What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas. On Friday July 11 the libertarian conference FreedomFest will have, as its featured event, a debate on "Christianity, Islam and the War on Terror" between Christopher Hitchens and me. The media will be there, and the organizers also expect to have the debate up on the web. (Just in case Richard Dawkins is listening, I'll have to remember not to use Hitler-style shrieks and yells.)
In thinking about this debate, I'm reminded of an argument that Hitchens made in our New York debate last October. At that time I did not know how to answer his point. So I employed an old debating strategy: I ignored it and answered other issues. But Hitchens' argument bothered me.
Here's what Hitchens said. Homo sapiens has been on the planet for a long time, let's say 100,000 years. Apparently for 95,000 years God sat idly by, watching and perhaps enjoying man's horrible condition. After all, cave-man's plight was a miserable one: infant mortality, brutal massacres, horrible toothaches, and an early death. Evidently God didn't really care.
Then, a few thousand years ago, God said, "It's time to get involved." Even so God did not intervene in one of the civilized parts of the world. He didn't bother with China or India or Persia or Egypt. Rather, he decided to get his message to a group of nomadic people in the middle of nowhere. It took another thousand years or more for this message to get to places like India and China.
Here is the thrust of Hitchens' point: God seems to have been napping for 98 percent of human history, finally getting his act together only for the most recent 2 percent? What kind of a bizarre God acts like this?
I'm going to answer this argument in two ways. First, in this blog I'm going to show that Hitchens has his math precisely inverted. Second, in a future blog I'll reveal how Hitchens' argument backfires completely on atheism. For today's argument I'm indebted to Erik Kreps of the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
An adept numbers guy, Kreps noters that it is not the number of years but the levels of human population that are the issue here. The Population Reference Bureau estimates that the number of people who have ever been born is approximately 105 billion. Of this number, about 2 percent were born before Christ came to earth.
"So in a sense," Kreps notes, "God's timing couldn't have been more perfect. If He'd come earlier in human history, how reliable would the records of his relationship with man be? But He showed up just before the exponential explosion in the world's population, so even though 98 percent of humanity's timeline had passed, only 2 percent of humanity had previously been born, so 98 percent of us have walked the earth since the Redemption."
I have to agree with Kreps's conclusion: "Sorry Hitchens. And Hallelujah."
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 36)
1. Da'dolph D'Itler, you silly little God Nazi. This is exactly why we keep demanding proof of your all perfect Fairy Tale. You suck this bird-vomit down like a good little nestling, while the rest of us have matured to the point where we say...Ugh! Bird Vomit! And head off in the other direction.
But not you and yours. You all devise ridiculous contraptions for God to be imperfectly smart and give him a pass that any other person would just shrug you off with a hearty WTF. God didn't drop by for tea and say "Time to get involved," anymore than Santa Claus said "Time to put the toys in the sleigh" or a serpent said "Taste the fruit" or Jiminy Cricket sang to a wooden puppet.
Dawkins was right. You are a silly Nazi.
Tim at 12:26AM on Jul 9th 2008
2. Oh good god, this is even more pathetic than the LAST blog! Mathematically inverse, WTF? This argument is as stupid as the physicists that insist that there must be ELEVEN dimensions to justify their mathematics.
Get fucking over it people, live and let live, you pathetic morons! Or don't...whatever!
dipshits...
Let the Games Begin!
Aloha!
Robert at 12:42AM on Jul 9th 2008
3. In a future blog? Lame squared inverse is at least 1/4 as lame as this...
Robert at 1:11AM on Jul 9th 2008
4. P.S. "Kreps noters..."
duuuuude...do you proof-read ANYTHING?
Anyone need a hammer?
Robert at 1:12AM on Jul 9th 2008
5. And furthermore..."god's timing"? How typical. You use the convenient to justify the illogical.
Quoth my sagacious 17 year old daughter. "What-f***ing-ever!"
Robert at 1:23AM on Jul 9th 2008
6. Sorry..."In vino veritas..."
Like I give a fuck.
Robert at 1:25AM on Jul 9th 2008
7. Postscript:
Just to show how lame and pathetic this is-
Double D and Hitchens are debating mythological animals in the CAPTIAL of fantasy!
Who gives a shit!?
A simple show of hands will do...
Robert at 1:31AM on Jul 9th 2008
8. Truly...How many people are going to waste their time in Vegas by attending this- like...FOUR? And two of those will be drunks who wandered in by accident. Maybe three.
Robert at 1:34AM on Jul 9th 2008
9. DD, what a terrible, terrible argument. I guess god hated Homo Erectus?
Ryan Anderson at 1:35AM on Jul 9th 2008
10. G'night! (hic!)
Robert at 1:36AM on Jul 9th 2008
11. OMG!!! Did I really write "captial"?
Like, how totally fucking embarrassing!
Aloha!
Robert at 1:40AM on Jul 9th 2008
12.
DoubleD,
why should Dawkins debate you? You don't have any scientific credibility, and you only want to promote your religious (christian) agenda. It is not fear, but it is the recognition that a debate with you would be a waste of time.
JefFlyingV at 1:43AM on Jul 9th 2008
13. But seriously...Dinesh, are you fucking SERIOUS?
This was written (paraphrased from OBJECTIVE, wasn't it?) by your retarded daughter, right?
Robert at 1:44AM on Jul 9th 2008
14. Hmmmmm...Titty-bar in Vegas- or a debate of DD vs. Hitchens? Wow, not enough alcohol on the planet to say THAT ONE!
Robert at 1:46AM on Jul 9th 2008
15. Wow! If I had a joint, and the wisdom of Goddess, this would actually be interesting.
Robert at 1:49AM on Jul 9th 2008