0718022173 (N) by Larry Alex Taunton

Author:Larry Alex Taunton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2016-02-29T22:00:00+00:00

THE ATHEIST HERETIC

The danger to progress in science is much increased if the theory in question obtains something like a monopoly. But there is an even greater danger: a theory, even a scientific theory, may become an intellectual fashion, a substitute for religion, an entrenched ideology.

—KARL POPPER, THE MYTH OF THE FRAMEWORK

Prior to the publication of his bestselling book god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, I had never heard of Christopher Hitchens. Since I am not an avid reader of the Left-Wing magazines for which he primarily wrote, there was little reason for me to know who he was. But god Is Not Great changed that. Not only did it launch him to a level of fame that had previously eluded him, but it also made him Public Enemy #1 in the minds of many Christians. One need only peruse the aforementioned book to see why. It was an offensive rant against all religions, Christianity most of all: “The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre. . . .”1 This wasn’t the voice of a man seeking meaningful dialogue on religious questions; this was the voice of a man seeking a fight.

I first met Christopher at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2008. I was the organizational point man for a debate at the EIF featuring him and Professor John Lennox, a staunch Christian. The issue being debated on the following day was whether or not Europe should prefer atheism or Christianity. The year before, my organization, the Fixed Point Foundation, had organized a similar debate between Lennox and Oxford evolutionary biologist, Professor Richard Dawkins, in Birmingham, Alabama. That event attracted massive attention. Lennox, by most accounts, had won that debate with the atheist Dawkins and was now in high demand. So we at Fixed Point came to be known as the people who knew how such things should be done.

Now, it was my task to interview the principal players in advance of this sold-out event, address any concerns, and make sure the rules of engagement were clearly understood. After a brief e-mail exchange, Hitchens and I arranged to meet at my hotel in central Edinburgh. I wondered at the sort of man I would meet. A journalist and polemicist, Hitchens’s reputation as a critic of religion, politics, the Royal Family, and, well, just about everything else was, by this stage of his career, unparalleled. As an evangelical, I was certain that he would hate me. I was prepared to meet a radical atheist jihadist. Would we brawl right there in my hotel room? I half expected just that. When the knock came at my door, I braced for the fire-breather who surely stood on the other side of it. With trepidation, I opened it and he burst forth into my room. Wheeling on me, he began the conversation as if it was the continuance of some earlier encounter.

“The Archbishop of Canterbury has effectively endorsed the adoption of Sharia Law.

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