If you want to be awe inspired.

[hilary]

[Cato]

I miss Hitchens. Coincidentally, today I picked up Why Orwell Matters from the library. He certainly gained significant notoriety as an atheist, but I enjoy all his writing. It's sad knowing that well has been fully tapped.

[The Grand Nudger]

The guy had a way with words, -and a smooth voice to deliver them-. OTOH, I think he would appreciate, on one level (certainly not all levels) that the temporary nature of his contribution enhanced, rather than diminished that contributions gravity. To bastardize Homer, the gods envy our mortality.

[hilary]

If only there was another Christopher Hitchens
I love this one too (I think it was his last public speech?) 

[Cato]

Haunting. In keeping with Rhythm's observation of Hitchens' command of the English language, at about the 0:30 mark of the last video he says "I feel very envious of someone who's young and actually starting out in this argument". Despite his conviction in debate and the firmness with which he shared his thoughts in print I always considered Hitchens to be quite humble and self deprecating; he frequently mentioned his lack of scientific depth and lamented a lack of creative ability. Human existence as argument; poetic.

[hilary]

Haunting. In keeping with Rhythm's observation of Hitchens' command of the English language, at about the 0:30 mark of the last video he says "I feel very envious of someone who's young and actually starting out in this argument". Despite his conviction in debate and the firmness with which he shared his thoughts in print I always considered Hitchens to be quite humble and self deprecating; he frequently mentioned his lack of scientific depth and lamented a lack of creative ability. Human existence as argument; poetic.

Yes, I very much agree, 100%.

[Lemonvariable72]

What if the reason we find the night sky beautiful because it is the closest visualization of true knowledge we will ever see?

[Cato]

What if the reason we find the night sky beautiful because it is the closest visualization of true knowledge we will ever see?

Is the night sky any less beautiful simply because someone enjoys white dots on a black field? I don't mean to be critical, but the experience may be different. Consider my dork ass...

I think I understand your meaning, but want to make sure we agree with how you framed it. I've always looked up to the stars, but I find the entire experience more beautiful knowing that constellations are three dimensional due to their contingent stars existing at various distances. Throw in Herzpring-Russel classification, luminosity and knowing the star had planets and the experience becomes orgasmic. 

This is one of the reasons I can't wait to leave NYC; impossible to see any stars. Venus has been prominent in the western sky recently. I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone give special significance to Venus; most think it's a star to wish upon.

[hilary]

A friend of mine had this reply to the second video. It sums up exactly what I felt but could not put into words. It's truly beautifully written.


"This may be my favorite quotation of all time:

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” 
-Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman 

The "unbounded" admiration. Unbounded is a mathematical term in the Calculus, meaning "from negative infinity through infinity", when working integrals and other related equations. There can be no greater term used by a scientist. And, as Hitchens says, above, it is that admiration, that sense of awe, that moves me far more than anything I felt, or believe I could have felt, as a religious devotee. When I look at a sunset, I know everything that is happening, from a physics standpoint: the process of fusion and the electromagnetic frequencies it produces, the way my eye detects those frequencies and how my brain processes them, and how the earth's atmosphere, full of dust and water, bends those light rays so that I see all those wonderful colors. This makes it more, not less, inspiring to me. More, not less, beautiful.

Forgive me for my droning sentimentality, but Hitchens is right. I love being an atheist.

Edit to add: From testicular cancer to autoimmune problems I have faced for decades now, to motorcycle crashes and even a plane crash, I have known the imminent possibility of death. I am in tears at watching the second video. How magnificent that man was! My hope, when I die someday as we all must, is that in some measure I can be a fraction as grand, and as dignified, as he is there. As he was throughout his bold and yet humble promotion of a freethinking world view.

We have lost so many of our great freethinking heroes, in these past two decades: Einstein, Sagan, Asimov, Vonnegut, Heinlein, Carlin, Adams, and so many more it crushes me to think of a world without them in it. "