Hitchens versus Wilson
I enjoyed the Christianity Today debate between Hitchens and Wilson because my guy was winning, but Hitchens was too easy a target. He embarassed himself by misunderstanding The Good Samaritan and he apparently hadn’t ever asked himself about the basis for his moral opinions, which he thinks are both self-evident and universally shared.
Here’s what he should have said to defend his position, an argument harder to attack. (I cross post this as a comment on Wilson’s blog, BLog and Mablog)
“Human morality is the result of evolution. We all share brain wiring that makes us feel guilty when we murder our fathers, steal from our sisters, and lie out of pure malice. Therefore, a human is well advised not to do these things. That is why I call them immoral. Also, our wiring makes us feel happy in condemning them, so I do.
I admit that our hard-wired morality won’t take us as far as I’d like. I can’t really say that infanticide or genocide are wrong, because too many people do these things without guilt, if the context is right. Our innate morality is designed for small groups of hunter-gatherers. But on top of that, we have the norms of our society, and the laws. My parents taught me to feel guilty if I stole even from strangers, plus I might get caught, so I don’t do it. Someone from India might well disagree, but I will cheerfully stand by my society’s principles and condemn him to other people in my society, at least. That’s fine for keeping me happy, even if it’s not universal.”
That argument require admissions of relativism and lack of personal autonomy, but it’s an argument, which Hitchens didn’t have. Also, I’m afraid that it does cause a collapse of the silly side Hitchens is defending in the debate, that Christianity has been bad for the world. A lot of his morality is society-linked, not universally human. His problem is that as a moralistic atheist, he really ought to concede that Christianity is a huge influence on his personal notion of morality and that Christianity’s influence is why he prefers the moral climate in England to that Iraq or India. His preferences (as I imagine they are) for things like equality, truth, respect for human life, and democracy are not universal.