RIP Christopher Hitchens

[_Sethbag]

Thanks Stak, that really set the tone. I just had a little drink and a private toast to Christopher, not for his sake, because he no longer has one, but because he meant something to me, and I do. ;-)

Now I must hit the rack. Brethren, I bid you adieu.

[_RayAgostini]

Thanks Stak, that really set the tone. I just had a little drink and a private toast to Christopher, not for his sake, because he no longer has one, but because he meant something to me, and I do. ;-)

In future, I hope you'll be somewhat more diplomatic and ease off calling Joseph Smith a fraud and an adulterer. Your hero doesn't appear to be sinless. He no longer exists, anyway, and is now just worm-fodder. Just like you will be. Like a month-living moth on a wall of despair. Born today, dead tomorrow, and that's it. Why even bother. It's all pointless, with some interim clapping and adulation, which means zilch. Your children are just flesh and meat, bodies destined to die and rot in graves forever. Praise Hitch, for such an ennobling vision. A true saviour from "religious ignorance", and all, of course, based on "evidence" very convenient to his innate narcissism.

[_Chap]

Thanks Stak, that really set the tone. I just had a little drink and a private toast to Christopher, not for his sake, because he no longer has one, but because he meant something to me, and I do. ;-)

In future, I hope you'll be somewhat more diplomatic and ease off calling Joseph Smith a fraud and an adulterer. Your hero doesn't appear to be sinless. He no longer exists, anyway, and is now just worm-fodder. Just like you will be. Like a month-living moth on a wall of despair. Born today, dead tomorrow, and that's it. Why even bother. It's all pointless, with some interim clapping and adulation, which means zilch. Your children are just flesh and meat, bodies destined to die and rot in graves forever. Praise Hitch, for such an ennobling vision. A true saviour from "religious ignorance", and all, of course, based on "evidence" very convenient to his innate narcissism.

Isn't it sad to see religious believers who (if we are to take their more intemperately abusive posts seriously) would not feel able to bother with their lives or care about their children unless they could believe there was a sky daddy to love them?

[_brade]

Isn't it sad to see religious believers who (if we are to take their more intemperately abusive posts seriously) would not feel able to bother with their lives or care about their children unless they could believe there was a sky daddy to love them?

Religion, on the whole, makes the world a better place by preventing millions of people who would otherwise be violent marauders from perpetrating their wickedness upon their fellow men. If fast and testimony meeting is anything to go by, then when I go to church on Sunday I'm sitting amongst people who would, were it not for religion filling in, be out raping and murdering in a cocaine induced frenzy.

[_Chap]

Isn't it sad to see religious believers who (if we are to take their more intemperately abusive posts seriously) would not feel able to bother with their lives or care about their children unless they could believe there was a sky daddy to love them?

Religion, on the whole, makes the world a better place by preventing millions of people who would otherwise be violent marauders from perpetrating their wickedness upon their fellow men. If fast and testimony meeting is anything to go by, then when I go to church on Sunday I'm sitting amongst people who would, were it not for religion filling in, be out raping and murdering in a cocaine induced frenzy.

I tend to agree with you that some of the people who post here give a clear impression that the rest of us are better off if they are scared of a big guy in the sky watching them all the time.

[Guest]

Christopher Hitchins was someone I admired a great deal. I envy Melchet his opportunity to meet the man in person.

The last time I saw Christopher Hitchins was on Real Time with Bill Maher, earlier this year, and he did not look well.

Hitchins was a highly intelligent man who was willing to speak out about wrongheaded decision making and bad policy, whether it came from the left or from the right. He was an engaging and versatile author who lived large and was always willing to own his life choices.

Most of all, along with the other three of the Four Horsemen (Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, and Sam Harris) Hitchins stood strong against the false claims, silliness and tyranny of religion.

His Portable Atheist is in my library and I plan to take some time to read a few passages from his introduction today in tribute.

[_Kishkumen]

I am really bummed out that Hitchens has passed. I was sad to hear of his illness, so it is not like I didn't know this was coming, but I will miss him. It is not like I agreed with his special disdain for religion, but he was an intelligent and witty fellow, with a ready quip to unsettle the self-satisfied and complacent. His book god is not Great was not very good, especially on things Mormon, but it was a real pleasure to watch him debate, even though I didn't agree with him about a lot of things.

Again, I will miss seeing him debate and appear on shows.

On a further note, I guess I am somewhat saddened by the argument that people are only significant if they can be physically immortal. I believe that everyone is immortal in the impact they leave on this world, no matter how small that impact may be. We all interact with other people and our planet, and in those interactions we contribute to the trajectory of history. My reverence for this idea is one of the reasons I feel more attached to my Mormon roots than ever. I pay tribute to my LDS ancestors and feel attached to them in finding appreciation for their beliefs.

Finally, I would recommend Paul Woodruff's book Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue as good holiday reading for people of all philosophies and beliefs. In respectful recognition of Ray's latest approach to the board, I offer it to you as a decent argument for the importance of reverence to human society, whether one is atheist, Christian, Muslim, or Scientologist.

[_sock puppet]

Ray, I'm sorry you're all worked up about this. You're perfectly welcome to think whatever you like about Christopher Hitchens. For my part, his death diminishes the world a little bit.

Of course. If you share his "death is the end" philosophy, then I understand why you'd sing praises to him. No doubt his brain is now being eaten by earth worms, and his life was totally meaningless. Nothing at all.

Zip, zap, and he's gone. Might as well have said nothing. What was the bloody point of existing in the first place? To convince people that death is the end?

While I don't generally decry passive atheism, or agnosticism, pastors and preachers of atheism, like Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris, are just full of themselves as "guiding lights" to nowhere. A dead end. And they completely ignore all of the evidence contrary to their sacred and not to be challenged opinions, but they totally and comprehensively refuse to even consider it. And their dogma is swallowed by millions, who don't have the nerve to question them.

So God is necessary so you don't feel hollow and meaningless?

Now, remind me again that God was not merely a concoction of man as an emotional salve?

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

[_EAllusion]

I really didn't like Hitchens outside of his brave and correct criticism of Mother Theresa. He was an amazingly gifted writer, but I think he wasted a lot of that talent.