Grim's Hall

Hitchens, and the debate that could have been:

It was noted recently in the Hall that when Christopher Hitchens took part in a debate about religion, he and his opponent were mismatched.

That observation was brought to mind when I ran into a book review on Hitchens' book, provocatively entitled God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

The book review--actually, a criticism of a book review, coupled with a review of the book--was done by Robert Miller, one of the many scholars who write at the First Things blog.

Miller holds that Hitchens has gotten in over his head on the subject of religion. He also holds that the book reviewer--working for the prestigious New York Times--has done the reading world a disservice, by failing to note the many ways in which Hitchens has ignored learning the elementals of the philosophy of religion.

I will confess that I determined to ignore Christopher Hitchens when I learned the title of his book. A book which gives away both its central attitude and its concluding thought in the title is probably not a book which needs too much attention.

Hitchens' book (and the review, and the book-and-review review) do raise questions. Has the study of philosophy--or the philosophy of religion--become so unpopular among scholars that non-specialists are unaware of its existence? Is there a special animus against religious belief among scientists?

Is such an animus typical in certain branches of science, or is it an occasional thing?

One more (partly humorous) question arises: given Hitchens' statements in debates and writings in the book, what would G.K. Chesterton have said about this?