This is a continuation of my blog on the Hitchens, Craig debate at Biola, you can read it here if you like. In this blog I will deal with some of Hitchens “reasoning’s” because I feel that Craig did not adequately deal with them, this is by no means a slight on him, no man is perfect and can deal with every point in a debate, and Craig did better in that debate than I have ever seen a Christain do against Hitchens, and I totally admire the man.

Point one: Hitchens says that he is not convinced by Craig’s reasons and thus doesn’t need to answer them, mainly because he doesn’t find them worth addressing.

This is such a weak reason given the evidence that Craig laid out. Craig gave some heavy reasons for God’s existence, reasons that deserve a response from anyone wanting to be an Atheist. You should not be an Atheist just because you don’t think there are no good reasons for God given the evidence, you MUST believe that there is greater evidence that there is no God than there is a God, not that you just don’t like the evidence for Him. In other words, lets say there is one evidence for God, but no evidences for no God, you must believe in God. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like that one evidence, or if you think it is weak, if it outweighs the opposite evidence, then you ought to believe in it, or frankly you are a fool. Now you can decide to be an Agnostic, but Hitchens refuses to accept this label although everything he says proves he is one; he refuses to give any evidence against God. What I mean by that is, he didn’t counter Craig’s evidence. Craig says “we know something doesn’t come from nothing, that all causes have a cause” Hitchens didn’t explain this with Atheistic evidence. Craig says “the resurrection is the best explanation of the facts” Hitchen responds that God is evil for waiting until 2000 years ago to send Christ, again no evidence to the contrary of the resurrection only a moral thought about God.

Hitchens, one cannot just make observations or moral claims and pass them off as facts, saying that God is evil or bad or a big meany doesn’t prove He doesn’t exist, just that you don’t like Him and think you are His judge. If we observe things in the world, like our existence, the complexity, the fine tuning, the resurrection, ect. we must attempt to explain these things and find which world view best fits the evidence out there. Claiming you don’t like the outcome of one and prefer the other, doesn’t make one true and one false, your preference has nothing to do with truth. Perhaps I do not like the Moon, so am I then to deny that it has any influence on tides just because I don’t like the moon, or don’t believe in it? It is the best evidence out there for how tides react, so unless I can come up with some other reason than the moon for tides, or can explain why it appears to be the moon, but is actually something else, I must believe in the moon because the evidence is weightier towards that conclusion. So it is with God, perhaps you do not like Craig’s arguments, but they are weighty and is “evidence that demands a verdict”, so you can’t claim Atheism unless you both explain why Craig’s reasons are wrong (not that you don’t find them good enough, you must show why they are not good enough, stating it doesn’t make it so) and then explain the evidence and phenomena with another reason other than God.

Point two. Hitchens said that if we believe in the God of the Bible then we must believe that people for hundreds of thousands of years suffered without any hope, died young, and led miserable and pointless lives, thus God is evil for waiting so long to send Christ.

Craig responded with “well we know that only about 2% of the population of the entire world history lived before Christ, and that 98% have lived after, thus God came at the perfect time”. Nice Craig, but you missed his biggest mistake. He is saying we must believe in an atheistic world as Christians. He is saying “If Christianity is true well then you must believe this” no Hitchens if Christianity is true then we must believe the Bible, not your view of early civilization. The Bible says that Adam was first created, he didn’t die in childbirth, or suffer and die young, in fact he lived to be over 900 years old as did his children and their children and so on and so on until Noah, when God then said that men should only live to be 70 or so. Hitchens did a typical switch-a-roo, he takes something vile and disgusting and says “this is what you believe” when it really isn’t. If Christianity is true, then early history looks like how the Bible says it does, not how evolutionists say it did. Oh by the way Hitchens if Christianity is true, then God provided salvation for men since the beginning, remember those clothes He made Adam and Eve? They were from the first animal sacrifices for sin, performed by God Himself on behalf of His children foreshadowing that He would provide the ultimate sacrifice in due time, His own Son. When someone decides to play “what if” don’t let them change the rules, if they say “then you must believe this” don’t let them unless it is actually what you believe. Craig fell into this trap and let Hitchens score a point with this.

Hitchens also did this with gays saying “why would God make people Gay and then condemn it” because he assumes that people are born gay, which I already argue about that it doesn’t really matter. And then here he is making the same mistake, he is assuming God exists and then pinning a atheistic view on him. Christians do not claim that God creates people as evil, He created men good, and men fell and Adam cursed us all so that now we are born in sin. It’s Adam’s fault not God’s, if Hitchens wants to be mad at someone that people are “born” gay, or murders, then he should be mad at Adam, not God.

I will write more as I think about it, but I think that should be good thinking for now.