Is there a need for God?

Debate at Edinburgh university- Adam Deen and Tim Maguire (Humanist society Scotland)

http://www.adamdeen.com/debates/videos/287-is-there-a-need-for-god

What do Gadaffi and Christopher Hitchens have in common?

Col Muammar Gaddafi the eccentric dictator was renowned for his cruelty and extravagance.  Throughout his 40 year reign of terror, he established a family fortune estimated to be in excess of $20 billion. But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and in his last moments, Gaddafi was terrified, cowering in a drain under a motorway, reduced to a wounded sewer rat.  As he was discovered by the rebel mob, he was dragged throughout the streets, beaten, sodomised with a blade, and his life was ended with a bullet to the head. Finally, his body was placed on a car to be paraded like a hunter’s proud catch of the day.

Tragic as it might be, Gaddafi could have avoided this outcome. When the up-rising received NATO support, when the rebel mobs had surrounded him, he could have acknowledged that his tyranny was coming to its bitter end.  However, Gaddafi stood defiant to the very last fight, as further loss of territory amplified his intransigence, ‘We will stay in our land dead or alive’ he said. I have no doubt that in his very last moments, he must have been reconsidering these bold words.
Why was he not able to see what the world could see so clearly? Like all tyrants, it was pride that blinded Gaddafi. The vice that created him was also the source of his destruction. Tyranny is the embodiment of pride.   Theologians regard pride as one of the most fatal of the seven deadly sins – It is defined as an excessive belief in one’s own abilities, which interferes with the individual’s recognition of ones fragility and humility. No matter how immense you think you are, no matter how much power you have, in the grand scheme of things, that power is ephemeral. This essential insight is somehow drowned when one is intoxicated with self-importance.  C.S. Lewis once made the poignant point “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you’re looking down, you can’t see something that’s above you.”  No matter how powerful a tyrant you are, whoever you may think you are, the reality is you are an infinitesimal spec that resides in a cosmos governed by an immensely superior power that will account you, a power beyond anyone of us – including Arab despots…
Gaddafi could, in an eerie way, have foreseen this fate if he had simply opened the Quran.  He could have recognised himself in the stories of Pharaoh.  The Quran uses Pharaoh as a symbol of pride and arrogance and a lesson for us to understand their destructive capabilities.  Despite Pharaoh’s relentless rebellion, he was given countless opportunities to humble himself before God and to release the Israelites. Ultimately, the destructive nature of Pharaoh’s pride is recorded in eternity as warning for us all.

“Pharaoh said: “O chiefs! I know not that you have a god other than me, so kindle for me a fire, O Haman, to bake bricks out of clay, and set up for me a lofty tower in order that I may look at the God of Moses; verily, I think that he (Moses) is one of the liars. And he and his hosts were arrogant in the land, without right, and they thought that they would never return to us”

Pride blinded Pharaoh from the futility of his rebellion against God. Pharaoh’s story is there to remind us not to be deluded by any scale of self-importance.   There is tragedy in the fact Gaddafi ignored the lessons of the Quran which could have helped him avoid following Pharaoh’s fate.
So what is the link between Christopher Hitchens and a dictator like Gaddafi, you are no doubt thinking? It is essentially pride – both men are utterly consumed by it.

In June 2010, Hitchens was tragically diagnosed with Esophageal cancer that is now at stage 4. In a recent conference held in October, making his first public appearance in months, Christopher Hitchens said, as he addressed the audience looking very frail, that his ‘time’ was coming.   Over the years Hitchens the author of “God is not Great: and How Religion Poisons Everything,” has seldom said anything remotely positive about religion. With death closing in, one could be forgiven for wondering whether Hitchens might temper his provocative view of religion? On the contrary. Hitchens claims that the sight of death has strengthened his atheism, as his comrade Dawkins praised him for showing his atheist determination even in the face of death.  One would hope that Hitchens would give up his vitriolic speech against religion and allow for the possibility of God’s mercy. But Hitchens’ pride knows no bounds – pulling the rug of salvation from under his own feet, he said “I am not going to have a foxhole conversion”, and most poignantly “if I should turn to religious beliefs in the final days of my life then you know the cancer has reached my brain”.

It is tragic to see that Hitchens’ hatred for God and religion is so great, he’d rather shut firmly closed the window of possibility that might allow him to change his mind.   One might argue that these are the normal utterings of man who simply has not been convinced of the existence of God.  But it seems to me there is more to it than that.   The infamous Friedrich Nietzsche, who proclaimed the death of God, once said that if God did exist, he could not accept that he was not God.  (Not long after this, Nietzsche was diagnosed as clinically insane…)  In a similar vein, Hitchens has said that even if heaven did exist, he wouldn’t want to be a part of it. This statement epitomises pride. Think about this for a moment – Hitchens is saying that even if he discovered that he was wrong, he would still be defiant in his beliefs. This suggests his grievance is not really about evidence or reason, but rather that Hitchens’ deep turmoil relates to something much more personal, that he despises God, whether he exists or not.

As Hitchens stares into the abyss of death, rather than seeing God, like so many of us do, all he sees is a reflection of himself, that perpetuates his uncompromising pride.

Written by MDI Speaker Adam Deen

http://www.adamdeen.com