The Hitchens Transcript
The complete interview between the renowned atheist Christopher Hitchens and Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell
Yup, that’s true.
Religion makes kind people say unkind things: “I must prove my faith, so mutilate the genitals of my children.” They wouldn’t do that if God didn’t tell them to do so. And it makes intelligent people say stupid things: Condoms are worse than AIDS, for example. Things they wouldn’t dream of saying if the pope didn’t tell them to do that.
I agree and am appalled in the same way you are. Let me ask you this: The Greek myths, their fables, their folk tales that endured are not literally true, but there’s great value in the universal truths that are taught just by the story itself. I see so much of scripture in a similar way including, for example, the creation story. Can you agree with me that some of those stories are valuable just as metaphor?
The creation story is ridiculous garbage. And has given us a completely false picture of our origin as a species and the origins of the cosmos. If you want a good mythical story it would be the life of Socrates. We have no proof, as with Jesus, that he ever existed. We only know from witnesses to his life that he did. Like Jesus, he never wrote anything down. It doesn’t matter to me whether he did or not exist because we have his teachings, his method of thinking, and his extreme intellectual and moral courage. Anyone who can look me in the eye and say they prefer the story of Moses or Jesus or Mohammed to the life of Socrates is— I have to say it to you—intellectually defective. The great edition starts with Locutius and Epicurius who work out that the world is made of atoms and is not created by any design. It goes through Socrates and through, well, Galileo, Spinoza—people whose work is burned and despised by Jews and Christians and Muslims alike—to through Voltaire to Darwin to, I’m abridging the story somewhat, but it’s the last chapter of my book. It’s a better tradition for people who think for themselves and who don’t pray in aid of any supernatural authority. That’s what you should be spending your life is in spreading and deepening that tradition.
You say that nonbelievers, “Distrust anything that contradicts science or outrageous reason” that you respect free inquiry. I am a person of faith and absolutely agree with these two statements. But I do not believe that in order to be religious you have to disconnect your brain. Do you believe that and, if so, why?
The smallest privilege of faith over reason is a betrayal. My daughter goes to a Quaker school, for example. Do I think that the Quakers are the same as Hezbollah? No, of course I don’t, though I think there’s a lot to be said against Quakerism morally and what Quakers and Hezbollah do have in common is the idea that “faith” is an automatically good word. I think it’s not. When people say, “I am a person of faith,” they expect applause for it as we see in every election cycle. If I could make one change in the culture it would be to withhold that applause, to say, “Wait a minute, you just told me you’re prepared to accept an enormous amount on no evidence whatsoever. Why are you thinking that that would impress me?” I have no use for it, when I could be spending time looking through a telescope or into a microscope and finding out the most extraordinary, wonderful things. People say faith can move mountains. Faith in what, by the way? You haven’t said.
If you would like for me to talk a little bit about what I believe . . .
Well I would actually.
I don’t know whether or not God exists in the first place, let me just say that. I certainly don’t think that God is an old man in the sky, I don’t believe that God intervenes to give me goodies if I ask for them.
You don’t believe he’s an interventionist of any kind?
I’m kind of an agnostic on that one. God is a mystery to me. I choose to believe because—and this is a very practical thing for me—I seem to live with more integrity when I find myself accountable to something larger than myself. That thing larger than myself, I call God, but it’s a metaphor. That God is an emptiness out of which everything comes. Perhaps I would say “ reality” or “what is” because we’re trying to describe the infinite with language of the finite. My faith is that I put all that I am and all that I have on the line for that which I do not know.
Fine. But I think that’s a slight waste of what could honestly be in your case a very valuable time. I don’t want you to go away with the impression that I’m just a vulgar materialist. I do know that humans are also so made even though we are an evolved species whose closest cousins are chimpanzees. I know it’s not enough for us to to eat and so forth. We know how to think. We know how to laugh. We know we’re going to die, which gives us a lot to think about, and we have a need for, what I would call, “the transcendent” or “the numinous” or even “the ecstatic” that comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t respond to things of that sort. But I think the cultural task is to separate those impulses and those needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.
Published: January 2010
This article disgusts me. The fact that you would put Sewell up against an atheist who seemed to know more about the beliefs of true Christians is a disgrace. As a Christian this is embarrassing to read. By no means is Sewell a Christian if she doesn’t believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again or that God even exists. I mean seriously it’s a load of crap. The Bible happened it’s not a metaphor. It saddens me that you would lead people in the same direction as Sewell because there is only one way and that is through God. The Bible says that many times, but Sewell doesn’t even believe in God, so really how do you even consider her a Christian. Anyone, believer or not, understands that. So I hope that next time you would find a better match-up than these two.
Claptrap Twaddle Balderdash Demonic
Galatians 1:8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!
Galatians 1:9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!
2Timothy 4:3 for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,
2Timothy 4:4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
Since the Apostle Paul is in glory and could not be here to answer your misrepresentation of him and The Word of God he wrote he now gives you your answer by predicting your articles 2000 year before your time. This interview and article are only claptrap and twaddle in the greater demonic scheme being played out in the “last days”.
Your religion is satanic. My wonder is if you obey by ignorance because you are blind pawn or are you a stealth player in the great satanic scheme?
Response by:
Steve Bragg, Christian and the Apostle Paul, Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ and Inspirited writer of The Word of God
“I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”
The above quote was spoken from the mouth of Hitchens himself. “Anonymous” notes that Hitchens seems to know more about orthodox Christianity than Sewell, and I would agree. I had the opportunity of hearing Mr. Hitchens in Florida several months ago and was quite surprised at his arguements. They seemed to me; someone who could proabably not “out-argue” him, weak. He generally argues from extremes and abuses, not from ideas or foundations. St. Augustine noted that the proper way to argue against an idea is to include its abuses as evidence. It can, no doubt, be considered but it is weak to use it as evidence against the claims. Nevertheless, Hitchens will continue to speak against religion and Christianity and let us defend truths we hold dear. I consider that I may be very similar to Mr. Hitchens himself were I not rescued from my unbelief. God bless all may He be glorified!
Although a bit passive, I think Sewell was appropriately neutral. This was only an interview to highlight Hichens’ views, not a chance to slander him – there are plenty of outspoken/anonymus Christians that can handle that.
I would like to add that Hitchens often refers to himself as an anti-theist more than an atheist. I appreciate this distinction as, like the previous comment authors would like to not be affiliated with the same values/beliefs as Sewell, I do not share the idea that religion is wholly wrong or evil just because I am an atheist.
Is’nt it funny that none of the writers attempts to use any rational argument to dispute anything Hitchens says?
Dear Portland Monthly,
One hardly knows where to begin on something like this. And a much more thorough response (which I would be happy to write) is certainly deserving. But a few items here, minimally, to note:
“Christopher Hitchens vs. Portland Christians” is the subtitle pinned on the Cover of the January 2010 issue of Portland Monthly in which this transcript appears. Catchy. And points for rhyme and alliteration. But at the expense of being terribly misleading.
If the intent of this article was to give Mr. Hitchens (an avowed atheist) a red-carpet upon which to promote and pontificate his points uncontested, then Portland Monthly has done splendidly well. But if this dialogue had in any of its early intentions – somewhere prior to its full gestation – any aspiration of being an actual, honest debate between two individuals subscribing to contrary and opposing worldviews, then Portland Monthly could not have failed more miserably.
Your readers deserve better than this.
I say this not to be unkind – and all the more as I rather like your publication. But, rather, I say this to be honest and out of the necessity for integrity when such material is being presented. Such pandering, which borders on propaganda, may be prevalent in media and secular society today. Incidentally, this does not excuse it. It only partly explains it.
The issue here is not with the article itself – a fine and interesting read – but with the branding of it as a debate, which upon even a cursory review it clearly is not. Invoke it as an interview. Call it a conversation. But champion it as a (“vs.”) debate?
Hitchens clearly fits the bill (advocating atheism). But Marilyn Sewell? Since when has someone unsure of the existence of God, and who at face value appears to deny every clearly marked and unmistakable foundational doctrine of the Christian faith, ever qualified or passed for being a Christian? That’s a masquerade worthy of an Opera to which the Phantom thereof might not even be willing to attend!
Hitchens, concerning Sewell, notes as much when he states, “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.” You know what? He’s right.
Your cover subtitle should read “Christopher Hitchens and Marilyn Sewell – A Conversation.” Sure, you lose the rhyme and alliteration. But you preserve your integrity in the process. Well worth the price in my opinion.
. . .
Interestingly enough, the Wall Street Journal just published a similar “debate” of sorts between Richard Dawkins (from the side of atheism) and Karen Armstrong (quite erroneously selected to represent Christian theism). And it was an equally flawed debate from right out of the gate. Armstrong and Sewell are entirely of the same ilk. For them, the Bible is ultimately nothing more than metaphor and myth – though history along with archaeology and even textual criticism will not bear that out, but only the opposite. How can this be? People have not done their own homework in our day, and/or simply prefer to play fast and loose with the facts.
Christianity, like it or lump it, rests on historical events and whether or not they actually occurred in time and space makes all of the difference. Hitchens and Dawkins get this, so at least they are logical, though I entirely disagree with their conclusions. Sewell and Armstrong, on the other hand, have conjured up a complexity of intellectual scaffolding that allows them to somehow miss this, and I find it difficult to imagine the structure it must be to maintain. It involves a convenient brushing aside of certain evidences (and, at least in the case of Karen Armstrong, established history) in order to subscribe to such thinking. The problem is largely that we have spent a great deal of time thinking about secondary things, when first things must be considered first. Skip over the foundation, or build on a faulty one, and no matter how sound the rest of your argument might be (or how many books you might write), your belief will remain firmly planted (at best) in mid-air.
If we are going to come up against the Bible, with any kind of personal integrity or interest, it has to be approached on this basis: that it at least claims to be a historical account. Nothing mythical. Nothing legendary. But actual events in history and one – in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – most specifically, that if it happened means everything and if it did not, you are free to leave it as nothing.
We then stand, each, to examine whether the testimony of things such biblical authors penned – and gave their lives for – are to be believed. And, if we say that the early disciples were either in cohorts or all frauds (as much of liberal scholarship would claim), for what ulterior benefit or mischievous motive that we could possibly conceive? What could they have possibly had up their sleeves? If they were making things up? And to what gain or advantageous end? Everything we learn from history only bears that from all earthly vantage points, their belief in a resurrected Jesus from the grave was only and each to their own personal detriments. Yet they would not disbelieve, regardless of the cost. With everything seemingly in the world to gain by renouncing their faith (or at least compromising on it), they too often didn’t.
Well, then, perhaps they were not deceivers, but those who had themselves been deceived?
Again, you are missing motive. But concede for a moment that it is at least possible, and you run into another cul-de-sac.
It is true, men may die for lies though they have been tragically deceived, unbeknownst to them. They may take their false cause to the grave only to find out too late (or for the atheist, not at all). But men do NOT die for lies which they themselves knowingly concoct. That’s a monumental difference. And too often lost on the Jefferson Bible subscribers of the world, and such other things. If you claim the New Testament authors added in their own doctrines, you lack ultimate motive and any example of a possibly beneficial edit.
No, men do not die for what they know is only a mere game, when the rabbit is found and the gig is up. Myth makers and martyrs are not made of the same metal. And the documentary and later add hypotheses of liberal scholarship, which seek to erode the historicity of the gospel accounts, simply do not stand up under scrutiny and cross examination.
And if the Apostles and the rest of the disciples were blowing hot air of a risen Lord, they not only would have known – as eyewitnesses or possible cohorts of a cover-up and conspiracy – that such a thing was false, but each was inexplicably willing to go through with the severest and most intense of persecutions in order to uphold it. For a lie? A game? And no apparent gain? That takes a tremendous amount of faith. More than I could ever muster. And as a liberal scholar or skeptic, you are then recipient of and left with the most unenviable task of trying to viably explain the explosive growth of the early church in the 1st Century with no more than a dead and physically un-resurrected messiah or, still more difficult yet, one who (some erroneously will conjecture) never existed.
You have more NON-Christian sources/writers (ten) within 150 years of Jesus’ life who speak of the Jewish Carpenter from Nazareth (and in striking congruence with the biblical narrative) than you do for Tiberius Caesar (for which there are nine) over that same time period. Include Christian writers for each and it is 43 to ten, respectively. Such evidence aside, even Einstein – and regardless of whatever conclusion he ultimately did or did not come to on the person of Christ – was minimally able to say of the Gospel accounts in the Bible speaking of “the luminous figure of the Nazarene” in Jesus Christ, that “no myth is filled with such life.” And as his interviewer asked him directly, “You accept the historical existence of Jesus?” he responded, “Unquestionably!” So when Christopher Hitchens states (and liberal scholarship stands by and fails to contest), “We have no proof, as with Jesus, that he ever existed,” he is either being dishonest with plain and uncontested historical evidences for Christ’s existence, or is simply ignorant. You can be the judge.
. . .
A quote on quote “debate” like this between an avowed atheist (in Hitchens) and a former Unitarian Church minister (in Sewell) – who can hardly serve as a representative for a Christian perspective let alone authority – offers the reader little and insults their intelligence. At least the article (albeit inside the issue) presents itself as an “interview” and “conversation” which is more on par. But if there is any regards or interest in truth these days, then? One has to wonder.
We are all free to believe or disbelieve in anything. And for which I am most grateful. But it is rather difficult to have a meaningful comparison or informed debate between Player A and Player B when the house’s pick for A is really non-A, and just as happy to agree with Player B (if not happier) and dismiss all that really is A, don’t you think? Coexistence should not necessitate a full lobotomy of logic and reason from life and tangible conversation as syncretism and ecumenical relativism so esteem. It is a bankruptcy of thought still for many (fortunately) too difficult to digest. But that number sadly grows fewer and fewer, it appears, by the day. Truly, God help us.
A response by Ravi Zacharias (Christian Apologist) to the WSJ article afore mentioned, and with its corresponding link to the original, follows: (for anyone interested)
http://www.rzim.org/USA/RZIMNews/tabid/599/ArticleID/10395/CBModuleId/1452/Default.aspx
Thank you! This was the funniest and most meaningless article that I have read in a long time. It was a great conversation piece around breakfast interspersed with other topics such as “Nacho Libre.” Wow, Sewell, no depth but really funny.
Not sure how many of the respondents here have actually read Christopher Hitchens’ book, ‘God is Not Great’ – I did, primarily because in tune with many of those who react negatively to Mr. Hitchens, I am presently sensing an active and growing dynamic in the US and the world to diminish God, Jesus Christ and the principles thereto. If anything, as Christians – with a foundation of a reasonably ‘sane’ commitment to the true faith, we are obligated to continue to keep the light of day upon that truth. However, it is also important that as ‘sane’ Christians, we remain unfrightened and unthreatened by a true debate on the issues, should they arise – and not overreact. Agreed – The Portland Monthly Mag did the uncourageous thing of not fielding a true debate, but again I defer to Mr. Hitchens’ tome – in it he beat the hell out of religion and the Bible, and somehow made the undo mistake of marrying the existence of God to the politics of religion. Had Ms Sewell had valid Christian intentions, she might have made mention of this and put an end to the debate in a flash. But she didn’t, which brings her intention into question as well as The PMM. Nonetheless, I say this – should every Bible burn and every church collapse under the weight of their investments toward earthy rather than spiritual things … God will still exist. The latter has never been and never will be dependent upon the former. Plant your faith in that truth.
I have a friend whose mother talks to people who aren’t there, who have been dead for years. She has whole conversations with them. My friend is very concerned about her mother’s obvious dementia. Yet this same friend professes to regularly communicate- quite literally – with the supreme being and have concrete answers from same. And sees no irony in it.
Religion is for the irony-deprived.
God is a fiction.
Get over it.
I believe in many things that have no material existence. Civility is among them. Too bad more people, what ever their belief system, cannot practice it more often, especially when writing in blogs where they do not have to face the person to whom they are be uncivil. Gods do not interest me except as they are the creations of human minds and all such non-material creation I find interesting.
A marvelous interview, I thought. Kudos to the Portland Monthly for having the foresight to use Sewell in this role. It was refreshing to hear two intelligent people discuss these things. (Unfortunately, the same does not apply to some of the above comments, starting with the first)
Great interview. I second the comment by the other Richard about the other comments though. Why do people think that quoting bible scripture actually proves anything? That is where the true "Claptrap Twaddle Balderdash " is.
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It was interesting to see how Hitchens reacted to a Unitarian. His ‘give no ground’ attitude stayed strong, even with someone who obviously agreed with him on almost every point. I say good job, and good riddance to muddled thinking.
To all the true believers who wanted a more fiery debate, I hate to break it to you. The debate is over. Nazareth wasnt a city for hundreds of years after Jesus. The gospels weren’t written for decades after the crucifixion. Those same gospels were collected, corrected, and re-written by a committee assembled by a Roman emperor, not divine providence. The tale of Moses, the Flood, and even Adam and Eve were ripped off from other local religions. Your entire religion is a sham.
The debate that were left with, is ‘Is the Sham worth anything’. Hitchens is saying no, and Sewell is arguing yes.
And to Matt S., for the love of your god, please use paragraphs!
My apologies to Matt S. if he tried to use any common formating to his posting.
The comment above was my first time posting to Portland Monthly, and I didn’t know they had no paragraph or spacing available in their comment boxes. If any system admins read this, please add spacing to the comment boxes! It would make them far easier to read.
to Matt S. -
“And a much more thorough response (which I would be happy to write) is certainly deserving.”
.ahem. MORE thorough? by all means!
@James H.
Maybe that’s because religion has no rational arguments. All superstition and lies. No evidence or intelligence whatsoever.
A question for Marilyn Sewell in light of her take on scripture and Biblical miracles as inspirational storytelling and metaphor and also her apparent admission in this interview that she may not even believe in a God as such…
Please don’t take this the wrong way because it’s a serious question, but what is the difference between you and a devoted and well read fan of any secular popular arts such as literature, theatre or motion pictures?
For example, is there really a serious difference between your chosen form of worship and that of a Trekkie’s?
Hey Joe Pavlo, no need to get insulting!
We Trekkies have real evidence that Star Trek is real! I myself own an original tricorder! I have to admit, my faith was severely shaken with The Shatner told me to get a life… Live Long and Prosper you filthy heathen.
“Well, it’s absolutely not. It’s a human one. It’s part of the melancholy that we have in which we know that happiness is fleeting, and we know that life is brief, but we know that, nonetheless, life can be savored and that happiness, even of the ecstatic kind, is available to us. But we know that our life is essentially tragic as well. I’m absolutely not for handing over that very important department of our psyche to those who say…”
I would finish this thought of Hitchens thus:
I think it’s a grave insult and a robbery of this important department of our psyche to attempt to remove this melancholy and replace it with fantasy.
This feeling that I’m living a life that is finite is such an essential part of human existence that to take it away and fill it with a placebo is to cheapen the essence of existence itself.
Life is a sacrifice. That is the essential nature of it. It’s not free playtime. It matters.
Matt S. – methinks thou doth protest too much.
Your silly beliefs are not based on any real evidence, and are ultimately irrational. I think you suspect this, hence the unconvincing diatribe.
SF
Excellent interview. I’ve started somewhere with the opinion that Hitchens is belligerent in style for something I read in slate. However, he’s well reasoned and even handed here and in addition to being no fan of faith that gives him pretty nice marks. Keep it up. Kudos to Sewell for hosting.
To all you faithheads out there, thanks for making Sunday a standard day off so us nonbelievers can get shit done. It would be additionally nice if you’d help us repopularize an interest in science and the rights and responsibilities of citizens to their civic duty. I think we’re sort of on autopilot on those issues.
I came here by way of the Friendly Atheist and I think I made his blogroll of atheist bloggers. Ciao.
Hitchens is brilliant. After 20+ years I deconverted from christianity only a few weeks ago. My life changed for the better. It’s like 1000 pounds has been lifted from my shoulders. The bible has errors and is contradictory.
Christianity preaches, and I believed 100%, that the bible was the word of god. How can there be so many errors and also the horrors commanded by god for his people commit? One would think that if a god could have created this massive universe and all life forms then he could have created a set of documents (the bible) that is perfect and very clear to all people.
Which is easier; to create the whole universe or a book? After 20 years as a born-again christian I can no longer stop my brain from thinking. If the bible is false, and it has been very easily proven to be false, then one must ask if god really exists. He doesn’t. There are no gods.
Through science and technology we now know for a fact that humans have been living on earth for at least 150,000 years. The bible indicates only about 6-10,000 years. If the bible is false, then there is no god.
I didn’t think this made-up story couldn’t be shown to be more ridiculous…but it did :)
“Atheist Comedy – The Great Flood”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I225Vcs3X0g
The bible is completely false. It was written by bronze-age people who know almost nothing about the earth and the universe. No different than remote tribal people today, who think that weather patterns reflect god’s commands. lol
I don’t quite understand why you would recruit an agnostic to debate an athiest on Christianity. The interviewee has strong beliefs, the agnostic has none…what possible benefit can the reader derive from this?
I nearly fell out of my seat, I laughed so hard reading this interview.
Let me just say, as a little bit of background, that I have a traditional (some might say “fundamentalist”) belief in Christianity as it is portrayed through the Holy Bible. This places me in distinct contrast with a “materialist/modernist” atheist like Hitchens, but in all honesty the “spiritualist/postmodernist” Sewell is the odd one out here.
For any other self-professed Christians who perhaps lament the softball questions of Sewell, go back and read this article once more, focusing instead on how thoroughly Hitchens demonstrates her position to be the weakest one imaginable. I mean, he runs rhetorical circles around her, burning her arguments to the ground and dumping salt on them—and all the while, she has no earthly idea how silly she sounds.
I summarize it as follows.
Hitchens: Fundamentalists are terrible.
Sowell: That’s right, preach it!
Hitchens: What are you talking about, you’re significantly worse than they are.
Sowell: I agree, they sure suck. Say, have you given any thought to the unitarian church? You’re awesome!
Is this satire? How can Sewell hold the positions she states that are so obviously mutually exclusive of being a minister?
Sewell, page 3: “I don’t know whether or not God exists in the first place, let me just say that.” Can we find a person of weaker religious faith? It is the literal definition of agnosticism.
IMO, the best exchange is at page 1. Sewell: “I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example).”
Hitchens: “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”
Granted, Hitchins is sharp and well reasoned, but religious FAITH by definition takes one’s conclusions at least a bit beyond where secular reasoning alone can lead. So Minister Sewell is not alone if she’s not up to Mr. Hitchin’s general depth of thinking. Regardless, an interviewer a bit more grounded in his/her faith would have been able to conduct an interview rather than allow Hitchens turn it back on her so completely.
“John Dunn” should be “John Donne”, I think.
Also, as a “true believer” by Hitchens’ definition, I actually liked this interview very much. I think Marilyn Sewell did a nice job of getting Hitchens to elaborate on his understanding of transcendence and the numinous. I enjoyed this very much.
And for you, my brothers and sisters in the Lord who are outraged by this interview: steady now! Sewell and Hitchens the beliefs of thousands and thousands of human beings. Learn from this, at least!
A response to “FormerXian”:
First of all, the use of the letter ‘X’ parallels the Greek letter ‘chi’ which represents ‘Christ.’ So all you atheists who think it’s cutesy to say ‘Xian’ instead of ‘Christian’ are duping yourselves.
Second, and speaking of duped, you state the following non sequitur:
“If the bible is false, then there is no god.” Riiight. Would the same conclusion follow if the Koran is false? What about Greek mythology?
Or here’s a thought: how about you make sure your premises actually flow directly to your conclusion if you’re going to make yourself sound so smart by using the form of deductive reasoning? I mean, wasn’t it the whole point of your post to demonstrate your intellectual superiority?
Finally, if I recall correctly, most scientists believed in an infinite universe leading up to sometime around the mid-Nineteenth Century(?). Then along came the “Big Bang Theory” and blew this notion to pieces—yielding instead the concept that, not only was the universe not infinite, but it had begun at a single point in space. Golly, sure sounds like science has consistently demonstrated the inferiority of the creation concept. Or not.
Seriously, if the idea that a misplaced comma or two (and yeah, I’m exagerating for effect) shook a “faith” that you held for 20 some-odd years, it’s sure arguable that your faith was pretty weak in the first place.
I happen to have moved in the opposite direction—i.e., from atheism/agnosticism to faith in Christ—and am always happy to explain my reasoning and beliefs to others when asked, but I sure don’t look down upon others as though I’m so much more “enlightened.”
Churches in America have become nothing but clubs dealing happy nothings and social events,
While America Drowns, Obama and the Elites Party
26.01.2010 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/111849-america_obama-0
There is, yet again, something very Romanesque about the state of the Americans, their empire and their collapse. As the US continues to sink in its co-UK created economic armageddon, the ruling regime enjoys the fruits of its labour of looting and swindling. This is the great “Democracy” they sell us, overseas.
As the year ended, America suffered one of its worst months for employment. Sure, reading the official Ministry of Propaganda (so called free press) reports showed only a mere another 85,000 Americans as loosing jobs, or rather the work force shrinking by that amount, so it takes the UK Telegraph (America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels ) to report the real situation, that 650,000 unemployed were moved into a category named “No Longer Searching For Jobs”. This is how the American regimes “honestly” tell the population that the unemployment rate is not going up and the lie they tell the rest of us, fortunate not to live under this deceit. This is the category that DC uses to dump the unwanted, unneeded and unemployable waste, its workers who no longer get government unemployment help and can go starve for all the elites care. After all, judging by the head lines out of DC, for the Haitians there is money, for their own unemployed, shelters and bread lines. This category has been growing by nearly half a million every month for the last year.
The hits kept on coming, too, for the former partiers of the American economic “miracle” of debt. Like a crippled Hercules, trying to lift a mountain of debt, or rather trying to keep it above their heads and from crushing them, the American populace continues to strain and tire and suffer, even as they deny reality while their legs sink deeper under their burden.
News came that inflation was really low in 2009, under 2%. Of course, the fact that salaries sank was not counted into that “fixed” model of inflation, otherwise the picture would not be so pretty. Outsourcing of jobs also accelerated, with predictions that up to 20% of the remaining jobs would still be outsourced, within the next few years. All hail the Marxist Free Trade. At the same time, news arrived that 1.4 million Americans went into bankruptcy last year, over a 30% jump from 2008. Food Stamps use, a form of government subsidy for food, was being given to over 10% of the population, with one third of the country’s children living in the abject poverty it takes to qualify for the handout.
At the same time, a massive new wave of mortgage defaults in the resettling of exotic mortgages, continued loss of jobs and thus regular mortgages and a collapsing business/commercial real-estate market is just starting to break over the Americans and promises to be worse than the first wave.
To all this, the American military has increased its budget by some $100 BILLION from 2009’s already mammoth $600 BILLION budget, more than every nation combined. And the people are continued to be led down the trail of slavery by their noses, in fear of being “invaded” or “attacked” while their sons sit in some 100 nations around the world, enforcing the Empire. Yet despite this giant spend on the military, families of US soldiers continue to have to buy body armour and other equipments and send them to their sons, since there are no funds for that armour and equipments, not after the elites and their companies get done pilfering the giant sum. Remember too, this does not include another $40 or so BILLION for the wars!
Equally, the evils of Wall Street, the pack of hyenas, the cabal of witches who brought us the lovely Soviet Revolution, the Great Depression, the Nazi take over, the rape of post Soviet Russia, the Asian Flu, (The Six Evils of Wall Street and the Suffering of Humanity ) are now paying themselves $146 BILLION in bonuses, 8% more than the 2007 record, after stealing $700 BILLION from the American tax serfs, through bought and paid for farce of their so called “Democracy”. That is some 20,000 people will be splitting $146 BILLION, or an average of $7.3 million each, for the people who are still laughing at all the Luciferien death and misery they caused by starting the lovely Great Depression II.
But best of all, it has now been brought out that the Obama Regime, much like Nero or Caligula, has been partying hard, with over 170 parties, receptions and big dinners, entertaining over 50,000 guests, flying in specialty chefs from around the world, all in this one year of power. That is, one party every two days. And the American serfs? They just bare it, grumble and pay their taxes, it si what they have been trained for. Oh sure, a bunch will get together here and there and wave signs and scream slogans for a few hours and then go home, feeling good that they did “something” and pat themselves on the backs for their “accomplishments” while promising to vote out the present elites and replace them with an exact same set from a different branch of the One Party Two Branch system. Someone famously called this: rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. And their so called conservative leaders on TV will tell them what great deeds they have done and how great they are, even as nothing changes and these so called leaders hustle books and t-shirts and caps to the impoverished but good feeling tax serfs. In other words, the bleeding continues.
Stanislav Mishin
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She’s one of Christopher’s groupies.
Excellent article.
It was a special treat to read the dialogue between a man of conviction and a woman of apparently none. It strikes me there is a decided lack of seriousness on the part of Ms. Sewell, and a tendency to grant herself a great degree of poetic license when it comes to issues of faith, which was met with a certain amount of disdain from Mr. Hitchens. The contrast between the two was instructive.
I’ve always wished that Hitchens was one of our (Christian) guys. I’ve actually prayed for this but alas he’s still not. There must not be a God. I also always wished to ask him, in light of his litany of the sins of believers both intellectual and moral, whether he has a point of comparison that has or does meet his stringent standards. I know that there are individual non-believers that do but is there a significant society or culture that over time has met with his approval. Without knowing his answer, though I can guess that he would not stutter in reply, I will hazard a critique. Hitchens and his fellow travelers operate out of a faith that if we could just get rid of religious belief and it’s lesser relatives, chrystals and all such nonsense we then would have a chance of entering a golden age of reason and brotherhood or something. This is either naive dwaddle or an example of well that didn’t work lets delude ourselves with something else. I was going to say let’s try something new but realized that’s silly even funny with less credibility than some " new and improved cereal." While Hitchens rales against all things religous he must know that idiocy is fungible just like evil and utopianism and while religion deserves its shots it is only one in an ever increasing list of worthy tagets.
Wow, reading that was a waste of my time. What a load of bull from both parties. I don’t know what else to say, but I feel very sorry for those two souls.
Bless you, Mr. Hitchens for setting Ms. Sewell straight on what we Christians really believe. And friends, if it weren’t for us Christians, Mr. Hitchens wouldn’t have any platform, so I suggest we cease casting our pearls before swine.
Well, at least someone in that conversation understands what it really means to be a Christian. Too bad it turned out the one openly prophesing Atheism.
Bottom line: only Christ Jesus died for the sins of the world. We’re all sinners. We are all lost without Jesus. Some come to this truth early. Some come to it much later. Some never come to it. But, remember, there is one life and then the judgment. God is a just and Holy God. He will judge in righteousness.
@Michael Currie
“Hitchens and his fellow travelers operate out of a faith…”
Balderdash! First off, although I am an atheist, I am also a libertarian. So the “fellow traveler” remark is not only ignorant of the wide spectra of political views held by atheists, it is personally insulting to be compared to socialists of any stripe.
Second, it is religious people have (or should have) faith. Atheists have conviction. If you don’t know the difference, then you don’t really understand the foundations of your particular religion. Atheism is a rational response to the natural world. There is no room for the supernatural. That leaves out God, Odin, Zeus, and Xenu. No magic required.
The difference between what I believe and what most religious people believe can be summed up by examining the response of atheists and theists when confronted with overwhelming evidence that posits a reality fundamentally divergent to their own. I adjust my belief to the meet the new facts. That is a rational response. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that supernatural beings do not exist (i.e., unicorns, leprechauns, God, Xenu), religious people cling to their faith.
See the difference?
@cackcon
“Finally, if I recall correctly, most scientists believed in an infinite universe leading up to sometime around the mid-Nineteenth Century(?). Then along came the “Big Bang Theory” and blew this notion to pieces—yielding instead the concept that, not only was the universe not infinite, but it had begun at a single point in space."
Your recollection is incorrect. The scientists of the 19th and early 20th Centuries (and earlier) believed in a static universe – always present and infinite. The Big Bang gave the cosmos what biology had already discovered – evolution. And there is no “point in space” from which the Big Bang emanated. Space, and time, did not exist until after the Big Bang.
Boy, ‘Itchin’ Hitchens sure makes a lot of people break out in hives, don’t he? How frail and fearful we are as a species that we can’t give up the idea of a deity, even for just a few moments, to consider what he espouses.
When men (and I mean that for all its definitions) invented god they also had to invent a devil to account for the tragedies that befall all creatures. Our god couldn’t be responsible for anything that causes pain, could he (again with the X chromosomes, enough already)? I won’t go on but I think you see what I am getting at.
I am not an erudite intellectual blessed/cursed with the ability to spew forth fifty words when five will do. Nor am I able to argue how many angles can dance the boog-a-loo but, I have found an ability to see, sometimes with stark clarity, when the Emporer has become a nature-lover.
I agree with Hitchens proposal that for whatever behavior “people of faith” perform that there is a secular justification with more power than one based on a belief without evidence. I love because it feels good, it makes good sense, the rewards are more voluminous and of higher quality than those produced by fear, its opposite.
On another issue: the inappropriate use of the word religion in place of the more descriptive term, spirituality. Religion, for me, means the regular practice of the tenents of a doctrine and refers not to the ineffable feeling one experiences when seeing the sun rise from the deck of their sailboat while crossing the equator. Remember the little gal in High School who got the award in the yearbook for being the most spirited? She had spirit, a quality that gave her the ability to smile and forge on through adversity. She also may have had religion. She may have had faith in some god, the good omnipotence who only ‘did’ good things for people. She may have believed that there was, conversely, a devil who tempted us to do bad things and who dumped rocks on our car as we drove through the mountains. But, I’ll bet that she would have received the same award if she were an atheist…it is in her genetic make-up and her upbringing which could have, again, been in an atheistic environment.
Please use the terms separately and appropriately.
I see why some of these responses are so long, I just sat to write one paragraph and now I’m fired up.
People do the most abominable things to others in the name of religion because the adherence to one particular ‘belief’ system negates the other and therfore negates the validity of the very lives of the ‘opponent’. If people lived their lives in response to what really works for all I theorize that there would be much less oppression/genocide in the world. If we did what really worked there would be fewer people on the planet clamoring for the available resources…blah, blah, blah.
I’m making myself nausated so I will stop.
Just one more thing, answer me this, “What did Jesus, the carpenter, say when he hit his thumb with a hammer? Zoroaster? Beelzebub? What?” I’m serious about this, now.
I am what Christopher Hitchens would call a fundamentalist Christian, one that takes the Bible and the faith it proclaims very seriously and as a standard for living my life. It is ironic, and disappointing, that Hitchens is more eloquent, solid-grounded, and convinced of his atheism than Marilyn Sewell is of her beliefs as Unitarian Universalist minister.
I almost felt sorry for Sewell as the interviewer herself was getting pounded and grilled by Hitchens for picking and choosing what she chooses to believe and being so wishy-washy theologically in comparison to “fundamentalist” Christianity, for which Hitchens was playing Devil’s advocate (no pun intended). But the truth is that, theologically, the Unitarian Universalist Association really does go scattershot across the world’s religious traditions, picking and choosing what appeals to their liberal, pacifist beliefs and continuously changing it in the name of being progressive and enlightened. Ms. Sewell is merely a reflection of that untethered foundation. Having a faith in which you’re not sure what you believe in is worse than no faith at all.
Two pastors in my church denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, used to be devoted atheists because they wanted no part of what they believed to be an intolerant, vindictive God who was ready to zap them dead for bad deeds, nor the extremists who did crazy things in His name. But they both came to faith in Jesus Christ after reading the Bible for themselves and after meeting people as firm in their faith as Hitchens is in his atheism, but also level-headed and friendly. I pray that Mr. Hitchens will come to faith in Christ the same way these pastor friends of mine were.
Interesting read, passed to me by a friend. I’m a simple man, simple faith, etc., but I’d like to think my profession and academic background have complimented my instinctive scientific approach. The Catholic faith, of which I’m a proud member, is founded on faith AND reason. “Faith without reason is dead.” Hitchen’s arguments are almost as boring and cyclical as his affected accent. Wow. I was so….yawn… impressed. It reminded me of two tipsy goofballs trying to hookup at a bar… the conversation was meaningless and superficial, they each had one thing on their mind (no, not sex this time….I think). He makes other prominent, historical atheist look like geniuses. The guy is a hack who would get eaten alive by the likes of Chesterton and Sheen. At least there are cooler heads out there who seem more convincing in remaining dispassionate atheists. Wait. Can there be such a thing? Hitchen’s entire argument is based on the premise that Christianity excess is so harmful to society. Yeah, things like do unto others, family, honesty, don’t steal, murder. Yeah, because there are SO many wonderful atheist examples of civic leadership and “conviction” like…um Mao, Lenin, Hitler. Cool. The only other prominent atheist preachers have spent their lives huddled in a room, in a loony bin, or on the speaking circuit. Why not dedicate their lives to the cause of freedom and goodwill they believe in? At least become a dirty hippie and spread some love, man! Where’s this change and utopia thathas been promised? Oh. Riiiiiight. The pesky Christians have been killing all the good rational ideas and “isms” that were gonna bring it about. Dang those doctrines of Judeo-Christian belief that formed the basis of Western government. I mean, never mind the atrocities associated with heresies, modernism and post-modernism. Never mind the fact that every experiment that tries to employ pure rational atheism ends in pure, evil, tyranny. I mean, it’s all such pap!! It’s pathetic how he tries to brush aside the pesky detail of inspiration and his yearning to be an artiste. Poor guy. Him and Hitler have some similarities. If only Mrs. Johnson had acknowledged his noodle art as “inspired”, he might be wearing a Franciscan habit, today. Sounds more like sour grapes, to me. Question: what makes a person spend their adult life throwing spears at a mythical phantom that doesn’t exist? Who’s more insane? How many scholars spend their weekends and spare time writing diatribes to refute the mentally ill person who asserts that they are a giant chicken? What is so insidious about a supposed imaginary person that makes one go to their death rallying against it? How many people spend a life committed to destroying the idea of fairies or leprechauns? Granted, some of those fairy tattoos look like crap on chicks these days, and Leprechaun 3 was horrible….Guaranteed, without a doubt, every excess this guy accuses the Church of is merely an indictment of his own sick soul. He sees it as sexually repressive? He’s a sexual perv. He sees it as sexually indulgent; he struggles with his sexual repression. He hates its opulence; he’s a miser. He hates its call to poverty; he is a consuming materialist. He hates the call to family; he’s single, lonely, infertile, or hates kids. He hates the rally against euthanasia; grandma’s Alzheimer’s became a little too inconvenient. The Truth exists as a seeming paradox and a condemnation of all vice that exceeds the natural balance and law, as does all of nature. Here’s a promise. I’ll take my “fantasy” any day over Sewell and Hitchen’s bland, boring doctrine or microscopes and telescopes. I’d rather make out under mystical stars than sit alone in a observatory, pondering how many days to death and nothingness. I want my earthly suffering to count for more than experiential experiments in pain and neuron impulses. I want to make love and think there’s something more lasting between my wife and I than damn pheromones! Might as well shoot all those terminally ill, mentally retarded, and clinically depressed folks, and then off myself while I’m at it. Geesh…At least I’ll die with a smile on my face. No, atheists, I don’t “protestethethesteth too much”, I feel, think, live, and love too much. Oy. I’m getting a headache from my own disjointed ramblings. Thank God for those wacky, irrational, religious monks who perfected beer. I’m gonna go have one or two and pray for these sad sad souls. St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for these lost ones and for my own shortcomings.
One of the commentators wishes to qualify Christianity as having faith and an atheist as having convictions. I suppose the implication is that Christians believe in something unproven while atheists believe in something that is.
Well, please prove to me that there is no God. Prove to me how it is possible to even conceive of something that doesn’t exist (like someone blind from birth conceiving color or someone deaf from birth conceiving sound). Please prove evolution to me. Show me the evidence. Why has the coelacanth remained virtually unchanged for millions of years. Prove to me it’s been around for millions of years (how old are you?) And if there is no God, what basis or rational do you have to determine what is good or evil? Hitchens believes that religions are evil. By what authority does he arrive at the conclusion? If there’s no God, what difference does it make?
There was another poster who couldn’t understand the difference between a friend’s belief in God and the person’s mother talking to nonexistent people. It’s delusional if the people do not exist. It’s not delusional if the Person does.
Again, the burden of proof is in the atheist’s hands. He can no more prove to me that there is no God than the most rational arguement could prove to him that there is. I conclude that faith and conviction are interchangeable terms. In the words of Descartes: that matter is real is axiomatic. You can’t prove it. Even the atheistic has to start with faith.
Finally, kudos to Ravi Zacharias! I don’t see anyone attempting to counterpoint anything he wrote.
All I can say about this article and the two people is “Very sad” for both of them.
I pray that they will both get a clue before it is too late.
What amazes me is the amount of faith Hitchens has that he denies he has. Mark Lowry once said and I agree with him. It takes a lot of faith to be an atheist. More faith than I have. You have to believe that this wonderful beautiful world that is filled with all of these wonderful creatures, including humans, animals, birds, fish, and mountains, oceans, seas, canyons that all of this was created randomly by some atoms.
We know that life follows along the word entropy. That is from order to disorder. From organized to chaos. From normal to decay. So to believe that all of this organized and beautiful universe followed the reverse of entropy and was formed from absolute nothingness is more faith than I can possibly have. To me, it had to come from somewhere. It had to have been created. So for the question is by what or by whom. For me the answer is by God. God created it all. I have chosen to place my faith in God. I have chosen to believe on faith alone that God sent His son Jesus Christ to Earth as a babe in the poorest of poor settings. That it was his son sent humble circumstances to become a man and then to die and go to hell, to fight satan and win and then be ressurected. I choose to believe that Jesus chose to die for my sins so that I could be with His father in Heaven.
I choose to believe that God will destroy this Earth and Heaven and create a new Earth and a new Heaven and a new Jerusalem. I choose to believe that when Jesus comes back a second time that my name will be found in the Book of Life. For me this kind of faith is much easier to choose than to choose the faith of atheism.
I am a young christian in that I have much spiritual growing to do. I am not a young person. I have lived with atheists, agnostics, christians and pseudo christians. Those that were the most content and had inner peace were the christians. I wanted what they had. Now I have it. Someday I hope that Hitchens will be able to soften his heart and see the truth. I will try and remember to pray for him.
This article was amusing. A “debate” between an atheist and an agnostic. Kind of like a debate between a liberal and a Democrat.
Hitchens does state on thing of which I’m in total agreement, he refers to the people who are unable to experience God. In discussing theological and spiritual matters with others I have found we all fit into general categories. There are those who believe with childlike superstition, and those who disbelieve with childlike rebellion, good for the both of them. Then you have the folks who have looked at spirituality/religion and given it the time and investigation, both externally and with internal meditation it deserves. When one does this one of two things occur. In my case I realized that I can see, hear, feel, and know God. One could debate with me and perhaps even get me to question my faith/sanity, then when I pray/meditate again, there He is again. When He reveals Himself to me all debate becomes meaningless. As Hitchens stated, for the poor atheist, all he ever sees/hears is that white noise, all debate is meaningless for him also. It’s like to people sitting in a room with music playing but one person can’t hear the music. No matter how much they debate the one will always be convinced the music exists, the other not. Only God knows why He made the music audible to some and not to others. It is unreasonable of me to expect someone to believe in the music they cannot hear, all I can do is pray that God will someday open their ears and eyes, His Will be done
Why was my comment removed???
All you skeptics need to read Lee Strobel’s works. Or enroll in THE TRUTH PROJECT, which demolishes Hitchens’ thinking. Or try the book of John. People like these two have always been around. These arguments and those of the skeptics above are worn out. Nothing new. True Christianity will never go away until God wants it to.
The blind debate the blind. Apart from the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ transforming a persons life, you cannot be an effective witness to the cannon of Scripture and its testament of the deity of Jesus Christ. This interview is irrelevant and of no importance…
(( Christopher Hitchens is an example of a man who will be rudely awakened to reality upon the day of his death, when, to his shock, he finds himself standing before the God he so vehemently opposes. In his delusion he wrote the book that was released in 2007 titled, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. His book reached the #1 spot on the New York Times best sellers list three weeks after it was released.
Much like Bill Maher’s documentary, Religulous, Mr. Hitchens’ book focuses on world religions and the idiocy of what these followers believe to be God. In the book, he’s pointedly critical of Christianity. This has earned him a platform on talk shows and lecture circuits, and he was recently listed by Forbes Magazine as one of the top twenty-five most influential liberals in media. I’ve listened to this man speak and I find nothing he says about Christianity to be in the least bit influential.
But true to the god he serves, Mr. Hitchens has nothing new to say. He is a confused and deceived man who cannot comprehend the simplicity of God’s revelation of Himself. For a man with his life’s experience, Christopher Hitchens’ perceived enlightenment has in fact far removed “from his grasp” the ability to believe in what is so easily realized. I have no sympathy for a man like this and I believe his punishment will be far more agonizing when, upon the Day of Judgment, he realizes his fate. For an eternity, Mr. Hitchens, you will believe in God! ))
This statement is taken from the book titled “LIVING IN THE HOPE OF MY IMAGINATION” In bookstores early 2010.
She says she is an agnostic. I just dont understand how she can say she is a christian and then make THAT statement. She keeps says God is a metaphor when portrayed in the bible. Amazing that this guy just runs circles and circles around her. He is poking holes in everything she believes and she just doesnt get it. Amazing, amazing, amazing.
@Sharon Henning “I suppose the implication is that Christians believe in something unproven while atheists believe in something that is. Well, please prove to me that there is no God.” Well, that proof rests with the person who posits the existence of a creature such as “God”. Unfortunately, there is no objective definition of this thing you call “God” amongst humans, so proof of an undefined creature is pointless and irrelevant. I would have just as easy a task as to prove that Invisible Pink Unicorns didn’t exist; which, you can’t. @Sharon Henning>> “Prove to me how it is possible to even conceive of something that doesn’t exist..” You don’t believe in Odin, so I have just proven that something that humans have conceived does not exist (a proposition I assume you would agree with or you will have issues as a Christian). @Sharon Henning>> “Please prove evolution to me. Show me the evidence.” Well, I’ve been told by my Christian friends that proof of evolution does not prove God doesn’t exist. It just proves that a small minority of Christians don’t understand science. @Sharon Henning>> “Why has the coelacanth remained virtually unchanged for millions of years. Prove to me it’s been around for millions of years (how old are you?)”. First question: The reason the coelacanth (and many thousands of other creatures that have lived for the last 650 or so million years ago) haven’t changed much is that their environment hasn’t changed much. That is what drives evolution: competition in a changing environment. Second question: Old enough to know that your second question is rude. @Sharon Henning>> “And if there is no God, what basis or rational do you have to determine what is good or evil?” By knowing that what is evil is equivalent to what I wouldn’t want done to me. It really isn’t that hard. @Sharon Henning>> “Hitchens believes that religions are evil. By what authority does he arrive at the conclusion?” By his OPINION. As far as I know, that right hasn’t been taken from him – yet. @Sharon Henning>> “For me the answer is by God.” Good for you. I wouldn’t change that fact for the world. Do you find that surprising? @Sharon Henning>> “For me this kind of faith is much easier to choose than to choose the faith of atheism.” To equate your faith with my conviction is doing your own faith a disservice. My conviction can be changed with the next compelling piece of physical evidence. Are you saying your faith is that flexible? WOW! Now that is surprising! @Sharon Henning>> “I have lived with atheists, agnostics, christians and pseudo christians.” You know, Sharon, when I was a Christian I seem to remember that only three beings could really know what was in a Christian’s heart: God, Jesus, and the believer. Since I don’t believe you are God or Jesus, or standing in someone else’s shoes, don’t you think it a be presumptuous to declare that anyone is a “pseudo christians [sic]”? Isn’t that God and Jesus’ job to sort out? Maybe you aren’t the best person to be giving me advice about what it takes to be a Christian.
@Diane I don’t seem to remember anything like what you’ve written from my lessons in physics about thermodynamics. I have provided the Three Laws here for your reference. First Law of Thermodynamics: Whenever we employ some process involving heat and work to change a system from an initial state characterized by certain values of the macroscopic parameters to a final state characterized by new values of the macroscopic parameters, the change in internal energy of the system delE = delQ – delW has a fixed value which does not depend on the details of the process. *Second Law of Thermodynamics: An engine operating in a cycle cannot transform heat into work without some other effect on its environment. Third Law of Thermodynamics: The entropy of a system at absolute zero is a universal constant (independent of all the macroscopic parameters describing the system) which may be set equal to zero. @Diane>> “We know that life follows along the word entropy. That is from order to disorder. From organized to chaos.” I’m not following your theory based on what I’ve cited above. In fact, nothing you’ve written is even remotely close to the Laws of Thermodynamics. Please explain the discrepancy; I don’t think you have your science laid out properly. @Diane>> “So to believe that all of this organized and beautiful universe followed the reverse of entropy and was formed from absolute nothingness is more faith than I can possibly have.” You know Diane, the more I read, the more I’m convinced that don’t know what you are talking about. The universe came from a condensed state of energy that contained all of the matter and energy of the universe – until it exploded approximately 13.7 billion years ago. We’ve even got pictures of the explosion. For anyone who, like Diane, believes that the universe is *organized, then you might want to take a look at this image of the cosmic background radiation and tell me where the “organization” is in the picture: http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/universe/wmap/wmap_rgb_cyl_www.jpg
To put things in perspective, it seems that this supposed christian is very blinded by satan and is just the same as the supposed atheist except they use different words and terminology to say the same thing. I feel sorry for the false christian since when they get to the judgement God will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you …” As long as I can remember the church listed in this interview has never been considered a Christian orginization by most mainline Christian groups, more like satans impersonation of a church.
@Robert Quance>> “supposed christian” There are so many Christian organizations, how do we know you belong to the right one? @Robert Quance>> “As long as I can remember the church listed in this interview has never been considered a Christian orginization by most mainline Christian groups,..” Which ones constitute the “mainline” Christian organizations? Near as I can tell, there are so many branches to the tree of Christianity, nearly anyone can call themselves mainline. All that matters is surviving the first 50 or so years of your particular schismatic separation and your church is now a mainline Christian organization. That is, of course, unless you belong to one of the other Christian churches. Then those people belonging to the “new” church are merely heretics and condemned to damnation. For a quick survey of all of the Christian groups, head over to adherents.com. They’ve got the best statistics for nearly all of the major religious organizations. Hail IPU!
In reference to reading the above article itself: Well, that’s 10 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. Stink.
The comments were much more entertaining and worth the time it’s taken to read them.
We’re smarter than Christians, because we don’t believe in what we can’t see state qwertyuiop, Bart Mitchell, Richard Ray, Pat A., and Robert Montgomery. I’m sure glad Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and Paul Ehrlich weren’t as smart as you guys are, or pharmacology might not exist. Oh, but wait, you believe in evolution, with it’s amazing lack of transitional fossils and failure to explain why there are no intermediary species. Oh, but scientists say it’s true, so it must be!
A bit hypocritical, sure, but hypocrisy is the heart of liberal theology. Words mean what you want them to, and there are no absolutes, so you can’t be pinned down to any sort of consistency, such as a consistency which has endured and been ridiculed for thousands of years, but never disproven.
Christians believe in myths, you say. The bible is all superstition and lies, you say. So here is a partial tribute to you – the clear thinkers, the intellectually endowed, the purveyers of truth (talking points are expounded on in the book “The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens” by Vox Day" – read it at the risk of your narcisscism) :
Atheist myths -
1. Atheists claim that atheists make up a smaller percent of prison populations that their theists counterparts. However, surveys indicate that those who profess no religion are four times more likely to be incarcerated than their Christian counterparts. (Page 20)
2. Religion hinders scientific progress. It turns out that one of the most religious countries (the United States) produces 28.7% more scientific output per capita than the most atheistic one (France). (Pages 58-59)
3. Cities in blue (Democratic) states are safer than cities in red (Republican) states. It actually turns out that the safest cities might be in blue states, but those cities are within red counties. Likewise, the most dangerous cities are within red states, but the counties that those cities are within are blue. Harris’s argument is completely wrong. (Pages 121-127)
4. Only religious people are responsible for destruction of art and religious architecture. Day points out that Dawkins’s argument has failed to point out the 41,000 churches destroyed the Soviet atheists, and thousands of Buddhist temples destroyed in Tibet, North Korea, and Vietnam, as they attempted to persecute religious belief out of existence. (Pages 143-144)
5. Hitler was a Christian. Although Adolf Hitler made Christian-like statements when attempting to get elected to political office, once installed, he hated Christianity, and planned to replace it with a religion based upon racial eugenics. (Pages 209-214)
6. The Spanish Inquisition was an unprovoked example of religious excess. In reality, Day gives a probable reason:
“While historians such as Henry Kamen pronounce themselves baffled as to what could have provoked the Spanish crown, the most likely impetus was that on July 28, three months before Ferdinand’s decision to appoint the two inquisitors, a Turkish fleet led by Gedik Ahmed Pasha attacked the Aragonese city of Otranto. Otranto fell on August 11 and more than half of the city’s 20,000 people were slaughtered during the sack of the city. The archbishop was killed in the cathedral, and the garrison commander was killed by being sawed in half alive, as was a bishop named Stephen Pendinelli. But the most infamous event was when the captured men of Otranto were given the choice to convert to Islam or die; 800 of them held to their Christian faith and were beheaded en masse at a place now known as the Hill of the Martyrs. The Turkish fleet then went on to attack the cities of Vieste, Lecce, Taranto, and Brindisi, and destroyed the great library at the Monastero di San Nicholas di Casole, before returning to Ottoman territory in November.” (Pages 214-220)
7. Atheists would never commit atrocities. In a chapter entitled, “The Red Hand of Atheism,” Day shows that atheist regimes of the 20th century have committed far worse atrocities than all religious atrocities combined. According to Day, “…the average atheist crime against humanity is 18.3 million percent worse than the very worst depredation committed by Christians, even though atheists have had less than one-twentieth the number of opportunities with which to commit them.” The unholy trinity’s attempt explain away the murderous acts of atheists shows the logical errors and double standard for those within their own camps. (Pages 233-250)
Logical Errors
One of Day’s most interesting “twists” is to turn the tables on atheists and blame the potential destruction of mankind on atheistic science. Although the atheists say that religion is a threat to humanity’s existence, it is this past century’s science that has provided the means by which the human race could be completely destroyed. So what religion has been unable to accomplish in several thousand years of conflict, modern science could accomplish in mere hours.
Atheists decry blaming science when the application of science is done for evil purposes. However, no such deflection is ever given for theists who misapply theology as they commit evil in the name of their religion. The double standard is quite striking! Day’s point is not to blame science for the evils committed in the use of its technology, but to show the illogical argument of atheists who blame wacko “followers” of a religion for evil they commit, despite the fact that those acts are specifically decried in those religious teachings (pages 43-60).
Sam Harris use the “no true Scotsman” logical fallacy in trying to explain away the tens of millions of killings done by 20th century atheists. The argument goes something like this:
Harris: Atheists don’t kill people because they have no good reason to do so.
Response: Stalin and Mao were atheists and they killed millions of people.
Harris: Then Stalin and Mao were No True Atheists. (Pages 127-133)
Regarding the design of the universe, Dawkins is quoted as saying, “A God capable of calculating the Goldilocks values for the six numbers would have to be at least as improbable as the finely tuned combination of numbers itself.” However, the six numbers have been calculated by physicist Martin Rees, who seems to exist despite the improbability! (Page 153)
Dawkins’s claim that the designer must be more complex than its design directly contradicts his own explanation for the anthropic principle (the “apparent” design of the universe). Dawkins says that the multiverse theory (which is backed by zero evidence) could explain the origin of the universe. However, according to his own logic, this multiverse as designer must be more complex than the universes it creates, which makes the multiverse infinitely more improbable than our own improbable universe. Great use of logic Dawkins! (Pages 156-159)
In a rather humorous section, Day quotes Christopher Hitchens saying, “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” Day takes him quite literally, and list 51 assertions that Hitchens fails to support in any way. According to Hitchens’s own logic, all those claims should be dismissed without evidence, which Day does (Pages 167-171).
Daniel Dennett, left out of the “unholy trinity,” because you couldn’t have a trinity of four, is, nonetheless, not left out of Day’s book. Dennett believes in “moral democracy,” in which the majority decides what is moral or immoral. Day, points out the majority elected both Adolf Hitler in Germany and Hamas in Palestine, pointing out that moral democracy is no guarantee that the majority will, in fact, be moral (Page 188-189).
In The Irrational Atheist, Day reserves an entire chapter, “Occam’s Chainsaw,” to examining specific logical fallacies committed by the “unholy trinity.” These fallacies include argument from authority, lack of evidence, hallucination, temporal advantage, fiction, unfairness of hell, God’s character, moral evolution, the golden rule, and superior morals (Pages 251-268).
And no, it wasn’t religion repressing science in the case of Galileo. Galileo’s problems with the church resulted from the common atheistic need to try to make believers look like fools, which is what Galileo tried to do to Pope Urban VIII, satirizing him as “Simplicio” in his writings.
Mr. Hitchens asks what a person of faith does that a humanist hasn’t also done. Gosh, that’s easy. Look at all the hospitals and schools bearing religious names all around the world. Here in the States. In Europe. Africa. Asia.
How many are named after humanists?
Wow! I received the link to this article from a forwarded email and after taking almost an hour to review all the comments, this is what I would say. I echo the words and heart of William Simpson from Jan. 31 and I would add a solemn warning to Mr. Hitchens and all the other atheists posting responses to this article. As a fundamentalist Christian, I believe there is an accountability to God that we all have as created beings. If I’m wrong, I guess it’ll just be lights out, worm food, etc. But, if I am right, there is a much worse consequence in store for those who don’t believe. Any atheist out there owes it to their own sense of self respect to really go out and research this to the fullest.
Someone mentioned Lee Strobel – he is a Chicago journalist and former atheist who decided to research the person of Jesus Christ for himself after his wife became a Christian. He wrote a book entitled “The Case for Christ.” It is excellent, no-nonsense reading material for anyone who would like to take this discussion to the next step.
I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor…
Seriously! The atheist preaching the Gospel to the minister…
God, sometimes You’re just too much!
@Spike>> “Atheist myths – 1. Atheists claim that atheists make up a smaller percent of prison populations that their theists counterparts.” Citation please? I’m an atheist and have never made that assertion. @Spike>> “However, surveys indicate that those who profess no religion are four times more likely to be incarcerated than their Christian counterparts. (Page 20)” Page 20 from a theistic apologetic does not constitute peer reviewed science. Unless, of course, you believe that the Bible is peer reviewed science. Bring on the citations from peer refereed journal articles, please. @Spike>> “2. Religion hinders scientific progress. It turns out that one of the most religious countries (the United States) produces 28.7% more scientific output per capita than the most atheistic one (France). (Pages 58-59)” But the US is falling behind “atheistic” societies such as China. Cherry picking data is so fraught with pitfalls, don’t you agree? @Spike>> “3. Cities in blue (Democratic) states are safer than cities in red (Republican) states.” How incredibly irrelevant. I’m an atheist and not a Democrat. Wow! I just blew away your entire argument. No citation required. @Spike>> “4. Only religious people are responsible for destruction of art and religious architecture. Day points out that Dawkins’s argument has failed to point out the 41,000 churches destroyed the Soviet atheists, and thousands of Buddhist temples destroyed in Tibet, North Korea, and Vietnam, as they attempted to persecute religious belief out of existence. (Pages 143-144)” Which proves what? That religious people do not destroy art and religious architecture? Is this a serious criticism of atheism; that in some ways people who are atheists act just like their theistic counterparts? You should publish a paper. This is groundbreaking research. @Spike>> “5. Hitler was a Christian. Although Adolf Hitler made Christian-like statements when attempting to get elected to political office, once installed, he hated Christianity, and planned to replace it with a religion based upon racial eugenics. (Pages 209-214)” So Hitler only hated Christianity after he was installed into office but not before? You got that information from what source(s)? Again, your arguments are based on inference without any citation (except to one book of questionable provenance). Your scholarship (cough!) missed discussion of one of Hitler’s most influential writers and philosophers: Madison Grant. His seminal work, The Passing of the Great Race, was considered by most anti-Semites (including Hitler, who wrote glowingly of the book) of his day to be the greatest work of its time. The oddity of your attempt to connect Hitler to atheism is this anti-Semitic glue binding all anti-Semites to their collective hate. Antisemitism is a disease that tends to afflict the Christians and some Muslims. Atheists that I’m familiar with could care less about whether someone is Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or any other religious group. That is a part of the human existence we don’t participate in, so there isn’t any room for bickering among atheists over some superstitious mumbo-jumbo about who did or didn’t kill an imaginary superhuman. Please keep to the facts. Your entire attempt to make atheists look like a group bent on destroying civilization didn’t work. Your attempt is hamstrung by the fact that your research methods rely on only one source for information. I understand that this is a handicap specific to the religiously convinced. Looking for information outside of just one text is difficult for you. Fortunately for the rest of the world, most religious people are not as dogmatic in their research approach as you are.
@Janine H.>> “As a fundamentalist Christian, I believe there is an accountability to God that we all have as created beings. If I’m wrong, I guess it’ll just be lights out, worm food, etc. But, if I am right, there is a much worse consequence in store for those who don’t believe.” No, if you are wrong, it is not because you weren’t an atheist. The flaw in your argument is that you believe that there are only TWO choices: Christianity and atheism. That is hardly a fact. But, according to your belief, everyone who doesn’t follow Christianity is doomed. That includes the other 4.5 billion people world-wide who don’t adhere to the Christian myth. So you are also an atheist when it comes to the other major religions of the world. Imagine your surprise when you get to the “other side” and you are standing in front of a Brahman. So much for your EPIC FAIL at Pascal’s Wager. I guess you had better believe in all of the religions of the world just to be safe, eh? The problem is that most all of them are mutually exclusive in their membership rules. Sucks that there isn’t a safe bet, doesn’t it?
@Matches>> “Look at all the hospitals and schools bearing religious names all around the world.” Doesn’t naming rights have more to do with money than religious devotion? The hospitals named after Christian martyrs is a legacy of Catholic hospitals being built over the decades with their parishioners money. Why weren’t the names of the devoted members of the local diocese on the hospital? Same is true for schools. They are named after politicians. Sometimes they are named after people in the community who have done outstanding works for the public. Was the religious affiliation of the politician and the noble citizen ranked as the reason for naming the building after them? A pedophile in Eastern Washington had a middle school named after him until his crimes were exposed. What was your point again?
Muy bien dicho>>>>>>God bless you>
I was stunned at Hitchens’ rebuttal of Sewell’s professed “faith” when she didn’t believe that Jesus died and rose for our sins. It also made me wonder: had she been talking to Billy Graham would she have said the same? Methinks not. How utterly vacuous and hypocritical! Also the fact that Hitchens, an outspoken atheist, knew more about Christianity than she, a minister, did, was simply embarrassing. The psuedo-Christianity of many people today is merely serving to drive unbelievers away from the church, especially when we get made fools of time and time again. Even if some of Hitchens’ views were ridiculous (that the “natural world” [earth] could possibly be better than any supernatural proposition [God] its creator), I still must give him props for absolutely destroying this so-called minister of God’s perfect and infallible Word.
Has anyone EVER suggested to Mr. Hitchens that he debate Ravi Zacharias? That would be a debate that he would lose big time. I would pay money to see that!
This interview and some of the comments can be summed up in one sentence…
“Man’s wisdom is foolishness to God.”
It is extremely detrimental that a person who doesn’t even know if she believes in God to call herself a Christian. I can admit that my actions are often hypocritical and don’t always reflect the life of a changed person as a result of believing in God and His Son Jesus Christ, but my goodness. What is the definition of Christian these days?? I agree with Diane Halloway.
Hey I have an idea, just accept the empty fleeting statements of anyone who claims that God doesn’t exist especially if they claim to be a person of faith yet can’t express clearly in what they have faith. That makes it easy doesn’t it?
Really who would stretch their mind in attempt to and understand a book of metaphors and stories with no real place in reality? We all know that faith is not restricted to the things that are seen and understood in common terms, right?
Faith is in fact confidence in the element of a particular hope with certainty of it though unseen/ “belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.” Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2010.
But if it makes it easier for you to live and enjoy life, wrap your faith around the idea that God doesn’t exist which is just as empty and without proof as believing that He does, but if somehow you’re wrong, well I’m sure you won’t see the intellectual benefit of speculation here will you?
To be an atheist is completely illogical. an otheist would ahve to ahve total knowlege. With a hundred billion gallaxies each with a hundred billion stars, how dies an theist know God is not hidden away deep in a cave in some distant galaxy? He can be an aganostic. There are tow kinds of agnostics: 1) An ordinary one. 2) An ornary one. An ordinary one is okay – to not know fine. But to say I do not know he would hae to have total knowledge to know that I do not know. There is no such thing as an atheist. A person who says they are an atheist is actually angry at God because He is bitter and has been hurt. Also he is not an atheist, he thinks he is God. I work in Bangladesh and in a poor country in Central America. I have been looking and looking for a group of atheists who have started a hospital or an orphanage or a school. They have stolen schools and hospitals started by Christians, but atheists and liberals have never ever started orphanges – as an evangelical I have. I am not good. Only God is good. Jesus said in Luke 17:10 we are unworthy servants who have only done our duty. William Carey who started the first Univeristy in India, and had 275,000 sthoudand books translated into Bengali had on his gravestone, I saw it two years ago, "A wretched worm am I into thy kind arms I fall. When it comes to doing social good the Unitarians are big bags of win. If you want to learn how dishonest they are read the book, “The Leaven of the Sadducees.” Give me the name and address of an orphange, a school or a hospital that the Unitarians have started in the last 25 years. Please. Anyboyd who doesn’t believe that Jesus arose from the dead should read what mathematician Peter Stoner wrote about the mathematical probabliity that Jesus did not rise from the dead. People do not believe because they do not want to obey. Jesus died for me and He died for you and I am not going to run from his love. I am 74, taught science on the Univeristy level, and am enjoying living for the one who died for me.
I am amazed at the amount of the actual recording that is left out of the transcript, or is completely erroneous in it’s transcription. For example, Hitchens did NOT say that, “the idea that the Koran was dictated by an archaic illiterate is a fantasy.” What he DID say was that “the idea that the Koran was dictated by an archangel to an illiterate was fantastical.” The transcript presents Hitchens making an ad hominem attack against Mohammed. What he actually said represents his view that the story of the writing of the Koran is too fantastic to believe. These obviously are two completely different things. And the parts that are left out, such as his discussion of starting his book tour in the South, and being willing to debate all comers, as well as his humorous asides, do not give people an accurate representation of how he speaks or thinks and the courage of his convictions. I would urge all to listen to the audio recording, rather than read the transcript.
Does this site really not allow paragraphs?
Really?
If this doesn’t work, I guess not.
Which is just unacceptable, seriously update the website.
Hitchens will continue to seem to hold Christian faith to the mat until we illluminate
his black box empirical understanding of science to the faith/false religion it is!
Christianity has it’s poppycock but science the more, all full of surmise and belief and the need for faith.
First of all, I am an antitheist as does claim Christopher Hitchens. For years, though, I attended a Unitarian church and here in Canada, Unitarians are considered a “religion,” even though many are agnostic or atheist. The point is that here in Canada that church does NOT pay taxes so they are just like every other church, in that sense, feeling that somehow they can have their land and building free from taxes. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Seems funny that all these people that don’t believe in the bibical nonsense should still call themselves Christians. Why don’t they just open their eyes and use their brains and be outright atheists? They probably are, but too afraid to admit it.
it’s obvious that she is trying to impress him with her intellect, but she sure blows it with every statement, every question. sad.
She seems to be kissing up to him, to prove she’s on his level. She is NOT a Christian. She states she’s don’t know if God exist? Have him sit down with Greg Laurie from Harvest ministry. That would be a real interview/debate. She doesn’t even know what she believes…just sad and a bad presentation of Christians. Why she would call herself a minister is unknown. She’s begging for man’s approval and she will have to answer to God, especially for all those she leading the wrong way.
I’ve never heard anyone speak so clearly about the falsehoods and dangers of religion. It amazes me that what he says goes right over the heads of believers. It’s a testament to the claim that faith is the result of brainwashing.
Reading and listening to Christopher Hitchens has made me want to learn more about the world. He has helped me emancipate myself from a geographically inherited virus of the mind, known more widely as Christianity.
His stand for free expression is courageous and exemplary. He put his life at risk to shelter Sir Salman Rushdie against Islamist death threats. And his famously pugilistic debating style co-exists with a personal graciousness that his enemies rarely acknowledge and never reciprocate.
A celebrated advocate of atheism, Hitchens declares that he is touched by offers of prayers for his recovery. People of all faiths and none will join them to wish for him an extensive final lap of the race. By the warmth of his personality as well as the clarity of his thinking, he enriches public life.WE LOVE YOU.
Christianity may not be theologically true but Jesus was a wonderful, morally exemplary human being with extremely lovely preachments that deserve attention whether you believe in the Gospel or not. C. S. Lewis quite rightly says that’s absolutely ridiculous. That’s the one thing you cannot say, because if this man was not the son of God then the things that He was saying were absolutely immoral, some of them wicked or mad. They make no sense or they make sense only as injunctions to do evil. As for example: Take no thought for the morrow, care not to clothe or to eat, don’t worry about your family, leave your family, who cares about your children, don’t invest, don’t grow, don’t sew, there’s no point. It’s all coming to an end very soon. The kingdom of God is coming, which he said would be in the lifetime of his disciples.There you have the proof, there is no god, period.
Please tell me how many more times God will order the killing of innocent people even after the Ten Commandments said “Thou shall not kill”. For example, God kills 70,000 innocent people because David ordered a census of the people (1 Chronicles 21). God also orders the destruction of 60 cities so that the Israelites can live there. He orders the killing of all the men, women, and children of each city, and the looting of all of value (Deuteronomy 3). In Judges 21, He orders the murder of all the people of Jabesh-gilead, except for the virgin girls who were taken to be forcibly raped and married. When they wanted more virgins, God told them to hide alongside the road and when they saw a girl they liked, kidnap her and forcibly rape her and make her your wife! Just about every other page in the Old Testament has God killing somebody! In 2 Kings 10:18-27, God orders the murder of all the worshipers of a different God in their very own church! In total God kills 371,186 people directly and orders another 1,862,265 people murdered. This PROVE’S Gods love for his creationI don’t really trust Abraham. He heard a voice telling him to kill his son. think of all the trauma pooor Isaac suffered. Must have scarred him for life. No, Abe didn’t have any psychiatrists to diagnose his paranoid schizophrenia back then. Today he would be under heavy sedation in an institution for the criminally insane. In his day, every madman was a mystic.
Most despots in history had the character of this insufferable tyrant god man invented. He had no more knowledge than man had back then, and he wasn’t any more moral either. Child sacridice? Who accepted Jepthah’s sacrifice of his daughter? Who ordered innocent firstborn Egyptians killed? And who claimed he sent his own son to die? For what? So he could smell the sweet savor of sacrifice to himself. All of this is utter nonsense, and it’s great I’m finally free from it.
THANKS.
. "Religion itself begins in our infancy the fearful cringing excremental infancy, infancy is charming in infants, not very charming in grown ups of our species . Religion begins at a time when people don’t know there is a germ theory of disease. They don’t know that the earth revolves around the sun, they believe the contrary, they don’t know whether the earth is round or flat. They don’t know when they are told they are given dominion overall species, in genesis. It’s just not the passage doesn’t mention any marsupials because the rightists don’t know the existence of Australia, doesn’t mention any micro-organisms over which we still don’t have – Dominion.
It comes from this primitive base cringing, fearful period but our minds fortunately are still patterned to look for argument and for explanation and even a conspiracy theory is better than no theory at all and religion is essentially the conspiracy theory of the origin of the cosmos and the species.In times of extreme darkness where you don’t know the road, even a local who is blind and deaf maybe a good guide. But when the dawn breaks you can’t bid adieu to this guide however, decent he was to you when it was dark. So that the religious have every thing still ahead of them, they have never been able to prove the existence of God.
The cleverest theologians have broken their chops on the question. And that’s fine we wouldn’t expect them to. But they want to go a step further, they know his mind!!!. They are able to interpret for you and tell you what to do on this basis. He knows and they can tell you, what he made? With whom he may have, this is a family values show, Congress. What books it might be advisable to read. What other practices might be avoided. This is an impossible solipsism, an impossible arrogance and self centeredness and it comes, this authoritarianism, in an awfully masochistic guise which should put you off it to begin with. It says bare in mind that you are already just dirt, as the Christian book says, or you are only fashioned from a clot of blood as the Koran states. Bear in mind that you were convicted and found guilty before you were conceived of crimes in which you couldn’t have possibly been involved and you have all the burden of proof at your own defense and you have been found guilty. But to make up for that role of horrible indictment you can be reassured that the entire cosmos is designed with you in mind. False translation, and that he has a plan for you, on condition that you agree to be a serf forever". Quote Christopher Hitchens.The fact that our species does demonstrate concern for others above and beyond ourselves. That’s commonly thought to be what morality consists of is caring about other people or other creatures. Other creatures do it and we do too. There is no mystery about this in my view; it is not a gift from God. To call it that is to make an uninteresting claim. What does that prove if it’s true? It would seem to me to have the implication that there’s no need to strive for morality since it comes, as it were, free from Paradise.
Well I’ll say this – it’s consistent with how much God hates children. Genital mutilation for babies; the epidemic of child raping priests; “He that spareth his rod hateth his son”, commonly known as ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’; the bald man’s prayers in ‘2 Kings’ to deal with mildly mischievous children, that result in two bears shredding children to pieces; the disgusting Abraham’s son story. Make no mistake about it – this is one magnificently paedophobic lunartic of a god here.
“Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.” – Malachi 2:3
“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” – Psalm 137.9 “Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?” – 2 Kings 18:27 “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.” – Ezekiel 23:20 “And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast.” – Leviticus 20:16 “And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, and the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.” – Deuteronomy 28:53My creator isn’t yours I assure you. The beguiling promises of love and comfort are not the arms of the creator, but the talons of the weak of mind.
Is there anything more hopeless and dispicable than the wreck of a human mind; a star reduced to a parrot?
In Exodus we have an account of the manner in which Jehovah delivered the Jews from Egyptian bondage.We now know that the Jews were never enslaved by the Egyptians; that the entire story is a fiction. We know this, because there is not found in Hebrew a word of Egyptian origin, and there is not found in the language of the Egyptians a word of Hebrew origin. This being so, we know that the Hebrews and Egyptians could not have lived together for hundreds of years.
Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.
A side benefit, incidentally, of freeing myself from religious indoctrination was the unexpected pleasure of finding my mind to be a private place. I had not realised until then, how much I resented the intrusion of a heavenly ‘peeping Tom’. A permanent farther/dictator who never goes away, who you are ordered to Love and Fear. What a Horrible concept to impose on yourselves. Rejoice, Rejoice its all Lies
The Catholic church is the most corrupt and ignorant system ever devised by mankind. In 1981 they admitted the world was round! They apoligised to Galileo for jailing him for believeing in science. Pope John Paul the Second caused the death of countless Africans who believed contraception was wrong because he told them so! Mass death through ignorance. The Catholic church is anti-science. Think about that, anti science! They don’t believe in contraception,or free thought.They all take vows of poverty but live in wealth. They protect sex offenders, this has been proven! There is no evidence of God, they don’t believe in God, but they know we fear death and they exploit this financially.
Religion is dangerous; 9-11, Afganistan, the Middle East, Aids in Africa, etc etc all stems from chanting, repetition, brainwashing, exploiting fear of death, and telling people what to do to please a “God”.
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” ADOLF HITLER.
So God wanted the Holocaust? Hmmm…
I love watching therapeutic stances get ruined like this.
Whatever you are, Christian, Muslim, or Atheist… I ask that you be consistent. Make assertions, have conversation, and do life.
Forget this liberal “it makes me feel better” nonsense. When did social philosophy suddenly become about making one feel better? It’s a disaster. People are intellectual pussies today… Stand up, drive your point home, belief or disbelieve and do it vigorously. Don’t stand in limbo with a flower in your hair saying, “I just want to feel happy.” Fuck that. Do something. Say Something.
It seems to be within the realm of possibility that as the good Dr. Thomas Campbell, PhD Physics, that all the universe is consciousness, and we are each a small center of awareness in the larger ocean of a bigger Consciousness. One has to first experience an enlightening brief moment of such an attunement to realize this dynamic. Once experienced, all perspective shifts.
I enjoyed reading this article very much. After seven years of academic study in religion I had come to the conclusion that the warfare, violence, torture, supression of women, supression of education, supression of human rights, supression of arts and culture, and other abuses of religion were primarily caused by three factors: the non separation of politics and religion; the fact that religions are organizations run by human beings; and the partisan appropriation of God.
Reading the comments posted on this site I realize that the partisan appropriation of God is perhaps the biggest factor. God belongs to everybody. When there is a conflict everyone claims that God is on their side. Allah wants us to win. Yaweh wants us to win. God wants us to win. Jesus wants us to win. God wants Right to Life. God wants women’s rights. God sends unbaptized babies to Hell. God saves everybody. Jesus says you have to believe in Him to be saved. Allah says you have to pray five times a day.
Everyone knows just what God wants and they have the Torah or the Bible or the Gospels or the Quran to prove it. People of faith start fighting with one another. They fight within their own faith and they fight with people of other faiths: sometimes with words, sometimes with rocks, sometimes with guns, sometimes with bombs, sometimes with airplanes.
I was saddened to see so many Christians angry with Rev. Sewell for not being their kind of Christian. In the USA members of a Unitarian congreagation were shot dead in their own church in this century by a right wing Christian. Yet Rev. Hitchens was unafraid to expose herself to fundamentalists. Rev. Sewell did a great job getting Hitchens to talk about faith and his own experience of transcendence. She did this by focusing on what united them instead of what divided them. When Rev. Sewell showed her religious vulnerability Hitchens didn’t react with his usual bluster and bull headedness. Instead he showed what might be called reverence for nature. She demonstrated real religious courage.
There is room in this world for people of every faith. There is room in this world for people who read the Bible literally and for people who read the Bible metaphorically. If we all insist that our way is the ONLY way, and that our God is the TRUE GOD, and our view of Jesus is the ONLY view of Jesus then Hitchens will be right: Religion will poison the world. There are many windows: One Light. You can open your window without slamming everyone else’s shut. The more open windows we have, the more Light there will be in the world.
All tastefully done
I really liked the article, and the very cool blog
I really liked the article, and the very cool blog
Get over it people. THERE IS NO GOD. Jesus, the christ, never existed. And neither did any other “saviors”…………And there ain’t no DEVIL.
Human beings all over the world need to grow up, take responsibility for their own lives, stop living in fear and start living this life without expecting another. We’ll get more out of life, and we’ll all be better for it.I love how Hitchens calls out Sewell after she says she’s a Christian but doesn’t believe one of the essential elements of Christianity. That is priceless.