be worthwhile to get around to the “series” I began weeks ago which discuss the latest views Christopher Hitchens explains in his new book, “God is not Great.” The focus of this post is a discussion on Christianity Today, in which hitchens has a friendly debate with Douglas Wilson, a theology professor at New Saint Andrews College.

Hitchens argues, in part

Many of the teachings of Christianity are, as well as being incredible and mythical, immoral. I would principally wish to cite the concept of vicarious redemption, whereby one’s own responsibilities can be flung onto a scapegoat and thereby taken away. In my book, I argue that I can pay your debt or even take your place in prison but I cannot absolve you of what you actually did. This exorbitant fantasy of “forgiveness” is unfortunately matched by an equally extreme admonition‚Äîwhich is that the refusal to accept such a sublime offer may be punishable by eternal damnation. Not even the Old Testament, which speaks hotly in recommending genocide, slavery, genital mutilation, and other horrors, stoops to mention the torture of the dead. Those who tell this evil story to small children are not damned by me, but have been damned by history and should also be condemned by those who shrink from cruelty to children (a moral essential that underlies all cultures).

I think it is clear hitches is trying to convince himself, against what seems to be his common sense judgement, that Christianity is the worst thing sense slised bread. He seems to think it unfair that humanity can “cheat” on their mortgage (i.e. sin) payments by accepting God’s free gift of forgiveness, but then fret that the consequences of that very sin will be visited upon those who do not cheat. In hitchens perfect world, sin should be repayable with human efforts… but wait, he doesn’t believe in sin.

I suggest you read the whole piece… it is quite worthwhile.

Victor Davis Hanson may very well be the most articulate spokesman for American exceptionalism. His new piece (see above link) is brilliant… and not for the usual reasons one might expect. I think it is fair to say that Hanson’s genius is due to nothing more than his imagination.

In this dream, I heard our ex-presidents add to this chorus of war-time solidarity. Jimmy Carter reminded Americans that radical Islam had started in earnest on his watch, out of an endemic hatred of all things Western. I imagined him explaining that America began being called the ‘Great Satan’ during the presidential tenure of a liberal pacifist, not a Texan conservative.

George Bush Sr. would in turn lecture the media that it was once as furious at him for not removing Saddam as it is now furious at his son for doing so; that it was once as critical of him for sending too many troops to the Middle East as it is now critical of his son for sending too few; that it was once as hostile to the dictates of his excessively large coalition as it is now disparaging of his son’s intolerably small alliance; that it was once as dismissive of his old concern about Iranian influence in Iraq as it is now aghast at his son’s naivete about Tehran’s interest in absorbing southern Iraq; and that it was once as repulsed by his own cynical realism as it is now repulsed by his son’s blinkered idealism.

wow… this guy knows how to write!

Christopher Hitchens may be my favorite writer. His latest piece is no exception. He points out something that I should have found apparent years ago… but that I have for some reason or other… overlooked. It becomes immediately clear that the pronoun “YOU” has become the defining concept of this decade… “we report, you decide”…. “call YOUR doctor and ask about some drug” … …”youtube”… ” I hope you are getting the basic idea.

A room-service menu, for example, now almost always offers “your choice” of oatmeal versus cornflakes or fruit juice as opposed to vegetable juice. Well, who else’s choice could it be? Except perhaps that of the people who decide that this is the range of what the menu will feature. Fox TV famously and fatuously claims, “We report. You decide.” Decide on what? On what Fox reports? Online polls promise to register what “you” think about the pressing issues of the moment, whereas what’s being presented is an operation whereby someone says, “Let’s give them the idea that they are a part of the decision-making process.”

So, whatever happened to the Me Decade? The answer is that nothing happened to it. It mutated quite easily and smoothly into a decade centered on another narcissistic pronoun. Which pronoun is that? You be the judge.