In a recent interview with Reason.tv, filmmaker Roger Nygaard calls Richard Dawkins the “pope of atheists”.

2. He had the look of a man who was just told by his chiropractor that he caught a mind virus, a mind virus which disposed him to the intense perpetuation of pseudoscientific ignorance.

3. Spode appeared as if nature had intended to make a brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with the Drones Club; and that its members were probably nasty fascist things anyway.

4. “All is right in the world and the universe”, remarked Honoria Glossop with a deep, inner, convincing vigor. “On the other hand, I don’t intend to be callous, but even if I have no proposal, who cares? Because that still doesn’t mean that what anybody else has to offer therefore has to be true”.

5. Jeeves glanced sideways at him and cleared his throat with the sound of one of his bacterial ancestors, which indeed were still bacteria, perambulating in vast ignorance around its own dreadful colony of bacteria.

6. “We are all co-evolved blighters, though people seldom realize they are such”, pontificated Spode in a benevolent, subjective way. “Some of us just go one blight further”.

7. “No doubt, Jeeves, you are grindingly, creakingly, crashingly brilliant. Your brain hardware has co-evolved with the internal virtual worlds that it creates”. Jeeves said “Not at all sir. This can be called hardware-software co-evolution.”

Shudder. Uh, on second thought, I’ll take P.G. Wodehouse

And the atheist–a complex chemical reaction according to the best contemporary science–uncorks with scathing observations on the hypocracies of other complex chemical reactions. Hitchens does this in the first five lines of his book, and shows no sign of letting up. But how can a chemical reaction be hypocritical? … Given his premises,  it is like being indignant with a tornado, or vegetable soup, or sand on the beach–but Hitchens does it. They all do…When atheists stop suspending their moral  indignation from their invisible sky hook, then I will no longer amuse myself by pointing out their levitation trick.

– Douglas Wilson in God Is: How Christianity Explains Everything

“It is most absurd, therefore, to maintain, as some do, that religion was devised by the cunning and craft of a few individuals, as a means of keeping the body of the people in due subjection, while there was nothing which those very individuals, while teaching others to worship God, less believed than the existence of a God. I readily acknowledge, that designing men have introduced a vast number of fictions into religion, with the view of inspiring the populace with reverence or striking them with terror, and thereby rendering them more obsequious; but they never could have succeeded in this, had the minds of men not been previously imbued with that uniform belief in God, from which, as from its seed, the religious propensity springs. And it is altogether incredible that those who, in the matter of religion, cunningly imposed on their ruder neighbours, were altogether devoid of a knowledge of God. For though in old times there were some, and in the present day not a few are found who deny the being of a God, yet, whether they will or not, they occasionally feel the truth which they are desirous not to know. We do not read of any man who broke out into more unbridled and audacious contempt of the Deity than C. Caligula, and yet none showed greater dread when any indication of divine wrath was manifested. Thus, however unwilling, he shook with terror before the God whom he professedly studied to condemn.”

John Calvin — The Institutes of Christian Religion Book i. Chapter iii. Part ii.

The film’s excellent–but not for the faint of heart!

Some debates are destined to be boring. Others are bound to evade the important issues. Still others are snoody and convoluted–you know when a Christian meets a snoody intellectual atheist who thinks he isn’t a fundamentalist. Rest assured, when Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson meet in a debate, we are sure to have a different sort of debate. And it will likely lean on the vigorous side.  I guess one could say it’s the sort of debate Richard Dawkins couldn’t have if he was paid a billion dollars for it. He just doesn’t have the oomph for it.

Here we have a great showdown, two contrarian fellows who even sometimes upset their own team find themselves subjected to a prolonged dialouge with a truly worthy opponent spread over various venues. They  may share the same planet, but their thought is so starkly different that at times they appear to reside in different worlds. And in a way they do. This is not really just a collision of ideas, more like a collision of lives–you really see it in the film.

You get the sense that Wilson and Hitchens, beyond their arguments, have this sort of thing for each other, a sort of friendship.  There’s a certain hint of mutual respect. There’s a certain hint incredulity. Hitchens appreciates finally finding a Christian who believes what he is defending and is willing to take it to its logical conclusions. Wilson appears to delight in having finally found a relevant “new atheist”. And they have some fun with it, there’s a Wodehouse “jam session” of sorts where they are flinging quotes, and it is a riot.

Now, don’t approach this film expecting a linear debate. It is moreso a collection of scattered cross-sections and various exerpts from the debates set in a variety of locations (ranging from Westminster Seminary on one hand and a few pubs on another hand). It is very unlinear, to the point of becoming unsettling.  But it has a certain charm and is produced fairly well! At points the video  makes them seem like rap stars or gangsters, but this sort of adds to the mystique. I hope that this video drives some people to actually seek out some of the full debates and watch them or listen to them, since their linear nature will probably lead to a fuller understanding.

The interchange is great. Wilson makes a good stand as a bold Van Tilian Biblical absolutist. Hitchens also plays his normal role. Both are witty and both really put themselves into this thing. I think Wilson makes a great, rugged case for the Christian worldview and the impossibility/absurdity of the contrary and he takes a lot of courage in subjecting himself to a thorough “Hitchens treatment”.

(And just as a bit of warning for those who would like to know, there is some coarse language, not gratuitous, but it is there)