1. Comment #62982 by MrEmpirical on August 12, 2007 at 6:52 pm

Hitchens is a very busy man.

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2. Comment #62998 by ? on August 12, 2007 at 8:20 pm

For the most part, White came across (at least in the transcript I read) as unusually civilized, cultured and friendly. I had several problems with his arguments, though....

---Like many elite, intelligent theists with good intellectual jobs he's simply living in a protective bubble where he doesn't have to deal with the barbarians. So he gets to pretend they don't exist or are rare. We know better.

---Along the same lines, as a liberal Protestant who CHOSE to become Catholic as an adult, he has no knowledge of what it is like to grow up in a rigid, dogmatic environment, Protestant or Catholic. Coming to it as a free individual, he gets to largely define what it means to him. For many, it (or other things like it) is an identity imposed through intimidation from such an early age that it interferes with the basic sense of self.

---Shockingly, for a man of his overall education and intelligence, he doesn't take full advantage of his right as a modern Catholic to accept much of evolution. Literal Adam and Eve? "Not sure" if our species is at least 100,000 years old?! There are probably Cardinals who would laugh at this!

---He uses Russian Orthodox writers as sources on at least two occasions and then indulges in ugly remarks about their church. These remarks may be warranted, but is calling the Czar "Holy Father" and writing the Protocols (was that really written by the Russian CHURCH per se or just secret police officers who were members?) really as bad as the Inqisition and the genocidal conquistadors? At least the Eastern Patriarchs have some limit on their power and the various Orthodox Churches cooperate and make decisions in semi-democratic councils instead of just damning each other as heretics. Admittedly Eastern Christianity might historically outdo the West in social conservatism and (especially in the case of the Russian believers) crude nationalism. And they may be more vulgar in their anti-Semitism. But the West's hands are scarcely clean when it comes to these things!

---What the hell is wrong with the Mass in vernacular languages? If the current English, French or Italian ritual is boring and ugly, hire some good poets to help you write a better version instead of lapsing back into Latin. There is nothing more pointless than intentionally communicating supposedly essential truths in a language hardly anyone can understand.

---I greatly respect his love of the arts and literature, and enjoyed his comments on them. However, how much of an authority is Dante on anything real? And while religion, particularly Catholicism has inspired great art, it has also limited the scope of expression. Look at what 19th Century artists like Monet or Degas accomplished persuing beauty and skill for their own sake without the need to glorify any myth, ideology or political/religious authority.

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3. Comment #63007 by Cartomancer on August 12, 2007 at 8:58 pm

Does this gentleman seriously believe that the five internal senses of Avicenna (c.980-1037) and his Latin inheritors are a legitimate and helpful model of human psychology in the twenty-first century?! Ye gods!

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4. Comment #63016 by Morro on August 12, 2007 at 11:26 pm

Great talk. Hitchens is on the ball, and the other guy is well spoken, if a little inchoherent.

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5. Comment #63017 by 82abhilash on August 12, 2007 at 11:27 pm

Did anyone notice David Allen White trying to suggest, science cannot do this, science cannot find that and so on. Even using the argument - 'We donot know, so God did it.'

Also he was arguing against positions Christopher Hitchens donot necessarily hold.

Sam Harris is right, there are honestly just a few ways to defend religion.

Here we have 4 people with 4 somewhat original ideas against religion, but all the religious people seem to gravitate on a few points.

The non-catholics seem to put up a more varying defense though, their dogmas are not as homogenous, although very similar.

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6. Comment #63025 by jaytee_555 on August 13, 2007 at 12:29 am

I found the discussion a bit disappointing. Hitchins was uncharacteristically soft on White, and allowed himself to get dragged somewhat into the 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' type of theological argument. White was talking absolute bollox, and seemed for the most part to get away with it. Sure, he was a slippery customer, but even on a bad day, Hitchins should have done better. Hitchins won on points, but it should have been a K.O. in the second round.

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7. Comment #63029 by JohnC on August 13, 2007 at 12:57 am

Despite his polite and erudite manner, one can see that White is rather more of a religious neandertal than was fully exposed here.

Hitchens was clearly taken aback (as was I) when Wilson declined to endorse the surely incontrovertible finding that Homo sapiens have been around for at least 100,000 years. And who knows what he had in mind with a "literal Adam and Eve" but he is clearly an enemy of modern biology. I don't think RD would have let him off the hook so easily.

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8. Comment #63043 by scooternyc on August 13, 2007 at 2:36 am

The "conversion" to another religion is the type of falsifiable evidence in observation with which to draw conclusions.

You cannot reasonably believe one religion and then abandon it for another. Either the one you're indoctrinated in is the unaltered word of god or it isn't. Conversion is one of the more laughable actions done by the religious.

Aain, using religion for your own objectives in life rooted in the subjective view one holds of how life should be lived.

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9. Comment #63057 by AJ Rae on August 13, 2007 at 3:27 am

White is so ignorant about science and computing, it's not funny. It's disappointing Hitchens doesn't have better answers to the stupidity. Computer models are flawed because a computer model was flawed? Mysterious peas, hilarious, can we get some logic in the house?

How can they even ask whether artists and authors can be inspired without religion? It's blatently obvious they can. Whether they like it or not, is only evidence of their tastes.

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10. Comment #63096 by Henri Bergson on August 13, 2007 at 5:25 am

Good to hear that Hitchens has finally embraced Nietzsche's concept of the 'Will to Power'.

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11. Comment #63106 by IQHQ on August 13, 2007 at 5:59 am

A very interesting discussion. I thought that it was respectfully conducted, and yielded much food for thought.

David Allen White, to me, came across as a man of integrity and moral virtue. He made some salient points. Yet, it seems to me that where religious people fall down is when they try to assert the "truth" of their dogmas and beliefs. It always seems that they fall back on the mythical import from the holy stories.

To address this important issue: I do not think that there is any debate as to whether religious belief has inspired some of the greatest art of all time. I cannot really conceive of a modern-day secularist creating a vision such is contained in "The Divine Comedy" or the music of Bach. I tend to think that this is because the key to artistic creativity is "imagination", and it is exactly this "imagination" which is most inspired by the mythical import of religious stories. People in modern day secular countries have lost their "heroes", so to speak. Therefore, I think David Allen White's concern about the neglect of the "inner life" is justified, although I hardly believe (as he does) that his myths represent physical reality. I guess though, that they still may be described as "true", at least if the world "true" is defined broadly. There is a "truth" in the St Mathew Passion, for example, which resonates as such in the ears of us human beings every bit as much as a "truth" describing physical reality, perhaps even more so, as it is of much more immediate and personal significance.

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12. Comment #63111 by scooternyc on August 13, 2007 at 6:12 am

"I do not think that there is any debate as to whether religious belief has inspired some of the greatest art of all time"


We will never know what art was LOST BECAUSE of religion.

This flies in the face of evolutionary understanding, because if "art" was to exist then at some point it would have developed regardless of religion. Even memes would have encouraged this behavior.

Religion served its purposes a long time ago when people were ignorant of certain precepts in life.

Just recently there have been science articles speaking of amoebas showing altruistic behavior when seeking survival - I guess the amoebas didn't get the memo about hay-zues and all his followers.

It's absurd.

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13. Comment #63112 by epeeist on August 13, 2007 at 6:14 am

Comment #63106 by IQHQ

There is a "truth" in the St Mathew Passion, for example, which resonates as such in the ears of us human beings every bit as much as a "truth" describing physical reality, perhaps even more so, as it is of much more immediate and personal significance.

It is a very great piece of music, as the "Divine Comedy" is a great piece of literature.

However, the Beethoven last string quartets are at least as great, as are virtually any of the Mozart Operas. Beethoven was a deist and Mozart a Mason.

There probably aren't many single works as broad as the Comedy, but you might consider Tolstoy's "War and Peace" as coming close. Again, while Tolstoy believed in a god of some kind it was hardly a conventional religious belief.

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14. Comment #63116 by etny on August 13, 2007 at 6:28 am

DAW says (about unbaptized kids going to limbo):
"What is very interesting is that that debate is currently going on in Catholic circles, because as you well know, there have been some recent pronouncements about limbo. They have not been definitive, but it is…you may find it crazy that this is being debated right now. I find it actually very interesting".
Interesting?! Not definitive? Debated?
What a lame statement regarding one of the most revolting concepts in the whole Catholic dogma.
This alone, eclipses the rest of the babble, and the pseudo-literary arguments made by DAW.
Perfect illustration of why even "moderate" religious believers are so potentially dangerous.

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15. Comment #63121 by Cartomancer on August 13, 2007 at 6:49 am

Yes, but for every Dante and Bach and Michaelangelo that Christian societies have thrown up, how many faceless, talentless hacks have there also been, churning out run-of-the-mill religious poetry, gratingly bad religious music and breathtakingly inane religious art?

Moreover, the religious content of the aforementioned artists is not necessarily the factor that makes their works so special. I would argue that the beauty of Dante's vision comes less from adopting the cliched and well-trodden theological semiotics of the medieval schoolroom than it does from imitating Vergil and the epic style of the classical poets. Its position as an early example of vernacular literature also helps - some of its freshness is conveyed precisely because it could get away from the tired latin of religious discourse and speak a different language. Similarly, we admire Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling not because it contains pictures of childish religious fable but because he too was adopting a classicising, realistic and impressive artistic technique. It could have been the flying spaghetti monster surrounded by invisible goblins on roller-skates up there and it would have been no less impressive. Michaelangelo's David is essentially Apollo with big hands and bears little resemblance to anything even vaguely Christian. His other classical sculpture groups bear the point out. Yes, the ideas taken from the classical world by medieval and renaissance artists were often religious ones, but they were not religious ideas that those artists themselves ascribed to. Religions are in this case simply common conceptual vocabularies describing something intrinsic to human thought and experience of the numinous and the transcendent. We have similar vocabularies today too from secular sources. Fantasy and Science Fiction literature are good examples I think - the idea of Big Brother from 1984 is an entirely secular one and still conveys all the crushing, stifling, de-humanising horror of any purgatory or limbo. We look to the Matrix as a metaphor to disabuse ourselves of the certainty of our perceptions rather than to the Veil of Tears or Through a Glass Darkly, and Frodo's ring not the Apple of Eve becomes a symbol of absolute power corrupting absolutely.

Note the intrinsic Florentine Renaissance bias in this article. This is typical of conservative scholars of literature and art, and indeed has become a cultural norm in western societies. Medieval art was usually far more religious in content than later stuff, far less classical and far less adventurous in many ways. Do the Hereford Mappa Mundi, the Bayeux tapestry and the sculptures on Chartres cathedral receive similar adulation from the masses? Nope...

And as for great art without religious inspiration, what about Shakespeare? True, he does recycle bible quotes at a fair old rate, but name me one of his plays on an overtly religious theme? Da Vinci anybody? Are the Mona Lisa, battle of Anghiari and those wonderful sketchbooks religious art? Or do they get their unique twist from a healthy dose of humanism, rationalism and science? Mozart? I don't recall seeing the gospel of Don Giovanni, the parable of the marriage of Figaro or the Book of the Magic Flute anywhere in the bible...

Cinema? all religious films I've ever seen are irredeemably awful, from that smug, grimacing idiot Charlton Heston as Moses in the Ten Commandments to the sick, pornographic violence of hateful Catholic moron Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Three films have won eleven Oscars to date - Ben Hur, Titanic and Return of the King, only one of which was religiously inspired. And bloody awful it got too when they started ladling on the syrup toward the end.

John Lennon's Imagine No Religion...? I didn't like it, but lots of people did...

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16. Comment #63129 by IQHQ on August 13, 2007 at 7:36 am

Cartomancer

Excellent post. Thanks for taking the time to write it. There is much of what you say that I agree with. I am not arguing that it is theoretically impossible to conceive of (or produce) great art from the basis of a secular and non-religious framework, just that (considering how much more access everyone has, today, to the means of producing art) there is a notable lack of it around! One must look at this question, for it may yield some interesting lessons about the inspiration derived from religious fables. You said:

"Similarly, we admire Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling not because it contains pictures of childish religious fable but because he too was adopting a classicising, realistic and impressive artistic technique. It could have been the flying spaghetti monster surrounded by invisible goblins on roller-skates up there and it would have been no less impressive".

I totally disagree with that statement. It is precisely the cosmic theme of Heaven and Hell, the all-encompassing reach and the personal moral lesson (albeit still mythically-grounded) enshrined in that artwork which makes it timeless, over and above just a great arrangement of colour and shape. The modern artwork of, for example, Alexander Gray, whilst being visionary and ingenious, nevertheless lacks this same "eternal" resonance. To my mind it does, at least. If the Sistine Chapel really had been dedicated to the mocking of religion (e.g. the Spagetti Monster or the Flying Teapot) I believe that experiencing it would almost certainly lack that transcendental quality, vivid and undeniable concerning the Sistine chapel as it is today.

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17. Comment #63132 by Flagellant on August 13, 2007 at 7:44 am

In art and music, there's a lot to be said for being aware of the influence of the sponsor/patron with the money. That was usually the church; then it became the aristocracy.

I'm just listening to something modern: Shostakovitch. Even he had 'patronage' problems...



Religion - an activity for consenting adults in private.

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18. Comment #63142 by Pete_C on August 13, 2007 at 8:25 am

There are often arguments on both sides of this debate that use as examples a select few people from what could be called the extreme tails of achievement -- the great artists we're talking about here, or the tired arguments involving Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc...

This handful of people shouldn't be used as a proxy for all religion or all atheism. I think the most damning arguments against religion come from its steady browbeating of its billions of adherents, its chilling effect on society, opposition to science, etc. To say "Forget all that and listen to Bach's Passion!" is a risible argument. A pervasive chokehold on most of the planet for millenia outweighs the grand achievements (whether good or bad - here I'd include people like bin Laden, too) of a few people. I think this is an example of the availability heuristic in action.

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19. Comment #63146 by JohnC on August 13, 2007 at 8:40 am

Cartomancer,

Was going to post something similar (though probably not as erudite), but got distracted (my boys needed dinner). But I might now elaborate on a couple of points.

First, artists are constrained to work within/against the dominant cultural narratives of their time. So in the case of Renaisance Europe, biblical themes and vocabulary are ever-present. So what? Is this a contribution?

Michelangelo's David used the motif of a crucial Israelite myth without communicating an atom of meaning about that myth. The marble is about many things, including the civic pride of Florence, but the biblical David? - the Jewish scribe who invented the story would have been aghast.

But no exception. Look at Donatello's even more homoerotic bronze of David from 1430 (http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1272/1104576245_334c3f51cc_o.jpg)
Generations of Jewish scribes should now be spinning in their graves, and not just because both Davids have foreskins firmly intact. Whatever these works are about, they have only the most distant connection with the dominant theology of their day.

Or consider Caravaggio, who produced a large number of "religious" paintings, with a shocking realism that is derived from drawing his models from the street life of Rome and Naples - prostitutes, rent boys, down-and-outs, you name it.

What are these paintings about? Well now is not the time for Art History 101, but most assuredly the Christian cultural narrative was the vehicle not the message of these astounding works (and one must really see them in person to understand their impact).

Art that survives does so because it creates something new out of the narratives and raw materials surrounding the artist.

What is astonishing is that DAW is a Shakespeare scholar, and must be aware that he is reading a supreme poet of the human condition, who while drawing on many sources ultimately owes a debt to none, least of all religion.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate

should have the evangelical right spinning as well (though Ted Haggard might draw some comfort) if they had the wit to realise it was written to a young man with whom he was deeply in love. Christian contribution - don't think so.

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20. Comment #63177 by RickM on August 13, 2007 at 12:02 pm

Let's reexamine our attitude toward the serial killer after having considered that at some point in his life he helped an elderly lady cross a busy intersection.

Michelangelo inspired by God? Perhaps he was inspired to avoid death for heresy. What great works would he have brushed had he lived in a society free of superstition?

We can not "crack the mysteries of language"? I would like to know how White knows that. Haven't we cracked the mysteries of lightning? How "mysterious" lightning must have been. I can't wait for the wonderful explanations to be revealed in the future by cognitive neurology, followed by the creative denials by the superstitious (priests).

The domain of religion keeps narrowing. God is not great; god is bull shit.

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21. Comment #63181 by Lauregon on August 13, 2007 at 12:18 pm

I tend to think that this is because the key to artistic creativity is "imagination", and it is exactly this "imagination" which is most inspired by the mythical import of religious stories. - IQHQ

I'd say imagination is/can be inspired by the mythical import of myth, but myth usually doesn't attempt to make literal or factual its descriptions of supernatural phenomena. Myth itself is an artistic creation that paints a story beyond itself that tries to explain aspects of human life. The Christian myth, unfortunately, claims far more for itself, and that's the big problem.

One thing I noticed in White's argumentation is that he presumed a universal need for "salvation." His presumption drags the whole subject back to the authority of the Bible (and the Church) which makes for yet another circular apologist argument.

When White linked future "proof" of the Big Bang with "revelation," I felt like whacking my computer speakers. Maybe he misspoke and didn't mean a revelation delivered to the Pope---but then again, maybe he did.

People in modern day secular countries have lost their "heroes", so to speak. -
IQHQ

Secular hero-seekers find them on movie screens(and in sports stadiums)---impoverished heros they may be, and yet their heroic stories do often bear at least traces of eternal myths. (Maybe the secular world is so overfed with supernatural cinema heroes that many among us have grown bored with them.

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22. Comment #63195 by Thrall on August 13, 2007 at 1:11 pm

When you refer to Dante as docterine, I get to refer to The Hitchhikers' Guide as Scientific fact.

More cherry picking of information, more diversion, more "scientism". Can we please hear a new argument about this please? Why does hitchins continue to argue on this guys radio show? DAW isn't even sure of what he believes, completely agreeing with hitchens that 'you must be a catholic to be saved', and then refers to Dante to show that it's entirely not true, even though he said it was moments earlier. How dishonest of him to believe both things. I wonder if he even has considered the conundrum before him on this point.

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23. Comment #63196 by IQHQ on August 13, 2007 at 1:17 pm

Lauregon

Good points. To me, God is a metaphor, a metaphor which transcends ALL categories of thought. I agree that those who view, for example, Christianity, as TRUE, in the scientific, materialistic sense, need to be challenged on the foundations of their beliefs, and that this should not be allowed to remain taboo. Part of "growing up" is to recognise myths AS myths. And yet so many remain caught in that symbiotic relationship with nature, in which their psyches are entangled. Incidentally, I just finished watching "The Enemies of Reason", and it provided ample proof of this phenomenon. Professor Dawkins did an admirable job of portraying these superstitions for what they really are.

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24. Comment #63201 by Oliver Leif on August 13, 2007 at 1:28 pm

"John Lennon's Imagine No Religion...? I didn't like it, but lots of people did... "

That's my favourtie song, actually.

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25. Comment #63258 by Lauregon on August 13, 2007 at 5:27 pm

Good points. To me, God is a metaphor, a metaphor which transcends ALL categories of thought. I agree that those who view, for example, Christianity, as TRUE, in the scientific, materialistic sense, need to be challenged on the foundations of their beliefs, and that this should not be allowed to remain taboo. - IQHQ

I emphatically agree.

Part of "growing up" is to recognise myths AS myths. - IQHQ

I'm appreciative of the explanation Banzai wrote a few weeks ago that describes (my paraphrase) "God" as the poetic or literary term for human aspirations and yearnings.

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26. Comment #63261 by Circumspect on August 13, 2007 at 5:39 pm

White has gone straight through the looking glass... the most nonsensical reasoning I've heard in a long time... and why Hitchens is so polite to him is beyond me.

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27. Comment #63320 by Dog Boots on August 13, 2007 at 10:20 pm

When DAW says that he can only think of 2 good works of art that have come from the moon landings, it would be interesting to know to total number of divinely inspired works he can think of from since then. In the clip he compares them to the divinely inspired works of the millenium or so - hardly a fair comparison.

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28. Comment #63578 by doodinthemood on August 15, 2007 at 12:37 am

Such atrocious audio quality I can't really be bothered with it unfortunately. Why can't these shows get the guys in the studio with a mic rather than have them on the flippin' phone for that long?

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29. Comment #63697 by Lil_Xunzian on August 15, 2007 at 1:00 pm

One thing that puzzles me is this:

The argument on the theistic side maintains that civilization is somehow premised on the belief in God. Without God, there would be no civilization. I guess the obvious argument against that would be that prior to the modern era, China was probably the most nontheistic society on the planet. That trend began around 500bc with Confucius, who thought so little of superstition, the supernatural, the hereafter, miracles, etc. that he refused to even talk about them. Since him, elite Chinese thought has been focused on the here and now, formulated in overwhelmingly secular, nontheistic (I can't say atheistic), and humanistic terms. Insofar as Confucianism dominated Chinese intellectual history, I should note that after Xunzi, Confucianism attitude toward a god could only be described as atheistic or pantheistic. At the same time, China was by far the most successful civilization in the world up until the mid-1400's when it "went to sleep" and the European Renaissance got going. In hindsight and with a fair minded view of world history, Chinese civilization was more successful than Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, India, and the most theistic civilization in the world, Christian Europe. Europe only caught up to and surpassed China when Europeans did the Chinese thing to do by embracing humanism and secularism at the outset of the Renaissance. So I pose the following question: if we need God in order to have civilization, then how is it that the most successful civilization for most of human history was by and large godless?

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30. Comment #66778 by chadwick on August 31, 2007 at 10:34 am

This was extremely lame. I wish Sam Harris was debating David. The stuff he was spouting was nonsense. I don't get why Chris wasn't on him about all the theology and Christian philosophy. Dante was a great writer....so what? It's just him saying "maybe it's this way." All Dante is doing is trying to make sense of the nonsensical that is the bible. How can re-telling a story about going to heaven and seeing non-christians, or pagan philosophers in limbo even be an argument? A shame....I was almost yelling at the computer.

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31. Comment #145397 by DIRTYDUNNZ on March 17, 2008 at 2:34 pm

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