Meh - he never gives any real arguments. He just says, "isn't it obvious" over and over.

He's just an unhappy man with nothing to help in his struggle with the bottle. Why that gives him credibility about the nature of the universe is a mystery.

I don't know what you're talking about, he gives plenty of examples. They may be nothing more than observations, but that's all you really need when you're arguing against something that has no factual basis and revels in the supposed 'perfection' of its design.

Sure, attack the man, not his irrefutable words.

An old philosophy teacher of mine and I are still in contact. The other day I asked him a question about theism and science and this was his reply:

"Yes, the problem is that of 100 people who have a degree in science or claim to know what science is, only an extreme minority really apprehends what science actually is, does, and can do. In fact, I have on several public occasions inadvertently embarrassed even award winning specialized scientists, such as physicists, based on their ignorance about the nature and scope of science, properly speaking.

One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty. People who '...are more than happy to believe that all theists must necessarily be stupid and ignorant,' are people who have either fallen victim to false pride or who have an understanding of science that is extremely immature and indoctrinated."

Hitchens strikes me as one of the immature and indoctrinated people of whom he speaks. There are so many things that he simplifies and talks about in partial truth that I don't even know where to begin. For one thing, he seems to completely misunderstand the purpose for Christ's appearance on Earth. He also seems to forget that man has taken free rein with religion and that the sexism that goes on is a result of society's affect on theism, not theism's affect on society. Religious sexist practices and attitudes are the result of either follies of mankind or false religion.

I see Hitchens do this time and time again. He finds fault with religious followers and practices and claims there is no god. I find great fault with countless religions, their beliefs, and their practices. They endlessly misinterpret scripture. But God is the perfect being. We are not. Our faults do not prove God's non-existence no matter how much Hitchens tries to convince us that they do.

thepinky,
your argument is worse than hitchens', when you say 'false religion' - is that supposed to mean there is a true religion?
and what's 'god is the perfect being' supposed to mean? which god, what about polytheisms?...
i could go on, but i'd just like to point out that someone that believes in young-earth creationism (that disagrees with evolution) isn't fully able to grasp the implications of what we've discovered with science.
theism in itself is just a point of view, like atheism, but being religious is indoctrination and poisoning of the mind by writings that we now know can't be true.