Drum Defends the New Atheists

Kevin Drum takes David B. Hart to task for his smear of New Atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.  

But no matter how beguiling those questions are, surely the metaphysical one always comes first. To say merely that Christianity is comforting or practical — assuming you believe that — is hardly enough. You need to show that it's true. And if you want to assert that something is true, the onus is on you to demonstrate it, not on the New Atheists to demonstrate conclusively that it isn't. After all, in the end the only difference between Hart and Dawkins is that Hart believes in 1% of the world's religions and Dawkins believes in 0% of them. It's Dawkins' job only to question that remaining 1%. It's Hart's job to answer him.

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.

The Great God Debate

On March 23rd I attended the Great God Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi David Wolpe at the Hancock Hall in Boston.   The tickets included a cocktail reception with the speakers after the event and my friend and I were lucky enough to sneak a photo op with the great Hitchens himself, Johnny Black under arm and all.

Anyway, the debate was being filmed and I've been waiting for a while now for the footage to show up on YouTube and now the wait is over.   Take 90 minutes or so of your precious day to give these guys a listen.   Quality stuff.  Q&A portion was top notch as well.   

Embedded vid for part 1 after the jump...

Hitchens on the pedophile protecting pope

Hitch demands the Wall of Silence be torn down:

Almost every week, I go and debate with spokesmen of religious faith. Invariably and without exception, they inform me that without a belief in supernatural authority I would have no basis for my morality. Yet here is an ancient Christian church that deals in awful certainties when it comes to outright condemnation of sins like divorce, abortion, contraception, and homosexuality between consenting adults. For these offenses there is no forgiveness, and moral absolutism is invoked. Yet let the subject be the rape and torture of defenseless children, and at once every kind of wiggle room and excuse-making is invoked. What can one say of a church that finds so much latitude for a crime so ghastly that no morally normal person can even think of it without shuddering?

 And then onto the question of what to do with the man who's been harboring these criminals...

The supreme leader of the Roman Catholic Church is now a prima facie suspect in a criminal enterprise of the most appalling sort—and in the attempt to obstruct justice that has been part and parcel of that enterprise. He is also the political head of a state—the Vatican—that has given asylum to wanted men like the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. What, then, is the position when the pope decides to travel—as, for example, he intends to do on a visit to Britain later this year? Does he have immunity? Does he claim it? Should he have it? These questions demand serious answers. Meanwhile, we should register the fact that the church can find ample room in its confessionals and its palaces for those who commit the most evil offense of all. Whether prosecuted or not, they stand condemned. But prosecution must follow, or else we admit that there are men and institutions that are above and beyond our laws.

Hitchens' Ten Commandments

No doubt a riff he has played during his many book tour stops and debates on religion, Christopher Hitchens expands a bit on his preferred re-write of the Ten Commandments in April's Vanity Fair.   

His wrap is terrific:

I am trying my best not to view things through a smug later prism. Only the Almighty can scan matters sub specie aeternitatis: from the viewpoint of eternity. One must also avoid cultural and historical relativism: there’s no point in retroactively ordering the Children of Israel to develop a germ theory of disease (so as to avoid mistaking plagues for divine punishments) or to understand astronomy (so as not to make foolish predictions and boasts based on the planets and stars). Still, if we think of the evils that afflict humanity today and that are man-made and not inflicted by nature, we would be morally numb if we did not feel strongly about genocide, slavery, rape, child abuse, sexual repression, white-collar crime, the wanton destruction of the natural world, and people who yak on cell phones in restaurants. (Also, people who commit simultaneous suicide and murder while screaming “God is great”: is that taking the Lord’s name in vain or is it not?)

It’s difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words “Thou shalt not.” But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

Video of his explanation after the jump