Happy Birthday, Hitch!

[Anomalocaris]

I think it's natural that people would react emotionally in defense of their sacred cows.

Hmmm, Not even the vaguest hint of the faintest glimmer of the most minute evidence of self awareness can be detected in that one.

I don’t think Belacqua can pass a Turing test.

[Ranjr]

"He was a journalist" is ad hominem. It's what apologists say when they can't address the argument a person makes. It reminds me of the "Earl Doherty is a writer of historical fiction not a Biblical scholar" response. Well, then he knows fiction when he sees it.

Hitchens was great. We need more like him.

[Anomalocaris]

Entire Christianity is nothing but racket based on an ad hominem.  It then spewed rivers of elaborate if moronic camouflage to disguise it.

---

This board is pathetic. The guy is a fucking journalist. Read the word carefully : journalist. Not a philosopher, not a biologist, nor an expert in any Abrahamic religion, the classical "thought crime" criticism he invokes so often doesn't even exist in Islam.

Okay, oratory skill, aside from that, the most boring, hateful antitheist.

Your Jesus is a fucking failed Carpenter, and was a far worse carpenter than Hitchens was a journalist, and yet you worship one such as that as if you yourself were lower than dirt.

[Fake Messiah]

This board is pathetic. The guy is a fucking journalist. Read the word carefully : journalist. Not a philosopher, not a biologist, nor an expert in any Abrahamic religion, the classical "thought crime" criticism he invokes so often doesn't even exist in Islam.

Okay, oratory skill, aside from that, the most boring, hateful antitheist.

Your Jesus is a fucking failed Carpenter, and was a far worse carpenter than Hitchens was a journalist, and yet you worship one such as that as if you yourself were lower than dirt.

Hmm, it seems to me that Klor is a Muslim.

But when it comes to "only a journalist", just in his debates with theologians from all sorts of religions, Hitchens showed publicly (what was assumed all along) that you don't even have to be a journalist to bring down theology - you only need some common sense and some knowledge of science to see that theology has no more merit than Astrology.

[The Grand Nudger]

If I think "gods don't exist"... is that or is that not a crime in islam, according to magic book?

[Belacqua]

Let's take one of Hitchens' well-known claims and examine why it is either ignorant or deceitful. His famous assertion that the Christian heaven is like North Korea is a catchy analogy, a bit of wit, and some people have actually been fooled by this rhetorical device into thinking that it makes sense. Someone quoted it earlier on this thread.

First, to show that what he is saying is true, we would have to find a Christian who says that heaven would be like North Korea. I am doubtful that anyone would make this claim. And since the first rule of honest debate is that you have to be able to present your opponent's position in a way that he would agree with, Hitchens fails right out of the gate. No one I have ever heard of says that he thinks of an ideal afterlife as being like North Korea.

It is possible that some Christians think that heaven would be a place that God rules over with complete control. The whole point of heaven, though, is that it is supposed to be a happy place. So however it's supposed to work, it is not a miserable country of arbitrary laws but a place in which everyone is happy. The idea is that because God is an ideal ruler, not a selfish pseudo-communist, it is a good place to live.

It's not clear to me how many Christians would agree with the above image of heaven, however. Not all of them see it as a place where we live as we do now only more happily. So Hitchens fails again, by asserting that Christians believe something when in fact only some percentage of them do. It may be a majority, I don't know, but it is false to claim that it is an essential belief of Christians. It would be similar to claiming that all Americans are Christian. Yes, the majority are, but I'm not Christian, and I'm American, and I would find it false and offensive for someone to claim that one part of the population equals all.

As I have written before on this forum, it is bigoted to look at a large and diverse group and claim that they are all alike.

In The Great Chain of Being, Arthur Lovejoy describes how Christians have imagined heaven. This book is safe for atheists to read, because the author is not trying to persuade us of the truth of Christianity. He is describing other people's beliefs and, unlike Hitchens, he is able to describe them accurately. He is a careful scholar, not a propagandist. Lovejoy makes the point that views of heaven traditionally break down into two types: in one kind, heaven is thought to be similar to our own world, but better. That is, we move around and think, but we are happy. In none of the traditional views is heaven like North Korea. The other general type of view is that heaven is fundamentally unlike our own world. This, as far as I can tell, is the view of the intellectual Christians and others who base much of their reasoning on Plato and Aristotle. At no point does Hitchens indicate that he has the slightest notion of this strong tradition which, again, may be in the minority, but is nonetheless important in Christian doctrine.

The most famous description of heaven as entirely unlike our own world is in Dante. I would have thought that a graduate of Oxford would have some passing acquaintance with The Divine Comedy, but Hitchens clearly has understood nothing of it.

Dante's heaven is generally Platonic. In this view, God is the Good. God does not issue arbitrary decrees as Kim Jong Il does. The phrase "God wants this," just means "this is what it's good to do." Dante goes to great lengths to show that if we are not neurotic or misled, it is natural for us to do what is best for us, and this is exactly equivalent to doing what God wants. The idea of arbitrary and painful decrees has no place in this important Christian tradition. Heaven, on the other hand, is not in the world of time and space, so there is no possibility of issuing or obeying laws. Heaven is eternity, which has nothing to do with the passing of time, with getting bored or wishing to do something else. It's hard to picture, and Dante makes extensive use of the inexpressibility topos in order to talk about it, but the idea of it being like a closed country of obedient servants is ridiculous.

So Hitchens has taken the beliefs of one popular, less-educated segment of the Christian population, mischaracterized it, and claimed that this is an essential part of Christian belief. Either he knows he's wrong and doesn't care, or he's just ignorant and shouldn't be talking about things he knows nothing about. It's possible that he just wanted to score rhetorical points, and so he went with whatever made the best sounding speech, and he didn't much care about an accurate portrayal.

The trouble is that because his words have rhetorical force, some people who don't know better are persuaded that he knows what he's talking about. The sophistry has power. In this way, he makes the world stupider by making people believe something that isn't true, by leading them to believe that many many Christians are dumber than they are, and that we atheists are just better because we don't want to live in permanent North Korea.

He has harmed public understanding.

[Fake Messiah]

First, to show that what he is saying is true, we would have to find a Christian who says that heaven would be like North Korea. [..] The whole point of heaven, though, is that it is supposed to be a happy place.

Or, hear this, maybe Hitchens read the Bible where heaven is described as North Korea. Like Revelation 19:14 says, "The armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses." - Do you see that? It mentions there is an army in heaven - just like in NK. Not a very secure and happy place when you are surrounded by soldiers. Then in Matthew 11:12 From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force. Suffering and violence are not attributes of a happy place.

Revelation 12:7 says there was war in heaven. If a war occurs there it's not a happy or a perfecr place and if it happened before why couldn't it occur again? Moreover, why would anyone seek to enter a realm in which war is a possibility when that is what nearly all people are trying to avoid? If war is possible in heaven, why wouldn't all other nefarious activities be equally plausible? After all, it would be hard to imagine a war without lying, stealing, cheating, brutality, killing, inhumanity, and all the other activities we have all grown so accustomed to in bad parts of this world.

Then Matthew 16:19 describes Heaven as a totalitarian place: "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven."
How could people be bound or restrained in a perfect place of freedom? But, then again, perhaps it isn't that free?

Or the whole character of angel Michael who is a general of God's army. And so on...

[Belacqua]

Fake,

I understand that criticism of Hitchens must be galling to you.

He is important to quite a few people's belief system -- what they believe about religion and its role in the world.

It may seem impolite for anyone to challenge another person's beliefs, but I think we have a duty to criticize feel-good rhetoric when it is flawed or unsupported by evidence.

[Fake Messiah]

Fake,

I understand that criticism of Hitchens must be galling to you.

He is important to quite a few people's belief system -- what they believe about religion and its role in the world.

It may seem impolite for anyone to challenge another person's beliefs, but I think we have a duty to criticize feel-good rhetoric when it is flawed or unsupported by evidence.

Actually you just described yourself. Indeed, anyone with at least half a brain can see that heaven is like NK and you don't have to delve deep into the Bible to see Heaven is like NK. I mean, for instance, already some Christians said to me on this forum that I will be burning in Hell, now it's not because I killed someone or did some crimes but just because I criticize and don't accept Jesus (and you know who else doesn't like to be criticized and punishes his critics?). So you can't deny that everybody must think the same in Heaven (just like in NK), that they all must accept and worship Jesus as if he's Kim Yong Un because if you don't you don't get in and get tortured forever.

[Little lunch]

Your Jesus is a fucking failed Carpenter.

I wouldn't go that far, although he was quite skinny. :-)