Christopher Hitchens debates Berlinski

By GREG GARRISON - BIRMINGHAM NEWS
Added: Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:25:11 UTC

Thanks to Saikat Biswas for the link. If the video becomes available, we'll post a link to it. What follows is a newspaper account of the debate.

Bestselling atheist author Christopher Hitchens showed plenty of spunk and energy in a debate tonight in Birmingham despite undergoing recent chemotherapy for esophageal cancer. Hitchens, author of "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," defended atheism as a moral stance in a debate attended by about 1,200 at the Birmingham Sheraton Hotel with David Berlinski, author of "The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions."

Berlinksi argued that it is atheism, not religion, that poisons society. "Atheism leaves unanswered the question, 'What obliges us, what forces us, to behave as we should?'" Berlinski said. As he has been battling cancer this year, Hitchens has canceled nearly all his public appearances, including a book tour to promote his new memoir, "Hitch-22."

Fixed Point Foundation, sponsor of the debate, had brought Hitchens to Birmingham last year to debate Christian apologist John Lennox at Samford University.

Larry Taunton, executive director of Fixed Point Foundation, said that Hitchens insisted on keeping his commitment to appear in Birmingham again. Hitchens, a popular speaker and writer for Vanity Fair and other magazines, drew loud applause throughout the debate.

Berlinski, a mathematician who lives in Paris, described himself as a secular Jew who defends the religious worldview because of its moral imperatives that he finds lacking in atheism.

When Berlinski linked Nazism and Darwinism while connecting atheism with violent government regimes of the 20th Century, Hitchens bristled and went on the attack in his next turn at the podium.

Connecting Nazism with Darwinism "is a filthy slander," Hitchens said. "Darwinism was derided in Germany."