Christopher Hitchens was recently in Australia and was a panelist on ABC's Q&A. Not exactly a stellar Australian cast appearing alongside him. They seemed either intimidated by him or a little irrationally hostile. Father Frank Brennan SJ sounded more like an agnostic, apologetic Anglican Bishop and Waleed Aly came across as rather evasive. The audience questioners weren't much chop either.

As for Hitchens, he was clearly aware he was not among peers and went a little easy (for him, that is).

Who would have been a better Australian choice as a panel member? I would've liked to have seen a theological pugilist like Cardinal Pell take Hitchens on (not that I think he'd have accepted an invitation, but).

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2695716.htm?clip=rtmp://cp44823.edgefcs.net/...

muso wrote on Oct 5^th, 2009 at 8:15am:

Yep, he's heavy artillery, that's for sure, having declared himself not merely an atheist but a militant anti-theist.

Having gone from Trotskyite to neocon, there's no doubt the man likes to get around (although again it may suggest that a continuum is best represented by an arc).

He has no place in Australia? Did the thought of Christians, Muslims and 'religionites' of all degrees and persuasion coming together to take on this 'Yankee-Pom drunken lout' not appeal to your sense of irony? Maybe Australia needs a six-pack of Hitchens'.

And if all it took was a Hitchens to drive up the numbers of fundamentalist religionites in Australia, then what would it suggest about our tendency towards a laid-back lifestyle? If it were true, it might even suggest that we're not so much laid-back as bogged down in a swamp of existential malaise being extricated from it only when propelled by strident external forces.

But, in the end, if we’re not up for the debate, why even have one?

YOU MEAN HE'S AN UNABASHED MODERATE iSLAMIC APOLOGIST?

Pell is an; ignorant, discourteous, arrogant, coward...  been there done that...  he should stick to being a priest running a church.

Now now Grendel, that's no way to speak to your Christian brother. Is that how you imagine Christ (pbuh) would've spoken to others? Other Christians no less??

NorthOfNorth wrote on Oct 5^th, 2009 at 9:37am:


Suits me fine. If it ain't broken, don't try and fix it.  The vast majority of Australians are either moderately supernaturalist or moderately non-religious'. We don't have a kulturkampf here. We don't have patriotism and religion sold as a bundled lot, and we don't need it. (I'll try to keep the Muslim issue separate.)

That moderacy in society is very fragile as you implied, and  Hitchens is an expert nasal dislocator.  

I agree with some things Hitchen's says but his anti-religion rants are just mindless ignorance.

Hitchens is great. He is a gadfly in the best tradition. He is articulate, he is smart and means good (you know he would not murder you if he found out that you are religious) ). He is passionately anti-religious and that is a great service as a corrective. He and his like are absolutely essential to avoid dogmatic stupor.

The great things about people like him is that group think is not required. You can disagree with him as long as you are intelligent about it. That's the challenge.