Talking to Hitchens
Some great stuff in Andrew Anthony’s long interview with Hitchens.
In America it’s been suggested by some religious types that his condition could prompt a revision of his atheism. It’s not a hypothesis to which he grants much respect.
“So now I know that there’s another life in my body that can’t outlive me but can kill me, it’s the perfect moment to gratefully acknowledge that I’m a product of a cosmic design? Who thinks up these arguments? Actually it’s an insulting question: ‘I hear you’re dying. Well wouldn’t it be a good time to get rid of your beliefs?’ Try it on them and see how they would like it. ‘Christian, right? Cancer of the tits?’ ‘Well, yes, since you ask.’ ‘Well, can I suggest you now drop all that tripe?'”
Well yes that’s insulting, but the rules are different when talking to atheists.
Hitchens dislikes the “New Atheist” title. “It isn’t really new,” he says, “except it coincides with huge advances made in the natural sciences. And there’s been an unusually violent challenge to pluralist values by the supporters of at least one monotheism apologised for quite often by the sympathisers of others. Then they say we’re fundamentalists. A stupid idea like that is hard to kill because any moron can learn it in 10 seconds and repeat it as if for the first time. But since there isn’t a single position that any of us holds on anything that depends upon an assertion that can’t be challenged, I guess that will die out or they’ll get bored of it.”
Oh no. Not any time soon anyway – not while the Huffington Post and the Guardian are still paying them to say it.
He’s just so damn British sometimes, isn’t he? That droll way of calling someone a moron in an offhanded manner, a criticism calmly stated but sharp as a Ginsu—I love it.
If Hitchens (or anyone) converts in a moment of vulnerability and anguish, all that would prove (again) is that religion preys on the vulnerable and thrives on human misery.
Re “New” Atheism: the only thing that seems new about the content is that it’s only recently (I think) that cog-sci has worked out some of the cognitive quirks that gave rise to religious thinking and make belief attractive.
I used to know an unfrocked priest who lived the life of a rake and libertine, and used to tip buckets on Catholicism. But he swore he would make a landmark act repentance as he sensed the end approaching. He used to say “why not place a bet if there’s only one horse in the race?”
Well of course that one horse racing would not be a certainty, and could still get disqualified by breaking a leg or something before crossing the line. It would be more like tossing a coin: heads theology is true is true; tails it ain’t.
But if it came down heads, you have to spend an eternity tossing more coins to decide between competing theologies.