Echoes in Eternity

Douglas Wilson and Christopher Hitchens have wrapped up their 6-week debate on Christianity Today's website regarding Christianity and its positive or negative influence in the world. Hitchens is a very intelligent man and shrewd debater, but Wilson handily won their exchange. Hitchens was ultimately unable to explain from whence he gets his moral belief system and how that morality is good and, say, a pyschopath's is evil (rather than the two people just having different beliefs). This is the problem for all those atheists who, like Mr. Hitchens, believe in right and wrong actions (though not necessarily the same ones as you or I) yet are unwilling to ascribe their morality to a supernatural source. If a person's moral being is defined completely by himself, and if said morality is itself a product of humanity's cultural and physical evolution, who is to say that the cultural mores of today are any more viable than those of 1000 years ago or of those that may come in the future? And if that is the case, what makes our "Judeo-Christian" cultural standards any more authentic (or good) than those held by much of the Muslim world (of which Hitchens is often a critic)? Atheists in such a predicament are, as Mr. Wilson mentioned, "like the minister in the story who wrote in the margin of his notes, "Argument weak. Shout here."

You can find the whole debate in my links to the left.