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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."
Yeah, that whole "be nice to people" aspect of christianity sucks.
Rape, slavery, torture, genocide.
"be nice to people", the christian way.
(Yes, I know there's other "be nice to people" in there too, but it's kind of hard to take them seriously when you have all that other stuff in there).
And clearly "most christians" do that. Just like most atheists attack attack religious freedoms
Until he got cancer. Sorry anyone gets cancer, but I wonder if he "found god" before he passed away. For his sake, I hope he made peace with god.
Any religion that promotes supernaturalism or offers mythology as a substitute for reality is bad.
Let me interject something geek-worthy at this point:
"It is better to believe in God and be wrong in your belief than to not believe in God and be wrong in your unbelief."
--Blaise Pascal (paraphrased)
What if the real god is Allah, Shiva, Zeus or Odin?
The premise remains. Sure, Pascal was speaking from a Christian POV, but the logic is still valid.
What if the real god is judging us on how rationally we behave in a godless, toy universe he created?
A silly assertion. What if we really aren't having this conversation of our free will, but it's being predicated by a supreme being? I could come up with any number of alternative universes in which we might be having said conversation.
Pascal presents the options that Christianity is right, or atheism is right.
Looking at the bigger picture: He presents us with the idea that one option has an outcome favorable over the other. Of course, you can blind yourself with pedantic chicanery and conclude whatever you want to conclude.
This is what I love about religious debates: No one can prove their position, so it all boils down to faith. Yes, even atheists profess a faith that there is no Supreme Being.