Atheist Christopher Hitchens in Debate with Frank Turek

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My response to "The Hitchens Argument" as he enunciated it in his debate with Frank Turek.

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I'd like to do a series of videos in response to comments made by Christopher Hitchens in his debate with Frank Turek.
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I was able to locate the video of this having listened to the debate. I wanted to start with some comments about the debate.
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Obviously, Dr. Turek does not approach the issue of apologetics from the same perspective that I would, and so I felt that in a number of places
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Mr. Hitchens was able to put his finger upon some problems in leaping from the evidentialist argumentation for, in essence, a god to the specificity of the
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Christian god, something that the presuppositionalist does not have to deal with, because he is presenting only a defense of the
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Christian god himself. So we'll look at some of those, but I wanted to begin in particular with the
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Hitchens argument. I have heard him use this a number of times, and therefore it is obviously something he uses in much of his public speaking.
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I've heard a much longer version of it used in his debate with Dennis D'Souza, but this is a good version of it.
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I think it's important to understand what he's saying, and I think it illustrates, again, my statement that theology matters, because I think that a lot of people would struggle to respond to this particular argument given their theology.
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I would like to respond to Mr. Hitchens' argument, as he's presented here, in a little different way than it would be responded to by evidentialist apologists.
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Let's listen to what he had to say. Just give me that amount of time. Suppose we've only been around for 75 ,000 years.
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Monotheism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, shows up, what, 4 ,000 or 5 ,000 years ago at the most.
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So, if you give me my most microscopically small assumption of human existence, for at least 70 ,000 years, heaven watches as the human species is born, dies, usually of its teeth, usually at about 20, usually its infants having about a 9, 10, 2 % chance of living gone.
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You can, I don't have to draw your picture. Watches this with indifference. Thousands and thousands of generations, miserable, illiterate, starving, hungry, to say nothing of the wars they'll fight with each other, to say nothing of the cruelties they will inflict as well as the ones they will suffer just from existence.
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And only 3 or 4, perhaps 5 ,000 years ago, heaven decides this is enough of that.
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It's time for an intervention. And the best way to do it would be in the most primitive part of the
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Middle East. Not in China where people can read and have looked at telescopes.
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No, in the most primitive part of the Middle East, basically by offering human sacrifice to them.
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This is a doctrine that cannot be believed by anyone who's studied anything scientific, anything historical, anything archaeological, anything paleological, anything biological.
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It can't be believed by anyone. It can only be believed by someone who wants to be a plaything and a slave of a pitiless totalitarian power.
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How glad we should be that the evidence for this ghastly entity is nil.
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Good. Thanks. It always amazes me that people find
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Christopher Hitchens' presentations compelling because if you step back for just a moment and really consider, maybe write out on a piece of paper the actual argumentation he's making, the debate wasn't even close and I don't even take
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Frank Turk's apologetic perspective. He did not respond to much of what
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Frank had to say. He certainly did not respond in a meaningful fashion to the evidence that he presented of the complexity of life and the necessity of the designer and all these other things.
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But he's very good at tapping into the emotions of the people who hate
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God and want to have a reason to disbelieve. Christopher Hitchens' own hatred for God is a compelling example of the accuracy of the biblical description.
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But let's look at the argument. He says that there was a long time, no matter what time frame, and he's used all sorts of different time frames, but without even getting into the argument over that, there's a long time between the rise of homo sapiens and the rise of monotheism.
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How he knows this, we're not told. He just, it's his ipsedixit, it's just, well, that's the popular theory so that must be the case.
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I would dispute that and would say that in fact monotheism, a belief in one true
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God, that is the primitive faith of mankind himself, I think my
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Muslim friends would agree with me on that in fact, because that is the biblical teaching that God had revealed himself to our first parents.
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He of course takes a secular worldview and therefore speculates on this as if it's somehow a factual thing that is a given that we just simply should accept.
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And then God looks down upon, again, a hypothetical situation where people only live to 20 years of age and you only have a 5 % chance of children living to adulthood or a short adulthood, etc.,
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etc. It doesn't tell us how he knows any of this. It's speculation.
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The biblical reality is that man was created in the image of God. He was created holy and just and upright.
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He in fact lived a very long time and hence had a great deal of time to observe the world around him.
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I sense a tremendous amount of modernistic hubris in Christopher Hitchens.
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We are so much wiser and know so much more than those who've come before us.
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The older I get, the more I realize that is truly a foolish perspective to take.
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But be that as it may, he just again presents this as his ipsodix that we are just supposed to accept this, that this is how things were and it was a terrible, terrible state of man.
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Heaven just looks down upon this for the vast majority of time and then when heaven decides to do something about it, what it does is ridiculous.
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It's not in the right place. It should have been done in China where they could read. Again, if you just would challenge any element of this, how do you know they couldn't read amongst the people of God where written records are passed down?
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You may like China better than the Middle East, but there is a lot of evidence that that's a center of civilization and that literacy has been there for a very long time.
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There was a reason why we find all these clay tablets with chiseled languages in them that take us a long time to figure out because people in the ancient world weren't nearly as stupid as modern people would like to think they were.
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But be that as it may, he obviously wants to present the least accurate version of the position he's skewering because the only people he's trying to really impress are the people on his side of the fence anyways.
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He doesn't have to worry about the rest of us. And he says that in sort of a barbaric corner of the globe,
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God finally acts by means of human sacrifice. I imagine this is
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Christopher Hitchens' rather pitiful attempt to describe the self -giving of the
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Incarnate One. Again, I am left to wonder at the arrogance of a person who basically wants to just hear themselves speak and cares nothing as to whether there is accuracy in what he is saying and whether it really represents what the other side he's debating is.
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Again, it goes back to the fact that we as Christians have a much higher standard of truth than the atheist would.
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We have to try to accurately represent what they're saying even when they do not return the favor at all.
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This was not a quote -unquote human sacrifice. It was a self -giving. And it goes far beyond any kind of mere sacrificial concept that is there.
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But since God is the one providing the sacrifice, there is a self -giving that, of course,
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Hitchens completely ignores in regards to the Incarnation and the fact that this is a choice that is made by the triune
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God in eternity past. He then says that this which he has presented can't be believed by anyone.
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Well, of course, what he's presented isn't overly close to biblical Christianity to begin with, but he says that it cannot be believed but by someone who wants to be a plaything and a slave of a pitiless totalitarian power.
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A pitiless totalitarian power. Over and over again through this debate,
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Hitchens makes reference to this concept of slavery. I could not help but thinking the first time as I listened to this that the person
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I'm listening to is one of the most enslaved men I've ever heard. Christopher Hitchens is enslaved to his own sin.
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He is enslaved to his own rebellion. And he does not strike me.
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I know he tries to present himself as the great liberator. He referred to Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, born the same day, both great liberators.
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Because taking away a transcendental nature of man's being, the creature of God, to him is liberation because he so hates his creatureliness.
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But you see, when you hate your true nature and you engage in the suppression of the knowledge of God that's within you and you pervert the true nature that is yours into something else, that is the greatest slavery there is.
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And he is utterly consumed by it. He has no freedom whatsoever because he does not recognize the source of true freedom and the nature of true freedom.
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To be truly free is to recognize who you are, whose creature you are. And of course, the natural man who remains in his rebellion against God simply doesn't want to see that.
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And so, why can't, you know, I should mention he went through a whole list of things that if you've studied science, if you've studied history, if you've studied any of these things, you can't believe any of this.
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And of course there are Christian men who have studied all of those things who do believe those, the
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Christian message. He can't really explain that because this is just simply an emotional appeal on his part.
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It sounds good, but it doesn't have any reality to it. We do have to wonder, why can't
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Christopher Hitchens accurately represent Christianity? Why can't he actually deal with biblical
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Christianity? Most of the time he's, in this debate, he wasted time talking about, even misrepresented
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Rome, for crying out loud, about limbo. Didn't even understand what they had done correctly.
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You know, his knowledge of biblical Christianity is absolutely pitiful.
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It's pitiful. It's the only way to describe it. And yet he seems to want to continue in that level of ignorance.
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But it makes sense. His entire argument involves tapping into the natural hatred that the rebel creature has for God.
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He's not interested in accuracy. He's not interested in truth. He's interested in expressing his hatred for a sovereign
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God against whom he is in rebellion and encouraging others in that rebellion.
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That's the only way I can understand his behavior.
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And that's because the Bible perfectly describes Christopher Hitchens. He is the poster boy of the
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God -hater. He's described with almost eerie accuracy in the pages of Scripture as you hear him speak and express his hatred toward God.
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I know that the atheists who might be watching are not interested in hearing what the
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Scriptures say, but I'm not overly concerned about that personally. Listen to this description of the man who is in rebellion against God and see if it does not describe much of what we see going on today.
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Paul describes this state of the sinner in Romans chapter 1, and he speaks of the wrath of God.
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Yes, we actually do talk about the wrath of God. We are some amongst the few Christians left who are willing to speak about this.
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The wrath of God is revealed, is being revealed ongoing from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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You cannot suppress something you do not possess. Christopher Hitchens and those like him possess the truth, but they suppress it.
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They are holding it down, and they do so in unrighteousness. We need to understand, and I again recognize that this is far outside the normative viewpoints of our culture today, but to deny the existence of God is sinful.
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It is an act of sin. It is an act of rebellion. It is not a morally neutral act. It is an act of sin, one that sinners rejoice in committing, in fact.
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Those who suppress truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them.
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For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made, so they are without excuse, unapologia, without a defense.
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Man knows about the existence of the one true God through what has been created.
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Now, some interpret that to mean through looking outward at the outward creation.
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Some see that as looking inward at our conscience. I think it's both. I think as we look outward and we see the beauty of God's creation, the order of God's creation, which we see with more clarity now than we've ever seen before, this is evidence of the existence of the creator that is undeniable.
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Likewise, in the same way, when we look inwardly, either at our makeup, at the complexity, the biological complexity of our life, which clearly indicates an intelligence that has designed the tremendous complexity that we see, or inwardly at our conscience and the testimony of our conscience, we are left unapologia, without an apologetic, without a defense for our suppression of the truth of God and our rebellion against him.
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For even though, verse 21, they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.
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And notice it does not say that they become stupid. It does not say that they lose their intellect, but there is a darkening of the heart.
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You can have a great intellect, but a great intellect in a blackened room will still run into the wall.
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There must be guidance. There must be light. And when a person suppresses the knowledge of God, they walk in darkness.
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Their intellect will be guided to error because of their own self -interest in maintaining their rebellion against God.
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So, don't get the idea that the Bible says that the person who suppresses the knowledge of God cannot have an incredibly high
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IQ or speak very well like Christopher Hitchens can, but the reality is that there is another element to human predication.
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It's not just one's IQ. There is many a little old lady that has much more wisdom than many a scholar.
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It is the combination of these two things that is most important. Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible
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God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four -footed animals and crawling creatures.
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In other words, man engages in idolatry. When you don't worship the one true God, you begin to worship the creation around us.
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You begin to attribute to the creation the things that should only be attributed to the one true
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God. That is the very nature of idolatry. It can be very religious or it can be like Christopher Hitchens' idolatry.
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Never ever forget Christopher Hitchens is a very religious man. What do you mean he's a religious man?
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Well, he's on a crusade. He's on a quest. He is serving his
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God. He has his ultimate authorities. He may be his ultimate authority. His lust, his desires, his agenda, but he has his ultimate authority.
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He is a religious man. He has priorities that order his life. Don't ever forget that.
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And so, he engages in his own form of idolatry. As I've mentioned,
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Christopher Hitchens clearly hates God. And he may even be described in verse 30 of Romans chapter 1 when it gives a list of those upon whom the wrath of God comes.
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Slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents.
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Now, it's possible that that particular Greek instruction could be understood as hateful to God.
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That is, hated by God. It is a possible translation. But there is no question that the
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Bible describes those who hate God, those who rebel against him as well. It's interesting, as it, in a sad way, finishes the description of these people.
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It says, and although, this is verse 32, although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death.
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They not only do the same, but you know what they do? They give hearty approval to those who practice them.
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They encourage others. Join me in my sin and rebellion. Join me in spitting in God's face.
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That's a pretty accurate picture of Christopher Hitchens. So, what do you say when someone repeats
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Christopher Hitchens' argument to you? I say you boldly say to them, the scriptures tell us that God has created man for a purpose.
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And God has had that purpose from the very beginning, that man was created upright. Man was created to worship him.
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And man loves his sin. And yet, despite man's ungratefulness and man's rebellion,
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God has, in Jesus Christ, provided for his own self -glorification through the redemption of those who have faith in Jesus Christ, his people.
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You respond directly. You challenge the presuppositions. But there is one other aspect of Hitchens' presentation
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I would like to address right here at the end of my comments. We'll be looking at more of this debate a little later.
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But that is this constant repetition on the part of Christopher Hitchens, not only of his hatred of God, but of his hatred of the idea of being a creature, being created by God and hence accountable to him.
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At least with Hitchens, that's out in the open. It's plain, it's clear.
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It's easier to deal with that than to deal with the exact same attitude when it takes a religious and even theistic form in the form of false religion.
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Religion that panders to an autonomous man. You see, what
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Christopher Hitchens recognizes is what a lot of Christians don't. And that is, if God is
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God, I am not. If God is God, then I am his creature,
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I am accountable to him, he can do with me as he pleases because he's the creator.
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In some ways, Christopher Hitchens, in his own twisted way, understands the truth about God's sovereignty better than many
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Christians do. Because he recognizes that if God made you, if God is the potter and you are the clay, then
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God does have a right over that lump of clay to do with it as he pleases.
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And he hates that. But at least he's open about it. A lot of people hate that and they just cover it over with their false teachings, their sub -biblical teachings, whatever else it might be.
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But you see, the fact that the atheist hates that demonstrates the need of the
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Spirit of God to change the heart and the mind. That is the difference, the only difference, between those who will in heaven bow the knee before God in perfect worship and who now, in the confines of the church, bow and worship
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God. And a Christopher Hitchens and a
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Richard Dawkins and those who follow them, the only difference between the two, it's not a matter of what you've studied.
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It's not a matter of your intellect. The difference is a five -letter word called grace.
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G -R -A -C -E Because were it not for the grace of God, there go
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I. Were it not for the grace of God quelling that rebellion, taking out the heart of stone, giving me a heart of flesh, a biblical metaphor often mocked by those who call themselves
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Christians, then I would be applauding Christopher Hitchens, just as the atheists do today.
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A supernatural Christianity will not back off from the affirmation that God is
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God, He is sovereign, and He must change the hearts of sinful men to free them from slavery to sin and themselves and bring them into the freedom of being creatures of God, true creatures of God, who worship
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Him as we were designed to do. Thanks for watching.