They say it was a walk-over for Hitchens but I didn’t see it that way. That’s the thing about debate: unlike in sport where the result is final, with rhetoric who the winner is can still be a matter of opinion.

Blair had the harder job. It’s more difficult to argue for a thing than against. If you’re case involves something unprovable and not amenable to evidence, like faith,

then it’s tough to beat a worthy empiricist. Religious people end up sounding irrational in such debates. If they would bite the bullet and stop trying to make the case that the thing they believe in is actually true and just argue that believers feel better for believing then their position would be easier. To some extent that’s what Blair did. He said that people like him (and by extension, humanity) were improved by their faith. He also pointed out that bigotry and prejudice are not "wholly owned subsidiaries" of religion, adding: "I agree in a world without religion, that the religious fanatics may be gone, but I ask you: Would fanaticism be gone?"

Hitch got the votes though. The motion that religion is a force for good in the world was defeated 68/32. It may be one of his last victories as it looks like that great polemicist won’t be around much longer having late stage cancer, ironically for a man of speech, of the oesophagus. I’ll honour him here by quoting some of his remarks.

From the debate:

"It's very touching for Tony to say that he recently went to a meeting to bridge the religious divide in Northern Ireland, but where does the religious divide come from? Four-hundred years and more in my own country of birth of people killing each other's children depending on what kind of Christian they were."

“...and making Northern Ireland the most remarkable place in northern Europe for unemployment, ignorance, poverty and I would say stupidity too.”

From God Is Not Great:

“Organised religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism... hostile to free enquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.”

CNN interview:

“Religion ends and philosophy begins. Just as alchemy ends and chemistry begins.”