Speaking about a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair about whether or not religion is a force for good in the world, the Gospel Coalition blog comments on the misplaced focus of the debate, in Be It Resolved: Hitchens and Blair Debate Religion.
The debate itself also demonstrates, however, the way in which modernization has shaped the debate. The question at hand was not about God’s existence or religions’ truthfulness, but about their respective usefulness. Is religion a force for good? To begin with this question is to concede the most crucial elements of the debate before it begins.
For example, in Hitchens’ opening remarks he posed several questions:
Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs? To appeal to our fear and to our guilt, is it good for the world? . . . To terrify children with the image of hell and eternal punishment, not just of themselves, but their parents and those they love?
Behind each of these questions lies Hitchens’ conviction that none of these claims corresponds to truth or reality. From his perspective, there is no deity who takes sides in human affairs or holds people accountable after death for the decisions made in life.
It seems unlikely that he would ask similar questions about hard realities he believes to be true. Is it good for the world to listen to journalists who takes sides in wars and human affairs (as Hitchens has done time and again)? To appeal to our fear and guilt by informing us that unless we prioritize care of the earth, we will be guilty of its destruction—is it good for the world? To terrify children with the images of nuclear war and the risk it poses not only to themselves, but also to their parents and those they love? If good means nice or safe, then none of these topics is good for the world. If good means true or real, then we must address them.
Exactly. Hitchens and Blair both seem to tacitly accept a utilitarian view of value and truth. This may be natural for Hitchens, who “describes himself as a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism, and reason.” The utilitarian philosophy was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment’s fixation with progress and technological improvement, but applied to morality and society. To make a machine work happily, you do what is good for the machine, and to make people happy, you do what you believe is good for them, without regard to what is exactly “true” in a larger sense. Morality is assumed to have no root other than the outcomes it produces for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That “good” is usually expressed in totally materialist, secular terms, without regard to whether it is good for people to know truth, and whether that knowledge has any spiritual benefit for them, in this life or the next.
But what’s true is true, regardless if it is obviously “good” for people in terms of outcomes we can immediately see. Hitchens takes a completely utilitarian slant towards religion at any time, though he seems bent on denying the obvious good it has done along with the bad. Blair is leader of foundation that is interested in discovering the commonalities of all religions and promoting them in the name of common understanding, a perspective which is bound to blunt his interest in the particular truth claims these religions each make that are at variance with the other religions. That means that neither party is very interested in what truth may underlie any particular religion, a blind spot that is expressed by the topic of this debate.
I suppose my utilitarian question for them both is this: is it good for people who know nothing about the afterlife or the Creator’s role in creating this life or the next to tell other people that there is no Creator, and no afterlife, and no meaning in anything, ultimately, other than being physically comfortable in this life?
Pascal’s wager comes to mind.
