The affects of Hitchens works will be felt for generations. For his likes, he has, given questioning stable and growing ground, and helped patch up Jefferson's wall that the right wing for the past 50 years sought to destroy.
While wrongfully reviled by the religious, they fail to see he wasn't a hero to atheists, he was a hero to the concept of individual freedom. "Jefferson, Author of America" is to me, his most important book. It is a demonstration that labels should not matter when it comes to the concepts put forth by Jefferson that both the believer and atheist can and do value.
His personal political views also demonstrated why labels should not matter. He hated the Clintons, was for the Iraq war, destroying the notion that non believers were all godless hippie commies.
He had lots of admiration even from his believing friends and many detractors. His wordsmith was always Oxford quality. Out off all the horsemen, Hitchens gave the atheists a more than any other, sense of identity and displayed fearlessness in questioning.
Believers should not fear his legacy any more than the church had any right fearing Galileo. They do have to fear him, not in a government oppression sense, but merely the mirror he put up to religion to say "really, this is what you claim?"
What else can be said other than humanity is better because he did not sit idly by and accept the status quo. He is one in human history in our species evolution, that served as a reminder that progress is not made stagnating in in the caves, and we only mature when we question social norms and lose or fear of leaving the caves of antiquity. Our future is brighter, if nothing else, he was a backstop to insure any form of state or religious fascism, because of questioning, is much harder now to take hold.
While wrongfully reviled by the religious, they fail to see he wasn't a hero to atheists, he was a hero to the concept of individual freedom. "Jefferson, Author of America" is to me, his most important book. It is a demonstration that labels should not matter when it comes to the concepts put forth by Jefferson that both the believer and atheist can and do value.
His personal political views also demonstrated why labels should not matter. He hated the Clintons, was for the Iraq war, destroying the notion that non believers were all godless hippie commies.
He had lots of admiration even from his believing friends and many detractors. His wordsmith was always Oxford quality. Out off all the horsemen, Hitchens gave the atheists a more than any other, sense of identity and displayed fearlessness in questioning.
Believers should not fear his legacy any more than the church had any right fearing Galileo. They do have to fear him, not in a government oppression sense, but merely the mirror he put up to religion to say "really, this is what you claim?"
What else can be said other than humanity is better because he did not sit idly by and accept the status quo. He is one in human history in our species evolution, that served as a reminder that progress is not made stagnating in in the caves, and we only mature when we question social norms and lose or fear of leaving the caves of antiquity. Our future is brighter, if nothing else, he was a backstop to insure any form of state or religious fascism, because of questioning, is much harder now to take hold.
