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Christopher Hitchens Has Died
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/16/143595854/writer-christopher-hitchens-dies
"For years, Hitchens had toured the country debating religious figures about his utter disbelief in the existence of a God. He didn't waver in the face of his inability to treat his disease. To the very end, whatever the argument joined, Hitchens' voice was an original. He is survived by his wife, the writer Carol Blue, and three children."
"Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.
“Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic,” Hitchens wrote nearly a year ago in Vanity Fair, but his own final labors were anything but: in the last 12 months, he produced for this magazine a piece on U.S.-Pakistani relations in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, a portrait of Joan Didion, an essay on the Private Eye retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a prediction about the future of democracy in Egypt, a meditation on the legacy of progressivism in Wisconsin, and a series of frank, graceful, and exquisitely written essays in which he chronicled the physical and spiritual effects of his disease. At the end, Hitchens was more engaged, relentless, hilarious, observant, and intelligent than just about everyone else—just as he had been for the last four decades."
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/16/143595854/writer-christopher-hitchens-dies
"For years, Hitchens had toured the country debating religious figures about his utter disbelief in the existence of a God. He didn't waver in the face of his inability to treat his disease. To the very end, whatever the argument joined, Hitchens' voice was an original. He is survived by his wife, the writer Carol Blue, and three children."
"Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.
“Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic,” Hitchens wrote nearly a year ago in Vanity Fair, but his own final labors were anything but: in the last 12 months, he produced for this magazine a piece on U.S.-Pakistani relations in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, a portrait of Joan Didion, an essay on the Private Eye retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a prediction about the future of democracy in Egypt, a meditation on the legacy of progressivism in Wisconsin, and a series of frank, graceful, and exquisitely written essays in which he chronicled the physical and spiritual effects of his disease. At the end, Hitchens was more engaged, relentless, hilarious, observant, and intelligent than just about everyone else—just as he had been for the last four decades."
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Comments
However, I was not all that impressed with their collective 'science' of religion. More often their 'science' degenerated into focusing on the worst aspects of Christianity and projecting those aspects onto anyone who happened to believe other than what they did - which seems to be exactly what they were arguing against. Rather paradoxical coming from those who professed an 'objective' science.
But Hitchens yet again demonstrates - that we all must die.
He will be remembered!
Just being the devil's advocate here.
“Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
I know. I do not believe in the rebirth. I was saying that the comment about his beliefs was an irrelevant.
He was no role model.
There are many of our contemporaries worthy of our respect..they are largely those who faced their dark depths and came up with pearls hard won.
Not who turned their face to the wall and succumbed to aversion to life itself.
We can recognise the sadness that the death of any person entails without projecting onto that person qualities that are at odds with their reality.
I think his is an extreme view where religion is concerned; definitely not the middle way.
However he is in his conclusion ignorant of buddhism as a practice. For example he says that one abandons their critical faculties as a buddhist. Now that would need to be the thesis statement of a separate talk and would need to be supported by evidence. In Hitchen's talk he describes war atrocities and then pulls a bait and switch ending the talk with a conclusional statement that was not supported within his speach. Perhaps this is just an excerpt?
Hitchens, along with Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, made money out of caricaturing, lampooning and jeering at those who believed in the supernatural whether it be God, Santa Clause or the tooth fairy. There was no science behind their collective words - there was only an appeal to ignorance. Their attack on religion was nothing more than listing the worst aspects of humanity - and one does not need a science degree to that.
Consequently, those great mystics who gave the world much, which includes Jesus and the Buddha, where nothing more than a convenient whipping post against which they directed their aggression and hatred.
I suspect such people are already living in their own private hell. My pray is that they will eventually be freed from such imprisonment.
In metta,
Raven
I could point to a whole world of ignorance (not that my mindset is smug, holier than thou or snobbish about it)... but rather knowing, having been subject to some false impressions in the past, that the voice of dissent makes me 'bunker down' even more.
Speaking for myself, I know I can be quite egotistical and have belief as a 'safe place'. The root of the belief is lack of security, so I succumb to it and give it power. My humanity takes second place to thought, but that then applies to other people too. If I don't respect my own humanity- putting my thoughts on a pedestal, so to speak- how do I respect the humanity of 'others'?
Having a gods eye view over another situation, to which I'm not privy, is to not intervene. But maybe people have to work it out for themselves sometimes. Experience is a hard teacher- the lesson comes first and the teaching after. But not always.
Follow a code of conduct that 'does no harm', if I'm not preaching to the choir then I'm airing the voice of dissent from a distance. But you/I can't seem beat the voice of self imposed integrity and self assurance, in anything other than a supervisory way. The dog will keep barking no matter how many times I scold it. It will keep chewing on that rotten old ball if I don't pick it up. Saying 'I told you so!' doesn't change our natural inclination.
Please do.
http://notepub.com/#note=328057
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/killing-the-buddha/