A meeting of unlike minds

Christopher Hitchens, a Goliath of an author, and Adam English, a David of an academic, stage a holy war of words

Tuesday is fight night at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Raleigh. The pre-bout buzz suggests two likely scenarios: Either we'll see the lamb to the slaughter or an upset on the order of David and Goliath. In one corner will stand Christopher Hitchens, the famous columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate who has used his vast erudition and slashing wit to eviscerate subjects from Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger to Mother Teresa. Pugnacious and polemical, he believes that the only thing the meek will inherit is the wind.

In the other corner will be Adam C. English, an assistant professor of religion and philosophy at Campbell University in Buies Creek. He's already predicting defeat.

"I'm going to lose or at least certainly not win," English said. "Hitchens is a very skilled debater who's had every question thrown at him."

English, however, believes he has one almighty advantage: He has God on his side.

That may (or may not) prove decisive given the topic of their debate: the arguments Hitchens advances in his new book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (Twelve, $24.99, 307 pages). A lacerating and irreverent attack on all forms of faith -- especially Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- Hitchens' book details why he considers religion a "dangerous fantasy" that produces far more evil than good.

To promote his book, Hitchens, 58, who was reared in Britain but became a U.S. citizen last month, has arranged a series of confrontations with believers in various cities, including London, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle and New York, where he squared off with the Rev. Al Sharpton.

"I haven't written a book to help atheists win the argument," Hitchens said during a phone interview, "though that is the principal purpose of it. I have written a book that I hope will discomfort the faithful. So it seemed necessary to make myself available to them, to see if they want to challenge me in turn."

English, 33, a scholar who also serves as an interim minister at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Willow Spring, welcomes that challenge.

"Christians have a responsibility to hear the other side," he said in a phone interview. "If we are convinced we have the truth, then we should be open to anyone questioning that truth. ... I don't think God is afraid of questions or people seeking the truth. If we have the answers, that will come out; if we don't, that will as well."

Atheists push back

"God Is Not Great" is part of a spate of high-profile books that have challenged religious belief -- "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" by Sam Harris (2004), "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins (2006) and "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" by Daniel C. Dennett (2006). Hitchens says he and those authors call themselves "the four Musketeers," who are leading "a resistance, a push-back to an excess of clerical and religious bullying and stupidity in the recent past by a lot of people who have had enough of it. ...

"For too long, atheists have been told to keep their views to themselves," he said. "I didn't come to America to keep my mouth shut."

During the interview, Hitchens listed a series of events that galvanized him: The Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa calling for the assassination of his dear friend, the writer Salman Rushdie; the rise of the religious right in America; the unwillingness of politically correct leftists to confront most religious extremism; religious opposition to stem cell research, Darwinism and the distribution of condoms to fight AIDS in Africa; the attacks of 9/11; and the war in Iraq, which Hitchens vocally supports as a battle against the type of sectarian religious violence now destroying that country.