Note  

Pray to God, but keep rowing.

The choice we all have is to either make Pascal's Wager, or challenge our intellect in an attempt at a more fully reasoned perspective. Philosophy presents questions for which there may not be answers. Religion offers answers that demand questioning. Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who suggested that "the way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason?"

Epicurus (341 BCE -- 270 BCE) posed some of the nagging questions asked by many atheists: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

One amongst so many poignant quotes from Christopher Hitchens' recent book "God is Not Great..." is "Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience." (p. 56)

On SIBLING RIVALRY: this ten-segment video is a debate between the two Hitchens brothers. Christopher covers well trodden terrain, but does so at Peter's expense. How ironic that Christopher borrows some oft repeated phraseology from the Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis. E.g., "asinine fatuity," from "Mere Christianity," in reference to somebody offering forgiveness for an offense they did not commit toward someone they don't even know by another complete stranger. "...What should we make of a man, Himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men's toes and stealing other men's money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct." Guess it shouldn't come as any surprise if C. Hitchens' irony takes the form of mockery. After all, mightn't we just as appropriately say "idiotic idiocy" as "asinine fatuity?" If Hitchens can demolish with consummate subtlety the likes of a lightweight like Al Sharpton, the silliness and conceit of a C. S. Lewis must present only a mildly more challenging target.

Vids