Since Megan and myself both engage in debates with people of the religious persuasion fairly regularly, we always enjoy watching/reading other people’s exchanges to see where the arguments for and against supernatural beliefs have been headed lately. “Collision” is a real treat in that department, as it chronicles a series of debates between pastor Douglas Wilson and prominent atheist writer Christopher Hitchens. The trailer for the documentary can be seen in the clip below.
I would highly recommend that Christians and atheists alike watch the full documentary, as it sheds a lot of light on how the other side thinks and what they have to back up their positions. For anyone who has read the works of Christian apologists or engaged in discussion with the religious before, it won’t be a much of a surprise as to who comes out on top of the debates most often, but it’s still absolutely worth watching.
Rampant immorality is one of my biggest problems with Christianity, and the reason why I certainly wouldn’t convert even if there were evidence to back up the existence of a deity, his zombie son, or his talking snake nemesis. Throughout the Bible, the Christian deity commits, commands, and condones such horrifying atrocities as rape, murder, slavery, and genocide. As I’ve mentioned in several of my previous discussion with the religious, some of the more outright evil passages are Numbers 31 (in which God commands Moses to slaughter the Midianites and kidnap the surviving women), or Judges 21 (in which God condones the Israelites slaughtering an entire city and raping the surviving virgins, as well as their abduction and rape of even more virgins when the slaughtered city didn’t produce enough spoils).
Hitchens brings up the immorality issue frequently, even going after the core belief of Christianity: the salvation plan. Besides the outright immortal nature of the salvation plan itself (that the all-knowing, all-powerful God’s genius plan to save the world from his own decrees of hellfire involves human sacrifice), Hitchens takes it a step further and attacks the idea behind it. The idea that one can put all their responsibilities on someone else and have them pay the price for you is not exactly a moral concept on its own.
After his first assault on the immoral teachings of Christianity, Wilson responds that what Hitchens is doing is working within the framework of Christianity to attack Christianity. Wilson claims that this is essentially “hijacking the Christian car” and trying to purposefully run it into a tree. Clearly Wilson didn’t think this idea through, though. He’s essentially saying that atheists can’t borrow the ideas of Christianity to attack Christianity, which is a transparent attempt to deflect valid criticism of his religion. If this idea were correct, then Wilson himself could never attack Islam, or Judaism, or Wicca, and he most definitely can’t ever attack atheism. If we follow Wilson’s line of reasoning, then he can’t ever say “Atheists think this, and I disagree because….” Because he’d be hijacking the atheist car and trying to run it into a tree.
Like many other Christian apologists, Wilson tries to undermine atheism by stating that you can’t distinguish right from wrong or be a moral person if you believe in evolution (never mind that evolution has nothing to do with atheism, as atheism is a lack of belief in a deity, and not a verifiable natural process or study of biology). Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to understand that evolution is a not a system of morals. Evolution is a scientifically verifiable, observable fact. Evolution is real, regardless of what anyone decides to do with that fact. Survival of the fittest is a reality – but absolutely no evolutionary biologist would suggest that we use survival of the fittest as the basis for our morals or values. On a related note, Megan recently posted up a blog about how atheism does affect morals and societies, and how atheists compare to religionists in terms of incarceration rates at this location.
In a later segment of the film, Wilson says that if he’s in a dungeon chained to the wall, he will admit he can’t touch the jailer’s nose, but there’s no reason to think the jailer can’t come and touch him. He’s trying to use the analogy to indicate that we shouldn’t stop believing in a deity figure just because we can’t interact with it any way, as presumably it could interact with us if it chose to. What he’s failing to understand here is that his analogy doesn’t actually apply to deities or other supernatural events. In this scenario, you can see the jailer, the dungeon, and the chains. In reality, you can’t see any god, or any supernatural powers or sins preventing you from touching God, whether it be Zeus or Allah or Jesus or any other deity.
Getting back to the morality issue, Hitchens gets Wilson to openly say he has no problem with God commanding acts of genocide and war in the bible, such as the destruction of the Amalekites. Wilson even goes so far as to say that it would have been wrong to NOT kill the Amalekites because God commanded the killing, and he sees no moral problem with murder if God condones it. It’s always sickening when religious people use the same rationale as suicide bombers and see no problem with it. I’m the supposedly evil and immoral atheist, and I find the concept of slaughtering an entire group of people to be morally wrong – always. Yet somehow the Christians, who claim to have moral absolutes and to be morally superior to myself, are willing to ease their restrictions on genocide just because God said it was OK.
During a debate in which the crowd participates in the discussion, someone asks how Wilson explains that Norway, Finland, and Sweden are predominately atheist or agnostic, but are still among the most morally upright and benevolent in the world. He responds by saying that the prodigal son didn’t run out of the money on the first day, implying that all these countries will have to become Christian down the line or come to ruin. Apparently he’s missed that all three of those nations are consistently rated higher than the more Christian United States when it comes to literacy and quality of life, and that Finland was recently ranked as the best nation in the world (determined by comparing education, health, overall quality of life, economics, and political environment).
At one point Wilson says the Bible isn’t an arbitrary set of instructions, but rather a description of God’s character, and an example of how we should act. He says God is love and will love his neighbor and not do harm to his neighbor, even though he had previously said he was perfectly fine with God ordering the slaughter and eradication of the Amalekites. At the risk of being crass, I can only say that this shows what an immoral, hypocritical fucktard Mr. Wilson (and Christians in general) really is.
In yet another example of Christians somehow arriving at the conclusion that is the exact opposite of reality, Wilson even tries to infer that Hitler was an atheist. To determine the truth or falsehood of this claim, one only has to head down to their local library and pick up a copy of “Mein Kampf.” Adolf Hitler specifically writes about his faith and belief in both God and Jesus numerous times in the book. A list of resources covering his statements and writings regards his religious beliefs can be found at this location. It’s honestly disheartening how it appears that the religious in general, and Christians in particular, have such a hard time with factual accuracies, and a total inability to research a topic before discussing it.
I’ll let the rest of the documentary speak for itself so as not to ruin the entire thing for anyone who wants to watch – you won’t be disappointed.
