Hitchen's Palpable Polanski Hypocrisy

Famous Loud Atheist Christopher Hitchens, whom Doug Wilson has pwn3d on a number of occasions, now writes about Roman Polanski. It's ugly reading.

Here's what's interesting.

Hitchens does not try to argue that Polanski's rape of the child was evil. He does not try to argue that Polanski's flight from justice was evil. He doesn't try to argue that Polanski's suing to protect his good name in England was hypocritical and evil. He does mention that Mohammed was betrothed to a girl when she was six, and took her when she was nine — but he does not argue that this was an immoral act. He also clucks and tuts about a Roman Catholic figure.

The closest Hitchens comes to a moral statement is, perhaps, his last sentence: "I would rather live in a country where children are protected and their predators prosecuted, and even (which in Hollywood is evidently not always the same thing) disapproved of."

"I would rather," Hitchens says. Well, just so. As an atheist, he cannot argue for what is transcendently better or worse, more or less moral. Note that Hitchens is left with just two things:

1. His preference
2. Brute force of law

How is this hypocritical, then? Well, ask why Hitchens is writing about Polanski. It is because Polanski's is a morally appalling story, and because Hollywood is behaving in a morally appalling way. And it is because Hitchens know that he can assume a Christian moral consensus between himself and his audience.

Hitchens cannot affirm, but Hitchens must assume, the absolute morality that comes from the God of the Bible. No atheist can live according to his stated premises. He can deny the ground he stands on; yet stand on it, he must.