Atheists love and adore the late great Christopher Hitchens. Hitch pulled no punches when it came to his viewpoints whatever they may have been, but his most famous and most defended viewpoint would be his atheism. The best argument against atheism would be Christopher's own brother Peter.
Peter Hitchens was fundamentally no different than Christopher in his earlier days. He was a strident atheist and a Marxist. But being a journalist in the old Soviet Union made him rethink that atheism. Hitchens's book, The Rage Against God, will make you rethink your own atheism. It is one of the best arguments I have heard against atheism.
Peter does not go into a lot of scientific stuff since he doesn't care to refute Dawkins. Instead, Hitchens makes the moral case that I found so persuasive in my own conversion. Here is Peter:
I do not loathe atheists, as Christopher claims to loathe believers. I am not angered by their failure to see what appears obvious to me. I understand that they see differently. I do think that they have reasons for their belief, as I have reasons for mine, which are the real foundations of this argument. It is my belief that passions as strong as his are more likely to be countered by the unexpected force of poetry, which can ambush the human heart at any time.
It is also my view that, as with all atheists, he is his own chief opponent. As long as he can convince himself, nobody else will persuade him. His arguments are to some extent internally coherent and are a sort of explanation - if not the best explanation - of the world and the universe.
He often assumes that moral truths are self-evident, attributing purpose to the universe and swerving dangerously round the problem of conscience - which surely cannot be conscience if he is right since the idea of conscience depends on it being implanted by God. If there is no God then your moral qualms might just as easily be the result of indigestion.
Yet Christopher is astonishingly unable to grasp that these assumptions are problems for his argument. This inability closes his mind to a great part of the debate, and so makes his atheist faith insuperable for as long as he himself chooses to accept it.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255983/How-I-God-peace-atheist-brother-PETER-HITCHENS-traces-journey-Christianity.html#ixzz25rR8LWl2
Peter touches his finger directly on the heart of atheism which is its internal conundrum of positing a transcendant moral truth without appealing to a transcendant source. This moral argument comes from St. Paul and C.S. Lewis. Our morality to a greater or lesser degree is inspired by God. God is the moral center of the universe. Hitchens goes on to show how moral decay inevitably follows on the heels of atheism as he recounts how the Soviet Union went to shit as a direct consequence of atheism.
The other thing I like about Peter is how he hits on Christopher with arguments I had when i was an atheist. Atheists desperately wish to disavow Stalin, Mao, and their ilk as somehow not belonging to the atheist camp. But this is self-denial on their part. If the Catholic Church has to answer for the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, then atheists have to answer for the millions killed by atheists. On sheer numbers alone, atheism has a higher body count than religion. Now, this is clearly ad hominem territory here, but it never stopped Christopher Hitchens from making his ad hominem attacks on religion. If the fruits of belief and non-belief are considered, Christianity comes out the winner every time. But this is not the best argument. Here is the best argument.
Why were Stalin and Mao wrong to kill their millions? A Christian will simply appeal to the imago Dei and the commandment to not murder. What does the atheist appeal to? Reason? It was reason that led those men to slaughter millions for the greater good. And there is no rational basis to contradict their conclusions that does not require an appeal to the divine. In short, without God, all things are permissible.
Morality is not proof that God exists. But without that morality, existence itself is impossible. As such, every atheist acts as a theist with every moral judgment he or she makes. Without God, you have no morality. The best you can do is posit game theory and tradition that is mutable. In this world of strategic morality, we can't say that Stalin and Mao were wrong. We can only say they were merely mistaken on the outcomes of their choices and reasoning. They simply lost a chess game.
Atheism leads to nihilism and moral evil. Show me a good atheist, and I will show you someone living inconsistently as an atheist. They may throw out some tripe about morality being "self evident." Some things are just inherently wrong. But this is stupid. If we can abort an unborn baby because it has no soul, why can't we slaughter one or millions on the same basis? If it serves some greater good, why not do it?
I highly recommend that people read the Peter Hitchens book and deal with the issues that he raises.
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