ExploreTruth

I watched a debate recently between Christopher Hitchens and Douglass Wilson…partly because I’m somewhat intrigued by any constructive debates on the big questions, and partly because Christopher Hitchens recently passed away. I still have yet to finish any of his books, however, I’ve seen various recorded talks he’s given online, and usually enjoy hearing his perspective on God,and religion. Not that I completely agree with everything he says. However, I do appreciate an engaging public intellectual, who attempts to speak intelligently from a place, which in the religious landscape, is often refreshing.

And although I’m wary of the profitability of apologetic arguments in the defense of Christianity, I appreciated some of the responses Douglass Wilson gave during the debate(found below).

That being said. I’m usually still left wanting…after listening to debates concerning religion, or the existence of God. Simply because they often represent the totality of an issue with a narrow set of polarizing viewpoints, that simply don’t seem to represent the wider spectrum of perspectives on the subject.

In this debate, and in general, I appreciated the ability to openly discuss something that for many can be very difficult to discuss in a thoughtful and constructive way. And although I appreciate the modeling of successful dialogue – where ideas get to civilly duke it out, as opposed to discussions descending into high-pitched, personal attacks. I see the value of inviting more voices and perspectives into a conversation, than is demonstrated in this documentary.

Reminds me of something I recently read…where John Herman Randall, Jr. speaks to the value of having an intentional appetite for “imaginative perspectives.”

Here is not the practice so much as the poetry of ideas. Those visions are perspectives, from differing standpoints, of the activities of men and their ideal enterprises, on the same permanences of man’s experience of the world. In seeking the universal structure of that world and of man’s varied experience of it and in it, it is an imaginative liberation to look through as many different eyes as we may.

What do you think? Do you find that your perspectives on some issue are sometimes just not represented in many public discussions?