By YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN - INDEPENDENT
Added: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 09:33:15 UTC

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's article, below, is a predictable piece of plague-on-both-your-houses-ing, but I take encouragement from the brevity of the shrift she is getting from commenters on her own page in the Independent. Increasingly I get the feeling we are winning the battle for hearts and minds.
Richard

Now here is Yasmin's piece, beginning with the heading, "Belief and scepticism deserve better champions than these two."

Coming on Friday, in Toronto, the big face-off between Godzone Tony Blair and Godless Christopher Hitchens! They believe that attacking Iraq was absolutely the right thing to do, but the former uses Christianity as an alibi for his political decisions – intimations of divine reassurance brought on by fervent prayers – and ardently believes in celestial goodness, while his adversary is contemptuous of religion, hates its global influence. Should be a titanic clash. The brainy braggarts will use sophistry and scorn, score points and punch – until, the hope is, one finally gives up and is laid low.

Can't see that happening. Can you? Both are excruciatingly self-righteous; their eyes shine with the loony light of absolutism; they are men of ideological wars without end, propagandists who have spun themselves into unedifying prophets. Belief and scepticism deserve better champions than these two, I feel, perhaps because they seem to have no heart and no room in their heads either for ambiguity or that unknowingness so many of us struggle with.

Read on

TAGGED: CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, DEBATE POINTS, POLITICS, RELIGION