Christopher Hitchens Dies At 62 910
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the NY Times:
"Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died Thursday at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62. He took pains to emphasize that he had not revised his position on atheism, articulated in his best-selling 2007 book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, although he did express amused appreciation at the hope, among some concerned Christians, that he might undergo a late-life conversion. Mr. Hitchens's latest collection of writings, Arguably: Essays, published this year, has been a best-seller and ranked among the top 10 books of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review."
Not all religions are bad (Score:1, Interesting)
In comparison, Theravada Buddhism is almost completely different. It promotes the idea of people thinking themselves and not just accepting what someone else tells them to. It doesn't believe in some imaginary persons or miracles - Buddha has actually lived, and isn't viewed as some kind of more than a human. It also teaches you to respect other people and in karmas law. The whole religion isn't so much an religion but good guidelines for life.
There's lots of bad with religions, but most of it comes from Christianity and western world.
The Atlantic (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember a reviewer observing that Christopher Hitchens writes books faster than most people read. I suspect that was true.
Re:Not all religions are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not all religions are bad (Score:5, Interesting)
the bigots i see here aren't the religious ones (Score:3, Interesting)
people mention bombing abortion clinics, beating up gays, sorry how many times does that happen out of 2 billion Christians, maybe it more of a problem with American's then Christian's, as that type of behaviour does tend to be US centric.
The majority of Christian's i have met are actually nice people, they help the homeless, they do a lot of chariabtle work, of course there are a lot of people who proclaimed to be religious and aren't nice, but that's like saying you met an arsehole who work for starbucks, so by definition all Starbucks employees are arsehole's.
On slashdot you expect a higher level of discussion, but it's quiet funny how when you mention religion it descends into bigotry and prejudice. Again im not religious but i have no major problem with Christianity, it basic doctrines are right, i.e be nice to people, dont murder people.
People seem to forget the abolition of slavery, the fall of Communism, many of the social right's w have today where from Christian organization's in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Re:Not all religions are bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes but it is the wrong question. This question is asking if religious persons are morally superior to non-religious persons. I have often heard that claim but I don't believe it is true, nor it is relevant to me. The relevant question in my view is, "Name one good, moral action you took that was motivated by religious belief, that you would not otherwise have done." In other words, ask not whether religion makes "people" more ethical, ask whether religion makes me more ethical. And BTW that is very easy to answer.
And name one wicked action committed in opposition to religion. Also easy.
I hope there is more to Hitchens' book than that. Very likely. Frankly as a religious person myself I am interested in reading it. I believe it was Aristotle who said the unexamined life is not worth living. Answering questions like these is in my opinion good for anyone's moral development, whether they prefer a religious or humanist approach.
Re:Not all religions are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Right.... except that it isn't hard at all to find that different people have interpreted it differently. A quick google search will bring up some interesting articles on the topic. Interesting if you find biblical interpretation debate interesting. I usually attribute my interest to the sort of bemused fascination that comes from having been an atheist who went to catholic schools...
The main quote on the topic is:
Some bibles have reinterpreted this to "Homosexuality is a sin", which would include lesbian acts, etc. Clearly thats a debatable stretch, but, before even debating that part, arguments about the context of the statement lead to different conclusions:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibh4.htm [religioustolerance.org]
Under that interpretation, its kind of hard to use that as a condemnation of all gay sex.
Re:Never heard of him (Score:4, Interesting)
If you even bothered to read the summary, the answer was "no." And your hope isn't for his sake: it's really for yours -- the fact that somebody else believes in your fantasy serves only to bolster your belief.
Additionally, have a look at this [youtube.com].
Re:Hitchens criticism of buddhism (Score:5, Interesting)
Invariable, as religions grow and spread they are twisted and used for evil and force people to abandon reason.
What causes the religion to start in the first place? What causes them to grow and spread? What causes them to be twisted and used for evil?
Buddhism, for example, did not start out as a religion. Siddartha Gautama figured out how to get enlightened (to end suffering completely in this lifetime) and started telling other people about it. He said you shouldn't kill people because it would hinder one's progress to enlightenment (not cause of any 'divine justice' or whatever, but simply cause the mental qualities that arise as a result of planning to and executing a murder are antithetical to the ones required to calm the mind and lead to the end of suffering). How did it get from that to people using Zen to justify slaughtering their enemies?
The issue is not with any particular religion. The issue is not with any particular person, either. The issue is the human mind's capacity to react blindly to what is happening. Not seeing what is happening with discernment, you make mistakes. You believe in things that have no proof. You cause yourself and other people to suffer. The issue is with this human capacity to believe. It's a process, not a thing.
Criticizing religions won't make a dent in it. Trying to convince particular people to not believe in their religion won't make a dent in it, because it won't solve the fundamental issue - that capacity to react blindly, aka to believe in things, aka to suffer and cause suffering.
What would make a dent in it is teaching people how to no longer react blindly to things. This is far more than just an intellectual pursuit. This capacity to react blindly and grasp at what is pleasant, reject what is unpleasant, and ignore everything in-between is quite deeply rooted... only made worse by social conditioning such as religion. Teach people a practice that, when undertaken diligently, allows for clearer and clearer seeing, which leads to less and less suffering, and less and less desire to cause suffering in others.
This is not easy. That's just what the Buddha was doing 2500 years ago. And he seemed pretty good at it - there are references to thousands of Arahats (fully enlightened people) in the Pali canon. Yet now you will be hard pressed to find one person claiming they are an Arahat. What happened? I don't know. Buddhism started out as an oral tradition for its first few hundred years... I suspect much was lost.
To summarize: going after the religion is going after something far, far further along than the root cause. If you shoot down one 'bad' religion, another will spring up, and so on ad infinitem. If you eliminate the root cause, though...
Re:Not all religions are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
So let me get this straight: God hates witchcraft. Does that, therefore, imply that witchcraft exists? That one can curse the cows of their neighbors by performing certain rituals?
Or does witchcraft not exist? If that's the case, then what does God hate in that context?
Re:Not all religions are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Try studying the bible as it was put together. The questionable letters that were chosen, The debates about what to include, what to remove. Did they teach you that the letters the used to put together the new testament where from people who weren't alive when Christ** was? Did they teach you the some stories had Jesus added to them? and that it's very likely that the letters weren't about the same person? That the manger story isn't correct? did they teach you that the trip Mary and Joseph* took wasn't possible to do? No, I thought not.
What are you under the impression is studied in bible college classes? You're getting them confused with a bible study perhaps.
The entire validity of the Bible as a religious text rests on the assumption that it is, in its entirety "God breathed, and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness..." (2 Timothy 3:16)
This assumption requires the stipulation that supernatural forces controlled the evolution of the text in its entirety.
When it comes right down to it, the entire story is worthless unless Jesus was literally the Son of God who was conceived in a virgin through supernatural intervention. (Zeus never managed that now, did he?) If he was NOT the Son of God then his death was meaningless and none of the rest of the pile of cards holds any meaning at all.
In the face of those required bottom level assumptions, your petty concerns about the validity of some of the epistles are meaningless. Either God impregnated a virgin, in which case something like making sure the story was preserved correctly over the next couple thousand years would be pretty fucking easy, or he didn't in which case there's no merit in any of it whatsoever.
that makes you LESS likely to be a rational source.
I'm pretty sure a thorough understanding of the subject, along with a degree in Sociology (the science of studying social constructs such as *GASP* religion) and a neutral viewpoint (rational agnosticism) DO in fact make me a pretty rational source. :-)
I generally avoid arguing about religion, since it's so pointless, but I'm feeling bored since i just finished my last college paper ever.
I'm also aware of the conception that agnostics are all self important pricks who just love to troll both sides, and it's entirely possible that I am just being that. However, after my initial antichristian atheistic kneejerk reaction to my upbringing I learned a hell of a lot about both sides, and myself, and realized that atheistic humanism requires just as much conscious belief on my part as Christianity. YMMV, it is fucking religion after all, the great thing about living in the modern era is we each get to choose for ourselves. :-)