Let us now consider the next segment as Christopher Hitchens asks for:
“an example of a society which had fallen into slavery and bankruptcy and beggary and terror and misery because it had adopted the teachings and the precepts of Spinoza, and Einstein and Pierre Bayle and Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine…you will find no such example.”
I wish to propose a much simpler challenge: I would like an example of a society that adopted the teachings and the precepts of Spinoza, and Einstein and Pierre Bayle and Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.” You will find no such example and so whatever such a mythical society may produce is irrelevant. What I mean is this: suppose that I could provide you an example of a society which had fallen into such things but they had adopted the teachings and the precepts Spinoza, Einstein, Bayle and Jefferson but not Paine, would the example not count? Or imagine any combination of inclusions and exclusions. Just how absolutist are Christopher Hitchens’ “and” statements?Thus, again I so not find the challenge unanswerable due to its force and correctness but due to its generic, fallacious and or straw man nature.Is Christopher Hitchens unaware that the USA, which adopted the teachings and the precepts Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, did fall into slavery, etc.? Yes, but did the USA also adopt Spinoza, Einstein, Bayle? Well then, that does not count. Could we thank Einstein for the devastation of nuclear weapons? Thomas Jefferson, deist or not, attended Christian church services in the Capital building, something for which today he would be arrested or sued by the ACLU (apparently modernists understand Jefferson’s concept of separation between church and state better than Jefferson did).
The bottom line is that such arguments will go nowhere.
The last segment is a repeat of earlier ones:
“name an ethical statement made or action performed by a believer in the name of faith that couldn’t have been by an infidel. And name, if you can (this is easier) a wicked action that could only be mandated by faith.”
This has been answered already in part I.
I do not know if to state that I have answered any of the challenges or to simply state that Christopher Hitchens’ challenges are a confused concoction of generic statements, misunderstandings and qualified to a degree that they may be unanswerable merely due to their illogical nature.
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