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The program has a festive feel, and indicates the celebratory nature of a gathering of those who, despite the souvenir T-shirts, caps, mugs, fridge magnets and bumper stickers, claim their only common ground is what they don’t have—belief. At CPX we have spent considerable time and energy engaging with the latest and most evangelistic of the prophets of atheist piety. I’m not sorry we have. There are important arguments against religion that are being made loudly and trenchantly and these are worth testing and challenging. We have gathered the relevant material here if you’d like to take a look. But I was struck today by an article by the brother of Christopher Hitchens, that most caustic of opponents of religion (notably absent from the convention). Just like his brother, Peter Hitchens is a talented writer. But, no doubt alarmingly for the older sibling, Peter is a Christian. Given their pugnacious childhood it is not altogether surprising that they would adopt positions at polar ends of a spectrum. For many years in his youth, Peter was also counted among those who had rejected God and the church, but he slowly came back to faith in his 30s. This made an already difficult relationship with his brother nigh impossible. For many years they didn’t speak. The article speaks of a kind of healing in the relationship around the time of a public debate between the two brothers on the existence of God and the goodness of religion in 2008. On that night, as he did in the article from the Daily Mail, the younger brother challenged the arguments made in God is Not Great – How Religion Poisons Everything, systematically drawing attention to what he saw as logical flaws, inconsistencies and blind spots. But as Peter Hitchens makes clear, it is not really arguments that will win the day or change the heart of a person so sure of a godless universe and the singularly negative impact of religion. It’s not that a belief in God doesn’t have to be based on rational foundations. As Flannery O’Connor writes, “A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith … eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way”. If a belief system is true it shouldn’t be threatened in the face of attack. But ultimately shrill and often ugly arguments for and against the existence of God mask something deeper and more personal. ‘Those who choose to argue in prose, even if it is very good prose, are unlikely to be receptive to a case which is most effectively couched in poetry,’ Peter Hitchens writes. In other words, something beyond a debate is required; a force that penetrates the heart and transcends the merely rational. It’s scales falling from eyes and hearts being touched in fresh and surprising ways. Mystery. That’s what I think of when I contemplate those gathering in Melbourne this weekend, their different motivations, and personal stories of disillusionment with faith, steeling themselves for a life without God. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less) |
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