Christopher Hitchens, the commentator, journalist, and most recently author of a book on atheism (God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) has a brother, Peter Hitchens, also a journalist and author, and member of the Church of England. In a recent article, Peter writes:
Am I my brother’s reviewer? A word of explanation is needed here. Some of you may know that I have a brother, Christopher, who disagrees with me about almost everything.
Some of those who read his books and articles also know that I exist, though they often dislike me if so. But in general we inhabit separate worlds – in more ways than one.
He is of the Left, lives in the United States and recently became an American citizen. I am of the Right and, after some years in Russia and America, live in the heart of England. Occasionally we clash in public.
Peter Hitchens describes their upbringing and then says,
Christopher is an atheist. I am a believer. He once said in public: "The real difference between Peter and myself is the belief in the supernatural. I’m a materialist and he attributes his presence here to a divine plan. I can’t stand anyone who believes in God, who invokes the divinity or who is a person of faith."
I don’t feel the same way. I like atheists and enjoy their company, because they agree with me that religion is important.
Of Christopher's book, Peter says:
I liked and enjoyed this book, and recommend it to anybody who is interested in the subject. Like everything Christopher writes, it is often elegant, frequently witty and never stupid or boring.
I also think it is wrong, mostly in the way that it blames faith for so many bad things and gives it no credit for any of the good it may have done.
I think it misunderstands religious people and their aims and desires. And I think it asserts a number of things as true and obvious that are nothing of the sort.
Concerning Christopher's atheism, Peter sees various problems. For example,
Where is his [Christopher's] certain knowledge of what is right and wrong supposed to have come from?
How can the idea of a conscience have any meaning in a world of random chance, where in the end we
are all just collections of molecules swirling in a purposeless confusion?
And this:
For all I know, Christopher is absolutely right – my prayers are pointless and a meaningless oblivion awaits. But if he is right, what a dispiriting, lowering truth it is.
Atheists like to claim they behave no worse than believers, and often better. I don’t deny it, in my case. It would be easy for almost anyone to have lived a more virtuous life than mine.
But why should atheists care, or use such terms as "good" and "virtue" anyway?
Peter makes a good point. Atheists are wont to smuggle in ethical terms that have no ontological grounding or meaning in an atheistic system.
Peter goes on to describe evil in the world. People with power abuse others.
Look at the annual massacre of unborn babies, done away with for the convenience of adults.
In the harsher parts of our great cities, strong, violent people rule their neighbours with pre-medieval savagery, demonstrating a fine understanding of what it means if there is no God: that if something works for you, and you can get away with it, then you may do it without fear of consequence in this world – and there is no next world.
That is practical atheism. Those who follow it probably cannot even spell it. Comfortable, suburban unbelievers hate to have this pointed out to them.
They would never behave like that, surrounded as they are by the invisible web of ten centuries of Christian law and morality, which still protects the nicer parts of our country.
But it is the application of what they preach, the worship of self and power.
Faith and belief can be and often are restraints on this arrogance of power. They offer the possibility of justice where human society fails to provide it – as it almost always does fail.
One chapter in the book Peter finds particularly troubling.
There is one chapter in this book whose implications are sinister. It is Chapter 16, which attempts to suggest that religion is child abuse.
On the basis of such arguments, matched by similar urgings from Professor Richard Dawkins, I can see a movement growing to outlaw the teaching of faith to children.
Then what? Liberal world reformers make the grave mistake of thinking that if you abolish a great force you don’t like, it will be replaced by empty space. . .
We are in the process – encouraged by Christopher – of abolishing religion, and so of abolishing conscience, too.
It is one of his favourite jibes that a world ruled by faith is like North Korea, a place where all is known and all is ordered.
On the contrary, North Korea is the precise opposite of a land governed by conscience.
It is a country governed by men who do not believe in God or conscience, where nobody can be trusted to make his own choices, and where the State decides for the people what is right and what is wrong.
And it is the ultimate destination of atheist thought.
If you do not worship God, you end up worshipping power, whether it is Kim Jong Il, Leon Trotsky or the military might of George W. Bush. In which case, God help you.