So, early in the debate, Hitchens asserts that atheists are capable of moral action – that is, that moral acts do not require a belief in a God who directs the laws of morality. In the question posed at 1:41, it was noted that atheists who have engaged in the political process and who have led nations, have caused untold destruction of human life. How then, the questioner asks, can one defend atheists as those who will not kill – that is, as those who act morally?
Hitchens begins by acknowledging that atheists, too, are capable of being part of these large-scale immoral political movements. He then asserts that “fascism is another word for the Christian Catholic right wing.” Then, moving on to national-socialism, he claims that it was a pagan movement that was blessed by Catholic and Christian religious leaders. He then claims that the Church never excommunicated Nazis because the Church and the Nazi party were allied in their stands on anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism.
His next claim is even more odd. Noting that Stalin wouldn’t have been a very good dictator if he hadn’t used his predecessor’s standing (as ‘God-like’), he nevertheless challenges the audience to find a leader who threw off theocracy in favor of secular humanism and went on to be a mass murderer.
Peter Hitchens replied that the leaders of the French Revolution are just that example. (Christopher Hitchens then botches his entire challenge, by asserting that a certain amount of bloodletting, in order to purge a nation of its clerics, is necessary when a secular regime takes over.)
