The BBC recently hosted a debate on the Catholic Church as part of its Intelligence Squared debate series. This installment considered the motion: “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.”
Arguing for the motion was Archbishop Onaiyekan of Nigeria and Ann Widdecombe, a British Conservative Party politician. The opposing ticket boasted bigger names: Christopher Hitchens and humorist Stephen Fry.
Both sides traded barbs, but Hitchens and Fry landed the better blows. The debate was a total shut-out, as even this Catholic blogger laments:
The voting gives a good idea of how it went. Before the debate, for the motion: 678. Against: 1102. Don’t know: 346. This is how it changed after the debate. For: 268. Against: 1876. Don’t know: 34. In other words, after hearing the speakers, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774. My friend Simon, who’s a season ticket holder, said it was the most decisive swing against a motion that he could remember.
For the record, I don’t really have a dog in this fight. There are things I admire about the Catholic Church, and other things I abhor. And despite my utilitarian sympathies, I doubt anyone could accurately measure the good and weigh it against the bad.
Anyway, the debate is fiercely fun to watch, so check it out. I provided the video below:
Content advisory: This debate will likely deplete what little respect a certain Catholic professor gained for Hitchens after his more muted performance in Collision.
The Hitchens in the film Collision was surprisingly muted, and I thought he played the role of public intellectual admirably there (though he was still wrong, he was at least wrong in a controlled and more careful way). But here, in these clips, is the Hitchens that I have come to know – the Hitchens who does not deserve to be taken seriously. So I – despite Jon baiting me – will not take him seriously.
I would implore students of all persuasions to work against this utterly unreasonable and entirely uncharitable mode of inquiry and discussion. If you care about reason, then be reasonable. If you care about “free thinking”, then let a principal of charity (which does not exclude being hard-headed, firm, convicted, etc) guide your discussions.
Dr. Kleiner-
In all fairness to Jon, I asked him to post this to the site. There was a substantial discussion on Facebook regarding this debate and I though (and I assume Jon did too) that those in SHAFT might benefit from having a practicing Catholic share his thoughts on it. I have always appreciated Jon’s willingness to include me in his discussions on Mormonism, and figured that you, too, would welcome the chance to respond if needed.
I was just playing with my “baiting remark” above. Jon (and the rest of the SHAFTers) know only too well that I am happy to insert the Catholic point of view into their atheism circle, and I appreciate their willingness to let me make my arguments.
I didn’t bite here because I would prefer to have that argument/discussion where the touchstone is not something so incredibly irresponsible as Hitchens on a day that he forgot to take his meds. The debate here, and the atheist flourish of absurd rhetoric found therein, is not a starting point for serious dialogue. I almost don’t know how to respond to Hitchens, the flood of obnoxiousness is somewhat overwhelming. Frankly I think the man here needs a good spanking more than anything else (and please spare me any homo-erotic catholic jokes, my point is that he is acting like an out of control child).
I can’t help but submit my own personal bias here. I think that Christopher Hitchens and his “new atheism” campaign is over-hyped and doesn’t bring anything “new” or “compelling” to the table.
Much of the case brought by Hitchens relied on past crimes of the Catholic Church, yet last time I looked, the debate was in the present tense. Sure Hitchens becomes uncorked with his attacks on the Catholic Church for being “responsible for the death and suffering and misery of millions,” by attributing the AIDS crisis and the abuse of children to the Church’s inaction, yet he brings virtually no real argumentation to the table. How difficult is it to find anything evil or unseemly about and organization and in the end, condemn it. Yet these kind of attacks are quick, dirty, and most importantly, too easy.
By employing a similar argument, I can therefore, condemn atheism as the single motivation behind the slaughter of millions of innocents living under totalitarian Soviet regime, which not only criminalized organized religion, but institutionalized atheism. To match the wit of Hitchens, I would only need to read off some gruesome statistics, speak of torture and murder, and then conclude by blaming it all on atheism. China’s atheist experience would also be an excellent foundation for a Hitchens-style argument against atheism itself.
I’m sure you would roll your eyes at such a convenient attack, but can you see anything more substantive in Hitchens’ arguments against the Catholic Church. While he does make for some great entertainment, I find myself yawning whenever he approaches his soap-box.
An immediate question comes to mind, Marc: How can you find Hitchens greatly entertaining, and yet simultaneously yawn-inducing? Ha ha.
Dr. Kleiner-
Furry men are usually only funny when they’re fat. Clearly I’ve misjudged you.
Marc-
Very very well said.
Um, thanks. I think.
Marc: I agree with some of your criticisms, but others are ill-informed.
For starters, Hitchen’s has never pretended to bring anything new to the table. If anything, Hitchens prides himself in being an old school atheist–one whose atheism is informed more by Enlightenment philosophies than the “scientism” of which Richard Dawkins is often accused. In fact, atheists weren’t the ones to even coin the phrase “new atheists”–that was a rather dismissive moniker that theists saddled us with. I’m fine with it, I guess, but it does lend itself to being misread in the way that you misread it.
“Much of the case brought by Hitchens relied on past crimes of the Catholic Church, yet last time I looked, the debate was in the present tense.”
How past is too past for you? I’ll admit that gripes about the crusade elicit a yawn from me, but child molestation among the priesthood persists and is a very serious matter. If it seems like a tired and worn controversy, it’s only because the issue received the attention it deserved.
“…yet he brings virtually no real argumentation to the table.”
You make this remarkable claim just a comma after describing how Hitchens attacked the Catholic Church for its position on condoms and for child molestation. These don’t amount to real argumentation…why? You can disagree with his arguments, but they are arguments all the same.
“Yet these kind of attacks are quick, dirty, and most importantly, too easy. ”
Explain to me how an “easy” argument is a bad one. The difficulty of articulating an argument should have no bearing on its validity. Does the fact that it’s easy to indict the Nazis of the Holocaust really render the indictment lame?
“By employing a similar argument, I can therefore, condemn atheism…”
You could try. The problem with that argument, however, is that atheism, unlike the Catholic Church, is not an institution. Indeed, in the strictest sense, it’s not even a philosophy (but the lack of one). Stalin’s crimes, then, to the extent that they are even attributable to atheism, can only be attributed to his atheism–not atheism in general. In contrast, the actions of the Catholic Church are of course attributable to the Catholic Church. How could anyone argue otherwise? The debate, then, just concerns the level of institutional or official involvement the Catholic Church had in things like child molestation.
And finally, your argument about China’s atheism betrays an ignorance of basic Chinese history. China’s “atheist experience” long predates Mao. Since that civilization’s inception, it has been predominantly atheistic. Confucianism is not necessarily theistic, and, historically, rarely has been.
Oh, and congrats on your first SHAFT post, Marc! I hope this site will continue to enjoy your audience.
I see your point, Jon. But I don’t think one can quite so easily brush aside the incredible atrocities done by political regimes that had “institutionalized atheism”. Atheism is essential to Marxism, it is not an “accidental feature” of it. If you look at recent history, atheism either leads to “beyond good and evil” will to power “ethics” or it leads to Marxism. As such, I don’t find it misguided to attach to atheism some responsibility for ideologies that flow from atheism.
I know Jon and many SHAFTers thinks you can get some nicey-nice secular democratic liberalism out of atheism – but I have yet to see a single post on humanism on this blog. Why? Might it be because secular humanism has no ground? Hitchens simply refused to answer this question in the Collision movie. With Nietzsche, I argue that secular humanism is simply the child of Christianity, made possible only because of Christianity and utterly groundless without it. Until an atheist can show me a grounded and positive view of man/ethics, one that does not fall into a mere will to power “ethic” or Marxism, I will continue to answer the question “Has atheism been a force for good in the world?” with a resounding NO.
The blood on the hands of atheistic communists makes the sins of churchmen look pretty mild (though I am not thereby dismissing them). Some 4000 people were killed in the Inquisition. Perhaps a million were killed in the Crusades – most of those being uniformed soldiers. (By the way, while not wanting to come to a total defense of the Crusades, I think they get an unnecessarily bad rap these days. The latin west perceived them, with some justification in the first 2, as defensive measures). More recently, those who continue to misrepresent Pius’s response to Nazism just don’t know history. Here is a review of some of the facts:
http://www.thecatholicthing.org/content/view/2295/
Deaths under 20th century regimes that whose ideology considers atheism to be essential: 100 million is a safe estimate, might even be low.
@Kleiner
Atheism can lead to secular humanism (good), but it can also lead to Marxism (bad). Given this, I agree with you that believing there is no God is not necessarily a good thing all by itself.
However, if man is incapable of determining right from wrong using reason and requires some kind of divine intervention, shouldn’t you be attributing secular humanism morals to the Jews (or some other religion that predates Christianity)
While atheism may be essential to Communism, i would argue that the atrocities committed by communists were not done because they were atheists but because they were communists, as well as the fact that committing atrocities is not a pre-requisite for being communist. Any one who reads Marx would know that a true communist state has never actually happened. Whereas, lets say, with the crusades anyone who participated was offered salvation, thus the atrocities soldiers committed to fight an unjust war like the crusades were a result of the combatants Catholicism or at least a religious desire to be “saved”
The idea here is that communism relies on atheism but atheism does not require communism! so when a communist commits an atrocity in the name of communism while atheism may be a part of that, atheism itself is not responsible.
“I argue that secular humanism is simply the child of Christianity, made possible only because of Christianity and utterly groundless without it.”
How does Christianity warrant humanism? I don’t mean that to be rhetorical, I would honestly like to here the argument.
Also, would you say that the non-theistic philosophies, such as Buddhism, don’t ground humanism either?
Let’s say for the sake of argument that I grant that humanism is grounded because of Christianity and it isn’t without it. Then, on what grounds are you criticizing atheism for not being humanistic? Would I first have to believe in the Christian God, or would the criticism be based on an external moral code?
Dr. Kleiner:
I got the impression from Peter Singer’s book on Marx that Lenin, Stalin, and Mao weren’t really Marxist, and probably didn’t understand his philosophy. Would you agree with that assessment, or am I not understanding Singer’s book?
“The latin west perceived them, with some justification in the first 2, as defensive measures”
One of my hobbies is Byzantine history, and I’ve studied the Crusades some as a result. From my understanding, Emperor Alexis Comnenus, in a classic Byzantine move, asked the West for aid because of the Seljuk Turks had taken most of Asia Minor after the Battle of Manzikert. His hope was that the Latin Christians would help him retake Anatolia, not go on to the Holy Land. If fact, the emperor was furious when thousands of soldiers were showing up in Constantinople instead of a small strike force of knights. I’m not quite sure how an attempt to take Israel was a defensive maneuver. Furthermore, the Crusaders slaughtered not only Muslims, but also Christians and Jews living in the region (in contrast to the Muslims, who at the time followed strict laws of warfare that included not killing non-combatants).
The Second Crusade was an attempt to take back the County of Edessa, which the Muslims took in response to the Crusades in the first place. Again, I don’t understand how that is a defensive maneuver on the part of the Christians. I’m open to the possibility that both crusades were defensive wars, but right now I don’t see it. And if the first two were defensive wars, why wasn’t the third? They were trying to reclaim the crusader states that Saladin had retaken.
I personally don’t blame Christianity or even the Catholic Church for the Crusades. People need to distinguish between apparent Christians committing atrocities and people committing atrocities because they are Christian. I think that the crusades was a result of political and societal factors, and people acting upon their darker motivations (greed, lust for power, etc), and that those things would have existed with or without any religion or church. I’m not trying to attack Catholicism at all. But again, I don’t see how the first two crusades were defensive in nature.
Dr. Kleiner, I could almost agree with your latest post in full, because it wasn’t responsive to my argument.
Within the context of this discussion, I don’t care whether atheism was essential to Marxism. My point to Marc was that, “[Marxist] crimes…to the extent that they are even attributable to atheism, can only be attributed to [Marxist] atheism-–not atheism in general.”
Let’s suppose I were charitable and granted the dubious claim that, say, Stalin’s crimes were committed in the name of atheism; you still couldn’t ride that argument very far. Because Stalin acting in the name of atheism is simply not the same as the Catholic Church acting in the name of Catholicism. Only the latter authoritatively represents their respective ideology.
I’m inclined to agree with Aaron, though, that even if atheism isn’t incidental to communism, it is incidental to communist atrocities. And as Aaron also noted, there is a big difference between saying that “atheism is essential to Marxism” and saying that Marxism somehow “flows from atheism.” To say that anything flows from atheism seems counter to another belief of yours that “Without God, all things are permissible.” Atheism, being a negative philosophy, is very permissive–it doesn’t commit you to anything aside from the lack of belief in god(s).
“The blood on the hands of atheistic communists makes the sins of churchmen look pretty mild…”
Sure. But I don’t think this demonstrates that so-called atheistic crimes are inherently more dangerous than religious ones. The communist regimes of the last century were the beneficiaries of 19th century technologies. Had the crusaders been equipped with AK-47s and nuclear and biological weapons, would they not have inflicted even greater casualties upon the Muslim world?
“People need to distinguish between apparent Christians committing atrocities and people committing atrocities because they are Christian. I think that the crusades was a result of political and societal factors, and people acting upon their darker motivations (greed, lust for power, etc)…”
@ Mike: That’s all true, but do you think the rank-and-file soldier in the Crusades was motivated by greed and a lust for power, or a sincere religious conviction? The average soldier didn’t have much to gain in the Crusades, right? It’s not as if they’d be reaping the spoils of war–the Catholic Church and feudal rulers would’ve laid claim to most of it.
I think most Crusaders were motivated by Christianity (or, more accurately, a perversion of it).
But that doesn’t matter to my argument, either. More important is that Pope Urban II commanded the Crusades. He supposedly said, “I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds…to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it.” This (and not the mere fact that the crusaders were Christian) makes the Catholic Church culpable for at least part of the Crusades.
Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?
How do you even try to argue this? Do you have to prove that the world would be better if the Catholic church never existed? If so, what happens to it’s members? Do we assume they all become atheists, or disperse them evenly amongst other religions?
Or we can just consider good and bad things that happen as a direct result of the Catholic church teachings and structure.
Does trying to live up to a vow of celibacy drive some people to abusing children? Perhaps. Does the Catholic church have higher rates of child molestation than the rest of America? I don’t know. Does condemning condoms lead to a wider spread of AIDS because people feel they don’t have an alternative to abstinence? I think so. Has the Catholic church killed people in the name of religion? Yes.
The current Catholic church obviously doesn’t endorse AIDS or pedophilia, but I do think some of that comes as a result of the way the Catholic church does things.
I think that the Catholic church teachings (or biblical teachings in general) are mostly good. The church inspires millions of people and offers a lot of support to charities.(I agree that people can get good morals from other sources, and find other ways to be charitable, but they could also find other ways to get AIDS. Since we are arguing about results of the existence of the Catholic church, we can’t ignore the charities they fund.)
Given the facts I’ve heard, I’m not convinced that the Catholic church is a force for Evil, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s a force for good.
Wow. Too much too comment on. I did not really care to engage this topic. I think the debate is pretty pointless, and I suspect it has been designed around giving blowhards like Hitchens a place to spout a litany of misrepresentations. A few quick thoughts, each of which is insufficient as a comment/response on the previous posts that motivate these thoughts:
1) I think statism “flows from” atheism, because the state fills the void and defines the good for man. There is no “check” on the state when “all things are possible”. Absent a natural law or a divine law (which are of course connected), democracy quickly devolves into tyranny. See the Republic for how this happens.
2) I think Marxism is a salvation story, of sorts. It has an end of history and something like a uptopia at the end. At the end of history the problem of man/society (alienation) will be resolved with finality. Sure, the salvation is entirely immanent, but it still is still a salvific story of sorts. As such, perhaps those killed “in the name of Marxism” were killed in the name of [a kind of] salvation.
3) I have not read Singer’s book. I know far more about Marx than I do about Lenin, Stalin, etc (simply as a result of my training). I assume you are referring to Singer’s “very short introduction” book? Perhaps Singer is right. That said, Marx expected and did not seem particularly bothered by the prospect of plenty of blood being shed in the name of revolution. I should say, I have some highly circumscribed sympathies with Marxism. I think he properly identifies a symptom of the problem, but he misdiagnoses the illness as well as the cure.
4) I do not know enough about Buddhism, or eastern philosophy in general, to comment on whether you can get a humanism out of them. A central claim of humanism is that man has intrinsic value. Speaking from an entirely western point of view, I think that is impossible without God. I am deeply skeptical that you could get an intrinsic dignity of man view out of materialism/radical evolution. But you can get it, pretty easily, if you believe man is made in the image of God. Aquinas is an example, to my mind, of a great Christian humanist.
5) My comments on the Crusades are dated, they are based on the recall of a couple books I read in a history class when I was in college. I’ve skimmed an article or two since then that tried to make similar claims. I’ll defer to experts, and it sure sounds like Mike knows a lot more about it than me.
Last thought: shouldn’t we judge beliefs on whether they are true or not? Is “being good for the world” the right approach to begin with?
I’m entirely in agreement with Kleiner on his “last thought”. This topic has popped up quite a bit lately it seems, and I’ve found myself wondering how relevant these conversations are if our group is predominantly non-theistic. That is, unless someone wants to act on some weird utilitarian idea that despite our own disbelief, we’ll lie and promote Christianity in the hopes that it will make the world a better place anyways?
“I suspect it has been designed around giving blowhards like Hitchens a place to spout a litany of misrepresentations.”
I hope you know me better than that!!!
I made a defense because I am dangerously close to a Marxist, and don’t want to be associated with the aforementioned atrocities.
“Marx expected and did not seem particularly bothered by the prospect of plenty of blood being shed in the name of revolution”
I don’t think anyone should argue against that, if oppression is so bad that revolution is required blood will be spilled. It could be bloodless if the oppressors are willing to relinquish power willingly (which never happens)!
after teaching contemporary modern (which ill grant is really really really teetering on the verge of religious) i don’t know how you can say that you cant get an intrinsic value of man without religion. Derrida would like to have a word with you. Even levinas knew that philosophy is fundamentally atheistic.
Also for now on I’m going to use my hyphenated last name (my mothers maiden name) for no better reasons than i like it more, There are too many Johnson’s and i think it makes me sound more credible as a philosopher.
also on point 2 even if marxism is a salvation story and the atrocities were committed with that sort of idea of salvation how is atheism responsible for that?
I don’t understand how you can get “intrinsic” moral values with or without religion.
I mostly agree with Kleiner on Secular Humanism. It has no grounding in anything and it is just as arbitrary as religion, morality, etc.
“I hope you know me better than that!!!”
@ Herr Orlovitz: I don’t think Kleiner meant to accuse us of being “blowhards.” When he said “I suspect it has been designed around giving blowhards like Hitchens a place to spout a litany of misrepresentations,” I think the “it” was in reference to the video; not this thread. Or at least I hope so.
The blowhard I was referring to was Hitchens. Not all atheists are blowhards, and not all blowhards are atheists. My experience with SHAFTers has not been marked by an exposure to blowhardiness.
Not only did Marx not mind some blood if necessary, he actually thought that, at some point, liberal politics was counter-productive since small victories (increased worker rights, etc) might make the proletariat content and hence weaken the revolutionary zeal.
Derrida and Levinas would not want a metaphysical account of the dignity of the person. (I am not as afraid of metaphysics as they are, so I have availed myself of that language). They reject the metaphysical vocabulary of religion, but not religiousity itself. Let me make my claim more general, so as to fit with postmodern sympathies: reductionistic materialism can never account for the dignity of man (the “face”). The dignity of man is always understood (and can only be understood) in the context of the “transcendent”.