blair

Tony Blair,the former Prime Minister of Britain, converted to Catholicism in 2007 – and in recent times he’s become an outspoken critic of secularism, saying things like:

“We face an aggressive secular attack from without. We face the threat of extremism from within.”

Arguing that there was “no hope” from atheists who scorn God, he said the best way to confront the secularist agenda was for all faiths to unite against it.

He said: “Those who scorn God and those who do violence in God’s name, both represent views of religion. But both offer no hope for faith in the twenty first century.”

Atheists don’t scorn ‘God’ any more than they scorn Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, or Goku from Dragon Ball Z. They consider the concept of ‘God’ to be just as imaginary as those cartoon characters. How can someone scorn something he or she doesn’t believe even exists?

What many atheists do take issue with (or scorn) are the problems specifically attributable to religious belief – such as superstitious thinking, religious violence, religious terrorism, intolerance towards sexual minorities, undermining of science, the claim that religion is the only path to happiness, vilification of the non-religious, etc.

What is surprising and worrying many religious believers today is that over the last 10 years or so, there has been an explosion of outspoken atheism – that is, atheists, most of whom had kept their views to themselves, are now coming out of the closet and are being honest and open about their non-belief. Atheists today are now more vocal than they have ever been in history in their criticism of religion. Understandably, many believers find this highly distressing, because they are starting the realise that the influence of religion in society is waning. Europe, in particular has seen a very sharp decline in religiosity. In the United Kingdom, for example:

… a 2007 survey found 15% of the population attends church more than once per month.  A poll in 2004 by the BBC put the number of people who do not believe in a God at 39%

This has led to many religious commentators in recent years to lash out against the non-religious, as well as advocates of secularism. Since he converted to Catholicism, Tony Blair has joined the ranks of these commentators.

Debate:

On Friday, November 26th 2010, Blair met Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, in Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall for a debate on whether or not  ‘religion is a force for good in the world’.

Hitchens is an outspoken critic of religion and has engaged in many public debates with Christian apologists. Many were therefore keen to see Tony Blair defend his many controversial views about atheism and secularism against one of the world’s most famous atheists.

The details of the debate can be found on the official site for the debate.

Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens debate in Toronto

EXCERPTS

Hitchens: 

[…] Religion forces nice people to do unkind things, and also makes intelligent people say stupid things. Handed a small baby for the first time, is it your first reaction to think, beautiful, almost perfect, now please hand me the sharp stone for its genitalia that I may do the work of the Lord. No, it is — as the great physicist Stephen Weinberg has aptly put it, in the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.[…]

Blair:

[…] it is undoubtedly true that people commit horrific acts of evil in the name of religion. It is also undoubtedly true that people do acts of extraordinary common good inspired by religion. Almost half the healthcare in Africa is delivered by faith based organisations, saving millions of lives. A quarter of worldwide HIV/AIDS care is provided by Catholic organisations. There is the fantastic work of Muslims and Jewish relief organisations. There are in Canada thousands of religious organisations that care for the mentally ill or disabled or disadvantaged or destitute. And here in Toronto, barely one and a half miles from here, is a shelter run by covenant house, a Christian charity for homeless youth in Canada.

So the proposition that religion is unadulterated poison is unsustainable. It can be destructive, it can also create a deep well of compassion, and frequently does.[…]

Hitchens:

[…] if you are going to grant this to Catholic charities, I would say, which I hope are doing a lot of work in Africa, if I was a member of a church that had preached that AIDS was not as bad as condoms, I would be putting some conscience money into Africa too, I must say. I’m not trying to be funny. If I was trying to be funny, you mistook me. It won’t bring back the millions of people who have died wretched deaths because of that teaching, that still goes on.
I would like to hear a word of apology from the religious on that, if it was on offer, otherwise I would be accused of judging them by the worst of them, and this isn’t done, as Tony says wrongly, in the name of religion, it’s a direct precept, practice and enforceable discipline of religion, is it not, sir, in this case? […]

[…] Do we grant to Hamas and Hezbollah, both of whom will tell you, and incessantly do, without us, where would the poor of Gaza and Lebanon be, … it’s nothing compared to the harm that they do, but it’s a great deal of work all the same.[…]

Blair:

First of all, I don’t think we should think that because you can point to examples of prejudice in the name of religion, that bigotry and prejudice and wrongdoing are wholly owned subsidiaries of religion. There are plenty of examples of prejudice against women, against gay people, against others that come from outside the world of religion. And the claim that I make is not that everything the church has done in Africa is right but let me tell you one thing it did do, and it did it while I was Prime Minister of the UK, the churches together formed a campaign for the cancellation of debt, they came together, they succeeded, and the first beneficiaries of the cancellation of debt were young girls going to school in Africa, because for the first time, they had free primary education.[…]

The full transcripts of the debate can be found here: Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.

Here are reviews of the debate from the Associated Press and The Guardian.

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