Christopher Hitchens Dies, Age 62

Discussion in 'Art & Culture' started by GeoffP, Dec 16, 2011.

  1. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    @Sam

    On the use of cluster bombs by the US in Afghanistan] If you’re actually certain that you’re hitting only a concentration of enemy troops…then it’s pretty good because those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. And if they’re bearing a Koran over their heart, it’ll go straight through that, too. So they won’t be able to say, “Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.” No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words.


    I should perhaps confess that on September 11 last, once I had experienced all the usual mammalian gamut of emotions, from rage to nausea, I also discovered that another sensation was contending for mastery. On examination, and to my own surprise and pleasure, it turned out be exhilaration. Here was the most frightful enemy–theocratic barbarism–in plain view….I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost.


    Sounds like he had a Road to Damascus conversion to bigotry after 9/11

    I also notice that he called his atheist primer "God is Not Great"
    Was that because he feared a backlash from US Christians if he attacked Christianity in his title rather than Islam.

    A better title for an anti Faith book would have been
    "In the name of the Father"
    Then he could have catalogued the abuses and criminal activities of the various Christian sects, done in God's name.

    (If anyone wants to use this title please send me $10)
     
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  3. Bells Staff Member

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    Doubt it was bigotry. He was inherently pro-Palestinian and has a particular dislike for Zionism. He blames Zionism and the formation of Israel for pushing Palestinians into forming quasi religious groups like Hamas to fight against the mistreatment and dispossession by Jews. If you read the chapter Hitchens wrote in "Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question", you would understand why. He saw the arguments used by Zionists and by Jews in general to support the occupation as being based solely on a lie and propaganda and the result was pain, dispossession and crimes and all caused solely by faith. And that was his issue.

    So I do not think it is bigotry or racism. He detested any religious based violence and he saw the 9/11 attacks as being ultimately faith based and the war that followed in Afghanistan was a war against a regime that committed crimes under the guise of their religion. So he supported the wars.

    The man hated religion. Anything that would destroy any religion he would probably have supported. But having said that, some of his points were vitally important and yes, there were some things I agreed with him on. Are we better off without him? I don't think we are. He was unafraid to say what he thought and for that, he should be praised. He fought for and stood for what he believed in and most importantly, he believed humans could be good without religion, that we could be better. I don't fault him for that.

    And I have to say, I find it somewhat distasteful that people could be feeling some sense of joy that he died. You'll excuse me if I don't raise a glass to his death. You see, being in the situation I am right now, I find it disturbing that we could sink so low.
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2011
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  5. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    I don't know about people expressing joy in his death.
    Is it the usual far right "Christians" and Mad Mullah types?
     
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  7. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    He didn't fight for anything. He was what he accused others of being: an armchair ideologue who supported wars to impose his ideology on others, who sat there relishing the deaths of others, who salivated at the prospect of endless wars against the other. I for one say, good riddance to bad rubbish

    George Orwell: The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.

    Christopher Hitchens on Israel [start at 1:40]
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8UEVoSJmfs&NR=1&feature=endscreen
     
  8. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Rerun of a rerun SAM, and boring as usual. :yawn:
     
  9. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Indeed. He was still utterly brilliant at it though.

    He said of Jerry Falwell: "If someone gave him an enema they could bury him in a matchbox"
    Awesome.

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  10. Bells Staff Member

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    Lovely..

    You mean he is accused of being like everyone else? Like you? Of writing his opinion instead of using a gun or bomb? How terrible of him...

    Whether you agree or disagree with him, which you do disagree with him, one thing that needs to be corrected is this ideal that he relished the deaths of others. He hated religious tyranny and to him, had you read his books and his writing, you would see clearly that he hated the religious tyranny that had people killing or denying others their rights solely because of how they interpreted their religious text. Hence his actual issue with Israel.

    And why he supported the wars. He didn't relish the wars. He saw it as the fight against a religious uprising. Pay particular attention to what CK quoted:

    If you’re actually certain that you’re hitting only a concentration of enemy troops


    To Hitchens, those enemy troops were the very type of people who beheaded people for religious reasons such as having sex outside of marriage or not wearing the garb when out in public.

    Say what you will of him, and you have, to the point where, yeah, the less said of that the better at this point.. He hated religious organisations and he never once backed down from that. He hated Mother Teresa because of he stance on abortion and even contraception and her attempts to convert others as much as he hated the Islamists who saw no issues killing innocent civilians because of their interpretation of their religious beliefs, just as he hated the Zionists who, to him, perpetrated a falsehood based solely on their religious beliefs and faith to dispossess and mistreat those who had been there before because of their faith.

    He was vile in some things but brilliant in others.

    I read an article, an interview of him and he was speaking about, well everything. And you know what? Looking back on that now, the feelings he expressed about his then recently diagnosed cancer and the chemo.. I'm sorry, but I cannot celebrate his death or say 'good riddance to bad rubbish'. Because no one deserves that kind of death. And to do that, because he was such an atheist, well.. it kind of proves his point in the end. The irony would not have been lost on him.
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2011
  11. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    The Hitchens Tradition

    Well, yes, there is that. But maybe it would help to look at it with the following in mind:

    (1) It's not really joy that Hitchens is dead, except perhaps among a few of the more extremely zealous theists; for many, it's the idea that a man with a nasty attitude problem should be canonized on the occasion of his death because he wasn't just an asshole, but an eloquent asshole. It's kind of a morbid spectacle, like watching Republicans deify Reagan.

    (2) Don't think of it as sinking low. Rather, folks are celebrating the Hitchens tradition of badmouthing the dead.​

    Just remember that in all Hitchens had to say about how horrible religion was, he never seemed to get around to that religion known as capitalism. For as much as religion complicates wars, people like to blame it for causing wars because they don't want to get into economics. It's far more acceptable in our society to hate religion than it is to acknowledge the underlying problem of greed. We've turned greed into its own religion, which we call capitalism.

    Smith would sit quietly, head in hands, near to weeping. Marx would nod sagely and ask him if he wants to go get a drink.
     
  12. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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  13. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    You want us to buy a book

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  14. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Buy a man a book, and he learns something about Japanese coeds and tentacles.

    Sell a man a book and you can probably also sell his credit information on to a megaretailer at ten cents on the head.
     
  15. Crunchy Cat F-in' *meow* baby!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Cheers! Mr. Hitchens, you rocked!
     
  16. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    .....or get yourself a decent sandwich and a beverage at Subway.

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    (tentacles are like chewing rubber bands after the breading is gone.

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    )
     
  17. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Symptomatic of a Troubled Age

    And in all that, the allegedly socialist Hitchens never really seems to get around to the kind of scorn he aims at religion.

    It's kind of like a question we have going on at Sciforums right now: Does religion cause violence?

    Whether it is Catholics molesting boys, Jews and Muslims trying to tear each other's throats out, or even the Christianized determination against Communism that led Americans to proclaim national theistic faith on their currency, it's never actually religion. Rather, religion is the metaphor exploited to hide the underlying greed. In this context, there are a number of nontheistic religions that never receive the sort of critical scorn so many, including Hitchens, pour on theistic faith.

    One can easily suggest that Hitchens' antipathy toward religion stems from, or was exacerbated by, his mother's suicide pact with a Christian preacher. But in all I've ever seen of the man, I never heard him indict the marketplace of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century with anything comparable to the ferocity he showed religion.

    Simply addressing the "capitalist-communist duality" is what it is. But he never seemed to actually strike after the heart of the matter. Whether church or capitalism or communism or whatever, the fundamental problem rests within our very humanity, and as long as we continue to argue about symptoms, we will never be able to even attempt to cure the disease.

    Even back in ancient times, the Jewish genocide against the Amelekites was not really about God and religion. The early fitnas were not actually about religion, nor were the Crusades. The Pilgrims, what happened in Salem, and even the Protestant usurping of Maryland were not about religion. None of it is ever actually about religion. The same problems religious faith seems to bring to the world can be found with or without religion.

    Not China against Buddhists or Falun Dafa; not Protestants and Catholics in Ireland.

    People will do anything for greed, even steal the very breath of the gods.

    Hitchens, much like Dawkins, was not so much about liberating humanity from the human neuroses manifesting themselves through religious conduct, but, rather, legitimizing his own hatred of other people.

    This is why his cultish canonization is problematic. In twenty or fifty years, perhaps Hitchens will, in fact, stand out as a luminary of the age. I rather suspect, though, that he will be recalled in the long memory of our human experience, as a popular fad, perhaps merely symptomatic of a troubled age.
     
  18. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Why? His criticisms of it seem quite valid. Clean up or shut up. Seems fair.

    As for the level of scorn he gives religion: his bent against it was stronger in the last few years, but so what? We never had time to find out what else he might have said against capitalism. I recommend reading his works on it before you draw the conclusion that Why God Is Not Great was his unreserved sine qua non.

    I also disagree with the notion about underlying greed: there are plenty of people on the earth that hate each other for the factual act of faith. At the least, it would be impossible to throw around the word 'bigot' on SF without the possibility of that salient exigence.

    As for "legitimizing his own hatred": dubious at best.

    Thanks anyway.
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I guess you never read this:
    Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens
     
  20. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, but steal a book, and somehow you're criminal.
    How does that weigh up?
     
  21. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    True Believer

    All vapor, no substance. In other words, spoken like a true believer.
     
  22. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    I listened to a preacher this evening speak of Hitchens. It found it interesting that he even brought up the topic. But he was telling folks that Hitchens was now a believer and in Hell. These guys never cease to impress me.
     
  23. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Well, that was a pack of nonsense as a response.

    Why is this becoming so common? "No, I disagree! Your substantial response has no substance!" I find this professionally sometimes too. Is it that same kind of baseless opposition that sustains the anti-global warming collective? It's bizarre.
     

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