Christopher Hitchens - Dead

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011

I don't know how much this man meant to the community, but he was a voice that will not be surpassed anytime soon.

Sad news. :(

Sad news indeed. R.I.P.

I have enormous respect for Hitchens. He was bold enough to call people like Mother Teresa out for being frauds and far from being worthy of their sainthood or saint-like aura. He had a certain intelligence, charisma and sophistication that is hard to match.

This is really saddening.

In b4 Westboro

But seriously. Any person with the pair to call out Mother Theresa and even the Big Man Himself for being frauds is a decent enough person in my book, and judging by him passing in his sixties, I can say that he went a bit too soon.

There aren't enough words in my possession to commend this man for his works and advocacy. Quite simply, he was one of my if not my greatest hero still living, and someone who had both empowered my want for the abolition of religious untruths in the social and political arena with eloquence and ferocity, and provided a navigable route through the complexity of the situation in the Middle East that up until that point I hadn't a chance in understanding.

In a way I think we can be thankful that a man of his magnitude happened around the time when communicating with one another was and continues to become simpler and faster (something said at the risk of allowing even a couple more decades of servitude of that sort), because for the truth of his endeavours to be swallowed by the chasm of misconception would be something of a crime. I have it "on good faith" that his iron clad determinedness and intolerance for superstitious preachment will herald in a new era of rational discourse and debate in politics and religious discussion the likes of which I hope, one day, might bring an end to all this nonsense - but prefereably in a way that does less to paint oneself as a target than as an enemy that can only be assailed through such discussions.

This could either be one of the worst days in my year or the best, depending on what comes from it, but in any case I'll be taking the day off to buffer Sam Harris debates and down Walker's Black. He deserves that much.

Very sad but not unexpected, as he's been sick for quite a while now.

He was a great orator and thinker who had a unique ability to cut right through all the bullshit right to the heart of the debate, in a way that was simultaneously passionate, honest and well-reasoned. He spoke frankly and never sugar coated his words.

Youtube is full of videos of Hitchens at his best. Here's a good example:

.

Sad news indeed. No more "Hitchslaps". RIP.


Also liking the obvious tribute on Cyanide & Happiness:

'Very brilliant human being. 'Very lame that he's gone.

Don't think I ever heard of him. Nonetheless, R.I.P.

RIP

I don't think RIP would have been his favored response...

david_a said:

I don't think RIP would have been his favored response...

Despite its origins, I never attached a religious connotation to RIP. There is nothing more peaceful than being eternally unaware.

it suggests that it's possible to do the contrary.

Damn shame. It really sucks to see people like this go so soon. :(

Cancer is a fucking bitch.

FUUUUUUCK

I had just spent the night at a friends house and randomly grabbed "God is not great" from book shelf while waiting for the rest of house to wake up. He reads almost exactly as he speaks, and I am honestly ashamed I'll never get to shake his hand and look him in the eye and thank him for his incite.

It's hard to explain, but he really gets how reason works and is really good at expressing it, even if he sounds a bit arrogant to some folk. He's sort of a more intense Seven Fry who never got out of his punk stage. Probably why they paired them up in the following set of videos:

This blog post basically sums up my thoughts on Hitchens
better than I ever could:


I haven’t read as many of his books as everyone else seems to have. I thought he was brilliant and fiery and witty and polemical, but when intellectuals and polemicists really counted – after 9/11 – he was swept along with the tide of anti-muslim terrorist hysteria. He was wrong on the great issue of the day: the invasion of Iraq – and he was so stridently, sneeringly, viciously wrong that his vanity never allowed him to walk it back. He spent a huge amount of time, energy and words railing against the existential threat of ‘Islamofascism’ when it turned out the great threat to the hegemony of the west was our own financial system.

He wrote some interesting, funny stuff – especially about religion. But he spent his youth being wrong about Marxist-Leninsm and his middle years being wrong about the War on Terror, and because he was also wrong about the health effects of smoking – brilliantly, cleverly, polemically witty, railing furiously against the ‘anti-smoking fascists’, but still completely wrong – he didn’t get an old age to be right or wrong about anything in.

I will miss Hitchens. What an amazing man.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/richard-dawkins-illness-made-hitchens-a-symbol-of-the-honesty-and-dignity-of-atheism-6278298.html

A little late on this one, but I thought I might flag it up despite its simply being a horrible coincidence to have happened on the same day as Christopher's death (although I do childishly cherish the not-a-possibility that the PM was abstaining until he was out of earshot of one of the biggest powerhouse retaliators on the subject - never minding that he couldn't talk or that it was the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible):

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/politics/article-24022432-stand-up-for-christian-values-says-cameron.do

Clearly a man like Cameron is aware of what is really implied in claiming that "traditional Christian values" can aid in recovering from an apparent "moral collapse" in the UK ("collapse" being probably the most dysphemistic use of a word in recent memory). At least I trust he is, because I don’t think I’d favour a PM that looks upon vicarious redemption and misogyny as values fit for shaping countries. He's just being a good (read: bad) politician and drawing upon the more agreeable and morally innate values he imagines most of Britain to connotate with Christianity.

In any case I find it a contemptible series of statements even from a politician who's understandably trying to find ways to deal with the sorts of problems he addresses, and I wish he'd not been tempted to use this landmark as a springboard for one of the most ridiculous suggestions I've heard in some time. I do believe that the UK should recognise its religious foundations and teach of its practice and role in history, art etc., but what was implied here goes a little beyond that for comfort. And especially on the 16th of December, 2011.