Blair attempted to persuade his verbal sparring opponent, writer Christopher Hitchens, that religion is a force for global good when he was asked by an audience member how religion influenced his decision to stand with the United States against Iraq. Blair acknowledged that religion has been used to lead people to commit indescribable acts, but it has also led people to commit acts of goodness. But Mr Blair, who converted to Catholicism in 2007, said it was also true that religion inspires acts of extraordinary good. He said it was "futile" to try to "drive religion out" and it was more important to concentrate on how to get people of different faiths to work together, particularly in the Middle East where the conflict would only be resolved if people worked across the "faith divide". Audience members voted on the debate and preliminary results posted on the Munk Debates website sided with Hitchens, with 68 percent saying that religion is more of a destructive than benign force in the world. He pointed to the good done by faith based organisations, including the millions of lives saved in Africa and care for the mentally ill, disabled and destitute, adding: "The proposition that religion is unadulterated poison is unsustainable. "Once you assume a creator and a plan it make us subjects in a cruel experiment," Hitchens said before causing widespread laughter by comparing God to "a kind of divine North Korea". In a question from the audience Mr Blair was asked what role faith played in his decision to invade Iraq. "It's very touching for Tony to say that he recently went to a meeting to bridge the religious divide in Northern Ireland, where does the religious divide come from?" "You know, one of the things that I sometimes say to people is, look, the thing about religion and religious faith is if you are a person of faith, it's part of your character, it defines you in many ways as a human being. "It doesn't do the policy answers, I am afraid. All my decisions were based on policy and so they should be, and you may disagree with those decisions but they were made because I genuinely believed them to be right," said Blair before the audience of more than 2,600 at Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall.
– Famous atheist Christopher Hitchens took on famous Catholic convert Tony Blair in a debate on whether religion is a good or bad thing for the world yesterday. And while it's impossible to declare a winner on such a subjective ... oh wait, this is 2010, which means we had an audience vote: Hitchens won with 68%. Highlights include Blair insisting that religion played no role in his decision to invade Iraq and Hitchens—AP described him as "pale and drawn" amid his cancer fight—comparing the concept of God to a "divine North Korea." Blair: "Religion doesn't do policy." At another point: "It is undoubtedly true that people commit horrific acts of evil in the name of religion. It is also undoubtedly true that people do acts of extraordinary common good inspired by religion." Hitchens: "Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick, and commanded to be well. And over us, to supervise this, is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea." More at the Independent and the Guardian.