The Hitchens-Wilson debate took place last night at Westminster Seminary, initially planned as part of an apologetics course, but then opened up to the public. Over 400 people came to hear the debate, with the usual camera equipment snaking cables over the floor, the book sellers in the back, and microphones in the aisles. One thing different, though, was the profusion of laptops surfing the internet before and during the debate. To wile away the hour-long wait before the debate, I too had brought my portable, long-battery life, random-access, 2MB infotainment device, Berkouwer's Doctrine of Man purchased 25 years ago and still functional, but somehow this intrusion of laptops struck me as a different thing. Why attend a debate at all when there are blog sites and YouTube?

If this debate were an answer to that question, then perhaps there is hope for colleges and seminaries and churches after all.

I realized as I sat down that I didn't have any notetaking material, but offered the back of a flyer and finding a pen on the hymnrack, I scribbled all around the margins. The following dialogues are approximate, but I'm sure tapes are available for those who want better quotes.

After some initial delay, the two speakers took their seats, and a long introduction ensued from the moderator, Dr Scott Oliphant. Doug Wilson had graduated from U of Idaho, was a pastor and founder of New St Andrews College in Moscow Idaho, had published books on logic popular among homeschoolers,  wore a dark suit and tie, sported a trimmed beard, and, like Aquinas, had the look of an ox. In a bit of self-deprecating humor, he said if he lacked pathos he would put this on, and pulled out a Phillies baseball cap. Christopher Hitchens had graduated from Oxford (economics, philosophy, and poli-sci), wore a sport jacket with a red-silk poppy pinned to it, had clean-shaven but dissipated look, and the wary-bored look of a feline sizing up the audience. Oh, and he's written some very angry, scathing and witty things in journals like The Nation, and Slate, as well as his blasphemous book "Why God is not Great".

Wilson opened the debate with some plodding remarks about the need to find meaning in the Universe, even if viewing the Universe aesthetically. He said he was not an evidentialist, though His approach clearly was in the C.S. Lewis rationalist tradition. As he later demonstrated, he readily slips into an evidentialist mode when challenged, so perhaps he meant he was a philosophically-minded evidentialist.

Hitchens' opening remarks were witty and won the audience. He said "Welcome my fellow Americans! I've waited a long time to be able to say that." For though he had lived in America 25 years, he had only become an American citizen last year. And this would be the characteristic of Hitchens' presentation throughout the night--cynical, biting remarks,  underlaid by a desperate longing to belong, to be loved. At one point my college daughter said she wanted to run up to the stage and give him a hug. In the introductory remarks, Oliphant reported that Hitchens refused his publishers desire to do the New York book tour, opting for a tour of the south, where he has spoken to many church groups. But one thing that really irritates him, said Oliphant, is that they keep calling him a seeker, which he insists isn't true. I said earlier he looked like a feline to Wilson's ox, but perhaps a better analogy would be a fox to Wilson's hound.

Hitchens opined that there was true beauty in the Universe revealed to us in Hubble Space Telescope pictures of galaxies, compared to the grimy ugliness of a God who demands blood sacrifice and annihilation of Amalekites. He talked about solipcism, as if it were the selfish tendency of religious people everywhere to think that God cared what they ate, who they slept with, what they were thinking, when the Universe was filled with the glory of black holes and exploding suns. He contrasted the beauty of the Parthenon with the dark images of human sacrifice at the Delphic oracle. He commented that all these beautiful temples were built with human slaves, but that the secular man must reject the temples and free the slaves himself. Is it possible, he asked, to have one without the other? Yes, he answers, for the modern must accept what is beautiful, and reject what is evil.

There were some interchanges with Wilson on the subject of miracles and ethics, with Wilson arguing that none of these feats Hitchens enjoins upon us are possible without meaning and discrimination which are impossible in a chance universe. Hitchens blithely ignores appeals to presuppositions and asks how the ugliness of the supposed demons causing a mass suicide of pigs is supposed to buttress a belief in a supreme being. After several unfavorable comparisons, Hitchens repeats the theme of his book, religion is toxic, poisoning everything it touches. At one point Wilson said poignantly "When we talk of God, I see a Father, you see only CCTV."

As the debate squealed after the subject of demons for a bit, with a typical Hitchens jab at Sarah Palin for belonging to a church that invites an African exorcist to lay hands and pray for her, my mind wandered off to what I would have said to Hitchens.  Clearly he had never seen demons, and yet here he was demonizing all religious people. Surely, I thought, he must think people are better before they drink the grape Kool-Aid, before the toxin is introduced. Then in fact, Hitchens' does believe in demons, for what else do you call such a poison? And if so, then his appearance tonight is as a secular exorcist, attempting to rescue us from the mind-numbing effects of religion. And if he is willing to do that, why should he object to anyone who is set free from whatever demon ails them? Far from being an ugly miracle, Jesus is saying people matter more than pigs, there is hope for every one of us. And Hitchens' presence tonight indicates he agrees with Jesus.

The debate wandered over into the realm of miracles, with Hitchens' giving the classic Hume argument that violating the laws of nature is less likely than the lying of eyewitnesses, citing examples from the Koran. Wilson countered that the existence of counterfeit $20-bills does not nullify the existence of real ones. (He should have said that it *proves* the existence of real ones.) Hitchens' took the implied proof and countered with the "forgery" of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", saying that it wasn't a forgery, it was a fabrication, with no real counterpart. As the debate then raced after evidences for miracles and the Resurrection, I again pondered my reply.

For Hitchens could see the evidences, it is just that he didn't want the miracle. All the things he said were beautiful were examples from physics, astronomy, and cosmology. More than once I whispered to my daughter that this particular beauty that had caught his fancy was the ephemeral product of theoretical physicist seeking fame, and tomorrow it would be discarded like steady-state theory and many others before it. Having lived in the physics world, I had no illusions that what we produce was truth, much less beauty. So Hitchens was trading his God-given miraculous inheritance, his human birthright for a mess of computer graphic pottage. I wanted to ask him, "Chris, when you get out of the shower and look in the mirror, do you like what you see? Is it beautiful?" Like an angry son given an unwanted gift, Chris denies miracles so that he need not deny himself.

During the question and answer period, someone asked Wilson the question, what do you have in common with Hitchens? Wilson answered "Nothing in our worldview, but we are both created in the image of God." Hitchens' immediate rejoinder was "For your sake you'd better hope I'm not in God's image." Wilson shot back, "It's the Fall." As the house erupted at this interchange, it was the one time that Hitchens seemed genuinely unable to get the humor.

Another demure female questioner asked Hitchens what it would take for him to believe in God. Hitchens said even if there were a God we wouldn't know Him. God is so transcendent, how could we possible think we could see Him? Theodicy has no compelling logic for him, for God is too much above the human brain. But God isn't there, he said without conviction.

Someone asked Wilson what his epistemology was, if he wasn't an evidentialist. Wilson replied with the Bible. This led to a long Hitchens outburst on the silliness of religious circular reasoning. "When I was a child," he told us, "I learned Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so. Why do I believe in Jesus, because the Bible tells me so. Why do I believe in the Bible? Because Jesus tells me so."  Wilson countered that this was also true of Reason.  Hitchens replied, "you believe in one book". Wilson answered "You believe in one thought."  Hitchens' bristled, "No I don't." "Okay, then you believe in Reason" "No I don't" says Hitchens. "Okay in Logic" said an exasperated Wilson. "No I don't" said Hitchens"  This was the first time I saw Wilson at a loss for words. "Is Logic man made?" he finally asked. "Yes".  "How?" asked Wilson. "How can a religion make anything more true than it already is?" countered Hitchens. "How can claiming a miracle, make it any more likely that you are logical?  (Earlier Hitchens argued that claiming your mother never went to bed with anyone doesn't make it any more likely that your logic is better. Or claiming that you used to be dead but now are alive doesn't endear you to people on the bus.) "Isn't it a bit much?" Hitchens asked, "Don't call it modesty!"

In the closing statements Hitchens gives the example of Laplace who explained the formation of the solar system to Napolean (the nebular hypothesis), at which point the Emperor asks him, "Didn't God have something to do with it?" Laplace answered, "It works without any need for that hypothesis." Hitchens looked over the hostile audience, as if pleading with them, "It works without any need for God."

On the long drive back to campus to drop off my daughter, we talked about the debate. "Hitchens doesn't believe in God because he is so angry at Him", I said, "But blasphemy has a way of being addictive. Like a little child who has done something wrong, Hitchens keeps on escalating, waiting for the spanking that doesn't come, getting more defiant, trying to provoke God into a response."  "But why doesn't God come?" my daughter asked.

"I don't know", I said, though perhaps I should have quoted St Peter "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance."

The fox is cornered by his own cleverness.