I watched a little film last night called "Collision", its a documentary covering a series of debates by Christopher Hitchens and evangelist theologian Douglas Wilson. Its shot in a choppy artistic style, lots of high colour contrast and black & white shots of city buildings and helicopters with a eclectic sound track comprising copious helpings of Metallica'esque heavy metal, it reminded me of a Warren Miller ski video.
Hitchens was his usual self, delivering arguments I've heard plenty of times before but interspersed with some interesting little "off camera" moments and quips. Douglas Wilson is not someone I know but he seems an interesting character, very assertive, well read and refreshingly honest about what he believes. Hitchens' clashes with Theists are usually one-sided affairs however this was slightly different. Wilson's depth of knowledge of literature helps him to almost hold his own against Hitchens, he gets some great one-liners and the editing is very sympathetic to Wilson. I say Wilson almost held his own because at the root of it Wilson's arguments were just the familiar apologetic standard bearers, "you can't know anything, especially what is moral without God" and the teleological argument, but when you drill in, both are really arguments from personal incredulity.
It's clear Wilson does not have a science background, neither does Hitchens, I was left hanging at several points in the film expecting an evolutionary science coups de grace to be delivered but those opportunities were missed, especially around the subject of why it is advantageous that human evolution has developed morality as an emergent property of the brain. Wilson's line on this was very weak, he believes that you can't account for morality unless you are a Christian which I'm sure tickled all the Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus in the audiences, never mind the Atheists.
All in all a reasonable way to pass an hour or so, the style of the film does get a little tired about half way through, I found myself wanting to fast forward bits in the middle. Wilson particularly repeats the same argument quite a few times in order to refute the multifaceted attacks of Hitchens, i.e. that it's not possible to actually "know" anything with certainty; it's probably a technically correct philosophical argument but of no practical use in reality and certainly no validation of any aspect of Christianity or belief in the supernatural in general. The film does however do a good job overall at presenting a good humoured and civilised appraisal of what is a clash of utterly incompatible world views.
7 comments:
Two points.
You're conflating morality and ethics.
Can you back up your assertion that different world views are incompatible? Surely that's an admission of bias towards a certain type of worldview in itself.
OP, so if I have a round peg and a square hole and point out the incompatibility, then I must be favouring the peg or the hole (I don't get that?)
You should watch the film, they talk heavily about morality not ethics, the focus is often on how we know what is moral. Wilson claims it's from God (or in essence, can only be provided from outside our conciousness), Hitchens claims it is innate and where it's not innate it is reasoned out. Wilson had no real evidence for his view other than deductive philosophical argument, Hitchens pointed out how different cultures and religions arrive independently at the same morality and also how Christian "morality" has changed over the years, both evidence of natural origins for morality and both completely incompatible views of the world (as far as morality is concerned) - I must say they seemed to get on pretty well in the bar afterwards though!
So, according to your description Wilson was arguing they are incompatible, but Hitchens was arguing that they are the same.
Yet you side with Hitchens while saying the two are incompatible.
Well I'm afraid I can't accept your logic there. Wilson has clearly made procedural errors, so his conclusion can easily be disregarded and the two sides reconciled.
I'm also dubious about the statement that morality and ethics are different things. The best description of them I ever heard was as a wheel and axle - they can't function seperately, so mentioning one infers a conceptualisation of the other.
They both claimed their world-views were incompatible, that was kind of the point of the film and why it was called "Collision" and not "Collusion", I'm not sure what unacceptable "logic" you are referring to?
I side with Hitchens in this case because he had evidence for his arguments, nothing else.
As for morality and ethics, I always attributed morality to people and ethics to societies, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.
Ah, well, in that case they were arguing they were incompatible on different grounds and my point holds.
In philosophy, ethics is the study of morality.
For example, normative ethics is the study of what makes something right/wrong, good/bad etc.
Perhaps there are other usages; I hear people using 'ethics' when I think they mean morality, but I've always suspected that has arisen from popular (mis)use of 'ethics' such that now it is synonymous with morality (in the same way 'reticent' is often now used to generally mean reluctance, when it actually refers specifically to a reluctance to speak - the misuse is so common that the definition of the word has changed).
Hi Lisa, I think you are right, I wouldn't be confident articulating the difference; whatever the definition the speakers in this movie were arguing about morality. In the argument about innateness I think the Christian might as well have been arguing the Earth was flat; he didn't concede the point though (he can't of course).
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