Christopher Hitchens is a man who proves that you can find an atheist in a foxhole. One of the most well recognized figures in the “anti-theist” movement, Hitchens was recently diagnosed with a metastatic esophageal cancer that has now spread to his lymph nodes and lungs.
I think that means “Go fuck yourself” in Italian
Christopher Hitchens is a man who proves that you can find an atheist in a foxhole. One of the most well recognized figures in the “anti-theist” movement, Hitchens was recently diagnosed with a metastatic esophageal cancer that has now spread to his lymph nodes and lungs. He spends everyday of his professional life trying to explain to people why they don’t need God or religion and he will most likely be dead in less than five years. Scientists are still in the process of calculating exactly how huge his balls are.
Last Friday Hitchens flew into Toronto, sporting a new chemo-inspired look, to take on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a high profile debate regarding the merits of religion. Blair recently revealed in his memoir that he has always been more interested in religion than politics. The event was the latest installment in the Munk Debates series which is aimed at promoting positive global discussion of several key topics. The resolution statement for this most recent debate was:
“Be it resolved that religion is a force for good in the world.”
I’ll let you figure out who was arguing pro and who was arguing con.
Since I like to appear informed when I’m hitting on female undergrads who get worked up talking about this type of event immediately before they suck a dick, I decided to catch a live simulcast of the debate at the Toronto Reference Library. Here are some of the highlights:
HITCHENS
Opening statement: Hitchens opened by stating that according to religion we are all objects created sick who can only attain salvation at the cost of our critical faculties. Religion threatens our autonomy by subjecting us to the divine command of a totalitarian God. He then went on to state that the extraordinary claims made by religion ought to require extraordinary evidence and that it’s hard to see how religion can be a positive force in the world when it preaches shame with respect to the act of sex, terrifies children with notions of hell, considers women inferior creations and denounces science in favor of creationist myth.
Argument that got biggest audience reaction: When Blair brought up the issue of religious charity, Hitchens hit back by saying that the cure for global poverty is the empowerment of women. This drew the loudest applause of the night. Hitchens followed by stating that the church continues to stand in the way of women exercising their reproductive rights.
Most interesting audience question: Hitchens was asked ‘Why not embrace the underlying values common to all religions as a way to facilitate globalization?” He answered that what globalization requires is a shared humanism which would not be facilitated by religion. Religion is a surrender of reason in favor of faith which can only intensify divisions, as has been proven in many current global conflicts. If anything, less religion would help to facilitate a shared humanism.
Closing point: There were communists who were also great people — heroes and artists. Ultimately however we had to reject communism because it sought to subject us to the rule of an infallible leader. You have to ask yourself if you are willing to give your faith to a totalitarian God as a way to appease your spiritual yearning. Are you willing to believe in the supernatural? Are you willing to follow the Vicker Vicar [thanks, Anonymous] of Christ and give him absolute authority? Hitchens contends that this is too great a cost.
BLAIR
Opening statement: Blair openly conceded that there are people who do bad in the name of religion, but pointed out that there are also those who do extraordinary good. Because of this religion cannot be pure poison. A belief that is central to all religion is: You best serve God by loving your fellow man. Religion has a “true face” and that is: to do unto others as you would have done unto you. He also pointed out that if we took religion out of the world it would surely eliminate religious fanaticism, but would fanaticism be gone? Blair finished by stating that we shouldn’t judge religion by its fanatics any more than we should judge politics by bad politicians.
Argument that got biggest audience reaction: Since Blair was at a significant disadvantage with the audience there wasn’t nearly as much positive reaction to his points, but there was an appreciable response to the assertion that it’s bizarre Hitchens would suggest conflicts, such as those taking place in Rwanda, are attributable to the Catholic Church. Blair said that from his experience he knows the underlying cause of most conflicts are always political and religion is just something that gets dragged into the mix.
Most interesting audience question: Blair was asked point blank how religion played a part in his decision to invade Iraq. He answered by saying that his decision to invade Iraq was in no way based on his religious faith. Religion does not provide policy or provide answers regarding policy. He joked that when he was trying to deal with issues of employment he never prayed to God to tell him what minimum wage ought to be.
Closing point: Fanaticism is not confined to religious faith. Science can help us to understand different facts about the world but it cannot give those facts meaning. The way to avoid fundamentalist religious ideology is by having those with good religious spirit stand up against fanaticism. Religion will never disappear so the real question should be “How can we use religion as a positive force in the world?” People of faith do not always do good but there is a true meaning of faith and it is good and worth defending.
—
There’s obviously a lot more that happened throughout the debate. If you’re interested you can stream the whole thing from the Munk debates archive for $3.
The final result of the debate was: Blair 32%, Hitchens 68%.
The audience must’ve all been Godless hipsters.
this was actually a good read
and yes for atheism
Hitchens ripped Blair a new asshole. I don’t see how anyone can think the ‘good’ religion does justifies the insane amount of bad. Let’s evolve already.
Also I agree. Something informative and not tainted with infantile opinion for ONCE on this site. Good job.
Enjoyed this summary. Thanks.
“Vicar,” not “Vicker,” you retard.
People such as Hitchens don’t consider that religion, as stupid as it is, prevents a shit-ton of barbaric morons from acting out on their caveman fantasies. The fear of hellfire has kept a lot of retards in check.
“Ultimately however we had to reject communism because it sought to subject us to the rule of an infallible leader. You have to ask yourself if you are willing to give your faith to a totalitarian God as a way to appease your spiritual yearning. Are you willing to believe in the supernatural? Are you willing to follow the Vicker of Christ and give him absolute authority?”
but you can leave if you want. under communism you couldn’t walk away. big difference.
There is nothing inherently wrong with an infallible leader if they are actually infallible which God by most definitions is.
The idea that atheism is somehow less dangerous because it’s less, like huge and all encompassing is wrong. There are people who aren’t very relgious who are dangerous and pepole who aren’t who have never hurt anybody. There are wahabi muslms walking down the street in Yemen who are never going to hurt anyone and blandly agnostic people in among other places washington who will.
Also, all the global humanism stuff is hooey
Officially I’m an agnostic and no fan of religious tyranny.
What’s hilarious, though, is that these anti-religion crusaders all seem sold on the idea that globalism is a good thing.
A global one-world government would be more despotic and inescapable than the Catholic Church during the Spanish Inquisition.
It’s fine if you want to “fight the power,” but don’t be a boob and create the biggest power of all time in the process.
#1 if blair really was a cristian, his faith would have influenced his decision to invade iraq, and this isnt something to cringe over. “just war” theory was something developed by Aquinas and adherence to it would have prevented the war in iraq from occuring.
#2 hitchens is a smart man but his entire life and rationale for arguing against the existence of god is based on the assumption of a cosmological nature of god, and tries to sneak by hundreds of years of philosophical thought
ditto mr tibbs
Saying you’re a man of ‘Religious’ Faith and then snorting at the notion that ‘religious’ faith would guide you in making a hugely momentous decision like whether or not to start a fooking war is like saying “I’m a vegetarian but I eat beef at every meal.”
Blair would toady up to a pile of dogshit if he thought it would get him ahead. Oh, wait, he did do that: see: Cheney et al.
Agnosticism is for cowards and indecisive teenage girls.
Being atheistic when you’re dying of cancer is about as brave as yelling at a train that is about to run you over. It’s pathetic. This guy probably thinks he is “sticking it to the man”, when in reality the only people he’s offending are illiterate grandmothers and people who “get” Adam Sandler movies.
Generalizing all religions into one and then making the equally vague assumption that all are Good or Bad is as ignorant as being in a religion and dividing the world into Believers and Infidels.
If you need someone to tell you to think for yourself, YOU’RE NOT THINKING FOR YOURSELF.
I think hitchens means to group all the abrahamic religions togehther and rejects them all on the same ground that they require devotion to a totalitarian god (allah, yaweh, etc.)
Also no one has yet addressed hitchens line where he says extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence. Relgion is bankrupt when it comes to backing itself up with any REAL evidence for the claims it makes.
Blaire: Religion is polarizing, you get vicious murdering fanatics as well as self sacrificing martyrs.
Hitchens: Atheisms nhilistic tendency evens out the polarities and we all get to wear grey.
It seems logical that in both cases the absolute mean of prosperity would be the same. Blaire wants to live in a world where the poles exist and hitchens wants to live in a uniform flat distribution. In blairs world there is more highs and lows and hitchnes universe is flat. Blaire has more destructive extremes, hitchens has more mind numbing blandness. Blaire has more outstanding self expression, hitchens has more safety and sociability.
My view. If we start cutting out all of the polarity in human behaviour we will be not only cutting out religion but also art. We would all end up shuffling about in drab gray suits mumbling about stocks or something. The movie Equilibrium anyone?
@”Agnosticism is for cowards and indecisive teenage girls.”
Atheism and religious belief are for liars who pretend they know the universe’s origins.
my view is everyone needs to stop this nonsense and go to the churches.
Requiring scientific evidence for a belief rooted in faith mistakes the limits and nature of both science and religion.
Science is just another self-contained ideological system that creates a mechanism for belief, although instead of faith in an all-powerful god, it relies on faith in (supposedly) all-powerful empirical evaluation of all statements.
By requiring empirical evidence for a necessarily non-experential entity, Science demands that Religion play by Science’s rules. When you say religion can’t be backed up with “REAL” evidence, you are saying religion can’t be proved by “scientific” evidence. There is the hidden assumption that science = reality.
Give me a break. 1000 years from now our scientific notions of the universe (What, Pluto isn’t a “real” planet??) will seem as ridiculous as that shit about how the world was held up by three dragons standing on a tortoises back or whatever.
@ Master’s fag: I feel dumber for having read your words. (That’s a reference to an Adam Sandler movie.)
You state that being an agnostic is cowardly, then decry Hitchens for remaining an atheist as he baldly stares death in the face. He’s not “sticking it to the man,” he’s remaining faithful to his faithlessness. That’s called integrity.
A dichotomy (good v bad; believers v infidels) is not the same as a generalization (“the foundation of human logic and reasoning”) and is the antithesis of “vague.”
However, I find that vague declarative statements made by persons incapable of crafting a clear argument backed by evidence (see above) are not to be taken seriously.
Or, as my illiterate grandmother used to say, “The more you talk, the less I listen.”
“Vicker” should be “Vicar,” I don’t care if this has been mentioned already, it’s still wrong. I don’t even know what a fucking Vicar is and I know how to spell it
“Science can help us to understand different facts about the world but it cannot give those facts meaning.”
“those facts” don’t have any meaning, faggot
Cool so I hear what you’re saying, but explain how my belief in the boogeeyman is any less ridiculous then. According to what you’re saying can’t I believe in anything with impunity? The honus shouldn’t be to disprove that God doesn’t exist it should be to prove that he does. What good reason is there to believe a God exists? Not trying to be a dick. Just saying.
I’m typing at work and messed up that last comment but I think\hope you get what I’m saying
Messed up the wording there a bit but you get what I’m saying hopefully
“Science is just another self-contained ideological system that creates a mechanism for belief, although instead of faith in an all-powerful god, it relies on faith in (supposedly) all-powerful empirical evaluation of all statements.”
The stupidity contained in this statement is denser than gold.
Science is the process of obliterating assumptions through best guesses and testing, whereas religion is nothing but unchallengeable, untestable assumptions.
But what do I know? I assume you’re tap tapping away on your LINUX box at MIT right now, another of the enlightened in a sea of techno infidels.
Master Fag sounds like the only person here who isn’t a total fucking robot.
I eat poopies and my pee pee is made of boogies.
“Pee” and the last “Steve Dave” = Master’s fag
@Weed, those facts do have context and meaning otherwise they would just be useless information. That was one of Blair’s few good points, facts and information without context or an ability to understand them are useless and meaningless. I could give a library filled with science and math books to a six year old and the information would be useless to the child unless they had some basic understanding and ability to interpret and put what was in those books into context and analytical assimilation into his/her brain. That’s what comprehension and understanding is, you dumbass.
science is not an “ideological system”
this is sad
@This nonsense needs to stop
that doesn’t mean religion is necessary to comprehend and analyze scientific information you retard
@ @master fag:
I’m not saying believing in god ISN’T ridiculous. It is. So is believing in how great some band is, or that political change is possible, or in the concept of love. The point is that all of these beliefs can be a source of strength, nothing more and nothing less. It’s not about “proving” anything to anyone but yourself. I just get pissed off at the blatant hypocrisy of saying that all religious persons are slaves to their ideology because their beliefs qualify as irrational and therefore worthless according to another ideology.
@ Steve Dave:
“religion is nothing but unchallengeable, untestable assumptions”
According to who? You? Or did you read that on the side of a cereal box this morning?
Atheism isn’t a belief, it’s a disbelief. Believing in disbelief might sound cool when you’re 19 but after a while you realize that even if you were somehow to prove your point, you would prove exactly that: Nothing. You believe in nothing. Hitchens might be brave, but he might also just be stupid.
@Weed I didn’t say it was, I was saying that scientific fact does have meaning in how we analyze and interpret it otherwise we would never be able to use science in any meaning full way you mongoloid…
i find it hard to believe that for a demographic that supposedly does so many hallucinogens, that no one believes in “god”/oneness of the universe/sustaining force of life.
ya’ll are liars one way or the other.
Nope, I read it in my pee pee made of boogies.
THEN, when that got boring, I opened my Bible and read the first line:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” – Genesis 1:1
That, my critically thinking friend, is an assumption. No ifs, ands, or maybes. Straight up: this-is-how-it-went-down.
What follows is a series of convoluted stories filled with men murdering each other over territory, a boat full of inbred animals, some magic shit, a hearty dash of incest and a very fickle, pissed of sky-man who can influence human events on a large scale. He also really gets off on playing weird games with his minions. Its a fun read if you have a lot of patience and a defective bullshit detector.
Show me a religion with a *testable hypothesis* contained anywhere in its tenets or texts (see example, above) and I’ll show you how to turn Miller into MOET.
The Bible and Talmud and Koran and Bhagavad G?t? are just books. These books are filled with stories; stories threaded through with assumptions, not guesses or hypothesis, which can be tested.
The entire concept of Faith is “belief in the absence of proof”. Its logically impossible to disprove faith, or the faith of a person of faith, because the whole mess rests on a big cushy bed of, “I don’t care what you say. Evidence scmevidence. I know I’m right.”
You have yet to make a point that makes sense, but thanks for stopping by.
Steve Dave for the win!!!!!!!!
EXACTLY what he said.
@ Master’s fag
My belief in the greatness of a band or in the power of love or whatever is fairly different from belief in a religion. Belief in religion can make it seem a good idea to–say–deny rights to groups of people because of their religion or sex or because of who they like to fuck. And that’s on the less-questionable side of the spectrum. Though there were a lot of people in the 90s who firmly came down on the Blur side of Oasis vs. Blur, they weren’t exactly declaring jihad.
Religious books usually aren’t as quick to suggest killing those who oppose believers as the typical atheist in an argument might have you believe, but human nature being what it is, I don’t see a pervasive belief system predicated upon untestable, often-unquestionable faith as anything but a poor guide to human behavior. It stops being just a “source of strength” when it starts telling you what to do, and most religions definitely try to tell you what to do.
Also, atheism is a disbelief, but you don’t believe in a disbelief. It’s kind of right there in the word. As such, making no positive claims, there aren’t any points to prove. It’s just pointing out that the other guy hasn’t proven his. The assertion that an atheist believes in nothing is nonsense. Believing in no gods is not even remotely the same as believing in nothing. I believe, for instance, that Blur were overrated, and that Oasis were kind of fun. I also believe they were huge dicks, all of ‘em.
@fredMS
Religion to most people means Organized Religion. Most reasonable people view Organized Religion with a justifiably jauindiced eye.
I would venture that 99% of anti-RELIGION-ists (e.g. those spritzing on this thread) are simply agnostics who are advocating for the continuation of scientific reasoning, i.e., they are not likely to be hardcore atheists. Hardly anyone is really a hardcore atheist. Magical thinking is rife–is, indeed, central to human cognition. Scientific reasoning is the best corrective lense for improvement of PHYSICAL limitation. if you think that’s not a central Good engendered by Enlightenment scientism, you’re welcome to go have a toothache without recourse to modern (scientific) dentistry.
Psychedelic-oceanic ‘spiritual’ intimations of connectedness is a ‘spiritual’ sensation/insight. It is not an Religious-authoritarian-credo object.
i seriously believe Elvis Presley was the Son of Man and that Michael Jackson was crucified for our sins.
Steve Dave nailed it. All you other dumbasses can go home now.
@ Steve Dave:
You stupid, stupid fuck. Since you seem so enamoured with the idea of logic and rational argumentation, spend a few minutes reading this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
You really don’t get it, do you? You’re reading the Bible LITERALLY. ONLY RETARDS READ THE BIBLE LITERALLY. When I say I believe in God I don’t mean I think there is some guy with a beard on the other side of the clouds throwing lightning bolts at people he doesn’t like. It is a METAPHOR.
Yes, it’s physically impossible to disprove faith. Why are you so bothered by that? Does it shake your precious, safe little world to realize that maybe not everything can be known?
By the way, if you were such a brilliant logician you would have realized that my point about atheism has exactly the same weight as your point about faith. You should realize that if God really doesn’t exist, you could never prove it either, according to your own scientific standards of proof. It’s also logically impossible to prove a negative (think of Iraq and the WMDs).
It’s Pascal’s Wager, bitch, and you just lost, again, you fucking loser.
@This nonsense needs to stop
no shit fuckface, but that doesn’t mean there’s some higher design on purpose, which is what we’re fucking talking about here
Religion: Fart
Atheism: Sniff
@Master’s fag
you, sir, are a total idiot.
@ Master’s fag
“By the way, if you were such a brilliant logician you would have realized that my point about atheism has exactly the same weight as your point about faith. You should realize that if God really doesn’t exist, you could never prove it either, according to your own scientific standards of proof.”
Actually dude you lose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
This is a well known and honored analogy amongst logicians. You need to rethink your shit.
props to master fag, believing in santa claus god who watches over you is for retards. religious texts are meant to be read transliterally, ya’ll are ultra gay cuz u think ur enlightened u figured out there’s no santa claus.
@ anonymous that @’ed me, how are we defining these terms? im assuming that you’re saying ‘spiritual awareness’ is different from ‘blind obedience’? how are we defining ‘god’ here? for a long long time, in circles where people could read, ‘god’ was a metaphysical concept for oneness. im asking cuz i think we’re saying similar things.
I’m stoked on a commenter choosing wilbur kookmeyer as a moniker. I can’t bear to care about any of this. There could be something out there, up there. Or not. What about the 4th dimension? What about the Twilight Zone®? What about deja vu and the pyramids? I think anyone speaking with any authority on this is completely absurd, regardless of their take.
@fredMS
Yes we’re agreeing insofar as it does seem that every human’s psyche must/needs/has a unique (and hopefully ever-evolving) Unifying Conception, with source as-yet-unknown (unknowable?), whether it’s consciously recognized as such or not.
arguing about religion on the internet
@shoutingattheinternet: people’s love of a certain band can totally influence their political beliefs, and can make someone think it’s a good idea to to-say deny someone’s rights to blahblahblah… just about anything can do that.
I’m a 100% atheist, I have no qualms about that. I think science has a better claim to some form of “objective” truth than any other method human beings have yet devised.
Despite my committed atheism I still find these radical anti-theists to be the most fucking obnoxious bunch of people ever (after radical muslims and radical christians and radical jews maybe).
The argument isn’t “are there good people who are religious?” or “has religion been good for society” it’s “do people ever make good use of religion in their own lives?” and the answer is certainly yes, many many people do. Why can’t we let these people continue to do so? Do we have to do everything we can to keep religion out of science classes in schools? Yes, obviously. Do we need to stop churches from being havens for pedophiles? Fuck yes. Do we need to tell the radical right wing of the Knesset that nothing in any of their holy books gives them the right to annex territory? Yes. Do we have to eliminate religion from society completely and make anyone who chooses to believe in god the object of ridicule? I don’t see why, or how that’s a worthwhile goal. I do a lot of “charity” work, and so I end up around a lot of religious people and a lot of them obviously gain tremendous inner strength from their religion, and I respect that. It is one of the few forces in society today that pushes people’s focus outside of their own self-interest, which I think anyone honest will admit we could use a lot more of. Also, isn’t there evidence that faith itself has an evolutionary basis? That whole “god part of the brain” thing that was so big a while ago? Maybe faith in god is part of a more complex neurological process we don’t even remotely understand. It’s certainly widespread among human cultures across time and geography.
Again, 100% atheist here, but jesus fucking christ people can we atheists be a little less dogmatic about what people are and aren’t allowed to believe?
@ …”Fergie”
Plenty of things influence any given person’s beliefs, yes. That being said, there is no Led Zeppelin voting bloc. There is, however, a huge group of Christian voters who routinely vote to limit the rights of everyone that isn’t them. Excuse my hyperbole there. Comparing religious belief, which often thoroughly instructs its adherents in their actions, to liking a band is silly.
On another (completely unrelated) note, I’m tired of people who call themselves atheists co-opting the word for their own uses. Its definition is right there in the word. Without belief in gods. It’s that simple. Now I see people claiming to be atheists not because they don’t believe in gods, but because they DO believe there are no gods. So now there’s a positive, unprovable claim. One little baby step to the side, and suddenly the way they’d like to define the word is logically unsupportable. I understand definitions change due to common usage and the like, but now there’s one entry in the dictionary that is adhered to by those whose vitriol got the better of their reason, and its popular association with the word makes things difficult.
…like arguing with my sister’s kids.
Did anyone ask Chris Hitchens how atheism played a part in HIS decision to aggresively support the war in iraq?
no, because atheism isn’t a religion or a belief system that informs values so decisions aren’t based on it
so what exactly informed his decision to obnoxiously promote the disasterous iraq war? and how is it any less sinister than a religous person coming to the exact same horrible conclusion?
re: Hitchen’s Iraq warmongering:
Holding our noses as we sidestep past Blair’s obviously galaxy-exceeding fetid ego, in the case of Hitchens the claimed near-proximal cause for his Iraq warmongering was the fatwa against his pal Salman Rushdie (sp).
So Hitchens, like so many anti-authoritarians who suddenly find themselves to have become middle aged and thus beyond the age of potential conscription [Taeil alert!], became an ardent supporter of armed intervention(s). (See also Mcinnes, Gayvin, no?) [Cf. also draft-dodging Republican chicken hawks like Cheney et al, and most-all warmongering politicians throughout world history.]
Also of interest in considering Hitchen’s anti-religious motives is the fact of his brother’s mid-life religious prosyletizing–sibling rivalry, anyone?
I don’t know about Rushdie in particular but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Hitchens hatred of religion makes him a particularly dangerous person in regards to the current face off between the west and islam. Its easy to drop bombs on people when you’ve dehumanized them as nothing more than a bunch of religous fanatics.
@Slime-Trail of the Professional Narcissist: Wouldn’t a fatwa against Rushdie lead Hitchens to advocate war against Iran since the fatwa was issued by Khomeini and not Saddam?
Post-fatwa, Hitchens became (rightly or wrongly, I am not taking sides here, just reporting for the nonce) a leading agitator against trans-national “islamofascism” (some claim he coined the term).
————
“In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was “on the same side as the neo-conservatives” when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues.[63] He has also been known to refer to his association with “temporary neocon allies”.[64]”
[admittedly from wikipedia, but with footnotes]
Well, I’m sure Hitchenms does support war against Iran. Blair probably does too. Ones an atheist , ones a christian, they are both for spreading their own version of their philosphy to people who don’t want it at taxpayer expense and their huge profit.
@Shouting at the Internet
Liking a band and believing in a religion are certainly not equivalent, but I don’t think that means you can’t compare them. There may not be a “led zepplin” voting block, but you do tend to know, say, how a U2 fan feels about debt relief in Africa. Bono is up there telling people what to believe about all sorts of political issues, and it has a massive influence (despite how poorly thought out most of his ideas are).
What about sXe bands? What about punk? When I was 14, the things Ian Mackaye told me to believe seriously influenced my attitudes about politics in ways that took decades to get over. Everyone who was in that scene, regardless of where, shared a lot of common political beliefs that for me and a lot of people I knew, came from the words and lyrics of the bands we loved. What about the 60′s? You think that you can’t lump in all the Bob Dylan fans in the 60′s into a general political category? What about black metal? What about juggalos?
If what you’re saying is “nobody’s love of a band has led them to specifically vote en masse to limit rights in the specific ways christians have” then I agree with you. I also agree with you that the specific ways christians have been led to think and therefore vote about issues such as reproductive rights and LGBT rights are horribly destructive and morally reprehensible.
I’m just saying that the comparison is not silly at all, it’s actually pretty interesting if you think about it.
Oh shit, I was waiting for Oasis and Blur to come up in this religious debate, like they so often do.
YoualllikeFergie has a good point. Oasis used to be my favorite band and they made me do way too much coke.
@dragler
“so what exactly informed his decision to obnoxiously promote the disasterous iraq war? and how is it any less sinister than a religous person coming to the exact same horrible conclusion?”
a “sinister” decision can’t reflect negatively on, or conflict with, a nonexistent religion. blair’s decision to invade iraq can be construed as conflicting his belief system.
so blairs decision to go to war is a reflection of christianity, but Hitchens decision to promote that war is not a reflection of atheism?
I am basically just pissed that this audience gave Hitchens a pass on war mongering, as if because he is an intellectual we should forget about that.
I’d like to see both these men apologize to an audience for an evening rather than debate each other on an entirely random and vague issue such as “is religion a force for good”
@dragler: I think they asked Blair that question to see if he would say something stupid like Bush would.
@ Everyone in general
They asked Hitchens about his support for the Iraq war, but if I remember correctly it was framed something like ‘if you say one of the negative results of religion is War then how is it you supported the Iraq war?”
His answer was that he supported the war because it was against a totalitarian/fascist regime, which would keep his answer consistent with the fact that he rejects religion because of the fact it asks you to submit to a totalitarian God.
This is me boiling it down. If you really care for all the detail watch the debate on YouTube or on the Munk website. I wanted to keep this under a 1000 words. I obviously had to omit a lot of what took place.
the fool- thanks.
“His answer was that he supported the war because it was against a totalitarian/fascist regime, which would keep his answer consistent with the fact that he rejects religion because of the fact it asks you to submit to a totalitarian God.”
what an indictment of his philosohpy. It DID lead him to support the iraq war.
it strikes me that master’s fag has assumed the case for atheism stops when he can’t think of a rebuttal an atheist might give to his points.
and pascal’s wager? really? what kind of high school religious education class has provided you with that prime rib of high intellect? leave debate to the people who can actually debate, please.
I can tell you right now. I’d rather there be a Soviet Afghanistan than a Ragheadistan.
You can rationalize with Marxists and anarchists because deep down inside they know they’re full of shit.
But when you’re dealing with people who will fly commercial jets into planes…
Ugh.
*into buildings…
@dragler
“so blairs decision to go to war is a reflection of christianity, but Hitchens decision to promote that war is not a reflection of atheism?”
not a reflection, but a contradiction. and yes, hitchens’ decision is not a reflection of atheism. no, hitchens’ disbelief did not lead him to support the iraq war, but rather a mistrust of authoritarian systems lead him to both conclusions.
You All Like “Fergie” said:
“The argument isn’t “are there good people who are religious?” or “has religion been good for society” it’s “do people ever make good use of religion in their own lives?” and the answer is certainly yes, many many people do. Why can’t we let these people continue to do so?”
Just because SOME people make good use of religion in their lives doesn’t mean their beliefs are factually accurate. Let’s get down to basics here, people – the bottom line is that belief in winged horses, talking snakes, dudes who walk on water and every other extraordinary religious claim are beliefs which are NOT FOUNDED IN REALITY. What if we can find a way for people to do good in their lives without resorting to the need for self-delusion, I mean faith? We can, and if we do, religion will have outlived its usefulness.
Exactly. I think that’s the biggest point of the arguments Hitchens makes – religion disables critical reasoning and that’s what’s really dangerous about it.
“but rather a mistrust of authoritarian systems lead him to both conclusions.”
you’re trying to have your cake and eat it to. Hitchens and Blair are of two different spiritual views and they both supported the iraq war which means that the viewpoints themselves are not the problem, the people are.
as Pat Buchanan might say, both Hitchens and Blairs religion is democracy.
and it failed.
@chRon
There are lots of religious people whose beliefs only extend to things that cannot be disproven. I do think that anyone who disputes, say, evolution is at a severe disadvantage when it comes to thinking clearly and understanding the world. I also personally think the idea of god is pretty ridiculous, but I can’t disprove it and neither can you (we can disprove certain attributes, like absolute omnipotence).
My point is that the “us vs. them” mentality is not going to help anything.
@dragler
correlation != causation
the assertion is that the seemingly fruitless invasion of a nation that costs thousands of lives is a contradiction of christian values
it might seem unfair that because someone doesn’t adhere to a religion, you can’t simplistically conclude “both sides are equally bad” but that’s how it is
and i have no idea what you’re on about with the democracy comment
alpha- I’m saying that whatever non religous values hitchens has and the allegedly christian values Blair have in the end probably little connection to their beliefs about the war.
Spreading democracy is their religion moreso than their alleged faiths. The way christians try to convert people in Africa they want to convert people to democracy in the middle east. It’s their white man’s burden if you will.
@ everyone
Go to hell