Hitchens on the Promise of Eternal Life

I can't get enough of this exchange from the Great God Debate between Christopher Hitchens and moderator Tom Ashbrook.   The conversation ducks in and out of how religion helps people  come to terms with our mortality, and Hitchens pounces:

Hitchens:  I think despair is quite a good starting point.  I think it's very good to know we're born into a losing struggle.  Everything is governed by entropy and decline and annihilation and disaster.  And because you are a mammalian primate you know you are.  And you know you're going to die and that there will be a lot of struggling along the way.  I don't want a world without anxiety and grief and pain and struggle.  I can't get it.   If it were offered to me, I'd spurn the gift.  I don't want what you want.  I don't want the feeling of eternal love and peace.  Love and peace are very overrated in my view. 

Tom: How is that not misanthropic of you?

Hitchens:  Misanthropic?  It doesn't mean I have to hate people.  It means I respect them enough not to offer them false consolation.  The realm of illusion will not help you to cure this conviction. 

This is precisely the reason most people who don't necessarily subscribe to the tenets of Christianity or Judaism remain ardently faithful.   And precisely why I do not.  No illusion for me, thank you.  I've come to grips with the fact that this is it and am quite content as a result.