I am greatly saddened that Christopher Hitchens is gone. There is no one with whom I disagreed more who I admired so much.
I emailed Christopher several times since his diagnosis with cancer, my last correspondence with him occurring the day after Thanksgiving. I expressed my prayers and concern for him. He responded immediately and graciously, and even said he would “love to renew our debates.” That gave me hope he was recovering. Now all hope is gone.
Although he was an opponent of my Christian worldview, I never felt that he was an opponent of me personally. I met him for the first time backstage in September 2008 at Virginia Commonwealth University before the first of our two debates. It was my first debate with anyone (save my wife, who routinely annihilates me), and I had studied mightily to go up against such a brilliant intellect. Upon meeting him I said, “Christopher, I know we are on different sides of the God issue, but I appreciate you and your work. In fact, I’m kind of a fan.” He paused, shot me a mischievous look, and declared, “The night is young!”
That night we had a spirited but rambling exchange. Hitchens could read technical manuals and keep an audience spell bound, so our audience was entertained. But as even one of the atheist organizers of the event admitted, he rarely directly engaged my arguments for God during the debate. He did little better in his book, dismissing over two millennia of rigorous philosophical argumentation for theism from Aristotle to Aquinas to Craig in less than nine pages.
In our second debate I asked him how, as an atheist, he explained the origin of the universe out of nothing—that all space, time and matter had a beginning out of non-being, which would imply that its cause is spaceless, timeless and immaterial. Indeed, since nature itself was created, the evidence points to an uncaused First Cause that transcends nature. After a long joke that went nowhere (but did entertain), Hitchens finally rested on the fact that he was not a physicist. Of course, that wouldn’t mean he could just ignore the evidence from physics. But he did and many in the audience applauded. Even my Dad, who was present that night, was impressed with Christopher’s ability to woo an audience while avoiding the question!
Hitchens was also a man of courage. Backstage at our second debate in March 2009, I asked him if he ever got death threats for his outspoken opposition to Islam. “Islamofacism” he called it.
“Of course,” he said.