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Christopher Hitchens Dies At 62
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the NY Times:
"Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died Thursday at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62. He took pains to emphasize that he had not revised his position on atheism, articulated in his best-selling 2007 book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, although he did express amused appreciation at the hope, among some concerned Christians, that he might undergo a late-life conversion. Mr. Hitchens's latest collection of writings, Arguably: Essays, published this year, has been a best-seller and ranked among the top 10 books of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review."
Among Greeks, probably best known for one of his less-blockbuster books, 1997's The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification .
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I'm not condemning Hitchens for having an opinion that's different than mine. I'm condemning Hitchens for promoting a war that's left at least a hundred thousand civilians dead.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I think it is nice that you brought up Dominionism*. Is is a movement that Christians as a whole are either willfully ignorant of or manipulated to the point that they are forced to agree, with the stakes being their own souls. Not looking this movement in the eye is modern American Christendom's single greatest failure; they allowed fascists to sneak in and pervert their highest ideals.
*For those not familiar with it, Dominionism, it is derived from a passage in Genesis: "and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
There is even a Dominion Church that actively advocates, very literally, world domination. Yes, the Evil Genius world domination. Many of these churches require that you walk through their book store before entering and exiting the sanctuary (at least in the two I have been in), making it the "Cracker Barrel Restaurant and Old Country Store" of Christendom. They even ask business owners to join their Dominion Business Network. In a couple US cities you'll find yourself driving past a Dominion Carwash, Dominion Title Loan and Dominion Fried Chicken, all business network members who are obligated to send non-taxable donations for inclusion in the Business Network Directory (I'd love to know if it also covers any licensing fees for use of the Dominion name).
Name me one wicked action that was committed in the name of religion.
I can't name one wicked action but I can name several.
How about The Crusades (1095-1291) which were primarily against the Muslims but also triggered increased persecution of Jews.
How about:
the Medieval Inquisition (1231-16th century)
the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834)
the Portuguese Inquisition (1536-1821)
the Roman Inquisition (1542-c. 1860)
How about the numerous witch trials from the 15th to the 18th centuries.
Yeah, nothing wicked there.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
There's even a book, Zen at War by Brian Daizen Victoria specifically focused on how Zen influenced Japanese ideology for WWII.
I am officially gone from