STUPIDITY

Round about 2'50" he frames the issue as an immediate personal challenge: if religion was debunked would you change your ways? Would you abandon the morality that you grew up with.

The civilisational challenge is intergenerational. Would you be able to bring up your young children to be moral? You've probably made a good start, and the surrounding culture is still on side. What about your grandchildren? Looking here twenty years ahead to when your children start their own families. Will the morality that you grew up with be grandad's old fashioned stuff. Looking ahead to after your death, your grandchildren may admonish their children: that is immoral, great-grandad would be turning in his grave! Will that stick? Will it work as well as "that is immoral, God will punish you."?

At 3'38" Hitchens asks "How can we build a just city?" Presumably, not in a day. His position needs to think intergenerationally.

One curiosity is that he gives his speech to an audience of nice, well meaning, people. His "would you abandon morallity?" question works for his audience. Would it work as well if Hitchens did a Johnny Cash and gave his talk at Folsom Prison? "Would you abandon morallity?" "Sir, I already did, that is why I am in prison.".

I think that Hitchens suffers from the typical mind fallacy. Mr A knows his own mind, and thinks that everybody is like him. He imagines a utopia, and it might even be a good one, contingent on every-one being like him. But they are not.