Famed atheist Christopher Hitchens took a podium next to his brother Peter Hitchens, a Christian, last Thursday in a debate sponsored by Michigan’s Grand Valley State University. Peter, a member of the church of England, is a journalist, like Christopher — the author of God Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything. Their parents raised them as nominal Anglicans.

Peter worked for London’s Daily Express for over 20 years, but left the paper in 2000 shortly before a pornographer bought it. He now writes a Sunday column for the Daily Mail, the Express‘ competitor, in addition to keeping a blog, appearing on radio programs and doing freelance work for other papers.

Peter Hitchens told WoW that reporting on wars and living in Russia has shown him the worth of religion. “They intensify your humility, because you’re exposed, without particular protection,” he said. Parenthood and “the normal temptations of life, when you find out you’re not as terrific as you think you are,” have increased his sense of humility.

But music and the arts suggest to Peter, that, contrary to John Lennon, there is more above us than sky. He believes that Beethoven’s music existed in eternity before the artist put the notes on paper. “There’s a solace in music which I don’t understand,” he said. “I think the origin of much of music is in religion.”

In an interview with the Grand Rapids Press before the debate, Peter said he was at a disadvantage with his brother because he didn’t have Christopher’s certainty: “I can’t definitively say I’m right and he’s wrong. … What I’m saying is this is what I choose to believe.”

The brothers have other significant differences. Christopher supports the war in Iraq; Peter opposes it. Peter lives in England while Christopher has immigrated and become a U.S. citizen. An apparently atheist-heavy crowd applauded Christopher when the two argued about the existence of God but seemed divided in the first part of the debate when the brothers debated the war in Iraq.

Christopher likened Christianity to a “celestial North Korea” in which God can “convict you of thought crimes in your sleep.” “At least you can f—–g die and leave North Korea,” he said.

Peter said his brother enjoyed “the luxury of atheism,” promoting atheism as an ideal, but not dealing with the despair and violence it seems to inspire in English young people and its affect on whole in countries — like North Korea. Christianity can’t be replaced by a blank space, he said.

“You do have to give people hope, when they’ve done things that are grievous and intolerable,” he said. “And what hope is there, besides a sacrifice?”

On Friday, we posted a link to an article from the Telegraph of London reporting that former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had publicly acknowledged he was a Christian. He has since denied that report: “Over the last few days some media have been disseminating fantasies—I can’t use any other word—about my secret Catholicism, citing my visit to the Sacro Convento friary, where the remains of St. Francis of Assisi lie,” Gorbachev was quoted by Interfax. “To sum up and avoid any misunderstandings, let me say that I have been and remain an atheist.”

Gorbachev was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church as a child, and a spokesman for Alexei II, the patriarch of the church, told the Russian media, “In Italy, he spoke in emotional terms, rather than in terms of faith. He is still on his way to Christianity. If he arrives, we will welcome him.”

In this essay in The Smart Set, an atheist chastises the atheist authors we’ve all come to know and love: Hitchens, Dawkins, et al.

They didn’t simply want an end to fundamentalism or the use of religious doctrine in governmental policy. They treated Christians as if they all believed the Earth was only 6,000 years old, and Muslims as if they were all strapped with explosives. If you pray to Jesus when your world is falling apart, or blame Mercury being in retrograde when your car won’t start, you are part of the problem.

The essayist, Jessa Crispin, goes on to comment on a new book, God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens by theologian John F. Haught.  She calls this book, or at least part of it, “a warm-blooded medium between the atheists’ cold logic and the fundamentalists’ fiery fury.”  But when you read Crispin’s essay - and it’s nice to read about atheists who don’t hate us as much as Hitchens would have them hate us - she sounds like someone who’s simply not willing to accept the either/or proposition of God that most people understand is, in fact, there.  Which is to say, the real-ness of God has some serious and meaningful implications for anyone believing in him.  Neither Hitchens nor Augustine muddy their understanding of the seriousness of the God proposition.  Crispin, as kind as she seems, wants to believe in God and not believe in him, too.  In the end, that kind of thinking is probably worse than the kind we get from more committed atheists.

This year, Americans made bestsellers out of Christopher Hitchens’ blunt book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity? Hitchens and D’Souza hotly debated the merits of religion, but another book seems to have muddled the debate.

In the Netherlands, this book about God’s existence (or nonexistence, rather) hit the bestsellers list, too. The title is full of paradoxes: Believing in a God Who Does Not Exist: Manifesto of an Atheist Pastor. So is the author: Klaas Hendrikse, a Dutch Protestant pastor for over 20 years, and an avowed atheist.

Hendrikse rejects the idea of God’s existence but embraces the language of religion, using the word God to refer to relationships between human beings. “God is for me not a being, but a word for what can happen between people,” Hendrikse writes. “Someone says to you, for example, ‘I will not abandon you’ and then makes those words come true. It would be perfectly alright to call that [relationship] God.”

Hendrikse’s book is in its third printing, but Ecumenical News International said both atheists and religious people are looking at Hendrikse askance. The Volksrant, a secular newspaper, called his outlook “bizarre” and compared the pastor to a vegetarian working as a butcher. Bas Plaisier, general secretary of the Netherland’s Protestant church said Hendrikse treats Christianity “as a dogma that can be put out with the rubbish.”

She said, however, that the denomination will not discipline the pastor: “What we as a church, church board and synod can do now above all, is to give personal witness of our faith.”

Richard Dawkins admits that he’d rather say “Happy Christmas” than “Happy Holiday Season.”  And he admits such a glaring truth that most atheists really don’t want to admit:

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In this article on the “new atheism” (translation: old atheism), Dissent editor Mitchell Cohen speaks about the role of religion in politics and how the rise of the Christian Right in the 1980s and 1990s is what brought out the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins now.  This is a good piece (especially in light of the “dominionist” post from yesterday) about what it takes to debate propositions in a pluralistic culture.  Cohen seems to suggest that a “pure” pluralism (where no philosophy dominates) cannot work:

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The Golden Compass opens in theaters today, and, yes, we have already talked about it here, here, and here. But last night I was struck by yet another perspective when I read a quote from the movie’s 13-year-old star, Dakota Blue Richards. In an interview with USA Today, the British actress who plays the central character of Lyra shared how she snagged a few choice souvenirs from the film, including the truth-divining golden compass itself. If it really worked, writer Susan Wloszczyna wondered, what would she ask it? Richards responded:
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On his blog, Al Mohler, who has seen the movie and read the books, provides an excellent brief for Christians on how they should react and respond to The Golden Compass. Mohler writes:
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In this sad article, Dennis Overbye bemoans the uses of the word God when talking about science.  Overbye admits that he’s done it in the past (for example, when writing about the “God particle”).  And Einstein, he admits, also made references to God when talking about science, but we all knew he didn’t really believe in him.  Einstein was too good of a scientist to actually believe in God!

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The head of Atheists Alliance International plans to put up a tree this weekend on the lawn at the Chester County Courthouse to stand beside three traditional holiday displays there, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

The 20-foot tree will be hung with copies of covers of books, including “Why I Am Not A Christian,” “Why I Am Not a Muslim” and “Judaism Beyond God.” This addition to last year’s three holiday displays is sponsored by the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia which, its president Margaret Downey said, is “welcoming to agnostics, atheists, humanists, skeptics, rationalists of all kinds.”

Former county commissioner Colin Hanna called the atheist tree “a pretty fundamental perversion of the purpose of holiday displays.” Here’s one fundamental difference: Religious displays such as nativity scenes and menorahs seek to draw attention to God. The atheists’ display seeks to draw attention to themselves.