An Old Year Message

I notice that our prime ministers, increasingly convinced that they are heads of state instead of mere heads of government, have taken to issuing 'New Year Messages'. So have leaders of the opposition. Dear me. Well, vain and bossy as I undoubtedly am, I am not yet that grandiose. The planet will continue to spin on its axis, and to orbit the Sun, uninfluenced by me as it follows its ordained path - or its wholly accidental and meaningless path, if you are, say, Dr Thomas or Mr Embery.

And as I am actively hostile to the 'New Year', a celebration of nothing in particular generally encouraged by states which loathe Christmas, I'll try to make no further mention of this empty, insignificant moment, for which non-devotees now have to buy earplugs if we wish to sleep, since the 'New Year' lot seem to think they are entitled to shatter the midnight peace with colossal explosions and high-pitched whistles.

However, I will respond to various squawks of disapproval which followed my riposte to Dr Sean Thomas, who said: 'Enjoy your religious celebrations. I shall enjoy my secular version.'

I am told it was rude of me to reply as I did. Oh, come now. Dr Thomas has shown by his contributions that he enjoys a little cut and thrust, and the remark was plainly designed to provoke. Nothing I said was personally abusive.

What shocked my critics, I think, was the unusual experience of encountering a Christian who is not diffident about defending his position, and who is prepared to use against the atheists some (but not all) of the techniques they happily employ against Christians. Put simply, they don't like it up 'em. The other thing that worries them is that there is in fact no answer to this argument. All the categories of good and evil employed by the Godless are in fact religious categories. They cannot acknowledge this, for two reasons.

One, because it would make them look silly to admit it, and expose one of the large holes in atheist certainty which are at least as embarrassing to the Godless as the more arcane claims of Christianity are to the believer. The other is that the accusation of free riding gives them private cause for alarm, alarm they cannot admit to without disclosing their true reasons for their own faith in a Godless, purposeless universe. After all, if they were to concede that they wish to be free from those rules, then in all honesty they would have to argue that others should be free from them too.

But they don't want their neighbours, their fellow-passengers on the bus, their children's teachers, the tradesmen who supply their wants, the officials who run their cities, to be free from neighbourly obligation. On the contrary, they are anxious that they should remain as obliged as possible, sensibly not wishing to live among muggers, cheats, idlers, perverts and corrupt officials. And in their public dealings, they will follow the tenets of enlightened self-interest (which many of them mistake for morality) precisely in the hope of obtaining common decency in return from their fellow creatures. They have not yet begun to suspect what a shaky and unreliable bargain this can become in times of trouble when the strong rule and the weak cringe.

But if they understand what it is that they are doing (and most of them do) they must grasp, even if dimly, that if all thought and did and felt as they did - especially in the private dealings where they want no interference or commandments, thanks very much, life would be a great deal rougher.

It is precisely because they do understand this that they sheer away, often with angry impatience and sometimes with personal abuse, from the stages of the argument which lead to this acknowledgement. And when they are rightly categorised as free riders on the back of a faith they profess to despise, they are so shocked by the direct truth of this accusation (and in these dreary days by the fact that anyone is prepared to make it) that they take it as a slap in the face, and imagine that a plain statement of fact in clear English is in some way ill-mannered. Robust argument often has that character in modern Britain, because so much discourse is wrapped in jargon and evasion.

Let them examine their own statements about Christianity in the same light.

Mr Bancroft asks: 'There are those of us who acknowledge and wish to maintain Christianity's decided role in western civilization, but have questions about some of the particulars and events described in the Old Testament. I wonder if Mr Hitchens could elaborate his thoughts on what our role is in keeping the cultural radicals at bay and maintaining the traditions and culture Christianity has given us, or are we on the wrong side of the barricades in his opinion?'
To which I reply that I have no idea what his role should be, but I am repeatedly baffled by the belief of so many apparently educated people that the Bible is a sort of Christian Koran, whose every word is of equal significance; and also by the failure of similarly educated people to notice that the Old Testament is so called largely because, among Christians, it is superseded by the New Testament.

Miss 'Un' asks (quoting me first): ' "Once everyone agrees with him that Christmas and Christianity are fairytales, then the world will be a violent and selfish chaos in which each deed is measured quite precisely by its immediate effect." Will Mr Hitchens be backing up this bizarre claim with any rationale, or will it just be left for readers to gasp at in despair?'

Miss 'Un' may gasp as much as she likes. But is she seriously pretending not to understand the simple point here made, that the Christian religion is the foundation of our society of ordered liberty? I can see why someone might argue that this was not the case, but I cannot see how anyone could say he or she couldn't see the connection.

Mr Lewis is mistaken when he says that it angers me when others don't share my views. Dishonesty and misrepresentation in argument anger me, as the breach of known and accepted rules in any activity should do. They are a form of cheating. Straightforward honest disagreement gives me pleasure and I seek it out.

Mr Everett says that 'he (ie me) often calls anyone who disagrees with him "moronic" or an "imbecile" or "ludicrous".'

I can certainly be rude about poor arguments, but I am unsure about the rest of this allegation, and I would ask him to back up his statement with quotations.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.