“Hitchens assumes that the elimination of God from the creation of all things is a simplifying move. It may have simplified Hitchens’ personal life, but it most emphatically does not simplify our explanations of how spiders figured out web engineering” (God Is, p. 43)
Venting the Spleen
“The way Hitchens glibly pronounces the body full of vestigial leftovers is something that the continued development of medical science should have taught us to quit doing. Ignorance of function does not not mean there is no function. As my wise grandmother used to say, ‘Never celebrate vestigialness prematurely” (God Is, p. 42).
How Fumbling in the Dark Got Us the Eyeball
“In the long developmental journey from the first three light sensitive cells to the eye of the osprey, what percentage of that time was the eye closed for remodeling (and therefore possessed of that condition that scientific laymen call blindness)? And, during those periods of blindness, what evolutionary advantage was conferred such that remodeling continued …
Vaudeville in the Natural Sciences
“I am afraid that Hitchens does not really respect his creationist adversaries. He is glad that the courts have protected Americans from ‘the inculcation of compulsory ‘creationist’ stupidity in the classroom’ . . . Now I understand a fierce uppercut, and I actually respect the ability to deliver one. But you really shouldn’t write things …
Something Always Was, Right?
[Answering the objection of the infinite regress, “who created the creator?”] Unless there is a known principle excluding the eternality of anything at all, there could be no basis for such an objection. And were we to cook up such a principle, we would find that it excluded, not only God, but the possibility of …
Medicine Kills
“For Hitchens to point out all the problems in the world and blame them on ‘religion’ is like writing a book attacking ‘medicine,’ that well-meaning endeavor which has killed its untold millions. But to get this result we have to define medicine as ‘anything that comes, promising relief, in bottles or any other container.’ That …
Related in Their Turn to the Primordial Bicycle
“To argue that the Ford Taurus evolved from the Model T because they each have four tires is a dubious procedure. Maybe four tires is just a good idea, and anybody who wants to build a car should use it. Maybe a pig liver does the same thing that a human liver does, and for …
Which They Don’t
“But for someone who bases an awful lot on reason, I think he needs to pay closer attention to what he is doing in the name thereof. His conclusion does not follow from the evidence being presented, not unless wet streets cause rain” (God Is, p. 11).
The Real Culprit
“Religion kills, but so does cancer, old age, hunting accidents, radiation from the sun, other predatory species, too much mayonnaise, and the music of Andrew Lloyd Weber. Actually, we need to use the wide-angle lens and admit that it is Evolution that kills” (God Is, p. 10).
Indignation That Floats Like a Helium Balloon
“How can a chemical reaction be hypocritical? How can the chemical reaction that is man be a hypocrite? Given [the atheist’s] premises, it is like being indignant with a tornado, or vegetable soup, or sand on the beach — but Hitchens does it. They all do it . . . I am happy to make …