Christopher Hitchens, God hater, died of complications from oesophageal cancer last night; he is the first of the atheist Four Horsemen to meet his maker.
God’s mercy is greater than Hitchens’ hate: may Hitchens at last be willing to receive it.
From here:
I have one consistency, which is [being] against the totalitarian – on the left and on the right. The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes. And the origins of that are theocratic, obviously. The beginning of that is the idea that there is a supreme leader, or infallible pope, or a chief rabbi, or whatever, who can ventriloquise the divine and tell us what to do.
I think Hitchens is correct in defining totalitarianism as the enemy – although, “political enemy” would be more accurate. Where he misses the mark is identifying God as the supreme totalitarian.
In practice, the most evil totalitarians have been godless individuals who, without the restraints that fear of the Divine engenders, cavalierly visited murder and mayhem on their own people.
If the Triune God exists, as I believe he does, far from being a celestial tyrant, he is the creator of human freedom, a freedom which allowed humanity the choice of rebelling against its Creator to the cost of God himself in his atoning sacrifice on the cross.
If God does not exist, if the natural is all there is, the true tyrant is our genetic makeup and the molecules in our brains: they guarantee that no choice we make can ever be free of what they compel us to do.
From here:
Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death. Nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on. I have found, as the enemy becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before. I hope to help defend and pass on the lessons of this for many years to come, but for now I have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science, and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion. It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstitition [sic]. It is our innate solidarity, and not some despotism of the sky, which is the source of our morality and our sense of decency.
…. And don’t keep the faith.
But, of course, Hitchens is keeping the faith:
Faith that a dying organism can bolster the immunity of a randomly assembled conglomeration of molecules – otherwise known as comrades – to a belief in the transcendence which alone offers a remedy for the despair inherent in mortality.
Faith that he, Hitchens is right, that his mind, body, rationality, faculties and voice are subject to no other forces than the material.
Faith that the reasoning abilities he is so proud of, even though they are nothing but the flotsam of a chaotic universe, are, for a mysterious reason known only to himself, more trustworthy than those of Mother Teresa – a creation of the same primordial pandemonium – someone who has earned Hitchens’ undisguised scorn.
Faith that a trust in nothingness is somehow nobler than trust in a Creator.
Faith that the best efforts of medical science to prolong the time that a person struts and frets his hour upon the stage is of consequence when set against eternity.
A wonderful illustration of Psalm 14:1.
Try as I might, I can’t dislike Christopher Hitchens as much as I think I should.
At the very end of the following interview, when asked whether any evidence could change his mind about God’s existence, he concedes that, although none has yet, it is not impossible that some could appear that would.
This admission is refreshingly honest and brings him closer to agnosticism than atheism; perhaps we are seeing a mind concentrated by its imminent demise.
The riddle:
‘Can you name any moral action or ethical statement that could be made or performed by a believer but could not be made or performed by an unbeliever?’
The answer:
‘Here is my attempt to win my own prize. When Lech Walesa was starting his work in the Polish shipyards and the Polish Militia and the outer ring of the Polish Army were closing in on Gdansk, he was interviewed with his then fairly small group, and he was asked: “Aren’t you frightened, aren’t you afraid? You’ve taken on a whole powerful state and army – aren’t you scared?” And he said: “I’m not frightened of anything but God or anyone but God.”
‘This came back to me, I thought, well, this meets my two criteria. It’s certainly a noble thing to have said, a distinguished thing to have said, and I certainly couldn’t have said it. So it does meet both my criteria.’
From here
Of disgusting bile. The Canadian Charger is an “alternative” (alternative to sane, I presume) magazine that, according to the professor of communication studies, University of Windsor is one of the best examples of “alternative” – I’m going to add that to my annoying words list – media.
In an August 13th missive, Joshua Blakeney, whose photo seems to be a portrait of someone sitting on a cluster of burst haemorrhoids without the benefit of an inflatable ring cushion, declares that Christopher Hitchens, through his oesophageal cancer, is receiving his just desserts:
On June 30, Vanity Fair journalist Christopher Hitchens posted on the magazine’s website that he has cancer of the esophagus. As I was contemplating this revelation, I couldn’t help feeling that the neoconservative armchair warrior was getting his just desserts.
The prospect of Hitchens having to cancel engagements at a time when an Israeli-American assault on Iran seems imminent is positive for humanity, I argue, because it deprives the war propaganda machine of one of its most erudite apologists.
I disagree with Christopher Hitchens’ views on Christianity – although less so his opinion of Islam – and his sniping at people like Mother Teresa and Jerry Falwell was inexcusable. Even though Blakeney excoriates this with considerable relish, it is but a sidebar to Hitchens’ true crimes: what Joshua Blakeney really can’t stomach is that Christopher Hitchens “morphed from a “Trotskyite” into a Bush-supporting neoconservative”. And he supports Israel. Bring out the garlic and holy water.
The fact is, Christopher Hitchens is one of the most engrossing and bright political and social commentators of our time; agree with him or not, his cancer is a cause for sadness not rejoicing and, if it finally kills him, the world will be a less interesting place.
A couple of interviews with Christopher Hitchens:
One of the interestingly wrong points that Hitchens makes is that if he does end up making a deathbed confession of faith, we should not take it seriously since it would be the product of delirium, pain, panic or chemically altered brain functions: in other words, it wouldn’t be the “real” Hitchens. For an atheist, though, where the material is the only reality, it would still be the “real” Hitchens, since the version of this over-inflated ego that exists in any moment in time is the only real one there is. For Christians a Lord Marchmain style deathbed conversion would be an occasion of rejoicing; for atheists one of lament – but atheists would not be able to wriggle out of it being a real statement of faith by a real Hitchens.
Watching these, it would take a hard hearted person not to feel sorry for him.
From here:
Christopher Hitchens diagnosed with cancer, cuts short his book tour
Christopher Hitchens is being treated for cancer, forcing the D.C. writer to cut short his latest book tour. In a statement released through his publisher Twelve, the British-born provocateur, 61, said that he has “been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me.”
Now would be a good time to try praying for an atheist.
