Christopher Hitchens concludes his book, and I conclude my review of it, with Chapter Nineteen: “In Conclusion: The Need for a New Enlightenment.” But if this is enlightenment, we need to check the batteries.
“Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important” (p. 282).
It seems fitting to end this series of reviews with a short parable.
A certain man of the eighteenth century was speaking with an infidel, one who had spent much time in the salons of Paris. He did this because it was the best place to meet sophist-chicks. When the infidel found out that the first man was a believer in God, he put his head back and he scoffed. After a moment, he scoffed again, directly at the sky. The first man offered the infidel a lozenge.
“What’s that?” the infidel wanted to know.
“It’s a scoff suppressant,” the believer said.
“It’ll take more than that, my friend,” said the infidel.
“Why do you say this?” said the believer.
“Perhaps you are unaware of the engines of knowledge that modern men have been able to build?”
“Perhaps I am, depending on what you mean by knowledge.”
“I refer, of course, to the microscope and the telescope. Your religious beliefs offered us comfortable explanations once, but that was before we invented these most excellent devices.”
“You mean to say that if you look at something closely enough, all need for explanation vanishes?”
“What?”
“Look, let me be the infidel for a moment. You be the Christian.”
“All right.”
“Do you see that tree over there? The one about twenty yards away?”
“I do.”
“Let us walk half the distance toward the tree.”
A moment passed, and there was only the sound of crunching gravel.
“Now, can you make the tree out more clearly? The outlines of the bark? The roots as they slope down to the grass?”
“Yes, I see it much more distinctly. I can even count the leaves.”
“So where’s your God now, friend?”
Christopher Hitchens does not know the difference between
greater detail of description and
explanation. If he would like a further explanation of this point, I would suggest that he double the font size of the above post, and read it again. And if greater clarity of vision is tantamount to explanation,
everything should become perfectly clear.
