Tony Blair Debates Religion With Atheist Hitchens

Famous atheist Christopher Hitchens took on famous Catholic convert Tony Blair in a debate on whether religion is a good or bad thing for the world yesterday. And while it's impossible to declare a winner on such a subjective ... oh wait, this is 2010, which means we had an audience vote: Hitchens won with 68%. Highlights include Blair insisting that religion played no role in his decision to invade Iraq and Hitchens—AP described him as "pale and drawn" amid his cancer fight—comparing the concept of God to a "divine North Korea."

• Blair: "Religion doesn't do policy." At another point: "It is undoubtedly true that people commit horrific acts of evil in the name of religion. It is also undoubtedly true that people do acts of extraordinary common good inspired by religion."
• Hitchens: "Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick, and commanded to be well. And over us, to supervise this, is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea."

More at the Independent and the Guardian. (More Christopher Hitchens stories.)