Christopher Hitchens Comes To Alabama

Amy Welborn has a good post on the Christopher Hitchens visit and debate in Birmingham Alabama. See Pity The Neanderthals!

I have never saw him person but it appears it was similar to other visits he has made down South. As Amy points out the pro Hitchens folks usually outnumber the Christians even in the deep South. That was similar to what I read about his visits to Mississippi. Amy makes the point that since is the celebrity atheist that makes sense.

Here are just a few things that caught my eye. First this made me laugh:
It was pretty entertaining, in an awkward way, to watch the Super Friendly Southern Atheists who were so happy to see Hitchens come around the table to have their pictures taken , fling their arms around him without asking him if it was okay, give him big old hugs, and put their faces right next to his. His expression was so pained – and I don’t think it was the cancer.

Well that is the South atheist or Christian I guess.

I think she sums up what is lacking in one sentence in these debates:

It wasn’t Ratzinger/Habermas, that’s for sure.

Sad but true. However did the European public pick up on the lessons from that experience? Not sure.

As to one of her major complaints:
My basic impression of Hitchens in regard to religion is that for whatever reason, even though he debates and debates and scribbles, in the end, he refuses to seriously engage theism. He has his points, mostly historical and social, to which he returns again and again, but he doesn’t address the origins or persistence of the spiritual impulse in humanity, he doesn’t address the question of meaning or transcendence. From what I have read and now heard, what Hitchens has to say about religion is not that much different from one of my 16-year old smart aleck high school students, but with a lot more historical references thrown in.

Anyway I though it was an informative overview of how I have always perceived these types of events go when Hitchens is in the mix.