The Sophistry of Christopher Hitchens

hey guys it's cosmic skeptic and I think it's no secret that of all the writers I most admire and enjoy Christopher Hitchens is perhaps the crowning jewel Christians are advised to love their enemies and this was never more strongly acted out than in their interactions with the hitch whoo it really was impossible not to love except maybe in the case of George Galloway you know a slug you did right like an angel but you're no working for the devil and damn you and all your work I adore Christopher Hitchens his humor his charm and his frankly enviable prose I also believe he got a good many things right across his various writings not disclosing by the way a prescient awareness of animal rights in both his forward to Orwell's Animal Farm and his chapter on the pig in God is not great still to avoid the perhaps not entirely unreasonable charge of sick of fancy I've taken it upon myself to identify what I believe to be some of Hitchens weakest arguments in his religious debates so weak in fact that I really think they should be considered discrediting and serve as a reminder that fierce and brilliant as Hitchens was as a journalist he was in no way a serious philosopher undoubtedly I am supremely influenced by Hitchens in both my thoughts and the way that I expressed them I might well have watched every single video clip of him that exists on the Internet and I can quote him from memory his influence in other words has undeniably made me what I am today but if Christopher Hitchens can turn on his maker and so can I and that's exactly what I'm intending to do in today's video in letters to a young contrarian Hitchens writes I attack and criticize people myself I have no right to expect lenience in return and so lenience there shall not be I want to expose some of Hitchens worst argumentative characteristics and show how he employs them to make you think that he has the upper hand in a debate even when he definitely doesn't the biggest problem with Hitchens bad arguments was that he presented them so charmingly and convincingly that it's easy to be won over by them unfortunately presenting bad arguments cleverly is the definition of sophistry and so definitely were calling out and breaking down in fact I think the only way to trust a person's admiration for someone is in the knowledge that they recognize their faults if and where they exist I'm not claiming that Hitchens was always sophistic of course and neither am i claiming that when he was he was so intentionally but I fear the prospect of idealization and also of getting into the habit of only criticizing my opponents so this should be a good exercise in humility and self-reflection now I won't be touching on Hitchens support for the invasion of Iraq or the infamous essay on the female sense of humor the problem with female communities up till now is they tend to be either dykes or Jews or but firstly because I want to focus on his religious debates as this is more my area but also because asking you on Twitter what you thought were his worst arguments these were the ones that came up the most I'm more interested in those things that people don't already popularly agree that he got wrong I want to talk about those things which people generally think he was right about all that slipped under the radar that I have a quarrel with and there are three examples in particular of areas which I think demonstrate just terrible arguments and responses from Hitchens these are his views on morality free will and the cosmological argument this list isn't exhaustive of course but I think these examples are typical of him and so we'll give you an idea of the kind of problem I have with Hitchens style of arguing the main thing to notice is that Hitchens continually manages to weasel his way out of actually answering serious questions by relying on quips jokes or other kinds of distractions so we'll take these three points in turn and demonstrate why Hitchens just utterly failed when addressing them I should add in my opinion guess what guess who's saying it that's a very clever thing to say should I ask would you prefer out in your opinion what a fatuous rumor [Music] for our first example the Hitchin seems to misunderstand the moral argument for the existence of God this is the argument that states that since there can be no objective morality without God and yet objective morality exists there must be a God by the main questions at hand are these does objective morality in fact exist and if it does how does the Atheist ground it without God is that possible well let's see what Hitchens has to say if Christopher Hitchens does not believe in God reviewers have asked then where does he get his sense of right and wrong you have replied in print that this question is in itself insulting and you have rejected quote the appalling insinuation that I would not know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided close quote why do you find it insulting because I think it's degrading to to the human to us to you and me to imply we're not to apply to state directly that absent a celestial dictatorship that had some supernatural influence over us yet to be established by the way as anything really existent but without the assumption of it we wouldn't know right from wrong degrading it maybe hitch but you're not answering the question okay the question was asked how do you determine right and wrong without God and Hitchens responds that this is insulting because it suggests that we potentially can't determine right and wrong without God well yes that's the question he hasn't actually made a point he's just restated the question and said that it's insulting well tough luck if it's insulting that doesn't constitute an answer his point is of course that the question is a silly one but he needs to provide a justification for why it's silly not just say that it is relying on his audience's tendency to go yeah I don't need God to get us riled up at the very question we wouldn't return stolen property if we found it in the back of a car we wouldn't give blood if someone badly needed a transfusion unless we were afraid either of reward either punishment or desirous of a reward that we might help ourselves to underage children as some religious people have actually been known to do because after all what's stopping us now you could tell me if you want you would do all those things if you weren't god-fearing but I would choose not to believe you I have more respect for you if know if your opinions then that this is the next thing that Hitchens would regularly do on this point he conflates two different questions by saying of course you would still be moral if you didn't believe in God he's responding to the idea that atheists can't be moral but that wasn't the question the question was not how can a theist be moral but how can a theists ground their morality this is a subtle difference but it's crucial Hitchens has got a lot of praise for making this kind of argument of course I'm still moral despite not believing in the supernatural dictator I'm insulted that you would suggest that I can't act ethically without divine permission I don't believe in the rest of it I believe in the prophets don't believe in the mountaintop they're believing the revelation well nor should you but how dare you suggest to us that we couldn't teach our children self-restraint and respect for others in the golden group how dare you but when the religious say that there cannot be such thing as morality without God they're not saying that there cannot be such thing as morality without belief in God they say that you can be an atheist and be moral you just can't objectively ground your morality so when Hitchens asks how dare you say that I can't be moral without believing in God he's answering an objection that was never put to him he's answering a different question one that the religious rarely if ever actually asked but when the question is framed more clearly sometimes Hitchens understands that he is in fact being asked to ground morality not just to prove that he's a moral person let's have a look at what he has to say when this occurs every time I'm asked this question if you didn't believe in God how would you know what was good and what wasn't every time I'm asked to speak on this The Daily News allows me to give a different answer and give a different example take the simplest case of what I believe is innate our instinct for our children you don't have to be a parent to have this you see a chil the child trying to rush into the traffic if you're not a parent something tells you what you probably ought to be doing about it the care and love and protection of children is it stinked in us in that in fact in many other she's two that don't claim to be divinely ordered around it's something we all share without having to have it explained to us so Hitchens is answering the following question how do we ground our sense of morality and his answer well we all have a sense of morality within us the question is how do you know that it's right to care about children his answer any parent instinctively cares about children but we're not interested in whether we have a moral instinct of course we do who doesn't know this what we're interested in is how to justify the moral instinct which Hitchens fails to do by simply appealing to the fact that the instinct exists a further elaboration on this comes from Hitchens debate with Frank Couric in which the same question is raised if God does not exist why do all people have a fixed moral obligation to love and not murder how do molecules in motion have any authority to tell you how to behave when you do something wrong whose standard are you breaking who are you displeasing the carbon atom the benzene benzene molecule who this question has been asked the Socrates answered it like this when he was on trial for his life accused of blasphemy by the way he said that he had an inner Dame on the way he put it not demon Matt Damon a spirit an inner critic the conscience would be one way for you and that he he knew enough to know even when he was making the best speech of his life that if he was making a point that was somehow dishonest or incomplete or shady the Jamin would say oh yeah that was clever but you shouldn't have tried it he knew any any person of average moral equipment has the same knowledge I hope you'll if you don't I'm very sorry for you Adam Smith are called it the internal witness who we all have to have a conversation with all the time it's been CS Lewis decided to call it conscience and to attribute it to the to the divine but he didn't improve on what Adam Smith said in Theory of Moral Sentiments or what Socrates said when standing trial for his own his own life again Hitchens has asked off those moral instincts that he has how does he know that they are objectively correct his answer well Socrates answered this well by saying that we have a moral instinct within us that's not the question the question is how do we justify the instinct Hitchens is totally avoiding the question and if you think I'm being unfair here take a listen to what he says next still talking about the moral instinct within him he says this it's something sometimes colloquially defined as why do people behave well when nobody is looking I don't believe there's anyone in this hall who doesn't know what I mean by that the instinct is sometimes defined as why do people do good things when nobody is looking Hitchens is in other words here conceding the very point in question that the moral instinct he is identified within us leaves wide open the question of why it exists and how we can justify it also note how when talking about this intuition Hitchens says any one of average moral equipment has the same knowledge any any person of average moral equipment has the same knowledge I I hope you'll if you don't I'm very sorry for you this implicitly recognizes that some people don't share his moral intuition some people don't have the same moral equipment the question we are asking is how can we know whose moral intuitions are correct Hitchens responds by saying that you'll have the correct moral instinct if you have the proper moral equipment well how do we know who has the proper moral equipment of course because they have the correct moral instinct this is the definition of circularity there are people to whom that those thoughts do not occur who are deaf to that idea who only think of themselves who wouldn't worry about the internal GameOn or sensor or or companion and there are of course people who only get pleasure from being unpleasant to are the people inflicting cruelty on them aha we may be getting somewhere Hitchens is here recognizing that some people just don't share his moral intuition how can we know that they have it wrong and we have it right well let's see the first group we call the sociopathic in the second group we call the psychopathic my own evil and they occur in nature and in society my only problem is with those who think that they're all made in the image of God the one explanation that absolutely doesn't work at all so Hitchens answers the problem of some people not sharing his moral intuitions by simply stating that we call them Psychopaths and sociopaths okay but the question is why we're justified in saying that they have it wrong which you can't answer by simply calling them Psychopaths notice that Hitchens then immediately moved to criticizing religious morality this constitutes an argumentative fallacy that Hitchens would always commit the two kwok-wai fallacy to Quaqua means you as well and is a fallacy committed when a person is presented with a mistake in their argument and responds by saying that their opponent makes the same mistake it may be hypocritical of somebody to criticize the mistake of another person while committing the mistake themselves but this doesn't change the fact that a mistake has been made when in later life Hitchens advised people not to smoke for the benefit of their health someone could have responded but you smoke this is of course true but it doesn't make Hitchens advice any less good just because he doesn't follow it himself in our present discussion Hitchens has been challenged with the claim that an atheist can't ground morality he first brushes over the question as we've seen and then he says but my problem is that the religious can't do it either okay let's say they can't that doesn't change the fact that you haven't done so either if someone asks how do you justify morality and your response is well you can't do it either you're committing a fallacy now you might say in response to this that Hitchens doesn't have a burden of proof here he doesn't have to prove that morality exists that's on the religious but Hitchens quite clearly believes and claims the morality does exist and so long as he is making that claim he does have a burden of proof which he simply isn't meeting but aside from that brief intermission here's a summary of Hitchens and the moral argument in its plainness fashion but if there is no God if there is no objective ground of right and wrong from what do you derive your morals Hitchens first argues that morality is innate within us first is innate in us but then the interviewer presses him we have many such innate intuitions some of which are false so how can we know that the moral intuition we have within us as you say is actually correct the problem is that there are kinds of that we're stuck with as a result of evolution if one posits evolu so you feel biological urges you feel you feel the impulse to steal and you yet at the same time you have some kind of innate morality that tells you not to steal the question is with a religious point of view it gives you some way you say there is an objective standard according to which we can we suggest we recognize that certain certain of these impulses are acceptable and certain other impulses are to be disciplined and restrained and so forth I don't understand how if you take it all as as a kind of evolutionary result of evolution let's put it that way how it is that you can see morality is over and above other urges how do you do that can you guess how Hitchens answers not to be grand about it but the world Socrates that's what so she is called his daemon he it was an inner voice has stopped him when he was trying to take advantage of someone in an argument he simply asserts that we have a moral intuition I'll remind you of the question we have many intuitions how do we know which ones are actually correct his answer because we have a moral intuition it just amazes me that this passes for a serious argument [Music] I've chosen the topic of free will as the next example because it demonstrates another tendency of Hitchens to improperly answer a question in order to gain a cheap laugh from an audience now this is something he actually admits to doing if I'm making a speech right and I make a cheap point to get a laugh I'm not above doing I can do that or or I skip a stage in an argument you know to make a an inexpensive point especially if it works I get I feel a pang so let's see this in action are you assuming that we have won one by you are you assuming that we have free will if you're on yours then give me an give me another source you want some my question with another answer it okay I will still answer it though your question is an answer to mine rather no it's a response to mine yeah the view I take about free will is that of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it the first thing to note is that Hitchens doesn't seem best pleased when his question is answered with another question bear that in mind for later when we discussed the cosmological argument the second thing is noted by his opponent David Wolpe himself that is indeed a quip rather than a proper answer you'll understand if you've seen my previous extensive videos and conversations about the intricacies of free will how frustrating it is to see the topic treated so flippantly but let's give Hitchens a chance here a nice tool to some extent am a dialectical mature list and I also think there are some there are some ironies in the universe's worth of history but to say of course we have free will the boss says we've got it is to make a mockery of the whole concept okay so Hitchens was asked whether or not we have free will with the implicit expectation to justify his answer his response well to say that free will comes from God makes a mockery of the concept we've already talked about this can you see what he's done it's the two cork way fallacy again well you can't justify free will okay but that doesn't change the fact that you have also failed to do so mr. Hitchens this is the takeaway from the numerous times Hitchens does this kind of turning the question on to his religious opponent he manages to wriggle his way out of actually answering any seriously difficult philosophical questions himself and because they are difficult questions when he turns them on the religious they struggle to answer them gaining him brownie points in a debate and I'll stress this point about the burden of proof you may still think that Hitchens shouldn't have to answer the question because the burden of proof is not on him but on his religious opponent well first if this is true Hitchens should just say so instead of pretending as though he can answer the question by providing some quip or irrelevant observation but I don't even think this is the case Hitchens clearly says that he does believe in free will Hitchens says that he does actively believe that morality exists separate from the God claim on which he doesn't have burden of proof these are independent claims he is making that do require justification he does have the burden of proof so long as he's making them but whatever okay accepting that we won't actually get a serious answer from Hitchens about whether and how Free Will exists on an atheistic worldview let's at least examine his critique of religious free will here it is again but to say of course we have free will the boss says we've got it is to make a mockery of the whole concept the force of this objection is all to do with the way Hitchens phrases things imagine if you will that I am the employee of a company and my boss gives me an hour of free time for lunch someone like Hitchens might say to say that I have a free hour because the boss demands it makes a mockery of the concept but of course it doesn't the boss doesn't demand that I'm free for his sake he permits my freedom for my sake now to be clear I don't think that Free Will exists and I don't think that God can permit free well and arguably if he does he does so ultimately for his own sake and not for ours these are all things I believe and good arguments and interesting lines of thought they're just not things that Hitchens ever said instead deciding to get a cheap laugh from the audience at the expense of actually answering the question a bit like he doesn't this famous example - that could be an unpleasant thing but how do you dimension evil for what Jesus calling only religious person would dream of saying let's call it evil where does evil come from religion but hitch incident always avoided answering the question by making a joke sometimes he avoided answering a question by simply inventing another question and answering that instead okay for a clear example of this I turned back to Hitchens debate with Frank Jarek and present his response to the question how can something come from nothing so there was nothing how do you get something from nothing without cause how do you get I can ask the same question and the way I did before how do you get so much nothing from something you look into the night sky if you're in say the Carmel Peninsula you can't do it from many parts of Virginia now but if you are can put certain puzzle California as I was recently you can look into the night sky and see universe is blowing up and bursting into flame every night of the week several times they had something and it's all nothing now who's the author of that who mandated that who's the creator of that who's the dictator who demands that sacrifice you're making a rod for your own back here yikes it is difficult to know where to begin with this one first the question is a metaphysical one how is it possible that from a state of non-existence existence can come consider Hitchens point that many stars and galaxies have exploded into nothing this isn't quite true if we're being technical the matter that made up the Stars is still there it's just exploded across the universe but the matter itself the stuff still exists so it's not the case that truly nothing has come from something as Hitchens suggests this makes it an inappropriate analogy to something coming from nothing by which Frank charac meant literally nothing as in not atoms in space or quantum fluctuations or Lawrence Krauss is nothing but nothing Hitchens asks what about the things that do exist and then don't exist anymore well the stuff itself that makes up those things does still exist it's just been rearranged when Sharik asks how something comes from nothing he doesn't mean how do atoms form themselves into stars or something like that which would be the actual reverse of Hitchens questions he means how did the atoms get there in the FIR place so the questions are not actually about the same thing but anyway Hitchens has answered Frank's question with a question something he apparently doesn't like when other people do to him how do you get something from nothing without cause how do you get I can ask the same question and the way I did before how do you get so much nothing from something if you're asked me and give me another source he wants my question with another 't ok I will still answer it though your question is an answer to mine rather no it's a response to mine but notice anyway how this is nothing more than a distraction Hitchens has asked a metaphysical question how does something come from nothing his response why is it that stars explode and the universe will end it's totally irrelevant they're just pointing to the fact that things come to an end does not explain how they were created in the first place it just doesn't answer the question the question is how did things come about and Hitchens responds by saying ah well have you considered that they'll come to an end he doesn't even attempt to answer the question to make a comparison this would be like if Frank had presented the teleological argument asking why there are complex things in the universe and saying that these indicate a designer and instead of actually answering the question say by pointing to a natural selection hitchens were to respond with something like ah but we also see many simple things in the universe how do you explain that it's like that's another question it may be a useful question but it's a different question and it's got nothing to do with the question that you were actually asked which you evidently don't have an answer to now at this point if you've followed the trend of the other arguments you may be expecting me to say that this is a tu quoque way fallacy again except it isn't it's actually much worse than that it would be a tu quoque way fallacy if Chirac had said Hitchens can't explain how something comes from nothing and Hitchens said yeah well you can't explain it either that would be an example of the fallacy instead Hitchens responds by saying yeah well you can't explain this other unrelated thing it's a totally unrelated observation imagine you were arguing with someone let's call in history Christians who believed that the Gyptians did not build the pyramids and instead believe that they were just natural objects you asked them how on earth do you get the pyramids from nothing but sand in a desert and Christians responds well they probably won't last forever you know erosion will destroy them eventually so if these Egyptians really did design them they did a pretty poor job don't you think it's like that's not an answer to the question totally unrelated not only this but the question Hitchens asks in response to Frank's question is not even a good one you may be thinking even if Hitchens failed to answer the question of how something comes from nothing we can at least say that he had a counterpoint a separate point but a good point in saying that the universe seems headed for destruction and this doesn't square with a loving God okay if God was a competent designer why would he design our world in such a way that it will one day be destroyed now as I addressed this point I want to stress that even if Hitchens was right in this point it's still completely separate to the question he was actually asked and got away with not having to answer so in this example Hitchens is debating with Frank Charak a Christian of course Christians believe in Judgment Day and the second coming of Christ in other words they believe that God will intervene and send human beings to the afterlife before the Sun explodes before the galaxy collapses before the universe ends the fact that our world is headed towards destruction doesn't matter because Judgment Day will occur and it will occur before it has the chance to end that's the Christian belief this is a fairly simple observation probably one that you've thought of yourself and in fact Frank direct says exactly this - Hitchens and look what happens and of course religious people believe that somebody's going to intervene to stop it before it does go anything they do even if it does excuse me did the religious among you ladies and gentlemen to understand I did not that there will be an intervention to make an exception in our case I mean does Hitchens not understands the idea that the religious believe in an afterlife that will save us from earthly destruction I mean seriously [Music] will be created Genesis is Paradise Lost Revelation is paradise where literally have you it sounds much worse to me have it your way it sounds factual to me I mean is this Hitchens conceding that this is in fact the Christian worldview if so his previous point completely collapses and the only point remaining is now that the idea of an intervention sounds fattest okay so if God creates the universe and allows it to end that's poor design and should be condemned but if he intervenes to stop it from ending that's fatuous you're not leaving many options open mr. Hitchens Hitchens just argued that the reason the religious view is silly is because the world is eventually going to be allowed to come to destruction but then when faced with the supposition that the religious view is precisely the opposite of this that it will not be allowed to come to destruction he says that's ridiculous but these are opposites of each other they're the only two options either the universe will end or it will not and apparently both are ridiculous to Hitchens but this is crucial both the universe ending and not ending are ridiculous according to Hitchens if they were designed right so Hitchens to show that he has a better explanation that isn't ridiculous must address the question of how the universe could come into being without a designer notice ladies and gentlemen this is the very question we started with that Hitchens refused to even try to answer this whole conversation is a trainwreck well then okay I think that just about sums things up obviously there are many more examples of this kind of argumentation to be found in the ian's catalog but I feel that these should be enough examples to help you spot it for yourself I'd like to stress in closing that Hitchens is my favorite writer and I really can't whittle down just how appreciative I am for everything that he has contributed to my academic life and I know many of you watching feel the same but please don't let the man's aura blind you to his mistakes and faulty reasoning and please don't think that just because he won the debate he also won the argument but anyway thank you for watching I hope you found it interesting I'd like to remind you that everything I do is supported by my viewers on patreon and so if you like what I produce please do consider helping it to continue by becoming a patron of the channel a special thanks to my top tier patrons Itamar evan Faraz and james you can also get cosmic skeptic merchandise at cosmic clothing dot shop and follow me on social media using the links in the description do hit the subscribe button and the notification bell if you haven't already stay safe stay inside and I'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: CosmicSkeptic

Views: 387,541

Rating: 4.6916246 out of 5

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism

Id: fopo9E7UAVQ

Length: 30min 44sec (1844 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Gumbi1012]

Hitch was a legend, but if anyone wants to see what he sounds like when "wrong", check out the Robert Wright interview where they discuss the Iraq War. His rhetoric is unbelievably grating when he is getting things wrong, and gets progressively harder and harder to listen to.

[u/makin-games]

I rarely watch these long youtube videos that are posted, but this one speaks to a personal criticism I've always held of Hitchens - that he regularly substituted proper reasoning/debate for storytelling, history and prosaic anecdote. Which is all fine, but doesn't always hits the mark in these pedantic debates.

I don't really think he pretended to be otherwise though (halfway through this video he's quoted as saying something to that effect), and I value that he was seemingly unashamed about it - just shutting down religious nonsense without humoring the specificity they usually demanded in responses to their own unreasonable claims.

And further in his defense, some of his claims, like having an evolved moral intuition mentioned in this video, usually seemed like shortcuts to perfectly valid and scientifically/philosophically sound points - it's just that pedantic listeners needed to be dragged through the grinder to get there, and short of that he was 'jumping to an unreasoned conclusion' etc.

His place in these sort of debates just always seemed like a different tone to how Harris/Dawkins etc operated.

[u/BloodsVsCrips]

Hitchens was a rhetorician. So long as that's what you expected, you wouldn't be caught off guard. But there are times where his loose words end up being bad faith. Watch the Robert Wright podcast and you can see examples of this.

[u/0s0rc]

Great video. This kid knows his philosophy