"Is Christianity Good for the World?" | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Free Newsletters:

RSS Feeds |

Audio |

Twitter

Home > 2007 > May (Web-only)

Christianity Today, May (Web-only), 2007 |

"Is Christianity Good for the World?"

Part 2 of the ongoing debate between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson.

posted 5/10/2007 08:54AM

3 of 3

Related Elsewhere:

Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man," Letters To a Young Contrarian, and Why Orwell Matters; and Wilson's Letter from a Christian Citizen, Reforming Marriage, and A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking are available from Amazon.com and other retailers.

Wilson's Blog and Mablog has posts in response to God is Not Great, as well as other topics.

Hitchensweb.com has links to Hitchens' online articles.

Stan Guthrie commented in CT Liveblog about Christian-athiest debates.

Hitchens debated Al Sharpton on May 7.

Books & Culture articles about Hitchens and Wilson include:

Can You Reason with Christians? | A response to Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation. (May 7, 2007)

Christopher Hitchens Explains It All for You | Move over, Sam Harris; another atheist wants the pulpit. (Books & Culture, April 30, 2007)

Book of the Week: Strange Bedfellows | Christopher Hitchens and Christopher Caldwell collaborate on a collection of political writing. Has the millennium arrived unnoticed? (Books & Culture, January 27, 2003)

Uncompromising Positions | Hitchens and Orwell (Books & Culture, November 1, 2002)

Mr. Wilson's Bookshelf | "Wayfaring Stranger" (Books & Culture, November 17, 2006)

first page |

3 of 3

share this page

May (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51

E-mail this page

Write CT

Print this article

Post a comment

Reader Reviews are below

Subscribe to Christianity Today and get 3 free trial issues. No credit card required.

Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only.

If you decide you want to keep Christianity Today coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive nine more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The three trial issues are yours to keep, regardless.

Click here for international orders

2-for-1 Gifts!

[Reader Reviews]

Average User Rating:

Displaying 1 - 3 of 177 comments.

See all comments

Konstantin

Posted: May 22, 2007 1:50 AM

Apologia, you asked: "How can one have an ever evolving world, yet fixed principles?" Only an ignorant person can believe in fixed moral principles. Morality has been evolving ever since human civilizations emerged. Just look back 50 years, and you will see how attitudes toward racism have changed in the United States. That is an example of the evolution of morality. Now take a look two thousand years back, and you will find plenty of nasty things in the Bible that you would no longer subscribe to. Do you really believe God ordered the Jews to wipe out nations and cities, including infants? Do you really believe God is pro-slavery? Do you really believe women are inferior to men? Do you really believe children should be stoned to death for disobedience? These are the clear teachings of your Bible, and yet you and I will agree that they are poisonous and cruel. So the Bible certainly does not provide "fixed principles," and indeed such principles do not exist.

hasty toweling

Posted: May 20, 2007 7:23 PM

apologia, claiming to have a rational basis for your ethics is different from actually having one. You say Christians have one, but this is really contingent on Christianity being the One True Religion. Muslims believe that Christians are morally wrong just for having their beliefs - - they are all going to Hell. So, before you can assert your fixed moral standard, you have to demonstrate, in some way, shape or form, that Muslims, all 1 billion of them, are wrong. But even that won't do it. You also have to explain why all of the other religions are wrong. But even that won't do it. You still have to give some reason why Christianity is True. The closest anyone on this comment thread came to doing this was to say the Yahweh is humble -- needless to repeat, I'm not convinced by this. Until some reason is given why Christianity is factually true, all talk about morals and logic being based on it is completely empty. Why are you so certain that you're right and all Muslims arent?

Hasty Toweling

Posted: May 20, 2007 9:36 AM

Kosmiceggburst, your post is possibly the silliest and most ignorant thing ever written. All of the "new athiests" (Dawkins, Harris, Dennet, and Hitchens) rail into Islam even more than Christianity. Islam is all of the worst aspects of Christianity multiplied by 10. You could actually try reading one of their books (or any book for matter) before presenting an "observation". Christianity gets more attention because it is more prominent in our country. Your idea that Theism = Christianity would be hilarious if I didn't think that you actually meant it. Have you heard of Hinduism? For Christ's sake man, you're making yourself look stupid here.

The allotted time for commenting has ended.