Peter Hitchens' introduction strikes me as more self-conscious and more self-aware than his brother's. Christopher gets carried away in swells and rhapsodies of words, often making claims that no logical argument could ever verify. Peter is more circumspect, aware of the limitations of words and reasons. For himself, he says that his belief (after long years of atheism) is the result of being convinced "by experience and reason." But he does not believe that that kind of conviction is transferable by argument alone. The causes of belief and unbelief lie deeper than reason: "I do think they have reasons for their belief, as I have reasons for mine, which are the real foundations of this argument" ( I hear echoes here of Pascal's "the heart has its reasons, which reason knows not of"). He stresses his experience of the emotional foundations of his brother's attitude, the deep and perhaps, unexamined, springs of his brother's need to attack belief. He expresses some frustration at Christopher's inability to even see, much less acknowledge, some of the rational holes in his position. "He is astonishingly unable to grasp that these assumptions are problems for his argument." If there is to be hope for change it lies at levels deeper than the reasons he deploys in the service of his mounting anger. "I believe that passions as strong as his are more likely to be countered by the force of poetry, which can ambush the human heart at any time."
As both books are not scholarly texts, but popular works written by apologists, it is perhaps appropriate to close this first pair of parallel readings with an admission by Peter (which could have been said just as aptly by Christopher had he had the self-awareness necessary to see it).
"My book, like all such books, is aimed mainly at myself. All polemical authors seek to persuade themselves above all."
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