Debating an intellectual

I’ve been reading the debate between Christopher Hitchens and Doug Wilson on Christinaity Today (see part 1, part 2, part 3, part4).  Wilson’s primary strategy in this debate is exposing the presuppositions of Hitchens.  Hitchens has been forced to answer the question of how does an atheist determine their morality and ethics.  Wilson presses the issue further by asking how does one evaluate an atheist’s hypocrisy.

Through the centuries many “Christians” have been targets of hypocrisy due to the fact that there is an immovable basis by which a Christian’s actions can be evaluated, viz. the Holy Scriptures.  Wilson states to Hitchens:

I can imagine some pretty vile Christians, and if I couldn’t, I am sure you could help me. The difference between us is that I have a basis for condemning evil in its Christian guise. You have no basis for confronting evil in its atheist guise, or in its Christian guise, either. When you say that a certain practice is evil, you have to be prepared to tell us why it is evil. And this brings us to the last point—you make the first glimmer of an attempt to provide a basis for ethics.

For the Christian ethics and morality are clearly drawn from the Scriptures but for the Atheist what can they claim as their basis? 

As a Christian, I found this dialogue encouraging as I watch Wilson employ presuppositional apologetics.  He is drawing out that Hitchens has unknowingly established an ethical and moral system based on a faith act.  As an atheist, Hitchens is indeed believing in a world view system yet has no objective basis to prove it, yet by faith is believing in it.  In part 2 of the series you can see how Hitchens is really dodging that question and attempting to distract the audience by going on the peripheral statements made by Wilson while ignoring the question.  Not until part 3 does he however offer a terse explanation for the source of ethical imperatives:

On the much more pertinent question of the origin of ethical imperatives, which I believe to be derived from innate human solidarity and not from the supernatural, let me likewise offer an instance from each Testament. Let us assume that the tales can be taken at face value. Is it to be believed that the Jews got as far as Sinai under the impression that murder, theft, and perjury were more or less all right? And, in the story of the good man from Samaria, is it claimed that the man went out of his way to help a fellow creature because of a divine instruction? He was clearly, since he preceded Jesus, not motivated by Christian teaching. And if he was a pious Jew, as seems probable, he would have had religious warrant and authority NOT to do what he did, if the poor sufferer was a non-Jew. It is belief in the supernatural that can make otherwise decent people do things that they would otherwise shrink from—such as mutilating the genitals of children, frightening infants with talk of hellfire, forbidding normal sexual practices, blaming all Jews for “deicide,” applauding suicide-murderers, and treating women as Paul or Muhammad thought they should be treated.

Innate human solidarity is not a complete answer.  Humans in common union with one another do not determine right from wrong very well.  Look at why debate continues today and why morals are continuing to slide on the grease of our postmodern society.  The bible actually proposes a more coherent answer to our innate human ability to determine right from wrong and that is through the human faculty known as the conscience.  The conscience was the reason that even apart from the law, such as the men in Sinai who have yet received the ten commandments, they knew in the hearts right from wrong.

For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.  They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. Rom 2:14-15

The story of the Good Samaritan was told by Christ himself to state the concept of explaining the commandments of loving God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.  This story, again its a story, given by Jesus was a powerful way of describing the depth of meaning in loving your neighbor.

I confess with Doug Wilson, that I am certain that Hitchens is a thousand times my intellectual superior.  I do however want to share from an evangelistic method a few things I walk away with in debating intellectuals (or anyone actually):

1. State the Gospel clearly.  Wilson has done this already in answering why Christianity is good for the world by answering, “Christianity is good for the world because Jesus died for the life of the world.”
2. Morality and ethics must be evaluated by an objective rule.  This is where Atheism will always lose because Atheism taken to its logical end is disorder and chaos.  Without a moral standard or rule, Atheism’s ethics and morality become completely subjective.  “What’s right for you is not right for me.”
3. State the Gospel again and pray that the Spirit of God would cause them to see the glory of God in the face of Christ (2Cor 4:6)
4. Love them
5. Pray for them

If you’re a Christian and are tempted to give the smackdown on your next evangelistic crusade, remember what Paul said:

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” 1Cor 2:14

Earlier in that chapter, Paul encouraged the Corinthian Christians that the faith and knowledge they have in Christ was from the Spirit of God. 

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” (vs 12)

Winning arguments and debates do not ultimately bring people to God.  Ultimately God brings people to God. We must pray that the Spirit of God must open the eyes of the hearer.  Clearly articulating the Christian faith is a means to Gods ends.