Man with his burning soul Has but an hour of breath To build a ship of Truth In which his soul may Sail on the sea of death For death takes toll Of beauty, courage, youth Of all but Truth.
Blair argued for the proposition that religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it.
Preliminary results on the Munk website said 68 per cent of the votes backed Hitchens and 32 per cent Blair.
Both men gained about 10 percentage points from the pre-debate standings, when 21 per cent were undecided.
Hitchens argued that religion is divisive and causes conflicts or makes them worse.
Blair conceded that "horrific acts of evil" have been committed in the name of religion, but said people like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, who opposed religion, had been evil, too. "I agree in a world without religion, that the religious fanatics may be gone, but I ask you: Would fanaticism be gone?"
Blair pointed to the Northern Ireland peace process as an example of different religions working for peace.
Hitchens replied that 400 years of religious warfare in Ireland entailed "people killing each other's children depending on what kind of Christian they were."
"To terrify children with the image of hell … to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?" Hitchens said.
Blair said bigotry and prejudice are not "wholly owned subsidiaries" of religion. But he said the hardest argument he faced was the assertion that evil done in the name of religion is based in scripture.
The ancient religious texts contain many ideas that now appear "very strange and outdated," he said, but religions must be seen as a whole.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
”
