Through the years, people who knew him told me he was a babbling drunk. Others hated him for his intransigent atheism. After 9-11, he defended some pretty awful political ideas.
Yet to the end of his days he remained one of the most readable, gutsy, iconoclastic and strong-minded writers.
His repeated debunkings of Mother Teresa were a breath of fresh air — not because the old nun was a bad woman (good or bad, I really don’t know; no doubt a mixed bag like all of us), but because she was the subject of absurdly unhealthy adulation and mythologizing. He questioned her precisely because nobody else dared. (The bit about her “divine light” — courtesy of Kodak — has always been a favorite.)
He went where others feared to go, dug in, and made those subjects his own. He opposed the same kind of unthinking credulity that has enabled tyrants to create iron-fisted rule in the name of “freedom.” Agree or disagree with his particular views, that’s a job that needs doing.
Oh, Hitchens, too bad you couldn’t have lived and written until you were 92!
I am sorry to hear about Hitchens, but I fear he spawned the largest cult of bigotry and hate seen in modern times. I hope it gave him comfort in his last days.
Grey Lady — are you talking about the militant form of atheism he and Richard Dawkins popularized?
If so, my thought on that (FWIW) is that they were definitely being embarrassingly certain about something no one can be certain of. But “largest cult of bigotry and hate”? I have to disagree. In a brawl between supporters of Hitchens/Dawkins atheism and militant fundamentalist religion of any sort, I think the religionists would outnumber the atheists so hugely that the poor intellectual folk wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance.
Upon reflection I agree with Grey Lady. The older generation were the church-goers and “god-botherers”. Their descendants despise spirituality whether organized or no, have little to no family ties or interest in perpetuating their own family, and thus find it far easier to adopt the gods of collectivism and the state. At least in the West, and at least in the more urban centers I unfortunately find myself living closer to than the rural areas.
Just reading about his death before jumping here.
Voices like that I tend to miss when they’re gone. He might have stirred up a lot, but he also made you think — if for no other reason than to defend what you believed.
By “largest cult of bigotry and hate” do you mean atheists? I think that is pretty darned funny, if so.
Claire we can agree,
neither side knows for sure both positions take a leap of faith.
Grey Lady — Yup. It’s pretty ironic that Hitchens, who was so against credulity, was credulous himself in that area. Oh, the things about ourselves that we don’t see!
I don’t despise spirituality; I despise delusion. And by delusion I mean the belief that something “supernatural” exists in spite of all the evidence that it doesn’t. I have been called “spiritual” by some people even though I am almost as “militant” in my atheism as Hitchens or Dawkins. Yet, I have strong family ties, and I have no use for forced collectivism of any sort, nor for States. It bewilders me how otherwise rational atheists can still believe in today’s most popular god (the State), and how otherwise rational anarchists can still believe in god. To say that atheism makes it “easier” to be a State worshiper- maybe, but the vast majority of the most dedicated State worshipers I have personally known are “mainstream” Christians. But, your life is your business, as long as you stay out of mine.
And, the notion that atheism takes a “leap of faith” equal to supernaturalism is … well…
Sure. You could have faith in that teapot orbiting Saturn, and I could have “faith” that it isn’t there, but really, whose faith is more grounded in reality and knowledge of how things really are?
Ah, but Kent, would you devote a large part of your career, and even write a book, swearing absolutely that there is no teapot orbiting Saturn?
BTW, here’s a great article on Hitchens:
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-christopher-hitchens-20111216,0,76.story
He was a complex contrarian.
If I saw that the teapotists were advocating and passing “laws” forcing me to act as though I believed in the teapot, then I just might do that.
And here’s Hitchens — in the observation of his old friend Christopher Buckley — belting out a hymn.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/12/postscript-christopher-hitchens.html
I agree with Pat-if nothing else,at least he made you think,and look at your own beliefs.
I have to say that the Christopher Hitchens cancer piece reminds me of something Uncle Screwtape would have written. Poor Christopher strikes me as having been a deeply unhappy man. Contrast it, say, with what John Piper has to say about his cancer treatment. There’s such a deep divide here. Read Matthew 10:35-36 and compare Christopher with his brother Peter, for example.
Christopher’s passing brings to mind 2 Maccabees 12:39-45. May he receive mercy and grace.
And as one of those idle lottery-winning fantasies — it would be amusing to see if, say, one could get Burt Rutan or the SpaceX folks to put a beautiful engraved teapot with Kent’s name on it in orbit around Saturn 😉
I disagreed with Hitchens on several specifics but he took the world at face value. That is a rare ability.
I came here to let Claire know that Christopher Hitchens was dead and found that she and a number of readers of Living Freedom knew and commented. My apologies for underestimating you all! You have given me food for thought with your comments and some reading to do.
rustynail — Thank you. I always appreciate people who think to bring news to the blog. I am surprised that Hitchens’ death has drawn so much discussion here. But as usual … yes, it’s good.
The Hitch will be missed. I make it a point to read things I disagree with regularly to check to make sure my brain hasn’t gone into automatic. I could agree & disagree with him at the same time and enjoy his superb writing at the same time.
I think rabid atheism is pretty much as dogmatic as its opposite but he had great fun doing it and I think he enjoyed the reaction as much as he really believed in it.
I’m not sure about all this cult of bigotry that seems to threaten people like the Grey Lady. Maybe I’m wrong and they’re stockpiling lions at some secret location but I don’t buy all this attack stuff. Christmas can be attacked by the odd dufus PC teacher but the only effective attack on it is by crass commercialism.
How many prominent atheistic politician are out there threatening to become president?
Anyways, if there is anything after this life Hitchens deserves something nice.
Steve
To be clear I am not threatened by him or his believers.
It behooves one to keep their eye on a new religion when it spews forth devotees who think they are far and above superiour to those that do not hold exactly their beliefs.
I find it revealing that you think of people as ‘his believers’ and ‘a new religion’. All of the Atheists I know have come to their conclusions on their own, not because someone force-fed them to them when they were 5.
Dana- “ it would be amusing to see if, say, one could get Burt Rutan or the SpaceX folks to put a beautiful engraved teapot with Kent’s name on it in orbit around Saturn”
But, in that case no one would need faith to believe in that teapot, would they? It would be possible for it to be there according to the laws of physics, and it would be plausible that someone had paid for it to be put there, and that the deed had been done. Right now it might be within the outer reaches of the realm of possibility that someone has placed a teapot in orbit around Saturn, but the odds are so tiny that it would be silly to make “laws” saying that people have to act as though they believe it’s there.
LibertyNews- Some people are so desperate to pretend that atheism is “just another religion” that they would insist that an empty dog house shelters “just another breed of dog”. It’s how they think they can put things on a level field.
But, it is not up to me to prove mermaids don’t exist; it is up to the believers to prove they do. And until they stop wanting to use coercion against me to force me to “respect” their beliefs (and follow them), I will keep speaking up.
Another view of Hitchens.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/16/my-take-an-evangelical-remembers-his-friend-hitchens/?&hpt=hp_c2
I’m amazed at the _variety_ of friends he had. But his private persona seemed to be genuinely likeable, even tho’ his public persona was not always.
Quote: “Christmas can be attacked by the odd dufus PC teacher but the [most] effective attack on it is by crass commercialism.”
I changed it a bit, but that is pretty good stuff there, Steve.
Claire Wolfe: “… they were definitely being embarrassingly certain about something no one can be certain of.”
Grey Lady: “… neither side knows for sure, both positions take a leap of faith.”
Generalizations about “everyone” are always dangerous, and always a confession about one’s self. Someone who says, “everyone cheats sometimes,” is confessing they are a cheat, but the generalization only projects their own failure to everyone else. The generalization itself is not true. To say someone is certain about something, “no one can be certain of,” only means you cannot be certain of it, so you project your uncertainty on everyone else. It is actually a claim to certainty about what others can or cannot be certain about. Unless you know everyone else’s mind and all that they know and are capable of thinking, that kind of certainly is not possible.
The idea that not believing in something is some kind of faith is absurd. There are all kinds of things I do not believe in simply because they are logically impossible. There are even more things I do not believe in because I’ve never heard of them. No faith is required to not believe in such things.
As for gods, if someone believes in any one of the possible gods that have been believed in throughout history, they do not believe in any of the others. Is that disbelief a matter of “faith?” As for me, I do not believe in any of the gods men have and do believe in because every description or definition of what one means by, “God,” is always comprised of logical contradictions and floating abstractions–they are flatly logically impossible.
[I do believe in the true God, however:
http://free-individual.com/df_2_17_11.php%5D
Unlike Hitchens, I do not care if others choose to believe in things I am certain do not exist. I have in fact defended Christianity against the very kind of absurd assaults Hitchens and Dawkins, and even Objectivists make against Christianity.
http://usabig.com/iindv/articles_stand/objectivism/three_books.php
I have occasionally enjoyed some of Hitchen’s writing, but it is not very important. He’s no H.L. Mencken and will soon be forgotten. He was, after all, a very confused man. He never really figured out if he was an anti-capilalist leftist, or a supporter of American imperialism, whether he was for peace, or for war. He was not even certain whether it was women (whom he did not treat very well) or men that he liked. [He left his first wife while she was pregnant with their second child for another woman. He was bisexual and enjoyed kissing his liberal “friends” on the lips in front of their wives.]
I do not intend this as a criticism. After all, the man is dead, and there are some who would applaud the very things I might find less than noble.
“The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.” –H. L. Mencken
Reginald — You’re right of course. I was imprecise when I used the word “certain.” The human mind, that amazing thing, can be “certain” of anything — certain there is no god, certain there is one. Certain the moon is made of green cheese or that Obama will be the savior of the world.
What I should have said is that neither Christians nor atheists can make a factual case that proves their position.
My own logic, understanding of the universe, and experience tells me there is no god — or at least not a benevolent one or one that takes any special interest in the humans of the third planet from a minor sun in an obscure corner of an obscure galaxy. But I don’t claim to have enough facts to completely exclude the possibility that some being beyond human understanding did, in fact, create the universe. For all I know, that being might even have set up subcommittees to manage various corners of the universe. It’s entirely possible that some entity so far beyond us that “god” would be an applicable term is, in fact, supervising the earth. Or not.
“But I don’t claim to have enough facts to completely exclude the possibility that some being beyond human understanding did, in fact, create the universe. For all I know, that being might even have set up subcommittees to manage various corners of the universe. It’s entirely possible that some entity so far beyond us that “god” would be an applicable term is, in fact, supervising the earth. Or not.”
🙂 That reminds me of a young friend in college in the 70s who theorized that, if there was a God, every galaxy was probably an individual “cell”, and our galaxy, big as it was, may well have been a minute part of a finger, or the heart, or other placement. The subject came up in discussing did the universe, with its many stars, go on “forever.” And where did “forever” lead to. She had written a paper in class theorizing this.
Dear Claire,
One of the things I have most enjoyed about your writing is the sense of logical certainty with which you express yourself. There are surely degrees of certainty, but there are many things about which certainty is absolute. My insistence in this is primarily as an antidote to the anti-intellectualism of post-modernism and linguistic analysis–that academic mush that declares that no truth can be known with certainty and that everything is relative, and by which the abominations of political correctness and collectivist-statist doctrines are put over.
Some things I am absolutely certain about: I can see, and think, and have the power of choice. I am conscious, but no one else can know my consciousness, and I can know no one else’s. Truth is that which describes reality, and my mind (my ability to think and know) is the only faculty I have for discovering and knowing the truth.
I respect your views and the logic of them. I know you do not hold your views lightly, and I would not change them if I could. I disagree, however, with that the statement, “neither Christians nor atheists can make a factual case that proves their position,” actually applies–at least it does not apply to me.
I never identify myself as an, “atheist,” simply because I think it is silly to identify oneself in terms of what others believe that I do not. There are endless things that others believe that I know are absurd.
I therefore have no case to prove. I do not care if others believe in gods, or mystic powers, or reincarnation, or angels. I am always willing to examine a new idea or discovery, and where there is evidence or a valid logical argument for a thing, am willing to learn about it. Except for those things I’ve discovered for myself, it is how I have learned everything I know. With regard to all so-called “supernatural” things, no one has ever presented me any evidence or logical arguments.
Now I’m curious about one idea: “I don’t claim to have enough facts to completely exclude the possibility that some being beyond human understanding …” What I’m curious about is what exactly you mean by a, “being beyond human understanding.” What kind of understanding is there except human understanding? Since we are human, and the only understanding we can possibly know about is the kind we are familiar with. Where does the idea of another kind of understanding come from?
I’m sorry we seem to have strayed from the subject of this thread and I appreciate your patience and indulgence. I think Hitchens might have appreciated our discussion. You’ve simply piqued my curiosity.
Hi Pat,
You might be interested to know the idea your young college friend suggested in the 70s, was in a slightly different form suggested by H.G. Wells sometime in the 20s, in his short story, “Under the Knife.” I quote:
“Was the whole universe but a refracting speck upon some greater Being? Were our worlds but the atoms of another universe, and those again of another, and so on through an endless progression?”
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/9388/
It is too bad Wells is no longer read by young people. His own political and social views were not good, but his stories are wonderful for stimulating one’s thoughts and imagination. Here is a nice collection of his stories.
http://www.readbookonline.net/stories/Wells/73/
Reginald – I hadn’t read “Under The Knife” before; it was interesting, and stimulating. Thanks for that link, and the list of his other stories.
(I don’t think my friend had read that story either. If she had she would have mentioned it; besides, they weren’t teaching Wells then. But at least they were teaching Imagination, and were still encouraging students to think outside the box. She wrote her story in an English Lit class.)
Reginald — thank you. I’ve never been opposed to certainties; I only say that there are some things about which we do not have all the facts or may have skewed perceptions. If you don’t consider yourself an atheist, then you’re completely right that my statement about atheists and Christians doesn’t apply to you.
As to things “being beyond human understanding,” you misread my intent. I’m only stating what’s probably painfully obvious — that humans don’t know and/or understand everything that there is to know or understand in this vast and mysterious universe.