You Must Believe This – Hitch
This topic contains 46 replies, has 10 voices, and was last updated by TheEncogitationer 4 years ago.
-
AuthorPosts
-
April 20, 2020 at 4:55 pm #31192April 20, 2020 at 6:24 pm #31194
Sure wish we had more people like Hitch.
April 20, 2020 at 7:04 pm #31195…and in the only part of the Middle East that has no oil 🙂
April 20, 2020 at 7:57 pm #31196I like Hitch..quite the orator and thinker but i hate the tendency among atheists to worship the guy.
No doubt there are theists who might be shocked into thinking a bit but that flavor of criticism can go on almost endlessly and it is stuff i thought about independently as a child. No doubt 100s of thousands or greater have as well..
April 20, 2020 at 9:06 pm #31197I like Hitch..quite the orator and thinker but i hate the tendency among atheists to worship the guy. No doubt there are theists who might be shocked into thinking a bit but that flavor of criticism can go on almost endlessly and it is stuff i thought about independently as a child. No doubt 100s of thousands or greater have as well..
Hard to overestimate the power of religious indoctrination and non-liberal society on someone like myself who spent much of their formative years in the deep South, Ga and Fl. I am talking prayers before office meetings kinda stuff. And “What church do y’all attend”?….. every single time you meet somebody. Where they shut down main street on good Friday for a parade with bloody jesus who drags a cross. That is where Hitch and his books stepped in. I feel like I owe him. Worship? Nah. Imagine being a rationalist in Saudi. Holy Crap.
April 20, 2020 at 9:34 pm #31198He was such a “Right wing Leftie“. The only one of the Horsemen I never got to speak with. But anytime I listen to Chapter 1 of “The Portable Atheist” when walking, I always smile at the clarity of thought and never an unnecessary word used. I had a pain from laughing when I heard the Vatican made him Devil’s Advocate for Mother Teresa’s sainthood debate.
It was Hitchens Day last week so I have a shot of Johnie Walker Black about the only time I ever drink alcohol. Today I have other people to celebrate! Mmmmm…Cookies
April 20, 2020 at 9:50 pm #31199He was such a “Right wing Leftie“. The only one of the Horsemen I never got to speak with. But anytime I listen to Chapter 1 of “The Portable Atheist” when walking, I always smile at the clarity of thought and never an unnecessary word used. I had a pain from laughing when I heard the Vatican made him Devil’s Advocate for Mother Teresa sainthood debate. It was Hitchens Day last week so I have a shot of Johnie Walker Black about the only time I ever drink alcohol. Today I have other people to celebrate! Mmmmm…Cookies
I gave up all booze Jan 1 in pursuit of my high school physique, but like you I allowed myself a tiny sip of whisky last week. No 420 celebrations tonite for me either…well I think there might be a lil something around here somewhere.
April 20, 2020 at 10:02 pm #31200If I posted that video on my social media it would be paramount to social suicide. I think my friends suspect the worst, but they like me enough to overlook it as long as it remains mutually exclusive. Fortunately my sweetheart is of a like mind.
April 20, 2020 at 10:51 pm #31201Robert, you are fortunate she is of a like mind. I have been adversely impacted in romance by women with infected brains.
And you are correct that in many places it is tantamount to social suicide-obviously any place in which fundamentalism is dominant but among blacks it seems to be the case almost ever place. I notice that apostates are way above average in intelligence. I have only anecdotes to back my assertion. It would make an interesting study. Religion is truly a powerful mind-fuck.
April 20, 2020 at 10:53 pm #31202And i meant to indicate that apostates who begin in those areas in which religion is dominant are the ones who are impressively smart.
April 20, 2020 at 11:42 pm #31203Religious thinking (an oxymoron?) stultifies the mind. Magical thinking is no substitute for reasoned objective thought. Faith is accepting the beliefs of others without question. God did it. The Age of Reason was so called because we started to think critically about our accepted beliefs. We rejected traditional dogmas and developed new understandings of how the world works. Once you see through the lie of religion it is often difficult not to see believers as somewhat lacking in their thought processes. I tried to sound not too condensing with the previous sentence but sometimes what they say is so incredulous to me that I think we are a different species. Their gods are just not real no matter how real they have imagined them to be. There are no gods. Let’s park it there and move on please.
No, they still insist they can communicate via telepathy with the Creator of the Universe and that He will make them all immortals too. Now where did I park my spaceship?? It’s the one with 420 on the side.
April 21, 2020 at 12:04 am #31204And all of this for what was to be a short-lived apocalyptic religion of a desperate ‘mystery’ sect of Jews that failed in it’s generational promise and was slowly massaged to be the mess it is today.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/explanation/jesusjohnbaptist.html
April 21, 2020 at 12:21 am #31205Yes, it is an oxymoron. Being incapable of reasoning without reconciling the outside world to the certainty of the religious delusion is not thinking. It is avoidance of thinking or at least reasoning. And that is what we mean when we say thinking.
If it weren’t the Abrahamic religions then it would have been some other religion, no? Was there a possibility that the light of classical Greece would outshine the mythology, mysticism, dynamics of power, bad ethics that prevailed? I guess if pigs had the right wings they would soar above the pig farms and shit on the butchers. idk..
April 21, 2020 at 1:05 am #31206Nice. I am so inspired by Hitchens. As Reg said, not an unnecessary word. His explanations are easy to understand. He has encouraged more of my deconversion than almost anyone. And now my son listens too!
April 21, 2020 at 4:46 am #31208but that flavor of criticism can go on almost endlessly and it is stuff i thought about independently as a child
I felt that way when I first became familiar with him, too. His and Dawkins’ criticism felt too strident to me for a couple of years, and I felt strongly that it would do little to sway people who I wished most would be swayed, i.e. the believers, e.g. those of faith. I still feel that way, although Dawkins seems to have mellowed. But what has changed is my grown appreciation of their ability to speak for me, or at least my strident atheist side.
Worshippers turn me off too, but I consider worship as an unfortunate, natural tendency in humans, perhaps linked to a tribal instinct. Instinctive like racial prejudice. I’m more aware than ever of that human flaw, when I’m trying like hell but mostly failing at having a reasonable, two-way dialog with those who so deeply worship Trump. It stresses me out more than the pandemic itself. Like Trump, they’re not just proudly disrespectful with an instinctive/reflexive knack for name-calling, but they’re even openly hateful at times toward all “progressives” and anyone who even mildly criticizes Trump, the Disser in Chief. (Shit, I just called him a name, in anger.)
On that note, I deeply appreciate Hitchens’ ability to calmly, without resorting to invection (is that a word? I don’t know!), eviscerate others’ poor thinking. And Jake, I look up to your advanced wordsmithing abilities, too.
But I do have a question about “flying pigs shitting on butchers”. Is that a slight on meat eaters? Or maybe it references a well known book I haven’t read?
- This reply was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by PopeBeanie. Reason: (btw i spent ~20 fricken minutes tweaking that post. or should i say 'sculpting' it
-
AuthorPosts
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.