Pot-stirring, hell, pot-smashing, author and journalist Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice) muses in Slate this week on what he’s “learned from debating religious people around the world.”  Typical for Hitchens, “Faith No More” is a nice balance of lucidity and venom.  But it’s also gracious to his current sparring partner, Pastor Douglas Wilson, a senior fellow at New St. Andrew’s College:

Wilson isn’t one of those evasive Christians who mumble apologetically about how some of the Bible stories are really just “metaphors.”  He is willing to maintain very staunchly that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and that his sacrifice redeems our state of sin, which in turn is the outcome of our rebellion against God.  He doesn’t waffle when asked why God allows so much evil and suffering?