Hitchens vs McGrath – Finally!

I have not finished reading your summary yet, Glenn, but I will get through it in the next few days. One thing that stood out to me write away was your point that Hitchens undermines himself from one sentence to the next. I agree with your logic, and the route you took in your criticism of Hitchens, and I wanted to add that Hitchens being able to pay off a debt for someone, taking another’s place in prison, and even dying for another effectively means “forgiving” them; and if not, it at least means setting up the opportunity of forgiveness for the people Hitchens would play proxy for. So, in one deft swoop, Hitchens has contradicted himself by suggesting that he cannot forgive another their sins in any religious sense because it would reflect the immorality of forgiveness in religion, and then turned around and set up the same scenario as the Christian religion whereby sins can be forgiven: namely, through sacrifice and acceptance.