{"id":512,"date":"2007-06-09T22:31:25","date_gmt":"2007-06-09T19:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2007\/06\/09\/intelligent-atheist-vs-brilliant-believer\/"},"modified":"2007-06-09T22:31:25","modified_gmt":"2007-06-09T19:31:25","slug":"intelligent-atheist-vs-brilliant-believer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/09\/intelligent-atheist-vs-brilliant-believer\/","title":{"rendered":"Intelligent Atheist vs. Brilliant Believer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve read many essays by Christopher Hitchens over the years, usually being impressed with his intellect if not agreeing with his conclusions.  Slate introduced me to his new book, “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything<\/a>,” when they ran a series of excerpts<\/a> from it, and though I’m not in the habit of reading books arguing for atheism, I put it on my “to get” list.  \"image\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

I wasn’t the only one impressed with his work, as his book shot up near the top of the bestseller list.  Somewhere I saw a short TV interview with him, his brother wrote an article<\/a> against his views, and there are various other debates and articles out there.<\/p>\n

Christianity Today sponsored an online debate between Hitchens and Douglas Wilson and the point of this post is to recommend that you read it.  There are six posts in which Hitchens and Wilson each speak, but they are interesting, intelligent, and often humorous.  If you live in the world of apologetics and philosophy, you may be less impressed, but I recommend them for all others.  It is good to read what the other side is saying, and it is especially good to read it when they have someone equally intelligent asking probing questions.  It is quite possible that a believer with a solid Christian college education could be fooled by Hitchens’ arguments as presented in his book.  But that is the advantage of a forum, where the ideas of both can be equally expressed and weighed.  Both of these debaters are brilliant, but they know how to put the cookies on a shelf that I can reach.<\/p>\n

You can read each piece individually online (Part 1<\/a> | Part 2<\/a> | Part 3<\/a> | Part 4<\/a> | Part 5<\/a> | Part 6<\/a>), but I found it easier to read them all in a single Word document<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve read many essays by Christopher Hitchens over the years, usually being impressed with his intellect if not agreeing with his conclusions.  Slate introduced me to his new book, “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” when they ran a series of excerpts from it, and though I’m not in the habit of reading\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}