God Strikes Down Hitchens

Sam Vimes

www.ncregister.com wrote: »

Christopher Hitchens can be smart, acerbic, funny, mean, insightful, and thick. He defends Western Civilization while, via his outspoken atheism, semantically chipping away at the Christian pillars that support it

:rolleyes:

It really pisses me off when Christians take all the credit for civilization (and none of the blame of course) but then what can you expect from people who think that their book of magic stories is the only source of good in the world.

The Mad Hatter

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Actually, his brother is made from the same mold.

Rather poorer quality dough, though.

murrayp4

Only heard this yesterday. Very very sad.

Zillah

Oh dear oh dear: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/hitchens-201009

If I hadn't managed to stop smoking recently I'd certainly be considering it now. Nice to see that he hasn't lost the edge in his writing anyway. With luck we might get another decade out of him. My favourite outtake:

If Penélope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice. In the war against Thanatos, if we must term it a war, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice.

Greek God smut

condra

Get well soon Hitch.

Canis Lupus

Would someone please mind popping the article in here. My work internet blocks Vanity Fair because it's : "Entertainment, Provocative Attire, Fashion/Beauty".

Ickle Magoo

Here you go:

First Person
Topic of Cancer
One fine June day, the author is launching his best-selling memoir, Hitch-22. The next, he’s throwing up backstage at The Daily Show, in a brief bout of denial, before entering the unfamiliar country—with its egalitarian spirit, martial metaphors, and hard bargains of people who have cancer.
By Christopher Hitchens•Photograph by John Huba
September 2010

JOINING THE RESISTANCE?
The author at home in Washington, D.C., July 18, 2010.

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement. I could faintly hear myself breathe but could not manage to inflate my lungs. My heart was beating either much too much or much too little. Any movement, however slight, required forethought and planning. It took strenuous effort for me to cross the room of my New York hotel and summon the emergency services. They arrived with great dispatch and behaved with immense courtesy and professionalism. I had the time to wonder why they needed so many boots and helmets and so much heavy backup equipment, but now that I view the scene in retrospect I see it as a very gentle and firm deportation, taking me from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady. Within a few hours, having had to do quite a lot of emergency work on my heart and my lungs, the physicians at this sad border post had shown me a few other postcards from the interior and told me that my immediate next stop would have to be with an oncologist. Some kind of shadow was throwing itself across the negatives.

The previous evening, I had been launching my latest book at a successful event in New Haven. The night of the terrible morning, I was supposed to go on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and then appear at a sold-out event at the 92nd Street Y, on the Upper East Side, in conversation with Salman Rushdie. My very short-lived campaign of denial took this form: I would not cancel these appearances or let down my friends or miss the chance of selling a stack of books. I managed to pull off both gigs without anyone noticing anything amiss, though I did vomit two times, with an extraordinary combination of accuracy, neatness, violence, and profusion, just before each show. This is what citizens of the sick country do while they are still hopelessly clinging to their old domicile.

The new land is quite welcoming in its way. Everybody smiles encouragingly and there appears to be absolutely no racism. A generally egalitarian spirit prevails, and those who run the place have obviously got where they are on merit and hard work. As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited. The country has a language of its own—a lingua franca that manages to be both dull and difficult and that contains names like ondansetron, for anti-nausea medication—as well as some unsettling gestures that require a bit of getting used to. For example, an official met for the first time may abruptly sink his fingers into your neck. That’s how I discovered that my cancer had spread to my lymph nodes, and that one of these deformed beauties—located on my right clavicle, or collarbone—was big enough to be seen and felt. It’s not at all good when your cancer is “palpable” from the outside. Especially when, as at this stage, they didn’t even know where the primary source was. Carcinoma works cunningly from the inside out. Detection and treatment often work more slowly and gropingly, from the outside in. Many needles were sunk into my clavicle area—“Tissue is the issue” being a hot slogan in the local Tumorville tongue—and I was told the biopsy results might take a week.

Working back from the cancer-ridden squamous cells that these first results disclosed, it took rather longer than that to discover the disagreeable truth. The word “metastasized” was the one in the report that first caught my eye, and ear. The alien had colonized a bit of my lung as well as quite a bit of my lymph node. And its original base of operations was located—had been located for quite some time—in my esophagus. My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

The notorious stage theory of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whereby one progresses from denial to rage through bargaining to depression and the eventual bliss of “acceptance,” hasn’t so far had much application in my case. In one way, I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. Rage would be beside the point for the same reason. Instead, I am badly oppressed by a gnawing sense of waste. I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read—if not indeed write—the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger? But I understand this sort of non-thinking for what it is: sentimentality and self-pity. Of course my book hit the best-seller list on the day that I received the grimmest of news bulletins, and for that matter the last flight I took as a healthy-feeling person (to a fine, big audience at the Chicago Book Fair) was the one that made me a million-miler on United Airlines, with a lifetime of free upgrades to look forward to. But irony is my business and I just can’t see any ironies here: would it be less poignant to get cancer on the day that my memoirs were remaindered as a box-office turkey, or that I was bounced from a coach-class flight and left on the tarmac? To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

The bargaining stage, though. Maybe there’s a loophole here. The oncology bargain is that, in return for at least the chance of a few more useful years, you agree to submit to chemotherapy and then, if you are lucky with that, to radiation or even surgery. So here’s the wager: you stick around for a bit, but in return we are going to need some things from you. These things may include your taste buds, your ability to concentrate, your ability to digest, and the hair on your head. This certainly appears to be a reasonable trade. Unfortunately, it also involves confronting one of the most appealing clichés in our language. You’ve heard it all right. People don’t have cancer: they are reported to be battling cancer. No well-wisher omits the combative image: You can beat this. It’s even in obituaries for cancer losers, as if one might reasonably say of someone that they died after a long and brave struggle with mortality. You don’t hear it about long-term sufferers from heart disease or kidney failure.

Myself, I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don’t read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent soldier or revolutionary is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.

It’s quite something, this chemo-poison. It has caused me to lose about 14 pounds, though without making me feel any lighter. It has cleared up a vicious rash on my shins that no doctor could ever name, let alone cure. (Some venom, to get rid of those furious red dots without a struggle.) Let it please be this mean and ruthless with the alien and its spreading dead-zone colonies. But as against that, the death-dealing stuff and life-preserving stuff have also made me strangely neuter. I was fairly reconciled to the loss of my hair, which began to come out in the shower in the first two weeks of treatment, and which I saved in a plastic bag so that it could help fill a floating dam in the Gulf of Mexico. But I wasn’t quite prepared for the way that my razorblade would suddenly go slipping pointlessly down my face, meeting no stubble. Or for the way that my newly smooth upper lip would begin to look as if it had undergone electrolysis, causing me to look a bit too much like somebody’s maiden auntie. (The chest hair that was once the toast of two continents hasn’t yet wilted, but so much of it was shaved off for various hospital incisions that it’s a rather patchy affair.) I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penélope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice. In the war against Thanatos, if we must term it a war, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice.

These are my first raw reactions to being stricken. I am quietly resolved to resist bodily as best I can, even if only passively, and to seek the most advanced advice. My heart and blood pressure and many other registers are now strong again: indeed, it occurs to me that if I didn’t have such a stout constitution I might have led a much healthier life thus far. Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups. On both of these I hope to write next time if—as my father invariably said—I am spared.

Christopher Hitchens is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. Send comments on all Hitchens-related matters to hitchbitch@vf.com.

liamw

To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

Love this

MagicMarker

He's 61?!:eek:

He really doesn't look it!

ColmDawson

MagicMarker wrote: »

He's 61?!:eek:

He really doesn't look it!

I know, it's amazing. It just goes to show the wonders a life of olive oil and spring water can do for a person.

Goduznt Xzst

On a more philisophical note Hitchens, like many intellectuals, has a character which I find hard to reconcile.

In a way, I feel a simultaneous sense of empathy and apathy for the man.

He can, with his words, cut through misconceptions and delusions like a hot knife through butter, but then on the other hand, can follow foolish ideals, and promote politics that are utterly reprehensible.

He can formulate arguments succinctly and deliver them with unwaivering poise yet he has been a fool in his animal consumption of toxins.

He reminds me, in a sense, of the late Martin Heidegger, on one hand his book "Sein und Zeit" blew me away, and still remains a cornerstone of modern philosophy, but on the other he was a scurrilous Nazi bastard, becoming a whistleblower on his fellow anti-Nazi friends and associates.

I guess I can't reconcile Hitchens obvious, foolish choices to slowly bring this malady upon himself, because I, and all of us, are no different. It all comes back to what Nietzsche spoke about in "Also sprach Zarathustra", of mans struggle to separate himself from the animal and reach towards the Übermensch.

When I see a man like Hitchens suffering such a self inflicted disease it shatters my preconception that it is possible for man to fully overcome the nihilistic animals that we where born from.

Soul Winner

Sad news for sure. Probably my favorite of the new atheists. I think he has a good heart and genuinely wants good for the world and his fellow man. May God be merciful to to poor old codger. Maybe his brother Peter will steer him right (faith wise) before the end. Will pray for the healing of his body and here's to hoping he finds faith.

Morlar

I do think he is a bit of a cock sometimes but at least he has a personality and sense of humour.

Can't say I agree with him on too many things but his opinions are genuinely his own and he doesn't care who he pisses off so on that basis I would have respect for him. Hope he gets well soon.

Zillah

Soul Winner wrote: »

Sad news for sure. Probably my favorite of the new atheists. I think he has a good heart and genuinely wants good for the world and his fellow man. May God be merciful to to poor old codger. Maybe his brother Peter will steer him right (faith wise) before the end. Will pray for the healing of his body and here's to hoping he finds faith.

Stop it.

Just stop it. You people are positively dripping with slime in my mind when you say stuff like this.

JimiTime

Zillah wrote: »

Stop it.

Just stop it. You people are positively dripping with slime in my mind when you say stuff like this.

Only when we say stuff like that? You mean, you think of Christians in a positive light at other times?:)

I'll pray for you Zillah:pac:

Zillah

JimiTime wrote: »

You mean, you think of Christians in a positive light at other times?:)

It's like a bad acid trip.

condra

Soul Winner wrote: »

I think he has a good heart and genuinely wants good for the world and his fellow man.

:rolleyes:

amacachi

I don't really mind if someone wants to pray for me, but I find it confusing why they don't use the time to do something more worthwhile, like take a pen apart and put it back together, or unwind a few metres of string then wind it back up.

condra

I don't care if someone wants to pray for me in private, but if I was gravely ill, the last thing I would want would be a theist telling everyone he will pray for me or smugly proclaiming "I think he has a good heart and genuinely wants good for the world and his fellow man."..

It's tasteless, it's disingenuous, it's opportunist, and it's insulting to peoples intelligence.

It's not surprising though, Christians are often incapable of giving to charity without telling half the world about it either.

Hitch doesn't care for your prayers, nor does he need confirmation from anyone that he "has a good heart".

If you want to show support or solidarity, a simple "Get well soon" would suffice.

amacachi

condra wrote: »

I don't care if someone wants to pray for me in private, but if I was gravely ill, the last thing I would want would be a theist telling everyone he will pray for me or smugly proclaiming "I think he has a good heart and genuinely wants good for the world and his fellow man."..

It's tasteless, it's disingenuous, it's opportunist, and it's insulting to peoples intelligence.

It's not surprising though, Christians are often incapable of giving to charity without telling half the world about it either.

Hitch doesn't care for your prayers, nor does he need confirmation from anyone that he "has a good heart".

If you want to show support or solidarity, a simple "Get well soon" would suffice.

Aye, I heard about an Aunt slipping away and how nurses were praying with her and told my parents that if I was slipping away to get praying nurses the **** out. Mam was all offended (even though she's not really Christian any more) so I asked how she'd feel if it was a muslim nurse alalalalaaing away as I drew my last breaths. :pac:

Pray for Hitchens if you want, actually if he has a public e-mail address you should let him know you are, laughter is the best medicine I hear.

panda100

condra wrote: »

I don't care if someone wants to pray for me in private, but if I was gravely ill, the last thing I would want would be a theist telling everyone he will pray for me or smugly proclaiming "I think he has a good heart and genuinely wants good for the world and his fellow man."..

It's tasteless, it's disingenuous, it's opportunist, and it's insulting to peoples intelligence.

It's not surprising though, Christians are often incapable of giving to charity without telling half the world about it either.

Hitch doesn't care for your prayers, nor does he need confirmation from anyone that he "has a good heart".

If you want to show support or solidarity, a simple "Get well soon" would suffice.

+1
I'm going through a crisis at the moment as I was rejected for the grant earlier this week and so probably won't be able to afford my postgrad next year.
Everyone in my family keeps telling me they'll pray for me or If God wants you to do the course he'll find you the money somehow Im like WTF, I need practical help people!
Annoying thing is when and If I do get funding they'll think its because of God's divine intervention rather than my persistence and hard work!

And the 'good heart' thing is patronising.Like you can only be a good person If your religious. Most of the evilest people I know are religious.

bnt

amacachi wrote: »

Pray for Hitchens if you want, actually if he has a public e-mail address you should let him know you are, laughter is the best medicine I hear.

A joke kinda loses its appeal after you've heard it a few dozen times, especially if you knew the punchline in advance - and I bet The Hitch is hearing this one at a rate comparable to iPhone 4 sales. His Vanity Fair piece this week ends by saying he's going to tackle this topic in his next instalment.

robindch

Soul Winner wrote: »

Will pray for the healing of his body and here's to hoping he finds faith.

If you're going to do that -- and I would recommend that you spend the time doing something more helpful like helping old ladies across the road or picking up rubbish on the streets -- then I would suggest that you don't tell the Hitch that you're praying for him, since it tends to make people significantly worse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer#The_STEP_project

sink

CNN's Anderson Cooper interview with Hitch.

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/05/hitchens-on-cancer-diagnosis-why-not-me/

mehfesto

sink wrote: »

CNN's Anderson Cooper interview with Hitch.

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/05/hitchens-on-cancer-diagnosis-why-not-me/

Great interview. Really, really interesting and quite touching.
Nice to see a perspective of death that isn't over romanticized. It just happens.
The man interests me more every day.

eightyfish

Zillah wrote: »

If I hadn't managed to stop smoking recently I'd certainly be considering it now.

I am considering it now.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

i've been trying to quit for the past few weeks, but keep waking up in the morning and buying a packet

few things have made me want a cigarette and want to quit cigarettes as much as that interview though.



http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115992191779994&ref=search#!/group.php?gid=115992191779994

get well hitchens group I stumbled across on facebook, if anyone's into pointless facebook group joinings

condra

You burned the candle at both ends --

and it gave a lovely light

sweet

eightyfish

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

i've been trying to quit for the past few weeks, but keep waking up in the morning and buying a packet

It's the evening that does it to me, usually after a pint I can't resist buying a pack. In the morning when there are 10 left I regret it, but smoke them anyway. Sad, really.

I need a book for some travelling soon and I'm thinking of buying Hitch-22. Has anyone read it? Is it a good read?

murrayp4

Full 18 min. interview here

MagicMarker

Would he not shave his head?

Kinda looks like a badass as a cue ball.

Dave!

Hitch

Get well soon!

That Slate article is terrific, and the interview was good too.

robindch

murrayp4 wrote: »

Full 18 min. interview here

A magnificently gutsy interview -- good on him

MagicMarker

robindch wrote: »

A magnificently gutsy interview -- good on him

Agreed, the part about his mum was absolutely heartbreaking! I'd imagine his memoirs would make for good reading.

ThirdMan

eightyfish wrote: »

I need a book for some travelling soon and I'm thinking of buying Hitch-22. Has anyone read it? Is it a good read?

Yeah, it's a good read. There's an irritating amount of name dropping though, and he comes across a bit egocentric. However, he's a fascinating individual, and present circumstances lend the book a rather ominous relevance.

Soul Winner

Zillah wrote: »

Stop it.

Just stop it. You people are positively dripping with slime in my mind when you say stuff like this.

condra wrote: »

I don't care if someone wants to pray for me in private, but if I was gravely ill, the last thing I would want would be a theist telling everyone he will pray for me or smugly proclaiming "I think he has a good heart and genuinely wants good for the world and his fellow man."..

It's tasteless, it's disingenuous, it's opportunist, and it's insulting to peoples intelligence.

Hitch doesn't care for your prayers, nor does he need confirmation from anyone that he "has a good heart".

If you want to show support or solidarity, a simple "Get well soon" would suffice.

robindch wrote: »

If you're going to do that -- and I would recommend that you spend the time doing something more helpful like helping old ladies across the road or picking up rubbish on the streets -- then I would suggest that you don't tell the Hitch that you're praying for him, since it tends to make people significantly worse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer#The_STEP_project

My word, you wish a guy well and the stick you get over it. Jeeese... shouldn't have bothered... :rolleyes: My reply to the OP should have been: "One down three to go" but then I would have gotten stick for that too (rightly so in that case). But like I've always said, we just can't win with you guys no matter what we do... Hey Hitch, I know you don't care but get well soon what??? Is that OK guys???

ColmDawson

Soul Winner wrote: »

My reply to the OP should have been: "One down three to go"

Would've laughed.:pac:

Soul Winner wrote: »

But like I've always said, we just can't win with you guys no matter what we do... Hey Hitch, I know you don't care but get well soon what??? Is that OK guys???

That's pretty good.

Really though, I know you think prayer works (despite the evidence to the contrary) so I'm sure your intentions are good. It's just ... it does seem so sickly pious. I feel like if you wanted to be respectful to sick old Hitchens, you could respect the fact that the idea that he might find faith is fairly repellent to both him and many A&A posters.

Zillah

Soul Winner wrote: »

My word, you wish a guy well and the stick you get over it. Jeeese... shouldn't have bothered... :rolleyes: My reply to the OP should have been: "One down three to go" but then I would have gotten stick for that too (rightly so in that case). But like I've always said, we just can't win with you guys no matter what we do... Hey Hitch, I know you don't care but get well soon what??? Is that OK guys???

Well, you could try saying "This is very sad, I hope he gets better" without adding in all that smug condescending crap about God and seeing the light etc. It has the distinct air of kicking someone when they're down, and it also reeks of passive-aggression. That's why you're getting stick over it.

Soul Winner

Zillah wrote: »

Well, you could try saying "This is very sad, I hope he gets better" without adding in all that smug condescending crap about God and seeing the light etc. It has the distinct air of kicking someone when they're down, and it also reeks of passive-aggression. That's why you're getting stick over it.

Listen, if I was sick and an atheist said to me that he hopes I get well but to not ask him to pray about it, I'd accept that as his way of showing that he at least cares. Obviously he is not going to compromise his beliefs just because I'm sick. So why should I because Hitch is???? If Hitch wants to puke because I pray for his healing then let him puke is what I say. I wasn't saying what I said to make anyone puke, I was saying it because I believe that it helps. If I'm wrong about that then I'm wrong about it, but don't take cheap shots at my faith because I actually practice it. I'm sure deep down Hitch appreciates the prayers, but if he doesn't then that's his prerogative, would you slap your granny because she blessed you on the way out of her house?

MrPudding

Soul Winner wrote: »

Listen, if I was sick and an atheist said to me that he hopes I get well but to not ask him to pray about it, I'd accept that as his way of showing that he at least cares. Obviously he is not going to compromise his beliefs just because I'm sick. So why should I because Hitch is???? If Hitch wants to puke because I pray for his healing then let him puke is what I say. I wasn't saying what I said to make anyone puke, I was saying it because I believe that it helps. If I'm wrong about that then I'm wrong about it, but don't take cheap shots at my faith because I actually practice it. I'm sure deep down Hitch appreciates the prayers, but if he doesn't then that's his prerogative, would you slap your granny because she blessed you on the way out of her house?

So we are back to the old "it's only a prayer, why would anyone be offended?" discussion. As has been pointed out, it isn't just that your prayer is unwelcome, it is the attitude that somehow the combination of you praying for him and the fact that he may very well die might cause him to see the error of his ways, abandon all reason and logic and start believing the utter rubbish people like you believe.

I understand that christians have a problem understanding this, but some people really do have a problem with people offering them prayers. I am sure Mr Hitchins could not care less, but the rubbish that went along with your offer of prayer was, IMHO, typical of the superior, smug sickening attitude of some christians.

How hard is it to say get well soon without all the other sh1t that completely took away from any genuine desire you might actually have for him to get well?

MrP

Dades

Soul Winner, I know you meant well, but could have foreseen some of those responses!

sink

In Hitchens own words "if it makes you fell better, you have my blessing". Which imo is the right way to handle the situation. Why take offence? If one is a true believer purposely not praying for someone is almost insidious.

If Soul Winner really believes Hitchens is going to burn in hell for eternity unless he accepts Christ, then if he is a person of good conscience, he should feel compelled to pray.

It would be like watching a blind man stumble towards a cliff and to not say a word.

It boils down to whether one takes offence at others beliefs or whether one feels sympathy for their delusional state. I would fall into the latter category, Zillah et al would most likely fall into the former.

eightyfish

Soul Winner wrote: »

I'd accept that as his way of showing that he at least cares.

Nah that's rubbish, your post was a veiled dig at Hitchens. Not appropriate in a thread about him being diagnosed with cancer, IMO.

Maybe his brother Peter will steer him right (faith wise) before the end. Will pray for the healing of his body and here's to hoping he finds faith.

MrPudding

sink wrote: »

In Hitchens own words "if it makes you fell better, you have my blessing". Which imo is the right way to handle the situation. Why take offence? If one is a true believer purposely not praying for someone is almost insidious.

If Soul Winner really believes Hitchens is going to burn in hell for eternity unless he accepts Christ, then if he is a person of good conscience, he should feel compelled to pray.

It would be like watching a blind man stumble towards a cliff and to not say a word.

It boils down to whether one takes offence at others beliefs or whether one feels sympathy for their delusional state. I would fall into the latter category, Zillah et al would most likely fall into the former.

So, keep it to yourself. If you feel the need to pray for someone do it and then STFU.

MrP

MrPudding

eightyfish wrote: »

Nah that's rubbish, your post was a veiled dig at Hitchens. Not appropriate in a thread about him being diagnosed with cancer, IMO.

That is the bit that is worse than the offer of prayer. Personally I would not thank someone for offering to pray for me. But what really gets on my goat is what comes with it. Not just praying that they will get better, but praying that they will see the light and come to their senses. Praying that the veil will be lifted and they will finally come to believe what they have been denying. Balls. That is offensive.

I understand that religion makes a living from, pardon the pun, praying on those that are most vunerable, but I find it highly offensive.

Considering the person we are talking about and the forum we are posting on what possible reaction could such a post be trying to elicit?

Why can the religious not just offer a simple hope he get well and then pray for whatever they want in the privacy of their own heads? Why do they have to follow up with all the bull****?

And the blind man analogy is rubbish. The cliff is fairly obviously there and is a danger the blind man is apparently not aware of. It would, of course, be wrong not to warn him.

What Soulwinner is talking about is all in the mind bullsh1t that Hitchins has spent his entire life analyzing and studying and he has found it wanting. This is not a risk he is unaware of. It is a risk he believes is not likely to exist and he has good reasons for believing this. The sighted man can see the cliff and knows the blind man can’t. The religious know no more about god or heaven or hell or angels or unicorns than anyone else.

MrP

sink

MrPudding wrote: »

That is the bit that is worse than the offer of prayer. Personally I would not thank someone for offering to pray for me. But what really gets on my goat is what comes with it. Not just praying that they will get better, but praying that they will see the light and come to their senses. Praying that the veil will be lifted and they will finally come to believe what they have been denying. Balls. That is offensive.

I understand that religion makes a living from, pardon the pun, praying on those that are most vunerable, but I find it highly offensive.

Considering the person we are talking about and the forum we are posting on what possible reaction could such a post be trying to elicit?

Why can the religious not just offer a simple hope he get well and then pray for whatever they want in the privacy of their own heads? Why do they have to follow up with all the bull****?

And the blind man analogy is rubbish. The cliff is fairly obviously there and is a danger the blind man is apparently not aware of. It would, of course, be wrong not to warn him.

What Soulwinner is talking about is all in the mind bullsh1t that Hitchins has spent his entire life analyzing and studying and he has found it wanting. This is not a risk he is unaware of. It is a risk he believes is not likely to exist and he has good reasons for believing this. The sighted man can see the cliff and knows the blind man can’t. The religious know no more about god or heaven or hell or angels or unicorns than anyone else.

MrP

I would've expected such a reaction, I'm not arguing against that. I just think the offence taken is reactionary and shallow.

From the perspective of someone with deep conviction they can see the gateway to hell just as clearly as the sighted man can see the cliffs. Delusion is incredibly powerful and I think you underestimate degree to which delusional people can hold false convictions. There is no point in taking offence at someone's deeply held religious conviction any more that than taking offence at a schizophrenics paranoia.

Ickle Magoo

It's not really, it's akin to someone on the christianity forum posting that a popular christian is fighting cancer and I post that I hope they cop on and realise there is no heaven. It is insidious and totally inappropriate.

The Mad Hatter

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

It's not really, it's akin to someone on the christianity forum posting that a popular christian is fighting cancer and I post that I hope they cop on and realise there is no heaven. It is insidious and totally inappropriate.

Not quite - the stakes, from Soul Winner's point of view - are much higher.

I think it was pointless to tell us about it, but Hitchens has said he doesn't mind, and really it's not a big offence.

Ickle Magoo

I don't think he posted such a thing on the A&A forum thinking his post will actually be noticed or acknowledged by anyone other than the posters in here, let's be honest.

Oh I know Hitchens doesn't mind but that whole hoping that his brother steers him right stuff just sounds awful, really awful. Why not just wish the man strength or hope he beats cancer full stop rather than spending the well wishes hoping to recruit him or get the last laugh, it's just so disingenuous.

The Mad Hatter

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

I don't think he posted such a thing on the A&A forum thinking his post will actually be noticed or acknowledged by anyone other than the posters in here, let's be honest.

Oh I know Hitchens doesn't mind but that whole hoping that his brother steers him right stuff just sounds awful, really awful. Why not just wish the man strength or hope he beats cancer full stop rather than spending the well wishes hoping to recruit him or get the last laugh, it's just so disingenuous.

Well, sure, he should have kept it to himself. I just think the response was unnecessarily vitriolic and way out of proportion.