Chris Hedges, in an interview about Hitchens with Brent Bambury this morning, called this attitude "secular fundamentalism."
That would have more weight if Hedges didn't have an axe to grind. Hitchens was snarky about Hedges' assertions about atheism and Hedges has never gotten over it.
I heard about this on the 6 o'clock news. I'm so sorry I never got to see her perform live Love her music. _________________ “If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a tractor.”
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 6173 Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2011 3:43 am Post subject:
Timebandit wrote:
al-Qa'bong wrote:
al-Qa'bong wrote:
Fervent belief in their dogma of disbelief.
Chris Hedges, in an interview about Hitchens with Brent Bambury this morning, called this attitude "secular fundamentalism."
That would have more weight if Hedges didn't have an axe to grind. Hitchens was snarky about Hedges' assertions about atheism and Hedges has never gotten over it.
My point is that Hedges identified the same thing that I did. _________________ "The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl
Chris Hedges, in an interview about Hitchens with Brent Bambury this morning, called this attitude "secular fundamentalism."
That would have more weight if Hedges didn't have an axe to grind. Hitchens was snarky about Hedges' assertions about atheism and Hedges has never gotten over it.
My point is that Hedges identified the same thing that I did.
Then I would recommend a second look. Hedges is frothing at the mouth irrational about atheists. Although I don't disagree with him on most political matters. Like Hitchens, his opinions vary in their reliability.
In 2008, Evora suffered a stroke while on tour in Australia in 2008 and later underwent open heart surgery.
Last time I saw her perform at Massey Hall in Toronto she had a little table set up on stage where she would sit during instrumental solos and calmly have a smoke. It was kinda classy and kinda sad.
Near the end of the show she asked if the audience had any requests, a couple of which she had to decline, with utmost grace and acceptance, due to the limitations of her much-deteriorated voice. She spoke in Portuguese, ending each remark with, "você entende?" The adoring audience hung on every word.
"The Barefoot Diva" is such a wonderful title, so full of strength, solidarity and humility. But in those darker moments she was also "the voice of longing."
Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 1283 Location: Left . . . of the plate
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2011 4:14 pm Post subject:
al-Qa'bong wrote:
My point is that Hedges identified the same thing that I did.
And are you hoping that if you say "secular fundamentalist" enough times and click your heels, that it will become a real thing? Or is it, like your god, enough that you have faith in it?
April, 2008
Quote:
Believers fail to understand that the absence of belief in god does not imply a blind “belief” in science and technology. Not believing in god means only that. It doesn’t mean trading one unsubstantiated belief for another.
This article is meaningless as is its title “Secular Fundamentalism”
Quote:
Hedges . . . pointing his finger and saying “YOU TOO”
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 6173 Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2011 5:46 pm Post subject:
Actually, I didn't say "secular fundamentalists," Hedges did, and I haven't made up my mind on the existence of God(s).
I do find it amusing, though, how challenging the lack of faith among devout athiests touches nerves, especially that optic nerve. Some folks appear to lose the ability to see what they're trying to read when this happens. _________________ "The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 6173 Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2011 7:34 pm Post subject:
No, it's more like they're addicted to fresh air.
We should start a separate thread on this topic, rather than clutter up the obit thread. _________________ "The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl
No "fierce tears" from me here. What a perversion of the ideals of socialism and a disaster for North Koreans that family has been. And if what I'm reading everywhere has any truth to it, it's not going to get better for the people any time soon since it appears a THIRD member of the family will be the successor. _________________ I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day. - Assclown Rob Ford
Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 1283 Location: Left . . . of the plate
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2011 3:10 pm Post subject:
al-Qa'bong wrote:
Actually, I didn't say "secular fundamentalists," Hedges did, and I haven't made up my mind on the existence of God(s).
. . . Some folks appear to lose the ability to see what they're trying to read when this happens.
I read it again. You said "radical atheists", I said, "What's that", you said, "Fervent belief in their dogma of disbelief." Then you quoted yourself and said that Hedges called "this attitude" secular fundamentalism. This attitude = fervent belief in their dogma of disbelief = secular fundamentalism. If you're now trying to disassociate yourself from that, OK, but that's pretty weaselly. And I could care less if you haven't made up your mind on the existence of god; it's totally irrelevant to your incorrect beliefs about what atheism is.
Al Jazeera has compiled a list of Kim II's err..."accomplishments":
Quote:
Divine birth
According to official state literature, Kim was born in 1942 in a log cabin at a secret base on Mount Paekdu, North Korea’s most sacred mountain.
His birth, believed to have been prophesied by a swallow, ignited a bright star in the sky that immediately changed the season from winter to spring and caused an awe-inspiring double rainbow to appear.
Golfing prowess
Pyongyang media outlets reported in 1994 that Kim scored a record-breaking 34, or 38 under par, on a regulation 18-hole golf course. To achieve this amazing score, according to reports, he nailed 11 holes-in-one.
Perhaps most impressive, Kim accomplished his eye-popping 34 on his first-ever golf outing. The score was verified by 17 of his bodyguards who were all on hand to congratulate him.
Shared addictions
In a tell-all book written by an ex-staffer, Kim is said to have had all members of his administrative staff injected each day with a painkiller that he was prescribed after he was injured falling off a horse.
Kim apparently did not want the risk of becoming addicted to a drug that no one else was hooked on. If he was to become addicted, the story goes, everyone around him would be as well.
Globally loved
According to state media, Kim was regarded as the world’s greatest statesman. Government channels claimed his birthday was celebrated across the globe and nations screened films and held festivals in his honour.
Refined palate
Kim, who refused to admit most foreign foods into North Korea, was a secret fan of international delicacies. He reportedly sent his former Japanese chef, Kenji Fujimoto, around the world to locate fine food and was known to have had a taste for roasted donkey and fresh lobster.
It was rumoured that Kim had all grains of his rice inspected for uniform length and colour. He was also said to be a huge fan of French wine and cognac, spending more than $700,000 per year on brandy.
Cinema buff
Kim’s love of Hollywood movies is no secret. He reportedly owned 20,000 films on VHS and DVD, and is believed to have fancied late American actress Elizabeth Taylor.
Kim’s love of movies was so great that he allegedly had South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his wife, actress Choi Eun-hee, kidnapped in 1978. The couple was released only after Shin was forced to produce "Pulgasari", a communist propaganda version of Godzilla.
Fashion star
Rodong Sinmun, a North Korean newspaper, once reported that Kim had become a world renowned fashion icon after his suits – typically khaki pantsuits that zipped down the middle – had become a global style phenomenon.
The article apparently quoted an "unidentified French fashion expert" as saying: "Kim Jong-il mode, which is now spreading expeditiously worldwide, is something unprecedented in the world’s history".
I really love the one about him becoming a worldwide "fashion icon". ROTFLMAO!
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 6173 Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2011 10:34 pm Post subject:
fork wrote:
al-Qa'bong wrote:
Actually, I didn't say "secular fundamentalists," Hedges did, and I haven't made up my mind on the existence of God(s).
. . . Some folks appear to lose the ability to see what they're trying to read when this happens.
I read it again. You said "radical atheists", I said, "What's that", you said, "Fervent belief in their dogma of disbelief." Then you quoted yourself and said that Hedges called "this attitude" secular fundamentalism. This attitude = fervent belief in their dogma of disbelief = secular fundamentalism. If you're now trying to disassociate yourself from that, OK, but that's pretty weaselly. And I could care less if you haven't made up your mind on the existence of god; it's totally irrelevant to your incorrect beliefs about what atheism is.
al-Qa'bong wrote:
devout atheists
Who are you referring to? Me?
Good grief, who cares? Get over yourself. _________________ "The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl
Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Posts: 14585 Location: Toronto, ON
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 1:39 pm Post subject:
The most accurate term that I can think of for the Hitchens-type attitude doesn't rely on describing them as atheists at all. They can be quite effectively described as being virulently anti-religious. _________________ "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." - Thomas Jefferson
Al Jazeera has compiled a list of Kim II's err..."accomplishments":
I'm a bit surprised he didn't die LIKE A BOSS. Y'know, death heralded by an albino raven with a rainbow in its beak, riding a meteor, or something like that. Maybe 24 hours of the world spinning backward ("confirmed by scientists all over the world!!!") or the North Star dipping to within 100 miles of Pyongyang before fizzling out forever, in grief.
I feel bad for the guy who runs (ran?) Kim Jong Il Looking at Things though. What's he supposed to do now? _________________ ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,
He has posted an obituary notice, and says he plans to keep it going until the pics run out. On the other hand, there's a nice idealized picture of his son in Switzerland on the cover of the Globe today.
And speaking of miraculous signs and portents, here's a little more background on Mr 37 on the Forbes list:
And on the other matter, yes the "atheist" thing is a foil, especially when people try to tell you you can't criticise their position because it isn't a belief at all. Really, the issue is more a case of tunnel vision, fundamentalist thinking and intolerance.
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 6173 Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 5:20 pm Post subject:
This has to have been tough.
Quote:
A British Columbia man drove about 360 kilometres toward Canada after his 75-year-old wife died in the car next to him, uncertain whether he could cross the border with her, U.S. authorities say.
Police Chief Robert Burks, in Tonasket, Wash., says the 71-year-old Oliver man didn't know what to do, so he kept driving
CBC _________________ "The purpose of government is to protect the weak from the powerful" Hammurabi
"We can't all be Sam the Sham; some of us have to be Pharoahs" Larry, brother of Darrel, and his other brother Daryl
Indeed. And really, what else was there to do?
I can't imagine I would want to deal with a bunch of strangers and weird protocol at a horrible time like that.
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 6173 Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:54 pm Post subject:
ronb wrote:
He was to Orwell what Billy Ray Cyrus is to Hank Williams.
Quote:
Hitchens, of course, never “prosecuted” the “exhilarating” war by actually fighting in it, but confined his “prosecution” to cheering for it and persuading others to support it. As one of Hitchens’ heroes, George Orwell, put it perfectly in Homage to Catalonia about the anti-fascist, tough-guy war writers of his time:
As late as October 1937 the New Statesman was treating us to tales of Fascist barricades made of the bodies of living children (a most unhandy thing to make barricades with), and Mr Arthur Bryant was declaring that ‘the sawing-off of a Conservative tradesman’s legs’ was ‘a commonplace’ in Loyalist Spain.
The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
I rarely wrote about Hitchens because, at least for the time that I’ve been writing about politics (since late 2005), there was nothing particularly notable about him. When it came to the defining issues of the post-9/11 era, he was largely indistinguishable from the small army of neoconservative fanatics eager to unleash ever-greater violence against Muslims: driven by a toxic mix of barbarism, self-loving provincialism, a sense of personal inadequacy, and, most of all, a pity-inducing need to find glory and purpose in cheering on military adventures and vanquishing some foe of historically unprecedented evil even if it meant manufacturing them.
Currently, Hitch is pushing the line, in language that echoes the reactionary Paul Johnson, that the U.S. can be a “superpower for democracy,” and that Toms Jefferson [sic] and Paine would approve. He’s also slammed the “slut” Dixie Chicks as “fucking fat slags” for their rather mild critique of our Dear Leader. He favors Bush over Kerry, and doesn’t like it that Kerry ”exploits” his Vietnam combat experience (as opposed to, say, re-election campaign stunts on aircraft carriers).
Because of all the focus on his chickenhawk war mongering, I'd forgotten about his misogyny towards the Dixie Chicks. What a small minded, hateful, sexist, piece of shit he was. _________________ I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day. - Assclown Rob Ford
Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 1283 Location: Left . . . of the plate
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:25 am Post subject:
The Evil Twin wrote:
Because of all the focus on his chickenhawk war mongering, I'd forgotten about his misogyny towards the Dixie Chicks. What a small minded, hateful, sexist, piece of shit he was.
So far, most of the eulogies of Christopher have come from men, and there’s a reason for that. He moved in a masculine world, and for someone who prided himself on his wide-ranging interests, he had virtually no interest in women’s writing or women’s lives or perspectives. I never got the impression from anything he wrote about women that he had bothered to do the most basic kinds of reading and thinking, let alone interviewing or reporting—the sort of workup he would do before writing about, say, G.K. Chesterton, or Scientology or Kurdistan. It all came off the top of his head, or the depths of his id. Women aren’t funny. Women shouldn’t need to/want to/get to have a job. The Dixie Chicks were “fucking fat slags” (not “sluts,” as he misremembered later). And then of course there was his 1989 column in which he attacked legal abortion and his cartoon version of feminism as “possessive individualism.” I don’t suppose I ever really forgave Christopher for that.
It wasn’t just the position itself, it was his lordly condescending assumption that he could sort this whole thing out for the ladies in 1,000 words that probably took him twenty minutes to write. . .
You know what they say: If you don't have anything nice to say, post it on Overrated White Dudes. . .
Hitchens made me uncomfortable, because he was the epitome of a certain breed of atheist that was able to walk away from religion because, in his arrogance, he thinks he doesn't need religion to justify his prejudices. These are the guys that eat up wacky evo psych theories that are so poorly reasoned that if they were being used for any other purpose than attacking women's equality, they would reject them out of hand. These men are, unfortunately, the face of atheism to much of both the U.S. and Britain. That's changing, with the influx of female faces and male atheists who are open allies to feminism, but as the fallout from Elevatorgate shows, there's a long way to go before irrational attitudes towards women are considered as unacceptable as faith healing.
I love the pic from Overrated white dudes that the Amanda Marcotte post links to:
And the caption as well: "More lucid than the average mean-spirited drunk."
Overrated White Dudes _________________ I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day. - Assclown Rob Ford
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 6173 Location: A monistic vulgarity in which nobility and wisdom have been exchanged for a pale belief in progress
Posted: Fri Dec 23, 2011 6:37 pm Post subject:
I'd been thinking of Bunyan more often than usual this past week...
Quote:
I get no satisfaction from Hitchens’s passing.
Although he was the last to know it, every death is a tragedy, if only for the bereft child—or, as in the case of Cindy Sheehan, bereft parent—left behind.
But, still, life is full of surprises.
No one should be too smug in his certitudes.
And if you’ve made a career of pissing on other people’s mostly innocuous beliefs, should it surprise that outside the tiny tent called Vanity Fair, your memory stinks of urine?
Hitch is barely cold and already the ghouls are coming for the corpse. It’s the strangest approach, too — they’re all sounding like Mormons, trying to retroactively baptize him in their faith.
Quote:
It’s appalling, sleazy, and contemptible, and exposes Douche-hat as someone completely incapable of comprehending any other perspective than his god-bothering own.
Quote:
Hitchens was always blunt and plain-spoken about his opinion of religion. He would not ever deny that he was a product of a Western and English culture that had religion wrapped around its roots (like a parasitic fungus, I would say), he was also explicit in his denial of the validity of god-belief, and was frank in his accusations of the folly of faith. For a Christian to now try and put the mantle of Christianity on him is repulsive and disrespectful — it’s like witnessing the desecration of a corpse. The corpse may not mind anymore, but it’s still a distasteful spectacle and gives the lie to any pretense of appreciation of the person who once resided in that body.
But then, that’s what ghouls do.
It’s also such peculiar behavior. When popes die, you don’t find atheists lining up to write encomiums in which they claim that he was really an atheist, deep down, and that he lived as a humanist rather than a Catholic. When William Lane Craig dies, no one will speculate that he denied the gods on his deathbed; when Scott Stephens croaks, no one will winnow through his columns, straining occasional words and phrases out of context to suggest that maybe he really was sympathetic to atheism after all. They are who they are, deluded dunces who invoke no sense of envy in us at all.
And maybe that’s the explanation. Hitchens was a man of palpable talent and immense rhetorical skill, and maybe we should recognize it as flattery that these Christians desperately wish to appropriate him.
There are no atheists in foxholes, goes the old saw. Well, it's not true, as Christopher Hitchens – a man of principle to the last – demonstrated.
Many of his adversaries . . . had expressed a hope or an expectation that this most trenchant of unbelievers would repent on his deathbed. . . But as he himself said in the last year or so of his life, any expression of faith which might issue from his dying body ("including but not limited to, 'I accept Jesus as my lord and savior,' or, 'Muhammad, peace be unto him, is the messenger of God,' or, 'the Lubavitcher rebbe is the true messiah and currently living in Brooklyn,'" as his friend Jeffrey Goldberg put it in The Atlantic) would not be coming from a Christopher Hitchens that Christopher Hitchens would recognise: "The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain. I can't guarantee that such an entity wouldn't make such a ridiculous remark. But no one recognisable as myself would ever make such a ridiculous remark."
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 3142 Location: tahsis, british columbia
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:39 pm Post subject:
So I was reading Hitchens, a rant against Ronald Reagan, and there was this word "bloviating". Do you ever get the feeling that you ALMOST know what a word means, but... you aren't sure? Well, three (count'em) dictionaries later I still wasn't sure about bloviating. When in doubt, contact my daughter... I had this feeling bloviating had something to do with intestinal gas...like, when someone is yapping yapping yapping and saying such stupid things you feel as if you're either going to belch loudly or fart some real stinky purple farts...not quite ridiculous enough to make a person puke, but close... took the blonde wonder no time flat and she e-mailed me the definition of bloviating. Nothing to do with farts or belches. I was way way way off the mark.
So whatever kind of paper warrior Hitchens was, however much he hated women (or envied us), whatever kind of total git he might have been, I'm one word richer thanks to him.
I put his writing and vocabulary skills right up there with good old wotzisname, you know, the git who may or may not be back in jail in the Excited States...Lord Lard...
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 3142 Location: tahsis, british columbia
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:39 pm Post subject:
So I was reading Hitchens, a rant against Ronald Reagan, and there was this word "bloviating". Do you ever get the feeling that you ALMOST know what a word means, but... you aren't sure? Well, three (count'em) dictionaries later I still wasn't sure about bloviating. When in doubt, contact my daughter... I had this feeling bloviating had something to do with intestinal gas...like, when someone is yapping yapping yapping and saying such stupid things you feel as if you're either going to belch loudly or fart some real stinky purple farts...not quite ridiculous enough to make a person puke, but close... took the blonde wonder no time flat and she e-mailed me the definition of bloviating. Nothing to do with farts or belches. I was way way way off the mark.
So whatever kind of paper warrior Hitchens was, however much he hated women (or envied us), whatever kind of total git he might have been, I'm one word richer thanks to him.
I put his writing and vocabulary skills right up there with good old wotzisname, you know, the git who may or may not be back in jail in the Excited States...Lord Lard...
Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 3142 Location: tahsis, british columbia
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 8:23 pm Post subject:
I don't even know how it happened, darlin'... I'm technologically challenged, damn near illiterate...
hey, I'd gladly take a hug from you. Anytime...in fact, at the risk of redundancy, I'd welcome three or four of your hugs.
It is positively pissing down rain in Tahsis today. Took the dawgs for their constitutional and we came home looking like drowned rats... my side yard is one huge puddle and the road in front of my place looks like a creek.
Egad!
well, you know what we say out here...at least we don't have to shovel it.
Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 1283 Location: Left . . . of the plate
Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2011 6:47 am Post subject:
ronb wrote:
BTW, that was your link that compared Hitchens to the Pope.
Maybe reading slower or out loud would help. The comparison was made by the religious dude, Stephens, and he was being derided by Myers for making the comparison.
It’s also such peculiar behavior. When popes die, you don’t find atheists lining up to write encomiums in which they claim that he was really an atheist, deep down, and that he lived as a humanist rather than a Catholic.
This is the religious fella? Sounded like the atheist fella to me.
Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 1283 Location: Left . . . of the plate
Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2012 5:00 am Post subject:
Quote:
But then, [Stephens] tries to “distill the essence” of Hitchens, and concludes that he was, at heart, a Christian. He quotes Hitchens saying that the Pope was one of his three most deeply hated people in the world (the others being bin Laden and Kissinger), and then declares that Hitchens’ anti-totalitarianism was exactly like the Pope’s.
That's the only comparison of Hitchens to the pope in that article and it was done by the religious guy. Read in context, your quote is not comparing Hitchens to the pope, any more than he's comparing Hitchens to those other guys, Craig and Stephens. It's contrasting the behavior of atheists with the repulsive and disrespectful behavior of the religious "ghouls" who are trying to put the mantle of christianity on Hitchens:
Quote:
Hitchens was always blunt and plain-spoken about his opinion of religion. He would not ever deny that he was a product of a Western and English culture that had religion wrapped around its roots (like a parasitic fungus, I would say), he was also explicit in his denial of the validity of god-belief, and was frank in his accusations of the folly of faith. For a Christian to now try and put the mantle of Christianity on him is repulsive and disrespectful — it’s like witnessing the desecration of a corpse. The corpse may not mind anymore, but it’s still a distasteful spectacle and gives the lie to any pretense of appreciation of the person who once resided in that body.
But then, that’s what ghouls do.
It’s also such peculiar behavior. When popes die, you don’t find atheists lining up to write encomiums in which they claim that he was really an atheist, deep down, and that he lived as a humanist rather than a Catholic. When William Lane Craig dies, no one will speculate that he denied the gods on his deathbed; when Scott Stephens croaks, no one will winnow through his columns, straining occasional words and phrases out of context to suggest that maybe he really was sympathetic to atheism after all. They are who they are, deluded dunces who invoke no sense of envy in us at all.
Religious guy claims Hitchens was actually religious. And shared the pope's anti-totalitarianism. So the atheist fella made the logical error of then saying, "hey when the pope dies, you don't see us claiming he was an atheist..." which makes it clear that he considers Hitchens' stature as an atheist to be comparable to the Pope's. Hence the joke.
So here it is stated without the attempt at humour as plainly as I can.
I'm an atheist. I share precisely zero of Hitchens' worldview as far as I am aware of it from reading him, which I admit I did increasingly less of as time wore on. I suspect the religious fella was right - his arrogant, unthinking, bellicose willingness to join the crusade put him in Kipling's company, about as far as it is possible to get from Orwell. In other words, he was as boringly CofE as they come, complete with the smarmy, self-satisfied skepticism concerning the deity that is all the rage amongst the clergy in jolly olde these days.
Oh sh*t, that's so tragic, Corey. I am so sorry for your loss and that of the Ontario New Democrat Youth. _________________ “If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a tractor.”
Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 1283 Location: Left . . . of the plate
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:42 pm Post subject:
ronb wrote:
So the atheist fella made the logical error of then saying, "hey when the pope dies, you don't see us claiming he was an atheist..." which makes it clear that he considers Hitchens' stature as an atheist to be comparable to the Pope's.
No. There is no comparison to the pope. It's a comment on how atheists behave or don't behave.
Quote:
In other words, he was as boringly CofE as they come, complete with the smarmy, self-satisfied skepticism concerning the deity that is all the rage amongst the clergy in jolly olde these days.
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