Debate with Rev. Sharpton

The following is an entertaining and civil debate between the Rev. Al Sharpton and author Christopher Hitchens on the topic of whether morality can exist without God. 

One predominant topic of the debate was the question of morality. Sharpton obviously asked the question, “On what do we basis morality” without a supervisory being, falling back on often-quoted verbatim (but not by Sharpton) argument that if there is no god, everything is permissable. This is a line from “The Brother’s Karamazov,” which, even when I first read it many years ago, and knowing little about philosophy, theism, deism or any of it, struck me as a “profound” line, as Hitchens duly noted it was. In his rebuttal, Hitchens quoted Steven Weinberng: “Left to themselves, evil people will do evil things and good people will try to do good things, but if you want a good person to do a wicked thing, that takes religion.”

The question-answer session near the end, skipping past the crude jokes at the beginning, introduced topics like, Do we as humans have an innate need for ritual (church services, communion, mass, etc), Who created God, if he exists, and the last question, why  didn’t Sharpton, who holds the Christian title of reverend, not once defend the Bible. Sharpton answered that he was not there to defend the Bible, but to argue for God. And his argument seemed to boil down to personal experience (I feel him in my heart; therefore he’s real, for example), which can’t be quantified.

Despite Sharpton’s round-aboutness and, sometimes nonsensical answers, and Hitchens in-kind crassness, this entertained me enough to watch all the way through. And I must say, even if Sharpton didn’t quite match Hitchens’ arguments, Sharpton did match Hitchens’ overt confidence (even in the midst of the reverend’s sometimes puzzling responses) point for point.