RayAgostini wrote:Sethbag wrote: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.
You should read Hitch-22, then you'd know he was not only far from sinless, but he owned his "sins" too. Joseph Smith was a fraud and an adulterer, and that matters because he announced to the world that the Creator of the Entire Universe had appointed him as his representative on Earth, with the power to tell the rest of us what to do.
Christopher Hitchens just wrote columns, books, short essays, etc. He did speeches, debates, appearances, etc. for those interested in what he had to say. That's it, really. He didn't need the supposed authority of God behind him to make him interesting. He earned that interestingness with his mind, his tongue, and his pen.
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.
Why the nihilism Ray? Hitch wasn't a nihilist, and neither am I. Are you telling me what I have to think? And as to Hitch's role in all this,
I'm not looking for a Saviour, and Hitch certainly never claimed to be one. We're just going through life making the most of it, and Hitch was one guy whom I loved to hear speak and share his thoughts about it. I really liked some of what he had to say, really was uncomfortably indifferent on some other things he had to say, but overall, I gave a crap about what he had to say, whether I agreed with it or not. Something about him demanded that of me.
A true saviour from "religious ignorance", and all, of course, based on "evidence" very convenient to his innate narcissism.
At least Hitch didn't blow smoke up our asses, like every prophet or priest I've ever seen does. Hitch never tried to convince me that what he was saying must be true because it came to him from the invisible man who created the whole universe.
Ray, what's with you these days? I don't get it.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen