I've watched a couple of recent Christopher Hitchens debates on religion, and as someone who would like to see belief in God become even more widespread, all I can say is thank God for Hitchens. He acts like a prick on stilts. You could cut the hostility he gives off with a knife. He acts like every religious person that ever lived molested his daughter. He comes off like a rabid dog, and all right-thinking atheists should do what they can to get him committed. He helps the cause like Hitler helped patriotism. Maybe it's the drinking. Look at the photo: does the guy go to the john without booze? He keeps talking about how hateful church people are, but I can't think of a person on a TV talk show that has shown more venom, and I'm not proud to say that I've watched a lot of shows. I was an atheist for about 15 years, and even then I was disgusted with these types who think that the way you talk to believers is to call their mothers whores.
Update: It turns out that Chesterton agrees with me. He wrote that the enemy of religion is not atheism--it's growing indifference. And like Nisbet wrote, aggressive atheism reawakens and reinforces a person's religious values. Hitchens is a friend: the deepening secularization of life is the enemy.
Ah, he's not so bad. And the cracks about his boozing became tedious about three years ago (to paraphrase Lincoln, someone ought to find out what Hitchens drinks and send a case to every other pundit).
ReplyDeleteHitchens brings a note of raucous, raffish Oxford Union-style debate to what is otherwise a tremendously boring, self-important, and over-earnest media atmosphere. And I say this as someone who disagrees with him about nearly everything (intellectually, I find his brother Peter -a journalist for the Daily Mail- much more congenial).
The main problems with Hitchens are that he seems to have a few rote-memorized monologues which he trots out during multiple interviews (this makes youtube-expedited-serial-Hitchens-viewing somewhat repetitive). And he has the annoying habit of conflating religions and using the obvious evils of particular ones (Islam, most obviously) to attack the concept in general.
Fred: The guy has zero sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteHe gets paid for dunken rantings? I'm in the wrong line of work. I am a heavy drinker and can carry on with the best of them. However, read Hitchen's piece on ADD, it is actually quite good. But then again, as I said, I'm a drunk.
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