Happy Birthday, Hitch!

[Ranjr]

What a silly, constrictive way to think. You don't have to be chef to taste too much tarragon in the Bearnaise, or a musician to hear a clunker, or a horse to know horseshit.

[R00tKiT]

What a silly, constrictive way to think.  You don't have to be chef to taste too much tarragon in the Bearnaise, or a musician to hear a clunker, or a horse to know horseshit.

We're lucky that most academics are silly and constrictive, then. Too bad they didn't notice your clever rules of thumb above.

[Ranjr]

We're lucky that most academics are silly and constrictive, then. Too bad they didn't notice your clever rules of thumb above.

This academic does not share your assessment of academics.  Shouldn't you be leafing?

[Belacqua]

Hitchens is a journalist

I think Hitchens had been a journalist. By the time he wrote his polemics on (his image of) religion, he was not one any longer. 

A journalist is supposed to write in a disinterested way about things that really happened. 

Nor was he a philosopher, because philosophers reason as best they can so that later philosophers can evaluate and criticize. That's how philosophy works. But polemics resist criticism, and the people who are taken in by them ignore criticism. 

The Hitchens we're talking about has transcended the plane on which mortals are supposed to say true things and make sense. Mormons don't care that Joseph Smith's Egyptology was nonsense. Scientologists don't care that Hubbard wrote third rate science fiction. The people become sacred cows, and what they actually said hardly matters any more. Likewise Hitchens' shoddy scholarship and terrible politics are no longer relevant to the fanboys. 

He's a symbol of New Atheist superiority, and it doesn't matter if much of what he said was wrong.

[The Valkyrie]

We're lucky that most academics are silly and constrictive, then. Too bad they didn't notice your clever rules of thumb above.

This academic does not share your assessment of academics.  Shouldn't you be leafing?

I think Chloroform has had too much leaf, personally...

[Ranjr]

I think Chloroform has had too much leaf, personally...

He was a budding philosopher but couldn't shake his preconceptions.

[R00tKiT]

I think Hitchens had been a journalist. By the time he wrote his polemics on (his image of) religion, he was not one any longer. 

A journalist is supposed to write in a disinterested way about things that really happened. 

Nor was he a philosopher, because philosophers reason as best they can so that later philosophers can evaluate and criticize. That's how philosophy works. But polemics resist criticism, and the people who are taken in by them ignore criticism. 

The Hitchens we're talking about has transcended the plane on which mortals are supposed to say true things and make sense. Mormons don't care that Joseph Smith's Egyptology was nonsense. Scientologists don't care that Hubbard wrote third rate science fiction. The people become sacred cows, and what they actually said hardly matters any more. Likewise Hitchens' shoddy scholarship and terrible politics are no longer relevant to the fanboys. 

He's a symbol of New Atheist superiority, and it doesn't matter if much of what he said was wrong.

That the supposed skeptics defend this guy recklessly is enough for me to look the other way. We're no longer dealing with honest, cute people looking for truths and evaluating arguments. Just a bunch of biased fools who think swagger and smarts, together with some rhetorical skill, are somewhat a substitute for raw facts.

I give Hitch the props for truly revealing what his admirers actually are : really fucking blind admirers.

Happy birthday, Hitch!

[Fake Messiah]

That the supposed skeptics defend this guy

Lol, "defend him". From what? When was he attacked?

[chimp3]

[Belacqua]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fopo9E7UAVQ