In what may be the final segment, Wilson replies to Hitchen’s reference of LaPlacian thinking with the following:

But it is interesting that the same thing happens to you when you have to give some warrant for trusting in “reason.”. I noted your citation of LaPlace in your book and am glad you brought him up here. LaPlace believed he was not in need of the God hypothesis, just like you, but you should also know he held this position as a firm believer in celestial and terrestrial mechanics. He was a causal determinist, meaning that he believed that every element of the universe in the present was “the effect of its past and the cause of its future.”

So if LaPlace is why you think belief in God is now “optional,” this appeal of yours actually turns into quite a fun business. This doctrine means (although LaPlace admittedly got distracted before these implications caught up with him) that you, Christopher Hitchens, are not thinking your thoughts and writing them down because they are true, but rather because the position and velocity of all the atoms in the universe one hundred years ago necessitated it. And I am not sitting here thinking my Christian thoughts because they are the truth of God, but rather because that is what these assembled chemicals in my head always do in this condition and at this temperature. “LaPlace’s demon” could have calculated and predicted your arguments (and word count) a century ago in just the same way that he could have calculated the water levels of the puddles in my driveway — and could have done so using the same formulae. This means that your arguments and my puddles are actually the same kind of thing. They are on the same level, so to speak.

If you were to take a bottle of Mountain Dew and another of Dr. Pepper, shake them vigorously, and put them on a table, it would not occur to anyone to ask which one is “winning the debate.” They aren’t debating; they are just fizzing. You refer to “language in which to write this argument,” and you do so as though you believed in a universe where argument was a meaningful concept. Argument? Argument? I have no need for your “argument hypothesis.” Just matter in motion, man. [full text of this exchange, here]

A response like this is delightful to read, not because it is sure to silence Hitchens, nor because it is a panaceic answer to all issues that an atheist might raise. Instead, it is delightful because it reminds us that there is not one spoken answer to all questions, but rather that the way you answer a fool is according to the nature of his folly. Paul does this on Mars’ Hill by pointing out the hypocrisy of worshipping a god who dwells in a temple made by man or who can be worshipped by the hands of men (as if he needs something of man to exist). We see also that Stephen does this very same thing when he tells the Pharisees that they have not kept the law, just like their father’s before them who put to death God’s prophets. It is something that we see throughout Scripture, and it is something that we should do when we find ourselves with the chance to speak to those who (knowingly or unknowingly) mock the name of God (being quite careful not to fall into the trap that we are adjacently warned of: answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him)

Getting back to Hitchens and Wilson, I heartily recommend that you read through their five-part exchange. In fact, the only criticism I have of Wilson’s replies to Hitchen’s is regarding his recent choice of a particular Tombstone reference. While there was nothing wrong with the one he used, I was hoping he’d go with a (slightly altered) line by Doc Holliday: Why Hitchens, perhaps thinking just isn’t your game… I know, let’s have us a spelling contest.

A well-known scientist (some say it was the philosopher Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?”

“You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Atheists often use this story to mock the Christian belief, but I have a question for them. If everything that we know about the universe is gained through our senses, and those senses are essentially chemical reactions in the brain, then how did we find out about chemical reactions in the brain? Is it chemicals all the way down?

Just curious.

Bell uses this verse as part of his justification for the following statement:

As a Christian, I am free to claim the good, the true, the holy, wherever and whenever I find it. I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God’s and everything in it.

This quote is troubling to me, in part because I wonder where Bell is going with it, and in part because I wonder what he uses to determine what is truth. I honestly don’t know the answers to those questions though, as I don’t have the book.

I can tell you what I fear. I fear that because Christianity can be perceived as an incredibly simple thing, because it can be seen as the Bible taught in Sunday school with flannel graph and cookies, or as the Bible taught in the most shallow of churches, or as the “we wear culottes and dresses made of homeliness and our children are taught that 1 + 2 = the Trinity” brand of religion that the world likes to portray and unfortunately does exist; I fear that because it can be perceived this way by the world, Bell is going ahead and taking this as the definition for Christianity and then saying, “There is truth out there outside these walls, there are Buddhists who are wiser than some of these simple Christians. Perhaps we can sit with them, and glean what they know. Perhaps through their perspective we can come to better know our Lord.”

If that is what’s being said, I’d recommend to Jamie that she put the book down and not return to it. It seems to me that regardless of his intentions, and in the end it is his intentions that worry me, Bell is playing games with words.

Christianity is not a man made thing, it is defined by the one whose name it bears, and as a result, there is no truth outside its walls. There are to be sure, people who do not know Jesus Christ, who possess some of his truth, who have come to know some of the Words of God. And if God brings such a one into your life, and if you see some thing you have never seen before and you take it to the revealed Word of God and see that it is true, then thank God humbly for His revelation. But don’t believe that you have traveled outside the walls of Christianity to learn it. Or that you must seek other non-believers to know God better.

We must remember that it is the exception and not the rule for an unbeliever to know the truth of God. Consider what Christ says to them:

I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
(John 8:37-45)

It is shocking when those whose father is the devil, speak the truth. We should not be surprised that they are deceived, nor that they seek to deceive us as well, for they know not God.

As I said, I don’t know where Bell is going with his arguments. I’ve certainly run into plenty of authors and speakers who make similar cases for the flexibility of truth. If I’ve judged wrong, maybe someone can set me straight.

While skepticism is a good starting point for coming to truth, it must ultimately give way to faith. The committed skeptic quickly becomes the man who believes nothing, who trusts nothing, who sees nothing, as in the end, he finds nothing that he cannot doubt.

Reading through the Bible is fairly interesting when you consider that the men that we encounter there could recite their lineage back to Adam, and that much of their faith was based on the word of their fathers. Today, we live in a nation of wounded men and wounded sons, and such faith is mocked.

Skepticism and doubt are interesting though, as René Descartes used them to plumb to the depths of his faith in God. His summary, I think, therefore I am, arose from his attempt to find the one immoveable point with which he could then move the universe and bring him to the knowledge of God. Ultimately though, skepticism fails, but only in that it must surrender to faith. A better “proof” for Descartes would have been, He is, therefore I am.

As always, comments or insults are welcome.