Hitchens loved Orwell and considered him required reading. I haven't read it since my youth, but what stuck with me was the oppressive tone of the utopia must be sought at the cost of the individual. Animal Farm had much the same tone.
Believers don't understand what a hero to individual freedom he was, even for them. He was of Jeffersonian mind. Hitchens may have said "damn it, you are full of shit, and your religious credulity fucks up society". But individual freedom and the ability, even to make absurd claims, was not something Hitchens would have wanted oppressed by government.
There is no such thing as a utopia, be it religious or political. There is only our common humanity and the common law we as a species consent to. Hitchens understood this. Believers should be thanking him, not condemning him. And Orwell too.
Believers don't understand what a hero to individual freedom he was, even for them. He was of Jeffersonian mind. Hitchens may have said "damn it, you are full of shit, and your religious credulity fucks up society". But individual freedom and the ability, even to make absurd claims, was not something Hitchens would have wanted oppressed by government.
There is no such thing as a utopia, be it religious or political. There is only our common humanity and the common law we as a species consent to. Hitchens understood this. Believers should be thanking him, not condemning him. And Orwell too.
