Hitch is dead

Well, they can be funny... as long as they're not too serious. He seemed pretty serious tho, in the militant fasion (which I have little respect for). Got any links?

I found some of his arguments to be persuasive, and his internal immunity to the concept of "taboo" allowed him to criticize things that had not even occurred to me to examine, like Mother Theresa. In her case I just heard all the good press, and never bothered to examine further, which led to a rather biased perspective on my part. I appreciate the ability of people like Hitchens and others like him to draw my attention to subjects I haven;t really thought to examine thoroughly, where I've made an opinion based on incomplete information. It's the subjects that we recoil at even the mention of criticizing that usually need critical examination the most.But he certainly wasn't a saint. I'll miss some of his writing, and I don't wish cancer or death on just about anybody, but he did wish death on a large group of people solely for their religious convictions. Just because a subset of that group are nigh-genocidal doesn't justify a similar position in reverse. His positions on Islam and Iraq/Afghanistan make him much worse than a jerk, honestly.

Sure, look at some of the material available from Larry Taunton. Larry Taunton remembers his friend

The correct response to being insulted or disrespected by another member is to alert the moderators. The incorrect response is to disrespect or insult back.As a result, and as I previously promised in Message 164 you can take 96 hours off. Again, if you persist in insulting other members upon your return you can subsequently take a week off.

Artemis at least achieved notifying the Admins to this comment. I don't think calling someone puerile is a problem, but 'puerile dickhead' is not the tone we are aiming for at this forum.So take a 24 hour break.

A moving testimony by his brother. Pater Hitchens

I read Larry Tauntons account of his friendship with Christopher Hitchens and am amazed at the recollections. Maybe you are right, jar. They may well have even better than Johnny Walker Black Label up there for him! Imagine..one of his best friends a Christian!! Christopher Hitchens and Larry TauntonEdited by Phat, : No reason given.Edited by Phat, : added video link

I must say, you did an admirable job of proving you're not puerile.

Hey Chuck,Can you provide any messages that show athiests making direct derogatory statements about Jesus?Most of us do not have any reason to believe that the man actually existed so it would be a waste of our time to call him names.You suggest that we mock Jesus all day long so it should not be hard to come up with statements that equal these - Dawn Bertot in Message 38Artemis Entreri in Message 103Artemis Entreri in Message 113Also, keep three things in mind with regards to any statements that you do find where athiests directly abuse towards Jesus or God.1. Jesus is likley a mythical figure who died over 2000 years ago. I would have thought that a 2000 year mourning period would be enough.2. Jesus was only dead for 72 hours so we are not mocking a dead man. We would be mocking a man who has sat in paridise for 2000 years and can expect to remain there for all eternity. I would think that a few course statements would not trouble him.3. God is a god. Do you not think that God would be thick skinned enough to take it? Or is your god so fucking weak that he needs you, and the other mere mortals to stand up for him?I really dont have a problem with anyone saying negative things about Hitch. I have no doubt that he would not have a problem with it with it either.What I do have issue with is people leaving derogatory posts about a man for the simple fact that he said bad things about their religion. You, AE, DB etc so far have not posted anything of substance as yet. You dont have any response to anything he actually said, you just dont like him because he said nything at all.I believe that your position is weak and deserves to be questioned.All of the posts have been argumentum ad hominem.Do any of you have something to say about his arguements or can you just attack the man?

DB, I have posted several of his videos here.Care to respond?

\Lurker

Could you just give the readers digest version in argument form, I presently dont have speaker for computer

Hello Dawn Bertot,it is a bit difficult to give a readers digest version of his debates. Some transscripts run into tens of thousands of words.But here are some short quotes, take your pick...

quote:

---

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

​

By trying to adjust to the findings that it once tried so viciously to ban and repress, religion has only succeeded in restating the same questions that undermined it in earlier epochs. What kind of designer or creator is so wasteful and capricious and approximate? What kind of designer or creator is so cruel and indifferent? Andmost of allwhat kind of designer or creator only chooses to reveal himself to semi-stupefied peasants in desert regions?

​

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.

​

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobodynot even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atomshad the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion.

​

Is it too modern to notice that there is nothing [in the ten commandments] about the protection of children from cruelty, nothing about rape, nothing about slavery, and nothing about genocide? Or is it too exactingly in context to notice that some of these very offenses are about to be positively recommended?

​

Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to be able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retardor try to turn backthe measurable advances that we have made.

​

Sometimes, true, it will artfully concede them. But this is to offer itself the choice between irrelevance and obstruction, impotence or outright reaction, and, given this choice, it is programmed to select the worse of the two.

​

Meanwhile, confronted with undreamed-of vistas inside our own evolving cortex, in the farthest reaches of the known universe, and in proteins and acids which constitute our nature, religion offers either annihilation in the name of god, or else the false promise that if we take a knife to our foreskins, or pray in the right direction, or ingest pieces of wafer, we shall be saved.

​

Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.

​

My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.

​

Name one moral statement made or moral action performed by a believer that could nopt be performed by an unbeliever, and name one immoral statement made or immoral action performed that could only be performed by a believer.

---

Butterfly writes OkButterfly quotes Christopher HitchensWell thats easy. Since the unbeliever has no absolute standard of what moral is or is not and involves himself in a logical contradiction by claiming anything as immoral, as he follows a survival of the fittest standard, the believer can perform not only one thing the unbeliver cannot, but the only thing that matters, objectivity in a moral standard without fear of blatant contradictionIs this the best the Journalist had?Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

This is, of course, nonsense --- in the most literal sense, i.e. it consists of words combined in such a way that the resulting phrases have no meaning.