is the dean of our big Episcopal church and is more like the latter sort, although he's pretty warm and funny as opposed to snooty.

I think at the end of the day, where Dawkins & Hitchens seem to divide is that Dawkins says religion sucks and we should get rid of it and Hitchens says religion sucks and it's fine with him if you hold irrational beliefs so long as you're happy with that and don't try to press them on anyone else.

But you know, we in SF just don't know WHAT to make of Hitchens because the whole anti-theism thing is ALL the rage here right now, but this is also a city that HATES the war on Iraq, so he's a quandary. I really really liked it that the first question from the audience was a challenge to his opinion on secular states, and he ended his answer by saying, watch out -- don't challenge me on this unless you're ready for a fight, and then the next question was a not-well-thought-through mumbledy jumble by an older woman who challenged some of his comments on Iraq and Sadaam Hussein and he went for the jugular. My companion said, "He's being mean," and I said, "No, he's being intellectually honest and he also warned us all not five seconds ago not to ask about bullshit that we don't really know about."

Hitchens said that if he were to properly sum up his feelings about religion, it would come out like Philip Larkin's poem, Church Going

Philip Larkin - Church Going
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.